Archive for the ‘Rant’ Category

Blog Writers Block (and the insanity that ensues)

Posted: March 17, 2013 in my tubby self, my undergarments, nostalgia is a dirty word, Rant, Uncategorized, Wordpress stats make me awkwardly happy
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It isn’t easy coming up with top quality blog posts full of wit and deep insight. It also isn’t easy to do what I do, which is crap out a post full of dick jokes and pointless rants. Sooner or later you run into writers block, life just doesn’t always provide the necessary stimulus needed for a 1500 word tangent about politics or movies. They say you should write about what you know but short of reviewing hardcore pornography I am running low on ideas that interest me.

Still, it is a big old internet out there and surely it has some good ideas I can steal…I mean borrow…I mean liberate for the betterment of all mankind. I found a site that claims to have 100 nifty blog ideas. Let’s try a few out, shall we?

Write about your favourite colour – Hmmm, seems a bit bland. Still, let’s power through and see if anything can be made of this. Most of my young life I have claimed that my favourite colour was red, which is a fine colour I suppose. At first it was just an arbitrary decision, someone asked what colour I liked in Kindergarten so they could quantify my sad little ass to make themselves a chart of some kind. I chose red for precisely no reason whatsoever because even as a kid I realized it was sort of a silly question that had no bearing on my life. I was young and stupid and my brain hadn’t fully cooked yet so my preferences were sort of dependent on the last thing I had seen or what my brothers thought were cool.

Eventually I did form a preference because all children eventually come into their own but I still stuck to red when asked. In all honesty my favourite colour is purple but as a child in public school I was always afraid of saying that because I thought it made me “the gay”. Try not to judge me to harshly for my youthful idiocy, that is precisely the sort of stupidity that youth, peer pressure from equally stupid young people and the public school system tend to breed into small children.

I am into my thirties now and have long ago realized that other people can certainly piss off because I have no interest in the opinions of 90% of the burping, farting, fornicating rabble that calls itself humanity. I have since come to learn that purple is in fact associated with sexual frustration (it really is, feel free to Wikipedia that shit). Considering the last 20 odd years of masturbating to increasingly shameful pornography it really comes as no surprise that purple is my favourite.

Write about your favourite number – Ummm, no. The only answer I have is the same one anybody who has ever read The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy has, so screw it. There have to be better post ideas than this.

Write about something you can’t believe you used to like – Full House…seriously, why the hell did I sit down and watch that drivel. In fact, most of what was the oddly named T.G.I.F comedy line-up. We currently live in an era of some of the best televised entertainment ever so I guess hindsight has kicked in but still, why in the name of all that is good and great in this world was the adventures of the Winslow family and their nerdy neighbour Urkele every a thing?

It lasted 9 damn seasons!!! I am sure I watched more than my fair share of those 9 seasons but the only lasting impression the show made is that one of the daughter’s on the show went on to become a porn star. I imagine you have already closed this tab and are googling that while you look for a tissue. Damn, I should have put this one at the end.

Write about your most favourite body part – Someone on this blog idea site apparently wants me to talk about my penis. I don’t know why, I don’t know what sick,deviant pleasure they get out of loving descriptions of my skin flute but I am hardly going to validate this perversity without at least getting dinner first. Some place nice, with tablecloths and real napkins.

Write about the most disgusting thing you’ve ever experienced – Alright, if you have a weak stomach I suggest you skip on by. I once worked for a company that did demolition and one of our jobs was to strip out an old restaurant to the bare walls. There was a lot of disgusting things involved with that particular job but the very worst was the urinals. We had stripped the bathroom walls and such out so basically we had two urinals in the middle of a giant empty space that used to be the men’s room. Imagine two urinals hanging in empty space with a few buckets under them and some wires tying them upright to the selling so the stayed up straight, mostly just hanging off their own plumbing.

