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Today is a FREE taste of an Insight Politics article by writer John Black.
Ten Reasons to Put Down the Razor Blade
The cost of living, gun crime, non-gun crime, racial division, vaping, homelessness, Covid, Government incompetence, oat milk, education failure, the health system in crisis, the All Blacks’ defeat, terrible weather and Patrick Gower. With the current mood of the country you’d be forgiven for thinking the end is nigh and it’s time to get the Remington stainless out of the back of the medicine cupboard and take the last bath you’ll ever take.
But here I am to stay your hand with ten reasons for living, or at least for rescheduling your suicide till the end of the new season of Top Gear.
Covid is Over
Yes it is. YES IT IS. While the media would dearly love to keep the frighteners on us all, ensuring their continued sense of self-importance (and profits), the facts aren’t playing along. Covid has receded to a seasonal ’flu level event. If it can’t kill 79-year-old Joe Biden, a man who can’t even stay upright on a bicycle, it ain’t killing you.
Sex
There’s nothing like a good bonk to get you in touch with the earthy joy of human existence. If you do it properly you might even get your partner in touch with it too. Of course, not all of us can rustle up a partner, in which case you should rejoice in living in an age with easy access to high-quality pornography. You can also rejoice in saving the cost of a dinner date at a medium-priced restaurant.
Free Stuff
The cost of living is rising fast. Investors are moving out of oil and minerals and into cheese and tomatoes. My weekly grocery bill has more decimal places than the combined ages of a New Zealand First rally. But there is still a lot of stuff that never increases in price because its price is zero. Free stuff that is. Grass for example, from which my Irish ancestors made a nourishing soup during the Great Potato Famine of 1845. Given the rising price of potatoes I may have to dust off old great-great grandma Colleen’s recipe book – Fifty Things To Do With Ferns, Nettles and Thistles.
Water is also free, at least in the form of rain. So walk in the rain with your mouth open and get your fill. Of course, water may not be free much longer – with the planned Three Waters legislation you may have to pony up a ‘koha’ to your local iwi each time you flush the toilet or water your hydrangeas.
Children
Take pleasure in children for they are delightful. At least when they are not hungry, tired, bored or angry. And when they cease being delightful they are easily given the slip because very few of them can drive.
The Consolations of History
One of the best ways of picking yourself up if you are feeling down is to read about the misfortunes of others. Open up a history book and turn to a chapter on the Black Plague or the Spanish Inquisition and learn how utterly horrible life was for large groups of people during most of human history. And then cackle uproariously at your good luck in not being those people.
There’s an Election Next Year
While most people find this a mild annoyance, if you are reading this site you are not among them. You look at politics as a sport. And one that doesn’t involve getting out of breath unless it’s Nanaia Mahuta’s daily sprint to Bellamy’s to get the last of the discount sausage rolls. And elections are the play-offs. A chance to see a team of assorted incompetents, fools and braggarts punished for buggering up the country and replaced by a new team of incompetents, fools and braggarts so you can watch them start buggering up the country. Democracy. The Chinese don’t know what they are missing. But of course, they have no feel for sports – which is why they all play ping-pong.
People are Hilarious
Enjoy the comedy of common humanity. Sometimes it’s intentional, sometimes not. A good example of the latter is a science reporter who tweeted about monkeypox last week:
‘The outbreak is occurring almost entirely among men who have sex with me’.
What a difference a letter makes.
Indulge in shameless nostalgia
Lock the doors, pull down the shades put some Frankie Goes To Hollywood on the stereo and pretend it’s the 1980s. A time when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher bestrode the world swatting small middle-eastern nations like sandflies and bringing freedom and highly calorific soft drinks to the Russkies. Lose yourself in an age of mullets, neon headbands and hot women doing aerobics in parks. Let young people deal with the present – those vaping, phone-addicted fools deserve it.
The Culture Wars May Have Reached a Turning Point
Roe vs Wade overturned, push backs against radical gender ideology, and the ‘everything is racist card’ becoming increasingly hard to play. All signs that the western world may be coming to its senses on the culture war front. I just wish this included New Zealand.
You’ll Be Dead Soon Anyway
Take comfort in the inevitability of your mortality. Who wants to be around in another fifty years anyway? If the climate creeps are right it will be far too hot – leading to the melting of the polar ice caps and mass outbreaks of nudism. Death is a much better option than seeing your wife’s mother naked.
If the culture creeps like me are right, there will be a total societal collapse led by Satan-worshiping-trans-abortion providers from single-parent homes. Death is a much better option than hearing them say ‘I told you so’ using all the wrong pronouns.
So have another whiskey, light up a cig, eat that bacon sandwich and tell any concerned relatives you’re just working on your escape plan.
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