{"id":40139,"date":"2011-06-01T02:34:12","date_gmt":"2011-06-01T06:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/40139\/obese-man-bleeds-campus-ireland\/"},"modified":"2011-06-01T02:34:12","modified_gmt":"2011-06-01T06:34:12","slug":"obese-man-bleeds-campus-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/40139\/obese-man-bleeds-campus-ireland\/","title":{"rendered":"The Obese Man Bleeds on the Campus of Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some random stuff that\u2019s been happening lately.\u00a0 The title was just an attempt to pull together in a single sentence the three themes below.<\/h2>\n

* * *<\/p>\n


\n\"\"Last week, I was out and about and quite hungry, so I went to wonderful Asian Buffet place in Lynnwood for lunch.\u00a0 This place is AWESOME and not a bad value.\u00a0 For $8.50, you get unlimited access to wide variety of Asian delicacies ranging from soups, fried yummies, sushi, Korean BBQ, crab legs, all the mainstream Chinese dishes and of course, the frozen yogurt machine at the end of the feast.\u00a0 I probably consume 3 or 4 thousand calories when I hit the Asian buffet.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I was struck last week by a glimpse of myself in the future, and was some disturbed by what I saw.\u00a0 There, at the table next to me was a fairly obese man chowing down on an overflowing plate full of nothing but Korean BBQ ribs.\u00a0 I\u2019m not exactly svelte, but my immediate reaction might be one that anyone would have seeing an obese person at an all-you-can-eat establishment, indulging his gluttony with abandon.\u00a0 I wondered if the owners of the establishment dreaded seeing him walk in the door.\u00a0 A buffet is in some ways, a competition when it you look at it from a bottom line perspective.\u00a0 Can the place make a profit offering you all the food you want for $8?\u00a0 That depends on how much, and what, you eat.\u00a0 This guy was going for the most expensive meat and consuming huge quantities of it.\u00a0 He was \u201cwinning\u201d.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"As I watched him out of the corner of my eye, I contemplated our different approaches to the buffet dining experience.\u00a0 Me, I\u2019ll load up my plate with a little bit of everything.\u00a0 I will like some things more than others, but the variety and contrasts in flavors is part of the experience, IMHO.\u00a0 This man, he had founf the one thing he liked more than anything else and was maximizing his enjoyment of it.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

He was eating somewhat distractedly, as all his attention on the science fiction paperback that he held in his non-rib-consuming hand.\u00a0 It looked as if he had not showered that day and he was wearing flip flops.\u00a0 He was alone.\u00a0 Large patches of psoriasis covered his elbows and forearms, complete with red splotches of fresh scabs where he had picked at the dense matting of grayish, dead skin cells.\u00a0 He looked to be in his early 50\u2019s.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"I was musing over how he was so intent on his book that he did not notice me staring at him.\u00a0 Laughing at the fat guy at the buffet.\u00a0 I stretched.\u00a0 My back hurt a bit.\u00a0 It\u2019s been hurting a bit more than in the past, and I would be blind if I did not recognize that was due to the weight I\u2019ve gained.\u00a0 I\u2019m like 30 pounds heavier than I was a few years back.\u00a0 I stopped staring at the guy and went back to reading my book, which is really good and was really into.\u00a0 I reached down to scratch through my jeans the psoriasis patches on my legs.\u00a0 A small shower of dead skin cells powdered the industrial carpet at my feet as I sat there, alone.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Then it hit me.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

OMG!\u00a0 That guy\u2026 the one I was deriding in my head\u2026 that is ME in about ten years and 30 more pounds!\u00a0 In many ways, that is me now!\u00a0 Fat, alone, diseased, dulling my pain through an obsession with genre literature\u2026 <\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>
\nI wish there was a happy ending to this anecdote.\u00a0 I wish I could say that the obese guy at the next table continued to eat nothing more than Korean ribs, because that might mean he was actually on the Atkins diet and was eating nothing but protein to lose weight (his next plate was loads of pot stickers and General Tso\u2019s chicken)\u2026 as for me, my happy ending is still being written, but it is not often one gets to look in the mirror so profoundly while looking at someone else. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n


\nThere was a stabbing today at my school,\u00a0 Edmonds Community College. <\/span><\/span>
\n<\/object><\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/p>\n

GOLDANGIT! I can’t get the local news coverage to embed properly here on this platform.\u00a0 Here, just click this <\/a>to open the video in a new window. <\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

OMG!\u00a0 Did you see me?<\/strong> I was on the news! That was me riding my bicycle at 1:42, talking to the two really cute girls in my morning class. I’ve never been on TV in my life and now TWICE in two weeks! <\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/p>\n

If I had not been 20 minutes late to campus due to my internet addiction, I would have seen the whole thing go down.\u00a0 See, it took place just feet away from the smoking section adjacent to the site of morning class.\u00a0 Eye witnesses were still on hand even with my tardiness.\u00a0 The victim of the assault came, bleeding, pleading for help to my fellow nicotine addicts.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The word is that it was an attempted robbery gone bad.\u00a0 Student held up at knife point on campus at 9:20 AM\u2026In the bathroom.\u00a0 Damn.\u00a0 Freaky bad.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I think I am addicted to the internet because I woke up this morning with plenty of time to get ready and get to the bus on schedule.\u00a0 In fact, I had more than enough time, so I settled in to read and respond to a few blogs before class.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t pay attention to the clock and noticed the time 5 minutes too late.\u00a0 This morning was not the first time this has happened this quarter.\u00a0 See, one of the hallmarks of an addiction is that you continue with the harmful behavior even when it has negative impacts on your life.\u00a0 I was probably late to class 20% of the time this quarter.\u00a0 Mind you, I am still on track to maintain a 3.9 GPA, but it still bugs me being late.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t get away with this if it were, say, a job. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

As far as class goes, I am somewhat nostalgic as I wind down the last two weeks in my one-year hiatus from the world of work.\u00a0 It\u2019s time to present final projects and I am going all out.\u00a0 Everyone in class was like, \u201cWow, you made that video?\u201d when I showed them all the following as the multi-media piece in my presentation for my working with diversity class tonight.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As I blogged about earlier, the assignment was a Personal Cultural Reflection.\u00a0 I chose to read an excerpt from my grandfather\u2019s book about his ancestors (note: it is not entirely historically accurate, but it was still easy and fun to make)\u2026 a bit of the history of the Irish people\u2026<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/span><\/object><\/p>\n

School has given me plenty to blog about this year, both here and previously on MySpace.\u00a0 I promise you that whatever I get this summer, there will plenty to blog about originating there as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some random stuff that\u2019s been happening lately.\u00a0 The title was just an attempt to pull together in a single sentence the three themes below. * * * Last week, I was out and about and quite hungry, so I went to wonderful Asian Buffet place in Lynnwood for lunch.\u00a0 This place is AWESOME and not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,10,26],"tags":[3538,3539,3536,3520,81,3540,3537,3541,1432,192],"class_list":["post-40139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cooking","category-life","category-news","tag-buffet","tag-china-king","tag-edcc-stabbing","tag-ireland","tag-joko","tag-korean-ribs","tag-lynnwood","tag-obesity","tag-police","tag-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}