
Doesn’t Matter (2014)
We were at a beach one summer, and I had a bathing suit on. My wife looked at me and said: ‘Boy, you are skinny, aren’t you?’ I said: ‘Honey, I’d like to remind you that it was minor defects like this that kept me from getting a better wife.’—Lou Holtz
[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]For the first forty years of my life, I was thin, at times disturbingly so. It wasn’t that I wanted to be thin, nor that I was trying to be thin. Quite the opposite, actually. I would have loved to have had enough mass to actually develop muscles and such, but that never happened. I delighted in over-eating to excess at buffets but never could gain weight. At 30 I was still able to wear the same pair of Levi’s 501 jeans that I bought when I was 18. Now, for women, that kind of tale isn’t unusual, but for men it’s practically unheard of. I had no muscle mass. If I ate too much and was bloated, I looked like Bloom County’s Bill the Cat (well, maybe not as orange). There wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it, no matter how hard I tried, and believe me, I tried.
Then, I hit 40. Boom. Like flipping a switch, I started gaining weight and suddenly staying off the 200-pound mark became an issue. Actually, with my body frame and size, I didn’t need to be above 170, and even that was frighteningly larger than I’d ever been. I started having to buy larger clothes, replace suits, and spend money that I really hadn’t planned on spending. What, when, and how I ate suddenly became an issue, as did the amount of exercise and stress. My health changed. I was sick more often. I had to watch my blood sugar. High blood pressure, which runs in our family anyway, was suddenly a much more important issue. That skinny teenager is gone and is never going to come back. Instead, like almost every other American and a large number of people around the world, I have to fight with obesity.
Fuck. I like fried chicken, chicken fried steak smothered in pepper gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans cooked with bacon grease, cornbread dripping with butter and corn on the cob far too much to have a weight issue. And don’t even get me started on the importance of chocolate, especially this time of year when the fashion shows are one right after the other and I’m not getting nearly enough sleep. I’ve been able to eat as much as I want whenever I want my entire life. What the hell does my body think it’s doing gaining all this weight all of a sudden? I don’t have time for an interpersonal rebellion like this. Pass the pie. Not, not a piece of pie, give me the whole damn pie. And more coffee, damnit. I have work to do. This is just a temporary, thing.[/one_half]
[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]No, it’s not. I’m well past 40 now and the problem isn’t going away. What I’ve come to realize, though, is that much of society’s view of what’s “skinny,” and our subsequent jealous loathing of that condition, is based almost entirely upon the skewed perspective born of one basic fact: we’re all too fucking fat. What’s more, is that we know we’re fat, we know it’s killing us, and we just don’t fucking care. We’ve thrown caution to the wind and ordered another triple burger with quadruple cheese, bacon, and onion rings. And should anyone actually challenge our obesity, we fight back with something stupid like, “You’re fat shaming me. I can’t help it, I was born large.”
Bullshit. Even if you were a ten-pound baby you were not born obese. Obesity, for the vast majority of Americans, is something we have chosen for ourselves and then proceeded to surround ourselves with a variety of excuses for our slovenliness. Let’s be clear: there’s a difference between being overweight and being obese. There can be many contributors to being overweight, including, but not limited to, water retention, bone mass, and muscle buildup. Being obese comes down to just one thing, though: FAT. The National Institues of Health calculate obesity according to Body Mass Index. If yours is over 30, you’re overweight. If it’s over 40, you’re obese. Want to see what yours is? Click here and don’t fucking lie. This morning, mine is 24.3, which is on the upper end of normal for my height. I need to be careful and exercise more.
Sure, there are people who are too skinny and that’s a problem, but shaming thin people just because they’re not so incredibly fucking fat like you just emphasises that your brain is as fat as your body. Well over two of three Americans are overweight or obese and Indiana is currently ranked number eight as one of the ten most obese states in the country. Try and justify it any way you want, we’re not healthy. Obesity is the third most common cause of death on this planet and it is totally preventable. Even our kids, our babies, are too fucking fat and it’s our fault. Put down the fucking fork. Park a few extra spaces from the door. Walk. Exercise. And stop making fucking excuses. You’re fat. You can either change or die. Your call.[/one_half_last]
12 People Who Totally Suck
Indiana Tea Party Republican Governor Mike Pense (2015)
“All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.” -Richard Avedon
[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Ha! I bet you thought we were going to give you a list of twelve individuals who totally suck! Okay, we did think about doing that, but then the number of Republican candidates for President grew to 16 and that just made the list too long.
Kidding. Sort of. Almost.
Sure, we preach being nice and inclusive and loving most the time. After all, that really is the only way the world is going to improve. However, there are certain groups of people whose actions as a group are so reprehensible that they need to be called out and shunned. Furthermore, we as a society should do everything we can to encourage the demise of these groups. Some I doubt will ever go away, but many can, and should. Here’s our list of the most despicable.
Real celebrities, those who have some significant talent that thrusts them into the public eye for good reason, can be challenging enough; there have been many in that group whose behavior is less than stellar. Pseudo-celebrities, though, have no significant talent. They have no significant reason for being popular. In most cases, we have reality television to thank for this phenomenon. When networks find amusement in airing the antics of talentless, classless, and too often clueless people, we all suffer. Greatly. Better they all go away. Forever.
These people are just straight up mean. They do not value life in any form, theirs nor anyone else’s. When people don’t value life, they do stupid things such as see how many people they can blow up. Ostensibly, they all have some cause they are trying to defend, but what cause would anyone support that doesn’t value life? Where on the scale of reason does that even remotely make sense? Here’s the thing: not all terrorist are in the middle east or carry guns. There are more in corporate boardrooms. They’re all just as dangerous and all need to be stopped.
