In high school my classmates and I - mostly Brian Kolesar - had a phrase we liked to throw around in AP English while we mocked the curriculum: "Symbolism isn't real." And it's true, of course. Symbolism is the shit that you make up around what is actually happening. Maybe it was the author's intent, may it wasn't, who the fuck knows. Personally, I hardly give a fuck about who the author is. I'm not talking to the author, I'm reading a book. And I'll put myself into that disbelief-suspension state of mind long enough to pretend that the bullshit you wrote is real, but that's as far as I'm willing to bend my perception of reality. I'm not going to start thinking that maybe shit that you tried to insinuate is real.

Symbolism is a real problem, though. Because we try to make it real. There are two categories of message with which I agree at different times. There's an sentiment that we all feel every once in a while - that those of us in economically thriving parts of the world are lazy fat fucks. And it's true, of course. We forget and don't appreciate our conveniences, et cetera, all the sins of the Western World, and we sit on our asses eating corn-based packaged foods playing Skyrim. While I'm not thinking about that, or about anything at all, just herping and derping around The Facebook, someone shares this little propaganda poster. A fat girl, captioned something about body image and everyone being beautiful and you shouldn't be a dick to people. And that's true too. Some people are pretty fat and whatever, and more of them than maybe you realize are actually pretty hot, and you definitely shouldn't be a dick to people.

So it seems like we've hit some sort of paradox here but it's only a problem if you make the mistake of listening to your AP English teachers. Fat people aren't a symbol of sloth. EVEN THOUGH it's true that overwhelming lazy-fat-fuck mentality is running rampant through this culture, and has had an empirical effect of raising bodily masses and such, which is probably on the whole a bad thing, and people therefore USE fat to symbolize sloth, that usage doesn't make symbolism real. Well, it's still real in the sense that it describes how people think. But we all know, although often neglect to admit, that people's thoughts are largely bullshit. They don't know how to think well. They think about SYMBOLISM, for god's sake, and symbolism isn't even real.

When a fat guy walks into a bar, that isn't a joke setup. It's just some guy.