Sunday, March 15, 2009

Too Fat to Fly and too Selfish to Try

Someone got on my case a few weeks ago for what he perceived as unnecessarily dumping on fat people. Well, he’s a cranky sort to begin with and often goes off the handle for reasons known only to himself. However... to be fair to me and... that’s just as important as my being fair to you, I’ve got no beef with fat people... heh heh... that doesn’t sound right. Let me rephrase that, I’m not prejudiced against anyone or anything except for ignorance and gross materialism which both operate together. I’ve also got something against unbridled greed and psychopathic behavior toward the masses. You could probably throw in a few other things like genocide and various criminal behavior but that should go without saying.

When I talk about fat and how we could power whole cities by the energy generated by the friction between the thighs of the pathologically obese, as they make their way back and forth from the icebox, I am talking about cultural disease and what better place to talk about that than right here at “Reflections in a Petri Dish”?

Now... both ignorance and materialism come into play here... as does some amount of unbridled greed and... on a deeper level, the need to insulate one’s emotional being from life’s vulnerabilities which ties into something I believe which is that civilization is humanities reaction to pain and... all of this catering to appetite; this need for insane conveniences and ‘push a button and make it happen’ mindset tends to set my teeth on edge because this cancerous mentality that seeks to consume without end and demand without shame, just so happens to intrude on my ability to move about freely in what should be a beautiful world without being threatened by raging brontosauruses and Tyrannosaurus Rex’s who either want to crush me with their insistence on taking up all of the world’s available space or eat me if I stand around long enough.

I’m not talking about being crushed by being sat on by someone who has to pay for two airline seats or should be wearing a sign that says, “wide load” when they come down the sidewalk or try to get past me on a public conveyance. I am talking about the mindset that causes a person to operate as if they are entitled to their space and mine. This is why I live in the more remote rural areas as a matter of necessity and why I avoid urban areas the way I avoid doctors. Both of them are harmful to my health and ought to have warning stickers.

It’s the stupidity and laziness of it that gets me. It’s the lack of all restraint and the opting for immediate gratification that gives me a certain kind of mental shingles. Let’s look at soft drinks. Let’s look at the Big Gulp phenomena. Let’s look at the supermarket carts that are loaded with this shit. Let’s walk into any supermarket and notice that there are more soft drinks along with junk and processed food than there is real food. Where did all these incredibly obese people come from? They came from the soft drink aisle by way of the doctor’s slips from indulgent parents that fabricated an ‘issue’ that got them out of the physical education thing in school.

Let’s look at aspartame. Aspartame does not help you maintain a certain weight and it does not help you lose weight. It causes you to gain weight. If you add in the various varieties of sugar in the non-diet drinks you are looking at one of the main reasons for Michelin Man Flu. You should take one of those soft drinks that probably now come in a fifty gallon drum and you should read the amount of sugar that is included. You should try to do the math and once you have figured out the weight in terms you can deal with then you should go down to the super market and buy that amount of sugar and pour it all out on your dining room table and look at it. That... and a whole lot more than that went into you and... consider... add up how many soft drinks you drink in two months and you might well find you have consumed that fifty gallon drum or more. Then you might do some addition according to years and...

Now you know why there is a diabetes epidemic and why so many people are in terrible health and near bone dead stupid besides because... this stuff does things to your brain a lot worse than illegal drugs do and... it’s perfectly alright for these corporations to sell it to you and to put junk food vending machines in elementary schools. You know why? It’s going to be so much easier to get you to do what ‘they’ want you to do and you’re not going to be in much shape to resist are you? What this means is that when whatever barbarians take over I’m going to have to watch out even though... even though I and some other number of people are not doing the insane things that you are.

So you get in your car and you drive to the fast food restaurant and you waddle inside and you get however many family packs you need; whether you have a family or not and you eat it. Or you go to the freezer and you take out these frozen monstrosities which have ingredients with names longer than any German word I’ve ever come across and sometimes contains more than 60 of them; I’ve checked so, you can verify if you need to.

Now you add in that TV watching thing and the consumption of the colorfully packaged shit I was just talking about and now what have you got? You’ve got a nation of beached whales asthmatically wheezing into the lightless, alcoholic, American night. Yes... we need to add in alcohol too. We might as well throw in polyester and pleather and Styrofoam too.

Of course... putting this crap in your body is a slow and sometimes not so slow act of suicide but... what about the things you are putting in your head as well? Why are you being fed all of this crap? Maybe it’s because you like crap and maybe it’s because somebody knows it’s going to make you more pliant, less aware and stupider by the day.

