Eat Yourself Rich

Looks like Drudgebart's readers are still doing good work, sending in links to amusing stories. Today's honey is about a New York cop--one Paul Soto--who weighs 500 pounds, injured his knee outside of his doctor's office, and sued unsuccessfully for a fat (heh) pension.

I pick on cops sometimes, because like most people, I have repeatedly encountered "cop personality." You know what I mean. A lot of nuts who get sexually aroused by the thought of pushing people around become cops, so they can do it for a living. And then instead of remembering the "servant" in "public servant," they think they somehow outrank the citizens who pay them for protection. It's an irritating thing to deal with, and it makes me glad I became a lawyer, because while a cop can only abuse you while you're in custody, a lawyer can make you want to kill yourself every day for the rest of your life.

Even though I think the job attracts a lot of real pukes, my natural reflex is to support the police, and I never lose sight of the fact that they lay their lives on the line every day for a comparatively low wage. I never forget that many of them are fine, courageous, unselfish people, and that they have to deal with the kind of filth the rest of us only see on reality TV or when watching the Miami Hurricanes play.

That being said, I'm afraid I feel some doughnut jokes coming on.

This character weighed 250 pounds when he was hired, and he was 5 feet 7 inches tall. You have to wonder how tall he would have been had he lost the weight. You also have to wonder who sets the hiring standards for the NYPD these days. My guess? An investigation would reveal wire transfers from the Krispy Kreme corporation. When I was in college, I knew a guy who was about six feet tall and weighed 257, and he looked like a big jiggly house. At five-seven, when Soto got his job, he was already knocking on heaven's door with a fork.

Is this the sad consequence of halfwits like Rosie O'Donnell, trying to turn fat people into a protected minority? Are we already living in a world where the ADA applies to people not because they can't move their legs or can't see, but because they really, really like Ring Dings? You have to wonder. When this guy's application was processed, did a representative from the National Association for the Advancement of Fat People show up on a pallet jack and pressure the department to hire him?

I know fat people face special challenges, because I'm fat, myself. Like I always say, the vast majority of skinny people have absolutely no self-discipline and stay thin simply because they aren't programmed to eat as much. Think of the skinny morons you know. Think of the responsible fatties you know. Am I right? Of course I'm right. Still, if you're fat, you have a responsibility to do something well before you hit the five-century mark. You can, therefore you should. That's how it works. Is it fair? Maybe not. But it's reality, so it doesn't matter if it's fair.

I now wish I had a cushy government job. Because Mr. Soto has proven that a civil servant who doesn't feel like working can get special treatment simply by pounding pastries into his maw. When he got too fat to work, they should have fired his ass. All of it. Instead they put him behind a desk, with what was presumably a very sturdy chair, and they sat around and waited for him to hurt himself on the job.

I love how his attorney describes his injury. He said Soto was outside the building where his doctor worked, "trying to navigate around a pallet" when he fell. Injuring his knee, altering the tides, and startling seismologists as far away as Japan. "Navigate." How appropriate. Maybe a bunch of tiny officers assembled on his bridge, got out their parallel rulers and a chart, and plotted a course around the pallet. Maybe he should have waited for a tugboat.

His former coworkers say he was nice. Sure he was nice. I'm always nice too, after 57 crullers. Nothing wipes away crabbiness like a blood sugar reading of 500.

Thank God, he lost in court. Otherwise, fat people all over New York would be bellyflopping deliberately in such stairwells as would admit their girth. I guess they do that anyway. It IS New York.

I wonder if TV production companies treat the fat like the handicapped. If so, we know what Jennifer Love Hewitt is up to.

I guess one day every physical problem will be a disability, regardless of how you got it. Tired of working? Hit yourself in the face with a hammer until they put you on disability. As for Mr. Soto, I think he was damned lucky to get a half-pay pension for life. He'll still have to work, but now he has a truly awesome pizza allowance.

Posted by Steve H. at 12:06 PM | Permalink  

I Used Geometric Logic

I've decided to back Fred Thompson in spite of his failure to campaign, and in spite of his wife, for one simple reason: Fred says the government should not tell us what to eat.

He's not a real candidate, and he has no chance of winning a single primary, and he's too lazy to be President anyway. But I don't mind endorsing him, because my endorsement means absolutely nothing. Not even that I have to vote for him. If it comes down to Fred versus Hillary, I'll write in Perot or even Christopher Walken. "Vote for me, or I'll stab you in the face with a soldering iron." Tap, tap, tap, tappity-tap. "I learned that step from Charles Durning. Fat. But always light on his feet."

In a CNN story, Fred points out what should be obvious: managing our diets is not one of government's main duties. Crazy as it sounds, governments have historically allowed people to eat what they wanted. I feel like we already pay enough taxes without funding additional bureaucrats to remind me that I'm obese.

The horrifying thing about this story is that CNN watchers are generally furious at Thompson for suggesting that we should decide what we eat. The comments that follow the piece show that the same people who think drugs should be legalized and unregulated expect the government to deprive us of steak and pizza and pie. It's hypocritical, if you think about it. When you smoke dope, what's the first thing you reach for? A bag of synthetic Nabisco cookies. Who are the fattest, laziest, most disgusting sacks of crap in America? Marijuana smokers. Maybe they need to sprinkle a little crack in those joints. Maybe we need federal guidelines to help us decide which recreational drugs to use.

I can't seem to get it into my head. There are millions of people in the US who want the government to raise us and care for us like cattle. How is that possible? How can anyone want that? It's not just stupid. It's creepy.

Remember this: if we want to be the pampered Eloi, the government will necessarily become the predatory Morlocks. I don't want to be plugged into the Matrix any more than I already am.

The government is wrong about food, anyway. The ridiculous "food pyramid" is more suited to beef cattle than human beings. For example, they want you to eat 25 grams of fiber a day. I challenge you to try it. That's over six bowls of raisin bran. I'm telling you, your ass will literally explode. On a good day, with effort, I probably manage to get 10 grams. And those are the days when I'm nervous about straying too far from the bathroom.

If you eat as much grain as the government wants, you'll be fat, you'll have blood sugar problems, your teeth will rot, you'll have mood swings, you'll fart constantly, and you'll be hungry all the time. In short, you'll have several of my endearing traits, plus four new ones. And you'll look like Fred Thompson.

Here's another thing to think about. Who does the government listen to when it makes food policy? Scientists? Doctors? Uh...no. It listens to the same people it listens to when it considers other issues. I'm talking about LOBBYISTS. If you'll pardon me for mentioning Fred Thompson again.

Hmm...farming is a big industry...and that pyramid seems to contain, literally, a shitload of grain. Doesn't that worry you a little?

Do you seriously think that when the government puts out food guidelines, industry doesn't get to review them first? Can you be that stupid? Do you really think the ideas for the guidelines originate in government laboratories, and not in corporate marketing sessions? Look, here is how a republic works. Questions come up, and instead of using deductive reasoning to learn the true answers, a whole bunch of people get to vote and persuade. Net result? If enough lobbyists say dog shit is good for you, it will end up in the food pyramid. Believe me. And then your kids will get it in their school lunches.

