Thursday, July 14, 2011

Extremely Malnourished and Incredibly Shallow


by Jallison Sharting Fatso

The 3 glorious months of living off the fat of the land, a.k.a. graduation $$, have come to a screeching halt and the only thing left in my pantry is a box of instant mashed potatoes.

My problem is that my spending habits always seem to adjust to my income, and by adjust I mean exceed. I go immediately into sushi-for-every-meal mode. And what goes better with sushi than a new Macbook Pro? Nothing. $4000 quickly becomes $-34 plus a post-it note from my landlord saying "reminder: rent was due yesterday". I've realized 3/4 of all my purchases are from restaurants. My Wells Fargo bank statement looks like a ban-list for a WeightWatchers participant, with Taco Bell listed over 6 times for emphasis. My mother sat me down to make a "budget", which has always been a word ranking just below "diet" on the list of things I wish adult women would stop talking to me about.

Her first suggestion was to save all food related receipts and keep them in a place where I can easily be shamed by them, like the cup holder of my car. However, shame hasn't been quite the effective motivator since I got a bowl hair cut and a "flames" themed wardrobe right before switching to a new school in the 5th grade. The stack of receipts is quickly crunched down by my Rolo McFlurry cup.

Her second and third attempts took the form of emails about Type II Diabetes and starvation in the third world. Both "made me feel bad" as I guess was their intent but they really only curbed the spending of that particular afternoon. Guilt seems like a powerful driving force, but it never really inspires change beyond the handful of situations immediately following.

The closest thing to actual, long lasting motivation for self-control came yesterday afternoon when, after ordering a Big Mac sandwich, I pulled forward to find the McDonald's drive-thru attendant to be morbidly obese- the kind of girth that demands elastic and makes roller coasters out of the question. In a moment of clarity that unfortunately coincided with a moment of eye contact, I put my foot to the gas and kept driving without paying or picking up my food. If McDonald's replaced the giant pictures of 'Quarter Pounders with Cheese' on the windows with equally giant pictures of 'Donna at the Drive-Thru Window' it would really solve a lot of my problems.

Ba-da-bum-ba-da... I'm an asshole.