(Not So) Great Moments in Fat History: Bye-Bye, Burgers.

Who says we have no exit strategy?

According to a story I read on CNN.com this morning, there are at least one or two American entities willing to lead the charge out of the Middle East, and get back stateside where they belong. Problem is, we're not talking about any official organization. Because the only buns that are hustling home anytime fast are of the sesame-seed variety: Both Burger King and Dairy Queen have announced a draw-down of deployed resources from Afghanistan.

"I can has cheezeburger? No? Well, I'll be a son-of-a-bitch."

Let me join my fellow Americans in the chorus of shock and awe as we ask, "What the fuck? Why in the hell were they there in the FIRST goddamned place?!?"

Now, don't get me wrong. It's not that I don't support the troops. I do. Though in fairness, it must be said that like most thinking people, I do have an ideological opposition to wasting thousands of lives, scores of years, and trillions of dollars fighting a futile war we have a less-than-zero chance of ever "winning." And before you argue - we may TALK a good game, but ultimately, Afghanistan is one of the few patches of dirt left on earth that has managed to utterly refuse every single historical subjugation attempt ever launched at it. Fer chrissakes, this a country that even Darius I, Alexander the Great and Genghis motherfucking Khan eventually gave the gas face to.

"Seriously, dude. That place is an ASSHOLE."

But obviously, none of this is the fault of any of the folks who currently fill the boots we're using to run roughshod over the fertile crescent. They have very little real choice over where they get sent, or what they're asked to do once they get there. And as such, I'm usually all about any provision that makes their lives even a little easier until they can get back. Movie nights? Fuck yes. Fire 'em up. USO shows? Absolutely. Give 'em all the Toby Keith, Jeff Foxworthy, and Pam Anderson shaking her tits around they could possibly stomach in any seven tours. Knock yourselves out.

But Burger King?!? I dunno...I guess I just have a hard time getting behind the idea of one of the greatest fighting forces in the history of man heading to evening mess, and having the option of ordering up a double #3 Whopper meal with large fries and a Snicker Pie.

"I do believe 'having it my way' means no onions, Sergeant. And that's an
order on at least two different levels."

And again, it's truly not that I support taking away any of the troops' creature comforts. Whatever helps make risking your life in service of a muddy, pointless goal inside a scorchingly sandy hell-hole even a little less of a Miltonian horror, I support it one hundred percent. I totally get that a double cheeseburger is a hell of a lot more appetizing than the freeze-dried MRE chili rattling around at the bottom of your MOLLE pack.

But.

It's a big ol' no-brainer that proper nutrition is essential. The military has a responsibility to help its personnel maintain peak physical shape. That is to say, the sort of condition it's necessary for a fighting force to be in in order for it to operate properly. If you're a soldier, and you're stuffing your face with the same sort of greasy, fat-saturated, cholesterol-soaked bullshit pseudo-food the obese morons back home gorge themselves on? It's highly unlikely that you're going to be in a hell of a lot better shape then THEY are. And at that point, you might as well hand any run-of-the-mill, buffet-surfing Chubbs O'Lardface an AR-15 and send 'em waddling out onto the battlefield.

I just can't help but assume that when Napoleon Bonaparte said, "An army travels on its stomach," he never envisioned a future where entire brigades could literally fucking roll out on them.

"On the upside, I'm actually wearing my own bivouac tent as a jacket."

And that's just as far as The Big BK is concerned. Because, honestly...Dairy Queen? Really? While I certainly don't begrudge anyone as simple a pleasure as ice cream, bear in mind that Dee to the Q is mostly in the business of foisting off the particular variety known charitably as "soft-serve" onto the public. Y'know, ice cream so puffy and flaccid that it's not just possible, but mandatory that you pinch it off with that little Superman's-forehead spit-curl at the reservoir tip.