When I was little, I would get excited every time I heard a knock on the door because it almost always meant a friend had come to play or the UPS guy had dropped off a package. Now, the UPS and FedEx guys just ring the doorbell and disappear. So help me, I swear they’re using teleporters. I’ve not seen a truck in front of our house in years. Now, when there is a knock at the door, it’s someone wanting to change my religion or ask me for money. I’m not interested in doing either and, quite honestly, even if I was looking to do either I wouldn’t wait to see who showed up on my front porch. If I didn’t invite you or you’re not bringing me something fun, go away. Forever.
This is one of those groups that, no matter how much we rail against them or point out how totally ridiculous they are, they’re probably not going to go totally away. Why do I think this? Because racists have been here pretty much from the moment hominids developed and separated into different tribes. Just because they won’t go completely away doesn’t mean we should in any way, shape, or form tolerate their unacceptable behavior. To the degree we ignore them, they fester and grow like an untreated cancer. We have to stay on top of them, stopping them at every possible juncture, or else they will take over.
Here we have one group who can, should, and must go completely away. More than anything else, these people are quite simply ignorant. We can’t even complain that they’re believing in ancient myths. These fools are making up nonsense out of the clear blue. While we would like to think we can love them into accepting everyone regardless of their sexual orientation, history would seem to indicate otherwise. We must instead focus on educating younger generations correctly, dismantling the nonsense before it has a chance to grab hold, and hoping that those who refuse to learn die out quickly.
Rapists. Pedophiles. Anyone who sexually takes advantage of another person, or commits any sex act against them without their permission and compliance, is someone who needs to be immediately removed from society. There’s actual science to tell us that recidivism among sexual predators exceeds 80% no matter what type of treatment or intervention they receive, or who their parents are, or what reality show they’re on, or which presidential candidates have had their picture taken with them. If we want to keep them from committing further crimes, they have to be removed from society. We simply have no choice at this point.
Compared to the previous group, this one may seem completely insignificant. However, I challenge that people who don’t hold doors and/or elevators, especially when they see the person approaching is in some form of distress, are more than just rude: they have no respect for other people. Those who have no respect for other people not only don’t hold doors/elevators, they are capable of doing any despicable and mean act of which one can think. Murder is not off the list of choices for these people, given the correct set of circumstances. Note, we’re not talking about someone who is just having a bad day and lets one instance slip. These are the people who, every day, despise everyone else on the planet and do their best to be mean. They can all go away.[/one_half]
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I’m relying on statistical analysis for this one. I’m not sure I’ve ever had the displeasure of actually running into a true Bieber Believer. I don’t go to the places where they are likely to congregate and run in the opposite direction at the first sound of anything that might possibly be the beginning of that noise Bieber calls music. Bieber fans elicit screams and other sounds that exceed the measurable quotient of the human ear. Rumor is they’ve actually had to re-route aircraft to avoid the shockwave of disruptive noise caused by Bieber Fans. Many cities are considering a ban on indoor Bieber concerts due to the screams of fans compromising the structural integrity of the buildings. Fortunately, most Bieber Fans grow up, discover real music, and move on.
You know at least one. They are convinced that they know better than everyone and no amount of evidence to the contrary is ever going to convince them otherwise. They believe they have the best religion, went to the best school, drive the best cars, live in the best houses, and could have just as easily invented Facebook themselves accept for the fact they’ve never been a loser geek. These people delight in putting everyone else down in an effort to make themselves look better. We have another word for them, too: Bullies. Like many others on this list, we have to stand up to them to keep their numbers from growing. Fortunately, there is evidence they can be converted when shown the error of their ways. We have no choice but to try.
If you’ve never worked for tips in the United States, you don’t understand the severity of this crime. All over the country, we hear people talking about the minimum wage being too low. What rarely gets any publicity is that groups of very necessary people work for even less, roughly 75% less, on the promise that if they do a good job people will tip them. Your server’s base wage is a mere $2.75 an hour. Who can live on that? No one! And while the concept of tips sounds good, the fact is that as meal prices have gone up, and the quality of food has in many cases declined, tips given to servers, who control neither prices nor food quality, get shafted. Not tipping should be a crime. The punishment: working three doubles in a row at a busy restaurant … with no tips.
This one is a no-brainer as well. Murder is probably the worst crime of them all, and often the most difficult to catch. Police can’t look for a murderer until they have evidence that the crime has been committed and contemporary murderers have all kinds of methods preventing that from happening. Murderers can be divided into two groups: passionate murderers who were simply pushed to far and killed in the heat of the moment; and psycho murderers who think, plan, and prepare before carrying out their nefarious deed(s). The first group probably isn’t all that dangerous with a little psychiatric help. The fact that they killed once was totally related to a specific situation. The second group, though, can’t be trusted no matter what. That there are still a huge group of them running loose should make all of us afraid to go to bed at night.
The Republican party has a grand tradition and holds a valuable place in political conversation. At least, it did until this small group of jackasses calling themselves the Tea Party started taking over. Tea Party Republicans have done more damage to the country, especially at the state level, than ISIS or any other terrorist group ever could. Consider their list of crimes:
Sadly, that list is just the most common grievances to be held against Tea Partiers. These folks are nothing short of insane. Running on a platform of fiscal responsibility and smaller government, once elected they decimate every necessary program that does not kick back funding to their cronies. They are the very definition of a real and present danger that, if not completely removed from the political system, could single-handedly destroy the country.
See, I made it all the way through the list without naming anyone specifically. Well, okay, there is the idiot in today’s picture, but that’s more implied, don’t you think? Besides, he’s already proven this year just how much he sucks. He doesn’t need my help.[/one_half_last]
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