Choose life

If this is as good as life gets, I might as well just get out now.

Choose life because you lovel. Even though you think that they don't care, that no one does, and that the pain is just too much, choose life to spare them pain.

We are the ones who stick around, we have more courage than any of the ones who go through with it. Courage is not required to stick a gun to your head and pull the trigger, but courage is required to go on with life that doesn't seem worth living.

If there's anything worse than this pain, it is knowing that you will make others feel pain that's even worse because it was caused by something out of their control. Something that will make them feel guilty for the rest of their lives. You've seen it, I've seen it, it's more horrible than anything I can imagine. More horrible than anything caused by chemicals in your brain.

And if there's anything to live for, it's for not causing pain to others.

This phrase is currently seen most often on the rear bumpers of anti-abortionists, aka pro-lifers. It's a pretty little sticker, with a rose on it and "Choose life" in blue script. I want to get one and put it next to a sticker that says, "If you're against abortion, don't have one."

The point is (or should be) choose life. If we make abortion illegal, then it will happen in two cases: rich people who can bribe a doctor to do it anyway, and poor desperate saps who will have it done in back alleys by unqualified creeps. These women will probably get a nasty infection and possibly holes in their uterus, all because the moralists couldn't trust other people to make good decisions on their own. Do you really want someone to be a mother if she can't make decisions for herself? Then her kids won't be able to make decisions either.

Planned Parenthood has a motto: Make every child a wanted child. So many people try to shut them down because some (NOT ALL!) of their clinics also perform abortions. But their true mission is to help make sure that people only get pregnant in the first place if they actually want the kid. See Why are anti-abortion activists also anti-birth control?

Onetime catch cry of 1980's pop band Wham, which featured public onanist George Michael and Where Are They Now Hall-of-famer Andrew Ridgley. This phrase was frequently seen printed in large capital letters on pastel sleeveless T-shirts, which were often worn in combination with Miami Vice jackets and/or fingerless gloves.

Funny, how this shiny, happy people veneer seen from a lot of musical identities in the eighties is in such stark contrast to the Seattle grunge of the nineties and the vaguely gothic posturing of this decade. Certainly the eighties had their musical rebels, just as the "naughties" have their Britney-like saccharine-pops. But the eighties! Eurythmics, Pseudo Echo, Duran Duran, Pet Shop Boys, A-Ha, oh the humanity!

Isn't there some kind of back-handed irony to a pair of buffante stubble-faced lads in pastel pink jackets and pointy white boots urging the youth of the Decade of Greed to choose life? That kind of life? Really? Are you serious?

Wake me up before you go-go indeed.

She could hear the rumbling in his chest as he formed the answer in his throat: "What is 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'?" It was an answer directed to no one in particular, but the television confirmed that he was correct.

They lay there like this often, cuddling on the love seat. It was the most comfortable place in the house.

"What about Tanzania?" he asked. This time it was a question, and not an answer, and it was directed at her.

"What about it?" she replied.

"We've never been. Don't you think we should go?"

"Um." She paused. "What's in Tanzania anyway?"

"I don't know, but who cares? We've never been. Remember that cold winter when we were both swamped and we said 'fuck it, we're going to Hawaii,' and just up and left? We'd never been to Hawaii, but we went anyway. We didn't have any money, but we went anyway. And we figured it out, and it worked out, and we had a great time. Things have a way of working out like that, I think."

"That didn't really happen."

"What?"

"Hawaii. That trip. It didn't actually happen. We just talked about it, we didn't actually go. We finished our work and went to The Coal Mine and got drunk on New Years. That was the night that you hurt your leg, 'cause you slipped on the ice, remember?"

The clock chimed out that it was 7:30. A few seconds later, the cuckoo clock went off as well. He made a mental note to get them perfectly in sync (he never got around to it).

"Well, we should have. I certainly didn't enjoy going to work in the snow all winter," he replied after thinking it over for a minute. He often did that, because he often couldn't tell the difference between dreams and reality because neither one turned out the way he wanted.

"So let's go." she said, after another short pause. (He had turned the TV off, and the silence was deafening).

"What?"

"To Tanzania. Let's go. We can tour the world. We've been saving for a while, I'm sure we could find the money. We could stop off in Europe beforehand and see Paris and see the alps, and then head to Africa and see the pyramids and see Mt. Kilimanjaro and then go to Tanzania."

She was quite serious, although from most other mouths, it might have been taken as sarcasm. He knew her well enough to know what she meant.

"Mt. Kilimanjaro is in Tanzania."

"Even better!" she said as she grinned up at him.

He smiled that smile that only she could elicit from his weary face.

"I think I'll talk to a travel agent tomorrow," he said, as he ran his fingers through the blonde highlights in her hair.

They sat there for a few minutes like that, happily reflecting. Eventually he turned the TV back on and flipped to the end of the evening news.

He forgot to call the travel agent.