An Ode To Being Fat

You could fit an entire goddamn gateaux down these. And don't think I haven't tried it.  

Everyone has their own preferred charity or cause they like to support and mine is being 25% beer and batter by volume. And that isn't even the first reason birds attack me on sight. Clearly, this is a subject very close to my cholesterol-choked heart so when I'm not busy planning a suicide Jackie Chan would be proud of, neglecting my family and friends and being generally awful, I like to make my weekly exercise quota waving goodbye to the Domino's delivery guy. But hey, if you want my life to hold some greater meaning or purpose so bad, feel free to have me rendered down into glue.

If you don't, or just want some absolution for the KFC or whatever you're stuffing down your cake socket at this moment in time, then good news: I'd like to take a moment away from whinging about how most of the luxurious trappings of modern life are flailing shit and reflect, however briefly, on the silver lining to be found in being something that 19th Century sailors could be tricked into fucking. 

My therapist, should he or she ever materialise, would probably vindicate thinking positive at least. As would anyone else lucky enough not to have suffered some recent and severe head trauma that smashed out all their common sense. 

This belated episode of I'm So Sorry is brought to you by Gloucestershire's Primary Mental Health Service! At time of writing, only left eight fucking months with nothing but the cold, numbing mercy of gin for support! And nothing has ever made me hate superscript more!

All the maybe five regular readers here will know that among other things, self-deprecation, cynicism and fat jokes aren't at much of a premium here. They'll also be aware that the title up there is a tad misleading. I know as much about odes as I do electrolytes and it may have been on my English syllabus a decade ago, but I still think iambic pentameter is Latin for Five Guys Burger & Fries. So there won't be a whole lot of poetic elegance in the following reasons being overweight kind of rocks. Albeit slowly and with a good deal of wheezing. 

[Special Note: If like me, you've already just accepted the myriad and sweaty joys of being portly and just want to enjoy the simpler things in life like bacon, cheese and auto-tune, you can just skip this whole thing and watch the following. Vaguely Interesting, Non-Vegan Note: No matter how much you think you like anything, you will never love anything even half as much as this guy loves fast food.]

1. Fuckitism.

Using the gift of 'absence of head smash', I'm able to hazard a guess that if you care deeply about your weight: every decision you make hurts. Every slip from your horrible, masochistic regime is all the more crushing because you know exactly how many calories that delicious ham and Emmental croissant set you back from your tragic daily cou-MHNHNHMNHM.

I'm not saying that these people necessarily deserve the Seppuku-ish agony they put themselves through every time they inevitably fail to meet the impossible standards they set themselves, I'm just saying it's Schadenfreude. And also funny. Because to a normal person, having the odd moment of weakne-Oh Christ. OK look, I'm well aware that the 'normal person' identifier barely means anything at the best of times, let alone this context, so in the name of simplicity, let's set some ground rules before we go any further. 

Nobody's denying that there're people out there who unironically go to spin classes and make packed lunches out of 'Superfoods' and count calories and measure their entire worth as humans by their body fat index so let's just call these people 'twats' and be done with it, OK?

I'm also not saying that dedicating yourself to building the body of a Grecian god is a bad thing, it's just that mythic figures like Hercules managed to do so without the dumptruck full of whey and self-importance. Plus they had personalities. Ah, but I guess I shouldn't be shitty. Artists like Michelangelo proved these meatheads burn half their daily calories alone just fretting about their tiny cocks. 

[LEFT] "This finger smells like your girlfriend, fatboy."
This could be you!
Enrol at your local gymnasium today!
We promise not to laugh at it!

This idiocy, thankfully, isn't the norm. What is the norm, is a more difficult question. So let's just attribute normalcy to anyone who on occasion aspires to being a straight-lace twat and on most others is like you (maybe?) and me; having sensibly realised that food stops becoming food the second you start over-analysing its chemical content and just accepts that much of what makes life worth living in this first world where our every basic, life-perpetuating need is met, is not going to bestow one with everlasting health. Curiously outdated notion that that is notwithstanding.

Personally, I thought the great benefit of humanity's sentience was that, yes, we're all aware of our immediate mortality but we developed things like Star Wars and Nutella waffles and poetry or whatever so that we didn't have to spend every minute of the day weeping about it. So basically what I'm saying is that anyone who takes any interest in their own health is evolutionarily backward. 

Which leads me, in an oddly roundabout way given our subject matter, to my point. If you have even the slightest bit of self-awareness, you should have realised that the odd peanut butter and fudge ice cream doughnut tower garnished with Baconators isn't going to kill you at this point, but a million fucking other things out there are only too happy to. So why the Hell wouldn't you get your fill before one of them succeeds?

