America’s Momma So
Fat She Sweat Butter
by Ramrod Hurley 

That’s right, I said it: America’s fat. You won’t see Red Bagel challenge the readership like that, will you?

It’s high time America took responsibility for its big fat weight. Doctors will tell you maybe you’re eating too much and not exercising. Genetecists will tell you it’s because of a fat gene, but what they mean is “fat jeans”—your ass has to squeeze in them. Ha. That’s one for Ramrod.

What is the secret behind our obesity? Is it that we’ve become complacent watching TV and living high off our conveniences? Like the ancient Roman privileged classes, are we feeding off the sweat of underclasses and foreign labor? Never getting out to plant and reap our own crops, to pull our own chariots, to have to put on tight-fitting slave tunics instead of circus tent-style togas? Well, of course that’s not it, I wouldn’t have phrased it as a question if it was. No, it’s something more insidious.

The Illuminati! That’s right, you humps, I’m into the big boy conspiracy stuff now.

There is no fat gene, and you are eating too much, but that food is packed with surplus calories. And those non-fat cardboard rice cakes you eat, only to gain more weight? Pure re-constituted lard, dipshit. Don’t think they can’t get to you, too. They get to everyone.

Americans are being fattened up, like candy-seeking German kids wandering a forest. Except no witch is going to eat us, with some rare exceptions. We’re not being made to be meals, although good luck with that rather on-the-nose conspiracy theory, Johnny Smallpicture. If you’re wondering what other purpose it serves to fatten up America, I’ve got two words for you: Militia.

That’s right, minute men. That’s the two words I implied, hopefully you got that. America’s is the only constitution anywhere that guarantees the right to form a militia—other countries may think their constitution does, but of course nobody ever actually reads the constitution but a small group of politics and history nerds and an even smaller group of revolution-era handwriting fetishists. Look again, Pierre—no militia for you.

If you were the Illuminati, poised to take over the world and yet stuck with this “militia clause” in the handgun-filled United States, what would you do? Well, scratch that, you’d probably spend all your money on lottery tickets and marry your cousin. But the Illuminati has a serious group of strategists, and if you can’t make them lie down and roll over like the French, you make them too fat to fight. Here, have some more Twinkies. Sure, they’re low-fat. Unless you count the additives we injected at the factory! No, they’re just for coloring! Ha ha ha!

I wasn’t really laughing at you that time, just pretending to be the Illuminati. But that’s what’s happening, America. The Freemasons are sitting behind their brick-built desks and cracking up as your scale spins further and further to the right. Pretty soon all those precious handguns won’t mean anything—you won’t even be able to get your fat fingers through the little trigger circle thing, whatever it’s called.

Even our right-wing reactionaries are getting too fat to do anything. Rush Limbaugh used to weigh a trim 240, now he’s ballooned up like a… balloon. And you don’t want to see Ted Nugent lately.

As for me, I’m in prime physical condition. This is all muscle. Well, yeah, some of it’s not, but I’m working that off as soon as the weather warms up. I urge you all to get into shape, and arm yourself heavily. See you at the gym/gun show.

The Internet Has Fleas, Fleas, Fleas
It pays to get a second opinion. In this case, the talk of computer worms and vicious Internet programs is merely to confound you while they find a way to exterminate the real nuisance: Phone line fleas.

Tom Cruise: Gay? No Way!
And what does Tom Cruise get for all his humiliation? Well, $10 million. But the guy will probably never pay on the bill, he’s a gay porn actor, for Christ’s sake. How much money is in gay porn? Don’t answer that as I never, ever want to know.

Ushering in a New commun Era
All of this depends, of course, on the length of Red Bagel’s absence. Any regular readers of this column know Bagel is a charitable lunatic who excels only at one thing, and that’s somehow making money from a nearly-bankrupt Internet publication.

A Mission of the Utmost Impertinence
Readers will remember the conspiracy of such great import I have told you nothing about it, and that at the last column it came to a head deserving of popping. This is where I go now, loyal readers, and I take with me beloved anachronism Sampson L. Hartwig as a human shield; that is to say, loyal companion.