Oh, what a First World problem we have, ladies and gentlemen! A billion people starving to death and this guy goes on and on about ingesting too many calories. Maybe if this rotund bastard ate half as many avocado rolls and gave the money he saved to some African dictator to fritter away on alligator skin AK-47 holsters and Ricin, the world would be a better place.

See what I did there? I trivialized the problems of an entire continent in a single sentence. It wasn’t even that hard to do. What is hard is to keep the static down long enough to fix problems instead of pointing fingers.

That’s what we’re here to do, like a hilariously paunchy Mohandas Ghandi. Keep that in mind, fat-challenged folk. We don’t bother you about your elbows being sharp like knives, step off our many chins.

That said: fat people, your fatness is only mostly your fault! It’s also sort of your food’s fault!

See what I did there? I made you think I was being contentious and then stuffed an accusatory finger into the face of Ronald McDonald. But it’s true, the food around us is by-andlarge pretty terrible. If I had a nickel for everything I eat in a day that could contribute to my contracting cancer, or a dime for every unsustainable foodstuff I buy, I could pay for gastric bypass surgery and stop writing this column. But sadly, carcinogens ain’t currency.

We live in a culture of bad eating. This is not to say what we’re eating isn’t awesome; I defy a vegetarian to prove to me that a spinach and pine nut vinaigrette salad is more delicious than a rack of fall-offthe- bone pork ribs in a honey garlic sauce so thick you could use it to, well, eat ribs with. But nobody in their right mind would think that the gratuitous consumption of meat, sugar, and salt is good for you. Prophet Atkins tried that and died of cardiac arrest. That’s not a joke, it’s just funny. The secret is that hardly anyone thinks meat and candy translate into ripe old age. Our options are just a little limited.

High fructose corn syrup, processed sugars, trans-fat, MSG, Little Ceaser’s Hot-and- Readys, salt-water taffy in all the colours of the rainbow, Pez. . . . The things that are worst for us are available, cheap, and delicious. Bad food is pushed onto us from the powers that be, coating us in a film of manufactured suck we just cannot ignore, like a culinary Miley Cyrus. Our food supply has been designed for efficiency and in so doing we feed poisons the things that feed us. My body is under assault and the chemicals in these foods still have not given me sweet claws that I may bolster with adamantium.

Organic is a sham. You pay through the nose and have to choose which couple billion or so more people on Earth you dislike most and want to starve (you better watch out, Switzerland). My pathetic undergrad bank balance can’t suffer the hit of market fresh produce and cruelty-free meats. My hair will likely fall out on it’s own and I could care less to speed that process up by not eating anything with a heartbeat. Things taste best if they at one time had a nickname and friends to mourn their passing.

You’re surrounded, brothers of the blubber. Your food supply has gotten so far outside your control that you can’t help but do harm no matter what you do. Whether to yourself or others, eating is now an act of cruelty. It’s a tough choice between Jimmy Dean’s Sausage Wrapped Chocolate Sausage Rounds and tofu, and likely will be until cannibalism becomes socially acceptable.

Holy shit. Cannibalism! I just solved all our problems!

Oh, what a First World problem we have, ladies and gentlemen! A billion people starving to death and this guy goes on and on about ingesting too many calories. Maybe if this rotund bastard ate half as many avocado rolls and gave the money he saved to some African dictator to fritter away on alligator skin AK-47 holsters and Ricin, the world would be a better place.

See what I did there? I trivialized the problems of an entire continent in a single sentence. It wasn’t even that hard to do. What is hard is to keep the static down long enough to fix problems instead of pointing fingers.

That’s what we’re here to do, like a hilariously paunchy Mohandas Ghandi. Keep that in mind, fat-challenged folk. We don’t bother you about your elbows being sharp like knives, step off our many chins.

That said: fat people, your fatness is only mostly your fault! It’s also sort of your food’s fault!