I mean, I could be behind you right now with a bucketful of venomous scorpions. So, would you rather that or Dauphinoise potatoes with extra Riserva and Grana Padana? Because I have those too. Unfortunately, if you work in recruitment, they're all in the same tupperware. And while you were Googling those cheese names, the whole delicious and poisonous mess is in your bed and your screams only make it funnier.

2. The Boring Sociological Kind Of Stuff Underachievers Study When They Can't Make The Grades For Real Degrees But They're Always Annoyingly Good-Looking & Likeable So You Just Fucking Know They'll Do Fine. The Shits.

"Hi! We're plus size models!
So in other words, some twisted specialism for deviants who like their humans to look like normal humans normally do." 

Time was, looking like ancient mummy wrappings stretched over a rake was the be all and end all. Of modelling and therefore acting; reacting, advertising, archaeology, pathology, mixology - you name it. Of course, it still is but thankfully someone with enough cultural stopping power and basic human dignity recognised that women could still be sexy even if they couldn't fall down a drain without hitting the sides. Naturally, regular, non-awful men were done masturbating to the emerging photos of these radical new 'plus size models' long before liberal journalists were hacking out articles about how progressive they were. 

So why don't we call that one a draw.

3. Fate.

Deal with it. 

If you're one of those insufferable types who believe anyone can be fit with a few small lifestyle changes and can-do spirit then you clearly don't know anything about genetics or psychology or physiology or even those mystifying shapes those weaklings you see at the gym struggling to care about jazzercise call 'words' but in the spirit of inclusivity, I'd like to call your attention, you people, to a paragraph up there where I proactively called you a twat and as a bonus, congratulate you on making it this far down a page not dedicated to protein shake recipes.

Everyone is different and not just in the drum-circling hippie sense. We all know that one lucky bastard who appears to be able to eat whatever they want and do nothing but smoke sticky and watch 60s Batman reruns yet not be sufficiently chocolate-based to have the melting point of human mouth. That isn't some kind of trick. Some people can just do that. Which by the same token, means some people are not going to go from flotation to fucking aid in a matter of months, dingbat.

Forgetting, for the moment, any kind of persecution you may have suffered within your family unit for soaking up extra gravy with your lovehandles as a child, being overweight has still got this weirdly medieval stigma attached to it in mass media as well as the obvious health and fitness circle jerks. You'd have to be pretty goddamned deranged to think 'enjoying pasta and cheese a little too much' should morally rank down there with bonking a whore to death with a condom made of glaives but I'm not here to make fun of Catholics. There are just, ha, just literally so many ways to go about that I don't have the time.

Just in case you didn't get that. 

Ultimately though, in some ways, if you were overweight as a child and young adult, things may have picked up for you in later life. For example, while the naturally hale, healthy and handsome kids were out socially and sexually experimenting and apparently learning that no possible achievement in life is greater than clumsily fucking a higher number (in either sense) than your friends; us mentally healthy types were out (and I use the both the terms 'out' and 'healthy' quite wrongly) cultivating rich inner gardens.

Exciting mental landscapes full of fledgling hopes for the future and awareness of our feelings, motivations, strengths, weaknesses and strange, schizophrenic fan fiction ideas like if Optimus Prime had shown up during the Renaissance and declared that if he were to fail to woo the Doge's daughter before Carnivale then Megatron would declare war on the Orc-pal States and Pope Palpatine IX would have no choice but retaliate with the Vatican Star doom fortress and ad-libbing this kind of paint-by-numbers 'random' nerd shit makes my head hurt.

But that's the point. Not that it makes my head hurt. Freakin' everything does that ever since I went off my meds weeks ago. No, human potential is in the mind. No-one's done anything impressive with their loins since that first, scared and presumably sticky lad sweet-talked a jar of peanut butter into anal. And there'll always be some species of flea that can triple jump higher relative to its size or tiger that's better at mauling or being adorable.

Doesn't matter how many miles you can go on a rowing machine, I will pick Mr Whiskers here over you everyday and twice on Sunday. 'Cause that's when the two of us go round the houses of people who bullied me at school and I laugh as he poops out their household pets and children onto their front lawns. 

We've risen to the top of the global food chain not because a select few of our species can bench press three Oprah Winfreys or even bring three ninjas to orgasm with the backend of a kunai, but because we can write operas and odes and stirring porno narratives. Also assault rifles.

