(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."

Great Moments in Fat History: Kevin Smith Gets the Boot

By now, you know the story. It's one that's really lit up the 'tubes the last few days. And when a story about a prominent celebrity getting kicked off an airplane for being too fat gets around the internet, it really gets around the internet.

For the uninitiated:

Renowned indie auteur/screenwriter Kevin Smith (he of "Clerks," "Chasing Amy" and the upcoming "Cop Out") was recently "asked" to disembark a Southwest Airlines flight...for being too fat. The airline's contention was that his size posed a "security risk," being as in the event of an accident, other passengers would have difficulty getting around him to escape. Apparently lost in their reasoning was the fact that in your average airway disaster, having a spot of bother circumventing the portly fellow in the next seat is rarely an issue, on account'a the flames, flying debris, and giant sucking holes in the cabin hull all representing slightly more pressing concerns.

"Bitch, fuck the seat cushion. Use ME as a flotation device."

The ludicrous nature of Southwest's concerns notwithstanding, maybe they should have checked their records. Because all of this happened despite the fact that according to CNN, Mr. Smith is something of a frequent flier, having bought no less than 10 Southwest tickets just that week. maybe I'm nuts, but there's something to be said for that sort of frequent-flyership.

The thing is, Smith KNOWS he's a tub of shit. He refers to himself as such constantly. In his series of laugh-out-loud funny "An Evening with Kevin Smith" DVD's (featuring college and general-audience Q&A's), he outlines his struggles with his weight in hilariously self-deprecating detail. Shit, he writes movies where the other characters refer to his as "Tubby" and "Tons-o'-Fun." Even so...acknowledging your body issues on your OWN terms is one thing...but making headlines for them is something else entirely.

"I'm sad. And you wouldn't LIKE me when I'm sad."

More tragic yet is that the aforementioned ten tickets were all for him...And he'd bought them for a total of five flights. Which means that he had ALREADY copped to their asinine policy that passengers deemed "too fat to fly" are required to purchase a whole extra seat in order to accommodate their girth. Seats he didn't even really NEED (because he was more than able to fit in the seat, as well as buckle the safety belt), but that they forced him to buy anyway.

So what was the problem? Well, he got bumped to standby on the flight in question. No problem...frequent travelers know this kind of shit happens. But when they found him a seat on a different flight, it was just one seat. Which means, in essence, that he paid for TWO seats, and in fact received ZERO.

So, you see.

The backlash was swift and immediate. It wasn't just that Southwest had fucked over a prominent celebrity...It was that they had fucked over a prominent, internet-savvy, self-aware and unapologetically self-promoting celebrity with legions and legions of slavishly devoted followers...all of whom had undeniable geek cred, and all of which were more than ready to set the entire internet on fire with scathing invective condemning Southwest as the second coming of HitlerSatan. All they needed was a dispatch from their Fearless Leader in the form of a Tweet, message board post, podcast or blog.

All of which is what they got.

"Fly, my monkeys...FLY!"

It's been entertaining watching the P.R. department of Southwest fall all over themselves trying to backpedal, apologize and do damage control in the wake of this. Point is, they fucked over the wrong random fat dude, and it bit them in their asses. Smith is standing up for himself, refusing to back down, and scorching the earth with the power of his raw hatred. And the world is feeling his power.

And if THAT doesn't qualify as a Great Moment in Fat History, I don't know what would.

Great Moments in Fat History: The KFC Double Down.

The Colonel is trying to kill you.

He's not even trying to hide it anymore.

He wants you to die, and he wants you to die now.

How else do you explain his newest menu item - a bacon sandwich topped with a slice of pepper jack, a slice of swiss cheese and the Colonel's secret sauce**?

What?

That doesn't sound too bad, you say?

In fact it sounds very similar to what you had for breakfast this morning, you say?

Hm…

Oh, right!

That's 'cuz I forget something.

You know the bun?

It's been replaced.

…

…

…

With fried chicken.

Bite into the Double Down and say, "I hate me."

**Koala semen. It's true.

Great Moments in Fat History: The McGangBang

In the grease-stained annals of fat history, very few food items exemplify necessity-as-mother-of-invention quite like The McGangBang.

You see, for the truly devoted, even an historic economic downturn is no reason to board-up the feed trough.

A real saturated fat sycophant will find a way to eat more with less.

The Corpulence Express (passenger service to Adult Onset Diabetesville) will not be derailed.

