June 2nd, 2012

There is something depressing about losing weight.  I mean, in the end, dieting is all about losing parts of yourself, dumping the spare tire around your middle, or as I come to see it, a dysfunctional fanny pack without a zipper, hollowing out your cheeks, which looked at one time like chipmunk cheeks. 

Shedding weight is something akin to starving, which has so many depressing images attached to it.  The Budhist monk protesting the occupation of his country, the concentration camp internee sustaining on pieces on the mere scraps he can find, poor children from a Charles Dickens novel.  To see yourself in the mirror should bring happier thoughts, a tough challenge to accomplish, getting healthy.  But, in the end, it is so tempting to view it as compulsory negative, compulsory in the sense that it seems never ending, negative in the sense that you hate being in the loop while hate the current shape and size of your body.

And then there is the comments that come with losing weight.  Of course, there are those people who feign happiness for you.  They say things like, "You are starting to lose a lot of weight.  I barely recognized you."  Or, "You're going to have to start buying a new wardrobe."  Of course, there is always the ones who state, "How are you doing it?"  The comments are nothing more than veiled jealousy, hidden attacks at a person who has been able to exert some control over their urges to eat, to do something about their negative feelings about self-worth. 

And you know this, because when you try to discuss with them your transformation, the hard work you've put into losing pounds, they either turn-off or make excuses for their own inability to lose weight.  They claim that they do the same thing that you do, stop drinking sodas, restrict their caloric intake, exercise more, but, for all their work, their body won't let them lose they weight.  What they are really trying to say is "You are lucky that you have a body that allows you to lose weight so easily," as if the hard work and focus was nothing more than the randomness of genetic disposition. 

And then there are those whose disbelief in your willpower, who doubt your desire to improve your health, who believe that the only way that anyone can lose the weight you have is to be sick.  They always begin asking you if you are alright.  When you tell them that you are, they look at you with disbelief, as if you are on drugs, because no one loses weight that fast on purpose.

And then there are those that are just flat out tired of your losing weight, and others noticing it, who can't bear to see you suffer.  And so any comments remotely related to your weight loss is responded to with

Never mind

Never mind the neWS, that keeps you awake at night with its violence and stories about fear and death

Never mind the politician who never quite know the truth but only half -truths told to them by "yes" men

Never mind what they tell you at school because they don't know themselves but. are really there to make sure you don't roam the streets during the day

Never mind the police who are only human after all but on the other side of the barrel Closest to the trigger

Never mind the musicians and athletes who tell you in what they Say and what they do that the only thing in life that matters is gold and women

Never mind your parents who are too embarrassed to admit that they understand what you are going through or even that they know what they are doing

Never mind the 10% percent who talk to you with their hands in their pockets to keep a close tab on their wallets

Never mind the 90% Who want you to hand overall your belongings as if you ever had ownership over them anyway

Never mind your friends who won't by your Friends next week because you have become boring

Never mind your girlfriend or boyfriend because behind those pretty eyes lies a deep pool of doubt that they are with the right person

Never mind such arbitrary things Such as time and day of the week

Never mind Science with its irratating need to always be right

Never mind religon with its irratating need to always argue

Never mind art inaccessible and incomprehensible

Never mind this poem with its platitudes and bad advice

Grocery Store Pet Peeves

It seems like I spend the majority of my time complaining about things.  As my wife is always quick to remind me that I take pleasure in making sure that I dislike that which the public has loved.  She says, "Everyone loved Shakespeare in Love.  Everyone except you."  True enough, I define myself by what I do not like or find fault in, rather than what I do like or that which is meritorious. 

However, there is something to being allowed to disdain reprehensible activities, to look down on social behaviors which are negative and deserve condemnation.  Too often, people engage in activities which are not only morally bankrupt but also impact others with no regards.  Take for instant a litterer whose chucking an empty cup obtained from a fastfood restaurant out of his truck because he has not the patience or motivation to find a trashcan either at home or another commercial estalishment negatively impacts a wide variety of people.  Certainly, aethestically, trash on the roadway is displeasing and tends to encourage other litterers to throw trash on the ground.  Further, trash draws rodents and other varments and creates other health problems.  Certainly, I should not be faulted for disliking litterers.

Perhaps one of the places where my ire is raised most is the supermarket.  The supermarket is a magnet for socially irresponsible persons. 

It starts when you arrive when you are trying to find a parking space, driving through row after row of cars, many of them trucks to large to fit between the painted lines, whose doors you know will bang into you own vehicle if you park next to them, leaving a small ding, and maybe a paint chip as a souvenir.  You are about to give up when you notice an empty space in the next row over.  And so you race over, to claim your find only to discovery some car parked over the lines, taking up two spots, an act I might equate to a dog urinating on a tree, or your mailbox, just to let you know whose in charge.  So you find a place somewhat distance from the front door and begin walking.

You notice that there are several people who have already completed their shopping, their bags contained in their shopping carts.  After placing their groceries in the back of their vehicles, they place the cart right behind the vehicle that is parked next to them, so they have the ability to back out and leave, but their neighbor will have to move the cart, put the cart return for them.  What makes this even more egregious is the fact that the cart return is only a few feet away, as if putting the cart return would kill them.  And of course, on a windy day, loose carts roam freely in the parking lot like grazing cattle bumping up against cars. 

Then you walk inside the store, and notice the fortyish man, with able legs sitting in the electrical carts reserved for the diable, as if using the cart was a matter of right, a matter of first come/first served.  And he will ride that cart in a bumpy, noisy manner, sometimes letting his just as able children ride it around the store as if it were a go-cart, blocking aisles when stopped, until it runs out of juice in the back of the store, no where near the charging station.  Once dead, the cart is dead, it will be abandoned for more tradional means of coveyance, the cart which has to be pushed, the one they shouold have used to begin with.  Meanwhile, some elderly woman who clearly cannot walk five feet let alone a whole store has no means to go shopping.

And then there are the parents who let their children run wild throughout the store, touching everything with their sticky fingers, eating food and drinking drinks before paying for them, leaving the empty packaging on a shelf no where near where the items was obtained, but a mere two feet from a trashcan, children who tear open boxes that have to be taped back up again, making the next person to pick up the package wondering, "Is it all in there?"