The government never thinks for itself. I can give you a great example, as a lawyer. When you practice law, you do the judge's work for him, including drafting orders so that if he rules in your favor, all he has to do is reach through the bars of his crib and sign them. Seriously, it's like caring for a helpless baby. You tell them the case law. You tell them what the evidence means. Then they misunderstand it or ignore it because of their biases, and they do what they decided to do ten minutes after your brief hit their desk. Congress and federal agencies are the same way. The people at the EEOC are so inert they might as well have pins inserted in their bones so lawyers could attach strings and move them around like puppets in a No play.

Corporations hate ideas that come from outside, because those ideas are generally better than the ones their own people come up with, and they make existing employees and managers look as stupid as they actually are. Government, on the other hand, is addicted to outside ideas and demands them, because the horrifying alternative is to work, and that is precisely what people get government jobs in order to avoid.

We should be using our own common sense, but instead we want to listen to Milo Minderbinder, telling us chocolate-covered cotton balls are delicious because they're good for business.

I know it sounds crazy, but listen to me: the government isn't supposed to do EVERYTHING. I don't want to come off like that stupid America-hating kook Ron Paul, but we have to draw the line somewhere. I live in a city where the Nazi code creeps tell me what color I can paint my bedroom walls. That's our future if we let the government pass nutritional laws.

I insulted Ron Paul solely to attract his Technorati army ants. RON PAUL MOLESTS CHICKENS. RON PAUL LOOKS LIKE HENRY GIBSON. Having Ron Paul around has really helped me get over the loss of Pat Paulsen.

I love ticking those morons off.

I ate oatmeal and a disgusting protein bar for breakfast, and later I'll have to eat fruit and tuna and maybe even salad. I WILL have some decent food on my off days, or we are going to re-enact Ruby Ridge. Only I'll win, because I have the one thing law enforcement officials cannot resist. No, I don't mean opportunities to tase innocent black people. I mean doughnuts. I'll lay in a good supply of flour and Coco Lopez and coconut oil, and the agents and I will hole up like the British army fending off the Zulus. As more and more LEOs cross over, I'll eventually become the head of the FBI and the de facto President for Life. After that, the asses will start falling into my briefcase, to paraphrase Wilford Brimley (another oatmeal head). And my first move will be to ban soy. After making flimsy tube tops compulsory for all hot chicks over the age of 18.

Go ahead. Send Janet Reno in her silly little tank. I'll light that bitch up like a swarm of confused fireflies humping a Christmas tree. My walls are concrete, and I have a fire extinguisher.

In conclusion, I fully support Fred Thompson. Until I have to go into a voting booth, at which point I'll have to cut the crap and vote for a grown-up. I hope one enters the race soon.

Posted by Steve H. at 12:19 PM | Permalink  

Never Trust a Redhead

I would already be at Northern Tool, were it not for my hesitance to get on the road right after a McDonald's breakfast and a mug of hot coffee. It would be tempting fate not to wait for at least one kidney cycle.

I'm eating Mickey D's on a Thursday because I was having a hard time scheduling both of my weekly Fat Days on the weekend. I have stupidly taken an interest in tools and gardening and home maintenance, so weekends are busier than they were back when I laid on my ass and watched things disintegrate. And my Nowlive show has also eaten into the fun.

I truly despise the local Mickey D's. The one near Maynada street. They must have hired a medically certified pinhead to take over the management ("Has that custom paper hat arrived yet?"). They have screwed up the last four times I've gone over there. Three or four; I forget. Let's see...they let me sit in the car waiting for hash browns until the food got cold. They tried to serve me a large drink in two cups because they were too stupid to keep big cups in stock. They sold me a gross bacon and egg McMuffin and charged me for a biscuit. They made me wait in the car while they changed their Dr. Pepper tank, AFTER filling my drink three-fourths of the way and letting the ice melt. They ran out of ice cream! Can you believe that? How can you run out of delicious McFlurries? What about the precious public trust?

I was not happy just now, as I choked down the last bite of bacon egg and cheese McMuffin dipped in Hunt's ketchup. It would be one thing if I were a 24/7 fatass. But I'm a 24/2 fatass, which is completely different. Two days a week I get actual food, and I truly look forward to it. A McDonald's breakfast is one of my favorite meals. And these incompetent turds keep ruining it.

What hope is there for you if you can't make a McDonald's restaurant work? Whoever is running that place should be put in an institution for life.

I decided that I need a chain hoist and a couple of slings to move the compressor. I was going to use a come along, but a chain hoist costs roughly the same amount of money, and I have noticed that cables cause a lot more problems than chains. The cool thing about getting this stuff is, I can leave the hoist attached to a roof truss, permanently. Then whenever I need to lift anything (once in ten blue moons), it will be there. I wouldn't want to hang an engine from it, but it could be useful for other stuff. Notably as a safety device when using a motorcycle lift. It could give me a few seconds to get out of the way. I figure a thousand-pound hoist will be way more than adequate, since I'll never put that kind of weight on it.

I ate the only real tomato I managed to grow today. It was a Mortgage Lifter. It was about half as big as it should have been. It started to go funny, so I picked it and took the seeds and planted them. It was very sad; I could tell that it would have been a wonderful tomato, had it not been ruined by a virus. Maybe the seeds will pay off.

Posted by Steve H. at 12:10 PM | Permalink  

You Can't See the Pies in Your Eyes When You Have Pies in Your Eyes

You know what's great after five weekdays of dieting? Getting up and breakfasting on a bowl of Pringle's and a Coke.

I assume this isn't good for my gall bladder, which has been worrying me. But dieting seven days a week is madness.

I learned something interesting this week, while Googling my medical problems. It look like insulin resistance--the notion Dr. Atkins was ridiculed for promoting years ago--is now accepted by mainstream medicine as a bona fide illness. Funny how stuff like that keeps happening to the late doctor. I believe it's also called, or perhaps considered a part of, "metabolic syndrome." The idea is that you torture your body with refined carbs all your life, and it becomes insensitive to insulin, so you gain weight and have blood sugar problems. And it leads to other bad stuff.

Well, guess what turns out to be a big risk factor for gallstones? Uh...insulin resistance. How about that?

Damn that quack Atkins. There is nothing worse than a fraud who turns out to be right about everything. I think Atkins will end up like George Bush and Ronald Reagan. Reviled by contemporaries but honored in retrospect.

I'm not that fat. I need to drop 20 more pounds. But it's very obvious to me that carbs and body fat are ruining my life. I snore. I have chronic heartburn. I have memory problems. And now my gall bladder is bugging me. I almost certainly have insulin resistance. Most of the time I'm pretty good about avoiding refined carbs, but I remember what life was like when I used to eat cereal for breakfast and lots of potatoes. If I went too long between meals, I started sweating, I shook, and I wanted to eat everything in sight to make it stop. You don't have to be a doctor to know that a person like that needs to lay off the carbs.

The big catch-22 of gallbladder problems is that extra weight brings them on, and dieting can cause acute attacks. I'm like one of those guys who held onto the rope in that famous film of the runaway blimp. The blimp left the ground and took them with it, and at 20 feet or so, they had to choose between a risky jump or certain death later on.

