J.M. PORUP
(get your free copy of this book
here)
I will never forget the first time I heard the Prophet speak. I had finished my shift and grabbed a bucket of fried chicken on the way home. A light snack before bed. Crashed out on the sofa, the bucket between my gargantuan thighs. Flicked on the news. And there he was. Running for President.
“Food is a drug!” he thundered at an arena full of blubber. People just like me. “You don’t need to eat! That’s a myth! All you need is air!”
Then he proceeded to do something extraordinary. He showed us his teeth, opened his mouth wide and chomped down on something invisible. He chewed, jaws working up and down, then swallowed loudly and patted his stomach with a satisfied grin.
“If I can do it,” he shouted, to cheers from the crowd, “you can do it too!”
He railed against the agro-business special interests that had brainwashed us into thinking that food was harmless, had corrupted our youth with their addictive caloric substances, and filled our hospitals with patients suffering from heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
Global warming. Crowded jails. Nuclear weapons. Drivers who forget to signal. All our social ills are caused by one thing only: the stuff we put in our mouths that we don’t need. By food. By calories. And by eliminating the source of all these evils, and enforcing a zero-calorie air-only diet, we turn our country into a city on a hill, a light in the darkness, a beacon that other nations may follow on their own journeys down the Superhighway of Purity and Air.
“There is hope!” the Prophet declared to a sea of worshipful faces, their double and triple chins quivering with joy under the stadium lights. “Hope for a Food-Free World! Ask yourself: Whose fault is it that you’re fat?” And his face went grim and the crowd fell silent. “It’s their fault!” he roared. “Them! The fat people!” He pounded the podium with his fist. “How can you be thin if you’re surrounded by fat?”
As if on cue, the crowd began to chant, “Down with fat! Down with fat! Down with fat!”
“Don’t blame yourself!” he shouted, to cries of swooning adulation. “You must see the change you wish to be in the world!”
I threw my half-eaten chicken wing back into the bucket, and kicked it across the room. “See the change you wish to be.” My God, he was right! Those evil fatties would pay….
To read the rest of The United States of Air, get your free electronic copy here. The offer ends on Guy Fawkes Day. Also, read an interview with JM Porup, here.
Former Lonely Planet author J.M. Porup now writes satire. American by birth, Australian by choice, Colombian by marriage and Canadian by accident, he escaped from the US in 1999 and plans to renounce his citizenship. His first editor — way back in the mid-90s — called him aloose cannon. Ever since, Porup has done his best to live up to that high standard.
copyright (c) J.M. Porup. All Rights Reserved. Used with permission
of author.
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