Most Popular Rants
Last Updated: July 29, 2009

This page has the most requested rants of the bunch, save for the Action Dolls tirades. Most are unedited, although a few may have notes to help put them in context. WARNING! This first rant was and is a joke! It's not true. OK? Don't pee your pants. Again. Grigsby Militaria Due to an unexpected and completely unwarranted federal investigation by the department of agriculture and the TBI, Eric Grigsby will be temporarily unavailable and unable to access his email or inventory in the near future. His attorney's hope to have the matter resolved quickly. Hopefully within 4-6 weeks he will be able to operate again. Please refer all questions concerning your orders with him to Charlie at 931-537-9165 Notes: The number is Eric's normal shop number. Charlie is a story unto himself which we can't share. Panic ensues...

 

 

 

 

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Hog Heaven
The Fat Rant Part 222

Jesus H. Christ. What is this country coming to? Last night, after shooting at turtles in my pond with the 42 (I missed), I picked up the paper and retired to the reading room. About 2 minutes later I nearly fell off the pot. I've seen the ads for this atrocity on TV; you know, the one with the hefty broad being chased around by a lion that lurks in her fridge, but I thought nothing more of it than "oh gross". But this is too much. Holy shit. It's one thing to have bad eating habits, but to resort to putting a zip tie around your stomach? This nonsense is like putting a tourniquet around your neck to cure a headache. Oh, and this gizmo is really convenient. It only needs to be "adjusted" 6-8 times the first year and 3-4 times annually after that. Just how does one adjust this sucker? Is there a cord dangling out of your butt? A remote? Oh...and they aren't sure how this critter will fare "over the long haul". (The article in the paper is longer). The "device" may dissolve or the stomach may grow around it...like a tree around a fence post...? One proud customer on their website gushes how the gut noose "taught her to take better care of herself". It talks too?
Where do I sign up?

The article was actually more concerned with the marketing competition between the primary suppliers of these "tummy ties".Which should be another red flag. Since many do not know me personally, let me tell you one thing. I am no conspiracy theorist. People are too incompetent and too stupid to pull off 99% of the schemes those nuts attribute to various organizations. However, I do know, from personal experience, that businesses are opportunists. The food industry knew, they had to know, that the sugar-soaked "fat free" foods which they pimped as "diet" products would have the inverse effect. There are far too many chemists and dietitians on their staffs for this to have been an accident.

It's so simple, so incredibly stupid, yet it's brilliant. I witnessed this personally. One friend of mine started gaining weight in the early 1990's. We were working at a gun show one weekend and he turned up with a bag of those "Snackwell" cookies. This is one of the most intelligent people I've ever met, one who should know better. He was terribly excited about these damned cookies. Why? Because he boasted to me that, since they were "fat free," he could eat all he wanted to. That was 10-15 years ago. His fridge is bursting with Slimfast, fat free this and low carb that. Guess what. He's so fat he waddles like tick that just dropped off of a shetland pony after a 5 day feast.

When the Adkins craze began, the food industry fought tooth and nail to deny the "carb connection". It was hurting their "fat free equals thin" fantasy. But like it or not, the basic premise of the Adkins diet was valid, and truth occasionally wins out. In other words, it worked. Now the food industry has finally jumped on (and taken over) the low-carb bandwagon.

If you step back, you may notice one thing. One very important detail. How many ads from food companies tell you that it might be wise to eat less? Hell no. Why pay Nutrisystem to mail you properly portioned meals. "The secret of the glycemic index" is just a fancy way of saying "sane portion sizes" and "watch the sugar". That's all. It's like Eskimos buying ice...

We did not have this problem 20 years ago. This is OUR fault. I want to strangle that wench on the Propolene commercial..."diet failure is not your fault....it's a nasty little stress hormone"...Tie that lying whore to a tree nekkid and let the spider monkeys have their way with her. There are lies that steal, lies that waste our time, but this one kills people. They know people want a fast and easy cure for the beach ball in their pants that will let them eat all they want. It doesn't exist...

Dear America: In case your parents or grandparents failed to inform you. Everything in life has a price. For example, if you eat too much, you'll gain weight. Conversely, if you eat reasonable amounts of good quality foods, you won't waddle. If you toss in some exercise, you can eat a bit more and you'll feel better. These are facts, not judgments. This whole hogging mess is essentially a result of people ignoring basic common sense. It's sad, infuriating and tragic. And now we've come to this? Tummy ties? (Wouldn't it be cheaper and less invasive just to wire your jaws shut and use a straw for a few months?) The actual solution to the problem is free. That's the problem. Nobody can make money off that.

Notes:
1. Yes, I know that there are exceptions to every rule. You don't need to inform me that all the fat people in your county have a medical condition, suffer from "caloric retention syndrome" or an imbalance of nasty little stress hormones. For most Americans, that is not the case. The cause and the cure are right there in the mirror.
2. I don't hate fat people. I hate it that so many people are fat. If this rant helps one person who reads it improve their health, then it's worth all the flak that it generates.
3. Dear Wade,
I appreciate your concerns for my apparent violations of KY Fish & Game regulations. But, honestly, when I whack *turtles I use a 12 gauge. I was embellishing a bit. Besides upsetting the game warden, shooting at the surface of a pond with the 42 is too big a ricochet risk. And I might accidentally kill a frog or a bluegill. Plus, it's hard to hit a turtle with that thing. (The bipod feet slip on the porch railing when you fire.) And every time I do fire it out the bedroom window, the poor dog screams and craps all over the floor. Usually I just trap the turtles. Then I take them and put them in my neighbor's pond while he's at work. I love to hear him bitch how "the turtles around here must breed like rabbits". Huh. Imagine that....

