In light of today’s sad news about David Bowie, I wondered whether to write this post today, but he clearly anticipated the outpourings of grief, real and invoked, and released an only slightly cynical death album to assuage people’s sentimentality. Good for him. He will be missed by many.

Today I am going to talk about things which actively rot your brain and reduce your functional capacity.

Reality television – this cheap form of entertainment is brainwashing. It exists to persuade you of a line of argument.  It tells you about acceptable and unacceptable opinions and the correct and incorrect social response. eg. Millionaire Matchmaker, which would have you believe that it is perfectly acceptable to prostitute yourself in order to be with a rich person, provided you can polish your appearance and appear pleasing.  Youth culture which would have you believe that agreeing with everyone else is more important than forming your own opinion.

Advertising – this exists to input transitory wants so that you focus on mundane wants instead of thinking about important things.  eg. Someone who is thinking of buying a cheesecake is not thinking about why the unemployed must suffer in order to kill people in another country.

Comedians – Comedians are used by media to provide a safety valve.  Any doubts you may have about the status quo are voiced and turned into a joke. It is a panacea to prevent you from worrying and taking action over things that matter. I use this myself, in my current project  eg.  Have I got news for you, in the UK, which employs satirists to state possible errant public opinion about current affairs and provide a comedic, rather than action-based response

The hour a day millions of people spend watching soap opera – Soap operas are used rather like sport for men.  The more involved you get for that hour, the less likely you are to use that hour in ways that might affect your fragile society.  eg. People often respond to activists, researchers and services alike by saying things like “I can’t talk to you right now, Coronation Street/Emmerdale/Empire is on”  This made it extremely difficult for me to subvert the course of property development in my local area, since people had been effectively tranquillized into assuming that civic action was a mere annoyance rather than being essential for the area’s preservation.

Relying on only one source of news – I used to be proud of the BBC, a supposedly independent source of news, at one time considered internationally important.  The reality is that no news provider is now providing honest news.  The only way of getting close to the truth, is to monitor several sources and compare the alternative realities.

Allowing yourself to be distracted by the envy, snobbery, and aspirations of other people – Keeping up with the Jones’s is a futile occupation, which prevents you from seeing a bigger picture. eg.  If you are concerned about replacing your shameful car, you are not concerned about your land being fracked or your country being destroyed by industrial and alternative corporate interests.

Being persuaded that being sociable means you have to conform to what other people enjoy – Nothing is more important than actioning matters of national concern, to protect your neighbours and your civil liberties.  Not even the party you got invited to, or the coffee your well-meaning friend invited you to.  Their opinion does not matter.  Yours does.

Not investigating topics before you form a transient opinion – in recent years, arguing online about topics you know nothing about has become a popular pastime.  Imagine if all the time you spent arguing was spent researching your topic.  How knowledgeable you would become.

Candy Crush Saga – in the last few weeks, Twisty has presented me with at least four starter drug games which lead to people playing this game.  There is nothing more frightening than a room full of people glued to their mobile phones, all playing this infernal game. IT IS NOT HARMLESS. You need to wean yourself off this and spend your time thinking how to improve your life and brain activity, not send it into dormancy.

I am sure there will be people reading this post who are laughing at these apparently harmless activities, and wondering if I am a kind of grim nun.  I am not saying that you should not enjoy yourself or relax.  I am saying all of the above are bad for your brain function and mental health and you should consider them a bit like junk food.  There are more important things for you to think about, and more important work to be done.  The news on TTIP, TISA and TTPP has been very quiet for a fortnight now, which means that they are attempting to quell potential activism and sneak it past you.  Wake up, before it is too late, and your opportunities and freedom are dictated by American corporations, with Europeans firmly in their wake.  Your liberty depends on it.

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The advantages of being a fat frump are manifold and varied.  Having been a fat frump from the age of four, I can tell you that the first thing that my condition fosters is a very healthy disrespect for vanity.  People look the way they choose to look.  The way they choose to prioritise their lives is often highly amusing.  The most insulting ones are similar to the people who, whilst clearly starting to dement, criticise you for your slow, aged parent whilst mouthing that you must be an angel for putting up with it.

At first it was quite hard.  The sense of divorce from the anorexic and the fit drunk (sisters) was quite confusing as a child.  I tried very hard to fit in, between bouts of misery and sticking my head in a book or sewing, both of which, of course, meant that nobody could see me to criticise me any further.  This meant that I had an unusually advanced reading age, and was communicating far better with my teachers than my peers at a very early age.

On the minus side, the snide comments, particularly as I was a very fast runner, from some teachers were not pleasant and came as a bit of a shock. When I was still ignoring this, I was considerably healthier than I ended up, taking up smoking in an effort to stop eating at 15.  Despite my efforts, I was still an enormous 140lb in my teenage years.  This would be quite acceptable now, but then it was considered outsize.

After a particularly brutal and violent relationship in my late teens, I swiftly lost a considerable amount of weight hill running, as I lived in the country at the time.  I then discovered the nature of envy, as my sisters still found fault with the idea that anyone would have seen my enormous rump ascending a hill on Seil Island, which is pretty remote in places.  I then learned that bitches are bitches no matter what you do, so you might as well enjoy your lunch.

In terms of boyfriends, I have never been at all short of male attention when I wanted it, big or small.  I am not the kind of person that you look at and immediately assess their weight.  During my raw period, I shed 150lb, and the people that I interviewed on a yearly basis did not notice, which delighted me no end.  There is nothing worse, when shedding your skin, than people telling you how crap you looked the last time they saw you. I was somewhat heartened by this idea that people see tits, eyes, hair and your general vibe long before they notice your giant thighs.  I guess I come from the right country.

Also, I am precluded from going out with sexist wankers who think they need to be seen with someone their friends will fancy.  This is good, because it attracts nice people who value your company.  Whilst many of my relationships have been disastrous, this has not been because of my size, and I note from many beautiful women that I probably have a lower cheat rate than they do, precisely because of this.

I do like clothing, and this is a problem.  Oprah once complained of the five sizes in her wardrobe, and I have to admit that this becomes oppressive.  When you have shed a person worth of weight over and over again, you become disinclined to give your clothes away every time you don’t fit them, because chances are you will have another blink of sunshine in the form of fitting them at some point.  So you become a kind of collector.

Yes it is tiring, but when you have to fell the odd tree, as I have to, the level of strength is quite helpful, and your general invisibility is a nice thing too, because you do not bore the pants off people taking hours to get ready. Personally, I find I am more outward looking than I am in my thinner moments, and the level of neurosis displayed by some of the readers that did not understand Kira makes me pat myself on the back.  Life is much easier when you don’t have to worry about your appearance because you look crap anyway.

All in all, apart from the obvious damage to your health, being a fat old frump is not too bad.  You get a lot of work done, and little interference from people who aren’t listening to you.  I once experimented with size whilst dealing with people in an academic setting, and it was as if I had lost 100lb worth of respect.  Suddenly sex entered their tiny minds, and it all got quite tiresome.

It does get uncomfortable eventually, and as I explained to Twisty recently, eating whatever you want becomes quite depressing when you know it is because your life is over.  Then the whole cycle starts again, until someone obliterates your hope, or some feather blows past in the wind, and you rediscover the joy of your cloak of fat.  Then you remove a host of emotional problems that nobody wanted to hear you talk about anyway, and you shut up.  Life is always easier when your romantic mouth is so full of food that you cannot speak.