If you happened to have read Playboy, or at least looked at the pictures, from the late-seventies and into the nineteen nineties, as I did, then you would have experienced a gradual revealing of the female anatomy. Eventually revealed was the Holy Grail for well-adjusted male heterosexuals at least—ladies and gentleman, may we finally present--- the female “Punani.” You knew it was fated, it had to be seen; there was no where else to go in the process, but still before actually seeing it with your own eyes part of you wondered, “Can they really take it to that extreme?” ‘Is this really where we are headed?” Today that innocent outlook seems quaint and naïve.

Recently while skipping poker tournaments in the happening town of Pendleton, Oregon I found myself viewing an infomercial which included, in a sense, the Holy Grail of health and fitness commercial product scenes.

You can tell a lot about a society by the commercials that are crafted to appeal to them. From a fitness standpoint it would seem that ideally we desire a program that is very short, can be done without hardly any attention or any commitment, and if possible we can lie down and eat while we perform it. My Fellow Fatty Americans—your fitness product is here-- or at least the infomercial is.

It’s a long, literally cheesy commercial and you need to sit through a lot of it to get to the money shot. Technically it’s not an actual money shot but it’s as close to climax as we’ve seen so far and the bar of piggish sloth has been lowered to a new BMI high.

The product is an electrical abdominal-stimulating belt to be worn around the fatty’s waist. It sends electrical shocks designed to produce muscle contraction and then without effort, and that's the key selling point, the wearer develops a thinner waist and six-pack abs. Not only that, the commercial goes on, but it is also better than doing fifty crunches, better than eating responsibly, and less intrusive than nearly everything. We get a series of testimonials reciting all the tiresome and annoying things which “naturally” led one to quit in the past. For example, the incredibly burdensome task of occasionally having to change one’s clothes is brought up. Problem solved!

Eventually we get to a scene that addresses all of these “reasons” why former fitness programs have failed them and we see a quite content, recently shaved down, thirty-something male, wearing his belt having only unbuttoned the shirt he woke up in-- none of that strenuous clothes changing for him. He is lying on a couch, watching television. Now they pan down for the money shot-- H is feet are up and crossed, lying on a table which is covered with... food! There is a bowl of corn chips, a bowl of salsa, and a bowl of creamy, cheesy dip. His stomach is lean, he’s ready to eat, rest, kick back and "exercise". Hopefully the belt is both soda and dip resistant.

We’ve already tackled that burdensome issue of self-mobility with those lovely personal wheel chairs many Americans will eventually eat themselves into and now that this product solves the nasty dilemma of how to eat, rest, and exercise at the same time I’m left wondering what the next big “life-improvement product” we need to invent will be.

As delusional and lazy as we are as a species I just don’t think we can actually pretend that we need to find a way to make it less strenuous to pile food in our mouths. So a lazy-Susan type hat or face prodcut is out, for now. We already have a booming colonic industry based on how much work it is to sit down and take a crap on one’s own. So my guess is that the next frontier in American “health and fitness” products has to be something to address the vast effort it takes to chew all the crap we jam down the top end.

Maybe we could just wrap that belly belt around our heads and use the electrical impulses to make our jaw muscles effortlessly fire. We could make it so that the face was open so we could continue to watch television and eat and then maybe hook a vacuum cleaner hose up our asses so we could “cleanse” at the same time. I think I am on to something.

This is absurd, right? It'll never happen. We are not really that lazy, desperate and dumb are we?

I used to think the same thing about "The Gold Kit."

Thanks for reading.