Thursday, November 16, 2006

Big Brother's Appetite

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," demon-free since ... well ... gosh, since forever. Occasionally we get visits from Satan, but he's not a demon. He's an angel. As for real demons, we believe in them. But they stain the furniture with reckless abandon, so they're not welcome here.










Are you food insecure?

According to an analysis by the United States government, 35 million Americans suffered from "food insecurity" in 2005. (I'm a goat judge, not a mathematician, but I think that's roughly one in ten. Right? Right? Right?)

Okay, so one in ten Americans is insecure about food. What does that mean?

Food insecure. Kind of brings to mind someone with a deadly shellfish allergy perusing the offerings at a Chinese buffet, trying to pick out the entrees that contain shrimp.

Food insecure. Kind of brings to mind someone who's barfed from eating spoiled Spam, someone who will no longer trust that peerless potted meat product.

Food insecure. Definitely brings to mind the many Nicole Ritchies out there, trying to become beautiful by swathing their skeletons in as little flesh as possible. Yes. Food insecure definitely sounds like an eating disorder. But golly. As rampant as anorexia is, can one in ten Americans actually have that?

Turns out none of the above fit the precise meaning of food insecure.

We have this just in from the Ministry of Truth that Big Brother wants us to call hungry people ... food insecure. You see, they're insecure because they don't know where their next meal is going to come from.

Yeah, and layoffs are no longer layoffs, they're revised head counts. Big Brother says the word "layoff" implies you may someday return to your job, whereas "revised head count" means that your head is no longer needed for counting. Nor will it ever be again.

So, if you're one of the 35 million Americans who worries about being able to buy or beg enough food for yourself or your family, you're not hungry, or poor, or miserable. You're insecure. You don't need food, you need an antidepressant!


One in ten people in America doesn't have enough to eat. Leave it to Big Brother to make that sound like a gentle little psychiatric imbalance.

Someone's knocking on my door. I think it's time to go to the dungeon where the rats gnaw at my face until I love Big Brother more than anyone.

Thanks to Heroic Hecate for having a proper link for this information.

FROM ANNE
THE MERLIN OF BERKELEY SPRINGS
Insecure, for damn sure

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The drug companies will come up with a cure for these problems. We shall see it on tv, with ten minutes of side affects which are worse than the original problem. Btw people are only counted as unemployed when they are actually collecting unemployment. Once they are no longer collecting(and still not employed,just ran out of benifits)they are not counted as unemployed anymore. What a wonderfull world we live in.

Anonymous said...

Currently, about 119 million, or 64.5%, of US adults are either overweight or obese! They should give some of their food to the poor.

Anonymous said...

What's really sad is our nation is doing nothing to stop this, yet they give away millions of dollars in aid to other countries. I heard on the radio yesterday that our local food bank does not have enough meat for Thanksgiving to provide for the number of people that they expect to come by for it. Sad Sad Sad.

Anonymous said...

Sadly, a vast number of the obese are also among the poor and "food insecure." If the only kind of food you can get cheap is high in fat, simple carbohydrates, and complex carbohydrates, while simultaneously being low in actual nutrition, you are going to wind up as many poor people are, fat and suffering from malnutrition.

Being thin in modern American culture is a rich person's game, and it's not much easier here in Soviet Canuckistan (although, granted, we have a lot less junk food in our stores and we do seem to know how to eat).