Fat Kids With Tubas: An Intervention

Don't do it kid. I'm begging you: Put down the tuba. Look, you're already fat. Why did you have to add "tuba player" to your image as well?

I'm not trying to be mean, really. Being a former child-fatty whose nickname was--well, never mind about that. I had a lot of nick names that related to my former girth, most of them being fat-related explatives that rhymed with my last name. I've been there. I'm speaking with enormous amounts of sympathy and empathy for your situation.

I know how mean kids can be. I know how mean kids are. Unfortunately, because you are a fat boy who has chosen to play the tuba, you are inviting an even greater amount of caustic ridicule with open arms (meaty, flabby and sweaty open arms). Normally, I would say, "Play that tuba, kid! Who gives a fuck what other people think." The tuba itself, however, is a stupid musical instrument. I submit that it really isn't an instrument at all, but a large, shinier and gayer than C-3PO equivalent of a "KICK ME" sign on your back.

Did I mention that the tuba was large? Let me repeat that: It's large. When you finally get that brass corset around your tubby belly and add it's hefty weight to your already copious cargo, then wrap your meaty arms around this corpulent instrument, then place your bloated lips on the mouthpiece, puffing up your Twinkie induced Charlie Parker cheeks to blow out a foghorn of a tone, it looks like one of two things: 1) You are trying to have sex with the instrument. 2) You are trying to eat the instrument. What's worse, is that a person observing this knows that you really aren't trying to have sex with or eat the tuba, but there's a nagging little voice in the back of one's brain saying, "Well, maybe he is."

Again, I don't want to appear unsympathetic or come off like every other dumb, jock asshole who makes fun of you. If by chance you happen to be an individual who absolutely loves the tuba, then proclaim this fact loudly, tell me to go to hell and stop reading now. If the tuba is your passion, I'll end my criticism and advice right here, and I'll completely support your choice to play that brass-blubber-boy instrument.

You really have to love the tuba though.

I mean, to get my respect and for you to be a strong enough individual to deflect enourmous amounts of ridcule from society, you need to love the tuba like Einstein loved quadratic equations, like Monet loved painting fuzzy pictures and like Jay Leno loves to tell unfunny and intelligence insulting jokes. Your passion for the tuba should be as great as Ed Wood's for angora. I'll even submit that your passion for the tuba, and I know this may seem too extreme, should be greater than your passion for Twinkies. If the word "tuba" equals your passion, I'll shut my pie-hole now. However, before you truly decide if the tuba really is for you, let me give you some further insight as to why the tuba really isn't a good instrument choice for a fat-ass like you.

The tuba is an instrument that embodies a number of inherent negative conotations. As more than alluded to earlier, it is a large and clumsy instrument. Can you think of anyone else who is large and clumsy? Um, you? Exactly. You already huff and puff and sweat and chafe when walking at a sub-leisurly pace. Now add a large, awkward instrument to your payload. It's not a pleasing picture, is it? Adding an awkward instrument to your body is like adding a stick of butter to a lard sandwich. It's just too much. It's way over the top.

The Tuba is not a solo instrument. I've never seen a VH-1 "Behind the Music" special about a tuba player who lived a passionate life, spending his nights snorting cocaine off supermodel ass between concerts. Even in the tuba's golden age of John Phillip Sousa marches, it's primary role was and is to provide a deep base line, a foundation for the music, if you will. Yes, foundations are needed in all aspects of life, literally and metaphorically, to be able to build great things. Unfortunately, your body mass is already as large as a foundation for a meat processing plant.

Futher supporting my claim that the tuba has negative connotations attached to it, this instrument is used to make rude and annoying sounds in the cinema and cartoons. It sounds like one of your sonorous farts after you gorge yourself in a chili eating competition. It's also used to make elephant noises. The best example of this is a song from Disney's The Jungle Book called "Colonel Hathi's March," subtitled "The Elephant Song." The controlled, thick noise that the tuba produces simply sounds like a fat instrument. The onomatopoeia word I've heard to describe the sound of the tuba is "Oompa." "Oompa" is a fat sounding word also (when crazy Greeks aren't exclaiming the word when setting cheese on fire for your dining enjoyment).

Even the damn word "tuba" itself has negative connotation attached to it. The word "tub" is a part of the word "tuba." This just isn't good for a fatty at all. Aside from being a shortened version of the word "tubby," "tub" also rhymes with "chub." (Interestingly enough, have any of you ever thought about the word "tubby" and why it denotes a fat person? Picture a large, round tub. . .) One further breakdown of the the connotation of this word goes something like this in my mind: Tuba>Tube>Tub>Tub A>Tub O' Lard.

