The Credible Shrinking Man

If you know me, you know that for a while now I have been fat. In my skin-tight, 2XL navy blue work uniform, I have been mistaken for Violet Beauregard, and the Oompa-Loompas have tried to roll me to the juicing room more than once (I really do chew gum constantly).

This was me the week before Halloween 2007:

It would be convenient for me to say that emotional eating took over my life when Mom died last July; by that point, however, I was already superfat. At Mom's funeral, I was wearing this monster of a shiny grey suit with about 27 buttons down the front. I bought it at a thrift store and I think it had been previously owned by Bruce Bruce (the host of BET's Comic View). It was very urban churchy. On any normal-sized man, this would have looked like David Byrne's giant Stop Making Sense suit. For me, it was tight through the middle.

By Christmas, I was nearly 300 pounds. 5' 8" and 300. Almost 300 -- 298 and change.

I needed a change. I don't really make New Year's resolutions, but January First was a convenient date for me to make some lifestyle changes. Then, on January 31, I turned forty. Four-oh. I have not been to the doctor for the big four-oh physical. When you are forty and you go in for your checkup, they send you to the proctologist. The proctologist essentially takes a plumber's snake with a webcam on the tip and jams it straight up your ass. All the way up your ass. Slowly probing and twisting. Is this making you horny? WTF is wrong with you. Yeesh. So that isn't kinda hot, in a way? WTF is wrong with you. Yeesh. As I say, I have not been. I am not ready to pay a millionaire to tell me that I am way too fat, and then send me to pay some other millionaire to also tell me that I am way too fat and while feeding a roto-rooter up my rectum. Rectum? It nearly killed 'um. Bah-dum, ching. About his own probative event, comedian Robert Schimmel said, "I taste metal." I couldn't possibly suffer the indignity of it all with Greenpeace simultaneously trying to push me back into the sea.

I was already getting smaller in March of 2008, when The Learning Channel aired British DJ/hypnotist Paul McKenna's I Can Make You Thin. This provided me with a couple of strategies: step counting and distracting myself from cravings.

• Step counting. I hate exercise for the sake of exercise. I love physical exertion in the name of something practical, but athletics and the gym are not my bag. I have maintained for years that I have a very active job which should completely make up for my hate of sports and workouts. It turns out that I was right. Paul McKenna reccommends 10,000 steps per day. My workday averages 12,000 to 15,000 steps. If I am a few steps short one day, a walk up to the grocery or the drugstore usually makes up the difference. My wife Tracey easily doubles my average daily steps, that showoffy skinny bitch. My Dad scoffs at all this walking...as he drives his Cadillac the few blocks to the drugstore to pick up his meds for type-2 diabetes and high blood-pressure.
• Distracting myself from cravings. Paul McKenna uses this rapid succession of hand movements, tappings, and vocalizations to scramble the brain a little bit and disrupt the craving. It helps. So does green tea. So does a frothy Metamucil smoothie. So does MGD 64 (I blame my b-sis Beck's mention of this redo of MGD Light for getting my alcoholic beverage average over 1 per month -- yay booze).

This is where I am now, the week before Halloween 2008:
This year, so far, I have lost 75 pounds. An XL is now a pretty loose fit, and much of the time I wear L. If the additional notches I've drilled in my belt are to be believed, I have lost 8 inches off my waist. Still, I am around 225. I am at a plateau. I have hit diminishing returns. Poopie. Nothing is ever good enough.


I would like to make it an even 100 for the year -- but Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are realistically going to knock me off my pace.


Next time: more hi-jinx, and a look at the start of the New Fall (eating) Season.

The Fall Eating Season I: ...and since Columbus discovered India in the Dominican Republic, we use precious cinnamon to make elephant ears.

Columbus Day. My sister's birthday is October tenth; so, growing up, every year for her birthday she got the gift of a three-day weekend from the school district. In fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, wished for a westward passage to India, blew out the candles, and had a piece of atomic cake with the Arawak shamans, so my sister got a three-day birthday. I'm not bitter.



Fenugreek is bitter. Fenugreek is not an important seasoning to "Western" cooking: you can't just pop into the Kroger and get a bottle of McCormick fenugreek. Half an eon ago, Columbus sailed the wrong way around the world to "India" in search of fenugreek and cinnamon and coriander and especially black pepper -- to make rotten European pork taste less, um, European. Today, black pepper sits on every "Western" table (it's the stuff that makes us say,"Oh shit," when we see the grey flakes and realize we didn't grab the salt shaker as intended). Coriander has been relegated to pickles and Mexican food. Cinnamon. Cinnamon is the spice of Columbus Day, the spice of every day when the darkness is longer than the light. The Fall Eating Season commences for me each year when I first smell the cinnamon goodness of fresh elephant ears at the Covered Bridge Festival, which begins Columbus Day weekend.

