How Apropos ...

Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar - Act I Scene 2

I don't know about you, but I seem to be finding more and more that the nastiest, most inconsiderable people I meet on a regular basis are either a) grossly overweight or b) use one of those motorized scooters.

I'm beginning to believe that in these cases, causality has been turned on its ear - these people are afflicted because of how nasty they are, not they are nasty because of their affliction.

Here's an example: I was walking down the street and in front of me are two morbidly obese girls in hip huggers. Each one was easily 350 pounds. Both of them have tattoos right above their butts. This is the stuff of night terrors. Since they took up the width of the sidewalk, someone said, "Excuse me" and tried to pass. The girls screamed at the poor tourist, who fled across the street.

First off, if you're often mistaken for "Bimba, whale of the Nile", do not wear hip-huggers (in fact whoever manufactured hip huggers in that size should be taken out and shot). Contact Omar the tent-maker for something much looser and a lot less revealing. I do not need to see something that looks like a lifesize black seagull or a Fell Beast flapping on your lower back and upper butt. If I want to lose my lunch, I will stick several fingers down my throat. Secondly, my health insurance premiums are paying for treatment of your diabetes, COPD, asthma, high-blood pressure and other weight-related diseases, along with all the meds you need to take. If the purpose of your midday waddle is, "I know that candy store is around here..." then you'd be better served by a gastric bypass, or having your mammoth jaws wired shut. Lastly, if you know that you are that wide, don't block the sidewalk - and if you act like you were brought up in a barn, then you should put yourself there and strap on a feedbag.

Okay - rant over.

I happened to check James Lileks' site today and lo and behold, there was something that brought a smile to my lips and a good, deep, cleansing laugh:

Nice call, Supe – don’t use your special powers to pry apart the booth ever so gently so Lana can ease her stout patoot out the door; don’t use your special lube-beams to grease her up so she can extract herself with dignity. No, pick her up and fly her around town with her ass hanging out.

Why would he care if Lana knew he had become FAT as well? Wouldn’t this actually be a comfort? Obviously some sort of evil enfattening ray has been trained on Smallville, and everyone looks like they just spent a fortnight at Chili’s restaurant drinking from the deep-fryer grease trap.

Superboy’s costume, being Super, easily absorbed the added demands; Lana, however, should have split that dress wide open, providing all the subscribers with the I-see-London-I-see-France moment they wanted. How many redhead fetishes Lana left in her wake, we'll never know, but she gets short shrift in the great debates over fictional women. Everyone's always going on about Betty or Veronica; the Lois-vs.-Lana issue never comes up.

Ahhhhh - just what I needed to get my perspective back - Thanks James!!!!