Maybe I AM the runaway blimp.

Another interesting thing: while fiber is turning out to be worthless in some respects, it looks like it does one thing well. It carries bile cholesterol out of the body, and bile cholesterol is what turns into stones.

Also, dietary cholesterol may increase gallstone formation (then again, it may not), so you have to be careful about saturated fat. On the other hand, if you eat very little fat, your gall bladder falls asleep, and guess what you get? GALLSTONES.

It's like a tightrope act.

Pretty clearly, doctors aren't doing nearly enough to educate people about gallstones. They claim they can't be prevented, but that's a load of crap. Thin people usually don't get them. People who eat lots of fiber have a lower risk. Exercise helps. Lecithin supplements probably deter stones from forming. Eating fat regularly is important. You can't skip meals, either. Those things are all true, so how can any medical professional claim, with a straight face, that you can't prevent gallstones? The only explanation I can come up with is that they don't care at all. They see the gall bladder as something they can cut out quickly and profitably, at fairly low risk to the patient. So what if you have diarrhea for a year after they remove it? Not their problem.

The disease has risk factors. The risk factors can be eliminated by behavior. So how can anyone say the disease itself is unpreventable? It can't be true. Maybe it's not a hundred percent preventable, but what if the risk can be reduced by say, sixty percent? Worth a shot, isn't it?

I guess I'll wander in to a doctor's office eventually, once I think I've done everything I can. In the meantime, I'm doing a lot. I quit skipping meals. I try to have a little alcohol every day. I got myself some Rowachol, the medicine doctors in Europe have been prescribing for fifty years. I quit eating four eggs a day. I'm making sure I drink enough water. I take lecithin. I'm back on cinnamon. I ordered some chanca piedra. I'm sticking to my slow weight-loss program. If I have to see a doctor, at least I'll know I've taken every responsible step. And if I go in, I'm not going to let them cut me up until they prove it's the best solution. If I can get these stones cleaned out, so I can have a chance to see if preventative measures can prevent a recurrence, I'll do it. I just can't believe the human body has a completely unnecessary organ hanging off the liver.

I have to stay serious about the changes anyway, because you can get stones without a gall bladder. Isn't that fun? If my lifestyle is causing stones to form, that won't change just because the gall bladder is gone.

In other news, I got a few links to an entry I wrote about political bloggers. I have some commenters who are making a big deal out of it. I assume they're being sarcastic. It means absolutely nothing, and it's probably useless traffic. If you attract readers with one product and then try to serve them something else, it rarely works. That's why it's not smart to wave your tits in a political vlog. People who come here to read a political piece are unlikely to come back to read about food or whatever. So here's my response to the links: whee.

I hope some day I'll look at my Sitemeter and see a few thousand visits with actual value. People who came to read a recipe or something I wrote to make them laugh. But fleeting traffic for a political piece is worthless and possibly counterproductive. So no, I am not grateful or impressed or even slightly encouraged. I'd much rather have a link from Egullet or Foodie Forums or maybe the Comedy Central blog. I wouldn't want the other rats to pull me back onto the sinking ship that is the right-wing Blogosphere.

I'm much happier about my Youtube hits. I get them from both sides of the political spectrum, and they're about humor, not conservatism. And speaking of Youtube, I have to get to work on a new video.

Posted by Steve H. at 11:32 AM | Permalink  

Why Treat the Disease When You Can Cut up the Patient?

As is so often the case, I am hopping mad.

I've been having what I think are mild gall bladder symptoms. Before rushing to the doctor, I have been checking around to see if there are ways to fix up a sick gall bladder without having it yanked.

I learned, to my amazement, that American doctors don't even try to prevent gall bladder disease. You think I'm exaggerating? Read about it. They love cutting those babies out. It's quick and easy, and I assume it makes them lots of cash. I mentioned this the other day. It sounds like something a quack-worshipping loony would say, but it's true.

I wouldn't mind, if I thought American doctors were right. But it looks like doctors in other parts of the world think gall bladder disease is worth preventing, and that it's also worth treating without surgery. I mean real doctors who cure people. Not fakes and charlatans in tin foil hats.

Here's something of interest, if you think your gall bladder might be an issue. In Europe, doctors tell patients to use a medicine called Rowachol. It's just a few plant oils (like menthol) in capsules. Does it always work? No. But sometimes it does. And it has no known risks or side effects. Damn, isn't it worth a try? Isn't it better than losing an internal organ and wondering for the rest of your life what the consequences will be?

The same company, Rowa, makes a product called Rowatinex. In studies, this crap helped people pass kidney stones. I looked that up at the National Institutes of Health. WHY DIDN'T MY DOCTOR TELL ME ABOUT IT? Jesus, I could have used something like that a while back. Here's the horrendous part: supposedly, it also prevents kidney stones from forming. And it's cheap! At least compared to surgery and X-rays and prescription drugs and doctor's visits.

It's hard for me to believe that there's a serious disease doctors make no effort at all to prevent or to treat without surgery. Especially since surgery used to involve cutting people up like watermelons. It was pretty invasive.

And there are so many things you can do to protect yourself. Avoid fast weight loss. Exercise. Eat fiber. Don't skip meals. Take lecithin. Go easy on cholesterol. Avoid eggs, pork, chicken, and onions. Eat nuts. Would it kill the medical establishment to make an effort to point these things out?

This is one of those times when I am positive someone needs to be punched in the face, but I can't figure out who.

If you're fat, for God's sake, don't crash-diet. And don't skip meals. And make sure you get a little fat in your diet. Don't give yourself a big bag of stones that are damned hard to get rid of. Don't wait for your idiot doctor to grin and say, "Here's what you SHOULD have done. Now let's start cutting on you so I can make another payment on my Bentley."

Arrgh. The world is positively insane.

Posted by Steve H. at 10:25 PM | Permalink  

Part of What Makes me so Attractive

Okay, I'm very upset. I struggled and slaved to learn how to use video editing software well enough to put subtitles on a .5HNH clip, as well as cutting in vastly better material from Comedy Central and a Youtube ass-rocket video, and now people are emailing me, claiming I lied. They claim the ass in the rocket video is NOT Alan Colmes.

Look, I'd upload the whole video so you could see his face, but I can't do that to him. He has a wife and kids. Probably. Maybe. I don't really know. Anyway, it hurts to be called a liar.

Just for this, I'm withholding another butt-rocket video I have, which features former PBS personality John McLaughlin. That's a shame, because as the rocket goes off, he aims it at Eleanor Clift and shouts "WRONG!"

It's very frustrating, fooling with video. Ideally, you would spend two hours writing and ten minutes editing, but in my case, it's pretty much the other way around. You find yourself sitting at the PC at 12:30 at night, thinking, "Gee, I can either rewrite this or go to bed before 5 a.m." So you click the "upload" button and go with what is essentially a rough draft and call it a night. But eventually I'll get better at it. I had a lot more time to screw with the Larry Craig video, and the rave reviews I got from gays suggest it paid off.

It's a real problem figuring out how long to leave subtitles up. I read much faster than an average person, so to me, it seems like they're just hanging there forever.

