So Sue Me

Chicken McNuggets - six of them make a nice snack. Ten of them make a tasty lunch. Seven thousand of them MAKE YOU A FATASS!

Unless you've spent the last few months deep below the surface of the Earth in your secret lair perfecting your doomsday device with which you will enslave all of mankind, you've probably heard about the big fat fatties whose lardsack children are so overflowingly obese that they are suing McDonalds in a big (ha ha... "big," get it? It's funny because they're fat) class action suit. Before I get too far into this particular case, let me just say that this is an article about frivolous lawsuits, not mocking the waist-deprived. Personally, I'm not the sort of person who would make fun of someone else for being a waddling blubber depository. Wait a minute, yes I am. In fact, that's precisely the sort of person I am. If you don't like it, you can just cry into your next box of Ho-Ho's, Fatty Arbuckle.

See, here's what really burns my grits about this particular legal debacle: there really isn't any sort of crime involved. McDonalds didn't break any laws by selling burgers to these people, and we're talking about a lot of burgers, here. I'll be the first to admit I was not an active child. I only really got up when I was forced to move to another room. Once I got a chair with wheels, my standing days were basically over. I wasn't exercising and I ate at McDonalds pretty regularly, as I still do. These lawsuit-bound kids weigh twice what I did at their age, probably because they are much more fat. Children do not just balloon up like that on a few Happy Meals; you'd probably have to inject barbeque sauce directly into their veins for that effect. So what this lawsuit is doing is basically exposing these roly-poly porkers to worldwide ridicule, hoping they can steal a dime from a giant corporation. The parents were so caught up in their drive for easy money that they forgot news only happens in America, not Australia (which is country from where I first read about this lawsuit). Nothing worthwhile has gone on in another country since World War II. As such, they have plenty of space in their newspapers and periodicals to comment on what's going on in the States. Do you have any idea how far away Australia is? Neither do I, but I'm fairly sure I can't see it from here.

Would you give this man your money? Of course not. He's a painting.

Essentially, all that this lawsuit against McDonalds is doing is forcing the plaintiffs into a corner. Either the parents have to admit that they are greedy enough to give their kids complexes that will last them their entire lives - and let's face it, they're already fat creatures, they don't need more problems - or they can face a lengthy trial during which they will have to defend turning their children into jiggling dynamos by stuffing festering beef patties down their bejowled pudding-holes on an hourly basis. But it gets better! They not only have to own up to being absolutely terrible parents, they have to - have to - support their case by announcing that they are the stupidest people in America. It is an absolute fucking miracle of metabolism that I'm not a bloated land-whale considering the kind of crap that I put in my body, and I've known that since I was young. You would have to be cork-on-the-fork retarded to possibly get away with claiming that you thought McDonalds' food is healthy in any possible way whatsoever.

It's not like they ate and ate and ate and stayed thin the whole time, then one day exploded into chin-toting butterchubs out of the blue. Becoming wider than you are tall is a long and arduous process. Anyone living in a moderately affluent nation during the past hundred years would think that they need to change their diet the moment they started outweighing many major national landmarks. If the parents are honestly going to say they didn't know that eating large quantities of greasy fried food on a daily basis is bad for you, then they should have their kids taken away from them (by forklift), as they are obviously unfit to be in any way responsible for the life of another human being. Frankly, the kids don't get off much easier. They're not about to get control of whatever money this lawsuit might generate for their families. The best they can hope for is a bigger allowance to blow on imitation fudge and various meat drippings. In exchange, they have to take the witness stand to announce to the world, "I'm grotesquely fat and stupid - both at the same time, and at such a young age!"

To clarify, the following are examples of legitimate reasons to sue McDonalds:

1. Your Big Mac contained large quantities of arsenic, in the sense that there was an actual bottle marked "arsenic" between the top and middle buns.
2. The Hamburglar stole your burger, then robbed your house and raped your kids.
3. Ronald McDonald leapt out of the drive-thru window, shoved a wad of fries in your mouth as a gag, pulled you out of your vehicle, then used said vehicle to run over your family.
4. Chicken McHerpes.

If your reason isn't on the list, chances are you're just being a jackass. Just shut up and go have another double quarter pounder, Jelly Belly.

Here, we see the victims of a terrible disease - ebola. By coincidence, they're shopping.

The worst thing about the Fatasses vs. McDonalds case is that it is a major continuation of a terrible precedent. The courts are horribly overcrowded because too many of us are getting horribly lazy. We can't bog down the judicial system any further with cases that are based on pure greed and unadulterated stupidity. Despite this, scads of people make bushels of money every year by suing some company for something that was entirely their own damn fault. It must be absolutely terrifying for storeowners to think that at any given time a complete idiot could walk in off the street, do something incredibly stupid that results in some injury, then sue for ungodly amounts of money. It's only going to get worse now that shopping too much is now a medical disorder. In case you missed the recent article in The Wall Street Journal, scientists, the people who invented science, have developed a pill to control compulsive shopping. In doing so, they categorized a desire to shop as a mental disorder. I give it a week before some moron with a gigantic ass and a house full of pasta makers and catalogue furniture decides that she (not to be sexist, but let's face it, you broads can't resist a sale) wants to sue every store she's ever been in for exploiting her horrible illness. It's some sort of freakish amalgam of two of America's most dangerous problems - suing everybody and calling everything a disorder. Let's face the facts: if you pack away so many cheeseburgers that you sweat special sauce, you're a fatass. If you have no money because you spent it all on lawn gnomes and QVC jewelery, you're a loser who should have a trusted friend hold on to your credit card and give you a shot of pepper spray every time you try to get it back. I'm fed up with tubby idiots clogging up the arteries of our national courts.

