BannedCast

Let’s get one thing clear and out of the way at the outset of this post: Gluten allergies are just the 2017 way of saying that you are a fucking pussy because if you are allergic to something that did not exist more than five years ago, chances are you’re not allergic—you’re just a narcissistic asshole.

And I know that Whole Foods caters to your whole self-absorbed persecution fantasies by offering an endless array of gluten-free food options, but let’s be honest: if you claimed to be allergic to the color yellow Whole Foods would find a way to cater to that, too, if it meant that they could squeeze another dollar out of you.

By the way, do you know who isn’t allergic to gluten? The entire continent of Africa. They’re a little too busy digging themselves out of a few hundred years of systematic oppression to be concerned with whether or not their food would make it into the specialty aisle at Whole Foods. The point being that perhaps those of you claiming gluten allergies should just go ahead an eat than bran muffin because it is not going to kill you, it’s not going to hurt you—not even a little bit. Although would that it could because the world might benefit from a reduction in numbers of overly sensitive hipsters and bandwagon Vegans who wear their gluten-allergic affectations as a symbol of their dietary enlightenment.

Incidentally, do you know what else isn’t popular in Africa? Every last one of your bullshit Tough Mudder races. I’m getting more than a little tired of the Crossfit bandwagoneers who are not content with high-fiving each other as they stampede out the doors of their Crossfit studios across countless suburban strip malls to run a few laps around the parking lot before going back inside to hit a tractor tire with a sledgehammer. Because not only do these unabashed Creed fans fetishize meaningless manual labor, they also shamelessly advertise their dedication to a misunderstanding of paleolithic diets by competing in races that look more like one of Jigsaw’s wet dreams than they do an Olympic-caliber challenge.

I understand that you peaked in high school and have a limited grasp of multisyllabic vocabulary, but that doesn’t entitle you to punish everyone around you with an unrelenting need for attention and affirmation. A few shirtless bathroom mirror selfies posted to Facebook and Instagram will suffice—you need not also pester us with dietary advice you overhead in the locker room at 24 Hour Fitness.

Furthermore, the reason why Tough Mudder has failed to take hold in Africa is because Africans’ version of Tough Mudder involves dodging bullets and landmines while sprinting across war-torn borders in order to cross turgid, shark-infested waters in an inflatable Fisher Price life raft so that they can one day work for below-minimum wages in upscale hotels owned by Donald Trump where they can be sexually assaulted by visiting French politicians with flaccid, liver-spotted dicks.

The point is that I have yet to see a single Tough Mudder challenge that so much as approximates this level of difficulty. Unless of course they’ve introduced a new challenge that involves a private casting session with Bill Cosby in which case, okay, I’ll concede that they have sufficiently upped the ante, but until that time, Tough Mudder remains the high-fiving dude-bro equivalent of the Kardashians’ Instagram selfies—an opportunity for guys whose highest literary achievement was reading Tony Robbins’ Awaken the Giant Within on a Southwest flight to Tampa channel their aggressions into something more suitable than date-raping Applebee’s waitresses.

In sum: fuck your Tough Mudder race. No one cares, and we all hope that puddle of mud you crawl through is spiked with hepatitis.