Wednesday, May 26, 2010

SPF 100 will melt your face off

If it's Wednesday, it must be Morford on lies, lies, and more lies about a variety of things. Purposeful misconceptions too.

(Oh, and beds? Mattresses? Those posh, $5,000 ones with the four-inch pillowtops and gold-dipped European springs that have been individually licked by eunuch gnomes? Also a total lie. After about a grand for a great, basic mattress, your body has no clue what it's riding on, and that includes Charlie Sheen and Stoya. Just FYI).

On it goes. Recently was I at Walgreens perusing the candy-colored collection of hardcore chemicals known as consumer sunblocks, all those supposedly safe, healthy, body-protecting lotions, liquids and sprays, nearly every one claiming something quite happily impossible (100 percent waterproof! Total sun block! Does not cause instant blindness in monkeys, we think!), all of them so full of marketing gloss that you're meant to believe one shot of Bullfrog™ Super Waterproof MegaSport SunPreventer Extreme II lets you go traipsing completely naked through sub-Saharan Africa for a month, never suffering so much as a freckle.

It's a crock. [...]

What else you got? Food expiration dates? A lie. Ethanol? Lie. Clean coal? Lie. Coke mini? Total bulls-- lie. Bottled water? Massive, unconscionable lie, still and forever. The Bible? Cute cluster bomb of childish oral-tradition mythology told by angry, sexless white men and then translated from multiple dead languages and re-written and re-edited countless times throughout history for the sake of power and political gain and to control the ignorant masses via guilt, shame and fear. Oh, and also a lie. But, you know, a well-intentioned one. Sort of.

The Bible? Yeah, one little white lie amongst many that are ongoingly wreckin' the world.

The good news is, it's not really true. The good news is, most of what we worry and stress about never actually comes to pass. The vast majority of fears are unfounded, the dire threats to our lifeblood turn out to be whimpering clowns who only wanted a moment of attention because they're lonely and sad. Just like everyone else.

The good news is, the good news is still outweighing the bad. The good news is, if everything were as dire and hellbound as the Christian fundamentalist right, the eco-maniac left and the libertarian nutball fringe say it is, we would've blipped out a thousand years ago in a puddle of whining, bloodshed and severely sunburned shoulders. Isn't that reassuring? I have no idea. Who wants lip balm?

More. Links. Go.

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