edward fox’s reality

If you have a crappy computer or a shitty monitor, feel free to ignore this blog entry, as you won’t be able to appreciate the full awesomeness of the apparel I am about to present you with. If you do, and you’re not a broke ass, continue to enjoy this entry.

So I’m a fat, obese fuck. Oh, some of you think I’m exaggerating. I am being completely serious and medically accurate. I used to be at a BMI as low as 24.5, which is still borderline on being overweight (not to be confused with a BMI of >30, which is considered obese, and >35, which is extremely obese)… my BMI has shot up to ~31.5 within two and a half years, and that is sick, literally.

I know I take a lot of pictures that make me seem slimmer than I really am, and honestly, if you all thought I was fat at all in some of my other pictures, you guys were too stuck-up, even for me. I weighed 40-65 lbs. less in some of my older pictures, and I want to get down to that weight, and lower, way lower. I know that I will never be a twig– I don’t plan on wanting to be. I am not a femm; I am a straight-acting guy and I don’t need to slim down to fit in girl jeans. I want to look hawt, and to me, not wearing clothes meant for your gender (unless there’s some hawt shirt which could pass off as a guy’s shirt, too) is not attractive at all in my book. I feel sorry for your genitals, silly boys with tiny balls.

So I found inspiration to correct this health and emotional issue. That’s right — there’s not one minute of every day that I don’t think about my weight. I don’t understand how extremely overweight/obese people can feel comfortable and continue to eat unhealthy food. That said, I no longer eat fast food. I will eat out once a week or every other week, but that is an extreme reduction compared to how I used to eat. I used to eat a nice greasy breakfast (which isn’t bad seeing as your metabolism is highest in the morning and gets it started early). I’d follow that up with a decent lunch from never just one fast food joint– usually two. I would hit up McDonald’s for two or three burgers (no joke), and then go to Taco Bell for a few tacos and nachos. Sick, eh? Dinner usually ended up being served up by Taco Bell and McDonald’s again. Totally sick. I saw Supersize Me but it apparently didn’t get to me much.

So. What will?

I am grateful for Comedy Central. This will be the first, and probably only, time which I will say such a ludicrous thing. I received my entire value from it, though, when I was watching George Lopez. He was pretty entertaining tonight, sans his obnoxious stereotypes of Mexicans and crackers, but then he was followed up by a morbidly obese Hispanic which caught my attention. He was featured on MySpace secret stand-ups (comedians) and once again, he was invading my life, and perhaps this happened for a reason. Presenting, the extremely greasy, fat, disgusting, filthy bastard known as Gabriel Iglesias:

Don’t get me wrong– I enjoyed his comedy, but for someone that huge to refer himself as “fluffy” is just sick. He’s not fluffy– he’s fucked up. There wasn’t a five-second period during the entire two-hour show that I didn’t think about his weight and how unhealthy this poor bastard must be…

He is now my source of extreme inspiration for weight loss. When I have reached my final goal (yet to be determined), I’ll write him a long letter, along with photos I will have taken along the way to my success, showing him that he can live a healthier life as well.

That said…

In the coming blogs, I will present my favorite clothing and accessories from my favorite design label, Diesel. I’m sorry that I am not a slave to Prada, D&G, or A&F. These brands irritate me, and are such clichés. I am grateful that I have better taste than those mentioned. To inspire me and others, I will be giving a new selection of clothing articles in each volume/edition of this series. Each selection will remind me to contribute to what I now call my Diesel Clothing Fund, and you are more than welcome to contribute, seeing as each set of 3 items will cost around $500 on average. This is an extreme goal, and this will be extreme weight loss.

I will be carrying around a picture of that fat greasy bastard, and may build my selection as time goes on. There are two very obese co-workers at my current job, and whenever I get a new phone with a working camera, I will take pictures and save them for easy access wherever I am, whenever I have an urge to gorge myself as I so often did and still somewhat do. It’s time for me to take control of the only part of me that upsets me.

I enjoy being a pretentious twit. I enjoy being selfish. I enjoy being a fucker. I enjoy the way I am. I enjoy being able to speak out. I like having an amazing speaking voice that some people mistake for apathy. I love not having to have sex with everyone to feel good about myself. I love still being able to appreciate the rest of me even though I don’t look fantastic on the outside. I long for the day that my current skills of being a bastard, fucker, bitch, come to equality with the outside me. Of course, you guys will love me then, because more attractive people get to be twits.