And, while I like the stuff just fine, we're not exactly talking about a frozen dessert with a whole lot of structural integrity. Christ, I live in Minnesota, and I have a hard time maintaining my cone in a locked and upright position just between the counter and the car. So I can imagine how it must be in Kandahar, where the daytime temperatures often crest 125 motherfucking degrees Fahrenheit in the SHADE. Ten bucks says that by the time you get your goddamned wallet back into your BDU's, you're pretty much just left with a sticky, cream-covered wrist and a lot of shameful disappointment. And believe me, if there was ever an expert on the subject of sticky, cream-covered wrists coupled with incredible shame, it is yours truly.

"Here's your change, Colonel."

Look, let's get something straight. Ostensibly (at least in the best-case scenario), the American military fights to preserve our way of life by defending it from outside threats. Whether or not that's what's happening in this current great big Mess-o'-Potamia is an argument better left to smarter persons than I. But there has to be a line drawn, doesn't there? You're SOLDIERS, for chrissakes. The elite. Our best and brightest. In other words, you're just about the only Americans on the planet capable of getting up to go to the refrigerator without needing a quadruple bypass just to get out of the fucking La-Z-Boy first. So, electing to fuck that up by subsisting on Chicken Fries and Double-Bacon Baconburgers (with Bacon)? That isn't just a subjugation of your training and mission, it's borderline treason.

"I wanted out, so I ate myself into a court-martial. I just wish my cell-mate hadn't taken
such a shine to me. I was kind of hoping getting booted from the service would have been
the LAST 'dishonorable discharge' I'd take up the ass. But, then last night happened."

Okay, so 'treason' is slippery-slope/straw-man hyperbolic fallacy. But even so, the enlisted are fighting to defend the American way of life. There'll be plenty of time for them to actively participate in it once they get home. Because, let's face it: If they want to up their overall chances of that eventually happening by a rather significant margin, it might help to not only keep themselves in peak running condition, but also to present a slimmer, more agile (and therefore much harder-to-hit) target.

Pictured: The most popular G.I. at camp.
Nickname: "Private Meat-Shield."

So, I guess we'll see what happens. Maybe the loss of the flame-broiled goodness of Burger King will enrage the Armed Forces to the point that they'll fight all the harder, just so they can get back home and eat it again. Maybe the overall fitness level will spike, and they'll start squashing insurgencies like so many schoolyard quarrels. Or, maybe we'll just continue slogging around thigh-deep in molasses like what's BEEN happening. No matter what, at least none of it will be the fault or responsibility of a creepy meat-monarch/mascot with a frozen, plastic face.

Hey, wait a minute. Burger King as a corporate entity might be retreating...but maybe if we sent the actual Burger King HIMSELF over there, we could freak them out so bad that they'd lay down their Kalashnikovs en masse within a fortnight.


Now that's what I call "psychological warfare."

DoF Classic: Great Moments in Fat History, Vol. 1

Originally Published: 9/8/08

By Merton Sussex, Regional Vice President of Snark Allocation

Beginning today, the Diary of Fools will be running periodic salutes to the hallmarks of fat acceptance in America. Great Moments in Fat History will take regular looks at the great lengths we go to in order to rationalize the growing obesity epidemic; and to make things easier for the morbidly obese to feel normal and streamlined in a society that is repulsed by them. We'll examine in depth the incredible attitudes that enable persons of great girth to keep on shoving Twinkie after Twinkie after Twinkie down their gaping, grease-slicked gullets in a pathetic, empty attempt to fill the voids in their souls where normal people are able to put love.

Great Moments in Fat History Vol. 1: The Obesity Scooter

There comes a certain benchmark in the life of every unbelievable train-wreck tub of shit; a crossroads, if you will. A point of no return of sorts where the revolting fatty has a choice to make. Maybe it's after the third or fourth heart attack, or after the doctor's visit that informs them that even their Diabetes has Diabetes...Whatever the impetus, the fork in the road is the same: The corpulent sod must choose either the path of "Wake-Up Call", or the road of "Fuck It, It's Too Late."