I've had a tough time getting anything at all done this week. A big home repair project is going on, so life is disrupted. I tried to devote August to crap like that and get it over with during a month when no one gets anything done anyway. But it is bleeding over into what is supposed to be productive time.

I'm highly annoyed at my tomatoes and peppers, which took an hour or two of my precious time yesterday. So far I have had early blight, bean rust, thrips, mealybugs, aphids, snails, damping off, leaf-curling virus, and possible spotted wilt. Every week I have to look up and buy a new chemical to fix things. By the time I have produce, it will be radioactive.

Seriously, though, I don't think anyone should be afraid of pesticides. Because bugs clearly are not. I started with Sevin, and I thought I had done my job. But no, mealybugs huff Sevin at parties for kicks. So I used bifenthrin. Which thrips think of as a mild spring tonic. Then I used malathion, and the thrips liked it so much they stood in formation and spelled out, "More, please."

Yesterday I used something called esfenvalerate. I couldn't tell whether the thrips were enjoying it, so I followed it up with diatomaceous earth and a generous hosing with a soapy capsaicin mixture I made in the miniature Cuisinart. And it was a windy day, so in essence, I maced myself.

I have something like ten really nice, healthy tomato plants. But if what I have read is correct, they may all have a bug-transmitted virus which will assure that I get no tomatoes. If that's true, I have to wonder how anyone anywhere in this county ever grew a tomato. I realize I brought the blight on myself by planting out of season, but the bugs...you can't hang them on me. They're here all year.

For people who don't know, diatomaceous earth is a bizarre miracle product, sort of like boric acid. Harmless to people, but supposedly deadly to bugs. It's just trillions of tiny dead diatom skeletons made of calcium. Sort of like talc, only on a microscopic level, it's very sharp. And it supposedly carves bugs up and lets the water out of them. I have no idea whether it works, but today all my plants look like Frosted Mini-Wheats. Finally a product with no poison in it. You can actually kill bugs in your food by adding 2% diatomaceous earth. And then you eat it.

As for the capsaicin, I don't care if it works as long as it causes the bugs excruciating agony.

I have to say, I think everyone who claims to grow vegetables organically around here is a goddamn liar. I think they're like the "kosher" catering services that actually slip supervising rabbis a hundred bucks to go home. We have a billion kinds of bugs here, they breed right through the winter, and each bug responds to its own unique insecticide, so you have to put an endless variety of poisons on your crops just to get them to fruit. Anyone who says he or she did it by releasing a few ladybugs is talking out of their ass. I'm pretty sure our county malathion trucks would take care of the ladybugs in one night.

I'm really not afraid of the poisons. I was thinking about it yesterday, and I couldn't think of a single example of a bug poison harming a human being who used it correctly. People are now saying that even bad old DDT is safe. Not even bad for bird eggs. I keep reading the safety literature on these chemicals, and the toxicity warnings are almost laughable. "At high doses, may cause brief sneezing." Is there a case I don't know about, where a bunch of people sprayed their lettuce and then had their genitals fall off or something? If so, it's news to me.

In some cases, even the packaging--which was created by neurotic lawyers trying to prevent bogus lawsuits--says things like, "Protective clothing is not necessary."

Speaking of neurotic, I had another problem which distracted me over the last three weeks or so. I thought I was dying of melanoma. I hadn't talked to a doctor about skin cancer in about seven years, and within the last month, two very dark spots popped up on my back. Just "POW," there they were. So I figured it was time to give away those green bananas. I made an appointment with a dermatologist, and it took two weeks to get in, and during that time, a third dark spot popped up on my hand. Which later turned out to be a scab from one of Maynard's helpful grooming bites. I was pretty nervous. When I was a kid, the guy next door to me got a spot on his back, and they carved a thing resembling Bryce Canyon in him, and then he died anyway. I'm not actually sure if the melanoma got him, or whether it was the five packs of cigarettes he smoked every day for like forty years. But still.

So I was freaking out for two weeks, and I was also having pains in my ribcage which I figured had to be metastases. And I went in on Wednesday, and the doctor looked at me for like fifteen seconds, and in a polite way, he told me to get my hypochondriac ass out of his office. I had absolutely nothing on me that interested him in the slightest. He said the things on my back were freckles.

As for the pain, I am pretty sure my diet has irritated my gallbladder, even though I'm getting a fairly generous 1500 calories a day and losing weight very slowly. Guess I'll have to see another doctor. Maybe I'll have my gallbladder yanked and turned into a change purse. They used to saw you in half to get it out, but these days, they stick a tube in you, jerk it out, seal the hole with joint compound, and send you on your way.

I now find myself in the perverse position of having to make sure I don't eat too LITTLE.

Reluctantly, I am giving up my four daily eggs. I have a feeling they were the main problem. Gallstones are full of cholesterol. Now where am I going to get protein? I wonder if thrips are edible.

Coffee is good for your gallbladder. So now I get up in the morning and drink it because I have to, not just because I'm a bug-eyed, trembling addict.

Unbelievably, I went to the hippie grocery and waded through the B.O. to buy kefir yesterday. I may conceivably have to eat something healthy once in a while. Disgusting. You know my slogan. "Lips that touch soy will never touch mine." Actually that applies to virtually all lips. But it illustrates a principle.

I guess I'll go outside now and see if any of my plants are still alive.

Posted by Steve H. at 10:57 AM | Permalink  

Magnesium

I'll tell you what. The more I know about nutrition, the more annoyed I am that I didn't know it sooner.

It looks like I may be deficient in magnesium. Because damn near every chronic problem I have is on the list of stuff caused by magnesium deficiency.

I somehow managed to get two kidneystones. I have ADD. I have been having problems with allergies. My memory is horrendous. I have to avoid high-glycemic-index food because I get blood sugar fluctuations. I'm pretty sure I have some degree of insulin resistance. Look it up. You can get that stuff from magnesium deprivation.

This is interesting because I live in a place where the tap water is full of calcium silt. I mean, I have a black toilet (don't ask), and on some mornings, I can literally see a layer of white powder sitting on the bottom of the bowl. I get HUGE amounts of calcium, I'm sure. It supposedly comes from oolite, which is the coral rock that makes up South Florida. And I have read that you have to balance calcium and magnesium in your diet, or else the calcium "wins," and you get symptoms of Mg deficiency.

I'm trying to find out if oolite has magnesium in it.

Anyway, I'm going to resume taking small magnesium supplements. Can't hurt. Especially since I've had kidneystones, which magnesium prevents.

My problems are also pretty strongly correlated with fat and lack of exercise, but I already knew that. I'm down seven pounds since I started my diet, and the workouts are going good. I'm hoping that if I drop 18 more pounds I'll be able to sleep on my back again, and I'll be more rested. That should improve a bunch of things.

It's hard to believe this crap actually matters. So often, dietary advice comes via freaks and flakes, and you can't trust it. But I know some of this stuff isn't BS. For example, I'm sure I feel better and lose weight faster and put on muscle faster when I take calcium/vitaminD pills. And I can see and feel the difference fish oil makes. Maybe magnesium is in the same category.