There is no season for turtles. And, I'm on my land. So even if I didn't have a hunting license, I don't need one to give the turtles in my pond a little "Sonderbehandlung". If you'd bothered to read the regulation, it only forbids one to shoot across a road or highway...or hunt in the median of the interstate. Being within 300 ft. of anything doesn't matter. (You may be thinking of the exclusion zone for sex offenders)

My weapons that need to be, are on Form 4's so that's not a felony either. I don't fool around with the BATF. I'm not an inbred moron like some of my neighbors who try to rebuild AK parts-kits with JB Weld and bailing wire. The risk of having to spend 10 years in the can socializing with our neighbors' meth brewing child molester cousins just takes the fun out of that. Oh, and I've never used the US Mail to deliver dead wildlife.

Sorry I'm a not dumbass, but I will admit to being a jackass. You'll need to find another tree to bark up. This one has no coon in it. (Jethro already shot Rocky Raccoon last week. Out of season. From his pickumup truck. Parked on the road. Cranked up on crystal and Vicodin. Using a spotlight. With his AR15...that he put a full-auto sear in...)
Thanks.
*Why hurt poor little turtles? They may be poor, but they aren't little. They eat the baby ducks in my pond and they're like a plague of locusts; they can wipe out the fish population.

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Getting fat is an inevitable result of aging.
Bullshit!
It's the successful American marketing of crap.

Here I go, starting the ultimate furball. Right? Not quite. Yes, personal girth is the most prevalent yet rarely discussed farbism in re-enacting. Yes, I know even mentioning it risks alienating us from half our customers. Sorry, but I've tread everywhere else that I wasn't supposed to, so let's go.
What got this going? Did someone ask for a XXXXXL paratrooper jacket? Some swamp hog got stuck in a jeep? No, sorry. Nothing even remotely that entertaining. Here's the deal. I was going through some old pictures of an event I attended at Pioneer Ohio in 1982. There were several pics of the morning formation, about 50 guys. No one was fat. One or two might have worn a 38 belt, but that was it. And these were the same young to middle aged crackers from the Midwest that still make up a large chunk of the hobby. I know obesity is endemic, and I've pondered it a lot. Yes, I do work out, even I might even be considered a "sit up nazi" by some of you couch carbs, so I'm not a good example. But the guys in the pics were not all situp-nazis or fitness nuts. They were a cross section of the mid-west in the early 1980's. Same gene pool as we have in 2005.
What's changed since then? I see just a few key things. But they are killing us.
Here's some simple, common sense cures for the "all American" waistline. No, I'm not a nutritionist, but I have watched dozens of people struggle with their weight and here's what I've deduced from my observations, of those who succeed and those who fail. This is simply recognizing the changes in the American diet over the last 20 years and working in reverse.
1. Sugar is the enemy. Sugars (carbs) effect the insulin level which in turn runs your metabolism and decides whether or not you burn or store your calories. The "fat free" lie is a marketing ploy. It's less complicated and easier to persuade someone that the fat on their hips comes from the fat on their steak rather than going into the whole insulin/ calorie chemistry thing. "Fat Free" foods were a brilliant, yet cold and calculated marketing tactic that packs tons of pounds of blubber onto the population. The poor fools assume that they can eat the whole bag of sugar soaked cookies because they believe that something with no fat can't make you fat. That it's taken 10 years for the Atkin's craze to disembowel the myth is a tribute to advertising brilliance and the stupidity of many Americans.
2. Weight gain is a result of more calories being ingested than are used.
3. Diets in themselves do not work. It's too complicated for most people to mess with point systems and calorie counting. That's the way the diet merchants like it; you need them to tell you what to do. Instead of a diet per se, one's entire eating style and choices need to be altered.
4. Diet pills are a crock. These peddlers should be strangled, drawn and quartered. They have absolutely no incentive for you to lose weight. If you get thin, you don't give them money. Diet failure is your fault, but their garbage is not the solution.
5. It can be difficult to schedule in regular exercise, but it really, really helps.
Being fat isn't natural. It's a matter of what you eat and how much you eat.
It's very much an American thing.