Problem being we needed the urinals gone so the plumbers could take apart the plumbing. The decision made was to smash the urinals off the plumbing by tossing a hammer at them and breaking them apart. Apparently smashing the porcelain also freed up the smell of fermented salty/ammonia leavings that had been sitting in the pipes since the place had closed. That is a smell that will haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life. There is never enough showers to wash that shit off. After 3 minutes it became less a smell and more of a taste. Thanks for reminding me of that you stupid site.

Discuss something you fear – Heart attack, clogged arteries, diabetes, birds, aliens coming down to probe me in unpleasant places, demonic possession, nuclear war, serial killers, the new Star Wars movies being really bad, asteroids colliding with the earth…

Just write about your daily travel from your home to workplace – It is a hour and a half bus ride, why would anyone in their right mind be interested in hearing about it? I have to do it every day and even I couldn’t give a shit.

Share an unconventional way of doing something – Instead of peeling a banana from the stem where it hangs from the bunch, grab it at the little tip at the other end and squeeze it together gently (I imagine whoever wanted me to describe my penis is probably throughly satisfied now). Should pop apart much easier than cracking it off at the stem.

What would people think if they went through your garbage? – They would probably wonder what the hell all these are.

sprue
You are intrigued now, aren’t you?

Your opinion on the latest world news – We have a new Pope. This hasn’t altered my life in any way, shape or form.

Describe your childhood in sounds and smells – This is the sort of nonsense that gives blogs a bad name. This is where you wax all nostalgic about the smell of fresh baked bread and newly mown grass as the reader rolls their eyes and wonders why they have to put up with this. They were only humouring you in the first place because it seemed like the polite thing to do. They were worried you might ask them questions about it the next time you met. Wow, two whole paragraphs about the sound of an ice cream truck on a summer’s day?! Well, to hell with polite then.

Dispel a myth – It is Rancid Monkey with the “Y” taken off of the end to be hip and cool. It is not, nor will it ever be, Rancid Monk with a silent and pointless “E” tacked on.

Your life in six words – Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck, fuck…sushi.

If you could be anywhere in the world right at this moment, where would you be? –  I would be in Anna Kendrick’s underpants, the implication there being that I would like to be having intimate relations with her, not that I want to be running around in her frilly lace panties and staring at myself in a mirror or something. Clearly that would be insane…haha, haha…*sigh*.

Write an article describing the focus and purpose of the blog itself – The original purpose was to impress women with my sparkling wit and personality so they would throw their moistened underwear at me as I passed. Not particularly successful so far.

Think of the unknown – I think this suggestion is broken…

Write about something that you’ve noticed that makes you like a person – Boobs? Is the answer boobs? I feel like the answer should be boobs. You know how they interview people on the street from time to time and they ask “What do you notice first about a women?” and there is a few seconds gap before the guy being asked says “Her eyes”? That is because he is trying to think of something besides boobs. Don’t look at me like that, if you didn’t want the truth you should never have come here.

Write about a new trend that you hate – I really don’t know who decided that leaving the sales sticker on the brim of a ball cap was the height of fashion but they are an idiot. It isn’t hip, it isn’t fashionable, it doesn’t make you an individual and certainly doesn’t constitute a style. I can’t imagine what type of women would be impressed by your stickered hat but I imagine they would be as equally impressed if you had “got their nose” or did that trick where you make a pencil look like it is all rubbery.

All it does is make you look like a wanker. It is literally a proud little badge you wear upon your head advertising to the world that you are the sort of irritating little pecker that thinks this sort of nonsensical shit is what makes a person cool. I know that probably sounds to you kiddies like I am too old to know what cool is but I can assure you that neither of us knows what cool is cause I am too old to give a fuck what cool is and you are running around with a FUCKING STICKER ON YOUR HAT.

People who are cool don’t worry about what is cool. They don’t follow trends, they set them. People with “swag” don’t use the word “swag” because it makes them sound like an insufferable ass. Sadly, none of the stickered masses will get that until well into middle age. I hope their parents are taking lots of embarrassing photos.

