In Some Cases, it's a Three-Figure Sum

Did you see the Drudge-linked story about fatty fashion in the UK? Check this out:

Oversize clothes should have obesity helpline numbers sewn on them to try and reduce Britain's fat crisis, a leading professor said today.

Can you believe that? Health warnings on muumuus. "If this garment is the correct size for you, you may wish to have a gastric bypass." Where would you put the tag so flubberballs would be sure of seeing it? You know how hard it is for fat people to turn their heads. Maybe instead of putting the tag on the clothes, they should put it on their refrigerator doors. Along with a Kryptonite lock and some electric fencing.

Am I an evil person for promoting fattening foods, in this age of seatbelt extensions and Super Duper Big Gulps? If so, I don't care. It's okay with me if you eat yourself to death after reading my book, as long as I get my royalties. I'm right behind you. I wouldn't ask you to eat anything I wouldn't eat myself.

Of course, I can still see my feet and I exercise for 45-60 minutes four to five times a week. And I don't smoke. So you'll probably buy the farm before I do. Hey, at least you won't die from eating garbage. If you die with one of my ribs or homemade doughnuts in your fat little paw, at least you'll know you died for something important.

You can't really blame a cookbook author for reader coronaries. I know fat people--I mean pathologically fat people so addicted to food that a cookbook could actually help kill them. They stuff themselves regardless of the quality of the food available. If they can't find good food, they'll lie on their backs shaking marshmallow Circus Peanuts directly into their mouths out of Sam's Club-size bags.

Here is how addicts work. Make their substance of choice available to them, and they'll snorf it up. Don't make it available to them, and they'll get it themselves and snorf it up. Hire armed guards to prevent them from getting it, and they'll bribe the guards to get it and then snorf it up. When they can't get the stuff they want, they take the next best thing. Quality is never an issue.

You can enable a drug addict. It takes effort and money to get drugs, and you can make it a lot easier. But it's impossible to enable a food addict. Because food is cheap, and it's everywhere. The only real enablers I've seen have been the softhearted morons who bring fattening treats to giant tubs who can no longer shop for themselves. Nobody hits eight hundred pounds without an enabler. But if you can walk and make it through the double doors at the grocery, you are responsible for everything you eat.

My pizza is really good, though. Damn, it's good. And easy. And really hard to get tired of. It's so good, publishing the recipe may rise to the level of Butterball Entrapment. You know how entrapment works. If I dress up like Britney Spears and stand on a street corner for the police department (or my own amusement) attracting johns who are already planning on doing some whoring, it's not entrapment. On the other hand, if I go to the home of a person who has no interest in whores or sex with women, such as Tom Cruise, and I sit on his chest and put a gun to his head and force him to pay me for a good time, and he would otherwise not have done it, that's entrapment. And possibly the basis for a new John Waters movie. Because I'm corrupting someone who would otherwise not have had the inclination to do the crime.

I don't care. I really want your money. You don't have to buy the book. How about this arrangement? Send me ten bucks, and I won't put the book in your mailbox, along with some eight-by-ten color photos of my latest pizza.

Don't mess with me. I can get to you. I can get a bellows and blow pizza fumes under your front door. I can fill your hot tub with sauce. Give me the goddamn money, lardass. GIVE IT TO ME. You would only have spent it on Ding Dongs anyway.

Think of it as protection money. I'm protecting you from yourself. Stiff me, and I'll turn you loose and let you give yourself a good working over. Complete with garlic rolls.

Stop whining and fork over the cash. I know you've been saving up for a day-old sheet cake.

I want you to do this because it's the right thing to do. Not because you feel pressured. But--and this is something I happened to notice purely coincidentally, after only Googling fiercely for half an hour--did you know that you have to type SIX X's before the L before Froogle stops giving you results for "XXX...L sweatpants"? They go all the way up to five X's. I don't know what they're charging, but whatever it is, they have to be taking a beating on fabric costs.

Look, when you find a hot pie on your lawn in an insulated bag the next time you waddle out to get the newspaper, don't say I didn't warn you. Don't say I wasn't a good friend, Porky. It would be awful if more pies turned up on your patio or in your specially widened shower when you ooze in there to rinse your flaps and wattles.

I'll be watching my PayPal account.

Don't disappoint me.