Simple fixes:
1. No more sodas. "I eat like a bird." Yeah, but I bet you guzzle Pepsi's like a chain smoker goes through a free carton of Marlboros. Sodas are the single most deadly sugar-injection system in the world. A 16 oz. Mountian Dew has about 14 teaspoons worth of sugars. 14! I have had employees that guzzled an entire case (or more) of soda every day. Nearly all drinks are now "sugar bombs". One recent study I saw said that adding one Coke per day to one's diet equalled a weight gain of 5 pounds per year. How about a dozen a day? Do the math. Likewise, I know one guy who lost 40 pounds simply from eliminating soda (Mountain Dew in this case). He is a big guy anyway, but it was still a huge dent. The soda companies are also despicable. Wonder why it's hard to quit? They have been slowly increasing the caffeine levels in most sodas since the 1980's. (But unlike the ciagrette companies, they don't deny it if you ask them. Smart...) Yes, you can get hooked. Diet sodas? Artificial sweeteners? No. "Play sugar" can effect your insulin levels as well due to the body's conditioning to sweet tatstes. It's also made in a laboratory. Someday they are bound to discover that they all cause the lining of you colon to rot or something. Tactic: Try tea (make your own, control the sugar content), water, milk, etc.. This may be the most difficult part of your eating habit to alter, but it frequently produces the quickest, most dramatic results.
2. Portion sizes: This and sodas are the two biggest culprits here. I remember when the plates grew in the 1980's. Try going to any chain restaurant; your main dish will come on a plate big enough to hold a 20 pound turkey. And it'll be covered with vittles. An order of pasta comes in a damned bucket. I ordered flounder at Red Lobster last week and got 8 filets. Eight! WTF?? Try ordering a blueberry muffin. Holy crap! You get a softball sized lump of sugar, flower and blueberry flavored pellets. Don't even get me started about double quarter pounders with cheese and super sized fries. That nonsense should be delivered in a 5 gallon bucket by a guy wearing rubber boots yelling ssoooo-eee! And the "Big Gulp" 64oz. drink; That's 56 tsp of sugar. It's like an intravenous blubber feed.
Tactic: I still can't look at a steak and guess how many grams it is. That's where many of the weight loss programs make their loot; simply charging you to set up your portion sizes. But, in most cases, a reasonable adult portion of a food item is about the size of one's fist. Eat, but eat a little less. Tactic: Eat either an appetizer and a dessert or a main course. Some places offer "half portions" which are normally reasonable. Or, share a main course with your friend. Avoid the "all you can eat and pork your ass out" buffets.
3. Learn to cook: This is critical and can be difficult. Only by cooking the base ingredients yourself, do you know what the hell you're actually eating. If you read the label on instant meals...you'll only be able to identify a small percentage of the contents. Tactic: Time is tight. I try to cook on Sunday night and have a good supply of left-overs to reheat for the week. Frozen vegetables, fish filets and chicken breasts are very handy. Healthy food is usually really good food anyway. You won't starve. Tactic: You can microwave almost anything. I know, a steak doesn't have "microwaving" instructions on it. Experiment. I've stunned many people by nuking fish, steaks and burgers. For meat, cook on 1 minute intervals, flip each time until done. Vegetables; put an inch of water in a tupperware bowl, cover with saran wrap and hit them for about 8 minutes to steam. Baked potato; 10 minutes, flip over at the 5min mark. Helmets: set on "high". Run. Come home after you see the fire trucks go by.
4. Food selection: A guy at the gym gave me this rule of thumb. If it stays edible on a shelf for more than two weeks, or comes in a plastic package, it's wrong. This doesn't apply universally, but it helps. Look at the contents label. If the majority of the ingredients are unpronounceable chemical compounds, leave the crap alone. Know what you're eating. Avoid the snack food and soda ailses.
Tactic: wnat to know what NOT to eat? Simply observe other people: This is nearly fool proof. At the grocery, the really fat people have carts (often two) overflowing with cases of sodas, hot dogs, potato chips and cookies. The "normal" sized types almost always have a mix of meat, vegetables, milk, etc..The food bar at the Golden Corral in Louisville looks like a feed trough at Bubba's hog farm. I've never seen such a concentration of very, very obese people in my life...all jostling like hungry cattle when the fresh load of Mac & Cheese is brought out. The 200 pound 3rd graders are the norm there. It's sick. Not everyone who is overweight eats at the buffet. But it's a dangerous habit. Tactic: Keep snacks out of the house. Eat them at the sport's bar or at a friend's house. If they're handy, then it's too easy to eat the whole damned bag.
5. Exercise: Physical activity will increase the rate of weight loss dramatically. Diet alone is not best, but is doable. Working out needn't require sweating your rear off in the gym or at a marathon. Cutting the grass (with a push mower not a riding mower!), taking the stairs, chop wood, play basketball, walking to the store, can all help. If you have bad kness, lift weights. You can avoid squats. Load up your gear and do a road march with your unit. A 5 mile hump with a 30 pound pack will burn some fat! 10 minutes of basic calisthenics can help alot too.
However, I doubt any greater percentage of the guys in the picture from 1982 worked out than ones today. They mainly ate less and ate somewhat better quality foods.
Common sense. You needn't be a nutritionist. The solutions are available at every Kroger, Win-Dixie and market in the nation. The causes of the burgeoning American waistline are mostly due to violating the rules most of us were taught by our parents or grandparents. Stay out of the sugar, don't pig out, eat your veggies and don't eat crap. I'm NOT espousing or endorsing Atkin's, South Beach or any other diet plan. The diet and diet product merchants have a vested interest in keeping you fat, or at least making money by having you pay for common sense advice. I'm fed up with the nightly deluge of commercials for "get thin quick and easy" snake oil products that prey on people's ignorance and desire for instant gratification...with no effort. The items that were once considered treats (ice cream, cakes, cookies, sodas etc) are now thrice daily (or hourly) snacks and main courses. Honestly, I'm not a granola type. I eat McDonald's once in awhile, I eat chesse, mayo on my tuna, have a pepsi or two a week (albeit spiked) and put lots of sugar in my tea. (But my 4 packets pale in comparison to the 14 in a Mountain Dew!). I don't conciously diet. I'm not starving. I rarely eat fried foods, no sodas in the house, any cookies or cakes I make myself. Nearly all things are fine in moderation. That I guess is the key. Changing your eating habits is like quitting smoking; it's not easy, but there's no downside. You'll feel better, you'll look better, you'll have more energy, and you might even get laid more!
I'm not taunting the 60% of Americans who are overweight. I'm trying to illustrate that the causes and solutions are much simpler than the diet merchants want you to believe but that we, as a nation, bear 100% responsibility for our condition. As for the Food Cartels, their actions are far more devious than anything the cigarette companies ever came up with. I would say that they never dreamed this big....but Philip Morris owns several of the biggest junk food brands.
Think about it; you produce hundreds of low quality food products that are of little or no nutritional value and fatten people up...all the while wagging Britney Spears and Pam Anderson as the physical standard, to further influence people to diet. And fail. Which leads to depression. And...snack cravings! Then, conveniently, hundreds of low quality, nutritionally worthless "diet" food products that are as bad or worse are introduced, fattening people up more, followed by new "improved" diet foods or "cortisol controlling" pills (@ $153 a bottle) that supposedly melt the fat away while you watch TV and munch diet pork rinds. The cycle is endless. Then, realizing that Americans are getting so damned fat that they can't fit into their car to get to the store in order to buy the food, the marketing sleuths introduce SUV's and mini vans with remote opening side doors...both equipped with XL cup holders for Big Gulps!
Pure, unadulterated genius.
A different rant isn't it?
Last suggestion: Watch "Supersize Me" with Morgan Spurplock. It's the film about the dude who eats nothing but McDonald's for 30 days. It's very well done, very informative and it may make you want to yack. But it's very, very good.

