My Shifting Autumnal Gorge

There are signs all around us and I have a new one. Global warming is a fact my friends. It's a factoid. Book it. Obviously, the rising global temperatures, the melting poles, polar bears dying of exhaustion as they have to swim for miles and miles before they can find an ice pack to rest on, these are signs. As is the fact that a bald man hasn't worn his winter hat once this year, and it's Christmas. If all that wasn't enough, I just began my autumnal gorge. Sad but true.

I always thought it was curious. I'd wake from slumber like its any old day and I'm still a rational three square meals type of guy. However, it isn't and I'm not. Like a dog shoveling dirt on a hot steamer he just clipped, it has to be instinctual, a matter of survival. While I'm rummaging through the fridge like a bum in a restaurant dumpster, I understand that my steady stream of caloric intake will remain steady and I can go ahead and push myself away from the frightened appliance. Yet, I can't halt the intake.

I’m like an ape and hors d'oeuvres party, minus some of the hair. I have dessert and dessert-breakfast, then a mid-morning snack. I take a lunch break and am thinking only of my next meal immediately after unbuckling my belt, at work. Dinner is more like a food-filibuster then a meal with the only thing standing between my mouth and more consumption is sleep and/or a shit. And, oh man, are those things healthy.

It may very well be confined to areas with harsh winters. I've had a few confabs with those possessed by the affliction and they've confirmed it's real. Aside from ogling breasts, I can't think of any other truly instinctual actions in which I partake and over which I have no control. I'll eat until my back hurts and I can't find a comfortable position to sit in and that is when I'll crack open the cookies. I'll smack my gut aghast at the lengthy flab-reverberation and then I'll pull out the squeeze cheese.

It's seasonal since there is the reverse affect when the weather warms. It just isn't as sudden or dramatic. It's the seasonality that has me thinking. I remember the days when the autumnal gorge came at the fall/winter transition. As the last leaf fell from the last tree with a leaf, I would start pudding-pounding like a fat sixth grader. It was then that McDonald's once again became a viable dining option. It was then that I could convince myself of a french-fry's nutritional value. It was then that the idea of lettuce or vegetables became repulsive without the latherability of butter or rich cream based toppings. It was then that words like rich cream based toppings caused delicious imagery and leaked saliva from my glands.

Then was before who-knows-how-many more millions of cubic centi-feet-meters of fossil-fuels have been burned into our atmosphere. Then was once in early November. Now the autumnal gorge doesn’t fatten me until late December and it’s accompanied by fifty degree winter days. Both are oddly enjoyable. A fifty degree winter day rings as eerie on my internal register. An entire box of chocolate donuts is just plain wrong. Still they’re sinfully enjoyable even though I’m clearly borrowing upfront to repay with interest on the backend.

I once listened to a futurist discuss the fact that the internet has enabled instant access to so much information that it's accelerating our evolution exponentially. Because of this, in the near future, humans will evolve during their own lifetimes. The same must be true for global warming. The compounding of effects have shifted the climates just enough so the cold weather hits slightly later nudging my annual gullet stuffing a little further down on the calendar. I’m making the claim that it’s the first tangible affect global warming has had on me personally. Me and the polar bears are feeling it. Anyone else?