Dining on Paradox

Good afternoon, devoted readers of SOA. I’m sure I gave you quite a scare over this past weekend – first Jim vanishes from the face of the earth (only to resurface through a series of confusing and admittedly verbose Kafkaesque missives delivered to Jeff’s inbox), and then AJ goes the same route with nary a farewell handshake? For shame, you must have cried, tearing at your garments in grief. Why have you forsaken us?

Okay, you probably didn’t say that, but I like to think you did.

Anyway, ye of little faith, I have returned to the land of the living after a tumultuous weekend abroad. It turns out that ape Jim was angling to purchase in Marrakesh was actually being bought on consignment by the Fixer. And the boss-man still wanted the ape. I don’t hazard to guess why, and neither should you. But regardless, with Jim on the run and Jeff far too drunk to get through airport security, it fell to me to procure the simian and return it to our compound. I flew out Friday morning. I just stumbled back in now. I’ve lost one shoe, dislocated a shoulder and, for some reason, now have a tattoo on my right ass cheek of Mickey Mouse smoking a cigar, but I’m home safe.

Yeah, I got the fuckin’ monkey.

No, I don’t want to talk about it.

(no, I did not have to kill the gorilla to get it back here, so get off my ass, PETA)

What I do want to talk about is food. See, I read Jeff’s blog yesterday (and bless his black little heart for throwing up some weekend updates while I was…otherwise engaged) and I’ve got to admit, he’s mostly right. Americans – and let’s not live in glass houses: North Americans – are by-and-large some of the fattest bipedal organisms ever to crawl off a couch far enough to order a Triple Decker Bacon Fat Beefy Melt with a side of chicken-fried chicken gristle and a Bambi smoothie. That products like the Comfort Wipe even exist is testament to that fact.

I can speak to this issue with some authority. In my younger days I spent considerable time gallivanting around Texas, the state that coined “everything is bigger here”.

And it’s true – true in so many great ways,

and so many very, very bad ways.

Driving along the University stretch in Fort Worth, I became familiar with more fast-food chains than I ever thought existed – believe me when I tell you those Texans have the undisputed monopoly on fast food, my friends.

I could eat at a different shit dispensary every day for a month, and I’d probably only be scratching the surface. So yes, it makes perfect sense to me that so many Texans would look like this.

What makes less sense to me is how so many Texans look like this.

They tell me there are a few places to go in North America for Most Attractive Females: California and Montreal come to mind. Add Texas to that list. Anywhere in Texas. Everywhere you go it looks like this. It’s like Hitler’s wet dream down there.

Clearly there’s got to be an element of good genetics happening here, because apart from the occasional…augmentation here and there, these girls are generally farm-fresh and even reasonably healthy, assuming you don’t count the vapid materialism and sense of entitlement a lifetime of oil-funded pampering instills.

But not everybody in America is lucky enough to come from a genetic line that renders Photoshop redundant. Most people – and let’s be honest here, we’re talking predominantly about women – are just middle-of-the-road people, not particularly attractive, not particularly hideous. Yes, there are some who fall left of the midline,

but generally speaking you’re not going to see an overriding prevalence of one extreme or the other.

America, however, is a nation defined by extremes. It’s also a country eaten alive by its own paradox. The ego-fueled desire for the biggest, loudest, baddest car on the road vies for supremacy with the guilt-borne belief in an economical, fuel-efficient, unobtrusive vehicle. The extreme right pushes for theocracy and MacCarthyesque governmental control, regardless the cost; the extreme left favours green energy and social assistance for all, regardless the cost.

Of course, the most visible expression of this paradox is the schism between the American diet,

and the American ideal of physicality,

the confluence of which results in the sociological equivalent of a 404 error:

Result not found, bad input.

As the late, great George Carlin (something of a patron saint in the Triumvirate that is Politics, Keep Your Coins and State of Affairs) once noted, only in America could a disease like bulimia ever become prevalent. Half the country is starving to death because they can’t afford both food and shelter, and yet there’s this significant fraction of the population that regularly vomits up perfectly good meals in an effort to look like the Texan Photoshop Girls. If that’s not paradox, I don’t know what the hell is.

Now before all you feminist types start lighting your molotov cocktails and sharpening your castration tools, I’m not saying that bulimia and anorexia aren’t serious conditions – they are. I’m going to get into it in a minute, so don’t get your 100% hemp panties twisted, sisters.

But first I’d like to comment on the big picture.

I don’t think, historically, there’s ever been as clear a double standard at work as in 21^st century American media. On the one hand, you’re looking at a huge media machine designed to inundate children with the virtues of Happy Meals and Kid’s Club Specials, and whatever else the moguls on top of shit dispensary chains conjure up, when they aren’t boiling babies and tacking puppies to a wall. Get them started early, get them hooked on trans fat and sodium and sugar because that makes them slow, docile, stupid and easy to control.

BUT.

