Column:
Bitch’s Brew:- First published December of 2002
(I
chose to post this piece as a comment on the specific reaction of certain
faction in Trinidad & Tobago to the New Zealand massacre. Perhaps, it will
spark such people to take a more balanced perspective when they grouse about
problems they claim to have, don’t actually have, but that people in other
parts of the world have in spades and suffer most horribly under.)
 |
| Any takers for trading places with these children or the millions like them all over the world? |
Dear
Tom Cruise, care to change places for a while?
I mean, with trouble like yours who needs
good fortune.
Don’t get me wrong, I like ol’ Tom, but
when I read a story in The WIRE where
he’s bemoaning how tough existence has been for him, and calling for people to
“mind their own damn business,” I was like, “Huh?”
Tom’s into Scientology and credits it
“with helping him deal with a spectrum of life’s adversities,” including
estrangement from his late father to persistent rumours that he is gay.
Poor Tom. Divorced from Mimi Rogers (Lost
in Space); divorced from Nicole Kidman; now fandangoing with the winsome
Penelope Cruz; only making a measly $20m per blockbuster hit; getting to rub up
on the delectable Thandie Newton and the irrepressible Cameron Diaz: poor,
pitiable thespian Tom.
Give me a break.
Mr Cruise asserts, “Life pounds you. You
come across losses.”
On
the opposite page of that same WIRE there’s
a photo of former South African president, Nelson Mandela, holding a
six-month-old baby infected with AIDS.
How hard is hard?
Overlooking what Mandela himself endured
under apartheid, the infant is emaciated, eyes staring wide. He looks like
those starving Somalian children, with their hands in their mouths and
distended bellies, flies buzzing on their faces.
Currently, after America got a bitter
taste of what it’s like to be attacked full force in your own country, Middle
Eastern people duck and run for cover at every turn, forage for scant food,
become refugees, flee the homes they’ve known, do more than die, rather, they
get killed.
But life is pounding Tom Cruise. Tom
Cruise is counting his losses.
Man,
I should have a life of such hardship: digging up
on Miss Cruz, described as “the woman of my dreams,” and being rated as one of
the most powerful people in Hollywood.
Tom can have my life for a second: tough
enough but better than most.
He can deal with people calling him a
bitch for having a backbone and “balls.” He can hyperventilate when men
threaten him with grievous bodily harm for not reacting kindly to their
comments about his nether regions.
He can have people call him a man-hater
for insisting that rape, spousal and child abuse are wrong. Tom can have my
paycheque.
At this holiday season, we sometimes get
so caught up in listing off the things we can’t have, we circumvent counting
the good things we do have.
Make your New Year’s resolution early.
Resolve, while aiming for the things you want via hard work, to be thankful for
all the blessings in your life, and even the not-so-blessings, because:
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