Write about what you did today –
6 am – Woke up
6:05 am – Had bowel movement
6:10 am – Started cooking breakfast
6:20 am – Watched episode of Dr. Who, ate breakfast
7:20 am – Started this stupid blog post

Well…that wasn’t really riveting.

What you like and dislike about your boss – Sure, why don’t I just take a shotgun to my foot as well? Or maybe I can stick my genitals in this bear trap? This is almost as bad as Cosmo Magazine giving out sex advice.

Write about the life lessons you learned in high school or college – People suck. Not all of them, not all the time and there are certainly varying degrees of suck but in general terms, people suck. Also, I am naturally pessimistic.

Write a blog about writing blogs – One of the most thankless hobbies I have ever had. I don’t get any money for this so my only reward is page views and the satisfaction of hearing from people that they had a laugh at something I wrote. It is rare to get any comments and almost as rare to get re-tweeted or a Facebook share. Tried posting on Reddit but with no success. Every once in a while I will end up in a conversation with someone and low and behold they have been a fan of my blog for ages, something I wouldn’t have known or even have guessed at until they mention it in passing.

I don’t want to whine on about this, nor am I looking to hit the big time or sell ad space, I just want to feel that this all has a point. All I ask is if you have the time and like what I am doing here please pass it on so I don’t feel like it is a waste of my time. There are buttons at the bottom of every post that allow you to share on several forms of social media as well as the option to subscribe to post updates by email if you check all the nonsense on the left side of the page.

A goal in your life – Promise you won’t laugh? Someday I want to be a New York Times best-selling author. You’re laughing aren’t you? I hate you so much right now.

Rancid Monke

Now For A Very Special Episode – 100 Posts and 2 Years Later

Posted: February 7, 2013 in my tubby self, Rant, Video Games, Wordpress stats make me awkwardly happy
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What can I do to mark this special occasion? 100th post and my second anniversary on WordPress. Currently sitting at 2400 views. Don’t get me wrong, I imagine there are bloggers out there who could pull those kind of numbers in an afternoon but it has also gone beyond my friends humouring me as well. Some poor bastard in Chile once landed on my page after a Google search and the top views after the US and Canada are Russia. Apparently my sparkling wit is crossing language barriers, what the fuck did you manage to do this week?

Well if television has taught me anything it has certainly taught me that it is time for a clip show. Ah clip shows, the great blue balling of televised entertainment. In tonight’s episode I will be dragging in some of my best quips from Facebook, Twitter and various washroom stalls. I provide them with as little context as is humanly possible, so they can be enjoyed as nature intended.

Interwebz

– So…if ever my Google searches become public then I will have a hard time explaining today’s activities. I also need to delete a few pictures before handing anyone my phone again.

– My ex-boss’s dog is now showing up as a “friend I may know”. Nice work Zuckerberg.

– Facebook is like German porn. No one is having fun until someone gets pissed on.

Television

– I may have to stop watching Justified for a few days. My internal monologue now has a Kentucky accent.

– Why do they even need ads for tampons and pads anymore? Have you ladies not formed some sort of brand loyalty by now? Are you really watching TV in hopes of gaining some fresh perspective on it between shows?

– I have regrets. There are parts of my past that I would like to forget, questions about my behaviour that I can never fully answer. Like why the fuck did I ever watch Full House?

Babysitting

– Teaching my nephew all about survival of the fittest. Specifically, I am teaching him he can survive for a few minutes while I go whiz.

– This is why you don’t want me to babysit your kids.
redrum

Dinner

– That wiener wasn’t very tasty at all, that was a substandard wiener as far as I am concerned. I like my wieners to explode with flavour, dammit!

– Time for a breakfast of regrets followed by a lunch of shame. Sensible dinner though.

– “All the flavours of Tuscany in our new Tuscan chicken sandwich.” – apparently the flavour of Tuscany is raw onion. 