So what do I intend to do to improve the situation? Absolutely nothing. A lifetime of sitting on my duff in front of a computer while wolfing down fast food and snacks fried in lesser snacks has made me too weak and lazy to get up and start any sort of effective protest or take any productive action. Instead, I figure I might as well get my hands on some of that free money that companies are doling out to everybody else. I thought about suing the computer, fast food, and snacking industries, but nobody cares about individual concerns anymore. These days it's all about class action suits. That's why I've compiled a few good causes that we can all rally behind. Just let me know if one of these sounds good to you. I think we can all make a boatload of cash if we just work together.

The People vs. Big Gas

No, I'm not talking about Lowtax. Ha ha! It's funny because he has horrible gastrointestinal pain! I'm talking about those damn gas stations. If you drive, chances are you've fallen into their trap. Sure, they put gas in your car. "Oh, you're all set," they say, barely holding back their smug laughter. "If there's fuel in your tank, you're ready to go." But once you get out on the road and drive for a little while, BAM! You'll eventually have to turn around AND GO RIGHT BACK! They know exactly what they're doing, ensuring that you'll have to return over and over again until you either stop driving or die. Can you think of another product that keeps people coming back over and over again until they either go through the difficult process of quitting or kick the bucket? That's right - cigarettes. If that doesn't just shout "big money" to you, I don't know what will.

The People vs. Big Poster

These days you can't so much as go into a poster store without being faced with hundreds of huge glossy advertisements. Their pictures entice us, and their slogans stick with us when we try to walk away. Posters of movies, bands, events, television shows, and products make it impossible for us to resist, thus draining our time and bank accounts. Posters of models and attractive entertainers refuse to fall from our walls, making the temptation to spend hours masturbating too difficult to resist, thus resulting in widespread blindness. Who knows what we could have done with our time if it hadn't been squandered by these wall-mounted infidels? We all could have ran for President - and won! Every one of us! It's absolutely un-American to let the poster giants go unpunished after the way they prey on our fragile, pill-addled minds. They must pay. Specifically, they must pay us. Even more specifically, they must pay me.

The People vs. Big Headache Medicine

Tylenol, Advil, Ibuprofen, Extra Strength Tylenol - big name companies with deep pockets. For years, we've swallowed their products, whether in pill, capsule, or gelcap, and what have they done for us? Taken our headaches, that's what! They took our headaches right out of our very heads. Maybe you can live comfortably with that, but I, for one, cannot. What goes on inside Greasy's noggin is my own intellectual property, and there are laws in this great country to protect that. If Tylenol and its cronies can steal your headache, what happens when they try to steal your novel idea for... well, for a novel? Who will you cry to then? Not me, I'll be busy living it up in my mansion made of twenty dollar bills that I got from my latest case against Big Mint (sorry I couldn't let you in on that one, but it was already in the works). That's why we have to send a message to the headache giants that this sort of behavior will not be tolerated any longer.

The sun's always up there, mocking us. Just look at it. Not for too long, though, you could go blind. Although, then you could sue for that...

The People vs. Big Sun

For too long, the sun has sat up there in the sky, delivering nothing but empty promises. It's a gigantic ball of fire which supposedly warms the Earth enough to make it habitable for life. Yet I went outside yesterday while it was bright and sunny, but it was still cold! That, my friends, is a clear case of flagrant false advertising. We know that the sun has the heat, and its job is to give us that heat, but I tell you that there is no heat! How much longer will we allow this abuse of power to go on? It's time we sent a message to the sun: we won't stand for your taunts anymore. The sun has held it's current position for many years. It has undoubtedly built up a sizeable cash reserve. It's time we took a chunk of that for ourselves. After all, don't we deserve it? Okay, we don't, but are we going to let that stop us?

You smell that? That's the smell of money, my friend. Why should fat and / or stupid people be the only ones who get to reek of money-smell? We've got four foolproof cases already, and I've already got some great news. I convinced Something Awful legal expert Leonard "J." Crabs to spearhead these exciting and lucrative initiatives. Well, I think I convinced him. He really just waved a flaming tree branch at me and told me to stay away from his office cubby, but I think that's just legalese for "I'll take the case." In any event, just remember: as long as fat and stupid people are willing to humiliate themselves and their families, our courts will never be free of completely frivolous lawsuits that result in million dollar payoffs. Get yours now, before all the fat people collapse into a black hole and the stupid people wander into it.

– Ben "Greasnin" Platt