FatLand Pizza Days

One of the first restaurants to go up on one of the main arteries of FatLand City, as it is now called, was a pizza place/casual Italian restaurant. In six months there were three more pizza places within eight blocks. In a year, there were twelve. Two closed a few months after. Ten remained.

Their signs were calculated to draw customers from their competition. They held sales, lunchtime specials, Super Sundays, Special Saturdays, held contests, held dances, had outdoor concerts.

One day, when all ten pizza places/restaurants were plugging their specials and contests, Margaret Clancy, the owner of the first and best known FatLand newspaper, observed that instead of competing against each other all the time, they might instead sponsor a Pizza Days festival in which they all served their best, had eating contests and tasting events and of course a few concerts.

It didn't take long for the restaurant owners and staff to agree that this festival would benefit all of them and bring welcome publicity.

And that is how FatLand Pizza Days got started...

Coming of age stories from FatLand

Now there are coming of age stories coming out of FatLand!

How wonderful it is, to see the writings of young people who were born and/or grew up here.

Some of them refer to the sheltered, almost dreamy quality of life here. Some of them refer to sneaking views and sneaking off the The Other Side to see what life was like there.

A few of them refer to the difficulties of growing up as thin or as transgendered in FatLand. Unfortunately even a land as egalitarian and tolerant as FatLand cannot escape the consequences of problems experienced by those who are different in some way.

Some of them talk about the wonderful food. Some of them discuss the ease with which they were able to stay up all night.  Some of them voice appreciation of the FatLand employment counselors and FatLand's economic system. Some talk about the unique FatLand games they enjoyed.

But all of them adore the scenery and the sunsets.

Backlash

After FatLand and The Other Side/USA normalized relations, a small but vocal group started taking out ads in online blogs and news media. The ads said, "Diversity is good, but health is better." They showed a fat woman who seemingly was having difficulty walking to her car from a store and a slim woman dancing in a club.

When FatLanders learned of the ads, they complained to their bodies of governance which then authorized the creation of ads which showed two women -one fat, one slim- dancing side by side. Both were dancing quite well. The ad read:  The only thing body size tells you is body size. Anything else is your own prejudice at work.

The organization which sponsored the "Diversity is good, health is better" ads pulled them.

Their ads were paid for mostly by your friend and mine, Winston Stark. Why? Always an interesting question when it comes to Stark. Perhaps he was trying to drum up business for CompleteFitness,  which wasn't doing too well. Perhaps he was just trying to stir up trouble.

As usual.