Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer
I stumbled across a short video commercial the other day of a morbidly obese woman doing yoga. The thrust of the commercial was that fat people are that way through no fault of their own, they are just as flexible and healthy as normal people and the only real problem is that people simply don’t understand how being morbidly obese is really a good thing.
That’s our situation.
We live in a world that has been systematically created, one mouthful at a time, deliberately, intentionally, understanding the entire time where it would lead. When it finally reaches the breaking point where the sickness is no longer deniable the only option is to blame anyone for noticing and to continue to pursue the same course of action that led to the problem.
The man who comes along and tries to point out the reality- say the surgeon who is going to have to amputate the fattie’s feet because of the diabeetus- is going to be seen as some kind of radical extremist.
Drastic times call for drastic measures. Sometimes there will be people willing to take advantage of the situation, like the companies that sell scoot-abouts or insulin pumps or adult diapers. Sometimes it’s people who really care and want to help out while profiting, like the folks who run fat camps and sometimes it’s just the steely eyed surgeon who has to saw through the bone and flesh to keep the patient alive.
Our nation, our entire late western civilization really is that morbidly obese lady in yoga pants telling everyone she’s just as healthy and limber as an 18 year old athlete. 100% Delusional and completely unable to stop the compulsive behavior that led to this point.
I wish that it were different, I wish we lived in a healthy and sane society where traditional values and decency prevail, but we don’t and we haven’t for a very long time. The degeneracy on every level has so permeated the fabric of the body politic that it is terminal. All we can do now is watch as the patient slowly dies from complications.
Good article,, HSF. Fat, undisciplined people only hurt themselves. An undisciplined, slothful society hurts all of us. If the government would stop paying for scooters and SSDI and the fatties would just die before they start collecting entitlements, we could use the obesity problem to our advantage. Instead of requiring filters on cigarettes, we should ban filters on cigarettes.
HSF
100%
I am at point that I don’t really care anymore what the opinion is of those caught in the normalcy bias delusion that is the world I live in. (ed I just can’t help myself with the prepositions 🙂 ).
Last month I went to talk to person managing my RRSP (401K for you Yanks) thru work. I told him I wanted all my money out of stocks. He looked at me like I was from Mars and even though my wife tells me I’m better looking than Brad Pitt I am not from that planet. Well at least that is what I tell myself anyways. Fellow like me is allowed one small delusion.
We ended up in argument about stock market. It was then it occurred to me that he was no better than a used car salesman peddling rusty YUGO’s and promising that they would not break down anymore. Promise. Yeah right. Since that day the market that he was pumping has taken a big crap. That guy and my boss claim that I don’t know shit from beans yet right now I am the smartest guy in room.
However my Dad told me once that if you think you are the smartest guy in building it is time to find another house. Maybe my wife is right time to keep it real and buy a farm and go all hardscrabble. My Grand-Dad would be shaking his head if I did this but deep down I think he would be proud of me.
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With possibly a few very rare medical exceptions, a person gets fat by eating more calories than he or she burns during physical activity. It is a decision they make, not something forced on them, and they are receiving the consequences of their decision.
Gluttony would be the proper term, but certainly not one you’ll hear used in public (probably considered hate speech if you do).
But our nation, along with large parts of the larger western civilization, has embarked on a deliberate campaign to deny that there is any consequence for the decisions we make to the point of making it illegal to even point it out in some instances and in some places.
Nothing is ever anyone’s own fault anymore, it’s always the result of something they have no control over and needs to be tolerated and sometimes even celebrated.
Which is why we are seeing the fall of western civilization and the rise another new and different one to replace it. We have become decadent and will follow the same path all decadent civilizations have followed in the past: The path to extinction.
It’s Matt Damon. Too funny I just watched that movie. Got my actors mixed up.
While I’m at it might as well give it my review.
It sucked.
It was about some white guy getting stranded on a planet that needed to be saved by a bunch of women, black people and Mexicans. With a couple of white men thrown in for diversity. I’m guessing the sequel will be Damon going back but next time it will a Transvestite with Bruce Jenner in staring role riding to rescue.
The movie was a Social Justice Warrior’s wet dream.
