Problem Solving

Last night I took the boy to Red Lobster for dinner. Not for any special reason, just because I had to pick up the truck from having the accessories installed and took him with me after school let out. Installation ran late, and there just happened to be a Red Lobster in town...
I know, it's the Wal-Mart of seafood, but look at Salina, KS on a map and then see just how far it is to the nearest ocean. Not a lot of choice out here.
Anyway, as I sat waiting for a table and the son & heir stood watching the lobsters in the tank (afterwhich he decided that he didn't want to try any lobster because he didn't want any of them to die) I noticed several, make that almost every other person (1 out of every two) walking out the door was severely obese. (Chux third law: eat where the fat people eat. Odds are the food is good, cheap, or plentiful; often all three.) Now, I don't really have any problem with fat people. I don't know if I believe that every fat person is a victim of bad genes, some kind of disease, or just a victim practitioner of sloth and gluttony. I was just surprised that there were so many of them in Red Lobster. It was surreal. Honestly, of all those I saw who were fat, none of them could’ve flown coach without paying for two seats, some would’ve been charged for a whole row!

Has anyone seen these Go Yellow commercials about using maize (my people call it corn) as a “renewable” source of energy for ethanol? Or biodiesel that (supposedly) smells like the food that it formerly cooked? Or even seen the commercials for the hybrids whose only exhaust is water? Time for a bit of debunking, chuckstyle. Corn is not renewable. Corn is the primary ingredient in what food (cows) eat. If we start dumping corn into the gas tank, then the cost of feeding cows is going to go up, and then so is the cost of corn-fed beef. Even if we could use all that corn for gas, without affecting the amount of corn we use to feed cows and ourselves, well, you have to continue to enrich the soil with fertilizer and nutrients. It isn’t like you just sow the fields and the stuff grows year after year. Also, tying your energy needs to something as fragile as agriculture is foolhardy, at best. What happens when we have a couple of bad years of drought in the Corn Belt? So much for renewable (and cheap) gas.

Biodiesel uses old cooking oil and converts it to a cleaner burning form of diesel. (Which sounds a lot like cleaner-burning coal... it still pollutes, just not as much.) Great in small quantities, but if everyone started using it, then the world would smell like French fries (not an entirely bad idea, except for the refinery near the bulimia hospital*) but the resulting noise pollution from all those diesel engines trying to start in the winter would make silent, holy nights a thing of the past. Besides, do you really think McFuel would be good for your engine?

As for engines that produce nothing but water, what happens when every vehicle on the road is producing water? For one thing, the roads are always wet. For another, humidity skyrockets (hi, my name is greenhouse, have we met?) In winter, roads would always be icy, and in summer the humidity increase would make Louisiana’s bayous a true vacation spot.

So what’s the answer, Chuck? Well dear reader, of course I have one! Fat People!

Get your helmets, this is gonna be fun.

1. It requires more energy to move a fat person from point a to point b.
2. Most obese people would rather not be fat, but lack the health insurance resources to get adequate medical treatment for genetic or disease causing obesity.
3. Medical treatments exist that allow doctors to remove fat.

That’s it folks. There’s the answer! We harness the fat from obese people by providing no-cost liposuction, and then refining the fat to fuel our cars! The now-skinny people would require less energy to transport, and if they regress and put the weight back on, they’d just get siphoned again! There’d be no stigma attached to being “heavy,” in fact, people would just think you were just storing your next contribution to society!

And, since we’re the fattest nation on the planet, we’d have the market instantly cornered! I've yet to see a third-world nation that has lots of fatties running around.

Okay, take the helmets off. Back on your heads.

--Chuck

*Yes, I know Bulimia is a horrible disease that affliicts millions of people. Please, don't chide me with comments about your own personal battle with eating disorders. I swear, if I hear one more story about bulimia,I'll throw up.