If it's the former, Tons 'o Fun may chose to hop on the treadmill, and not get off until he can see his shoes again. Maybe he'll try all sorts of fad crash diets, or even opt for invasive Bariatric surgical procedures. Of course, these measures enjoy varying degrees of success dependent upon everything from genetics to tenacity, but at least Tubby is taking an active role, and may squeeze a few more years out of his portly meat-shell.

But if it's the latter, Two-Ton Tessie really only has one choice: Self-Delusion. "I'm just fine the way I am," she'll tell herself. "I'm perfectly comfortable and happy at 578 pounds. Sure, I can't reach my genitals anymore, I smell like warm brie, and and when I die they'll have to cut a hole in my house and forklift me out, then dump me in a shipping crate, the previous tenant of which was a Steinway Baby Grand, before shoving me into a hole they had to spend two days excavating with a backhoe...But there's nothing wrong with ME. It's the REST of the world that has a problem!" At which point she'll nod her porcine melon, the TEMPLES of which are even slick with flop-sweat at the effort, and when the undulating from her seven chins stops perpetuating itself like those chrome balls on strings that your boss has on his desk, she'll pick up her second large, stuffed-crust two-layer pizza of the last ten minutes, and proceed to sink even further into sideshow territory as she gulps it down without hardly chewing.

It is post THAT stage of the great chub charade that one must seek further rationalization for one's decision. "Hey," thinks the bloated sack of protoplasm. "If the world didn't want me to look like Bibendum's glandular-disorder-affected older sibling, there wouldn't be size 9X sweatshirts, all-you-can-eat buffets, and that most ridiculously enabling of all pachy-person accoutrements: The Obesity Scooter."

For the uninitiated, the Obesity Scooter is a most marvelous invention, to be sure. It allows even the chunkiest of Hutt-proportioned piles of lard to still enjoy something approaching independence in the days and months leading up to the inevitable bedridden, rag-on-stick sponge-baths and impromptu drop-ins from Dick Gregory. The Scooter provides even people whose legs have negative-integer muscle tone to experience a reasonable facsimile equivalent of ambulatory motion; allowing them to perform some version of the tasks that those of us whose flatulence does NOT register on the Richter Scale are able to do. Everything from shopping, to attending social events, to...well, going to restaurants.

The Genius of the Scooter resides in its (if you'll pardon the expression) "elephant in the room" status. See...Whenever we notice a person with an assistant medical device...e.g. a colostomy bag, insulin pump, iron lung, crutches, prosthetic limb, glass eye, wheelchair, neck brace, trachea ring, CPAP, pacemaker, or even giant, scrap-metal-looking dental headgear...We're obligated not to mention it under any circumstances. To do so is a faux pas of the highest order. When you go to shake someone's hand, and grab a cold steel hook instead, it's considered terribly bad form to recoil in horror, shrieking like a Girl Scout who's just been told that her St. Bernard got into the Thin Mints. Nope, it's incumbent upon us to shake away, and act like we simply didn't notice. Most normal thing in the world, that. Wouldn't even have seen it if you hadn't mentioned it! Reason being, it's polite to not call attention to the glaring differences of others that may make them feel alienated from other people.

And somewhere along the line, the Obesity Scooter got lumped in with the rest of those things, as though it were a legitimate medical device. Out of a shared sort of mob-mentality social decorum, the American populace was hoodwinked virtually overnight into politely regarding the Obesity Scooter as just another meaty leg up for the disabled, like an eyepatch or a Dr. Stephen Hawking Speak-and-Spell thingy. We were bamboozled into thinking, "These people aren't human Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons. They're not Ripley's Believe it or Not footnotes. Why, heavens, no. They're handicapped."

And THIS was perhaps the fat acceptance movement's greatest coup of them all, worth a thousand Mo'Nique-hosted chubby-girl beauty pageants, or a few dozen Emmies for Camryn Manheim. Getting the rest of the world to see these rotund rollabouts not as unrestrained hedonists reaping the consequences of their chosen lifestyles of excess and apathy...But as legitimate victims, plagued by a world that made them the way they are, only to staunchly refuse to accept them that way once they were. There are no notions of entitlement at play, here! When you get right down to it, they're really no different than sufferers of Multiple Sclerosis or Muscular Dystrophy. After all, those, too, are progressive conditions that render their victims increasingly unable to care for themselves, and ever less mobile as the ravages of the disease take their toll.