Rob, if your wife is on board, then it’s past time to go. It is neither as difficult nor as unpleasant as it has been made out to be. You eat better, you sleep better, you will be as fit as you can possibly be for your age, you’ll learn valuable skills, you’ll build solid relationships with people in the community, you’ll spend more time with the people you love the most, your mind will be filled with deeper thoughts and you’ll learn to be resilient no matter what life brings. And you’ll work in the most beautiful work space on Earth if you choose your location wisely. I have yet to think of a downside that we haven’t been able to overcome or come to terms with- maybe we’ve just been lucky, but I don’t think so.
Yes, there is hard physical labor, but then you will also learn to work with the seasons and with the weather giving you far more free time than you ever had before. You will still have to deal with the economics of our present world, but you will discover that you can make do with far less and that you will be paid in ways that you never expected to before that are not necessarily economic in the strictest sense of the word. Your stress level will diminish, your satisfaction with life will increase and you will earn a kind of respect that very few men obtain in this life because it will be based not on what you do or what you have, but how you live.
I wish more people could see the potential in the kind of lifestyle that is based on something more meaningful than income and title, but that’s a journey everyone must take in their own good time if at all. It took me almost my entire adult life to come to the realization that this is the only one we have and it is far too short to squander it doing something that fails to satisfy our true purpose, no matter how much you may earn or accumulate. In the end none of that matters anyway.
@HF
Very well done.
Indeed our country is in the winter of its existence, or a fatal Fourth Turning, perhaps. There are no political surgeons to save us from that which is inevitable – only quacks and well intentioned yet benign nurses, as it were.. We have smoked the cigarettes of war, intervention, thievery, and greed, and our metastasized late stage cancer is no longer curable. The palliative care of a political hospice will be the result of the upcoming election.
hsf, think i enjoyed your comment even more than your essay. you are absolutely correct on the rewards of the life you have chosen. i ate three large meals a day and was anxious to begin a new day. i had time to read and write letters, listening on occasion to a sewing machine in the background. forced to do things i never realized i was capable of doing. the fun of planning the garden and beginning the earliest seeds about this time of year. the smells from a root cellar. the list goes on, yet it is a family experience in my view. my sense of worth never had more value. appreciate your essays
the patient is self medicating, because they were programmed to consume.
a consumer is like the grasshopper from Aesop’s fable, proudly partying and drinking all summer long, not a care for the future. Sounds like a wall street day traitor.
so, we are going to repeat 2000 and 2008 again, another crash during the last term of an 8 year prez.
I think the cabal could come up with a better scenario to steal all the chips off the table, again.
they are all in Davos right now, deciding on how to further infect peoples minds with a new brand of consumerism.
this next one is going to be called “the experience economy” which is really code for “bread and circuses” where people will no longer buy the latest icrap device, but rather, they will spend money on drinking expensive boutique beer, made by hipsters with dad’s money, and eating smoked meats, also make by hipsters, all sold at 10x profits, watching some young college girl (with a major in black history and theater) play acoustic songs about how hard it is to be young, but, hey, were cool because everybody is doing it.
So many in our society are bored and lost — they are depressed and lack motivation and personal satisfaction. Some are obese by their own doing. Others are chronically ill. If left to their own devices, these people would chew off their own feet from their unhappiness and boredom. Our modern society has created this and then enabled them to continue along. It’s part of the Free-Shit welfare plan.
I want no part of it. In fact, I would rather that people be completely weaned off of this system — cold turkey. Where I come from, it’s about herd management. The weak are culled, the strongest remain.
Here, it was a hard morning at our small farm…We were at 9-degrees just before dawn but I still made it outside to try and find all 5 planets shining to us from beyond.
A bit later, I carried hot water to the barn. All of the water in the buckets and trays had frozen solid. The goats, rabbits, chickens, and horse appreciated the fresh water and I watched each of them eat their morning feed and lap up that fresh water I gave them.
The greenhouse will be opened up next week — it’s time to set a few early seeds to get ready for our Spring plantings. Inside, in the dining room which is our makeshift homeschooling room, we have a few green beans attached to the plants that were grown as an experiment. I’ve never harvested green beans in January before. Money can’t buy that kind of personal thrill…
I’ll walk out the the barn until my legs can’t carry me. And I’ll never have to worry about having my feet amputated because I’m a 600-pound blob.
There’s plenty of personal satisfaction around here. We live with the seasons and the woods and the life that surrounds us. We provide for ourselves. There’s a rhythm here that can’t be found anywhere else unless you feel it and you’re part of it. I’ll take this lifestyle over any other. It’s the only lifestyle that has ever made sense.