Not on their watch.

So with $2.16 and a handful of Krackle Bar wrappers in their pocket, they slowly mount their freshly-charged fat scooter and set their course for fatty spendthrift Mecca: the McDonald's Value Menu.

What they come up with is equal parts disgusting and Girl Talk mash-up innovation:



The McGangBang.

An entire McChicken Sandwich slid in-between the all-beef patties of a double cheeseburger.

800 calories. 39 grams of fat. Again, all for $2.16 and whatever dignity you have left.

Truly, another Great Moment in Fat History.

For an extensive bio on the origins of the McGangBang, check out Eat Me Daily.

Great Moments in Fat History: Gluttony on the Go!

You're fat.

And on the road.

You could wait until you got to your destination to order your double cheese meat lover's pizza with extra Canadian bacon.

But, come on.

You're not sitting behind the wheel of a retro-fitted shortbus with no front seat, reinforced shocks and a cup holder cradling a gravy-filled thermos because of your legendary will power.

Problem solved:

Item originally found on technabob.com

Great Moments in Fat History: Enter the Comfort Wipe

So it's come to this. Sweet, creepy Jesus, IT HAS COME TO THIS.

It's no secret that obesity is a growing problem in America. So much so that, "Obesity - A Growing Problem™" is actually a copy-protected slogan registered by Amlagamated Puns Enterprises/Service Humor International Trademarks. And believe me, the folks at APE/SHIT know what they're doing.

It's also no secret that America has apparently decided to simply accept this and adapt to it accordingly rather than actually fight the problem (hence my attempt to force the euphemistic phrase, "shaking the hook" into the popular culture). I guess fighting takes too much effort. You actually have to get up off the couch, put down the Ben & Jerry's, and do something. It's easier to just blurt around on your Obesity Scooter, sitting around after having given up. In fact, "sitting down and giving up" are pretty much the only two things you have to do in order to succumb to your new status as a member of the Hutt family (well, that, and eat half your weight in Western food every day.)

But never have "sitting down" and "giving up" combined in quite so hopeless, so cynical, so downright OBVIOUS a fashion as they do in the Comfort Wipe.

Used to be that years ago, "he has to clean himself with a rag on a stick" was the sort of news that elicited clucked tongues and sorrowful head-shakes from people who can't imagine how anyone could possibly let it get that far. But now? These pitiful wads of clarified lard aren't shameful cautionary tales. Heavens, no. They're an under-served consumer niche that can be marketed to! Just watch!



I don't know about you, but I'm having a hard time deciding what's funniest/most horrifying about this:

A) The voice-over lady's liltingly musical delivery.

B) The copywriter's delicate dance around the concept of, "this is something you wipe your ass with."

C) What the talent agency's ad must have looked like that sought to recruit for the role of the guy who shows up at the 40-second mark.

D) The fact that the woman who pops up at :45 is obviously well-taken care of (and from the looks of her, probably even has a advanced Dance Performance degree from Juilliard), yet we're still expected to believe that she's so elderly and infirm that she previously needed assistance swabbing out her brown-eye before the Comfort Wipe came along.

E) The subtle, probably until-now-unconsidered fear-implantation aimed squarely at squeezing additional sales out of the OCD/germophobe crowd ("If you're someone who just doesn't want to touch DIRTY TOILET PAPER...").

F) The idea that you can and should give this stain on the dignity of Western culture as a gift to "someone you love," and that their knee-jerk response WON'T be to use it to beat you to death with.

G) That we're supposed to believe a plastic stick (and a bonus plastic stick with a pair of suction cups attached to it) is somehow a steal at twenty bucks (plus S&H), because the two of them together represent a "$50.00 value."

H) The understated, in-context acknowledgment of the eternal "crumple vs. fold" debate.

I) They want us to believe this thing is somehow "sanitary" when you KNOW that in the hands of the sort of person who has trouble wiping his or her crack normally, it'll no doubt wind up more smeared with shit than GG Allin during a curtain call.

No matter what, I just want to send a very clear message to all of my treasured Diary co-contributors and readers:

I know I'm not the most in-shape guy in the world. But if my personal physical condition ever gets so beset with tragedy that I'm forced to drop a Jackson on a special stick just so that I'm not waddling around from buffet to buffet reeking of stale excrement? PLEASE MURDER ME. Just walk up and launch the business end of one of those gas-powered livestock-killing spikes like Javier Bardem toted around in "No Country For Old Men" directly between my eyebrows. Then, print out this entry, bring it into court, and allow me to exonerate you from beyond the grave. The gigantic, diamond-mine sized grave they had to use a backhoe to dig before bulldozing my Steinway crate into it.