So now you see, my fat tuba-playing friend, why the tuba is a bad instrument choice for you on so many different levels. To break down my breakdown,

Visual: You're large, and the tuba is large. You're clumsy and even clumsier when you don the instrument.

Auditory: The tuba sounds like a fart and a slow moving elephant. Perhaps even a slow moving, farting elephant.

Societal: Unless you are going to become a Tuba Master, playing the tuba doesn't earn you any cool points.

Connotative & Psychological: The word itself sounds fat and invokes fat images.

One last time, my intention was and is not to make fun of you or add to your misery. I'm here to help. If you have read my thoughts and decided to that you are only even more gung-ho about becoming a tuba master, I applaud you. If, on the other hand, you have decided that the tuba is not for you, I only have one last piece of advice. Don't choose the French Horn as a replacement.

Jessie Jackson Protests Lack of Diversity in One Man, Home Operated Business

Jessie Jackson and other Rainbow-Push coalition supporters are protesting the lack of diversity represented by a small business run out of a suburban Chicago home. The business, “Ed’s Editorial Services," which is independently run and operated by Edward Dolph out of his Mokena, Illinois home, has been besieged by marching and chanting protestors for over a week.

“I’m just a one person at-home business,” said Mr. Dolph. “I provide proofreading and editorial services on a small scale, and I have no need for another employee.” Jessie Jackson, in his latest grassroots campaign to root out unfair racial hiring practices in all workplaces has vowed to protest outside of Dolph’s home until reparations to the “home-based diversity disparity” are made. Jackson said, “It matters not that this is an at-home business. It is still a business that is severely lacking in proper racial balance. African Americans comprise eleven percent of the population in America, and his company falls way below even that figure in it’s hiring of minorities.”

“You want to talk about unfair? I quit my job with a big publishing company to pursue my dream of starting my own business. Now, my wife is shouldering the work load because no one wants the services of ‘a racist’ like me. She [Dolph’s Wife] can’t even pull out of the driveway to go to her job without going through a gauntlet of protestors."

Dove Ads and Ideals of Beauty: Highbrow and Lowbrow

Highbrow:
The "magazine cover" standards of beauty are atrocious. I have never, ever found the stick-figure, heroin-thin ideal attractive. I've always been attracted to women who looked like women: Curvy. Give me Kate Winslet or Renee Zellweger as Bridgid Jones anyday over the Skeletor ideals that are constantly being paraded before our eyes and imposed on every level, every day of our lives.

The new Dove ads feature real women. (New in our country--the ads have already run in England.) In fact, these beautiful examples of feminine beauty are featured prominently on billboards all over Chicago, and it is such a welcome change from the usual billboard board of fare. A few extra pounds on a woman is most welcome by me; as I told my girlfriend, who is worried about her weight, "As long as you're healthy, I don't care what size you are."

Lowbrow:
The Dove women are hot. Thanks Dove. Thanks to your billboards, I'm now starting to sport an uncomfortable tree trunk in my pants on the way to work. Your ads coupled with the normal vibrations from the trains and busses I ride are a recipe for embarrasment, groin discomfort and/or enseamed underwear.

Combination:
It's affirming that popular culture finally reflects an ideal of my philosophy, thus slightly reducing the usually ever-increasing gas flame that heats the cauldron of cognitive dissonance in my soul. Those ads are also freakin' affirming to the blood flow into my cock:

Download My Take on the "Dove Curves" Ad Here


(PDF format, 144 KB)

Truly You Are The Corn

Um Hapi Qa’Öniwti^[1]

Truly You Are The Corn

Everybody gets them from time to time. Mayan Priests got them in the distant past, and Oprah Winfrey gets them today. From the most paltry of peasants to the most bombastic of kings, they all had them in the past and continue to get them today. Throughout the centuries of recorded history, we have realized the uniqueness of each individual human being. Seemingly contradictory, there has also been much philosophizing over the past few millenniums as to what all human beings might have in common despite “uniqueness.” Many answers have been proposed. Unfortunately, over the course of civilization after civilization, trying to define what human beings “have in common,” i.e. that which makes us humanity, has usually been a set of principals proposed and imposed by a tyrannical few thereby subordinating the minority to the majority, or vice versa. And we are now in the “respect my culture” era whereby bridges between each island of ethnicity are hard to find, if at all.