Guilty.
Gluttony. Pure and simple.
Hardly anyone performs heavy manual labor for their food any longer.
For that matter, even moderate to light labor! Calories in but not out = FAT.
The most common form of physical exercise in the modern world is missing.
That being – PUSHING YOURSELF AWAY FROM THE FOOD TABLE!
I.C. I am really glad to read that. Made my day.
I’m waiting for a chicken to finish roasting (if I go outside when I’m cooking I come back to a smoke filled room, so I use it as an excuse to sit and read. Still single digits out there and the wind is whipping) Then it’s back out to the barn to install a new barn door.
Days mean something when you have things to do that will make things better.
Frustratingly, those of us who take steps to maintain a healthy body/mind will have to pay for the huge medical care costs to keep these fat asses and druggies from dying. That is screwed up. Penalize the successful and reward the lazy. That is the path America has embarked upon.
You should have to step on a scale when you receive food stamps. If you qualify as being obese, the food stamps should cease. There, fixed that.
That was it.
@HSF
Good advice. Might as well do it. Sitting here at my desk thinking world is going to change for better isn’t working. I’m realistic that I won’t be able to completely unplug but it can’t hurt to be a bit more self reliant.
Reading thru the comments here. The one by nkit pretty much sums it up for me. Patient is dying and all we can come up with is another shot of morphine.
I went over to the big farm yesterday, and my foreman ‘s ten year old had gotten out of school early and was out there. He had moved one of the bobcats out and was sitting Indian style on top of it, shooting an elaborate stack of cans he had set up with his BB gun. He had his ear buds in, and it struck me how content a ten year old can be when left to his own devices. His hovercraft mother would have a panic attack if she knew how much instruction and then how much freedom we give the kids out there. It is an environment full of potential dangers and disasters, but, aren’t they all? They thrive, and are smart enough not to tell their moms.
Brilliant, as always. Oh for that to be required reading in high school.
The constant excuses one hears about why someone is fat are essentially repeated for all failings, along with the denial and desire for others to pick up the pieces and make the poor decisions consequence free. And then the left’s minions and useful idiots wonders why it isn’t working while the leaders laugh.
Federal Government mission statement:
Soak the successful to provide largesse for the lazy.
HSF- Thanks for the article. Not that it is an excuse, but something has happened to the food, most are not, or choose not to be aware of. Stucky wrote an excellent Monsanto Indictment Article highlighting some of the depredations, wasn’t very popular.
Anyways on a happier note, I got the new seasons first egg yesterday, those leghorns are my very best layers.
It’s definitely seed time here as well, spring is in the air, always exciting.
@I.C. I find one of the best closes of the day is listening to sound of the horses eating the evening hay. One of the pleasures this season with horses being brought overnight.
Do not mention horses and pleasure in the same breath.
Prof. Pangloss said the USA is but an experimental lab. We are the guinea pigs. We get easy access to drugs, calories, alcohol, innoculations, sex change surgery, guns (oops), violent tv, hate literature, demented talk shows, morbid murder shows…it’s all fucked up but the data is fascinating. Heh.
https://youtu.be/6bQWIoNDJAA?t=31
I wish ever person had uh gawd dammed ear piece that communicated the inner dialogue of Hardscrambled at ever moment uh the day. Then we could all be informed about what we need ter do ter be wiry heroes like him, with healthy relationships and eatin majorly healthy shit and shaming all the bastards like his lazy ass neighbors that don’t appreciate his hard work. Then we’d all be awesome like him.
Billah’s wife is back! She seems to show up right after EL dipshit has gotten into the tequila.
Yer just uh gawd dammed goat molester Islamic piece uh camel dookey. Shitballs uh mercy, don’t come cut off my noggin I bet of you Mr Sand Negro. Good gawd uh might I hope trip turns yer homeland inter uh giant fuckin blob uh glass.
Mahtomato, you fucking moran, Billy has made the same observation. Don’t go trying to become a scientist developing theories on such flimsy evidence. BW always makes an appearance on an HSF, Maggie and Billy posts. Seems to have something against landowners.
I ain’t BW. Maybe your BW, Mahtometi. Funny how you appeared right after.
Billah’s Wife can blow me.
Matter of fact, Billah’s Wife can blow everybody here that thinks I’m BW. so what do you have to say now, dickhead? I don’t fucking drink either, asshole.
