Food For Thought, or Fun With Fat

With the rise of Morbid Obesity--not to be confused with Horrid Obesity or “Oh My God!” Obesity--it stands to reason that the fatish fetish for diets will continue unabated far into our fat future.  And so, is it any wonder that the weight loss mendacity is one of the few American growth industries (pun ever-so-intended) and a booming billion dollar biz where hope is sold like lottery tickets . . . and with about the same odds of winning . . . and losing (pun still intended). 

Long ago, TV hucksters figured out that when it comes to weight loss, 99 out of 100 weak-willed American lards will opt for the easy way out every flippin time.  Instead of just willing the tonnage off by 1) Surprise!  Hello? Anybody home?--not eating, and 2) Hello, again? HELLO?—exercising, most fatsos naturally favor the painless route and try to buy their way to health, happiness and lots of hot hammer sex. 

Most painless of all, of course, are the so-called special diet plans, or “systems,” as they are grandly dubbed.  These ads are always promoted, of course, by svelte success stories like Marie Osmond and former athletes, like Dan Marino (upon retirement, Dan and other ex-jocks continue to bolt down chow like they are still in spring training).  Basically, these come-ons easily convince the helpless, hopeless, will-less mopes among us that they can actually realize the age-old dream of “having their cake and eating it too;" that they can eat “normally” (i.e., gorge) and still lose weight.  Gourmet meals, delivered to the “system” subscriber’s door each week--seemingly so much food that they are able to glut down three to six times a day and still drop pounds like casino hags drop quarters in slots--are understandably very popular now.   

Of course, the above “systems” would indeed be “special” if it were true.  Now, the same people who believe you can eat like a hog and still shed pounds are the same delusional people who believe in things like honest American elections, that U.S. troops in the Middle East are fighting for their freedoms, that if enough of us wear pink at sporting events the medical establishment will find a cure for breast cancer, that Bill “did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky,” that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, that  American politics are more honest than the politics of the Democratic People’s Cannibal Republic of the Congo, that American politicians care more for America than they do Israel, that if you keep reading this article it will somehow make you more intelligent, and so on. . . .

The ever popular exercise machines are another fun, fun way that tortured souls imagine they can magically escape their loathsome vessels.  After watching a few minutes of these work-out commercials small wonder that some folks think that they can just jump on a certain magic machine and, without work, sweat or misery, the wonder device will mold their grotesque bodies into shapely shapes similar to the smiling, sweat-less handsome hunks pumping, pulling, pedaling, and above all, posturing, in the commercials.  Alas, how many times have you been in a friend’s basement, garage or large warehouse and it is literally a tangle of black handle bars, nylon straps, plastic pedals, rubber grips, tracks, seats, treadmills, pulleys, belts, and other such stuff used on dust-gathering exercise contraptions?  In fairness, some of these expensive things--devilish devices that look like relics from the Spanish Inquisition—will work as advertised.  Left out of the commercials utterly, however, are the weeks, months, and yes, years, of blood, sweat, toil, tears, wrinkles, hair loss, deafness, blindness, cancer, strokes, and the almost certain death that go hand-in-hand with these contraptions if you hope for real results.

Last night I saw a commercial for one of the newer and cheaper ways to fool folks into believing you are something you are not.  It’s the “Insta Slim.”  In a word, this manly magic shirt is designed to hold in all those pounds of ugly flab and make a slobbish gut appear as flat as a pizza box in a parking lot.  Much like sweeping dirt under a rug, the Insta Slim never claims to get rid of the mess, just claims to hide it.

So, throw down twenty or thirty bucks, slip into this magical wife-beater shirt, and WHAM, you look like a new wife-beater.  Really, this shirt in four different flavors, is just a high-toned man’s belly girdle, pure and simple.  Getting the damned thing on must be tuff enough but getting it off has just gotta be pure hell.  After wearing this skin-tight constriction prison for an hour or more, one has to believe that the shirt has almost become fused into the skin and cutting one’s way out with a knife or can opener must be about the only way one can escape it. 

Whatever, like any hard-driving TV con, the Insta Slim has plenty of Thrilling Testimonials (aka "Lies Scared Stockholders and Paid Shills Tell"):

Roy C. Nile of Florida:  “I lost 25 lbs. on my stomach with the Insta Slim.”

The All-Seeing Eye Sez: “If you look hard enough, Roy, I think you’ll find all that missing mess stuffed up under your rib cage.”

Arthur Forgery of Chicago:  “Since using the Insta Slim I took 10” off my belly.  It’s been a year now and hey, my girlfriend still doesn’t know my secret!”

The All-Seeing Eye Sez:  “Art, you lying lard, if your girl doesn’t really know you are wearing that shirt of armor then that means you two definitely have not been “intimate” for at least a year.”

Gaylord D. Seever of Georgia—“My sex life has increased tenfold since slipping on the Insta Slim.”