My plans are basically making more money by doing web design. This will be a lot easier once the economy improves (at least a little bit). I also look forward to perhaps moving up to a better position within the next year or two at my job, perhaps to the IT department. It would be nice to boost my salary by 125%, right? Ah, dreams, dreams. Let’s make this shit a reality. Whether you support me or not, I’ll be moving forward. I’d prefer if you don’t support me — it’ll make this shit a lot easier.

The only people that I know will support me every hour of every day are Eric and James. The rest of you can do as you please. Feel free to take this advice and mold it to your own liking. If anyone has any other supportive ideas, feel free to let me in on it! If it works well for me, I’ll be more than happy to give you a gift card to any restaurant or retail store of your choice ranging in various dollar amounts. I look forward to your ideas, and I hope you look forward to my continuing series, and next time, I’ll be providing more enticing pictures– I promise.

Here’s one pretentious prick signing off for tonight. I love you Eric, always. You will always be my brother. I love you, James, though you won’t see this for God knows how long. You’ll always be my boy.

Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey once said, “Time is a cruel thief to rob us of our former selves. We lose as much to life as we do to death.”

If I was to hate time ever, this would definitely be one of the best moments to do so.

I’ve lost a lot. I’ve lost a lot of important people. They’ve left my life for reasons unbenknownst to me. And, I hate to say it, but, I miss the past… I really do.
“Time is the school in which we learn, time is the fire in which we burn.” – Delmore Schwartz

I’ve gained a lot, but I’ve lost a lot as well. I’ve been disappointed with the major life paths I have chosen. I’ve messed up… and I am not happy about it.

Hopefully I’ll fix it all with time.

Damn, where did the time go?…

Today (and the past two weeks) just has not been going right for me. But I liked this quote…

“We are only the sum of our experiences. Besides, some of the best things in life are total mistakes.” - from the movie “Paycheck”.

That’s all!… K thnx.

Henry Ward Beecher stated this:

“A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.”

Now, let’s not be sexist, so we’ll assume “he” means he or she. With that logic in mind, let’s ask ourselves this: Are we grateful?

First of all, happy Thanksgiving Eve. It’s not a real holiday, according to the U.S. Government, but if Christmas gets an eve, and the start of a new day at the end of a year, the day before such, gets an eve, then so shall Thanksgiving. It seems like we are never satisfied with what we have, and I have fallen a victim to this, too. The way things are, how things are, how people are, it’s never good enough. If you are completely satisfied, that probably means you simply don’t care… or you’re one of very few people who have learned how to balance enjoyment of life with accomplishments of change, and that is a very powerful thing.

Sometimes, it may seem like life sucks. And frankly, I think it does. But we still have to remember what we have, and what we don’t have. We must remember who is still in our lives, and all the good times we have shared. It’s unfortunate that we forget about the past so quickly. To forget is one thing, and to idle, another.

Am I trying to sound extra smart? Perhaps. But it’s important to remember that the past cannot be erased, but it should not take control of us… It’s happened, and what’s happened, happened. We have to move on, but we should be grateful for what has happened in our lives. With that said, I again pose the question to everyone, including myself: are we grateful?

In a heated discussion as I sat in on a Government class this morning as a member of my Forensics team, I noticed that people don’t seem to be grateful for what they have in their lives at all. Their views are so twisted and shaped by what they have been taught that many seemed partially closed to new thoughts, opinions, or ideas, and others closed themselves off completely from everyone else’s opposing views.

What was the issue? Illegal immigration from Mexico. I actually ended up participating in the discussion because of the fact that so many comments were flying back and forth about the room that lacked any credibility that I was about to explode. So many contradicting comments in so little time–welcome to the junior college experience.

One student personally attacked me and said, “Who builds your bridges? Huh? They do the jobs that no one else wants. Who builds your bridges? HUH? HUH? I mean, look at you.” That was obviously a racially-loaded statement. Regardless of the facts that personal opinion should not be included when trying to prove a point, and that I’m Hispanic anyway (50% Salvadoran), just makes me wonder what point he was trying to prove. Was he trying to say I should be grateful that I have bridges that are being built by people who are illegally entering this country? Or perhaps, that I should I feel sorry for them and have sympathy for all their hard labor, which I never denied to begin with?