You don’t want to hear about it... no... no... tomorrow will be a better day. You’ll wake up looking like Tom Cruise with an enormous Johnson or that chick from the soap opera with the pneumatic tits that look like the nose cones of a rocket when she lies on her back. If the surgeon can’t make it happen then they’re going to have a pill for you by the end of the week. Ah... but you can’t afford the surgeon any more and now you’re going to need two cardboard boxes to sleep in; two big boxes, refrigerator boxes.

Yeah, I’m insensitive, but I’m not half as insensitive as you. Look what you did to my planet. Yeah... take a look.

What this all means is that the really awful things that have been happening over the last couple of decades can be laid at your doorstep because you went to sleep. You thought eternal vigilance was the price of being able to get into Wal-Mart early. You now believe that three buildings came down at free fall into their own footprint and one of them didn’t even get hit by a plane. Meanwhile, worse things happen to less soundly constructed high rises and there’s no repeat of the phenomena; much less 3 in the space of a few hours.

So... what this got you was an ever increasingly slew of repressive laws with more and more people being labeled as terrorists by the terrorists who are running the show; or think they do. This mindless prostitution of your humanity in the service of your appetites doesn’t just affect you. It affects real people as well. Herein is the problem.

Well, I think I’ve said all I have to say about this today and you can think about it for whatever time you think you can spare but I’m not sanguine about your giving it much thought at all because it surely couldn’t be your fault. It has to be somebody else’s.

Visible and The Critical List: Jews from Outer Space by Les Visible and The Critical List♫ Overweight Lover ♫
'Overweight Lover' is track no. 3 of 9 on Visible and The Critical List's 1993 album
'Jews from Outer Space'

Lyrics (pops up)

Jews from Outer Space by Les Visible and The Critical List

13 comments:

nina said...

Coincidentally, I was up at 3am thinking of these things by the light of the Waning Gibbous. We need that kind of solitude when the world is turned off, when we are strung out on epiphanies, each born from the last.
So rarely is this available to the generations which came along after ours, instead there is always a concerned, smothering someone, bathrobed, soothing sleepy nonsense. Don't worry your beautiful mind, here's your teddy, warm milk, come sleep with us.
Sounds like love? Deep down in the secret steamer trunk of the dependent childmind this translates to "I don't trust you - alone unsupervised awake in the house while everyone else is sleeping."
In the light of morning, distraction builds upon distraction, another disney day on joystick, the Brewski's set out a lavish ham scramble bagel brunch by the home theater, in the all-secure, terror free gated community, videoed, lasered, alarmed, Lysoled and anti-allergenic. No smoking, no dogs, landscaping, parking, visitors and parental controls in full force, GPS "on", IMs and
textings, edited, readouts arrive in Mother's email one minute
after family values viewing hour is over.
Its Sunday at last. Following Bible school, The Brewskis show
their love by going to a Sponge Bob film at the strangely empty
mall completed by a visit to Red Lobster's Sunday family buffet.
Why no lines tonight? Stuffed and stupified, everyone is then
double strapped into the Humvee and proceeds to the nearest
entrance ramp on the six lane, but not without a quick stop at Ben and Jerry's for triple cones and a quart to go just in case someone wasn't satisfied.
Parkas, mittens and Uggs off at last, homework is checked and
redone by Mother while Father selects a bedtime story. Bambi is
too radical, he deliberates and narrows it down to a Jetson's
comic during which everyone likes to gather round with soup
spoons to dip into the quart of triple nut fudge ribbon mocha
banana pressed with extra M&Ms. They quarrel over who took too much, more than they pay attention to Father's comic and are soon sent upstairs to bed.

The problem is not the result, the problem is at the root of the
result - in every case. Rip it out some night and take a good look: The root holds steamer trunks of unacknowledged childhood insignificance, the powerlessness of expectation that problems, dilemmas and crises resolve themselves by themselves without your input or at most, someone else will resolve them without your having to take any responsibility and or action at all. "Don't worry your beautiful
mind."
If we were pioneers on the range in log cabins under the big sky,
responsible for our own needs and knowledge, our social
maturity and making, mending our own clothes and attending to the
upkeep of our meager belongings, our food crops and our animals'
wellbeing, none of us would have any idea what an obesity epidemic was. Is it Scarlet Fever? Locusts? A freeze? When the root problem is raw survival against the elements, no one's imput is insignificant, no one else would save us but our own powerful selves.

