I sat down to write this column with a Butterfinger and a 44- ounce Mountain Dew just to get in the right frame of mind.

Earlier in the week, I had an interesting conversation with a couple of friends about a group of 30 fat people in San Francisco.

According to the Associated Press, they were protesting at a health club that bore a sign reading, “When the aliens invade, they will eat the fat people first.”

This didn’t sit too well with the fat folks who felt the sign was somehow degrading them.

More than the fact that they were fat to begin with? They did that to themselves.

One of my friends said she was sick of fat people always wanting sympathy, and the other thought this was politically correct speech gone too far once again.

And you know, they’re right. I won’t sit here and try to tell you that fat people deserve your sympathy.

Let’s face it, fat people are like animals with no self respect. People who let themselves go like that have to expect a certain amount of disdain, if not actual disgust, from normal people.

How can they have the audacity to expect the rest of the world to feel sorry for them?

Hey fat ass, you weren’t too interested in sympathy when you were sucking down pizzas and cheesecakes while watching TV for 10 hours a day for 20 years.

Don’t expect the rest of the world to pity you, Porky, when you could have hopped on a treadmill and done something about it, for God’s sake. Whining doesn’t burn as many calories as running.

People need to express their hate, and who better to bear that burden like a judas goat than fat people?

We can’t hate gays and people of color any more.

The least we can expect is to be allowed the dignity of mocking and ridiculing the rotund.

It isn’t the same as gays and minorities; they can’t help what they are. But there is nothing stopping fat tubs of lard from getting off their dead asses and doing a few squat thrusts.

Try doing a sit-up once in a while, Jabba.

In my grade school, there was this fat kid, Tim Matthiessen, and even his name drips with bacon grease.

Every day at recess, about five of the really cool guys would surround that butterball and bean him with soccer balls, hoola hoops, rocks and whatever was handy.

He couldn’t even run away; he would just try to cover his fat face and then BING! He’d get one in the balls.

After about five or 10 minutes of this, he would just sort of give up and roll around on the ground squealing in pain and shame, “REEE REEEE REEEE.”

That’s usually when they’d start kicking his big ass and laughing at the jiggly flesh.

There was nothing so sweet as the sound of Chuck Taylor’s colliding with a fat kid for pure entertainment value … until we got special- ed kids at our school.

Pure expressions of hatred are invigorating. They make people feel like giants.

Nothing makes you feel more alive than proving to some hamloaf how easy it would be for you to kill him if it weren’t for the restrictions of society. Unless you can find some retarded kids to prove your point on.

Good times.

People need people to hate — it’s as natural as a spring rain. There is no way around it. A day without hate is like a day without sunshine. Why fight it?

The real problem isn’t WHO you hate, it is the fact THAT you hate and you’re looking for an acceptable outlet. You’re the one with the problem, Slim Jim.

You see a fat person walking down the street and something inside of you starts burning to say something, anything about it to your buddy. “Hey, check this one out.”

Your every instinct is to beat on fat kids because something is telling you they aren’t normal. Seeing a person fall down isn’t as funny as seeing a fat person fall down.

You get drunk and start looking for someone to start crap with, and your heart fills with glee when you see a fat dude and his fat date because, lucky you, you got a two- for-one special.

You love telling that fat friend of yours how easy it would be to just do a few crunches and maybe go for a walk every day and that weight will come off in no time.

Chief Seattle said that hate is a sickness that harms the one who hates. It doesn’t matter what the object of your hatred is; it says more about you. It corrupts you.

So some fat folks don’t like a poster.

They find it degrading and use this to make a point.

Hell, the poster described here — it IS funny. These are people trying to politicize something that is bothering them, and they chose this one case to draw attention to their cause.

I won’t defend the instance by saying the poster should come down. I would probably buy one, but I can tell you something about the cause overall; I’ve got time.

No one is asking for sympathy; they just don’t want to be treated like animals.

Accusing people of wanting sympathy when they ask to not be treated poorly is offensive and only adds to the morass of humiliation most people feel anyway.

They can’t set up picket lines around those raconteurs who yell “Hey fat ass!” out their car windows at obese people waiting to cross the street and then laugh like they are Oscar Wilde or Noel Coward.

They can’t demonstrate around schoolyards every time some gang of scrawny jocks gang up on a chubby kid.

I won’t even try to tell you that not all fat people can help being fat because that isn’t the point I want to make.

The point I want to push home is that if you feel the need to hate someone, then there is something wrong with you, not them.

People aren’t asking for sympathy when they ask to not be treated like subhumans.

So feel free to hate fat people all you want if that turns you on.

People don’t like the way I look; that’s cool, I can take it. I’m a big boy.

Hate away!

It’s always easy to hate the ones who don’t conform to your model of normalcy.

It’s easy to hate the weak and to despise the underdog, too.

It’s easy to kick someone who is already on the ground or to hurl epithets at people whose self-esteem is already so low they can’t look people in the eye or even lift their heads when they walk down the street.

I’ve never understood how people could enjoy winning with those odds.

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Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs. He is opinion editor of the Daily.