It wasn’t exactly clear. So how does this relate to being grateful? It didn’t seem like he was even grateful of what people from his country did, and made me feel like it was my responsibility to acknowledge the fact that they work for a living, just like 95% of the U.S. population over the age of 18. I didn’t understand where it was going, and attacking me personally with inaccurate information and baseless, racial accusations, are just as disappointing and devalue the debate entirely. Nonetheless, I maintained my composure…

…but I am grateful. I am grateful we have a diverse community. True, minorities may be suffering because of a lack of education, and the economy may suffer because the less education someone has, the less of a chance they have at making more money, thus less money being invested into the system, but this doesn’t mean I am ungrateful for any of their contributions to society and especially highways! I love me some new roadways and bridges. Ah, the bridges. The word “bridges” was mentioned in three separate arguments subsequently. I started the debate for the morning. Go me.

Normally, I type out a list of people I’m grateful for, but I’ll save that until Christmas, because some other fun things happen around Christmas time, too (James, you know what I am talking about :P), and plus, I don’t feel like I should be thankful only on a holiday with the word “thanks” in it… Shouldn’t that be a year-round thing?

Let’s stop getting caught up in our own busy world, and realize we are all part of the same society. Let’s start contributing, not just for our benefit, but for each other’s. This is something that should happen all the time. If we all did our part, then no parts would be left undone, and the world would feel more complete. We wouldn’t have the feeling like we need more…

Do we already have enough? I think so.

Take that for what it’s worth.

Happy Thanksgiving to All!

There are a few various reasons as to why I feel better. One of them is simply because time is the best healer. Another is because I’ve taken responsibility for my actions, but only one other person besides me, could ever take the credit for my improvement. He knows who I’m talking about, don’t you, Evan? (:

There are so many factors that influence our lives on a daily, hourly, basis. We don’t always get to control what’s going on. But, hey, let’s look on the bright side–we all have an equal shot at it.

Consider this. We are all in control of our own happiness. We are all in control of who we are and who we want to be. With that said, I will leave you with a few quotes about happiness. Today (Sunday night) turned out ending many times better than I expected. Just goes to show, you never know what’s just around the corner… and I like that.

Links after each quote will take you to brainyquote.com’s page of that quote’s author with a complete archive of their quotes on various topics, beyond just happiness in most cases.

“No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change.”–Barbara de Angelis

“Today I choose life. Every morning when I wake up I can choose joy, happiness, negativity, pain… To feel the freedom that comes from being able to continue to make mistakes and choices - today I choose to feel life, not to deny my humanity but embrace it.”–Kevyn Aucoin

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.”–Marcus Aurelius

This upcoming quote doesn’t entirely relate to happiness, but it gets to there eventually. This falls into the same area of happiness, as far as achieving it, and the pitfalls we create for ourselves with how we think sometimes:

“Suspicion is far more to be wrong than right; more often unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness.”–Hosea Ballou

And someone give the author of the next and final quote a cookie; what a genius.

“Happiness is the reward we get for living to the highest right we know.”–Richard Bach

All of the quotes above, with exception to Bach’s, are very easily interpreted. However, the rights of which we all have, aren’t the rights all of us have. We must find the highest right we know, which could only mean that our happiness is limited by our own resistance. Interesting way of saying it.

I learned a lot tonight. It’s amazing how much you can learn in a short period of time, and how much things can change. Sometimes, it’s scary, but for the most part, anticipating change makes it a bit easier and a little more worthwhile than you anticipated. There’s always an “up” side to the “down” side: you cannot go any direction but up. That is most definitely true in this case, and I’m already headed that way.

I know that sometimes I don’t act like I appreciate what I am given, and it’s true. Sometimes, I don’t. But I realize what I have and who I have in my life soon enough, and that makes everything a lot better for me. I have myself, most importantly, and the more I give to myself, the more I can share with everyone else. Every day isn’t just mine or yours. Sometimes, we have to share it. Thankfully, I’ll have no problem with that, because I know that I have an equal chance of making it my day just as someone else has the chance to make it theirs.

It’s time to stop bitching and start sucking it up. (Credit for that quote goes to the lovely Jose :)) It’s time to get it together. It’s time to get where we want, and what we want, because we want it, dammit! It’s time for change, and change is here, it is now, and it’s waiting for you. And me. But I’m going with it. I’m going to stop bitching now.

Care to join me?

—

P.S. As for everyone else who is my friend, don’t think you go unappreciated, either. You all are important because you are all in my life, no matter how involved you may be in when it comes to my more personal issues. As long as you are here, that’s what counts.

One thing I have a habit of doing is going over what’s happened in the past, not because I enjoy living in it, but because I see the value of it. Short and sweet, this is all.

Isn’t that lovely? I think it’s lovely. Coming up next, an actual entry, another series.