Responses to some of the complaints about this little post of mine:
1. This refers to the average American. I am well aware that there are a few people who have medical problems or are just plain big. Nowhere in the text below do I say "everybody should be thin". However, those with such conditions make up a minority. A 60% obesity rate is insane.
2. This isn't a money issue. We don't sell many jumbo sizes. We tried it and gave up. This rant has nothing to do with our sizing or sales. It's due to personal frustration watching our nation pork out and then listening to the bullshit flying in both directions. (For comparison; our most commonly shipped trouser size in the US is a 38. European orders are a tie for 32 and 34. Same gene pool....most Re-enactors are white males of European descent.) Overcomplicating the whole matter allows the food companies, the schools, restaurants and people in general point their fingers in every direction other than at themselves. It's the new American way..."I'm not responsible. Someone or something else did it to me or made me do it. I'm a victim." What kills me is that the solution is simple common sense.
3. Business Suicide: Being cantankerous and ranting about various subjects has actually been good for business. (Sorry if some of you were getting your hopes up.) Sensitivity and political correctness are two qualities that I lack completely and I have no compunction to go trying to find some. The modern concepts of customers always being right and telling people what they want to hear don't fly with me. I'd have a very short career if I tried politics wouldn't I? Being straight feels far more comfortable than does "warm and fuzzy" or other variations of bum kissing and self-esteem flattery.
4. Irrelevant: This particular rant is a bit off-topic, but it's my website, I'm annoyed, so what the hell.

