Your Wednesday Riddle, from Webriddles: You are a bus driver. At the first stop, 4 people get on, including an old grandmother and her kids. At the second stop, 8 people get on, one with two big bags of groceries, and a young man with a new puppy, and three people get off. At the third stop, 2 people get off, and five more get on. At the fourth spot, three people get on, and two people get off, including the old grandmother and her kids. At the last stop, everyone gets off. The question is: What color are the bus driver’s eyes?
     Highlight for the answer: Since the riddle starts out by saying you are the bus driver, the answer would be the color of your own eyes.

     Junk Food Tax — A TAX on junk food, subsidies for fresh food and a diet program for every Australian with a wide waistline are the latest cures for our obesity crisis recommended by experts.
     We have two TVs at the restaurant, one on the far wall, and one on the wall over the coffee counter. The one by the coffee counter is generally turned to CNN. The coffee counter is also where the cash register sits, and so, I spend a lot of time up there. I get to see a lot of CNN. Unfortunately, I’m usually running back and forth doing things, so I never see all of a news story. If I can stand there for a moment, then it’s generally too loud in the restaurant to hear the whole story. So, even though I spend nine hours a day under a TV showing CNN, I only ever catch half the news of the day. Heh.
     So, Monday, I heard a blurb on CNN — I think Larry King was interviewing some guy, who was going on about taxing junk food in the US. I went Googling for some information about it, but damned if I can find anything now. The link up there is about an initiative in Australia, taxing junk food and so forth, but apparently, there’s a group lobbying to do something similar in the US. Although, I think the guy on CNN was rattling on about just taxing pop and other unnaturally sugary beverages. (IE, natural apple juice wouldn’t be taxed, because although it’s very high in sugar, it’s a natural sugar, but, say, Mountain Dew would be.)
     
     So. We’re fat. “Obesity epidemic”, and all that, here in the States. How do we fix that? Ooo! Ooo! Pick me! I know! Let’s tax junk food and pop!
     What the hell. How about, instead, we all except some personal responsibility, and cut back on the couch potato-ing and scarfing down junk food? The government is not my parents. I don’t need the government punishing me for my eating habits. I’m an adult; I can be responsible for my own crappy eating habits.
     A large part of the problem in America — and possibly the rest of the world, although, having never really visited the rest of the world, I’m in no position to comment about it — is a distinct lack of personal responsibility. You are responsible for your life and your health, you and no other, utterly regardless of circumstances. Everything in your life is directly controlled by you. If you’re fat, then there’s no one to blame for that but you, regardless of genetics, upbringing, society, commercials, etc. (With the possible exception of some health and/or mental complications.) If you’re an average, healthy adult, you’ve got no excuse for being chubtastic other than yourself.
     For example: I currently weigh about 155 lbs, and it’s mostly all hanging off my gut. My ass has gotten somewhat wider, but mostly, all gut. Who’s to blame for that? Me. I sit on my ass all morning playing on the computer and bitching at my website, while scarfing sugary breakfast cereals, and following up at work with greasy foods and french fries. And dessert. Plenty of candy and cookies and cake and so forth. And for filler? Potato chips and crap. And then I get home and sit on my slowly widening ass some more. And bitch about it.
     So, the obvious solution to my problem is for the government to charge me more for my potato chips. Or, instead, I could just stop eating so much of them and get off my lazy ass.
     And all of our lives are like that. We seem to have fallen into the rut of thinking that we should be taken care of. We seem to think that we should be given everything, or helped out, or excused, because of this, that, or the other thing. We lack personal responsibility. There’s a saying: “God helps those who help themselves.” I think we need to pick up the same attitude, here! There is no problem in my life that I am not directly responsible for. Therefore, if I want a particular problem solved, then I should get off my ass and get to work on it! Even if I didn’t cause the problem my own self, then I am certainly responsible for how I react to it and deal with it.

Playing the Popularity Game:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Ranting, Wednesday Riddles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.