On the other hand, you’re looking at a huge media machine designed to inundate children with the virtues of makeup and designer clothes, and whatever else the moguls on top of hollow, fascist fashion regimes conjure up when they aren’t masturbating in front of mirrors and making fun of poor people. Get them started early, get them hooked on brand labels and celebrity culture and body image because that makes them distracted, depressed, vapid and easy to control.

Seems like a solid mix, right? Well, like everything else, the ends might justify the means, but just because two separate agendas are working towards the same end doesn’t mean there won’t be disparity in the processes.

Think about it. What kind of culture promotes on one hand, the consumption of food so poor in nutritional value, a steady diet of it will inevitably put you six feet under, and on the other hand, an idealized body style that maybe a percent of the population might naturally have, but one that anybody subscribing to the All-American Shit Diet will only ever see in their chicken-gravy-induced hallucinations? That’s hypocrisy at its very best folks.

There’s even crossover here. You ever notice the kinds of people featured in McDonald’s commercials? What’s interesting about them? Do they bear any resemblance whatsoever to regular McDonald’s customers you see in your day-to-day life?

I think not.

Instead, they bear a striking resemblance to actors who are physically active (who probably employ a personal trainer), who eat a balanced diet including fresh fruit and vegetables, and who probably never eat at McDonald’s. Fancy that!

It’s sort of like how girls who suffer from anorexia and bulimia really want to look like this:

but end up looking like this:

We have a term for that here at the Compound. The term is “truth in advertising”. See, here’s how it works. If you start out with a flawed premise – you want to look like Keira Knightley but you can’t afford the legion of staff and professionals that help to keep her looking the way she does – then you’re going to end up with a flawed product. Similarly, if you really believe eating at McDonald’s is the way to look young, healthy and attractive, you’re going to end up with a flawed product. The reason we call it truth in advertising is because in order for it to be true, you have to buy into that flawed premise. Once you do that, you automatically go in for the whole package.

You want some serious tinfoil-hat theory? Let me lay this on you. Anorexia and bulimia are essentially government-funded ailments designed to keep young women weak and distracted, in the same way professional sports is a government-funded program designed to keep young men from pursuing meaningful goals (and, of course, to prepare them for their inevitable military service). Think about it: the industrial complex builds a nightmare fast-food industry that rakes kids in from the time they’re old enough to eat solid food, and subsequently makes them fat. At the same time, the complex glorifies size-zero movie starlets and football heroes in the youth-driven media, giving all those fat McDonald’s veterans something to obsess over. Yeah, males and females obsess for different reasons (I don’t know too many guys who idolize Peyton Manning for his killer pecs, and I know fewer women who idolize Jennifer Aniston’s acting ability), but the result is the same. Give them an idol to compare themselves to, and the result is a) hero worship and a desire to be “just like” that idol, and b) a subconscious lowering of self-esteem brought on by the subliminal message of “This is what cool/acceptable/successful looks like. Now go look in a mirror, loser.”

So what happens when Jane America realizes that her perfectly-ordinary size 6 body (I’m guessing here – is this an ordinary size? Ladies?) doesn’t fit the starlet mold? She goes on every diet known to humanity, exercises obsessively, maybe dabbles in dieting drugs, whatever. And when that doesn’t work? Well, how about we just don’t eat? Aha! Brilliant! But wait – uh oh, Mom and Dad have noticed that I refuse to touch my Hamburger Helper at dinnertime, and all those hand-packed lunches I never ate are starting to rot in my closet. Okay, I guess I better put on a show of mastication so they get off my case and leave me to my thinspiration. What to do, what to do. God, this conundrum is making me nauseous. Wait! That’s it!

As if young people in 2009 don’t have enough to be neurotic about – nothing remotely stimulating on the tube, album after album of fucking terrible music on the radio and on the internet, lives wasted on Youtube and Facebook and stupid mindless blogs – the Folks In Charge are going to give you one more thing to bog down your life. So if drugs, booze, sex, self-mutilation or antisocial violence aren’t for you, how about starvation? And hey – if you still can’t lose weight, chubby, at least you can clean up the evidence with a handy-dandy Comfort Wipe.

Here’s an idea. Educate yourself. Quit eating all this bullshit food, and quit buying into this celebrity culture rim-splatter that’s trying to tell you what to be. For the moment, you’ve still got some choices left. Exercise them. (no pun intended)

In the meantime, there’s some commotion down the way – I think it’s time to go look in on the ape. The Fixer better not be doing what I think he’s doing with that poor animal – the pro-ana people are going to be pissed at me as it is, I don’t need hate mail from PETA too. More on the big monkey later. I’m thinking of calling him Ishmael.

ed. note – for some seriously brilliant philosophy on the topic of food, success and just how we’ve managed to fuck up as badly as we have, check out Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael series. Like, now. Run, do not walk. There will be a blog post on this man soon, so consider it homework.