I just know I'll be the picture of health once my tomato plants start producing. I'll be up to my ass in fresh tomatoes and beans and peppers. You wait.

Meanwhile, the weekend is coming up, so I better plan how I intend to stuff my hole tomorrow and Sunday.

Hey, I'm sure baked potatoes and pizza are high in something healthful. I just don't know what it is yet.

Posted by Steve H. at 6:21 PM | Permalink  

May not be Wasting my Time After All

A night or two ago, I measured my resting heartrate, to see if all this exercise was doing me any good. And I am pleased to announce that the resulting figure was 58 beats per minute. It may actually be lower, but 58 is what I got during the time I was willing to devote to measurement.

What a relief. Maybe I'm not ready to go on the cart yet.

When I was in law school, eight years ago, I was frustrated because I rode a Lifecycle for 30 minutes a day at 168 beats per minute and only got my heartrate down into the mid-60s. I talked to a hot doctor who used to study in our library, and she told me I was an old fart and that my blood vessels had lost elasticity, and that I should be happy with what I was getting.

HA!

Still, it's not like the old days, when I was in my 20s and could get myself down to 52 beats per minute exercising three times a week on a crappy rowing machine from Service Merchandise.

I guess things are looking up. But I'm still a giant mass of flab. I'm losing a pound or two a week, which is a safe rate, but not too satisfying or reinforcing.

Between this and my giant bean plants, I am absolutely beside myself.

Posted by Steve H. at 9:21 PM | Permalink  

I Need Grief Counseling

Here I am on day 7 of my Dietpower trial. This is the anti-fat software I downloaded last week.

This morning's bleak revelation: the scaled-down McDonald's breakfast I just had ran me 1067 calories. I say "scaled down" because I had a diet soda and I omitted one order of hash browns. My typical order is one McMuffin, one sausage and egg biscuit, a large Coke, and 3 hash browns. I give half an order of hash browns to Marvin and Maynard, and I eat the rest of it. Because I think waste is a sin. Shut up.

I wonder what that comes out to. Let's find out.

Holy moley. It's 1507 calories. You have to wonder how I survived days when I started with that and then went to ManCamp for lunch.

I don't know if I'm going to buy Dietpower or not. If it was 20 bucks, I'd be all over it. At 50, it seems like a bad deal. Like a reader said, you can do this with paper and pencil. The convenience of a computer is great, but not that great.

Here are a couple of things I hate about it. First it keeps insulting me. It gives me a nutrition grade every day, and I keep racking up Ds and Fs. Even when I eat garbage like egg salad and salmon. Aso, little messages appear in a window at the side, telling me everything I believe about dieting is crap. Yesterday it tried to tell me beef makes people fat.

I get the sense that whoever wrote the software is pretty anal-retentive and controlling and annoying, and that he or she really REALLY likes the Zone diet. Yesterday I went fishing and started the day with a Zone bar and two Zone-like bars, and the software gave me an A++. So I punished it by eating a Chunky.

The second irritating thing about the software is that it keeps reducing the amount of food I can eat every day. You enter a goal weight, and you give it a date, and you enter your starting weight, and it tells you how much you can eat. If you don't lose weight fast enough, it cuts your rations. I came in under budget every weekday last week, and I exercised very strenuously, and the frigging software cut me from 1400 to under 1300 calories. Just because the weight didn't fall off instantly. My worst day this week has been under 2200 calories, and that was yesterday, when I was getting all sorts of exercise running around on the boat.

I know damn well I'm losing weight. But you know how diets are. You mysteriously hover at the same weight for a week, and then five pounds fall off overnight. How come the software doesn't know that? Someone should tell it.

I'm down two pounds in a week. That ought to buy me some respect from this program. But no, it has to mock.

A reader reminds me that counting calories isn't a great way to diet. I disagree. I think that in all probability, a South Beachy regimen is the best possible approach, and on diets like that you don't have to count calories. But calorie-counting definitely works, and it takes little effort and no brains. And you can combine a little of the South Beach/low glycemic index philosophy with it.

I kind of like calorie counting, because I am completely capable of eating 5,000 calories in a day without much effort, and it's nice to know where I stand at a given moment.

When I get this lard off my ass I plan to shoot for 2200 calories a day, which is what I need to maintain a constant weight. That's not too stingy. You can do a lot of damage on 2200 calories if you eat intelligently, and if you exercise, you can add 400 to the days when you work out.

Of course none of this would work if I didn't relax on weekends. Life without an occasional pig-out is unthinkable.

So far, the only real problem I've had with this diet is a crampy sort of feeling. I can only assume that hard cardio workouts and low calories and lots of water add up to electrolyte problems. Yesterday I caught a 3-pound dolphin and I felt so miserable while reeling it in I almost handed the rod to someone else. Dolphin are tough, but not that tough. I got myself some Powerade, and I deliberately overate (it was Saturday), and now I feel a lot better. I hope I'll be okay to exercise tonight.

That is the status of the diet at present. I will keep you informed as it progresses. Or fails to.

Posted by Steve H. at 12:01 PM | Permalink  

Anything to Avoid Old-Fashioned Work

A couple of days ago I read that sleep apnea may cause Alzheimer's. Wow, was that encouraging. Like my memory doesn't suck enough NOW.

Thinking about it, I realized that the health problems which annoyed me most were probably caused by fat. Sleep problems. Heartburn. And now I was looking at Alzheimer's. Spiffy. Maybe it was time to get really really serious about losing 25 pounds.

It occurred to me that anything that requires discipline goes better when you keep records. I record my workouts, for example. Maybe there was software out there for fat people. To record their food intake.

I'm trying something called Dietpower. A lot of fatties recommend it. It has a huge library of food items in it, and you can add your own stuff. It also keeps track of exercise. It has a library of exercises, just like the food library, and if you don't like the ones that are in there already, you can make new ones up.

Seems pretty good so far. I arbitrarily decided I wanted to lose 25 pounds by September 4. It says I have to stay pretty close to the 1500 calories per day which I would have used as a goal if I had dieted without the software.

You can enter your daily weights, and it will give you a graph telling you what you can expect to weigh at the end of the diet. I haven't entered any yet.

It turns out you can buy yourself a fair amount of chow by working out. Today I bought myself 450 calories by putting in 45 minutes on the Nautilus bike and 5 minutes pushing the pedals on my old ergometer with my hands.

One annoying thing--if you forget to tell it when you drink water, it nags you and tells you to go get some.

It has a thing called a calorie bank. If you get ahead of yourself, you store up calories you can eat later. That's pretty cool. I have 506 saved up.

I'm surprised how much I enjoy the road bike. I think I know the reason. When I dream, I often dream I'm running like a dog, on all fours. Much faster than a human can run. It's a lot like flying. It occurred to me the other night that riding on the road gives me a very similar sensation. I ride faster than I can run, and I feel the wind, and the bike has a way of humming and surging when I push the pedals, making it feel much faster than it really is. And you can get a sensation of centrifugal force in turns, which never happens when you run.

