That game of life is hard to play / I’m gonna lose it anyway / The losing card I’ll someday lay / So this is all I have to say / Suicide is painless / It brings on many changes / And I can take or leave it if I please — Suicide Is Painless (theme for movie M*A*S*H), written by Johnny Mandel, 1970

As tempting as it is, we just cannot go around saying “100% of us believe…” or “everybody feels…” We know that’s ridiculous; there are 7.8 billion people on this planet as of this writing, and most of us couldn’t agree on where to go for lunch.

So I will not state “100% are stir-crazy and would gnaw our right arms off to leave the house and go to…” whatever. However, I would not be the least bit surprised if 99% of us felt that way. Maybe we can get together and T-P the houses of that other 1%.

No. Wait. Is there still a toilet paper shortage? I wouldn’t know. I haven’t been permitted to enter any building other than my own for… jeez, about 10 weeks now. I did drive around the neighborhood last week, just to give my car some reassurance, and I was surprised at how little had changed. But I was more surprised at how few cars were on the road, how empty the parking lots were, and how easy it would be to park at the train station.

I’m also surprised at how clean the air seems. This figures — with fewer people driving, we have less ground dinosaur bits clogging our atmosphere. This latter fact frightens the crap out of the oil and gas industry, which has been hell-bent on choking us to death in the name of dividend checks and nine figure annual employment packages. Some of these greed-driven killers are down to their last 50 million bucks.

I have little doubt that this is one of the chief reasons we are being pushed over the brink of insanity with constant reminders of how wonderful it will be to get out of the house and go to restaurants, sports events, family reunions, and, I dunno, maybe orgies. Don’t forget your condoms; you wouldn’t want to catch a disease, would you?

Anything to get you to have to tank up.

I have even less doubt that those vile oil industry spirits that whisper “advice” to our lunatic president are behind all these reopening drives. Get out, spend the money you would have had if you were still on somebody’s payroll (14.7% of employable Americans were unemployed in April, and that number keeps skyrocketing), get even further in debt, fill up your gas tanks and enjoy life while you still can. And if you’re over 60, stop whining and take one for the team!

Yes, folks, that’s right. According to our government and our business leaders, suicide is great for the economy!

Screw Logan’s Run. We’ve got it beat. No muss, no fuss, no social distancing, no masks.

Hard times beget tough solutions. I’ve changed my mind about the death penalty. That big-ass clown with the Confederate flag face mask dangling down past his unshaven chin while going the wrong way up the supermarket aisle? Shoot him. Then toss a Confederate flag over the body. After all, even if you’ve just killed a flaming asshole, there’s no reason to show disrespect. Maybe in a couple million years we can use his body for oil.

I understand that, right now, roughly 40% of schoolchildren are not getting their vaccines. The theory, and it’s not at all accurate, is that kids can’t get Covid-19 so what the hell, let ‘em die from chickenpox, measles, diphtheria, polio… or just weaken their immune systems so that they can follow their grandparents into the glorious afterlife.

This raises a question while, at the same time, promotes major concern for the future. The only group of Americans shown to be as stupid and as inconsiderate of others as our president may very well be the anti-vaxxers. Let’s say we come up with a coronavirus vaccine. Let’s say it works — and I mean that in the Hippocratic oath sense as well.

Will the anti-vaxxers take it, or will they become Patient Zero – The Next Generation? It’s kinda hard to put down a global pandemic if you permit a large group of paranoid fools take a pass.

So, it likely will come down to this. Take the coronavirus vaccine, or wash down your hydroxychloroquine pills with a nice cup of Clorox.

Pick your poison. Suicide is painless.