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American Walrus The Fat Rant Part II AP, 3 May, 2006 Tens of millions of students will no longer be able to buy non-diet sodas in the nation’s public schools under an agreement announced Wednesday between major beverage distributors and anti-obesity advocates. “It’s a bold and sweeping step that industry and childhood obesity advocates have decided to take together,” (said Jay Carson, a spokesman for former President Clinton.) About 8 years ago, I was at the swimming pool in Tom Sawyer Park in Louisville with my chick. It was a fairly busy day, but not insanely so. As we basted ourselves in the sun, I glanced over at the diving well. There before my eyes were about 15 walruses lined up waiting for their turn to waddle along a rather narrow gangplank and tumble into the water for a moment of weightless delight. Then I realized that we weren't at some ooglit* in northern Canada and that I wasn't going to be entertained by a gang of wild-eyed Eskimos running these beasts down and butchering them for their annual barbecue. These were American kids. Whitebread. In an affluent end of town no less. But if one of the hapless tikes were so foolish as to tread on a rocky beach on the Arctic Circle, he or she would surely be at grave risk of sexual assault by a randy bull walrus. Of 15 kids (I actually counted once I recovered from my initial shock), one, repeat one, token kid was "normal" size. The other 14 were warthogs. Besides being dimensionally challenged, their gender was threatened. The boys all had voluptuous titties and the chicks had beer bellies that would make any biker proud. All appeared to be 10-12 years old. I glanced about the rest of the park and noticed a similar distribution of large Canadian mammals masquerading as American children. Even the baby pool was bulging with kids that could be mistaken overfed for albino penguins. Rattle, rattle here comes the cattle. (It should be amended to rumble rumble...that's no Tiger tank, that's just the kid from next door!) When I was a kid, (Carter was president) most classes at school had one or two fat kids. If you said "the fat kid", everyone knew who you were referring too. I suppose now, things are reversed. That works out to about 1 or 2 kids per 25. There are some people who gain weight just by looking at pictures of food. (That sucks and I am not making fun of them.) But our genetics have not altered themselves so greatly in 20 years as to account for a 500% increase in the North American walrus population. Now, a bold step to help reverse the obesity...no more non-diet soda! Healthier snacks! In vending machines. Right. There's a compound word that applies in this situation. It's known as "bullshit". These kids are way past "diet" products making a dent in their winter insulation. The last thing they need is a "snack". That's the whole damned problem in the first place. Instead of the sound of a teacher speaking or a basketball bouncing, the most prominent sounds in American schools (and homes) are the incessant rustling of bags and the munching of kids snacking on their processed goodies. We got yelled at for chewing gum during class. (Yes, I went to public school and I even got bused. Three times.) Some states don't even have physical education requirements anymore. Elementary kids have "snack time" instead of recess. The little darlings weigh 125 pounds for God's sake. In first grade! The last thing they need is rest and another snack. What they do need is some simple, healthy food and a few hours a day on the stairs with a rucksack full of bricks. My friend's daughter, 17, has declared herself a vegetarian. Now she subsists on french fries, chips and ice cream. She's not retarded as far as I know...but she's not looking any better in her "low riders". Going back to Morgan Spurlock's film, "Supersize Me", he investigated the school food contractors. Schools serving the typical, high fat, high sugar all-American menu offered by nearly all the food contractors showed little or no cost savings over those few "rebellious" schools who made serious attempts to provide healthy "real" food to their students. Moreover, schools that switched to high quality food programs showed marked decreases in behavioral and short attention span problems. Overall, the best results were achieved by schools who increased physical activity and made sure to provide breakfast in addition to nutritional improvements. This link is not terribly exciting, but it is informative. The Appleton School District was the example cited in the film. Yes, I know, this appears to have nothing to do with reenacting. Besides the farb factor of paratroopers unable to board a C-47 due to door width limitations, it really pains me to see guys nearly pass out in a chair at the Gap when they bend over to lace up a boot. Despite my apparent contempt and cynicism for humans of all ilks, the porking-out and subsequently poor health of our population I find depressing and utterly unnecessary. This whole topic is a major pet peeve of me, and once in awhile something simply sets me off. In this case, it's the blowhard media trumpeting non-solutions. The last version of this rant met overwhelmingly popular response, except for a few (future lawyers?) who growled that I shouldn't be dispensing "medical advice." To such imbeciles, I can only offer a few basic comments. First, the causes of the American Walrus population explosion can indeed be explained medically. But the mechanics of the problem do not require a degree in medicine to define. It's so simple that it makes me want to scream. My mother and grandmothers taught me the basics. Don't eat so much sugar, avoid junk food, don't be a pig and go outside and play. They taught me to cook, probably to occupy me so I would quit asking how long until dinner, but I thank them for it. Anyway, aside from family advice, four semesters of chemistry and one of sport's physiology in college, my only claims to authority are personal observations, experience and a decent track record of drawing rational conclusions from a small field of obvious choices. I intended to go to SFQC for 18D and later med school but the Clinton army's "meals on wheels to the world" campaign and my lack of good study habits dictated that I should make nazi shit instead. My beef here is this. Why is it so complicated? Don't eat garbage, don't pig out and get some exercise. There is no downside. Despite the advertisers and food companies making billions from our "generous" eating habits and our conflicting desire to be thin, their complicity and propaganda run so counter to common sense that I find it appalling that anyone with a 4th grade education or higher can't see (or smell) the bullshit for what it is. Next time I go to the pool, I know to take spear. *Ooglit- Eskimo for a walrus haul-out area

