Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling for November 04, 2021

“…the young with 50-60 years ahead, are cowering, risk-phobic shut-ins”? That ain’t counter-Earth. That’s this one. [Sez this 80-year-old. 101st Airborne, Vietnam, over 3000 SCUBA dives worldwide.]

Comedian Denis Leary on smoking: (Taking a deep drag on stage.) “I’ll admit it, I love these things. I love ‘em, love ’em, love ’em, love ’em, love ’em. Even though they say smoking will take ten years off your life. Eh … [expletive] it – they’re the worst ten years anyway.”

Their old people are better than our old people. And sizeable proportion of our young to middle-aged people cry-cry-cry about having to wear masks during a pandemic… How does one get to counter earth?

See the novel “Old Man’s War” and sequels.

About 40 years ago my wife’s grandmother, at 95, started smoking and drinking while insisting “this ain’t gonna kill me.”

Soldiers should have gone on strike until they got 8 hour days with overtime, 15-minute breaks, and 30 minutes for meals.

Scalzi’s “Old Man’s War.” I’ve always thought that if I got incurable lung cancer I’d start smoking again.

If only my rickety old body would let me do those things…..

Back before the pandemic, a friend had been in line at the bank for several minutes, and finally got called to a teller… an old geezer shoved his way past her and demanded to see the teller ahead of her (and everybody else)… he turned and sneered “age before beauty, dear”… she replied “that’s okay, I have a lot more time left than you do”…

Insert Bill Hicks’ routine about terminally ill people being stunt doubles in films: “I love the movies, love ‘em. Now, I’m watching Terminator 2 the other day, and I’m thinking to myself: They cannot top the stunts in this film, they cannot top this shit, unless … they start using terminally ill people as stunt people in feature films … well, hear me out, ’cause I know to a lot of you this may seem a little cruel. “Aww, Bill, terminally ill stunt people? That’s cruel!” You know what I think’s cruel? Leaving your loved ones to die in a hospital room surrounded by strangers. Fuck that! Put ‘em in the movies! What, you wanna let your grandmother live out her last days in a sterile hospital room, with translucent skin so thin you can see her last heartbeat work its way down her blue veins? Or do you want her to meet… Chuck Norris?”

Old Man’s War:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man%27s_War

Hell’s Grannies:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ckXn9NirHA

The third one seems to be true on this earth. Rates of STDs are said to be sky-high among retired folks.