Bright Ideas

Since cable television left, I’ve been watching only national news on CBS, ABC, NBC, or PBS. No Montana news is available, but I can hear about Rapid City if I’m interested. With my choice of national news announcer, I can find the most pleasing voice to tell me the bad news.

North Korea is ruled by a short, fat dictator, with a really bad haircut. All of the nation’s unnaturally thin soldiers are parading in a painful “goose step” made popular by Hitler. Those men and women will need an orthopedic surgeon by the time they’re 35 years old! In addition, while they and the rest of the population are starving, their life-long dictator grows fat—he’s the only fat person in the entire country. The masses need food!

While he threatens the U.S.A. with potential nuclear strikes on South Korea, Japan, or the American west coast, we wonder—fearfully—what our president will do. The United States elected a tall president, with a big stomach and questionable hair color and cut. What is he combing over, and shouldn’t a man in his 70s be a little gray?

His language and example of Syrian attack, accompanied with a statement saying he won’t give an enemy advance warning worries me. Is he meeting Korean threats with some of his own?

If that weren’t bad enough, now national news tells me artificial sweetener leads to dementia! I’ve been drinking Tab, Diet Pepsi, or Diet Coke since the early 1960s. While I have given up diet drinks except at lunch stops in Miles City, sugar free chocolate candy is consumed with lunch and supper at home. Sugar is bad for everyone; most of the nation eats too much salt and sugar. They eat too many calories in general. Most are much fatter than the last generation.

I’m very thin, but my diabetes and MS could cause a heart attack, and my cholesterol is lower than a baby’s, according to one PA-C. They may have made me vulnerable to the Transient Ischemic Attack, a mini-stroke, I suffered, but I look out for anything like it to repeat. MS is a big red flag, attracting all sorts of problems, and now I need to watch for dementia.

I won’t give up my sugar free chocolate candy. I’m going to be 67 in December, and while my brain is slowing down, I still remember more accurately than my husband. MS can cause confusion and other mental problems. I think I’m doing fine, and by the time I develop dementia, I’ll be dead anyway!