When I use the Nautilus bike, I enjoy it for a different reason. I listen to loud music, which makes me somewhat manic. I've been thinking I'd like to take my MP3 player with me on the road bike, but I'm afraid I'd get mashed by a car I couldn't hear.

I often wonder if mild mania is a form of mental illness. I don't get depressed any more, but I definitely get manic, which is nice, because mania is pleasant.

Let's check Wikipedia.

Hypomania (literally, below mania) is a mood state characterized by persistent and pervasive elated or irritable mood, and thoughts and behaviors that are consistent with such a mood state. It is distinguished from mania by the absence of psychotic symptoms and by its lower degree of impact on functioning. Hypomania is a feature of some mood disorders, such as bipolar II disorder and cyclothymia. Though hypomanic people are often associated with bipolar disorder, it is in this state that many creative talents are in their most productive and successful mood. Ideas come to one with hypomania easily, and there is a full awareness of what they are doing, unlike intense forms of mania, which are a form of psychosis.

People with hypomania are generally perceived as being energetic, euphoric, overflowing with new ideas, and sometimes highly confident and charismatic, and unlike full-blown mania, they are sufficiently capable of coherent thought and action to participate in everyday activities. One in the state of hypomania might be immune to fear and doubt and have little social inhibition. They may talk to strangers easily, offer solutions to problems, and find pleasure in small activities. However, a large number of hypomanic episodes can be dysphoric. Subjects can be hostible, irritable, and in some cases, rageful. They may make poor choices and display little to no sympathy for other's emotions.

That doesn't sound so bad! Fortunately I am never irritable and always extremely sympathetic to others.

Shut up.

I ought to try harder to induce that state when I work. I remember doing things to make myself crazy as far back as 1984, to help me with my writing. But I rarely remember to do that now. It's funny. You can learn dozens of useful lessons in this life and then go to your grave without benefitting from them, simply because you didn't have the presence of mind to remember them when you needed them.

I've thought a lot about that this year. And a month or two back, I had an awful idea. I considered getting a tattoo.

I really don't like tattoos. They're fine on old men who served in the Navy, but other than that, I find the pretentious and trashy, especially on flavorless white-bread suburban kids struggling unsuccessfully to convince people they're interesting. But a tattoo can be useful in a way few other things can manage. It can serve to remind you of things. Constantly. No matter where you are or what the circumstances are.

I thought of a few lessons I had learned in my life, which I really wished I could remember to apply. And I thought I might get a small tattoo on my left hand, consisting of the first letters of a few words that would remind me of those lessons. Example: "R." Which, oddly, is supposed to remind me to pray before doing anything important. I know that's weird, but it was the first one I thought of, and for some reason "R" for "remember" seemed better than "P" for "prayer." I guess I could go with "P," but then I might forget to pray and remember to pee.

I think it would be hard to get a tattoo like that. Tattoo artists hate tattooing hands, because people regret hand tattoos. And it would have to be a really small tattoo, because I would want to get it burned off eventually, when I began remembering these things automatically.

I might go through with it eventually. If I get Alzheimer's from sleep apnea, I can have them tattoo my name right beside it, so when I forget what it is, it will be right in front of me. I'll be the Memento guy.

I may spring for the fat software. Right now I'm using a demo. I think it ought to make dieting a lot easier.

Posted by Steve H. at 8:57 PM | Permalink  

I'm Practically a Vegan

I now have proof that I am the most pathetic person who ever lived.

I still feel wiped out after today's interview. Maybe it's the overcast weather. Maybe I didn't sleep as well as I thought. But I was too pooped to cook, so I went to McDonald's.

Instead of my usual Double Quarter-Pounder with Cheese, I had a Big Mac.

Why?

Because it contained salad.

Yes, I knew I was making a horrendous choice by going to McDonald's, and I tried to make up for it by eating a fat, greasy sandwich containing half an ounce of shredded lettuce.

Mmm. Wow. I can already feel the fiber, vitamins, and minerals invigorating my system.

I also had a Diet Coke. Every little bit helps.

Posted by Steve H. at 6:14 PM | Permalink  

Great

I cannot believe what a wimpy little virus can do to a person.

As of three weeks ago, I was working out several nights a week. Some nights I rode my bicycle for 45 minutes, with my heartrate hovering in the mid-140s. Other nights I used stationary bikes and my amazing Cardio Glide for an hour. Tonight I managed THIRTEEN MINUTES. Then I quit, and I think I may still pass out. It's like a virus lowers my blood pressure or blood sugar or something.

It makes me so mad. I hope to God this will pass quickly. I would hate to spend months trying to recover from three weeks off.

This is what I get for associating with other human beings. I knew better.

Posted by Steve H. at 7:07 PM | Permalink  

In Some Cases, it's a Three-Figure Sum

Did you see the Drudge-linked story about fatty fashion in the UK? Check this out:

Oversize clothes should have obesity helpline numbers sewn on them to try and reduce Britain's fat crisis, a leading professor said today.

Can you believe that? Health warnings on muumuus. "If this garment is the correct size for you, you may wish to have a gastric bypass." Where would you put the tag so flubberballs would be sure of seeing it? You know how hard it is for fat people to turn their heads. Maybe instead of putting the tag on the clothes, they should put it on their refrigerator doors. Along with a Kryptonite lock and some electric fencing.

Am I an evil person for promoting fattening foods, in this age of seatbelt extensions and Super Duper Big Gulps? If so, I don't care. It's okay with me if you eat yourself to death after reading my book, as long as I get my royalties. I'm right behind you. I wouldn't ask you to eat anything I wouldn't eat myself.

Of course, I can still see my feet and I exercise for 45-60 minutes four to five times a week. And I don't smoke. So you'll probably buy the farm before I do. Hey, at least you won't die from eating garbage. If you die with one of my ribs or homemade doughnuts in your fat little paw, at least you'll know you died for something important.

You can't really blame a cookbook author for reader coronaries. I know fat people--I mean pathologically fat people so addicted to food that a cookbook could actually help kill them. They stuff themselves regardless of the quality of the food available. If they can't find good food, they'll lie on their backs shaking marshmallow Circus Peanuts directly into their mouths out of Sam's Club-size bags.

Here is how addicts work. Make their substance of choice available to them, and they'll snorf it up. Don't make it available to them, and they'll get it themselves and snorf it up. Hire armed guards to prevent them from getting it, and they'll bribe the guards to get it and then snorf it up. When they can't get the stuff they want, they take the next best thing. Quality is never an issue.

You can enable a drug addict. It takes effort and money to get drugs, and you can make it a lot easier. But it's impossible to enable a food addict. Because food is cheap, and it's everywhere. The only real enablers I've seen have been the softhearted morons who bring fattening treats to giant tubs who can no longer shop for themselves. Nobody hits eight hundred pounds without an enabler. But if you can walk and make it through the double doors at the grocery, you are responsible for everything you eat.

