FML

I have to transfer a car title. That means that at least one weekday I will have to be in Memphis so that I can go to the DMV and get a new title and tag. As long as I'm going to have to do this, I'm thinking of applying for a personalized tag that says "FML" - I wonder if they'll give it to me? You have to list 3 options in case your first choice isn't available. I'm thinking of listing the following -
1) FML
2) OMG FML
3) WTF FML


Monday I was in my pump class, sweating like a pig, huffing like an ashmatic rhinosaurus, and clogged with snot by my stupid allergies, while all around me hot women were huffing and puffing, too, but oddly never sweating. My sinuses were clogged to the point of being useless, which meant that I had to stop and put my weights down so I could blow my nose. I hate blowing my nose in class. People always look at me like I'm the Elephant Man. But if I don't do it then I can't breathe, so I have no choice. But this being me, of course, it all went horribly wrong.

I blew my nose as quickly and quietly as I could, wiping the disgustingness off my face and stuffing the handkerchief back into the pocket of my workout shorts - yes, I have to wear shorts with pockets, which makes me look freaky. I thought I had done a pretty good job of it, all things considered. But then I thought I heard the sound of a group of females going "eeeewwwwwww." It may have been imagined or it may have been real, I don't know, but I quickly wiped my face with my hand to make sure nothing disgusting was hanging out of my nose or anything. My face was clean. Then I looked down at my shirt. There was a big nasty booger on my chest that had somehow exploded past the handkerchief and escaped. I was a walking, sweating, panting, pumping, nasty human booger. Awesome. FML


Tuesday, as I was driving to lunch, I noticed a police car in a side parking lot driving like a maniac through the lot and heading towards the road with his blue lights flashing. I was in a group of cars all going the same speed. None of us were doing anything unusual, smoking pot, shooting at each other, surfing on the hoods of our vehicles, or driving naked. The cop skidded out onto the road and came up behind me. I pulled over, nearly running up a curb in the process, and he pulled in behind me. WTF?

He got out and came up to my window, demanding to see not only my license, but also my proof of insurance and registration, which no veteran cop ever does anymore, so I knew he was a rookie. I had to dig through piles of papers in my truck to find all that crap because NO ONE EVER ASKS FOR IT. He took my license and insurance card and told me if I find my registration to bring it back to his car. Great, if he were just going to yell at me he wouldn't be taking my license to his car to sit down.

I dug out every receipt I had received in the last 2 years, every old, expired insurance card, and 3 years worth of old registration documents before I found this year's. I took it to him. He said I was doing 55 in a 40 zone. I said, "no, I wasn't." He just looked at me. I went back to my truck. I'm old enough to know what a waste of time it is to argue with a cop about much of anything. Tell it to the judge isn't just something TV cops enjoy saying because it sounds coplike. It's just how it is.

He came to my window and handed me a ticket. He said if I wanted to do traffic school I'd have to appear in court and ask the judge. Oh really? And pay the court costs, too, right? I see how this works. I took the ticket and watched him drive away. Then I read the ticket. According to him, I am 5'6" and weigh 160 lbs. I was also born in december of 1959 and my social security number is 518-86-7048. The fuck? Whose ticket is this?!

So I'm thinking he pulled someone else over and started to write them a ticket, but something persuaded him to stop mid-ticket and let them go, at which point he needed someone else to slap it on since every ticket has to be accounted for. And he chose me. 5'6" sounds like a girl. So maybe he pulled over an ex-girlfriend or a hooker and she gave him a blowjob to get out of it? But wait, 5'6" and 160 lbs - I think not. Not unless he was desperate for that blowjob. Maybe he pulled over his own mother? He pulled over his own mother and started to write her up. But she threatened to kick him out of the house if he did, so he stopped and let her go. Yeah, that sounds about right. And then he gave her ticket to me because SOMEONE has to pay this thing. FML


My post from the other day was totally fucked up, and it's all my fault. I've done "Wordless Wednesday" before and I know how it works. You post a photo and no words. Well, I had meant to crop out all the words from that photo and simply post the wordless picture, as you are supposed to do. But I've been stressed and busy. I forgot. I posted a wordy photo for Wordless Wednesday, which is just unbelievably stupid. FML