Yes cultures change, yes cultural values fluctuate and that which makes us human today will make us animals one million tomorrows from now. But, since I won’t physically be around one million tomorrows from now, where can we find some common ground today? Compounding this dilemma is the way my current generation thinks, or should I say, isn’t allowed to think: there is nothing much to believe in anymore. Points of view are argued, daily, from oxymoronic perspectives to solve the same problems. Should we trust the news report on channel 87, or the conflicting report on the radio? The fact is that with no agreed upon standards of any kind, our minds cope by wandering like bobbers in the wake of a battleship. We cannot grasp fundamental tools (such as philosophy) to come to our own conclusions of what truth is. Day after day, I hear and read armchair pundits espousing philosophies that mimic the mass media: No one listens to each other, and everyone waits for their turn to talk without processing what the other person just said. Their minds are mazes that never lead to anything resembling a center. So, in this one small example let me try to open a doorway directly to the off-center of our mazed-minds by presenting an example of commonality that humanity experiences today, that humanity experienced millions of yesterdays ago and will experience well into millions of future days.

I mentioned that Mayan Priests had them, and so does Oprah Winfrey--Kings and peasants had and do have them, or in our cultural vernacular, I should say, “took them.” Of course I am talking about the ubiquitous corn-shit.

While this observation of mine may have furrowed a few brows out there, it is a truth that cannot be denied. In no way am I trying to imply that this fact of human excremental existence can solve humanity’s problems (while the pun had occurred to me, by no means have I built a new foundation of philosophical thought called Excremantalism, nor have I become an Excrementalist). However, it would be ironic justice if society reached a Utopian state via the bond that the human species has in passing undigested kernels of corn along with their fecal matter. No matter, really, for I see this observation as it is: An unfortunate exercise in pedantry, fastidiousness, pomposity--take your pick. Regardless, furrowed brows or not, we have all taken a corn shit.

Actually, I remember the first corn-crapola of my life. I must have been six, maybe seven years old. I even remember what mother cooked for dinner the previous evening that brought on my wondrous toilet discovery. It was years ago, yet I remember the entire dinner, and the events surrounding it, which is not unlike how my mother remembers that she ate a plate of Mostaccioli right before she heard that president Kennedy was assassinated. But my meal remembrance before a major life event was more special than some old Mister “leader-of-the-free-world” being shot. It was the meal itself that enabled me to discover the event.

We had Roast beef, mashed potatoes and corn on the cob. Simple, average dinner conversation circulated: Did I behave in school that day; what did I learn; have I been saying “no” to the drug dealers. And it was during that simple meal with simple conversation where I consumed about four ears of plump, juicy, farm-stand fresh corn.

What followed brought new light to the inner workings of my body. The next day I sat down on the toilet. I did my thing. It felt different. Instead of just sliding out nice-n-easy in a sleek and aerodynamic fashion, it felt like a bumpy-calloused missile coming out of my buttocks. It just wasn’t right. So I stood up and investigated.

“Oh my god!” my six-year-old mind screamed. To a six year old boy, seeing last night’s dinner emerge from a place that something brown and unidentifiable in use usually hails, felt like an invasion. What were these interlopers doing in my bum?!? The underdeveloped and underutilized logic cells started to burn into use. The electrochemical chaos whizzing through my brain began to become more focused, like sunlight through a dirty, cracked magnifying glass. You see, this was my first experience in discovering what digestion is. Up until this specific point, food was food, and shit was shit. They were two separate entities existing in separate vacuums. I ate, and I shit, but now my realm of understanding expanded. A major paradigm shift was upon me; I shat because I ate! Newton and his apple, Columbus and America, and now, the corn in my shit. This was an amazing discovery, so I took the next logical step by imparting this knowledge unto a higher authority.

After my mother was able to stop laughing, she explained to me the more technical aspects of the human digestive system, and that this milestone was not limited to my experience. She was very good at explaining it all to me; my mother was a registered nurse, and because she has an excellent bedside manner I never once thought about suing her for breaking the nurse/patient code of confidentiality when she told all of her friends and coworkers about my discovery.

So what does this signify aside from some childhood mental scars that I’ve never quite gotten over? Besides learning about how the human body works, I discovered something that all human beings have in common. Whether your corn is served with black eyed peas or as a buffalo dinner side-dish, you are going to pass undigested corn!