See what I did there? I made you think I was being contentious and then stuffed an accusatory finger into the face of Ronald McDonald. But it’s true, the food around us is by-andlarge pretty terrible. If I had a nickel for everything I eat in a day that could contribute to my contracting cancer, or a dime for every unsustainable foodstuff I buy, I could pay for gastric bypass surgery and stop writing this column. But sadly, carcinogens ain’t currency.

We live in a culture of bad eating. This is not to say what we’re eating isn’t awesome; I defy a vegetarian to prove to me that a spinach and pine nut vinaigrette salad is more delicious than a rack of fall-offthe- bone pork ribs in a honey garlic sauce so thick you could use it to, well, eat ribs with. But nobody in their right mind would think that the gratuitous consumption of meat, sugar, and salt is good for you. Prophet Atkins tried that and died of cardiac arrest. That’s not a joke, it’s just funny. The secret is that hardly anyone thinks meat and candy translate into ripe old age. Our options are just a little limited.

High fructose corn syrup, processed sugars, trans-fat, MSG, Little Ceaser’s Hot-and- Readys, salt-water taffy in all the colours of the rainbow, Pez. . . . The things that are worst for us are available, cheap, and delicious. Bad food is pushed onto us from the powers that be, coating us in a film of manufactured suck we just cannot ignore, like a culinary Miley Cyrus. Our food supply has been designed for efficiency and in so doing we feed poisons the things that feed us. My body is under assault and the chemicals in these foods still have not given me sweet claws that I may bolster with adamantium.

Organic is a sham. You pay through the nose and have to choose which couple billion or so more people on Earth you dislike most and want to starve (you better watch out, Switzerland). My pathetic undergrad bank balance can’t suffer the hit of market fresh produce and cruelty-free meats. My hair will likely fall out on it’s own and I could care less to speed that process up by not eating anything with a heartbeat. Things taste best if they at one time had a nickname and friends to mourn their passing.

You’re surrounded, brothers of the blubber. Your food supply has gotten so far outside your control that you can’t help but do harm no matter what you do. Whether to yourself or others, eating is now an act of cruelty. It’s a tough choice between Jimmy Dean’s Sausage Wrapped Chocolate Sausage Rounds and tofu, and likely will be until cannibalism becomes socially acceptable.

Holy shit. Cannibalism! I just solved all our problems!

This is the best picture of me that has ever been taken, bar none.

“The problem is I don’t want one drink. I want 10 drinks.” — Leo McGarry.

I wasn’t fat until someone told me I was. I just finished what was on my plate and went and fiddled with my Mighty Max playset.

I remember the first time it happened. I can’t, however, remember the last time. A boy in my class, let’s call him “Douchebag,” came up to me and stuck his index finger nearly into my belly button. Rather than elicit the standard Pilsbury “hoo-hoo” and grin like a banshee, I elected a more direct approach: I grabbed his wrist and pushed him to the ground. Douchebag didn’t like this and inquired, “Why did you do that, fat-boy?”

Fat boy. Blubber-nuts. Tons-of-fun. Fancy Feaster. Harpoon-proof. Rosie O’Donnell’s left cankle. I’ve heard them all, ladies and gentleman. They don’t faze me now, but back when I traded piggyback rides for packs of Soda-licious they were the be-all-endall my existence. Tell your kids to leave tubby alone because while I think most of us would thank them for it now, back then it required the constant treatment of cry-abetes.

That said, I can’t remember the last time someone called me fat, even from a place of mirth. Maybe it’s just me?

It sneaks up on you. It’s not like a lard baptism or anything — all of the sudden bathed in the fatness of generations before you. It is a gradual process. At some point, you accept it and either change yourself or make it a part of your life. While the calorie-counters are calculating the cost of their candied cranberries at Christmas, I’m cracking the crust off another crostini. Sure, there have been Thanksgivings where I have taken my third helpings in my room, silently weeping in the dark and supplementing the lack of a salt shaker with my pickled tears, but that wasn’t this Thanksgiving.