Tuesday after work, as I was pulling out of the parking lot in the pouring rain, the DJ on the radio was giving a traffic report. The DJ was informing us that we were under a flood warning, which I could clearly see for myself as everything around me was underwater. The DJ then said that a cop was stuck in the median on the very same road where I had gotten my ticket earlier that day. Witnesses had called to say that his blue lights were flashing and he was spinning his tires in the mud, sinking deeper and deeper. I wondered, could it be the same cop who gave me a ticket meant for his own mother earlier that day? As I drove past, I looked and saw him. Indeed it was the same cop, and he was in a ditch filling with water, looking rather angry at his predicament, and as stuck as he could be. I imagined I could hear him saying, as I drove out of sight, "FML"



Speaking of fucked lives:

My Humiliation/Workout

I went to the gym yesterday. I've been sick so it was a test to see how well recovered I am. Apparently I am recovered well enough to have returned to my previous pathetic state.


She can't take her eyes off me
The instructor is always looking at me, monitoring me. I'd like to say she's checking me out, but I know that isn't true. She's looking at me in that worried way that people do when they see someone they think is about to keel over and die. She keeps saying "go at your own pace. Rest if you need to. Take a break if you have to." Things like that. And she's usually looking at me when she says it.

The greatest insult of all happened yesterday. I did, in fact, need to rest so I sat my ass down on the floor for a minute while everyone else was doing lunges while pressing weights overhead. The woman in front of me, apparently seeing me in the mirror, turned around and said "are you all right?" Yes, I am fine. I am sitting on the floor because I am tired, but I will be getting up again in a minute.



I'm surrounded
All around me are college volleyball girls. They pump along, never tired, never sweating, never huffing or puffing or blowing anyone's house in. I'm pouring sweat. I always do. I have been this way since I was 11 years old. I sweat waterfalls. And I have bad allergies, so my nose runs during class. Today I thought I'd be smart and bring a handkerchief to blow my nose without having to leave class. Well, it was a particularly bad day for allergies and I soaked that handkerchief on the first blow. It was nasty. And all around me are the young, shiny volleyball girls, all hearing me going "HONK" and eyeing me with their side glances. "Is he REALLY using a handkerchief? Like, I haven't seen anyone use one of those since my grandpa, and he died in the 1980s when I was in diapers."


No eye contact
The college volleyball girls won't ever look at me directly. I know why. They don't want to make eye contact. They fear that if they do I will lock onto them and then smile a goofy grin, like guys do when their brains are drowning in dopamine and oxytocin which is kicked off by a strong physical attraction and makes guys suddenly become retarded. It has an effect similar to cocaine. I know this because I learned it in biology back in college. Hot girls make guys dumb. And then we get that stupid grin on our faces because our brains are suddenly stoned out of existence and all we have to function with is our most basic "lizard" brain which isn't very bright and rarely impresses women. They call this thinking with our dicks, but that's not quite scientifically accurate, although it's close. The stupid grin is a warning to women, especially hot young single women, that trouble is lumbering their way all Frankenstein-like. And they don't want trouble to lumber their way, grinning like an idiot, and trying to make small-talk with grunts and moans. So they won't look at me. And that's just as well, because I can see myself in the mirror, and I look like ass. Even worse, being surrounded by hot young college volleyball girls just makes me look even worse. It accentuates my assness in contrast to their hot young shiny. And it makes me feel rotten. And the feeling rotten then makes me shine less and less, so that my sweaty, honking, snotty assness stands out even more as the light inside of me gets dimmer and dimmer because of seeing my ass-like self in that damn mirror surrounded by shiny glimmering angels.


See how she shines?
Even worse, these volleyball girls, nothing against them, but they aren't anything spectacular. I mean, outside of class I probably wouldn't pay much attention to them any more than they would me. But in this class, where most of the students pumping away are over 30, this random flood of collegiate athlete girls stands out. I don't know what it is about girls who play volleyball, but they have a certain look to them everywhere I have ever encountered them. And this crew is no different. There are three or four of them who look like they have stuffed 2 volleyballs under their shirts, only it isn't volleyballs, it's the real them. So sure, they attract some attention there in the gym. And I'm sure they want to avoid as much of that attention as possible, especially in a class filled with over-30 guys.


