Making trips to a gas station is without doubt the most emasculating experience an individual can make in the year 2010. It anything it magnifies the embarrassing fact that we are all slaves to a long antiquated technology controlled by the morally sociopathic and fear mongering fundamentalists. As if being caught in the bear trap/swirling shit storm of Iraq and Afghanistan weren't enough abuse over the past 10 years (and beyond), the immediacy of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill this year has been the equivalent of receiving “The People's Elbow” while laid out flat on the wrestling mat. What could be worse than that? Well, watching the morbidly obese painfully make their way out of gas station convenience stores at lunch time with their “meal” of 64 oz acid based sodas, cheddar wrapped, deep fried, weiners made of spare animal parts, and laboratory engineered “potato” chips, all of which come wrapped in plastic packaging that will last on this earth far longer than the corpulent individuals who have purchased them. There is horrifying harmony to the modern gas station as it pumps out a fluid whose base ingredient currently poisons unsuspecting sealife, while simultaneously dispensing food containing poisons that aggressively increase ass size while proportionally shortening lives, only to watch vehicles inefficiently use the aforementioned fuel to transport said fat asses while producing gases which poison everyone's air and turn skylines the color of armpit stains in white t-shirts. It is this harmony that leads me to two questions. How many inches does it take before you know you are getting screwed? How much longer does it take to know you are banging yourself? And so we have A Memo Concerning: WikiLeaks, Food Deserts, and Poison.
I've avoided this topic for months because as a skinny man I inherently lack the experience to fully empathize with the obese. But, as I recently flipped through photos of oil bukake-ed sea turtles I realized that the look in their eyes were curiously, and tragically familiar-- the image of a car wreck or gruesome injury, something you try to forget but whose image haunts in random, violent flashes, something like Hedi Montag or Carrot Top. It was a look of perpetual shock, helplessness, confusion, and silent surrender. “What. The Hell. Happened to me.” It's the same pain shelled stare you can find on the corpulent, bottled oxygen dependent as they scooter their way through the shitspray of exhaust accumulated in the middle of a busy intersection on their way to go grocery shopping at the 99 cent store.
The painful reality is that given recent studies it is increasingly difficult for me to judge the morbidly bovine any differently than I would a fish who has made the horrible mistake of deciding to swim through BP's million gallon sea of poison. For millions of Americans the option to not poison themselves is simply unavailable as large communities have zero access to fresh food without making a pilgrimage past an ocean of cheaper, toxic options chemically engineered to create addiction and dependence. This creates a horrifying Catch-whatthefuckdoyoudo. Given the option between traveling over an hour to find expensive yet healthy options or heading down the street and hitting up the dollar menu, what would you do? For the poor the first option leads to hunger, the other to a living death. In the Land of the Opportunity not everyone who has the desire to eat healthy food has the opportunity to pursue it. The results are frightening, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the most obese state in the US in 1990 weighed less than the most healthy state in 2009. In twenty years, fat has become the new skinny.
I am not looking to absolve responsibility from those who have access to healthy, sustaining food yet choose to drink oil, but it would be equally irresponsible not to consider the waters we swim in. The concept of a Food Desert is dangerously foreign to many who live outside of them, but just as a non-smoker can get lung cancer from living in Los Angeles, the effects of this poison extend well beyond those actively killing themselves. Currently children are assaulted with more fast food advertising than any other form of food advertising, including ads for Frosted Covered Sugar Bomb cereal and High Fructose Acid Blaster beverages. The horrifying truth is that shit food is a more devastating killer than alcohol, drugs, and tobacco and yet shit food is able to wage a billion dollar seduction campaign promoting ways children can slowly kill themselves.
I'm sick and tired of having to wade through oceans of invitations to poison because in the end moments of weakness are inevitable. I ate Wendy's last week goddamnit, it gave me the shits, made me feel like my lungs were lined with bacon, and two hours later I wanted more. Isn't that what heroin does? Suddenly the answer to “Taco Bell, why can't I quit you?” is a lot more simple.
We live in a society where you can get McDonalds delivered, order a foot long cheeseburger from Carls Jr., and buy meat product in any shape you desire, while professional athletes peddle beverages scientifically proven to create weight gain, high blood pressure, and tooth decay (Gatorade). Yet we reserve our outrage and calls for action for instances/disasters when people poison other species by MISTAKE, rather than on purpose. Maybe the solution to this round of Gulf Crisis is to add sugar to the oil, get Nemo and Flipper addicted to oil consumption, and then say it's their fault for swimming in that shit.
I'm sick and tired of seeing people who look like they have been exposed to nuclear radiation and now have front butts and rooster jowls. Yeah, its a “free” country, so if people knowingly want to poison themselves, that's fine I can deal with it. But, that freedom shouldn't be a function of your tax bracket nor should it poison the water for everyone.
These things considered, I'm afraid that the underlying issue here isn't complacency or surrender, its an overarching desire to consume things that have already been digested. Too many of us choose to be chicks waiting in our nest for Sysco, Kraft, and Monsanto to vomit food into our mouths. Too many are afraid to acknowledge that meat has a face (and it's delicious) and that food, like all living things, shouldn't all look the same (you got that bleach blondie?). Too many are afraid to realize that eating living food means that sometimes your favorite food isn't available or in season. But this isn't just about food, its about frayed jeans and wood that's been painted to look old, its about facts that have been filtered through bureaucracy and panels of editors with conflicts of interest. It's about a desire that far too many have for things that have already been processed. I don't want to have to be a millionaire to get my food via WikiLeaks.
Click here for more information on Food Deserts
For more information on Nationwide Obesity, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation can be found here
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