Someone came up with the idea of being able to shoot anyone who looks at us funny with a thousand missiles from space, with iPhones. You think that guy managed that by working on his core strength whatever that means - (spoiler) nothing? No, doing anything even remotely impressive with your fleshy, mortal body these days is best left to Olympians, future Guinness world record holders for number of bees on any one face at one time, and porn stars.

The human form has limits and we reached the extents of most of those in the last century. Which makes the absolute mental and physical torture of denying ourselves the few corporeal pleasures left in the culturally stagnant and cynical corporate dystopia we live in all the more pointless. I would have said fruitless there, but I don't want to disparage the many wonders of fruit by associating it with the last sentence, plus, it may have sent the wrong message. God. Who knew being so privileged could be so simultaneously boring and depressing? Apart from, you know, every even remotely successful society throughout human history.

4. Superiority. 

And The Will To Dominate All Life. Provided It Has Lasagna & Moules E Frites & Tacos & Those Fun, Multicoloured Pickles You Get With Most Japanese Meals. Ooh, And Amaretti Morbidi. Love Those.

Kneel! Kneel you mewling quims. Don't make me retcon you out of this whole mess with my magic space stick. Because I will. See if I don't. 

If you're anything like me: handsome, talented, completely dissociative and longing for a death that might at least merit the odd retweet from the Darwin Awards, then I am just, so, so sorry but more relevantly you may have gone your whole life shrugging off shitty comments about your weight.

This may seem strange since I obviously have so much wisdom to offer from a life totally not typified by catastrophic mistakes, alcohol, bagel and Bioware abuse but I only realised this point a few days ago. Namely, that the single fraction of a second it takes some mouth-breathing, lowest common denomination, inbred marsupial-fucker to choke out the word 'chubby', or make suggestive motions towards the latest set of office reports as if that in some way insinuates you'd eaten the last is more than enough to prove that you, the arbitrarily 'inferior' party are in fact infinitely superior to this malignant rectal wart in absolutely every meaningful way. 

And this is not flouncey revenge fantasy. All you normals have to do is redirect a little energy away from lifting a heavy object and putting it down again to your malnourished brains to see that making a pejorative comment about someone else's weight in this day and age (provided you're not fucking twelve of course) instantly marks you as, for one thing, utterly lacking in imagination. And also duller things like emotional maturity, empathy, intellect, I could go on. So I will. Wit, independent thought, decency, pride, good looks, testicles and/or clitoricicles un-riddled by STDs and insects and so forth.

Remember how an entire US State voted this guy Governor on the basis that he could 'lift heavy things up and put em' down real good'? Not that I wouldn't. Three words: Real Total Recall. Also Running Man. And Commando. And Predator and True Lies and Last Action Hero oh my. Hell, I'd vote this guy Chancellor of the Exchequer if he dropkicked George Osborne in the tits first. 

I mean if it was me you were hissing porcine noises at, there're at least a dozen other things you could rightfully take the piss out of me for purely at face value. Like how I'm inanely giggling to myself in the street having come up with one of these strange 'jokes' your instincts say are at your expense in the preceding paragraphs. Or the strange and powerful erection I have right now for the print on my desk of Jack Lemmon mixing Manhattans in a hot water bottle and dressed as the hooker the rest of the trailer park evicted.

Making a fat joke in person is such a culturally low and intellectually unchallenging feat that if, after the last few days, you were to aim one at me, it would have the opposite intended effect. And, somewhat confusedly, I'm medicated for that not to happen [I think? They all look like Skittles at this point]. I would actually feel better about myself and you would become the butt of the real joke. That I came up with with my smooth, throbbing brain-on. Such as:

"Hey, Chubby".

"Oh hey, you. You know it is so heartwarming to know that you learned to read and write. I should let your mother's abortion doctor know that the worst mistake of his career is doing so well. Maybe he could pin your dried-out hippocampus opposite the broken condom and Kopparberg Mixed Fruits that led to your birth in the family scrapbook?" 

Totally monopolised by shitheads.
Not that they're not welcome to cough medicine that tastes like Type 2 diabetes. 

It was a long but I hope at least uniquely pointless road to get here, but if you hadn't guessed already: I suck at advice (not to mention not being full of Caesar-flavoured things). Even on something I know as inherently well as being overweight. Sad isn't it? I've gone my entire life knowing literally no alternative. But whatever, I'm going to have a concluding crack at this anyway. Maybe it could count towards my next community service in advance. 

'Being thin' can eat a bag of low calorie dicks.