Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Dubious Health Practices

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I cast a dim eye on those who are obsessively healthy.  I drink, smoke, eat fried food and do a wide variety of other things that are really, really bad for me.  I've been blessed with a metabolism that, while it no longer actually keeps me thin, allows me to do all this and not become obese.  If I ever bother to work out, I do so because I want to tone up a little bit for beach-oriented purposes.

I have never been the sort of person who does things for my health because I already do so many things that are bad for it.  If I did enough healthy crap to actually compensate, there would need to be more hours in the day, and anything less would just seem like trying to stop a freight train with a doorstop.

If you ever see me eating salad, it's because I actually wanted salad and not because I want to cut out poly ungluclear transsiberian fats or whatever the hell it is this week that "Good Morning America" tells us is out to kill us all.  I love salad, and I especially love it when it comes after oysters, soup, fish, a palate cleanser and roast and just before cake, ice cream, cheese and nuts.  Let's not forget all the tasty wine.  Although wine is OK, at least it will be until some other jackass working on a graduate degree finds out otherwise, because apparently some weird crap in it makes you not have a heart attack.  So I guess red wine is sort of like Diet Coke.  Fat doesn't exist if you have a Diet Coke with the fat stuff, and I can eat all the nice cream sauces and cake I want if I counterattack with red wine.  I'm cool with that.

And isn't it fun how every year or so a different food is either sent by God to make our lives longer (and pure and angelic by extension, one assumes) or sent by the Devil to make us fat and explode in a giant aneurysm? (After which we go to the fat unhealthy people corner of Hell which, I only hope, has good bar snacks.) I remember back in the late 70s the bete noire  was the egg.  It was full of cholesterol, and cholesterol was the worst thing ever.  Then a few years later someone decided that eggs were actually really good for you even though they were high in cholesterol, but it really didn't matter anymore because all of the magazines, papers and TV "newsmagazines" had found something else to terrorize people with/help them sell advertising.  This has led to a complete maelstrom of fad foods over the past couple of decades to the point where I can't remember if I should eat pomegranates because they'll keep me from getting prostate cancer or if I shouldn't because they'll give me encephalitis. By now I think the right idea is to just binge on everything and figure that the black-eyed peas will balance out the cigarettes, which themselves are busy cancelling out the lycopene in the tomatoes, which can't remember what they're supposed to do but it's OK because they've teamed up with red wine to prevent heart disesase.  The red wine and tomatoes may not be getting much accomplished but they are probably setting up an Italian restaurant somewhere around my pancreas.

The creepy thing about the health freaks is that they're so damned self-righteous.  I have a tendency to light a cigarette when I leave the apartment and walk to my car in the morning.  Grove Avenue is very popular with joggers and every one of them looks at me like I just harpooned their mother and a baby seal. Keep it up, folks, and your mom is toast (though I'll probably take a bullet for the baby seal).  Mind you these are the same people who eschew sidewalks and jog in their annoying little reflecty suits in the middle of the damn street. In the dark.  Hey, bro, your lungs are in great shape but I can't always see your reflecty suit until you're about five feet from me and splat you're done. And...hehehe...after I run your toned, Lycra-coated ass down, I'm going to light a cigarette.

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Thanks! Now, go get a drink, sit down and enjoy the show.