Saturday, October 14, 2006

An Old Entry about Fat and Old People

9/29/04 8:28AM PST



I'm having coffee and watching a stunningly beautiful time-delayed dietician on the Today show talk about diet plans that can be found online. Apparently there is a special edition of People magazine coming out that is all about dieting. The figure that was just barfed on me by my 13" inch televsion set is that 70 MILLION Americans diet a year. I don't know what the exact percentage of the population that is - I still use the census numbers I remember from 3rd grade - but I think that 70 million is somewhere in the 1/5 - 1/4 range of the total population of our nation.



I feel as if we are sliding on a slippery slope to becoming a nation of ballast.



8:35AM



Willard Scott is on now, doing that 100 year-old person thing he does. That this segment is historically sponsored by Smuckers Preserves has always vaguely unnerved me. As in these people are well preserved now, and Smuckers is going to make sure that they are going to be VERY well preserved after they finally shuffle off this mortal coil toothlessly humming "Surrey with the Fringe on Top."



Perhaps Smuckers is in a triumverate with the Pharmaceutical Syndicate and the Federal governement to track these American Centarians (or Centurions? Who's to say.) for some sort of toast-and-jam based genetic engineering project with Willard Scott appearing in these oldsters' homes in the middle of night in a flurry of X-Files flashlights and helicopter noise.



I see him gliding over to the bed of a cowering immortal and using a frightening, glistening glass-and-chrome sort of reverse air-charged syringe thingie to take DNA samples from our mewing victim. After he has sampled of the vital blood of the eternals, he'll lean in close and whisper "Thank you my darling." The wind in the room will rise as the rotors of the choppers on the lawn outside speed up, making the whine of the engines louder and higher in pitch. Pill bottles will go flying and Precious Moments figurines will knock into framed photgraphs of pets long dead. With a flourish of his Smuckers red gingham cape he is gone, leaving our victim wondering if the Angel of the Lord had come for them and had decided to leave them behind, shakily rubbing a now sore arm from whence the secret of their longevity was drawn while pieces of porcelain gently finish their tottering off the edges of Levitz furniture.

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