Introduction

The "Hotel Melanoma" moniker is a metaphor for living with my particular brand of cancer. Except for those lucky few of us deemed "cured", all we cancer survivors are guests of one of the many, many branded hotels in the "Hotel Carcinoma" chain. We can check out any time we like, but we can never leave. Meanwhile, let's be livin' it up; and please support cancer education, prevention, and treatment research.



Tutu Brothers

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

We Can Be Together



Pinktober is kind of a tough month for the inmates at The Hotel Melanoma. It’s not that we don’t detest breast cancer (and every other cancer) and hope and pray for a cure. We surely do. It’s because Corporate America will be sticking a pink ribbon on just about anything and everything in hopes of pushing more products out the door, while claiming it’s to promote breast cancer awareness, and then continue to largely ignore melanoma and every other form of cancer for the next eleven months. The unintended (I hope) message is that the rest of us at The Hotel Carcinoma just don’t count. And that sometimes hurts more than a bit.

But I think we at The Hotel Melanoma will continue to hang together this coming month and not let up on our individual little campaigns to educate the uninformed about the Black Beast and tear down the walls of this place. I myself am considering a counter-revolutionary campaign of getting a few thousand black ribbon stickers and randomly placing them on products displayed down at my local Kroger chain grocery store. Anyone care to join me?

Until next time, I’ll sign off with The Hotel Melanoma rendition of Jefferson Airplane’s “We Can Be Together”…



We can be together
Ah you and me
We should be together
We are all outlaws in the eyes of America
In order to survive we heal, treat, cry, gorge, shed, guide and feel
We are sunscreened, flawless, beauteous, stage 4 pests, shirty, not silent and young
But we should be together
Come on all you people standing around
Our life's too fine to let it die and
We can be together
All your silent mockery is
Target for your enemy
And your enemy is
We
We are forces of chaos and anarchy
Everything they say we are we are
And we are very
Proud of ourselves
Up against the wall
Up against the walls (motherfucker)
Tear down the walls
Tear down the walls
Come on now together
Get it on together
Everybody together
We should be together
We should be together my friends
We can be together
We will be
We must begin here and now
A new confidence of worth and fire
Come on now gettin higher and higher
Tear down the walls
Tear down the walls
Tear down the walls
Won't you try