Those aren't volleyballs
As for me, I'm too busy trying to keep up with the teacher to stare at the volleyballs under the shirts of the volleyball girls. I'm sweating and huffing and wondering how I could lift weights, play soccer and run distance races all my life and still struggle so much in this damn class. Why won't she just slow down? Why are we doing a zillion squats and lunges? My legs are going to fall off and I may projectile vomit if this continues. I could do a million pushups and dips and overhead presses if she'd just have us do that first and then do the zillion squats and lunges, but when we do them first I can't do jack crap afterwards. By the time we got to the pushups I felt like I was going to suffocate from lack of air. And then the worst possible thing happened - I felt my knees coming down towards the ground. For God's sake, it's just pushups! I am NOT going to put my knees down on the ground to do damn pushups. But down they came and thumped on the ground and there I was with my knees down doing pushups like a girl. But those volleyball girls weren't doing girl pushups. It was just me.


I was the only girl doing these pushups
You'd think I wouldn't go back after such humiliation, doing girl pushups surrounded by college girls who did man pushups while pretending that I wasn't even there, blowing my nose and sweating all over the place, gasping for air while the woman in front of me asked if I was OK or maybe needed an ambulance. But my whole life is one giant humiliation. I am accustomed to humiliation. The fact that I struggled so much just means I'm doing the right workout. My muscles need the shock of something they can't do for a change. Sure, I know this type of workout is tailored towards women more than men. I remember when Cory Everson was Ms Olympia and she created this whole "body pump" workout specifically for women. She used to invite male bodybuilders to try to do her workouts with her and she'd make them squat until they vomited. It's just the way it is. I can load up a bar and squat with a ton of weight, touch my ass to my heels and stand back up again, but ask me to do a million reps with my warm-up weight and I'll run out of gas in a hurry. I can max on bench, do some negatives and partial bench presses, clank the big plates together and feel good about my bench, but ask me to do a hundred thousand pushups after doing squats till I puked and I will drop my knees to the ground and end up shaking out a handful of girl pushups while my sinuses clog with snot because I have allergies and suddenly I can't breathe at all.

Don't talk to me about sinus surgery. I already had it. It made things worse. My doctor was a lunatic and everyone I ever met who had that surgery performed by him regretted it. He didn't know what he was doing. Either that or he's intentionally incompetent. Either way, I had the surgery. It didn't help. I still can't breathe.

When class is over everyone has to mill around putting all their equipment back up. The women all talk to each other. People who have been in the class forever all talk. I am new. I don't know anyone. The volleyball girls don't want to make eye contact. I don't talk. I just sweat and blow my nose and do girl pushups and sometimes I stop and sit down on the floor while women harass me that I might be dying. But I will be back on Wednesday to do it again. And I will be back the next week, too. When it isn't hard for me anymore, then I'll do something else, but until then, this is what I need to be doing - humiliating myself, apparently.

So This Is Christmas

It's Christmastime again, this time for the year 2010. We're expecting snow on Christmas Day, which would be cool, in more ways than one. I'm going to take some time off from work and try to rest, although God only knows what I'm actually going to end up doing. There's always a list of things to be done, whether at home or at work. I suspect when we all get up to Heaven someday, God will greet us with a list of things to do along with a requirement that we fill in estimates of when we think we'll have them done. The list will continually grow and we will spend our eternity doing this damn list. Yeah, and that's Heaven. Hell is no doubt even worse and probably involves project managers and perpetual 'scope creep', where your original task keeps growing with more and more requirements. Meanwhile, other things are added to the list and you're expected to somehow get them all done at the same time. Demons nag the shit out of you for being behind. And there's no internet in hell so you can't blog about it. And no days off. And no toilet paper in the bathrooms. And no coffee, except decaff, which you finally learn is just demons pissing in a dirty coffee pot, as you had always suspected.



