Getting to the Bottom of Things

THIS IS NOT JUST ANOTHER TITS AND ASS POST.

Yes, that's a breast mug on top.

And yes, that's my bare butt on the bottom, so to speak.

Butt I'm writing about them both today because they relate to some other recent developments, all of which have to do with a devastating disease that almost everyone has been touched by.

CANCER.

Here are some pages from today's edition of the newspaper I write for.

Yes, our edition today is called the Pink Paper. You're not seeing a mistake involving red ink or pink dye. To our knowledge, we're the first paper anywhere to do something like this.

It's a full edition printed in pink, in honour of the fight against breast cancer. Basically, every second page of the paper tells a story related to breast cancer and the people who have fought it.

Ten cents out of each paper sold will go to the fight against breast cancer. With a total paid circulation of around 140,000, not including separate sales on the street or in boxes, that's a fair bit of coin.

One of my sisters (below) has fought this disease and won. She went through a long battle, but she's still with us, and much more.

I have come to admire her strength and will and positivity immensely. I doubt I could have emerged the way she has from this fight, or waged it with the courage she did.

She's the one who gave me that breast mug at the top.

An online poll today on our paper's website asked readers: "Have you or anyone you know had breast cancer?" Of 1,618 votes cast as of this writing, 87 per cent said yes; 13 per cent said no.

That's astounding.

And what does this have to do with my butt? Well, only this. There's a family history of colon cancer, you see. Several of my relatives have died of it; some of my others, including siblings, have encountered hints of it.

I've always been super healthy. But plumbing-wise, there have been a few, shall we say, "incidences of irregularity" that have caught my attention and have made me believe I'm NOT invulnerable.

So I'm getting tests done. And, gulp, I will need to get a procedure done called a colonoscopy. Google it.

Suffice to say while I'm confident and feel strong, my lifelong feeling of immortality is, ahem, being flushed down the toilet.

While I don't want to make of this any more than it is compared with the real-life battle my sister and so many others have waged, it's the ordinary, lovely souls like her who should be our real heroes.

We get so wrapped up in the latest actor, sports personality or famous trainwreck who's trying to dry out in the Betty Ford Clinic or whatever, the Brittney Spears and their ilk...the total fuck-ups who, for some reason, get all the attention.




We follow losers on TV shows like Celebrity Rehab or whatever it's called. Like Sly Stallone's former gal, Brigitte Nielsen. Or Scott Baio and that mental, mindless midget with him in the pic above.




We watch them crash and burn every week all in the name of ratings, retro-retread child stars and the like, embarrassing themselves on global TV with their boob jobs and liposuction and lip jobs and facelifts.

All the while, the truly REAL people on the planet who weren't born with silver spoons in their mouths or spectacular looks are surviving the way we were meant to survive or, sometimes, die, on our will and pure chance.

But that's boring.

Our media-frenzied world and pop culture-driven mass drivel-induced machine just keeps grinding out the pap, while the great masses struggle every day just to survive as totally inept governments look on.

It's all so absurd. But it's all those real-life struggles that still make the world go round, and deep down, I think anyone with a brain and conscience and depth knows that and values it and holds it close.

Now, pardon me while I go watch the latest on Scott Baio and his Chachi life.