Here Today, Gone Fishing Tomorrow

I'm having a rum and ginger beer as I settle in for the night and read about the latest and greatest cause of cancer this week, which is, of course, the moderate consumption of alcohol. Sex, drugs, cigarettes, booze, and even ice cream: cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer, and yet more cancer in the making.

We are woefully mortal, almost to the last. One's only realistic chance of escape is to die young and beautiful in some hopelessly romantic and socially acceptable tragedy. Ideally one should die as a rock 'n' roll singer or much beloved politician. Should it come to pass that you are no longer young or perhaps have chosen not to be beautiful, then you are out of luck this go 'round. It's the mundane and secretive doom of the hospital ward or the hospice for you.

Cancer certainly isn't your only option. Heart attacks and strokes are very popular. Suicide, mass shooting victim, or crashing a car soundly into a tree while posting something very important to Facebook are viable means. Odds are on cancer though. In the West, we have done just about everything we can to ensure each of us will likely die by way of cancer. Oh, I could go on about pollution and plastics and so forth, but they aren't the essential problem. The more immediate issue is we have managed to effectively negate the risk of once popular modes of demise (like dysentary, smallpox, or falling off a horse) so much so that the available options for exactly how to die have been whittled away until most of what's left is heart disease or some brand of cancer.

We go on and on indefinitely until our hearts explode or tumors waste us away to skin and bones and agony. All the while the good folks at the hospital are there to help us live through as much of that pain and humiliation as technologically possible before we at last escape their clutches. All things considered, I quite like the idea of falling off a horse. Falling moderately, of course.