‘Smoking takes 10 years off your life. Well, it’s the 10 worst years, isn’t it folks? It’s the ones at the end! It’s the wheelchair, kidney dialysis, adult diaper years. You can have those years! We don’t want ’em, all right??
? Comedian Denis Leary

We’re all going to die ? and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.
You can go to the gym every day, jog to work, give up eating meat, swear off alcohol, eat enough fiber to pass 1970s Elvis through your colon and gobble up every single overpriced vitamin and herbal supplement known to man and guess what?
Worms are still going to eventually feast on you like you’re an underground Golden Corral. Of course, that’s after your body and mind have slowly betrayed you.
Gravity, time and entropy always win in the end, just like a casino.
Sure, you might extend your life by doing the aforementioned things, but as Mr. Leary pointed out, those extra years at the end are the worst ones. Visit a nursing home sometime and tell me I’m wrong.
Now that you’re thoroughly depressed, here’s my point.
Enjoy life! Live, baby, live!
Eat whatever you want.
Drink whatever you want.
Smoke whatever you want.
Don’t feel guilty about not going to the gym.
Don’t order the baked, skinless chicken breast with steamed kale and lentils when what you really want is the 32-ounce porterhouse steak with loaded, twice-baked potato and sauteed mushrooms.
Why deprive yourself?
Why deny yourself life’s pleasures?
Why live like a hamster, dividing your time between eating bland food and running on a giant wheel?
I guarantee whether or not you believe in an afterlife, either way, there’s not going to be a buffet or a bar waiting for us following that last heartbeat.
We’d all be wise to remember the poem recited by the character Trimalchio in ‘The Satyricon,? a satire penned by the ancient Roman writer Gaius Petronius in the 1st century AD.
The hedonistic Trimalchio tells his dinner party guests, ‘Nothing but bones; that’s what we are/Death hustles us humans away. Today we are here and tomorrow we are not/So live and drink while you may.?
Every day, doctors, dieticians, politicians, health and fitness fanatics, researchers, professional activists, so-called experts and all the other do-gooding fun-suckers in the world bombard us with statistics and studies designed to scare the hell out of us.
Their endless nagging and fear-mongering makes life more miserable by adding to modern man’s already lengthy list of things to fret about.
Perfect example, the World Health Organization recently listed cured and processed meats, like bacon, ham and sausage, as a major cause of cancer.
What the WHO failed to point out is these things are also extremely delicious and breakfast just wouldn’t be the same without them on the table. The smell of bacon frying in the morning is one of the most pleasant things in life. It ranks right up there with the sound of a cocktail shaker mixing a Martini.
Did someone just recommend turkey bacon? Shut up!
Bacon no more comes from turkeys than drumsticks come from pigs.
I am so tired of hearing about all the things that are bad for me. I am so tired of hearing about how I should be living my life. I am so tired of people trying to control me.
You can eat a healthy diet, exercise like a fiend and still get a variety of cancers, have a heart attack or stroke or get hit by a gravel hauler.
You can’t control genetics or fate, so why not stop worrying so much and just enjoy yourself ? or at least stop lecturing others between sessions at the gym.
Let’s all live exactly how we want to and stop trying to scare, manipulate and browbeat others into supposedly better health and longer lives.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, that glass of gravy isn’t going to drink itself. I like to dunk bacon strips in it. It’s my version of milk and cookies. Yum.