“All the flavours of the Southwest in our Turkey chipotle sandwich.” – apparently the flavour of the Southwest is also raw onion.

– We are sitting around having turkey dinner and both my nephews come back over from the kiddie table to stand beside their father’s seat with their plates held out in front of them, waiting patiently for the chance to ask for help getting seconds.

I gazed at them, I gazed over at my brother and in my best British accent I said “Please sir, can they have some more?”

Maybe you had to be there…

Exercise

– So I go to a job interview in the river valley and I am climbing back up one of those horrible long wooden staircases to get back to the top of the hill to catch the LRT. I look behind me and there is an attractive young women following me up in her jogging attire. I am near the top so there is NO chance I can even pretend that I am not a wheezing, sweaty mess by the time she catches up…fucking great.

So she gets up next to me and I say “Wow (pant,pant) guess I am really out of shape (wheeze).”

She says “Well, stairs are always hard for everyone.”

I look over at her and she isn’t breathing heavily or sweating or even working hard. 

BEGONE HARLOT, YOU HAVE MADE THIS STAIRCASE A HOUSE OF LIES!!!!!

Politics

– If you think your stockpile of assault rifles and canned goods are the only thing keeping you safe from the government coming to get you, then you clearly don’t know what a Predator Drone is.

Warhammer

– Blood for the Blood God, Skulls for the Skull Throne…and I call Big Spoon.

There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods…and their unending hunger for cuddling.

–  I love the Imperial Fists (mostly because it reminds me of fisting and I have the maturity level of a 13 year old) but why did they think canary yellow armour would strike fear into the hearts of their enemies?

– If I ever become a millionaire I am going to build all of the Warhammer 40K flyer kits and have a team of scientists test them for aerodynamics and feasibility. That is the sort of thing us rich folk can waste our time with.

Love

love is

Miscellaneous

– Some days I just don’t feel all that mentally sharp. Thankfully nature gave me a penis to do most of my thinking with. I am currently using it to do my typing as well.

– LOL?!! NONE OF YOU ARE LAUGHING OUT LOUD, STOP THE LIES YOU BASTARDS!

– I want to start a band called Misfiring Neurons, every set will have the lead singer flailing his hands about or staring off into space like he is trying to remember the words to the song. Meanwhile the band will do instrumental versions of classic hits.

– I am starting my own gang, that is how bad ass I am. We will smuggle porn to the pornless masses and hang out at our clubhouse eating sandwiches our moms make for us. Probably tuna fish and pickle.

– I need a sugar momma to buy me some acrylic paints. Also some mints to get the taste of rich old lady out of my mouth.

– Much like Tupperware I must be burped to maintain freshness.

– Hopefully they are doing fine at work without me, But not to fine…don’t want them figuring out how non-essential I really am. (as true today as when it was written)

– There is just some shit you can’t Photoshop your way out of.

– I had an epiphany…but I cleaned up after.

– The weekend is almost here and it is time for my favorite things. Staying up late, sleeping in, reading a good book, watching a good movie, cooking bacon in the nude, applying ointment to my third degree burns…

– Soft rock with less talk? Why that sounds like witchcraft, sir and I shall not abide it in my home.

Video Games

– So I sneak up on a guy in Dishonored and strangle him unconscious while he is pissing on a bush. Just one problem…why did he STOP pissing when I strangled him?

My Pity Party (man, even I feel bad for me now)

– I would like to invite you all to my Pity Party. 

Cocktails will be at 5 (although they will probably be sub-standard). I couldn’t get a band or DJ so the entertainment will instead be dramatic readings of some essays titled “My terrible inadequacies as a lover” and “Why my parents never loved me”. Dinner will be store-brand mac and cheese with past pull-date hot dogs cut up in it…because that is all I deserve. There is only enough for about four people though, so the rest of you will just have to wonder why you weren’t special enough to get any.

