Dear Amritsar,
I'm huge. Humongous. Humongo. Humo. Hum. Really, really big. A blimp on legs. I'm five foot nine inches tall and weigh almost 98 pounds. I'm Gina Ginormous!
I've had my tummy tuckered and my lips stapled. I spent a month only eating foods beginning with the letter "x." I was hypnotized to see the face of Clara Peller whenever I looked at a cake or a pastry. Nothing seemed to work.
Is there a technology so new that it doesn't even have a commercial name yet that can help me with this problem?
Chubby Chelios
Hey, Babe,
There's always a technology so new that it doesn't even have a commercial name yet that can help you with your problems. This is known as the Rathskeller Surmise, after the scientist who first proposed it after a long and successful career playing Sherlock Holmes in the movies. Unfortunately, you won't be able to afford it. This is the Reality Principle, named after Irwin Reality, the producer of all of those 1970s disaster movies.
Still, since you asked, the technology is described in official Convex Tech Mex Spex corporate specs as ALo234PlopPlopDoozies V2.35.4.1 Fuschia. According to CTMS, it is a pair of glasses that has digital lenses programmed to make food look bigger than it actually is while not affecting how the wearer views anything else.
This is how it works: the glasses make French fries look like 100 year-old tree trunks and hamburgers look like semi-detached two-bedroom homes with neo-faux traditional kitchen, post-modernist bathroom fixtures, combination den/woodworking shop and three quarters of a parking space. People wearing the glasses tend not to eat the fries because they are afraid the spooky spuds will be cut down by lumberjacks who don't yell "Timber" and crush them; naturally, they want to save their families the embarrassment of having to explain that they were killed by a falling French fry. Eaters tend to stay away from the burgers for fear that they will be bankrupted by the mortgage.
The glasses are programmed not to do this to healthy foods. Seeing celery the size of cabers might give eaters looking to lose weight the misimpression that the stalks could only be eaten by brawny people of Scottish descent. Seeing wobbly pieces of tofu the size of Hummers might give some people flashbacks to the blancmange invasion of 1970, forcing them to put paper bags over their heads until the people around them stepped into steamer trunks and sang "Jerusalem" at the tops of their lungs.
Trying to lose weight is difficult enough without getting the whole community involved!
Dear Amritsar,
I'm five foot three and weigh 237 pounds. My friends at Communist Martyrs High School all weigh over 300 pounds. My BFFFN (Best Friend Forever For Now), Rosamunda McWockwalk, weighs 417 pounds in a skimpy bikini. Not that anybody wants to see her in one. Anyhoo, she says we can't be friends unless I gain at least 100 pounds. I...I can't lose Rosamunda. She's the captain of he cheerleading squad - I would be kicked off it and forced to wander aimlessly around campus until somebody from the chess club took pity on me and asked me if I wanted to learn a thousand and one uses for a rook. I would never be able to live that down!
Is there a technology so new that it doesn't even have a commercial name yet that can help me with this problem?
Skinny Minneapolis
Hey, Babe,
There's always a technology so new that it doesn't even have a commercial name yet that can - where have I heard this before? No matter. Good advice, unlike good skin, is truly timeless.
You could also benefit from Convex Tech Mex Spex' ALo234PlopPlopDoozies V2.35.4.1 Fuschia. Once you have a pair of the glasses that are currently unavailable to the public (I don't judge), find a patch on the Internet (not, to be clear, the kind you would find on the Girls with Eyepatches Web site) that will reverse the polarity on the glasses. This will make food appear smaller than it actually is (but, astute reader, you were way ahead of me on this one, weren't you?).
T-bone steaks the size of your fingernail! A small mountain of mashed potatoes in the shape of Devil's Tower that appear to be the size of a molehill! Asparagus spears the size of toothpicks!
Darnit, but all this helping people is making me hungry!
Send your relationship problems to the Alternate Reality News Service's sex, love and technology columnist at questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour is not a trained therapist, but she does know a lot of stuff. AMRITSAR SAYS: making up your mind is a lot messier than making up your bed. No wonder so many people go to great lengths to avoid it!