Anonymous said...

Beautiful Nina- it's an unreal existence all right.
Tony

Anonymous said...

The sheer range of your gifts is incredible. As I have read your book and listened to the music {at least you have limits- you are not an arranger or a complex musically gifted sort} and followed your various personalities, I am in awe.
This one is not going to gain you support and influence people. Too much truth just like having your point surface like a drowning man finally coming up for air is not going to win you fans but I was greatly amused.

R.

Anonymous said...

R, 11:47 AM
The mindless prostitution of your humanity in the service of your appetites doesn’t just affect you it affects real people as well. Herein lies your problem.
Tony (with thanks to LV)

Anonymous said...

Les, It reminded me of Hansel and Gretel... better get your chicken bone ready to stick through the cage when the witch comes by to feel your finger!

Fatten us up before the feast. This ship of fools is gettin' fleeced in the pocketbook and right into the thigh!

Thanks,

fletch

Anonymous said...

Greetings Les
Yes.
Les is more
Peace, Al B.

Anonymous said...

It used to be that more Americans, than now, consumed just what they needed-and, stopped.
There are those who don't participate in the materialistic game for philosophical, or spiritual or metaphysical reasons, they don't want to support materialism. Or, they don't like the idea of being earth-bound, after transition.
For me, these are just a few good reasons to be less materialistically oriented. But I'm not less interested in material "stuff" for these alone. It's also because I've looked at what is the pleasure factor of acquiring stuff in relation to the hassle factor. And many times the pleasure is outweighed by the hassle. It's in many times a sucker's game. Why should one be the dupe, the mark, the sucker, chasing after stuff that's not worth it, jumping through hoops, following other's rules, sweating ones guts out on behalf of evil people just for the sake of acquiring more crap that often just winds up in a landfill? And why participate in acquiring objects when the happiness from doing so needs to be done over and over and over again?
If buying stuff was really all that hot then we could just do it once or at the most a few times, right?

Visible said...

There is a new Visible Origami up.

Karma, the Gift that Keeps on Giving.

Anonymous said...

As I look at the contents of food in the local 'big-box', I see chemicals which have no relation to nutrition, but rather, are added for longer shelf-life. Each producer will show proof that in the amounts used, that no harmful effect has been demonstated in humans. What no producer can and will say is what happens when their chemicals are mixed with the other 'non-harmful' chemicals in a different producers food product. When these unknowns are combined with the body's enzimes no one can predict the response. Yeah, fat needs to be called fat.

nina said...

Anon 9:40pm: Relatively recently we were concerned with country of origin which you know was not on the labels, only the US distributors make an appearance. Now, everything is suspect. But we are not alone in these suspicions. Although comforting, yes, it isn't a solution. The temporary solution will be to live as outlaws and eventually be incarcerated for growing your own survival. Survivalists will then be portrayed as Snuffy Smith terrorists making moonshine, routinely raided, jailed and ruined, freed on parole, raided, jailed and ruined, over and over. Meanwhile, the root of the problem, that being corporate government competition under the NWO, will, it appears, does it not, never be addressed. This is backwards to all common sense, but common sense was the first victim.

m_astera said...

I've done a lot of thinking about fat, fat people, people being fat. This sounds like the lead in to a joke but it's not. Or is it?

Here's one angle: for however many lifetimes we have incarnated in human bodies, many of those lives have been lived at survival level. Just enough to eat, just enough to survive, and many times not enough. So OK, you get this one life where all of the food you want is available. Pig out, it may be your only chance.

Another angle that hasn't been addressed here is what's called pica. It's caused by your body needing something and not getting it in the food. Animals do it too; cows will chew bones because they are starving for the minerals in the bones. People pour salt on things, way too much, but their body is craving something that's not in that salt, because it isn't sea salt.

I know I go on endlessly about this mineral thing, but it's real. Yes sometimes people are addicted to stuffing their bodies with food; other times their body is screaming for a missing element; it needs that to function correctly and it is not to be found in that grocery store packaged crap. It may not even be found in the fruit and vegetable aisles. Got Chromium? You need it to function. Where is your body going to get it? Chew on an antique car bumper?

Anonymous said...

Beautiful rant, thank you. But M_astera's comment about the "missing element" is also food for thought . . . no pun intended..

Anonymous said...

Yes so much for it being genetic. I'll put the blurb about Komodo dragons at the newest article by you. Interesting how this happens with what you write.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25708021





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