Again, I have no illusions that full societal realization of this can bring the entire human race together, so now it is time to ask the question, why in the hell am I going on about it? Well, the more we think we are different, we can take a look at ourselves on a biological level. Our biological functions do not cause great schisms between different sects of people. You’ve never seen a bloody holy war between two groups of people due to the fact group one thinks they are superior because they breathe out of their eyeballs, and group two, the “inferior” ones, breathe out of their left big toe when it’s sunny.^[2] That would be silly. No, instead our races, cultures and religious groups fight over much more serious issues such as skin color, food preferences and which compass direction to face when to god. I myself tend to annoy many because in the tradition of the best Americans, I am a rugged individualist; However, if your life views differ from mine I really do not care as long as you do not put any obligations on me (i.e. steal my car, violate my body, enact a law that allows you to steal from me legally). If our bodies can agree, why cannot our minds to an end such as this?

If I knew the answer, I suspect I would not be writing this. Heck, I suspect if I knew the answer, then I would also have been smart enough to construct a wondrous spacecraft to whisk me away from this mostly irresolute planet a long time ago. Then is this composition in vain? Well, I know that the corn has ears, and so do people. At one time it was socially acceptable to stone someone to death for uttering the word Jehovah in public.^[3] But at some point some rather smart people began saying: “you know, that stoning bit just doesn’t seem right,” and the stoning stopped. Granted it took a couple thousand years, but societies are changed with ideas. Consequently, I suppose my presupposition to this essay is that I’ve used a very unnatural analogy between corn infested feces and the coming together of the human race to add a sliver of my point of view to the monolithic web of “truth” out there.

So, corn eaters of the world, let us not fight, especially on the topic of how to achieve peace. Let us just live our lives for ourselves, whatever may “tickle our pickles,” without obligating others to our demands, and all that is “good” and “right” will emerge.

---

^[1] An ancient Hopi corn metaphor.

^[2] In the interests of always thinking ahead and always trying to see the “big picture,” I publicly state that this argument will most likely be refuted on, near and/or during the time that we (the human race) discover with undeniable proof that there is other, biologically dissimilar , intelligent life in the universe (the human race not necessarily being the best model of intelligence).

^[3] See movie: “Monty Python and the Life of Brian” for wonderful pop-culture illustration of this concept.

Corporate Love Letter

Dear Interpersonal Love Colleague,

We met each other while networking. How could I have known that our mutually exclusive interfacing would lead to a paradigm shift in my four chambered organ?

The truth is, I love you. . .but I am ashamed of you at the same time. When I walk down the street in my jogging suit with my dog (which is fully pedigreed and pedicured), I find myself attracted and repelled by you. The fact is, we come from different market segments. My four chambered organ says one thing, but my key result action steps tell me that I need to maintain quality control in all aspects of my life. The future isn’t future-proof, no matter how well I multitask all proprietary aspects of my life.

I’d like to believe we are in a win-win situation, and we have in the past taken proactive initiative steps which provided us with increasing returns of love. Unfortunately, I think I have over-leveraged my investment. Unfortunately, as well, I know you’re not the straw man I had hoped for to make this break-up easier.

I tried to be proactive and think outside of the box, but I will admit, the box has me trapped, and I like it here. I tried giving 110% to the idea of us. . . There will be no merger. I am the customer and I need to be fully satisfied.

Aside from us being from different market segments, aside from your rather gosh taste in shoes, there was one thing you said on our last date that sealed the break-up deal: We were walking hand in hand by the lake, and you looked out at the water and suddenly interrupted my assessment of the curent market and its influence on no-load mutual funds by saying, “isn’t the sky beautiful today?” That display of lack of career focus was a window into what lay behind the real you. I could see us years down the road, me reading the Wall Street Journal and you smelling a flower—a real flower mind you—on the kitchen table. I won’t have it!

Please don’t make me change my phone numbers, fax number, e-mail addresses and registry listing under the A.A.B.C.D.E.E.F. Please accept this as a declination of the original proposals of future love and commitment we communicated non-verbally to each other, and thus, all explicit and implicit ties that were and may have been. Since we will, however, inevitably run into each other again, I do consent to whomever makes the first eye contact to nod their head towards the other and say their name, and the other respond with the other’s name in turn, as is very fashionable these days with important people who really have nothing interesting or intelligent to say.

With remorse for what could have been,

Jennifer

P.S.—I want my Celine C.D. back.