The Rant Rant Archive Holy Cow The Fat Rant Part 3 Being New Year's and all, the deluge of advertisements for miracle weight loss pills and "abs of steel in 5 minutes" gizmos have gotten me pissy again. True, I am a tactless prankster who enjoys making fun of any and everything possible (but I taunt across the board, no discrimination) but seeing people inflicting early deaths upon themselves, and hurting the quality of their lives in the process drives me nuts. When they are preyed upon by opportunistic jackals (many of whom contribute to the problem in the first place) I'm fit to be tied. These filthy companies propagate myths and mis-information, lie and charge money for information that is readily available for free. I know our schools suck and our kids are getting dumber, but this is ridiculous. I'm not a moralist, a social conservative or a left wing fruit cake. Just a realist. There is one main problem with Americans today. The myth that "it's not my fault". Personal responsibility should, in theory, kick in at some point. Common sense used to dictate this. Maybe it's gone to the wind as well. The Beef The fat epidemic started in the late 80's. (Click here for an illustration. It's sick.) The cause isn't mysterious. It's not genetics*. It is our fault. America's gene pool did not mutate enough in the last 20 years to explain this mess. Getting fat is not inevitable. The cause is eating crap (sugar) and eating too much crap (portion sizes). People in the 70's and 80's weren't any more likely to be fitness buffs. They just didn't eat so much crap. The primary ingredient in that crap is sugar. Glucose and sucrose. Not so much the fat. The snake oil salesmen of "diet" foods have always known this. They also knew, that consumers were far more likely to understand and accept a correlation between fat in your food and fat on their ass instead of the somewhat complex relationship between sugar, insulin and metabolism. Sugar tastes good, so they sold the sheep billions of dollars worth of "fat free" sugar bombs. Which made people even fatter, which in turn, sold more "diet" foods. Only the success of the Adkin's diet forced them redirect their schemes to include "low carb" products. To add insult to injury, the medical community has often accommodated the situation, or at best been slow to react, for reasons that I still find mystifying. Food for Thought Shit in a can: Soda is the single largest source of added sugar in the US diet. One 20 oz. soda per day for a year adds 127 cups of pure sugar and 91,250 calories, which, theoretically, is 26 less pounds of body mass. Imagine the cumulative effects of half a case for a few years. Oink! How many people do you see nursing a soda or God forbid a "Big Gulp" all day? To make sure you can't drink just one, the producers keep notching up the caffeine every few years. They claim it's only for taste. Does Phillip Morris make soda...? Diets don't work. A permanent change in what you decide to eat and how much of it you eat is the only truly effective means to cure the Great American Porkfest. Eating intelligently I do not consider a "diet". You want to develop a habit, not a temporary program. Ultimately, it's a lot less work than any diet. If you feed your kids crap, it's no different than buying them cigarettes. Love your kids? Then don't kill them. If you raise them on Pizza, Pepsi and Pop-tarts, they may be happy, but they'll probably be injecting insulin by the time they go to college. And then they'll hate you. You're poisoning them with lethal doses of sugar. My amateur suggestions, based on experience, observations, reading and feedback from friends and customers is thus: 1. Am I fat? Again, we're back to common sense. Use a mirror. Still unsure? Quiz: Can you bend over and tie your shoes without blacking out? Does your partner ask you to keep your shirt on during sex? Is your waist 40 inches or more? Can you see your feet without leaning forward? 2. Information. Figure out where you're going wrong. Write down what you eat for a week or two. Everything. Then read it. 3. If you eliminate nothing else from your diet, kill the soda pop. It is nothing more than a feeding tube for sugar. (I have heard from dozens of people that this one tactic has often produced dramatic weight loss.) Ditto for 90% of drinks offered in convenience stores. Water, milk, and tea are better alternatives. Sweeten your own tea. At least you'll know what's in it. 4. Keep the crap out of your house. This may be the deal breaker right here. If I have Doritos, cookies, or Apple Jacks in my house, I'll eat the whole damned box in 2 days. It tastes good even if it makes you feel like hell. Reduce the temptations. 5. If you're unsure of what foods to buy, this improvisation can help. Observe other people's carts in the grocery. 8 out of 10 times, you can match the cart to the family. If you don't like what you see in the people, then avoid what they have in their cart. You can learn a lot about what not to eat in 30 minutes. I admit this idea to be a bit outside the box, but I make nazi shit for living. What do you expect? 6. Don't know how to cook? Learn. Boiling frozen vegetables, nuking fish filets, and making ice tea are within the realm of capability for most Homo Sapiens. 7. Common sense. You do not have to be an organic health food freak show to keep your bodyweight in line. Dessert is dessert. Not the main course or your primary source of calories. Junk food is called that for a reason. If you can't comprehend most of the ingredients on the label, why are you putting it in your mouth? Americans want it easy: We are a society who feels a right to live like Caesar, loafing on the sofa being waited on hand and foot. The sad part of all this sickness, misery and untimely death is that it is so unnecessary and the solution is so utterly and completely simple. That's how Nutri-System and their kind makes loot by selling you prepackaged meals. The less effort, the better. There's nothing they offer that you can't make yourself. If their program works, fine, but learning to do it on your own, rather than having it done for you, is far more likely to become a fact of your life instead of a faze. The "secret of the glycemic index" is no secret. Look it up. It's free. This Rant: I will try gradually building a page with basic info and links to sites with good information for those who are tired of waddling and want to do something about it. Yes, I'm trying to be constructive as well as obnoxious. Input is welcome.* *Before you send an indignant email that you know "such and such" who has a "medical condition that makes them fat, you're a dick", yes I know. There is a small minority of people who have some genuine physiological cause for their obesity. But, 99% of the people who blame their genes, their pancreas, pituitary gland, McDonald's, Santa Claus, Darth Vader, etc, are fooling themselves. The cause is that opening between your chin and your nose. I'm not making fun of fat people. I'm sick of everyone getting fat and being misinformed at every turn so some asshole can turn a profit. For the previous Fat Rants, click here. I hadn't read them in awhile and this is basically a re-hash of the first one, which is probably a bit better.

 

The Living Historian Rant
The problem with WWII Re-enacting

Over the last few years, I've been struck by the petty and pompous airs put on by many re-enactors. I think the main problem is this "Living Historian" bullshit. Until the late 1990's, most battles were just that, and they were approached on the basis of being a field problem or wargame..using antique gear. Suddenly, that concept was attacked and derided by the newer minions as "busting caps"; these types apparently are made of a higher, more advanced form of organic matter, and let it be known that they weren't just lowly "re-enactors". They were "Living Historians". Now, previous to their declaration, there was a movement underfoot to get away from running about the forest and shooting blanks. But this movement had no title; if it had one, it would be "Guys too old and fat to run anywhere anymore". We placated them by letting them putter about in Jeeps and Koobles eating cheeseburgers and sipping on Pepsis stashed in the backseat cooler. However, the Living History movement struck so suddenly that the majority were unprepared. Most of us viewed this as a fun hobby; meaning we didn't take ourselves or it too seriously. These supermen were not diddling. They are quite serious about their hobby. And like Republicans (if you question the war you're a terrorist) and Democrats (if you question gay marriage you're a bigot/ nazi) if you question these dorks they up the ante and proclaim that they are decked out in Oak camo in order to "honor the memory of the veterans"; question them and you're dissing the vets. OK Wilbur...
Not that the vets don't appreciate the attention, but more than a few I've talked to think we're just fuckin' nuts. The word "wannabes" is frequently used when the 400 pound Knight's Cross winners rumble by.

