Submitted to McSweeney's Internet Tendency on October 26, 2023 - Rejected
(This was 3 months before this brilliant piece appeared there so maybe they already had this on the radar and I was just too late. Or, like, mine was shit compared to the other one. You never know.)
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Turning and turning in the widening gyre
Did you just call me fat?
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
I can hear you alright and I have chosen to ignore your comments about my waist.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Yeah, maybe I’m not as slim as I used to be, but what you’re doing here is called body shaming and it’s not okay..
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
It’s not called anarchy, it’s called body positivity!
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
Hey, I am completely innocent of stuffing my face with conveniently available, highly processed garbage for the third time this morning. I am just bored to death with this fucking meeting. And how is two or three glasses of fine wine a day/meal a “tide”? This is straight up gaslighting.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Not sure what to make of this. Sure, I'm not "the best" at trying to avoid any kind of sweets I see lying around, but that's just because it's really hard in this environment. The kids seem to be deliberately setting up traps now. Like, why is there a half-eaten Snickers bar in the Kleenex drawer? Of course, I discovered it at the worst moment of my day, when I was at my weakest, and it disappeared down my cakehole before I fully understood what was happening. Am I full of passionate intensity? Absolutely! Especially when it comes to sneaking into the next room to passionately stuff as many Pringles in my face as possible. I'm also passionate about staring out the window when I hear someone behind me, giving the intruder the impression that I'm contemplating nature or some shit like that, while trying to breathe through my nose with the equivalent of a full meal's worth of calories in my mouth.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
OK, here is a revelation: Sometimes I walk around in circles between different snack options, not wanting to open anything that is not already open (which would be admitting defeat). Instead, I turn the bars over, fiddle with the packets and fish around in the boxes, hoping that something might be open and I can perform a secret, no-harm extraction, surgery style.
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
I had to look this up and Wikipedia says: “Three events will happen all at once in an instant: the living will die, the universe will be transfigured, and the dead will be resurrected, judged, and recompensed” and that reminds me of the trinity of snacks and multidimensional snacking. This is what the experts call it, when you eat a bit of chocolate and, with the taste still in your mouth, your perfectly rational brain goes: "Wow, that was great, but pretty sweet; what I need now is something salty!” So you go straight to the other secret compartment and after a couple of pretzels you say: "A handful of jelly beans would be the perfect balance to the salty experience I just had!” This loop continues until you are jolted out of it by an external force, such as the moment of Jesus' arrival.
So go ahead, call me a rough beast, slouching towards morbid obesity but as long as this vexed nightmare of a meeting is going on, my gaze will be blank and pitiless and I’ll be moving my slow thighs towards the snack cabinet at regular intervals.