The continuing saga of The Three Little Pigs, an effort at satire based upon a true account.

The first little pig, Lies to Himself, is a good place to start, as he was the patriarch. He was divorced from Machochism’s mother for many years and lived a life of depressed over-indulgence. It was difficult to tell if he was dispirited or simply lethargic from the nicotine from the three packs of cigarettes he smoked every day and the greasy food he masticated every three to four hours. He need for nicotine was greater than his need for air. He would reach for pack after pack after pack; ripping open each one with thick fingers, grabbing each one out to stick between trembling lips, bringing each one down to the filter. Let me repeat. Down to the filter. And when the packs were emptied, he turn on them like a cheating lover, leaving the empty package and the tiny filters abandoned in and beside overburdened ashtrays. His desire for food was as gluttonous as his passion for cigarettes. It went beyond hunger and bordered on a quest for something to bring to his life that might trigger pleasure endorphins. But what he cooked for himself, or bought from the fast-food drive-thru window, apparently couldn’t find that trigger so Lies to Himself settled in to unconsciously consume what was before him. At times, he seemed unaware he was eating. Large quantities of greasy chicken wings, pastas, and stews accompanied by bread and butter would be zapped in the microwave and brought to an Igloo cooler that served as his coffee table in front of his sixteen inch television set so he could watch ballgames on multiple channels while he mindlessly consumed the calories before him. Dessert was pie, cake, cupcakes, and cigarettes.

It was a fact that he had concerns for his health. He lamented constantly that he could not see his feet or if his belt was buckled or his zipper fully zipped. He was very worried about the gray and black phlegm he coughed up continuously from vicious paroxysms but neither this nor his immense weight motivated him to alter his behavior. When he walked, the plywood under the linoleum groaned. When he sat, the risk of breaking furniture was very real. In his bedroom, his queen-sized mattress had one ditch in the middle where he slept and one treadmill unusable because it was covered with high blood pressure pamphlets, heart problem pamphlets, lung cancer pamphlets, and exercise program pamphlets. They had dust on them.

Lies to Himself abused his mind by gazing at uncensored websites on the Internet that had photos of vibrant young ladies. He could spend several hours there after calling in to work saying he would be in “after lunch.” That he could do this and not be fired only proved that he had managed over the years to creat a special niche for himself within a company that was in and of itself a vendor for a specialized service. It set an example for the younger little pigs to wish they had, by their early twenties, found a special niche for themselves whereby they could emulate their father/uncle.

So Lies to Himself would sit and peruse these sites and eat and smoke. In the light of his computer screen, his flesh appeared pasty white with florescent little blue veins spreading their spidery tendrils across his cheeks and nose like an otherworldly roadmap to a stroke. The rolls of excess skin around his neck, arms, and stomach surely carried fat cells had been forced to store more coagulating grease than they had ever thought possible therefore gravity pulled them down towards the floor where he would end up if he didn’t purchase a sturdier chair. The thought of his stomach, kidneys, heart, and all the other organs that were forced to swim in the cumulative oil and grease of his lifetime gave one pause as he shoved fistful after fistful of fries as a between meals snack into his mouth.

As is often the case, it was unclear whether food was his addiction or replacement for something else or if the nicotine from the cigarettes blocked the release of insulin. If this was the case then it was causing excessive blood glucose to be released into his blood stream resulting in hyperglycemia making him feel hungry all the time. This was a little factoid made known by the people writing for the anti-cigarette sites who did all the research and then marketed the information for the benefit of all who smoked, needed reasons to quit smoking, and/or who never smoked and dearly wanted to slam their frenemy with death facts. Whatever the reason, be it tobacco addiction or gratification issues, Lies to Himself could eat an amazing amount of food stretched out over an amazingly long day. He would eat while he cooked, eat after he cook, eat snacks all day, eat supper, and then within an hour, reheat the leftovers and eat again. He ate in his car while he drove and took food with him to bed each night. There were times he wouldn’t seem to know if he should eat or smoke so he would do both. The right hand would push the food into his mouth and after he swallowed, the left would bring the cigarette to his lips for a long drawn out hit off the slender white stick filled with, well, you know. It was a sad little factoid that Lies to Himself was never satisfied. Nothing tasted good, nothing at all, and it made him sad.

The odd thing was that Lies to Himself tried to lie to everyone around him who cared about his health. They would relate facts about cigarettes and he would rail against the people who tried to deprive of the pleasure tobacco brought him. His cigarette diatribes were famous. He claimed, “They've never proven that second hand smoke is harmful. They’ve never proven it. It's just smoke. Nothing but smoke. I don't know why people get so upset about it. Yeah, it gets in clothing and makes everything smell but that’s just the smoke that’s bad. Those people should hold their breath if it bothers them. And if it is harmful then I'm only killing myself.” He was fascinating to listen to as he chained smoked and laughed at all the “stupid people who want to take away our God-given right to smoke.” Yet for all his aggressive oratory to make his point, he refused to see that his Internet searches for images of cancer-riddled lungs and all the pamphlets shoved at him as he left the doctor’s office was proof that he was doing himself great harm, and suspected it. And that he was setting an example to his son by this slow commitment to suicide.

It was when he closed his eyes that Lies to Himself’s ill health came startlingly to light. It was a time when even the coldest of casual observers could possibly feel sorry for him. The casual abuse of himself throughout his whole life showed in his complexion, his raspy breathing, his coughing, and his pulse that beat so fast while he rested.

Life can be so cruel, so harsh. People can turn on you in a heartbeat and there are times when you are your only friend. You are the only one who can see to your own best interests. It is not a sin to be knocked down into the dirt but to put yourself there by over-eating and chain-smoking, then complain about your poor health, then slap at the hands that offer help, seems wrong. It was definitely confusing to the other two little pigs who looked up to him as an example of what a man should and could br. They were following him down the self-destructive path of hating their jobs, choking on the haze of nicotine bliss, creating his own pigsty’s, and most of all believing they could not improve their situation, that nothing was their fault, and that life should be kinder to them.