What's the point to this rant? This isn't near as much fun as it used to be. The main changes since the 1980's when I started are:

1. Events are shorter. We always had a Sunday scenario. The battle itself lasted from about 0800 until dark. Now, it's stumble out of bed at 10:00, into the field by 12:00 and waddle back to the catered meal at 14-15:00. The slogan of the day is "Say NO to exertion!" 2. Everybody's bigger. Maybe that's why they're down on tacticals. 3. We used to march everywhere. Now they feel the need to car pool the 1/4 mile from the inspection area to the battle field. (For safety? To save hobnails?) 4. Catering? What the fuck is "meals on wheels" doing here? This is a war, not a cook out. We knew how to use a breadbag and bring lunch. 5. Attitude. There wasn't one. We were there to have a blast. Not have a beauty pagent and fluff egos. 6. Medals and awards weren't taken so seriously. We knew that they weren't real....

Busting caps (as you higher life forms term it) happens to be fun. Making noise, blowing things up, rumbling about in tanks or shooting them with "Nerffausts" is fun. Tacticals (Cap Busting) need not sacrifice authenticity despite the protests of the LH's. Besides getting their uniforms dirty and causing them to break a sweat, they frequently claim that tactical events throw open the door to farbs and paintballers. (They omit "airsofters" for some reason). Sorry Buckwheat, but LH events are hardly immune from farbs. The farb level is controlled not by the type of event, but by those putting it on as well as the participants as a whole. As a teenager, I heard occasional cautionary tales about the degeneration of Civil War re-enacting into a politicking ego fest for amateur know-it-alls. Well, here we are.

This living history thing is a lie. Very few of these guys are trained historians. (This is equivalent to the actors on "ER" claiming to be doctors.) One worrisome and unfortunate result of this conquest of the hobby by the LH weenies is a decline in the quality of events. The truly capable people rarely step forward or volunteer to run events or the organizations anymore. When they do, they are quickly worn out and exasperated by the weenie brigades who deluge them with inane and incessant whining and sniveling over bylaws, catering concerns and political jockeying. The vacuum of effective and rational leadership is often filled by yoyos who always knew they should have been a general (or an FBI agent, a Green Beret, or Der Fuhrer) but who had to settle for a part time job as a night watchman at a used car dealership in Iowa. Their penchant for displaying their untapped leadership skills pisses everyone off even more and often makes the whole hobby look like a bunch of fools. Scenarios are hopelessly overcomplicated (and some are just plain gay), the only concern the event organizers have is collecting the gate money, treasuries are used for new cars or gender reassignment surgery, and insurance policies lapse or don't exist. Rational, competent types who start into this hobby take one or two looks at such antics and want no part of it. The desire to impress other re-enactors and the public (Look girls! I won a Close Combat Clasp in Gold! I'm one of 300...yadayada..) overrides all else and turns the whole affair into a "peacocking" expo.

Not surprisingly, the worst offenders are rarely veterans of any military service. The Civil Air Patrol, Volunteer Reserve Police cadets of Greater Tacoma, and the Red Berets of the Olson High School ROTC Company don't count; even if you did help quell a riot at the methadone clinic in 1993. The LH moniker is a flowery, and on the surface, defensible excuse to avoid physical exertion, soiling of the fancy uniforms, long walks with no air conditioning, and the need to stray too far from Doodle Burger. Even though "Living History" may sound marginally less threatening to those unfamiliar with the hobby, left wingers are going to call anyone wearing camo and swastikas a "militia". (The fact that many Americans will disagree with this hobby is the beauty of our country. They aren't besmirching the honor of you or your hallowed unit...or dissing vets...they just don't understand the concept. That's our right as Americans.)
If you LH's really were "reliving history", your ass would be cowering in a muddy hole, you'd be half frozen, your precious uniform would be filthy and wet, you'd be too scared to worry about the shade of khaki on your buddy's jacket, you'd be sore, hungry, miserable, and praying to any and all gods available to please get you through this and get home...and you'd never be a complacent, thankless and arrogant ass again so long as he'll let you live. If you had caps to bust, you'd be damned thankful they were there. This can be accomplished even without live ammo! Until you characters are ready to put your E-tools to use, are able to complete a roadmarch of at least 5 miles (no SUV escort to pick you up when you're feet hurt), sleep under a wet overcoat on a winter night in your hole, and continue your mission despite the rain...keep things in perspective. You're not a hero! Real heroes rarely if ever mention the whole affair. Many are heroes simply because they were the guys who survived. Surviving a drive to the airshow and a day without waffle house doesn't entitle you to any recognition, despite what MTV or your self esteem coach tells you.

Service wasn't about honor, country and glory. Those are the words used by politicians and propagandists to convince the younger and less experienced guys to go fight for them. You can't compete with what the vets went through. Don't try to lay claim to what's not yours. You don't want to go through what they did. Even though it is left unsaid, the main goal of the LHers is that they want to share the recognition and bask in a just a bit of the sunlight that they perceive the vets to have done. They want a piece of glory and adulation without the suffering. How do I deduce such outrageousness? Simple; the attitude change in re-enacting is directly related to the celebration of the "greatest generation" starting about 10 years ago. Private Ryan fanned the flames, then BOB caused a firestorm. These characters are all about "honoring veterans" and "keeping history alive"; so long as the vets were in E Co. of the 506 and the history is the Normandy invasion. If a vet was in the Coast Guard and drove landing craft at Salerno or Anzio, or an Air Corps pilot who flew "the Hump", he's pretty much ignored. Who are the assholes now?

