contact has been made

The above is basically the message that Facebook has been sending me ever since I joined up. This is based on the ads that rotate at the left of the screen; the ones that you can’t get rid of no matter how far you scroll down.

It’s kind of amazing, because normally ads letting you know what a fat slob you are focus on the Beautiful People and what you should look like if you obsessed over your weight constantly, ate nothing but 1/2 container of nonfat yogurt for every meal and did a lot of heroin. However, most of these ads focus on “fat” people. That is, they show pictures of what you’re NOT supposed to look like in hopes that you suddenly say, “holy shit, my stomach is not concave!” and go out and buy their diet pills or green tea diet plan or whatever. It’s pretty awful.

The one in the lower left comes with the caption “avoid muffin top”– they gave it a label! Now whenever I see someone with a little gut spilling over her buttcrack-jeans, the phrase “muffin top” involuntarily comes into my head. Ack! Thanks a lot! How many high school girls are going to sit in the locker room and derisively scorn Uncool Katie Jones’ now-actualized Muffin Top?

Here are the “ideal” bodies; what we’re all supposed to strive for. The captions for each of these revolve around looking good in a bikini, because after all, that’s the whole point of existence.

I personally like “the Pink Patch.” There’s supposedly this patch that you can wear that will make you skinny. Everything is in patch form these days: cigarette-quitting, birth control… does anybody else find it slightly unnerving that something you stick to your skin is somehow silently leeching chemicals into your bloodstream? Even if it *is* pink?

Lastly, there are the before-and-after pictures. These ones really crack me up:

The first one’s caption talks about losing 20 lbs in 6 weeks. The difference between the “before” picture and the “after” picture is way more than 20 lbs. Losing 20 lbs in 6 weeks? Is that even healthy? The second picture is awesome because we learn that not only will you be skinny after going on the Whatever Diet, but you’ll get a tan, too!

The ads read my profile and deliver ads specifically to my demographic, such as diets for “35-year-old Women” — I really wonder what the ads are like for 35-year-old men. I bet you anything that there are not nearly as many “DAYUMMM, YOU’RE A FAT-ASS!” ads targeted at them. I really really hope that my 13-year-old niece isn’t getting as many fatso ads as I am; that would really suck. Like girls need to get screwed up at that tender young age if they aren’t already.

Facebook has added a little feature to the ads, 2 buttons– one with a thumbs-up and the other with a thumbs-down. The thumbs-down one changes the ad if you click on it. Unfortunately, it seems that pretty much all the ads for my demographic are ones decrying fatness, because if I elect to change the picture, it just gives me another one from a different company letting me know how fat I am in a slightly different angle, and how I can fix it with a different preposterous-sounding diet.

Now, with the increase in cheap, available, fat-laden convenience foods coupled with the increase in jobs that require you to sit at a desk all day, Americans are getting fatter. Nobody disputes that. However, you’d think that with the Average American being a little chunkier than the ones in bygone years where people toiled in fields and factories and at other waist-slimming jobs, the attitude towards fatness would be relaxed a bit. However, this is not the case. Fat people have always had a bias against them (except perhaps in the middle ages when fatness was considered a sign of wealth), but I think that people are not only more intolerant of extra pounds now, but also the criteria for what constitutes a fat person has narrowed quite a bit.

For example, check out Marilyn Monroe:

What a freaking fat-ass! Jeez, have another jelly donut there, Tubby.

I know it’s an obvious statement, but in a world where Kate Winslet

and Drew Barrymore

are considered the chubby chicks of Hollywood, then what chance does anyone have? If your dress size is a positive integer, then you might as well be mainlining cheesecake, because face it, YOU ARE DOOMED TO FAILURE! WE all know that if you are fat, you will never live a happy fulfilling life and you might as well just lay down and die right now because people are laughing at you behind you back, you’ll never get a raise, and if you somehow manage to trick some unwitting illegal alien into marrying you, he’ll be screwing a chick in a size -000 dress within minutes. I hope you’re proud of yourself, you lazy slob!

Because, we know that all fat people are fat because they’re lazy and have no self control. Of course that’s it! It’s just like poor people aren’t rich because they’re too lazy to work hard. Is it any co-incidence that there are so many fat poor people? I think not! In fact, how many skinny terrorists do you know? Saddam Hussein certainly was no Twiggy. Fat people are actually terrorists!

Jesus says nuke em all! Fucking Communists.

On another note, my cat, whom I affectionately nicknamed “Lard-Ass” has been on a barfing spree again. I’ve thought that maybe calling him Lard-Ass gave him a complex about his weight and caused him to become bulimic. Then I realized something else recently. In the movie Stand By Me, the character called Lard Ass exacts revenge on the town who bullys him for being fat by barfing on everyone. He enters a pie eating contest, drinks a bunch of castor oil before hand, and hurls blueberry pie all over the audience. This causes the audience members to each get sick and ralph up all over their friends and neighbors.

i don’t know why this piece of cinematic trivia escaped me for so long. I mean, I’ve only seen Stand By Me like 800 times– it came out when I was about 12; the perfect target for a coming-of-age movie, even if it was a fairly trite Baby Boomer Nostalgia flick.

So, I will strive to no longer call Morrissey by his nickname, and go back to calling him Moz. Godspeed, me.