Just Doing My Part to Help the Tennessee Obesity Task Force

Sure, I spent today like every day–using my fat ass to ruin it for other Tennesseans. I especially tried to ruin things for the Tennessee Obesity Task Force by scowling and pulling the peeling part of my forehead off and dropping it on the floor, which is, admittedly, very gross.

Not that they noticed.

But I also found this article, which I pass along, just to, as the kids say, problematize the narrative that fat people are just deliberately fucking ourselves up to spite you.

In a letter to a congressman that was obtained by The Washington Post, the FDA said that recent scientific studies raise questions about whether triclosan disrupts the body’s endocrine system and whether it helps to create bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. An advisory panel to the FDA said in 2005 that there was no evidence the antibacterial soaps work better than regular soap and water. [emphasis mine]

Yep, 70% of us are pissing a chemical that seems to fuck with your endocrine system.

I note, as a person with a fucked up endocrine system.

The Truth about ICP

Yes, folks, this is a post about motherfucking Insane Clown Posse. Whenever you sit around and wonder if white people have a culture or cultures, think of the fact that, while most people in this nation have probably only the most cursory knowledge of ICP (if they have any knowledge of them at all), I have sat through multiple viewing of Big Money Hustler, though, thank the gods, not in any state of mind where any of it stuck with me.

But I believe you can measure a white person’s approximate age and midwestern-ness with great accuracy based upon how much ICP awareness he or she has. Don’t get me wrong. In spite of the vast, inexplicable number of juggalos (ICP fans), most white midwesterners don’t care for ICP. It’s just that you can’t not know who they are.

And, hell, if they’re behind the wider spread of Faygo pop, they’re not all bad.

There’s been a lot of talk about ICP becoming more explicitly Christian and whether this is somehow shocking or problematic or a sign of them becoming Tea Partiers or something. I don’t think that’s the case. If you know their basic mythology or the background of the majority of their fans, it makes sense that they would have to become more explicitly on the side of “good” or “evil” at some point and that, since they always were kind of the hacks of the horrorcore scene anyway, it wasn’t like they were really going to be all “woo hoo! Evil wins! Hail Satan!”

After all, at the end of the day, their fans have to go home or back to work, and the make-up has to come off, and devoting your life to evil eventually winds you up in jail, and, in this economy, who can afford that?

No, what I find most shocking is that the band responsible for this:

Is the band responsible for this:

It’s not that they’ve become more explicitly Christian that’s so shocking and hilarious. It’s that they’ve gone so damn soft (that, and that they appear to be riding a giant phallus as it climbs into the sky).

I mean, it’s one thing to suck, which they always have. It’s another thing to suck so softly.

Damn.

Treme

I loved it. I was worried I was going to be spending all my time comparing it to The Wire, with so many of the same actors, but I really didn’t. I’ll admit, the only thing I know Khandi Alexander from is CSI: Miami, so seeing her here, so easily embodying this character, about blew my mind. I’m not going to knock CSI:Miami, because, clearly, it paid her bills, but damn, seeing what she can do only serves to show, by comparison, how little that show lets its actors do.

I’m still not sold on Steve Zahn’s character. I’m going to need to see a little sweetness in him I didn’t see in this episode to understand why folks like him enough to fuck him or to help him break into Tower Records.

John Goodman’s character and his wife pretty much cracked me up the whole time, just because I felt like their characters hit exactly the mark. If you don’t know folks like that, they probably seemed a little over the top. If you do, it was uncomfortably hilarious viewing.

And Wendell Pierce. Dear lord, he’s a treat to watch. I don’t even know what more to say about him, just that I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen when he was on. His character’s a jackass, but so alive in ways that I hope to see Steve Zahn’s character kind of take shape like.

But most of all, Clarke Peters. I about didn’t even recognize him, so thoroughly did I just believe he was a dude cleaning out a bar with two kids who think he’s up to something ridiculous. And when he came strutting out of the dark, like some psychedelic turkey, I really felt like I was seeing something magical–that this is a show about how people live in New Orleans and about how having hope and getting on with things is a real act of defiance, sometimes.

I loved seeing folks smoke, both tobacco and pot, that felt like seeing real life and I loved all the fat people.  I loved that nobody seemed so pretty that you couldn’t imagine them in real life.

And the music!

Most of all, though, I loved that I didn’t think of The Wire once we got past the credits. I was worried it’d be too long a shadow, but, having seen the show, I don’t think so.