Phat

By David Belisle

It's 2020. America has gone skinny. It's a crime to be obese. Mississippi Governor Billy Bob Bishop and his state are playing catch-up, as the last state to tighten its citizens' belts. Bishop takes the media on a tour of the Grimes Ketchup plant ... where we see a mysterious worker on the production line put a message into a ketchup bottle.

Harold "Ice Pick" Beeston, a 280-lb white man and budding rapper is busted for stealing ice cream from a baby. He's put in a jail cell with David "Jelly Roll" Jellison, the former governor of Mississippi who is black. Jelly Roll landed in jail after falling prey - like many fat voters - to a state-wide, all-you-can-eat fried chicken special orchestrated by his opponent Bishop on voting day ... when the anti-fat legislation passed.

While in jail, Ice Pick, finds the message in the ketchup bottle. It warns against eating the ketchup and is signed by "Long Neck". Ice Pick shares it with Jelly Roll. They decide it's the ketchup which is controlling their hunger. They decide to escape and alert the remaining fat people in Mississippi. They hijack an Evil Knievel motorcycle-jumping exhibition and barely make it over the prison wall with their immense girth.

Once safe, they head for Jelly Roll's old haunt in Hattiesburg to look up an old friend, Rufus Braintree, 75, at the Camptown Court trailer park. Rufus is a retired trucker who still has an 18-wheeler parked outside. The trio rename the trailer park "Home of the Lunch Davidians" and paint a logo for the "Macon Bacon Lines" on Rufus' truck. They get the word out on the internet - in code - that they're going to be picking up fatties in hiding across the southern states to bring to the trailer park compound.

But the Pork Patrol's Sheriff Snodgrass and his lackey, Ned Logan decipher the internet message and prepare for the triple-extra-large human trafficking ring. But to no avail. The fatties either jump out of the truck and squish the two officers or act as tire blocks so the cop car can't move. A home-made video beams the S.O.S. - Sudden Obesity Siege - to the nation and U.S. President Benton yells at Governor Bishop and sends in the special F.D.A. forces.

The F.D.A. supervisor, William Hardman, has special agent Drew A. Blanke, 30, skinny and clean-cut, wear a fake fat costume and infiltrate the trailer park to act as a mole. Once inside however, Blanke – who already has a girlfriend – falls in love with one of the overweight arrivals, Gloria Biggs. Ice Pick takes a liking to Gloria as well, increasing tensions. Blanke's cover is blown, but when Jelly Roll shows him the evidence, Blanke agrees to help the fatties get to the bottom of the ketchup scandal.

Blanke swaps clothes with a pizza delivery guy, sneaks out of the trailer court and into the Grimes Ketchup plant to meet "Long Neck". He and Long Neck are captured. Hardman arranges a march for the fatties cause ... as a ruse to get them out of the compound. Hardman finds Blanke's clothes and fears the worst – that he’s been eaten. Blanke's captors however, force him to participate in a granola bar heist. Hardman finds Blanke and summarily dismisses him.

Hardman rounds up all the fatties immediately following Jelly Roll's "I Have Ice Cream" speech, an extra-calorie spoof of Martin Luther King's famous words.

Are the Lunch Davidians going to go hungry? Will America be 100% Fat-Free?

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Belisle
• Release date: Aug 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311064103

David Belisle

Dave Belisle is a Vietnam War draft dodger ... his mother escorting him north of the border at the tender age of 8. He's returned to Calgary -- not as a Stampede side show -- but to transform that Rocky Mountain air into raucous laughter ... give or take a foothill. There's no armistice on anecdotes, no flat tire in satire ... and your busted funny bone IS covered by Canadian health care.

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