Except that there are no telethons for the man- and woman-atees who are eating themselves into an early grave. No foundations created to help those who started eating seven meals a day in 1982 and eventually worked up to 12. No fund- and awareness-raising marches designed to assist those who find themselves stricken by the condition. Though, to be fair, you can't cure MD by hanging out with Tony Little or Richard Simmons for a few months, either. In fact, you might CATCH some shit from that. But, I digress.

The point is, when we see someone buzzing around on a scooter, rolls and folds spilling so far over the edges of the seat that we can't even really be sure that there IS one, we're just supposed to let it go. To ignore it. To pretend that the situation somehow DOESN'T embody most of what's wrong with Western culture and it's overindulgent me-first-ism, and treat the plump passenger as if they're just like anyone else. Like they DIDN'T just take the "Fuck It, It's Too Late" path of least resistance when faced with their own crossroads, and use the last thousand dollars they didn't spend on Ho-Ho's to buy electric leg replacements instead of a fucking Bowflex.

So, in the interest of preserving inter-personal propriety, we DO let it go. Rather than look at these planet-proportioned pudge-piles and cluck our tongues, wondering what exactly went so horribly awry in their psyches that things could have gotten to that point, we smile. We treat them like we would anyone else. We ignore the room-elephant.

We shake the hook.

Maybe this is for the best. Because we KNOW if we simply got fed up, and adopted a tone of sneering sanctimony concerning their corpulence, we'd just come off like bigger assholes than they are. Sure, the be-scootered blobs are essentially foisting themselves on the unsuspecting public, forcing us to flatten against the shelving and squeeze our butts into the pickle jars as they hum by at Wal-Mart, parting the people in every aisle right down the center like a goddamned freight-liner trundling down the Panama Canal as they fill their carts with Doritos and Cheez-Wiz, daring someone to say something to them. But the second you decide to drop a pithy bon mot concerning their sheer monolithic mass within their earshot, you can almost guarantee that you've picked on the one person in a few dozen who genuinely has a thyroid that thinks it's in a narwhal, rather than the rest of them who just use that as an excuse.

So, as ever, it's best to keep your mouth shut. Sure, if they'd do the same once in awhile, they wouldn't be in the barge they're in, but that's really not for you to be concerned about. Natural selection will eventually weed these guys out. Or, the other possibility is we'll all wind up like the beefy butter-tubs onboard the Axiom in Pixar/Disney's delightfully thin-veiled attack on consumer culture "Wall-E": Little more than barely-sentient giant amoeba, who live only to ingest and excrete, blissfully bouncing through life without even the merest worry, floating around on the future's version of the Obesity Scooter, the hover-chair. We'll loll about in our own reeking perspiration, never quite cleaning between the folds well enough to completely excise the funk, but not really caring because, after all, that's the norm. We'll eat and shit and eat and shit and then eat some more, eventually winking fatly out, barely noticed by the other slow-witted cattle as they continue to soak up more resources than any organism needs to perpetuate its own useless life-cycle. Evolution does, after all, favor dominant traits that are well-suited to the overall environment of the alpha organism. Which is why I sort of wonder if we WON'T wind up going that route. Because as long as our environment keeps allowing for shit like THIS:



...We're pretty much fucked.

Way to shake the hook, America.

The Day I Lost Faith in Humanity, part V

By Blaine Fridley, Editor-in-Chief

The good thing about targeting slack-jawed, mouth-breathers as your base clientele is that with their mouths already open, it makes it all the easier to shove your shitty fast food down their throat.


(CLICK PIC FOR STORY)

I don't know what's worse: A) The fact that people waited up to 2 hours for Sonic, B) It was reported on by local news affiliates or C) It's my neighborhood.