Christmastime always drills home the fact that American consumers, myself included, produce more trash unwrapping our crap than we probably do throwing the crap away at the other end of the craptispan.
We succeeded, primarily, in convincing relatives and friends that our daughters would rather have clothes than toys this year, but even so the wraptermath was dismaying*.
Piles of nearly unrecyclable and glossy four-color print boxes, tough and deadly pieces of twisted plastic blister-packaging, wee little metal twist-ties, and paper! Paper! PAPER!
There has to be a better way, man. Like, why not have just one pretty display box per item of crap at the store and then just put the crap–a Microsofe Zune**, for instance–into a burlap sack at the check-out counter? I could re-use the burlap for a thrifty business-suit or several sets of underwear. Or, at least, I could use burlap for underwear easier than I could wear a razer-sharp fragment of the Zune’s plastic blister-packaging after I’ve torn it apart with a pair of depressed, short-lived scissors.
* only glossary hoverers will note the redundancy.
** I do not now, nor will I ever, own an actual Zune***.
*** Unless one is gifted to me, after which I will unashamedly sell it on eBay or something.
60 Degrees on Dec 27? Why the heck not?
Note the piles of startled ice and snow converting to airborne water vapor in embarrassment.
Three days ago it was, literally, 1 degree Fahrenheit (-18C).
Cold enough that no amount of bundling could make a man feel cozy.
This morning I woke up and it was 60 degrees Fahrenheit (16C).
Warm enough for me to go outside clothed only in a toddler and a pair of sweatpants.
Whoever knew that signs of impending doom could be so amusing! Its as if Buddy Hacket had assumed the role of grim reaper in tonight’s production of “Death and Dismemberment in The Age of Enlightenment*”
* Not an actual play but, you know, it should be!
 This is a 230lbs (105kg) SafeTinspector photographed cavorting in water with his eldest SafeTspawn in the summer of 2006.
At this time he wore pants with a thirty-eight inch (97cm) waistband–and when he did, he found that they were a bit on the snug end of the belt spectrum.
As recently as August of 2008 he was still 215lbs (98kg).
Note the prominent jelly-rolls, mound of back-fat, moobs*, and the protective barrier of flesh artfully concealing the waistband of his swimming trunks.
|
Now, here is a 183lbs (83kg) SafeTinspector in mid-November, 2008.
The waist of the Inspector is now a full five inches (13cm) narrower than in the above picture and he can very nearly bench-press his former weight. He last saw this low a body weight 19 years ago at the age of 17. And since he had no muscle to speak of during that bygone era, he is actually in much better shape now than at any time in his life.
How did this happen? Simple. Inspiration and perspiration.**
|
I realized that my dream of being the star of a 1978 pornographic cinema feature could never happen in my current state. My naturally hirsute nature was ideal to please the pubic shrubbery acclimated public of the time, my wacky eyes and practiced sneer fit the task of gentle misogyny perfectly. But the flab needed to go if I wanted even the slightest chance at being an adult film star in the 1970′s.
I’d succeeded in shedding the coagulated lipids and man-curd from my belly meat, and had already posed next to this trendy dream catcher when the fatal flaw in my plan finally was revealed:
I don’t know the way to 1978 and my GPS says its not a location in the continental United States.
EIther I need to purchase a new map-pack from Magellan or it is back to the drawing board for ShapelyInspector.
Regardless, the weight was lost the old fashioned way: diet and exercise.
- Diet:
- I cut out the junk food
- stopped eating out so much
- started eating a lot more fruit
- cut down my portion sizes
- reduced animal flesh to a minimum***
- took one multivitamin a day (just in case my diet was missing some vital nutrient or another)
- Exercise:
- Increased the frequency and length of time playing DDR for my lower-body and to provide aerobic exertion
- Dusted off and began to actually use the fine set of olympic free-weights in my basement to build up my upper body and to provide anaerobic exercise.
Once upon a time, in 2001, I was able to get myself down to about 185lbs briefly through near-starvation. I was not exercising at that time in any meaningful way and the weight piled back on as soon as I started eating again. I can hope that I’ll be able to keep it off this time; it’s really neat being able to wear “medium” shorts and “large” shirts (as opposed to “large” and “extra large”) and I would love to make this a permanent development.
I’d hate to finally figure out how to get to 1978 only to find that I’m too fat to make it in the skin trade. |
* Moobs: man-boobs. And now you know.
** This marks the end of the third-person portion of the posting. Sorry about that.
*** But not entirely. I’m not a vegetarian, I’m a meat-minimalist
My daughter. Beautiful, but about as calm as a your average robo-hampster.