"I just done you a solid, friend-o. That was for your own good."

You can do whatever you want with my shit-stick after that.

Great Moments in Fat History: http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/

The Diary has always been a champion of the disgustingly delicious delicacies. Whether it be the Bacon Explosion, The Luther Burger, or Canada's own Poutine.

Apparently we've been slacking. A lot.

Thisiswhyyourefat.com basically has made this an art form, if you can actually call this art. Personally, as a fattractive man like myself, I can call this high art. You can keep your post-modern heaps of shit New York, this man will take his Bacon Wrapped French Toast Sticks Stonehenge. To Go.

Actually, I'll just eat it on the toilet to save time.

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.

Great Moments in Fat History- "The Bacon Explosion"

By Reno Gruber, Eater of most things unholy.

When we think of the 'new' America, we think of a crumbling economy and lost jobs… but we also dream of hope. When we think of the 'old' America, well, we think of wars started by old people and a foreign policy that revolved around "our god is righter than your god." But in both of these Americas, we have the tireless urge to consume. Now that we know it's bad panda for us to drive tanks to the mall and emit garbage into the atmosphere because it's probably brought an ice age dangerously close, we turn that tireless need to consume inwards.

Luckily the people at BBQADDICTS.COM

have surmised a beautiful way to to kill yourself slowly in the most delicious way possible.

Ladies and gentlemen: The Bacon Explosion.

Start with a 10 piece slab of weaved bacon, dry rubbed with seasoning salt. Then add a few pounds of Italian sausage on top. Then for the salty icing on this meat-cake, add a lb. of bacon cooked in the middle.

But the purely American genius that comes next is the presentation:

The sausage is rolled with the cooked bacon in the middle, then the uncooked bacon weave is rolled on top of that. This takes the term "suck my salty meat log" to a whole new and delectable level.

Where my counterparts may wax poetic on this being yet another blight on the state of our glorious union, I feel this particular piece of ingenuity is a stoke of unadulterated brilliance.

Will your heart explode if you eat this? Probably. But the question you ask yourself should be: "Is it worth it?"

Yes. I believe it is.

For the recipe check out:
http://www.bbqaddicts.com/blog/recipes/bacon-explosion/

Ps. The DoF is not responsible if this piece of culinary freedom results in Heart Disease.

PPs. No word on whether or not the actual explosion is in your pants after digestion.

Great Moments in Fat History Vol. 3: Old Country Buffet

By Merton Sussex, Grand Poobah of the Mundane




Man...Who DOESN'T love a buffet, huh?!? It's positively un-American to not want to belly up to a plethora of ready-to-go grub, and eat to your (cholesterol-crippled) heart's content! And such VARIETY!

Of course, the granddaddy of them all is Old Country Buffet. With its headquarters right here in the Twin Cities, Old Country's parent company, the creatively-labeled "Buffets, Inc." operates almost 650 restaurants in 39 states. That's a lot of mashed potatoes.

You'd think with that sort of market penetration, Old Country would be pretty well set, serving up steam table after steam table of bland, mediocre food, and a lot of it, to everyone, everywhere. However, on January 22nd of '08, prior to the most recent round of financial woes to plague businesses large and small all over the country, Buffets, Inc. declared Chapter 11. Seems they had a tough time making ends meet. There are a lot of theories as to why this might be, but I have my own.

See, whereas the normal person sees the buffet as a nice occasional dinner alternative with a lot of choices, no waiting, and a reasonable price structure, there is a large-and-getting-larger contigent among us who sees it as more of a food amusement park: Pay a flat entrance fee, and play until you drop.

Have you ever BEEN to the Old Country? Have you SEEN the sort of people who eat there? Sure, there are plenty of families, looking to get the most out of their food budgets. Single people, maybe striking out on their own, and who don't know how to cook yet. And, depressingly, a lot of single old men, who look lost, and who probably ARE since their wives died, and they never even learned how to boil water. But by far the largest group, and I mean that in every sense of the word, are the ones who are even more depressing than the widowers: The corpulent mounds of barely-human flesh, waddling their way back and forth to the feed troughs, rolls quivering and undulating, plates loaded to critical mass with mounds and mounds of whatever couldn't run away from them.