I wish I was a real boy
Anyway, enough about that. What else is going on for Christmas this year? Oh yeah, President Obama is trying to push through a bunch of new appointees to our Justice Department and other top posts with great power. It's not being widely publicized (Wall Street Journal page A2, Dec 22), but I couldn't help noticing that every single one of them are Jewish women with heavy feminazi ties, and by feminazi I mean Ashkenazi, which is German for 'face like a rat.' And then I started researching a little (got lost in Googleland) and I discovered that the vast majority of Obama appointees are feminazi Jewish women. And living in Memphis as I do, I had to ask, where are all the high-ranking jobs for black men and women that he promised? Why are only a handful of his closest and highest-ranking appointees black men and black women? Why does he so often appear to be totally beholden to (owned and operated by) Jewish misandric feminist women specifically? These women didn't vote for him, not a single one. They voted for Hillary. And Hillary isn't dead (where's Dorothy with that bucket of water?) or even out of the running for the next presidential race. Yes, yes, I know that Obama is George Soros' houseboy and George Soros is a huge Ashkenazi feminazi communist momma's boy who gives millions to female supremacist hate groups around the world in the mistaken belief that one day, if he gives enough money, these man-hating Marxist mostly-lesbian womyn will magically love him and only him the way his momma never did. But even so, you would think, what with all the rap songs about "bros before hos" and shit, that Obama would take care of the brothas first, and pay back his master, Voldemort, second. But if you thought this, you would be wrong. Never underestimate the power of the Dark Side, and by 'Dark Side' I don't mean black people, because as I just said, he's not really paying back the black people very well, which was the whole point of that entire gigantic paragraph.



Barney Claus
Also happening just in time for Christmas, our Democrat-controlled Congress, with their dying breath, set free all the gay soldiers in the military (Democrats created Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell under Clinton and The very gay Press celebrated it), took over the internet so they could censor blogs like mine, sold our national security to the Russians with a Jimmy-Carter-like treaty straight out of the drug-fueled, disco 1970s, and swore to their goddess, Lilith, that they didn't mean to lie about Global Warming. And then those Death Eaters disapparated and returned to Voldemort's lair to plot their eventual return and revenge.



Pump till you puke
What else is going on? Oh yes, I have joined a new gym, where women in workout tights stand in front of a room wearing a Britney Spears-like headset and force entire groups of people to do torturous and agonizing things involving stretchy cables, dumbbells, plastic step-ups and foam mats. Meanwhile, just outside the torture room, visible through the glass windows, college girls in tiny tank-tops and shorts are sweating and exercising with weights for upcoming volleyball/basketball/softball/soccer matches against other colleges with teams of similarly sweaty girls. Alongside the sweaty college girls, old fat men are attempting to powerlift the same weight they did while they were younger while struggling not to stare too hard at the college girls. Elsewhere in the new gym, there is a tiny dark room filled with sweaty, panting people on bicycles that go nowhere. Another Britney-Spears-like person, this one a man, forces them to ride their bicycles to nowhere as fast as possible while he shouts at them and blares technopop music through giant speakers. Upstairs, people ride similar bicycles to nowhere, run treadmills to nowhere, and ellipticize on ellipticals to nowhere, all while watching big-screen TVs (checking each other out) and listening to iPods. Down below, a group of white men play basketball against one another (badly) and silently pray to God for the ability to slam dunk like Michael Jordan (never gonna happen.) And because I have joined in on all of this, I am now paying less money (I'm broke) while working out harder (vomiting) than I was before (no interruptions to listen to monologues about conspiracy theories), and as a result, I am today in severe pain unlike anything I ever experienced with the conspiracy master, LaRaza, who was my previous trainer.



Drugs? I ain't on no drugs. Whatchew tawkin' 'bout, boy?
Yesterday, as I was driving home from work, I got behind a white Toyota Celica going 40 in the passing lane on the highway. Traffic was just blowing past this turd until we came to a red light. When the light turned green, he just sat there for a minute until I had to tap my horn. Then he slooooowly accelerated up to a crawl. With all the traffic blowing past us, there was no way to get around him. When I flashed my brights, indicating to all who passed their driver's test that you are in the passing lane and clearly not passing anyone so move it or get over, he began tapping his brakes. Yeah, in a Celica. And I'm in a giant 4x4 with a steel grill-guard just right for pushing Japanese shit-piles into a ditch. He tapped his brakes and I didn't tap mine. My grill-guard went up over his rear bumper and hatch and was nearly tapping his rear window when it suddenly occurred to him that he'd better speed the fuck up or he might be visiting a bodyshop and/or hospital for Christmas. At this point, Bo Duke there stuck his fist out the window and began shaking it. Yes, seriously. And then, not satisfied with shaking his fist, he himself began to climb out of his window, turn around backwards, and scream at me. I have no idea who was steering his car at this point, but he was going so slowly anyway that it is entirely possible that no one was. The fist-shaking gentlemen had a long white beard and scraggly long hair, well matched to his sunken pale eyes, pale wrinkly skin, and bad teeth. He looked like someone who might have been kicked out of ZZ Top at some point. I had to laugh at this comical cunt going totally apeshit in front of me as a consequence of his own bad, and likely drunken, driving. But I did go ahead and sit on my horn while turning on my high beams to make absolutely certain he understood that I was not his sister and thus he should stop trying to fuck with me. I suppose he got the point. He slipped back into his seat and continued his agonizing crawl down the highway. I had reached my destination at this point and turned left to go home. At the rate he was traveling, I'll bet he's still driving right now, trying to get to wherever he was going. That is, unless someone has shot him by now.