Static displays, public events as well as "tacticals" are all self complimenting components of this hobby. But don't overstate their purpose or importance. Otherwise it'll degenerate into a squabble-fest for idiots with time on their hands for nothing else.
Living History is simply another name for Re-enacting. Living Historians are no higher on the food chain than Re-enactors. Some guys think it makes them sound more important and that's where the trouble starts.
"Re-enacting" is a far more accurate term for playing war. It's a hell of a lot more fun too. Quit overcomplicating and taking things too seriously. The War is over. Has been for awhile. This is a hobby. Not an honor.

Aftermath to the Living History/ Re-enacting Rant:
It seems that the percentage of those in agreement with my callous observations is far greater than those who are now and forever going to ruin our business by telling their buddies what a dickhead I am. I actually expected more pissy responses. The "atta boys" aren't as much fun to read. Ya know, dirt sells for a reason.
To my disappointment, the genuine, hard-core LH responses were completely stereotypical. All were of the same ilk;
"You attacked Living Historians of (random geographic region) and you just lost X number of customers eat shit and die you history hating pig".
No argument, no conflicting opinion, no attempt to show me the error of my ways. Nix. Just squawks and threats. Perhaps because I'm right? I'm a reasonable person. If I'm wrong, show me, I'll admit it. But if you want fame, it's gotta be so completely ridiculous that it's entertaining or at least a reasonably well written, half way intelligent counter point to my evil filth. The 8th grade quality outbursts only reinforce my point. Better check your grammar too. If I posted a few of the responses, there'd likely be some free samples of "Hooked on Phonics" in the mail from your buddies. On what authority do I stir the pot? I've re-enacted/ "lived historically" for 25 years and I was a real soldier (a paratrooper even!) so I have been around long enough to watch the gradual shifts in the hobby and draw edumicated conclusions.
One overriding aspect of the indignant responses; None of them got my point. The Living Historians immediately interpreted my rant as a personal attack on their character, their families and pets. It wasn't that deep guys.
My point was this:
"Living History" and "Re-enacting" are the same thing.
If defining yourself as one or the other makes you feel better, fine. But don't start denigrating everyone else to the level of Untermensch (or excluding yourself from said category) based purely on your choice of term for playing war.
One is not superior to the other. There's no difference. The attitudes of those who militantly prefer the former and ridicule the latter tend to polarize the hobby.
My issue is with those trying to overstate the importance of the whole affair (and often themselves) which has cost the hobby hundreds of good people. If stating a painful fact costs me a few customers, so be it.
It's a hobby dammit. It's not a real war.

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Semantics...
This is the last LH installment. Promise.
You guys STILL don't get it. You cannot "relive" history. Not until they invent a working time machine. That's why it's called "history". It's over. Done. Gone. Vorbei. Nix mehr. You may be "living history" in your own little mind during the Fuhrer's last gamble..roaring along those roads in the "Ardennes"...but as soon as you wake up...you'll see a road sign and realize that you're in Pennsylvania. Sorry. Not Europe. Besides being over...60 years over...you're not even in the right location and you most likely wouldn't be able to understand Sepp D's commands if you did happen to encounter him on that Pennsylvania fire road. More likely he would be querying instead of commanding..."where the fuck am I and who are you yo-yos??"
You can "reenact" a historical event. Acting is fiction, what we do is essentially fiction. For all but a select few crazier-than-a-shit-house-rat types, the War is over. You're not really a Major in the 506th with a DSC. A few guys might have been in the 101st at some point, but most likely they wore woodland camo BDU's instead of khaki.
Whether one is attending a tactical, a public event, a display or an air show, you aren't reliving history. You can't even get close. You're buying and wearing mostly reproductions of old gear and clothing. That's where the similarity stops. Roosevelt isn't president anymore. He's dead. Many of you drove a Japanese car to the event. Germany has turned into the multi-culti liberal feel good mecca of the universe. A large percentage of re-enactors (yes, and you LH rebels too) have never even been to basic training. You have a cell phone and an Ipod in your backpack, sorbethane inserts in your jump boots and you get Burger King for lunch. Safety commitees dictate how much flour is in your rubber grenades and artillery barrages consists of light shows from "Martian rocket batteries". Sorry to ruin the fantasy for some of you.

"Living" History is a misnomer. That's probably why real historians cringe at the trespassers so naming themselves. Yes you can get cute and use "living" as an adjective instead of a noun and be a living (i.e.; alive..not dead) historian; if you have the degree to qualify. More likely a "living history buff" is most correct. Unless historians are most often found in a deceased condition, and "living" is required to indicate an anomaly, which is not the case in this instance. How often do you hear "living sports fan, "living doctor" " or "living mail man". Sounds silly doesn't it? "Re-enactor" is not only more accurate, in ALL cases, it's correct and grammatically less confusing. "Living Historian" denotes a person who has a degree of some level in history or a derivative of history (archaeology, paleontology, etc., etc.) who for some reason, one feels compelled to describe as not quite dead.
Interestingly enough, the best events, both tactial and public, are those put on by guys who are organized, know that they are on planet Earth and are totally cognizant that this isn't real. The worst are run by the self important sort who derive a personal ego stroke (or like cleaining out the till) from the whole affair. The most successful units are those run as dictatorships, not by committees. Just like the real military. We need a David Hackworth and a few less Frank Burns running things....

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