Fat flip-flopping fun!

President Bush firmly believes that the worse thing a person could do in life is change his mind. That would make them a "Flip-flopper". That must stem from the fact that he has such a narrow mind, there's no room to maneuver. Personally, I believe that changing one's mind is an admirable trait. If you receive some information that alters a previously held belief, then a reasonably intelligent person will change that belief to correspond with the new information.
I'll give an example. Last Thursday I was wearing a gray t-shirt. When I got called to work, I'd only had it on for 20 minutes or so. Sam, my regular engineer, was off for a doctor's appointment and I was told that my engineer for this trip would be Uncle Strawberry. Whenever I work with Strawberry, we make tons of money. Dispatchers don't seem to want to run our train and we sit at red signals racking up the overtime. Its gotten so that when I work with him, I not only wear a green t-shirt (green as in greenbacks) but I pack a green one for the next day also. So after I took my call, I changed my mind about wearing the gray t-shirt and put on a green one.
Now, that may not sound like a life altering occurence to some of you, but it was quite stressful for me. You see, that one little decision turned me into a "FLIP-FLOPPER"! Some people could just slough off that stigma, but not me. I'm much too sensitive about political correctness and about the feelings of strangers for that. And Jen thinks that my job is low stress. Hah!
To change the subject (which is not flip-flopping), I have decided to address a subject that is considered to be a scourge of modern civilization: FAT. As you know if you read my last posting, I'm big boned. Queen Latifah calls it being wide. I like to think of it as being horizontally challenged. I don't have a beer guy, I ate this one on. Little did I know when I started evolving into a tub what a drag on the American Economy I was becoming. There was a study out last year that said obesity costs ALL Americans over $6 billion the year before in health costs. Don't blame me. I have health insurance. Blame the POOR fat guy. I think skinny people are just mad because food prices are higher because of shortages caused by us fat guys mowing down on the supplies. Throw a bag of potato chips into a room full of lard-asses and you'll learn about supply and demand pretty quickly.
The thing that has me concerned is that that study about the $6 billion cost of fat people is just the first shot over the bow. That's how it started with smokers. Some non-smoker came up with a study how smokers cost all of us over $5 billion a year in health costs. Then it soon became OK to act however prejudicial you wanted to against smokers. Its got so bad, one company, US Gypsum, doesn't allow their employees to smoke OFF the job in their own homes. If an employee tests positive for nicotine in a urine test, they're fired! That same fervor that non-smokers exhibited in the smoking wars is now rearing its ugly head in the war against obesity. Pretty soon, it will be OK to disregard the rights of fat people, making them non-entities like smokers. After all, watching a fat guy scarf down 2 dozen hot wings and a large order of fries could cause irrepairable harm to an impressionable young child. Watching a fat woman enjoying a banana split may cause kids to want that type of love and enjoyment in their lives too. Soon, restaurants in Fort Wayne will only be allowed to serve dessert in walled off rooms and convenience stores will quit selling Twinkies to anyone under 18.
Whereas non-smokers think smoking is just a habit and not an addiction, skinny people think that their heftier brethren are fat because they are lazy and lack self-control. All I know is my current heft was not caused by laziness or lack of self control. It happened because, as a little kid, I was once scared by a skinny guy!
I think that Jenny once told me that bloggists don't like to read about 2 different subjects in one posting. Here I am, in only my second posting writing about 2 subjects. I was so ashamed until I found out that that scary skinny guy was also a FLIP-FLOPPER!!!