Many years ago, I gave up wearing a watch. I still have watches – five to be exact – but they are all in a state of disrepair in my jewelry chest. I stopped wearing them when I figured out what a ruse the earth was trying to play on me. I simply refused to be part of its shenanigans any longer.
I have covered this in great detail before. So this particular posting has nothing to do with time, except of course, the time it takes me to write it and the time it takes you to read it.
Instead, I will be talking about another totally arbitrary thing the Earth causes us to obsess about, and for many of us, sink into a deep depression, especially when a special occasion arises, such as a wedding or a reunion.
I only bring the issue up because I was heading back here to my homeland, returning to Seattle after a four-year absence to see some people I haven’t seen for many more years than that. As such, I had hoped to shed a few pounds before I left. Given my love of food and having good times, that hasn’t worked out as well as it should have.
And then it dawned on me. It’s not my fault. It’s the damned Earth’s fault. Like time, weight is an arbitrary standard of measure. We weigh what we do because the Earth spins around in the universe at a particular speed around its axis. That’s it. That’s what determines our weight.
In response to this “non-standard” standard, we fret over every ounce gained and go on strange diets that deprive us of protein one moment and then carbs the next. We eat only vegetables, then just meat, we stay away from dairy then suck up only fruits — all in a fruitless attempt (pun intended) to shave off a few pounds.
When my friends ask me what I weigh, I always ask them where? If we had been dropped on another planet, we wouldn’t be the weight we are. Our entire concept of weight, just like time, would be different.
For example, if we lived on Mercury right now, I would weight just 99.4 pounds. True, I would be burning up from the heat and suffocating also, but my weight would be far less than it is here on Earth. On Mars, I would weigh about the same, 99.1 pounds. Go to the Moon though, and I would be 43.6 pounds. On Pluto, just 17.6 pounds.
I think I would like that. I definitely don’t want to go to Jupiter, as I would weigh 621.7 pounds. I don’t think any amount of dieting will get me back into a swimsuit there.
See how arbitrary this whole weight thing is? It’s all because we spin around on this big blue planet of ours at a certain speed. Not fast enough to spin us off, thankfully, but slow enough to cause us to weigh in at what we do. If the Earth was to slow down or speed up, we would be heavier or lighter correspondingly. Of course, the Earth is slowing down ever so slowly, so you can just expect to continue to gain weight for as long as you’re alive. Even if you follow a very strict diet, the Earth is screwing you.
Perhaps worse, we let society judge us for the fact that we landed on planet Earth instead of Mars. This was not my fault, so why should I let a 20 pound Twiggy or 15 pound Kate Moss set the standards here?
As long as all this weight thing is random, I think I’m just going to go with a weight I like, wherever it is. People can look aghast when I tell them I’m 43.6 pounds on my fat day, but only 17.6 pounds when I’m feeling good about myself. Let them figure out what it really means.
And you think this is unworkable? Silly readers. Fashion designers have been changing things up on us for a long time. They realized along the way that women don’t want to be a size 12, they want to be a size 8. So they simply did what’s called “vanity sizing” and changed the tags. In the 1950s, Marilyn Monroe was famously a size 16. But did you know that in the 1940s, the smallest size you could get was a 10? Today you can be a 00 size which means… absolutely nothing, at least in absolute terms. Sizes are relevant. No two designers even have the same size standards so why should you be a slave to them?
By taking a page from the fashionista marketing machine, I have ordered up a new line of scales to help us all feel better about our respective girth. Soon you will be able to buy my designer scales. You can get the following models: Mars, Moon and Pluto. Oh, and I ordered a few Jupiter models that were intentionally mis-marked with a Pluto label. These will be sent to all the supermodels so they will always feel as fat as they made us feel all these years. Yes, Twiggy and Kate, I am resetting the scales of America, and you’re coming in a bit on the high side.
Out on the Treasure Coast, weighing in today at 18 stones, and a couple loose pebbles,
– Robb