Ahm gowna put a bullet in ye, boy!

Dammit Gym, I'm a Doctor not a Brazilian bikini wax inspector!

So, I went to the gym tonight. I've gone to this gym a few times. Not many. The first time I ever went there I stepped onto a treadmill behind a cute blonde college girl. Next to her was a guy her age. Beside me was a fat, freaky-looking dude with big glasses and a goofy face. The moment I stepped onto the treadmill the goofy-looking guy turned to me and started talking. "Blah bleargh arroooooo," he said to me. It took me a moment to run this by all the various foreign languages I speak in my brain before I realized it was utter gibberish.

"What the fuck" I politely replied. Then I noticed he had crumbs of some sort all over his face.

He looked at me and I looked back at my treadmill and ignored him. No sense wasting time on a man who can't speak English. At this he grew angry and stepped off his treadmill, walking away still talking in his gibberish language, slowly disappearing around the corner towards the front doors. I glanced over at his still running treadmill and noticed that he had left his TV set on (every treadmill has its own TV). And also, he had left a half-eaten cookie on the treadmill where your iPod and car keys go. Hmm, half-eaten cookie and a treadmill. So, basically this guy, who is clearly retarded, likes to walk on the treadmill behind pretty young girls, watch TV, eat cookies, and annoy strangers with babbling. Lovely.

Anyway, that was 3 weeks ago. Tonight when I arrived at the gym I was relieved to see that he was nowhere around. I got on my usual treadmill and began to run. I noticed there was some sort of karate class going on in the aerobics room behind me, but I mostly just ignored it.

I ran 3 miles on the treadmill, picking up speed as I went, searching for the fastest pace that I could maintain without having to stop or slow down. Meanwhile, a hot blonde woman in a tank top and sweat pants walked past me. I, of course, didn't even notice her. I don't know how I was even able to tell you that she was there since I didn't look at her walking all the way across the room to the waterfountain where she may or may not have taken a drink before going into the women's lockeroom.

A few minutes later another women, also blonde, wearing a skin tight half-tank top and short-shorts came down the stairs from the free weight area. She was clearly a serious weight lifter, judging from the shape of her, which I did not even pay attention to at all. I also did not notice a small tattoo she had which was so very sexy. She was so rippled with muscles that her chest stood permanently up and out like some military man standing at attention. Not that I noticed, of course. She also went into the women's locker room, presumably to have sweaty lesbian sex with the other hot blonde woman. Shortly after, the first woman came out and left. Then the second woman did the same. I didn't notice any of this, though, because I don't gawk while running mindlessly on the damn boring treadmill. No, not me. I have my TV set, which I flipped over to Ultimate Fighting in order to distract myself from the fact that I was very nearly running fast enough to make myself throw up.


This is SO AWESOME!
I finally completed my 3 miles in a blistering time of somewhere less than 30 minutes. Awesome! I could probably qualify for the Olympics. Then I went upstairs to get some water before I passed out onto the floor. And then I headed over the to free weights. In the process of wandering from treadmill to water fountain to free weights I kept passing this girl, she was slim, but with all the desired parts and curves, wearing skin tight shorts and a tank top, and a scarf on her head. I don't know what the scarf was about, but passing her repeatedly seemed to trigger a realization in my brain.

Every single other time I have come to this gym to work out, there has not been one single attractive female person there since that very first day when I ran behind the pretty girl on the treadmill only to be accosted by the retarded Cookie Monster. In fact, since that first day, excluding today, there has not been any women at all. And then tonight I realize that I have seen at least three, two of whom were blonde and hot and sweaty and may have engaged in a porno-style lesbian sex scene in the locker room. Or perhaps I imagined that. I ran pretty hard on the treadmill and my mind got a little overheated. It's hard to know what was real and what was just a memory of bad '80s porn on VHS cassettes that my dad's VCR ate and I had to pay for.