For the Covered Bridge Festival when I was a kid, The Rockville locals would set up two parallel cinder block walls knee high and a foot apart along one entire block of the courthouse square. The space between the low walls was filed with blazing firewood -- a block long barbecue grill. In recent years, the crowds have shifted to other parts of Parke county, so the grilling setup is a lot smaller. Still, not much has changed on courthouse square in the 30 or so years since my first Covered Bridge Festival. Nowadays, instead of our family searching as far as Terre Haute or Indianapolis for lodging, we make it a day-trip.

• SAVORY HIGHLIGHT: Pork chop sandwich with complimentary hot tea or (perfect) coffee.



• SWEET HIGHLIGHT: Warm persimmon pudding with gingersnap "sideboards" and whipped cream.

For the displaced hillbillies or fans of Andrew Zimmern, there's always a big bowl of fried chicken gizzards. Mmmm...the more you chew them, the bigger they get!

Next time: More hi-jinks, and a pre-post-election rant that I should really post pre-election.

Premiere Entry: Let's get the compulsory bitching out of the way up front

"Don't sweat the small stuff," calls the novelty mug in a brushy 1980s font. A chorus of schwag chants this platitude from dump tables and thrift stores in every English speaking community on this planet we call Earth. I would venture to guess that somewhere there is a picture of LOLcats mewing "Don't sweat the small stuff," to each other from ground level, peering up along the legs of a new frilly bassinet.

I smash that coffee cup in the fireplace with a hearty Opa! I dress those LOLcats in layettes and bonnets and leave Sweet Pea on the floor to crawl through the steel girders and cement mixers just beyond the open door.
I reject your reality and substitute my own: "If you cannot trust that someone will do the right thing when it is easy to do, you cannot expect that they will do the right thing when it is more difficult to do."

Here's an easy example: school zone speed limits.

My hometown has one main drag through downtown. Three schools and the library are clustered along this main drag well away from the downtown area. The speed limit is 35, 20 in the school zones. Twenty. In the school zones. On school days. When the orange hazard light is flashing. When children are present. Our children. I am the only one who even approaches 20. Ever. Not the parents, not the school buses, not the police on their way to and from their speed trap set up to catch speeders in the school zone.

To be sure, I am a fairly law-and-order fuddy-duddy for an extreme lefty -- but I am no prude. Still, if I can't trust my neighbors to slow down and follow the rules long enough to be certain they are not plowing over their own children and their children's classmates, then I can't trust my neighbors when the sleeper cell of foreign operatives in Lake Station, IN accidentally gets switched on by a David Blaine trick gone wrong on TV. Sure, I wouldn't mind a series of payday-loan shops meeting with a few pounds of C-4, but not if the debris field is directly over the jungle gym at the park.

I think back to being fifteen years old and failing the driving portion of Driver's Ed. because my spinning alcoholic of a driver's-ed. teacher couldn't regain his equilibrium enough to tell that I came to a complete stop at the red octagon. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. When I learned how to drive, we were required to come to a complete stop at a red octagon no matter what. No matter what. No matter what. Then, once we had come to a complete stop at the red octagon, we had to count out-loud "one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi" before we were even to look and see if it was clear to lurch forward into the intersection. In nineteen eighty duhba-duhba-duhba I aced the classroom portion of Driver's Ed., but failed the practicum because I said Mississippi faster than the stammering drunk with the additional brake pedal. I had to retake the driving portion in summer school, and had no problems with the extra-sober elderly Dutch-Christian-Reformed spinster who instructed me then.

I resent the stranglehold of frivolous regulation as much as Rush Limbaugh and his Pez dispenser full of oxycontin. The old punk in me says, "Rules are for fools." Indeed, the old Puck of punk himself, Johnny Rotten, said it:

Rules are for fools...but common sense is for everyone.

If we are going to replace all of the red tape with clear tape -- or with no tape at all -- we have to make sure we don't run over our kids on the way to the candy store. Mix metaphors until stiff peaks form. Pour into a 9-by-13 cake pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Sweat the small stuff. The small stuff is everyday life. The small stuff is your friendships, your family relationships, your sense of belonging. The small stuff is the Social Contract.

Here endeth the bitching.

Next time, hi-jinx and poop jokes.