My pizza is really good, though. Damn, it's good. And easy. And really hard to get tired of. It's so good, publishing the recipe may rise to the level of Butterball Entrapment. You know how entrapment works. If I dress up like Britney Spears and stand on a street corner for the police department (or my own amusement) attracting johns who are already planning on doing some whoring, it's not entrapment. On the other hand, if I go to the home of a person who has no interest in whores or sex with women, such as Tom Cruise, and I sit on his chest and put a gun to his head and force him to pay me for a good time, and he would otherwise not have done it, that's entrapment. And possibly the basis for a new John Waters movie. Because I'm corrupting someone who would otherwise not have had the inclination to do the crime.

I don't care. I really want your money. You don't have to buy the book. How about this arrangement? Send me ten bucks, and I won't put the book in your mailbox, along with some eight-by-ten color photos of my latest pizza.

Don't mess with me. I can get to you. I can get a bellows and blow pizza fumes under your front door. I can fill your hot tub with sauce. Give me the goddamn money, lardass. GIVE IT TO ME. You would only have spent it on Ding Dongs anyway.

Think of it as protection money. I'm protecting you from yourself. Stiff me, and I'll turn you loose and let you give yourself a good working over. Complete with garlic rolls.

Stop whining and fork over the cash. I know you've been saving up for a day-old sheet cake.

I want you to do this because it's the right thing to do. Not because you feel pressured. But--and this is something I happened to notice purely coincidentally, after only Googling fiercely for half an hour--did you know that you have to type SIX X's before the L before Froogle stops giving you results for "XXX...L sweatpants"? They go all the way up to five X's. I don't know what they're charging, but whatever it is, they have to be taking a beating on fabric costs.

Look, when you find a hot pie on your lawn in an insulated bag the next time you waddle out to get the newspaper, don't say I didn't warn you. Don't say I wasn't a good friend, Porky. It would be awful if more pies turned up on your patio or in your specially widened shower when you ooze in there to rinse your flaps and wattles.

I'll be watching my PayPal account.

Don't disappoint me.

Posted by Steve H. at 11:04 AM | Permalink  

Life is Perverse

Here is how weird my life has gotten. Although a confirmed fat person condemned to obesity or perpetual dieting, I am now trying to find ways to get MORE fat into my diet.

A while back I decided to cut back on high-glycemic index foods. Except of course on weekends. I mean, come on.

So now a typical day starts with huevos rancheros and a whole grapefruit, and then I have a Labrada protein shake for lunch, and I tend to find myself eating a lump of beef and a vegetable for dinner.

I eat four eggs every morning, because it takes a lot of eggs to generate enough calories to be a real meal, and on the side, I have fried pico de gallo, and I add sour cream to get up to five or six hundred calories. Then I have that protein shake later, and after that, I start to feel like I'm blacking out from starvation. Even though I don't feel hungry.

But I don't want to keep sucking down protein shakes, because NOBODY needs a hundred and fifty grams of protein per day.

There have been times when I have looked at the butter in the fridge and said, "Hell, just eat half a stick and get it over with."

I have to find more stuff to eat. I'm not going to make up the shortage with fruit, because fruit is basically candy with a peel. Maybe it's time to go to Costco and buy a five-gallon jug of cocktail peanuts.

I see now why people eat crap like flour and sugar and rice. It's so damned EASY.

I think I made things worse by extending my workouts. I did that by training my brain to tune out testosterone, which was only present in my system in trace amounts anyway.

When you're a man, you always feel like you're not working out hard enough. Women, on the other hand, put on makeup to go to the gym and then act like their afraid they'll explode if they break a sweat.

When I do cardio stuff, I always feel like I have to suffer, so I exercise hard enough to make myself breathe hard and generally be miserable. Consequently, after 25 minutes, I feel like I've done all I can stand. But smart people, unlike me, exercise longer by cutting back on the intensity. Realizing that, I recently changed my workout so I make an effort for 25 minutes and then continue exercising at a more leisurely pace until CSI is over.

I have to have my CSI. I can't exercise without Marg Helgenberger.

Anyway, since I've been doing that, it seems like I get hungry a lot faster during the day.

I should just start eating lard with a tablespoon. Who has time to waste, trying to make diet-friendly fat taste good?

I guess there are worse problems to have.

Posted by Steve H. at 2:35 PM | Permalink  

I Can Feel the Pounds Melting Away

Tell me if you buy this.

Because many of my readers are fat sloppy persons like myself, a lot of you know what "glycemic index" means. It's a refinement on the low-carb concept. Low-carbing gets to be a drag because you can barely touch normal food, and you stay in ketosis, which gives you breath like a camel's armpit. Luckily, someone somewhere figured out that the thing that really mattered was not a food's carb content, but the speed with which it causes the body to produce insulin. Or maybe it's the speed with which it turns food into blood glucose. Related things, I suppose. In any case, that's the basic concept. When you eat foods that make your blood glucose shoot up, you overproduce insulin, your blood sugar plummets, you store fat, you feel crappy, and your cells build a tolerance for insulin, so next time it's worse. And on top of that you get hungry. That's the theory, I believe.

There is another index which is supposed to be better in some ways. It's called "glycemic load." But I figured the plain old glycemic index would be good enough for me.

So I got myself a food glycemic index chart. The index tells you how problematic a food is. And the chart says raw apples have a glycemic index of 38, which is high enough to be worthy of notice. On the other hand, another food comes in at a much more manageable 32. And that food is...peanut M&Ms.

Evidently, then, you're better off lying on your fat ass eating M&Ms than apples. Can this possibly be true?

Naturally, I have decided to do the research myself.

I wonder if pizza has a glycemic index. Yes. About 60. Damn it.

Anything under 55 is supposed to be good, but I notice that foods I have managed to get quite fat on come in below 55, so I figure 40 is better.

In other news, a pig roast is about to happen. Val invited me and my dad to ManCamp for Fathers' Day, and we're going to do another apricot-glazed pig stuffed with rice and bread cubes. I love this recipe. It works with pork chops, too, so you have no excuse for not making it.

I got the ingredients for stuffing and two big Key lime pies today, so it should be a grand and glorious feed. Not sure about the glycemic index.

Posted by Steve H. at 3:00 PM | Permalink  

Bleahhh

I thought I could handle it. But I can't. I absolutely can't face another serving of salmon.

I had this idea that I would replace my cholesterol-filled morning eggs with fish. Fish is full of omega-3s. That has to be better than three eggs every morning, right?

But fish is expensive. I don't want to blow ten bucks on breakfast six days a week. Finally, I decided canned salmon was the answer. I'd get up every day and eat oatmeal, followed by salmon salad.

I can't look at that crap any more. Salmon salad is fine, on a nice carb-laden sandwich. But by itself? Even Tom Cruise would turn it down.

I don't know what the answer is. Maybe I'll have to find some sort of oaty bread, dump the daily bowl of oatmeal, and eat sandwiches in the morning.

I truly miss the good old days, when I always had tons of dolphin in the freezer. But the weather has been horrible for months. On land, it's nice and dry and breezy. On the water, it's eight-foot waves and a constant beating. The only people who fish in this kind of weather are Yankees determined to squeeze as much value as possible out of their vacation dollars. The same pinheads who go to the beach in February when it's 45 degrees and go, "I love it! It's BRISK." While their teeth chatter and their nipples turn blue.