"At last" I thought to myself, "I have found the Dream Gym, where hot women in nearly no clothing at all come to exercise while sweaty men gawk at them."


Please towel off the equipment after using it
Up in the free weight area, where I noticed the lone remaining reasonably attractive female was doing serious ab work, I shoved my way in amongs the sea of pumped up, sweaty, smelly men and grabbed some dumbbells.

It was then that I realized I had no fucking clue what I intended to do with them. I had no weight lifting plan for the night. I only came to run. Having done that, I was now just winging it.

I looked around, hoping none of the other guys had noticed the empty lost look of cluelessness in my eyes. Then I cooly grabbed a bench and started doing some Arnold-presses. Hey, if this exercise is good enough for Mr. Schwarzenegger, it's good enough for me.

As I was pumping along, frantically trying to compose a workout plan in my head before The Guys noticed that I was wandering aimlessly like some newby who didn't really belong, I noticed that one of the guys lifting weights there was a guy I had gone to high school with.

"What the fuck?" I thought to myself, pleased that the Obama White House hadn't yet figured out a way to censor our private thoughts and thus I was able to say 'fuck' in my own head without the FBI raping me with a Taser and throwing me into Gitmo or Guantanamo Bay. It was ... it was ... Stewart. That was his name. How the hell did I know him? I remember talking to him. I remember we weren't exactly friends. But where? We didn't have a class together. He knew someone, someone that I also knew. We only talked because of a mutual friend.

Another thing I remember about Stewart was that he used to be a lot smaller. He was never a tiny guy, by any means, but he wasn't any giant. But now, fucking A, Stewart was HUGE. Clearly he had been living in this gym for the past many years and doing nothing other than lifting weights since I last saw him. Either that or he's taking some serious steroids.

Steroids! That's where I knew him from! He was friends with a workout partner I once had who took steroids.


Dude, let's do some more curls
Not that I'm suggesting that Stewart has been taking steroids. After all these years it's entirely possible that he got this huge purely through hard work, good diet, and better fucking DNA than I've got.

And fuck him for having better DNA than me, DAMMIT!

No, I don't mean that. Lots of people have better DNA than I do. My DNA is shit. When God created my DNA I'm pretty sure he was in a bad mood. I might even say this in regard to my entire family, but purely out of the vain hope that someone unusually good-looking, athletic, intelligent, and successful might one day arise from the ashes that is my family, I shall limit this theory to myself. God took a steaming dump, and from out of that pile came my DNA.

This would explain why I was so good at running all those years ago. God must have had the runs.

I briefly considered walking over to Stewart and saying "Hi, do you remember me?" But I realized that after all these years it's unlikely that he does, and even worse, he might confuse me with someone else, such as an FBI agent who might be trying to bust him for illegal steroids and thus he could feel compelled to kill me and flee. As I was more than a little fatigued after running on that damn treadmill I decided against this option. I said nothing to Stewart and continued my makeshift - let's call it "freestyle" - workout.

I was also concerned that, what with President Obama declaring June to be National Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transexual Porno Pride Month, I couldn't recall Stewart having ever had a girlfriend back in school. What if he was gay? What if he was huge and strong and gay and decided he liked me? I have a sweet, sweet ass, I won't lie to you. My ass is my best, er, asset. This would be bad. This would be very, very bad. My legs were all run out from the treadmill and even though I have a vicious and whiplike front snap kick and once had a spinning back kick that could completely crush the fender of a maroon 1975 Buick Skylark with one "KIYAAAA", I still feel more comfortable with unpleasant violent confrontations when my running option remains wide open. As my legs were now nothing more than rubber, this was not the case.


Naked Gym Day - The women pretty much never show up
So I went over to a corner of the gym where several machines I needed were, where Stewart wasn't, and I pumped up my chest and lats until I thought my arms were going to fall off. In the good old days, this kind of pump was very impressive. I would pump these muscles and look like a Greek god carved out of marble. These days, though, my pump is more of a puff. I pump and I pump and when I look in the mirror I just look, er, puffy. It's considerably less impressive than the Greek god statues of old.

