Folly Brings Down Another Cancer Powerhouse

I’d like to declare a new awareness month to call attention to a potentially horrible health crisis: A mysterious illness seems to be infecting nonprofit foundations that raise money for cancer research.

If things continue at this pace, we’ll all be back to relying on the federal government for research funding… and we all know that’s a recipe for progress. (Snicker.) Smart people everywhere are amping up preventive health measures as the “race for the cure” is looking ever more like a grueling marathon.

Lance Armstrong finally being exposed as a cynical liar and cheat – albeit a liar and cheat legitimately missing one testicle – undeniably spells bad news for LiveStrong, his foundation to support cancer research.

Yeah, Nike dropped Lance while continuing to support the foundation. And Lance stepped down as board chair (while retaining an active seat on the board). But how long will that last? Methinks it’s only a matter of time before those yellow bracelets stand for shame rather than hope.

Add LiveStrong’s inevitable demise to Komen Foundation’s bizarre and totally avoidable plunge into the nation’s most polarized political issue. Komen was caught in crossfire it single-handedly created. Their unprovoked attack on Planned Parenthood (which, ahem, serves as a safety net for breast cancer screening for low-income women) was so unfathomably unnecessary. And so tragically mishandled.

Perhaps cancer nonprofits missed some sort of critical inoculation against the folly of misguided leadership?

Generations from now, it’s possible that anthropologists will sift through our landfills only to uncover an entire society’s strange infatuation with pink EVERYTHING, along with millions of yellow wrist artifacts, all bearing the same coy, oblique message.

Warring nation states? Dueling religions? Or the remains of powerful cults with once-noble missions?

Really Dude? Seriously?

     After seeing the pictures that Time Magazine recently published of Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, I have only one thing to say.  Dude, what the hell were you thinking?  I realize that this photo session was a year ago and back then you were just a lowly congressman from the wilds of Wisconsin.  But you were a nominee for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year and an elected representative.  Is this the image you really want to portray?  Pauly Paul and the Funky Fresh Bunch just feelin the vibration?  Right Said Paul too sexy for his hat?  You look like you are just one bad tweet away from sending a picture of your penis to an intern.  The bottom line is you look like a fool and not someone who should be a heartbeat away from the Oval Office.  You can claim that the photos were all the idea of the magazine or the photographer, but you said yes to the concept.  You put that baseball cap on backwards, picked up that dumbbell and flexed for the camera. Why?  It doesn’t look congressional.  It doesn’t look vice-presidential.  Then I figured it out. Maybe, just maybe, you were going for senatorial.  Back when these pictures were taken, everyone knew that Wisconsin’s democratic Senator Herb Kohl was not running for another term.  His job would be up for grabs, and who better to grab it than a relatively young and power hungry republican from southern Wisconsin?  But how to set yourself apart from the republican mob and make yourself a shoe-in for your party’s nomination?  Maybe, just maybe, Mr. Ryan you are a closet fan of our little blog and took the sarcasm of a much earlier post a little too seriously.  I refer to post from December of 2010 about the pictures taken of one Senator Brown (R-Mass.) in his misspent youth.  Yes, perhaps Mr. Ryan was trying to take a page out of the centerfold Senator’s book and let his freak flag fly, but if that was his intent, it was still an epic fail.  He did not go far enough. At least Senator Brown had the balls, at least I assume he does it is hard to tell from the picture, to go full frontal and really put himself out there.   All Congressman Paul Ryan accomplished with this photo shoot was to take some pictures that made him look like a vain, supercilious ass. But then, as they say, the camera never lies.

And I Feel Swine

Dear Friends and Readers, I realize that we who contribute to this blog have neglected our duty for the past year.  We have failed to bring you witty articles about pop culture, health and beauty trends, travel, and fine dining.  We have failed to provide the insightful social commentary and useful tips on apocalypse preparedness on which you had come to rely.  The only excuse I give, in my case, for this gross oversight is my brush with death last fall.  After fighting my way, heroically I might add, back from surgery and infection, I found myself in an appreciative fog unable to be truly snarky and thus unworthy of posting to this blog.  Today, my friends, this changes because over the past couple of weeks a news story has chilled me to my very core.  It is impossible for me to keep silent about the impending disaster that hangs over us all holding our world’s happiness and existence as we know it in a precarious balance.  I refer, of course, to:

 

BACON-OCALYSPE 2013!

Last week it hit the national news and for a moment my heart stopped beating.  Bacon Shortage!  No not that! Please by all that is holy, anything but that.  Why now? We just learned how to put it into ice cream.  Is it just bacon, or will I have to give up my pulled pork, carnitas, and sausage?  Will we be forced to stand in long lines for meager pork rations while privileged government leaders gorge themselves on BLT’s?  Or even worse, forced to eat bacon substitutes like turkey bacon, soy products or in the most desperate situations Soylent Bacon also known as long pig?  I rushed to my local grocery store and snatched up packages of Oscar Mayer and then scoured the internet for some glimmer of hope, a silver lining behind this, the darkest and ugliest of clouds. It turns out that this story originated with the press release from an obscure British trade organization, and although the drought experienced this past summer will affect the pork supply in the coming year, there is not a shortage of pork products looming on the horizon.  No this was just a crass marketing ploy to soften the economic blow of higher pork prices due to the higher cost of feed.  So there will still plenty of pork products available, but the price may be less palatable.   Then again, I always say that pig is proof that god loves us and can you really put a price tag on love?