Party games will include “Mock the genitalia” and “Guess how successful my siblings are”…and possibly Twister if there is a demand for it. The entire party will be held in one corner of the kitchen while a better party filled with more interesting people will simultaneously be happening in the next room. We will no doubt be wrapping up early so we can all get home to feed our multitude of cats and read a book before falling asleep alone and unsatisfied. No need to R.S.V.P. as I already know you wouldn’t come anyway.

Goals

– People tell me to follow my dreams, do what I am passionate about. How do you explain to people that you never wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or a writer? I wanted to be a Jedi Knight. I wanted to be Batman. The best I can shoot for in the real world is a decent career, nice house, wife, kids, maybe a dog. I am not mad I can’t be Batman, nobody else gets to be Batman either, I just don’t view those other things as the consolation prize. Your reality sucks and I am happy to substitute it with a few Neil Gaiman books and some good video games. 

I know it is hard to explain but I am pretty sure the thousands of people preparing for a zombie apocalypse that is never coming or have sex in furry costumes are aware of what I am trying to say.

Rancid Monke

Fat Tax Alternatives – Better, Crazier Plans for a Healthier Canada

Posted: January 21, 2013 in doctors, gym, my tubby self, Rant, weight loss
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The Fat Tax and YOU! – It all started with my post about a group of Ontario doctors proposing a tax on high calorie items. They proposed it as a way of combating obesity but to me it seems more about profiting from obesity than actually putting effort in to stopping it.

I should mention that as part of my research I found out that both Denmark and Hungary have proposed such taxes, in fact Denmark worked on a fat tax and a separate sugar tax. About a year after Denmark imposed the fat tax it is contemplating rolling it back and is considering abandoning plans for the sugar tax. Although I didn’t find any information on if the tax was having the desired effect of decreasing obesity (it was probably too early to see useful data on it anyway) the reasons for considering dropping the tax were mostly political and echoed in all of the articles I read. Firstly, many labour groups were claiming that the tax was costing people jobs in the food and beverage industry and secondly the Danes were just border hopping to buy and horde food from countries without the tax (which explains why the jobs were disappearing).

Although I still oppose the tax vehemently these are  obviously very real problems that would have to be addressed if this proposed tax is actually considered for Canada. Many people in cities within driving distance of the US border are already crossing for shopping deals and smuggling cigarettes is big business. Do we really have the time and interest to search every citizen returning from the US for hidden compartments full of bags of chips and bottles of cola? Will contraband cupcakes become a thing?  If they do, I want to be known as the Cupcake Kingpin…I will require a cane with a cupcake shaped handle and some sort of pimpin’ hat with a feather in it…although I might be mixing villain archetypes there. Anyway, the point is that suddenly a lot of the money generated by the fat tax will used up policing the border, and extra border security hasn’t really worked to stop the drug trade from flourishing so it’s effectiveness is sort of questionable.

The Obesity Conundrum – Then I moved on to looking at some of the obstacles to a healthy life style. Mostly it was from my own experience and more than anything it was a stepping stone to this post.

Now I am ready to wrap this up and move on. What started as an insulting post on someone’s Facebook has spawned three blog posts that I am pretty proud of, it has gotten me more views, likes, shares and follows than anything that has come before but it is time to finish off and put it to bed. I can think of no better way to do that than with a quick brainstorm of alternatives to the Fat Tax, I once stated I could think of a hundred better alternatives to the Fat Tax and despite that probably being gross hyperbole it is still time to put my money where my mouth is.