Not all fat asses are jolly people, quite a few are but I have also observed a handful that seem to be real dicks.
And contrary to the thrust of this article, I have read that fat asses are stronger and have greater resistance to shit that will kill lesser folks.
B says: Frustratingly, those of us who take steps to maintain a healthy body/mind will have to pay for the huge medical care costs to keep these fat asses and druggies from dying. That is screwed up. Penalize the successful and reward the lazy.
I wish I had a dollar for every sniveling Übermensch that whined about having to pay for the sins of smokers, drinkers, druggies, unemployed, illegal and whatnot. Damn, you must be rich to pay for everybody.
Your not paying for shit, if you were, there would be no deficit. Stop suffering, you Emo.
@EL billah’s wife
Nope. Mahtomedi means: ‘white bear’ in the Sioux Injun language (mom is half injun, so I figured I would be at least half proud of it). No Sand-Nigger in me that I know of.
Sadly, my mom, in true injun fashion, fucked-up every avenue that could have made us eligible for casino money. She has cousins in on the casino dole, but somehow not us. The biggest casinos in Minnesota have some people that are 1/32nd indigenous blood ( and look more White than a loaf of Wonder Bread) who get in on ‘the cut’, but many, many are left out. Not that I’m bitter about the worthless Rat Fuckings Basterds that run the system or anything.
I always feel better after venting! Thanks, and fuck you EL dipshit.
EC- Prof. Pangloss never heard of sex change in the 1700’s, are you sure you no longer drink?
EC… calm down. BW follows us around like that damned stray cat I’ve been trying to shoot on the south end of my land. Only gets close enough to annoy the Pyrs and yowls at night, but when I’ve got a rifle with me, seems to know to stay out of sight.
We are iced in here, so I am busy with bunnies and chickens. My hens lay one egg each almost every day… they are amazing girls. The male bunny is on the end and seems to be cold. I think he’s just trying to con me into putting him in with one of the ladies. I do not need more winter bunny kits. He got a towel to snuggle.
The food is contaminated Ottomatick… is why I garden now, raise meat bunnies and soon, raise goats. I am starting my canning classes with young cousins, who are amazingly aware of the nasty food issues. I’ve got too many young ladies wanting to come to the “classes.” I may start a school.
Bea, et tu?
Thanks, Maggie. I know the drill about weather here, we are enjoying several days that seem like spring, then we should get a bad frost. Til then, I will enjoy the days.
Oh mah gawd, mahtomedi is an injun. How quaint. Talk about a race uh people going from running down deers healthy ter poundin down beers morbidly obese in 1 er 2 generations. We’re familiar with yer type at TBP thanks ter oNE uh yer moral enemies, llpoh the Cherokee. Luckily it’s virtual here so we don’t have ter worry about yer smacking around the women and stealing our TVS ter be exchanged fer sniffing glue.
HSF and IC, I am jealous. Have always considered myself a wannabe farmer. Will be moving to a farm type property somewhere when #2 son gets out of private high school in 3 ½ years. Right now keeping him out of the public school system is the priority. I am doing all I can now given my location and full time desk job. 10 hens and a rooster, built a greenhouse, start my own plants for a very large garden, go in on raising pigs, meat birds and sheep at a neighbors farm, buy ½ grass fed cow each year from a local. Clean food is worth it, and it is fun! Well the actual killing part not so much.
I.C., I was thinking about raising rabbits for meat to feed the dogs after the patient dies. How do you harvest them? I would not like offing a cute bunny, what is the most humane way? Are they difficult to debone?
Fine piece HSF. As usual. As always.
MA
I don’t know if you meant me, Iluvair, but I believe the solid, life-ending thump to the medulla located at the base of the head, below the ears is the most humane. Stops heart and thought in one efficient whack and no damage to the fur. Calm your rabbit and have someone hold the back legs and then press the face down as you bring the tool solidly to the medulla hard enough to make blood fly from the ears. That ensues immediate stop of brain and heart activity.
If you don’t know how to gut and skin a rabbit, you’ll figure it out somehow, but most important, to me, is killing without pain to the animal.
Three does and a buck can produce up to 180 lbs of wonderful meat per year.
I wouldn’t take it as an indictment of society generally. You’re just not going to sell healthy people on the need for them to make an appointment to further enrich the medical bureaucracy at public expense. That’s why we need less health care and more gatling guns in this country.