Fat Heads

Not long ago in these parts I put down a little ditty called "10000 Steps". You may find it herein at your convenience. Basically it dealt with why we have become a bunch of butterballs. We'll get back to that.

Many years ago a "muck-a-muck" from some drug company gave a speech to his shareholders. He said, in effect, that the company was not going to get big so long as the company sold drugs to sick people. He said the company would get big if it sold drugs to healthy people. And so began the era of the manufactured disease. Now the normal flows of life are given syndrome and disorder names reduced to initials: ADD, ED, and so forth -- you know them. No longer do we live with ourselves, we live with the drug company's excuse for what we do and have become. My favorite, of course, is the drug for the guy who needs a drug to have sex. In my early days, you needed a drug to make the girl look pretty (booze did the job, too), but you didn't need it to -- shall we say -- uh perform. Now it is Viagra or Cialis replete with the warning of the 4 hour erection. This 4 hour ditty has a name too -- Priapism (who comes up with this stuff???). You are warned to call a doctor if your 4 hours are ... up. I would have thought, in these parts, with a 4 hour job going, one may want to call "the Mayflower Madam" rather than the sawbones who gave you the scrip.

Another aside: One of my dad's friends was talking about Viagra and wondering if you could get it "over the counter". My dad replied, "Maybe, but you'll probably have to take a whole bottle all at once."

Now what does this have to do with anything? Well, readers, it appears researchers in that bastion of good health and enlightened despotism -- Louisiana -- believe they have found a virus that makes people fat. ADENOVIRUS - 36 (AD-36), related to the virus that gives us sniffles, is now responsible for making us large hulking slobs -- and the drug companies are thrilled for now they have yet another excuse to sell us along with the drug. Have a sniffle?...eat a TWINKIE and take a pill.

Virus or no virus, drug or no, the surest way not to be fat is to be fit. Eat to your activity and not beyond it; walk the way our bodies have developed to walk. And, for goodness sake, when you buy your house from me, make sure it has a big lawn. Buy lots of grass seed instead of that pill, and mow that grass yourself.

The drug companies will hate you but your body will say, "AHHHH..."