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I just found a great video about Henri VIII’s terrifying 5000 calorie-a-day-diet.

Aside from eating an insane amount of food overall, he also, as royalty did in that day, ate insane amounts of white bread and drank sugared wine. No wonder the guy was so fat.

(The other part of his liquid intake comprised of ale, which of course isn’t a very healthy way to go, either.)

Henry VIII also didn’t eat vegetables: the Tudor family didn’t go for that kind of thing, believing they were indigestible.

If Henry VIII had cut out the sugar and white flour and had eaten that nasty peasant food called “vegetables” instead, he probably wouldn’t have been able to stuff himself like he did. Sugar/white flour tends to mess up your appetite, making you feel hungry when you shouldn’t. And not only does it mess up your appetite, it just plain messes you up.

Having watched the first four episodes of V, I feel like writing an entry about it.

First of all, I will say that the series isn’t too bad. It could be better, but it’s still enjoyable.

Secondly, I must say I’m a bit bemused and disappointed by its pandering to right-wing conspiracy theorists.

We find out that the Visitors (often called “V’s” for short, which sounds retarded – my guess is that the producers decided that the audience was so stupid it couldn’t figure out that V stood for visitor on their own) are responsible for “unnecessary wars” and whatnot. Turns out they’ve been infiltrating our politics for eons, manipulating us to the point we’d be ripe for the picking.

This is where the show panders to those who can’t cope without scapegoats. They can’t grasp that humanity’s problems might have something to do with the fact that humans are rather shortsighted and often stupid creatures, but must instead point the blame at some unseen force manipulating things from behind the scenes.

The show also panders to the anti-vaxxers: we find out that the Visitors are slipping something horrible into our flu vaccine. Oh, yay. (Now, for anyone who actually believes that flu vaccines are all a plot to kill our innocent chilluns, I have a question: if the government really wants to decrease the number of children, why don’t they stop making children tax-deductible? Why don’t they make us pay for our children, like Australia does?)

There are so many cases where the show doesn’t even try to disguise its anti-Obama criticisms, its ridiculous. Universal heathcare? It just means someone’s buttering us up for eating later.

Also, I can’t end this without a paragraph about Tyler. Tyler started off as a good character, but sometimes I think he’s being written as how adults think teenagers act, rather than how they actually act. In the fourth episode, Tyler corners his mother to talk about one of his many problems. Mom’s phone rings, but she decides to be nice and tells Tyler she’ll ignore the phone this once. Tyler tells her to go ahead and answer it, so she does, promising Tyler she’ll get off the phone ASAP. Then, for indiscernible reasons, as soon as she puts the phone to her ear, Tyler bolts out the door, runs tot he Visitors, and complains that he can’t talk to his mother. What the frell?

Even so, the show’s not bad. I just hope it’ll stop pandering to the right-wing conspiracy theorists so much in the future.