I should mention that the ideas listed below for curbing obesity range from the mundane to the insane to the completely infeasible to the down right moronic. I am not trying to establish policy, I am trying to brainstorm and there are no “stupid ideas” in brainstorming…except for every idea besides mine, those are clearly idiotic and should be mocked accordingly. Anyway, I will try to keep this post as coherent as I can but I am also hopped up on cold meds…so odds aren’t stellar that it will be readable. Without further ado…

Rancid Monke Patent-Pending Obesity Combating Tips

More money spent on playgrounds, nature trails, community sports programs and recreation centres – If we can get kids to make a habit of exercising through sports and playing then that habit will continue into adulthood. Not only does it make sense to me but I have seen this theory in action. While I never really got into any sports my brother spent years in junior hockey leagues as a goalie. Despite the fact that he never made it to the professional level the habit of playing hockey followed him into adulthood and he has been in and out of both ball hockey and ice hockey leagues for years. There is probably an equal amount of beer swilled to hockey played but he is still in better shape than I am likely to ever be.

Mandatory cooking classes in school – if people can cook they aren’t nearly as reliant on fast food. I am perpetually surprised by how many people I meet who can’t cook. I am no culinary master but I am talking people who can’t even make there own macaroni and cheese unless it comes in those microwave cups. I was forced into taking a lot of bizarre classes in junior and senior high including gym class, industrial arts and career and life management (in which we listened to our gym teacher tell pointless life stories). Seems to me a few cooking classes would be infinitely more useful than almost all the algebra I ever learned.

Government caps on max sugar and fats in foods – Set a limit to how much crap they can actually put in any given product.  

Subsidies for gym membership – Subsidize the insane costs of joining a gym so more people can afford it. 

Tax credits for purchasing home gym equipment – They gave tax credits for house  renovations here in Alberta a while back, why not for people improvement? Save up your receipts for any exercise or sports equipment you bought in the year or for your gym membership/personal trainer and be able to claim it.

Artificial fat flavour – We have artificial sugar flavouring in Aspartame and Splenda so why can’t the same be done to make the flavour of kettle cooked potato chips into my bland ass rice cakes? Sorry, but baked chips just don’t taste the same, so why isn’t anyone working on fixing that?

Meal partners – I think this would make for an excellent website idea. Being single and living on my own tends to leave me fairly open to ignoring proper meal planning or preparation. Why put effort into a nice dinner when I can wolf down a bag of chips and watch Netflix instead? So what if I could go on a site and get paired up with someone else who likes to cook but doesn’t feel much obligation to when they are all alone. The site could allow you to find someone within a easy to accommodate radius of where you live and then allow you to set up a schedule for making meals you can share. Sort of like a dating site but replace the awkward touching with a nice spaghetti dinner. Instead of a profile rife with lies, sexual innuendo and self shots in the bathroom mirror you would have a list of your favourite recipes so anyone interested would know what sort of things to expect if they partnered up with you.

Mandatory sizes on apartment kitchens – I have been in a variety of apartment kitchens over the years and the expectation of an ability to cook a meal in some of them is laughable. Nothing makes me want to cook less than having no counter space to work on and no dishwasher to help make clean up easier. I propose that any new apartment or  housing development should be required to devout a specific square footage of space toward a properly designed kitchen.

Panini shops – Why the hell are their no panini fast food places? I am not even sure if a panini would be considered all that much healthier than other fast food items but considering how tasty they are why has no one set up a panini franchise in Canada yet?

Food court restrictions – What if food courts were required to have a specific number of health alternatives kiosks per each burger, pizza or fried chicken shop?

All fast food for commercial ads has to be from an actual store – Currently any of the food used in advertisements and posters at a fast food place needs to consist of 100% edible products. Unfortunately with things like edible food lacquers and the massive amount of advanced prep time that burger in the poster will look nothing like what they wrap in coloured paper and hand to you. I think they should make it so that any food used in advertising needs to be randomly sampled from an actual store kitchen instead of the corporate kitchen. Either the food at the chain would start looking better overall of the posters would start looking much more realistic and less appetizing. This might not have much effect on obesity per say but it would make for more honesty in food advertisement.

