Since we Americans seem bound
and determined to eat, overeat, hypereat, and eat-until-we-need-a-crane-to-lift-us-out-of-the-house-and-place-us-on-a-flat-bed-truck-so-that-we-can-be-hauled-to-the-ER-for-emergency-liposuction,
it stands to reason that the American fetish for diets will continue unabated
far into the future. And so, is it any
wonder that the “weight loss” industry is a booming trillion dollar business
where hope is sold like soap bubbles that pop on cue?
Long ago, TV hucksters
figured out that when it comes to weight loss, ninety-nine in a hundred weak-willed lardos look for the easy way
out. Instead of just willing the tonnage
off by 1) surprise!--not eating—Hello?
Anybody home?-- and 2) exercising—Hello,
again? HELLO?--most patheticos opt on 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 called. These ads are always promoted, of course, by svelte success stories like Marie Osmond and former fat athletes who after
sports continued to eat like they were still in spring training. Basically, these come-ons easily convince the
desperate, will-less mopes that they can actually realize the age-old dream
of “having their cake and eating it too;" that they can eat “normally” (re: gorge) AND still lose
weight. Gourmet meals, delivered to the “system”
subcriber’s door each week, seemingly so much food that they are able to ham down three
or four times a day and still drop pounds like others drop coins in quarter slots, are naturally very
popular now.
Of course, the above would indeed
be a really “special” diet 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 Santa Claus,
the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, honest elections, that we are winning the war on drugs, that Bill “did not have sex with that woman,
Ms. Lewinsky,” that Elvis might still be alive and living secretly in a
double-wide in Ames, Iowa, just to enjoy a quiet life of anonymity and the enjoyment of mowing his own lawn and working in his own garden, that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, that
Jim “Gold is Just God Without the ‘L’” Bakker and his wife, Tammy “The Lord Must
Love Mascara Because HE Made So Much Of It, Ha, Ha” Fay Bakker, didn’t cuckold
the people any worse than Benny Hinn, Paul and Jan “Haystack” Crouch, Jimmy “Cry on Cue” Swaggart, Peter “Pop it to ‘em” Popoff, or any other money-mad televangelists, that
we’ll find a cure for cancer soon, that American news reporting is much more honest than that of Iran or North Korea, that if you keep reading this blog it will somehow make you more
intelligent, etc. . . .
The ever popular exercise
machines are another fun, fun way that searching souls imagine they can
magically escape their loathsome vessels.
After watching a few minutes of these work-out commercials it’s easy to
see why some folks think that they can just jump on the 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 or garage and
it is literally a tangle of black handle bars, nylon straps, plastic pedals, rubber
grips, tracks, treadmills, pulleys, seats, 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, years of blood, sweat, toil, tears, face wrinkling, premature
graying, hair loss, deafness, blindness, cancer, strokes, and almost certain death
that go hand-in-hand with the machines 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” (above). In
a word, this manly magic shirt is designed to hold all those pounds of loose lard
in and make a slobbish belly appear as flat as a beaver's tail run over by a steam roller. 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 enuf
but getting it off has just gotta be pure heck. 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 certainly be about the only way some can escape it.
Whatever, like any
hard-driving TV con, the Insta Slim has plenty of Thrilling Testimonials (aka "Lies Scared Stockholders
and Other Paid Shills Tell"):
Arthur Forgery of Florida:
“I lost 25 lbs. on my stomach with the Insta Slim.”
The
All-Seeing Eye Sez: “If
you look hard enough, Art, I think you’ll find all that missing mess stuffed up
into your rib cage.”
Lawrence Arabia of Alabama:
“Since using the Insta Slim I took 10” off my belly. It’s been a year now and hey, my wife still doesn’t
know my secret!”
The
All-Seeing Eye Sez: “Larry you lying lardo, if your wife
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.”
Ramon Ramon of Rochester
“Since wearing Insta Slim my sex life has increased ten fold.”
The All-Seeing Eye Mocks: “Ha ha ha ha! Yet another wishful thinker and paid liar. I can hear her now: ‘Oh, Ramon Ramon, make love to me . . . this minute! But first remove that terrible tight t-shirt you are wearing. It's like iron!’ What to do, Ramon Ramon? Leave the shirt on and fib that you were horribly mutilated in some saw mill accident and therefore you can’t show your bare chest because it is so horrible that it would gross out and freeze up your sex mate completely? Or, Ramon Ramon, do you face the music, come clean, start peeling off the shirt and when the last stitch comes off half an hour later do you watch your hottie’s face turn to stone the moment she gets a gander at what you've been hiding under that shirt? Like some terrible tsunami of fat, the gross gut just rolls out and quivers there. If it had arms and legs it is almost large enough to make a whole n’other person.”
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Well, obviously, news is slow hereabouts. Most of the geezers have fled the Florida furnace and high-tailed it back to their other homes in the Mason half of the Mason-Dixon line and thus not many seniors crashing into things down here now. Except for Michelle seeing a manatee the other day and me running over a large, dead snake on my bike ride yesterday, little to note. No pit bull attacks, no decapitations in the homeless camps, no nothing. You know that times are slow when our local paper starts reporting on kiddie porn raps and meth busts as if they were "news." Whatever, when something momentous occurs you can count on me to report on it here on the Daily Diatribe.
