![[SATIRE] Mardi Gras Signs Up for Jenny Craig Program, Tired of Being Called “Fat Tuesday”](http://eyeofzatara.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Mardi-Gras-2017-EoZ.png)
(Original Post: February 27, 2017)
New Orleans, LA- As the people of New Orleans revel in the excitement and tradition of their favorite late February celebration, the southeastern Louisiana area holiday known as “Mardi Gras”, tired of being referred to year after year by the insulting monicker of “Fat Tuesday”, has reportedly signed up with the popular Jenny Craig weight loss program in an attempt to slim down before next year’s festivities, even going so far as to release a “soy-and-tofu-based King Cake substitute” that supposedly has most of the taste of the popular Mardi Gras dessert, but without “all those fattening carbs and sugar”.
“Everyone seems to have just gotten used to me as ‘Fat Tuesday’. Everywhere I go, people smile and wave, calling out my name like it doesn’t kill me a little inside every time they do,” Mardi Gras explained to veteran CBC News reporter, Michael Hamden, during a short interview at New Orleans’ world famous Cafe du Monde yesterday. “But, a hundred years ago, they called me ‘Skinny Tuesday’, or ‘Mardi Maigre’, until a few decades of drinking and eating King Cake made me less of a parade personality and more of a parade float. Yet, as a holiday, I’m expected to just keep smiling, and act like everything’s alright 24/7, even though my identity is shattered and I’m dying inside. Can you imagine what it’s like to live forever like that?”
“Mardi Gras beads barely fit around my neck anymore.” the overweight holiday added, rather sadly, while also trying not to drool over the delicious beignets being eaten by Michael Hamden right in front of him. “I used to be a smiling Jester bringing happiness to everyone around me once a year. Now I’m just a sad clown faking my joy decade after decade while holding in the tears. The drinking helps, but there’s not enough alcohol in Louisiana to really water down what I’m feeling inside. It took me almost a century to admit it, but I need help…”
While many have come out in support of Mardi Gras’ decision to begin a weight loss program in order to return to a healthy lifestyle, other notable celebrities have surprisingly denounced Mardi Gras’ comments for various reasons, one of the most vocal of which is on-again, off-again spokeswoman for Jenny Craig, Kirstie Alley, who is rumored to have been dropped by Jenny Craig at the end of last year after gaining one hundred pounds while on their program, and whose role as the program’s spokeswoman may, according to some reports, pass in a few months to a hopefully slimmer Mardi Gras, assuming he has success with their plan.
“Mardi Gras doesn’t really want a healthy lifestyle. He just wants people to stop calling him fat.” Kirstie Alley announced to Timothy Gibbings from SLNC News in an early interview this morning in SLNC News’ New York studio. “That’s not going to be enough to really make a permanent change in his life. Trust me, I know. If Jenny had any sense in that tiny, anorexic head of hers, she’d wait for me to slim down again, and let me make more commercials for them myself, instead of trusting her future to a freaking green and gold court jester. A freaking green and gold court jester! I mean, things have worked well enough for me and Jenny for years. Why change it now? Just because some immortal personification of a celebration has got some self-esteem problems, she’s going to throw me to the curb like yesterday’s garbage?”
Surprisingly, TV talk show host, major media personality, and founder of the OWN television channel, Oprah Winfrey, has also come out in criticism of Mardi Gras, but for very different reasons.
“It’s like my good friend, Dr. Phil, always says, ‘You gotta love yourself before you can change yourself.’ I’ve been fat, skinny, and everything in-between, sometimes fluctuating hundreds of pounds in a single week, but do you see me getting down on myself? No, I’m always me, and Mardi Gras has got to learn to love himself for who he is, too, if he ever wants to live a productive endless existence as an existential conglomeration of Louisiana festival traditions. Love yourself before you can change yourself… wait, maybe that was actually from a fortune cookie.” Oprah Winfrey trailed off, mumbling to herself a few seconds while trying to determine the actual origin of her poignant quote. “Boy, I sure could go for a fortune cookie right now. ALRIGHT, WHO’S GOT A CHINESE TAKEOUT MENU? MAMA OPRAH IS HUNGRY!”
Unfazed by the negative feedback he’s received from modern celebrities, Mardi Gras has assured the public that he is dedicated to his goal of losing weight, and hopes to return to his previous skinny self no later than the year 2027.
“It’s going to be hard to cut down on the drinking, binge eating, and riotous revelry that have come to define me as a holiday,” Mardi Gras said in a public statement released on his personal website a few hours before this article’s posting on the ‘Eye of Zatara’. “But if a tangible manifestation of beads, booze, and laughter from the heart of Fleur-de-Lis country can’t lose this kind of weight with all the many resources at my disposal as an immortal holiday, what choice do normal people have at shedding a few pounds themselves with the timelines of their short human life spans? I want to give people hope that no matter how many states require them to weigh in at Truck Stops when traveling cross country… no matter how many buffets turn off the lights and pretend to be closed when they pull into the parking lot… no matter how many donut shops and pizzerias send refrigerated trucks on scheduled deliveries to their house every morning just to serve them breakfast… they can lose weight just like I can, if they really put their mind to it, and refuse, no matter what, to give up hope that they can change.”
“Unless they’re film maker Michael Moore.” Mardi Gras later added, with a shrug, in a live video post to his website. “Hey, I want to inspire people, not make them believe the impossible.”
In a related story, Terry Bradshaw has apparently signed up with Weight Watchers in a similar attempt to slim down, after the same swarm of falcons that previously carried off New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady at the end of last month’s Super Bowl attempted to abduct him the following week, but were unable to move him more than an inch or two off the ground before giving up and flying in mass to the nearest veterinary clinic for suspected hernia treatment.