Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Two Bucks a Pound



I listen to family and friends whine about either their own lives or the lives of their children. Someone is sick, someone has money problems and some just aren't that bright. The stories of personal lives go on and on.

You don't need a televised reality series to be immersed in the sometimes dramatic, sometimes created drama, of those who surround you. 

I listened recently to a story about how a grandmother's daughter was ill and managed to plug up the toilet. As you can already tell by the subject, this isn't going to end well. The grandmother goes in and tries to plunge the waste down, instead she ends up with a fountain of shit that ends up covering everything, and seeps through the floor into the basement, etc. That's enough when it comes to details, but really, do you need to watch soap operas all day?

All you have to do is look around you. Love and friendship, hate and anger, drunken foolishness, all on display everywhere you look. The sinister, the honest, the good, the crazy; all spinning on the carousel waiting for you to jump on. Life is good.

I've been thinking about what could possibly be worse than what some people have to contend with. There are real problems, real terror and real pain. There are those who focus on food to survive, those who run from war and those who hide who they are. Some cringe from public humiliation, some wait for punishment that the religious will bring, some die because of the hate hiding in the seeming serenity of mankind. 

There are plights that I can never understand, being lucky enough to have been born in a land that opportunity, at one time, existed. It is an easy exercise, want to feel good about yourself, there's always someone who has it worse.

I have come up with one thought that could possibly be worse for all, and that would be if your only value was determined by how much the local butcher could charge for you. 

Your only value being a market commodity, your only value a dollar sign. Eating swill, living in cages, disease ridden and only knowing fear.

Two bucks a pound is the ultimate insult.

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