combating the diseases of affluence

i came across this term today while looking into my health. on days after a good night of drinking, smoking, and genuine gluttonous excess i will - if time allows - reflect on my choices. "that was fun, but i'm so stupid..." is generally what my reflections sound like. today i had the time because i called in sick to school.

it's a wednesday. i only have one class and i don't have to work. it's 10:30 and the day stretches out before me like a wonderland of time. no stressors. oh, beauty.

so i started looking around the internet. i really do - and i think like most people i know - want to be healthy. want to make healthy choices. for some reason we live more for now than for the future. this could just be our ages. we're young. hip. we don't feel all the chocolate shakes just yet.

but we do feel the hangover.

last week at nick holwegner's (crooked gospel drummer for those of you reading...) birthday party i met leisa and brady. they're real cool. friends of alecia and andy rostad and have a great dog. love the outdoors. kind of - well, ok - they're hippies. or wannabe hippies. can real ones even exist anymore?

well, turns out, leisa works at a cool place that throws away some booze sometimes. and i just happened to be there when this was going down. and i just happened to have had some in me and jumped on that train real quick. ok. don't mind if i do. thanks leisa. it's gonna be a great night.

and it was. i talked with jake for a long time. spent time with the poet jeff skarski. he, "didn't know there were people in minot really worth knowing..." well, that's not verbatim. mostly, he was drunk and happy that he'd met cool people. hell, me too.

i'm happy i meet so many damn cool people.

anyway, back to my story. so i drank. learned about skarski's world. he's got a german penpal. the translating book was on his table. he also has this thing about me touching his computer's wooden cabinet before i touch the computer. to ground me. get all the schocks out of my body.

whoah.

and at jake's apartment, on the landing, there's this 5-gallon bucket filled with energy-drinks. seriously. and we walk into the building past it, and i ask about it. what the hell's that all about? jake says it's been there for 3 or 4 days.

we take to the balcony and i keep drinking. we talk about crutches. he tells me about his grandpa. a preacher. jake would make a good one, too. and that's not an insult. i mean it in the most complimentary way a cynical-atheist-cum-mystic can.

his grandpa, when arguing for religion (not christ, but religion - i'm guessing?) would encounter the "crutch" argument. he would tell his friend, "a crippled man with a crutch is gonna get a lot farther than a crippled man without..."

after he told me that story, i asked him why he wasn't gonna have a drink with me then...

ha!

it was good times. i babbled. i miss that kid.

becky came over and i was hitting the road. and i called barta. and i said to him, "come pick up all these damn energy drinks i found!"

and he did. and we sort-of raced home. i was on the shogun. and i had barta beat - in a race he didn't know we were having - and then my shoelace got caught up on my pedal. and fuck if that weren't scary enough. i was at 20mph at the very least. the fixie'll lock up all around your feet that way, you know? and so my shoelace snapped, and the other part of the lace hadn't and it dangled.

so i don't want to stop. this is a race, after all. and i keep pedaling, but i'm sure to keep that foot with the dangling half-a-lace away from the pedal. i'm riding with one left leg extended and pedaling to beat hell with the other when barta passes me shouting, "this is for PINK SLIPS, bitch!"

well. fuck.

we drank some more. we ate crap food. i fell asleep around 3. i woke up around nine. i'm writing around 11. and i'm finishing my story close to now...

so, for some reason i started looking into colon-cleanses.

hell. i'm stopped up. my guts generally feel like settling cement, anyhow. and that adds to the lethargy.

i'm a way off-kilter being. so there's mind, body, & spirit. well, my spirits go...or the mind can't concentrate...and my body get stuck with the bill. "here, pick up the tab on this pizza-beer-cigarette party we had last night. i know, i know...we should've thought about maybe taking you into consideration, but it was a LONG day, don't you get it???"

ugh.

i ordered some whole psyllium husks. it's like a condensed powder that gels up and expands in the ultimate fiber-feature-event! so, like a glacier, it slides through intestines wiping out villages of disease-ridden fecal matter.

cool, huh? and it was only four-bucks!

PART II: WHY THIS IS NAMED COMBATTING THE DISEASES OF AFFLUENCE

I read this:

"Examples of diseases of affluence include: type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, peripheral vascular disease, obesity, certain forms of cancer, asthma, alcoholism, depression[1], as well as a major range of other psychiatric illnesses.

These diseases are categorized as non-communicable diseases, whereas the diseases of poverty tend to be largely communicable either through infection, inadequate safety or environmental health regulations, or poor hygiene.

Diseases of affluence are predicted to become more prevalent as starvation and diseases of poverty decline, and as longevity increases. From a sociological perspective, there is a failure among policy makers to recognize that development could be experienced as self-defeating if it means exchanging one set of diseases for another."

on wikipedia.

I'd never heard the term before, although I HAD spotted it's symptoms. I wrote a song once for Fist Full of Knuckles. Called it, "White Knuckles." In the song I just say a bunch of shit about privilege. My having it, and all. Well, one of the lines is, "All my friends have drinking problems, but at least they can afford to."

So I named this blog "combating the diseases of affluence," because it sounded like something we should try. It sounds good.

Fuck, how to do that? By sitting around typing blogs. I hate my arrogance as much as you do.

Well, that's that. Have fun with the new term. I'm going to learn more.

Knowledge isn't really power but that's what afternoon school-programs say. I'll gain that while the rest (the BIGGER fishes of privilege) gain real power - through banking.

Oh, today may be terrible.