Miss Karen Is Updating Her Status Way More Than Someone Her Age Reasonably Should Be

There are so many reasons why we Americans, and especially American kids, are getting fatter and fatter and fatter. Deirdre Barrett's recent book explains it in evolutionarily: basically, when we were hunter-gatherers, not so very long ago in geologic terms, vegetables were everywhere, but sugars and fats were hard to come by, so when we came across those yummy treats we ate as much as we could, and apparently we haven't evolved enough since then to get over that mindset. And as Morgan Spurlock showed us kinda graphically, the more crap we eat, the more crap we want to eat. Our increasing fat-assedness is, as we've all heard over and over, only made worse by PlayStation, cable television, our love affair with the automobile, and the fact that parents are afraid to let their kids play outside for fear they'll be swept up by predators lurking in the shrubs. But, in all honesty, I think that if America's youth turn out more pasty, fat, and unhealthy than they've ever been before, we can place most of the blame squarely on Facebook. I joined out of boredom one day when a grad school friend invited me, but I have to say that if I had more than 4 friends on Facebook, and any of them were on it with any greater frequency, I probably would never leave the house. The status updates alone are addicting, a la Twitter, but then there's the booze mail! The rock-paper-scissors! The magnetic wall! Sigh. I should have been born 20 years later than I was. Of course, then I wouldn't have as fine an appreciation for Paul Lynde and Sanford and Son, or the right to cluck sadly at people who don't remember cassette tapes or televisions with only 13 channels. So I guess it's a trade-off.

And speaking of fat, I find grocery shopping an onerous task, and I often bribe myself with treats when I'm at the store. And I also have an embarrassing fondness for heavily processed, chemically enhanced snak foods, especially anything with that weird, white "cream" filling. Plus, when I'm alone and vulnerable under the florescent lights and musak I am a sucker for marketing scams. So yesterday I bought a box of these.

They taste maybe a little more like chemicals than the standard version, but all in all they're not nearly as gross as I expected. Until I read the ingredients and learned that there may be beef fat in them--the label says "...vegetable and/or animal shortening (soybean, cottonseed and/or canola oil, beef fat)." I don't know why that should gross me out more than the chemicals do...I'm not a vegetarian by any stretch, though I guess I assumed that my cupcakes were. Though of course everyone knows that lard makes the best pie crusts, so it's not like animal fat doesn't have its time-honored place in dessert. I don't know. By the time I've finished the box maybe I will have a more well formed opinion.

Reading: Salon's article about the Britney debacle. And can I say that I just don't like Sarah Silverman? I don't think she's funny. I feel like it's a failing of mine.
Listening to: Teddy Thompson's new album of country covers. His voice just gets me.