The All-Seeing Eye Sez:  Another paid liar.  By the time Gaylord manages to pry himself clear of his body armor that boozed up broad beside him will be fast asleep and snoring like a drunken sailor.

At the same time that the Insta Slim pitch was in full scam mode, another channel revealed dozens of sleek body builders milling around in a phony gym and hustling something called the "Magic Belt." Looking like something Buck Rogers might strap on before he zips off to the Planet Zar-Kon, this marvelous break-through in lard control promises to subtract the fat faster than you can add it. Just cinch the belt around your girth, turn on the Magic Thermo Techno Radar-Decombobulator, and you're all set. It's as easy as that! Now, no need to ever miss another meal or snack because of all that time lost on those pesky exercise machines. With the new Magic Belt you can get right back to packing it in the moment you bolt it on. But Wait! There's More! With the handy carrying case included in the offer, you can take your Magic Belt with you where ever you go--to the Dairy Queen, to the Fudge Factory, to Large Larry's Stuff-N-Bust Buffet. Fat has finally met its match.  But hurry . . . Supplies are limited!  (Batteries not included)

Thought: Why do Americans eat until they gain so much that they lose, for all intents and purposes, their gender? Why do they consume vast quantities of everything within reach to the point where they stop being an identifiable man or woman, or even a recognizable human, and more resemble some amorphous larva-like organism, inactive, inert, not really dead, not really alive, just some shapeless thing whose entire existence is devoted to food and rumors of food?  Is it something so simple as one half of the American population was born with a modicum of will power and the other half was born without a mote of it and hence their resistance to all the sugar, sodium and carbs washing around them is non-existent? I don’t think so. I don’t think so. After all, look at the epidemic of anorexia we are also witnessing side-by-side with obesity. Were these human sticks born with too much will power? Or are these living skeletoids no better than the obese in that they are bereft of the will power necessary to resist starving themselves to death while the gluttons are lacking the restraint necessary to keep from stuffing themselves to death?

I personally find anorexics almost as repulsive as their opposites. Both groups are extremely sick, spiritually sick, people. Both groups are the obvious symptoms, the outward manifestations of a morally sick society. In both groups, it’s not so much that they can’t stop eating or they can’t stop starving so much as there is no really good reason to stop the eating or stop the starving. In a society where there is no hope, no future, no purpose, no aim, no plan, no point of even getting out of bed in the morning, much less looking ahead a whole week, why bother? Just as with the dope epidemic and the modern mania of frying one’s brain to a cinder, suicide by over-eating or suicide by under-eating seems a better way out of this misery than continuing to fight each day for nothing. Why not eat the toxic fast food, no questions asked, until you cannot move except with the aid of a small electric bulldozer, or why not starve one’s self to the point that people on the sidewalk quickly look away in horror when you appear wearing a tank top and a pair of shorts? Why not? What hope, what future does this so-called society offer its people? Is there any fun or future living in a nation that threatens to make state sponsored torture—TORTURE—a cabinet level position?  Could there be even a scintilla of pride or honor in any nation that attacks and kills defenseless people as eagerly and with as little conscience as a pack of wolves would attack and tear apart a group of spring lambs?  How about our new life in the American spyocracy?  How about the soulless slaughter of our unborn?   How about the killing of animals in the most sadistic way imaginable after raising them in the most criminal ways possible, then eating them up and shitting them out without a thought? . . . Kiddie porn? . . . The eco-rape of our natural world? . . . White guilt hammered home day after day by the hate-filled Jewish media and “entertainment” industry? . . . Nuclear annihilation hanging over our heads from the moment we were born? These ugly realities and plenty more do not lend themselves to a healthy, happy society.

I realize the above is a very simplistic and quick scratch at the problem, but I think my main point is made. Why would not a criminal abomination, such as the U.S. has become, why would it not have deadly epidemics like obesity, anorexia, drug addiction, serial killing, hoarderism, paranoia, mass psychosis, and other killer diseases of the mind when its very existence, its very way of doing business, is the cause of it? We are very much like the tormented lab rats who are force-fed poison and develop tumors and schizoid behavior merely so a few human ghouls in white can sadistically study them and later pronounce grandly that lab rats develop tumors and schizoid behavior because they ate poison.

But anyway, I do go on.  Sorry for the rant.  Don’t know what came over me.  Quite unlike me.   Maybe something a bit lighter to leave on?

How about “On the Road to McCovery”?  When a Florida judge sentenced George McCovery to jail for driving while suspended, she made the 345-pound land whale a deal: For every pound the tub shed while in custody, the court would subtract a day from his sentence. Now really? Is this is, or is this ain’t, a hands-on correctional carrot any offender can sink his teeth into? And thus, after sticking to a largely veggie diet, at the end of twenty days the prisoner had shorn 25 pounds from his lard-like load. The result: Nearly one month was whacked from George’s sentence.

McCovery? Sounds like a half-way house funded by McDonalds, Inc., where the obese who live on a diet of pop and Big Macs can come and lose lots of McPounds.