Bacon is Now a Vegetable!

I've hereafter proclaimed that Bacon is forevermore a vegetable.  Although, it could also be a Fruit, if it suits your fancy.  If you're older than the dirt, that is.

Like me.

I've spent my entire life "eating right."  Not consuming too much of this, while forced to eat a gob of that.  With all of "that" looking and tasting just awful.  All to stay healthy enough...so I could grow old.  

To accomplish what, again?

Taking part in all of this enabled me to now grunt and moan and suffer on a daily basis.  Only every time I move.  From the very moment my eyelids snap open each morning I'm in pain.  And when I roll out of bed, I ache.  It hurts to move until the variety of pills I take each morning kicks in.  And I've deprived myself of untold measures of prandial joy so I could "live" to experience this.

Unlike the folks who've eaten steaks and potatoes and burgers and fries and pizza and ice cream sundaes.  Who die young(er).  Who drop dead from a heart attack.  Or a stroke.  With a smile on their faces, no doubt.  Before they have to suffer the pains and torment of growing old.

What a cruel joke.

Did you know that the average age at death of a White male back in the 1850's was only 44?  I am an expert on all things "Old West," BTW, so I know stuff like this.  And when they did die, it was from a snake bite, or pleurisy (tuberculosis), or an impacted wisdom tooth, or even lead poisoning (of the bullet hole variety).  

What they didn't die of was cancer, or Aplastic Anemia, or Multiple Sclerosis.  Because those are "old persons' diseases."  How nice.  We fought our entire lives to cure polio, and measles, and yellow fever, to replace them with lung cancer and heart disease and Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyrediculopathy.    

Did you know that fully 20% of all the money ever  spent on healthcare for you will be during the last two weeks of your life?  Really?  Do you want to look forward to you laying in an ICU with tubes running in and out of every one of your orifices?  Thinking about all the bacon cheeseburgers with Freedom Fries you didn't eat.  While a for-profit hospital does its very best to keep you alive, at $5,000 a day?

I didn't really take note when I was younger that I would one day get older.  I mean, really take notice.  As in, REALLY!  In fact, I doubt that anyone does.  It's a fact of life.

Or, of death.

You just keep your head down and run like Hell to try and earn enough to feed your brood, and pay all your bills, and stay out of jail, while everyone with less is trying to take what you've got.  And so is the Gubmint, which is owned and operated by those who've got much more than you do.  And continue to do their best to peel you like a grape.

Folks my age have two main fears: running out of money in Uncle Joe's "Bidenflation," and then sitting on a sidewalk somewhere begging for alms; or falling, breaking something, and then dying in a hospital a week later from pneumonia.  

Hence, the "20%."

In fact, I have another fear.  As a veteran, I'm afraid I'll be shuffled off to some V.A. old age home.  You know, when I become senile like our President.  When I can no longer converse in a language approximating English.  And then I'll wind up on the sun porch, in an Adirondack chair, with a blanket across my lap, and a silver drool cup hanging from my lips, while some 400 pound Samoan nurse asks, "And how are we today, Mr. Chuckmeister?"

What's this "WE" sh*t?  It ain't YOU in this *$#&@ chair!

But in the meeeeentime, I've decided that every day might be my last.  In fact, every meal might be my last!  So I've given all my foods the new, and improved, "Chuckmeister Food Groups" label.  For instance, bacon is now a vegetable!  Most closely related to Kale, I believe.  And steak for me is actually a bunch of Carrots.  And with those carrots we have a nice, fat baked, umm, cauliflower.  Replete with a dollop of sour...broccoli.  And then on top we smother it with a nice, er, green bean sauce.  With a few of those cantaloupe bits, doncha' know.       

Tasty stuff, that broccoli!  

And after every single meal, including breakfast, I'll prepare a nice caramel swirl ice cream sundae, covered with caramel syrup, and a dash of chocolate sauce, with some Cool Whip on top.  And sprinkles.  A generous portion, to be sure.  And I'll enjoy the heck out of it!  In fact, its one of my primary sources of joy!* 

And trust me, what they used to call "joy" is in short supply here in 'Murica these days... 

*  I've decided not to "recategorize" ice cream and its various sauces.  That's because God loves us and wants us to have ice cream and everything we can possibly put on top of it.  Oh yeah, and beer, too...