Specific times fast food commercials can’t air – By preventing the airing of fast food commercials during standard breakfast, lunch and dinner time periods we may be able to prevent impulse purchasing. Commercials for mouth watering burgers or pizza just as you are trying to decided what to do about making dinner is not very conducive to making smart and healthy choices.

Convince the companies, not the public – It may be difficult to convince a board of directors of a large company that reducing fats or sugars in their product or to make healthy alternatives would be in their best interests but it is still small groups with a fairly easy to define goal in mind (to make money for the share holders). Compare that to trying convince millions of average citizens with wildly different motivations that they should eat healthier.

Rancid J. Monke
rancidmonke@gmail.com
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/rancid.monke
Twitter – @rancidmonke

The Fat Tax and YOU!

Posted: October 23, 2012 in doctors, my tubby self, Rant, weight loss
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I have been overweight all my life, so no story hits closer to home for me then when someone starts talking about the “obesity epidemic”. It hits even closer to home when the story is a group of skinny apathetic people trying to “solve” the “problem” of obesity, like I am an errant X in an algebra equation that they are hoping will sort itself out if they calculate hard enough. So a group of doctors in Ontario have come up with a list of recommendations for battling obesity. Not suprisingly they are taking the exact same stance on fatty foods as they do on cigarettes, why screw with a winning formula I guess. The current list of suggesstions includes:

– Restricting marketing of fatty and sugary foods to children.

I would also like to restrict marketing of mass market, over-priced toys to children. oh, and insultingly stupid children’s movies. It would be nice if they didn’t watch all those pointless and violent cartoons either. So I guess it’s watching C-Span and eating rice cakes from now on kiddies. I mean, this isn’t necessarily a bad idea but it’s not like you are going to get Bran Flakes to start sponsoring kids shows either, so there needs to be something to replace it with.

– Placing graphic warning labels on pop and other high-calorie foods with little to no nutritional value.

I don’t remember a single smoker going “Boy, that label is just damn gross, I am done with these things.” Actually, the labels would probably be counter productive once kids figure it out. The package with the diabetes amputation warning is the tasty stuff kids! This is actually pretty insulting to be honest, like there is someone who mistakes sugar frosted corn-syrup flakes for a healthy breakfast and it is only the keen insight of an Ontario doctor who can set that person straight. Assuming your audience is too thick to figure it out on their own without a medical professional taking them by the hand is the sort of contempt that makes average people’s teeth grind.

– Adding retail displays for high-sugar, high-fat foods that prominently advise consumers of the health risks.

I ignore the retail displays now, adding a big sign with nutritional facts and warnings is LESS likely to make me stop and care. I am there to shop, not read about all my bad life choices in order of nutritional value.

– Restricting the availability of sugary, low-nutritional value foods in sports and other recreational facilities frequented by young people.

Get rid of Coke machines, because recreation centres exist in the land of make-believe where convenience stores aren’t 2 blocks away at most. Regardless, most of those places are getting some sort of rent or a cut from the vending company. That is money that suddenly has to be made up somehow. I am not saying it is a bad idea necessarily but if one rink or basketball court has to close over not enough funds than it will actually cause considerable more harm than any good it did.

Then comes the big one and my personal favourite.

– Increasing taxes on junk food and decreasing taxes on healthy foods.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the FAT TAX. It won’t matter what the government calls it (food rebate adjustment?), that is what it is and that is what everyone will call it.

So besides it being an inelegant solution born of a lack of empathy and understanding of the causes of obesity, besides it sending a strong message of judgement to those who aren’t at the government approved average body weight, beside it being the exact opposite of everything I know about the psychology of the obese and those hoping to lose weight (by being a punishment against the obese instead of an incentive and reward for losing weight) let’s look at why this idea is just plain old going to fail.