I think I need to start meat fishing, and then I should smoke like fifty pounds of fish. Then I'd be eating a lot of salt, though. Damn it.

I tried buying egg whites, but you would be amazed how much egg white you have to eat to get the amount of protein you would get from regular eggs. I was making these big fluffy piles of scrambled egg whites with one yolk, and it was like eating the foam from an airline seat. I guess I could go back to that. Salmon makes it look appetizing.

My research shows that there is no such thing as a healthy, protein-rich breakfast for under five bucks. Might as well not even try. You can either eat eggs, or you can stuff yourself with cheap carbs, which will turn into homocysteine and kill you dead as a hammer.

And the worst part is, McDonald's stopped serving McMuffins thirteen minutes ago.

Posted by Steve H. at 10:43 AM | Permalink  

My Reputation Precedes Me

Picked up some groceries today, and I was bummed out to see that there was no cane-sugar Passover Coke in the soda aisle. But on the way out, I saw a display. FIVE FOR FIVE DOLLARS! YEAH, BITCH! FILL MY CART! WHOO HOO!

So that worked out pretty good.

Then I decided to see if there was anything in the "ethnic" or "condiment" areas that resembled Wanjashan steak sauce. While I was there, I found a couple of things that looked worth trying.

1. Taste of Asia chili sauce. This stuff is pretty nice. It's like a really smooth, sweet Sriracha. I just ate a big glob of it on a wad of ground chuck. It's a little like Peter Luger's steak sauce, only GOOD.

2. Kikkoman Ponzu. This is soy sauce with citrus flavoring. Very nice. A hell of a lot better than the soy sauce I've been able to find around here. I think it would be great on sushi.

I've been trying to improve my weekday diet. When I'm not working on recipes, I don't much care what I eat during the work week (as other people call it). I think of weekend food as food and weekday food as medicine.

I decided to try to put some healthful stuff in the mix instead of relying so heavily on canned soup and tuna sandwiches.

I bought myself a green pepper, a red pepper, a Bermuda onion, and four ripe tomatoes, and I made a giant bowl of a pico de gallo sort of thing. I added a little vinegar, diced raw garlic, a tiny amount of olive oil, and half of a chopped habanero. That came out pretty good. I figure the acid and the pepper will keep it reasonably fresh for maybe five days.

I also got myself some cottage cheese, because dairy is back in style. They say it makes you lose weight, and supposedly, you need dietary calcium to prevent kidneystones. Which are made partly of calcium. Sounds crazy, but that's what I read.

Now I plan to eat cottage cheese with the salad-y stuff. The diet gurus recommend nonfat yoghurt, but that's a lot like eating cat vomit, and I'm not scared of fat.

I bought some ground chuck so I can grill myself burgers without bread. I want to cut back on the high-glycemic-index stuff during the week, so eating less bread seems smart. I think beef is healthy; it supposedly makes you lose weight, and it is my understanding that it has omega 3s in it.

I wish I knew of a good cheap source of fish. I'd eat fish in the morning instead of three eggs fried in butter. But I'm not ready to drop ten bucks on my daily breakfast instead of forty cents. I ought to sneak over to the marina and rape the local snapper population, but the dockmaster hates that. They're fat and tasty, and real stupid, because no one fishes for them. You can fill a bucket with foot-long mangrove snapper in half an hour.

I should take my old man's boat out and cast-net a few dozen pinfish. I could scale them en masse with the marina high-pressure hose, and then I could gut and head them and smoke them. There is nothing better than smoked fish with eggs in the morning. The Bahamians eat smoked grunt, but a pinfish is about the same thing.

Some day I swear to God, I'm going to go to a bait store and buy a dozen ballyhoo and smoke them. They swear by them in Central America. And they smell great when I'm hacking them up for bait.

I could also fish for small barracuda. The big ones have ciguatera, but fish under 5 pounds are safe, and they're supposed to be delicious, and they're easy to catch.

I'm not a big fan of fruit, because it's basically a peel filled with sugar. Although as I have said before, I am convinced that God wants us to eat more grapefruit. And I am in favor of eating apples, because they're supposedly full of all sorts of magical chemicals.

I jacked up my daily oatmeal intake to the point where I now get 5 grams of fiber from it. That means I eat approximately one mop bucket full, and later in the day, when I retire to the bathroom, I have to take a very, very thick book.

I figure that if I eat this stuff during the week, on the weekends I can lie on the floor in my underwear with my head in a big bowl of crema catalana with marshmallow Fluf.

I think I can take that Ponzu crap and toy with it and come up with a reasonable substitute for Wanjashan steak sauce. Maybe if I mix it with soy paste.

I'll tell you what I'm NOT going to do. I'm not going to eat tofu. There is responsible eating, and then there is sad desperation.

Posted by Steve H. at 6:21 PM | Permalink  

Mixed Bag

I was at the store just now, buying crap for ManCamp, when I noticed a pretty cool product. South Beach Diet bars.

I'm a huge fan of prepackaged diet crap, because it's really easy to use when you're on a calorie-counting diet. You always know how many calories you're getting. Also, it's the easiest way to get lots of protein without going nuts on calories. Don't believe me?

Protein Amounts in Packaged Foods I Just Chose at Random:

1 serving Met-Rx drink mix: 37 grams/250 calories
1 Met-Rx Protein Plus bar: 32 grams/320 calories
1 South Beach Diet bar: 19 grams/210 calories

Compare that to 21 grams/240 calories for three eggs. Obviously, it's a hell of a lot easier and faster to go the packaged route. And the packaged stuff usually has a buttload of vitamins in it.

One huge problem with packaged stuff is that it tends to be low on fiber. So you have to do without, or possibly resort to some sort of artificial supplement like Metamucil. Well guess what? I just checked, and South Beach Diet bars have 5 grams of fiber, each!

Unfortunately, I didn't know that until after I ate three. And I had oatmeal for breakfast. It's shaping up to be a long night.

I decided to make scones for the Super Bowl. I realize this is a bizarre item for a heterosexual man to take to a barbecue, but I make really, really great scones, and we're going to need something to eat until the smoked things are done. And instead of regular old BBQ beans, which are pretty great in and of themselves, I decided to make BBQ beans and franks, using fried slices of smoked sausage. As man food goes, this stuff is hard to top. It's greasy, it's heavy, it's spicy and sweet, and it makes you fart like a wildebeest. And even though I'm using sausages, I'm going to put bacon on top of it.

If you don't have my BBQ bean recipe, I pity you. I think it's posted here, if you use the search thing.

Posted by Steve H. at 4:06 PM | Permalink  

Has This Ever Happened to You?

My cookbook has bitten me in the ass.

Tonight I was supposed to go to a baby shower for a law school friend. I had some presents shipped from Babies R Us, where she is registered, and then this evening, I started to get dressed.

I am too FAT go get in my dress clothes! I'm okay if I want to wear a double-breasted suit, but other than that, I'm screwed.

This is AFTER losing about six pounds, dieting over the last month. Think how fat I was BEFORE!

I'll have to send her an email explaining that I thought my clothes would explode.

On the up side, I got in some excellent piano practice.

Posted by Steve H. at 10:07 PM | Permalink