In and of itself, this really isn't the problem. The Buffet business model is meant to absorb the cost of the gluttons, and make it up on those who DON'T eat their own weight in gravy every time up.

However, that being said...It's NOT calibrated to account for two things that have become rampant: 1) Waste, and 2) Over-consumption of the loss-leading entrées.

You know what I'm talking about. You've seen 'em with the prime rib hanging over the sides of the plate, because they wouldn't budge from the line until the hapless chap working the carving station slapped enough beef on their plate to feed a Guatemalan family for a week. Hell, go to any buffet on seafood night. If you don't see some sumo-sized mass sucking down plateful after plateful of peel-n'-eat shrimp, crab legs, or whatever that stuff is that's passing for "Lobster Thermidor", I'll skip the always-untouched salad bar and eat my hat instead. These assholes view the humble buffet as "Chuck's All-You-Can Inhale Crab Leg Shack," and they're not shy about it. "Well, HELL, Marg'rit. It's cheaper'n Red Lobster. Besides, it ain't even our annivers'ry anyway." So there they go, getting the only exercise they ever do, humping back and forth with boiled crustacean...and leaving half of it on their plate every time they go to get more. Which brings me to point 2...

WASTE. The amount of food these places have to buy in order to keep up with demand is positively obscene. The only thing MORE obscene is the amount they're forced to toss out. Whether it's the fact that the stupid lazy fuck with the crab legs is only eating 10% of the actual meat in the shells because it's not worth the effort to extract the other 90%, or the gaping rectum with the prime rib who eats three little bites of a one-pound slab and throws the "fat" away, the rampant food waste these places put up with is quite literally shameful. The stuff they throw away in just about a month is more than the aforementioned Guatemalans will likely see in a lifetime. And it's all because the spoiled chubsters in their sweatpants and vintage "Coed Naked" t-shirts just cast if off like it's trash, beneath their contempt. THIS is why Buffets, Inc. filed for bankruptcy. Because when they opened in 1983, they simply coundn't DREAM of having to put up signs reading, "Take all you want to eat, but PLEASE eat all you take!" Or, "Please don't waste food!" Having to ask someone, much less GROUPS of someones, not to waste food? This, to me, is the #1 indication that Western society just has too goddamn much. Imagine having to tell someone in Gambia or Ethiopia not to waste food. That'd be like telling them, "try not to punch your children in the throat." It simply would never have occurred to them otherwise.

However, weep not for poor Buffets, Inc. Something tells me they're gonna be just fine. Early reports are that they'll be emerging from Bankruptcy protection sooner rather than later. And besides, it's hardly like they're completely faultless. Remember when I said they opened in 1983? Well, dig these couple of charts I found that plot out the average U.S. obesity rates over the last few decades or so. Pay special attention to the rough year when they start to creep northward:







If you notice anything interesting, please come over to my table and let me know. 'Cuz this fried chicken, bread pudding, pizza, beef vegetable soup, mac and cheese and soft-serve sure as hell ain't gonna eat themselves.

Great Moments in Fat History, Vol. 2: Arby's/Sbarro, KFC/Pizza Hut/Taco Bell and the Dawn of Fast Food Caloric Collusion and Cholesterol Consolidation

By Blaine Fridley, Just a Small Town Girl Livin' in a Lonely World



How many times have you gone to a Pizza Hut and wished that you could order a 12-pc. extra crispy bucket of chicken and Nachos Bell Grande to compliment your Stuffed Crust Meat Lover's Pizza, cheesy bread, Oreo Dessert Pizza and 2-liter of Mountain Dew?


Or sat down at an Arby's and felt disappointed that you couldn't wrap a nice greasy over-sized slice of pepperoni pizza around your Big Montana?

Never you say?

Well then, I'd hazard to guess you don't find your bedsheets and clothes in the same department at Kohl's. I'd also bet that you maintain at least a casual relationship with dignity.




But at some point in the early-to-mid 90s the fast food industry powers-that-be (in an apparent partnership with the world's elastic pants producers) felt that the collective American waistline still had room to grow, and that the menu items of a single, stand-alone fast food restaurant simply did not meet the needs of its waistline expansionist agenda.

What if, they dared to ask, we combined the menus of several restaurants under one roof?

This bold question proved to be the catalytic event leading to widespread pairings of fast food restaurants, creating havens of super-saturated fats and, consequently, one of the Great Moments in Fat History.