Our esteemed employer recognizes that investing in preventive medicine is a good thing, saving bigger money down the road. So they contract with an esteemed health-care provider to bombard us with emails about our shitty health habits. They don’t actually know (or aren’t supposed to, anyway) that we have shitty health habits. But, hey, going by statistics of the average American population and adding up the healthcare expenditures for this insured pool, they can make some pretty good guesses. And, shoot, emails are cheap.

Now, I really don’t know much more about this stuff than you learn on the receiving end of a lot of health-related emails. And, I’ll be honest: most of them I don’t even open. I am reasonably healthy, and, no, I don’t need to team up with a group of health-minded individuals to work together to do something important and glorious about our health. Or any of a number of other “Get on board the health wagon!” cheery boosterism programs larded with images of happy people, puppies, sunshine, etc. So into the e-trash they go without a flicker of remorse.

But over the years I’ve come to appreciate the many flavors of nice that they try to wrap these messages up in. The most frequent category is what I call the “You Fat F**k!” emails. It’s pretty hard to dress those up, but they keep trying. The most recent one is for a program called “Retrofit”. What – are they going to get a crew together to shoehorn you into your skinny jeans? What is truly hilarious about the latest round, however, is that they’re going to let spouses participate, too! Yes, the happy-looking emails veritably scream “You Fat F**k! And Your Spouse is a Fat F**k Too!” I imagine people are signing up in droves.

Sweet Puppy and Sunflowers, by freelancer1982, on Flickr