What it comes down to is that habits like those are self destructive with any substance. I don’t understand people who leave half the bun on the plate. I don’t understand people who like taking the stairs. I don’t understand why people don’t take a second helping. No, I don’t want one Fudgesicle. I want 10. Why would you want this feeling to go away?

In a society where the vast majority of our food supply is created to fulfill evolutionary tendencies toward unsavory savories (sweet and salty are rare in nature, and abundant in a host of delicious things made these days), these are dangerous habits to have. People have thrown away portions of their lives on worse things than food, but none so culturally acceptable. The biggest hurdle for a wannabe fat-man ex-pat is what has proven to be the fattest part of the fattest people: their brains.

I am going to continue to call us fat people. Tubby people. I am going to call us every word that makes us different. If you are offended, if you would like me to say “overweight” or “differently insulated,” or some other such nonsense, the ghost of Mr. George Carlin would like a word with you. I’m taking them back. Because the first step to no longer being fat, or being fat and happy, is to get our minds and habits in line with our waistlines.

And brothers and sisters, I hope you join me.

Bonus content: I now fear skate bowls.

Ladies and gentlemen, I just broke a chair.

As I was sitting here waiting for inspiration, I took a good long lean back in my chair to admire the blank space above my monitor, and faster than you can say “ass over tea kettle,” I’m on my back, my form draped over the busted remains of my chair, a fat man on a fulcrum.

I am a fat dude. These things just happen.

As I lay, broken in body and spirit, pondering the structural integrity of bargain priced Swedish furniture, a thought occured to me. The danger of breaking furniture of any price probably doesn’t occur very often to people with “healthy” BMIs. There are probably a lot of things that don’t occur to them that may occur regularly to the calorically inclined.

Say I buy a dozen Krispy Kremes from some heartless fundraisers in the AQ and eat a few. Just a few though, I swear. I will keep the rest for later out of guilt. Ten minutes later, I think “Hey, these won’t be near as good tomorrow. They’ll be all stale! If I eat them all now and not have a donut for the next year, that’s only one donut a month. That’s pretty average.” I then proceed to bombard my pancreas with high-fructose corn syrup and my colon with saturated fats for the next 20 minutes, purring like a kitten the whole time. What type of mad man thinks this way?

Being fat isn’t just what you carry around your waist. Being fat resides in your mind and in your heart, and I don’t mean hardened arteries and a propensity towards stroke. Being fat is a way of life. It’s taking things in stride and coming out on the other side forgiving, but not forgetting. It’s learning lessons the hard way and coming out stronger. It’s spending the day looking for pants with just enough elasticity to be comfortable without sacrificing dignity.

Despite being a “growing problem,” the media presence of fat people has been relegated to ridicule and t-shirts denigrating our sexual desirability (I’m pulling for you, ladies). The North American obesity rate is skyrocketing with the readily available and readily delicious fast food. It’s the hot ticket, and hell if I wasn’t into it way before it was popular. I’m way into the scene and have the thighs to prove it. I’m not ashamed of my lot. In fact, I revel in it; it’s made me the person I am today. I say it loud and proud: we’re here, we’re near, and we’re coming for your cookies.

Having said that, it’s time for me to take my leave.

In the next year of my life, I am going to take the first steps to distance myself from the only identity I have ever had: the fat dude. Exhibiting incredible foresight, I’m leaving it behind for my health. My knees are my new biggest fans. I want to go from Seth Rogen 2006 to Seth Rogen 2009. But on my way out, I want to give a little insight into the unique challenges and foibles of the new silent majority, having a little fun along the way.

We’re all in this together. One giant, love-handled, man-breasted mass of solidarity. Over the next few weeks, I hope you join me in throwing a solitary sausage-link finger defiantly towards the rampant thinocracy.

Just as soon as I get up out of this broke-ass chair.

A moment of silence for the dearly departed.