– To me, taxes are a purely political maneuver and this will be seen as such. The story won’t be about the healthy benefits of the program, the focus will be raising taxes on an already highly taxed nation. Motives will be questioned to the Nth degree and any politician who tables it had better be squeaky clean and probably vegan or he will be viewed as a hypocrite. If he is a vegan he will be viewed as biased and out of touch with common citizens. Talk about a no win scenario. This isn’t about luxury items, this is about essentials and it will be taken as a political scheme no matter how honourable the intentions.

– There is no tax on food in this country (at least none that I know of), they are talking about raising and lowering a tax that doesn’t exist. I thought food might be subject to the GST (goods and services tax) but it turns out that the government that implemented the tax was so afraid of the backlash of taxing food that they raised the actual tax rate but exempted food. The only exemption to the GST food exemption (I shit you not, this is an actual thing) is for savoury snacks (chips and chip like snacks), salted nuts, granola products and snack mixture. So essentially there is already a fat tax on the worst offenders of the food world and it has done sweet fuck all to curb obesity. So other than those listed in order to have a lower tax on good food and a higher tax on bad food you would have to CREATE a tax which would mean the price of everything would go up. Instead of a punishment/reward system, everybody gets punished and it is a matter of degrees. Good luck getting elected officials to support that or average consumers not to openly rebel. That is a burden the lower class can’t afford.

– You could create a tax on just bad food but it wouldn’t correspond to any decrease on the other end, thus it would just be a money grab, none of the money raised by the tax would be used for the intended purpose of lowering the cost of good food. If you attempted to get companies to lower prices by handing them the fat tax money that would be government trying to directly control the market which would be massively frowned upon. Setting prices is not really the job of the government in a capitalist society and no one wants to see their tax dollars wasted on private corporations.

– You could remove GST exemption for food I suppose, I mean, they already have their exemption to the exemption. Then you have all the bad parts of creating a food tax PLUS the money raised would just be part of the standard budget instead of being earmarked for anything like obesity studies or cancer research. That would be officially giving up all pretence of it being a positive attempt at curbing obesity and would just become discriminating against fat people for the sake of extra tax dollars. That is on top of the fact that taxing chips doesn’t seem to be stopping people from buying them (I honestly didn’t know I was being taxed for them until I researched this blog post so it wasn’t slowing me down in the slightest).

– Actually, it wouldn’t even really punish just the obese. Who the hell hasn’t had a shitty meal from time to time? Who hasn’t popped a frozen pizza in the oven between work and soccer practice for the kids. Why can’t a perfectly healthy person chow down on a bag of chips from time to time. He isn’t about to become a burden to the healthcare system, so why must he face punishment? It is easy to tax cigarettes or booze, not only are they not essential but it won’t effect millions of people several times a day. Try telling the entire population that their food court lunch just increased a buck or two and watch your party get shit-canned in the next election.

– This all begs the question of who gets to decide what is considered bad and good food. Do we let a vegan decide and eat tofu for the rest of our lives? Do we let government decide? I don’t trust politicians to sit the right way on a toilet seat. Do we leave it to doctors? What about that 1 out of 5 doctors that doesn’t recommend my brand of flu medication? Does he get a vote or not? Again, cigarettes and booze are easy to tax, it either is a cigarette or it isn’t, there isn’t a grey area. Considering the way science flip-flops on food health every day there is no straight answer on what should or shouldn’t be taxed. Sure, potato chips seem obvious but it become REALLY subjective, REALLY fast. Is butter good or bad? Is it better than margarine? What kind of cheese is considered the healthiest? Should I show up to the grocery store with a graphing calculator and some loose leaf?

– In the end I think the biggest problem is that the obese aren’t a “problem” to be “solved” (despite what this group of doctors seems to believe), it is a group of people who need help. Having lived with it all my life, I know that if I ever do get to a healthy weight it will be because of my hard work and the help of supportive people cheering me on, not because the government made Cheese Poofs and Coke a dollar more expensive. Maybe it is time for these doctors to bring on a psychiatrist as well, maybe even actually talk to a fat guy not just talk down to one. I am always available for consult.

Rancid Monke