After puffing, er, pumping up some beach muscles, I headed over to the, um, thingamajig where the ab straps were hanging. I climbed up, looped my arms into the straps, hung like a gymnast, a sad tired puffy gymnast, and I did some ab work. It turned out to be a mistake to do my lats before doing this exercise, because hanging with my arms through the straps required that my lats remain tensed throughout, and the sad fact is, they were shot. Of course, I have abs of plastic, so they don't take long to run out of gas. But I usually prefer to work them until they ARE out of gas before I quit. This time it was the rest of me that ran out of gas.

You see, lately when I work out I get this feeling, it's only happened to me over the past 4 years or so, but my body tells me loud and clear when it is utterly and completely out of fuel. It says, "how 'bout we lie down and vomit?" And if I ignore it and try to 'push through' then I just end up sprawled out in the floor with some buff twenty-something guy and his uber-hot girlfriend telling me "elevate your feet up over your head. Here, put them up on this bench" while they both look at me with grave concern. This is not good for my self-image, so I try to avoid it as much as possible.

So, that unmistakable feeling began to hit me. It was time to go. I was running on fumes. And I was puffy enough for one night. And all the hot chicks had long ago left. And I think maybe Stewart was checking out my ass.

Running On a Treadmill, Goin' Down and Down

I went to the gym because it's cold and raining outside.

Oh sure, the rest of the country has lovely white snow. In Memphis we get gray wet shit that may or may not turn to ice and drop our powerlines. Again.

Anyway, I needed a run. I wanted to do something else. But I looked in the mirror and concluded that I needed a run. About a 100 mile run. But as my lunchbreak isn't quite that long, I settled for a shorter one.

I got on a treadmill and I slowly worked my way up to a good speed. I stared from TV set to TV set as they all either talked about Obama, Hillary, or how the stock market analysts all swore we should sell everything RIGHT NOW as the market is diving, and right after we did, they all bought up all our sales at dirt cheap prices and went yachting with big fat smiles on their faces.

Four miles on a treadmill is mind-numbingly painful. This gym being so small and sparsely populated is a double-edged sword. When I'm lifting weights it's great to be left all alone so I can focus on what I'm doing. When I'm on the treadmill forced to look at Oprah's big fat face, I'd much prefer that some good-looking women come in and run with me. I may be only vaguely aware of their presence, and they may bring seriously unappreciated drama to the gym when there are too many of them, but I swear to God, even a little drama is better than what I had.

One of the channels appeared to be talking football. But they kept intermingling it with clips from the Brady Bunch. WTF? And then they had several of the Bradys on, too, all grown up. They'd switch from Tom Brady to Greg Brady and then show a clip of Marsha being hit in the nose with the football. I guess it was supposed to be funny. Maybe if the sound was on I'd have appreciated it better?

One TV was on CNN, but the subtitles were hosed and taking up over half the screen, so all I could see was the tops of people's communist heads and then a big black rectangle covering the rest with the odd phrase "Hnnnnnnnnggggggggg" written across it. I guess whomever was responsible for trasnscripting the dialog for deaf people must have died and fallen onto the keyboard?


CNN reporters
Fox News was on another one of the TVs. I don't know what they were saying, but they have a female reporter who looks like a living, breathing Barbie doll. I swear, if they ever make a Barbie movie, she should play Barbie. She's hot. Even without knowing what she was saying, I liked her. I assumed she was saying nice things. About me. To me, in fact. To be frank, I think she was hitting on me.



It was then that I suspected I may have run far enough. I was seeing spots and my sweat had turned cold. The Fox News lady had asked me to marry her and I had said 'yes'. We were going to honeymoon in Australia. Something seemed odd about the whole scenario, but I wasn't complaining.

Why am I running?

Oh yeah. Time to stop and take a shower. And put my brain back in. Damn, that treadmill running is boring as hell.

Girl Reaction - part II

I went to the gym during lunch today. I haven't been in awhile because of all the strain of moving from one house to another. And because I'm damned lazy.

I did a fast workout with high reps and low weight. I didn't have much time and I needed to go fast. I pumped and pumped as I glanced at the posters on the walls featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime. Yeah, I look nothing like that.


When I was done, I went into the locker room and took a shower. When I got out of the shower and began to get dressed I had the unfortunate experience of seeing my full nude profile in the mirror.

Ugh.

I stood there looking in horror. This is the guy that flirts with gorgeous women on the internet? This guy? THIS guy?! Oh Lord, what if they ever emailed and said "hey, I'm coming to Memphis to see you, you big stud, you!"

I would shit. I mean, oh my God, I look like ASS.


I thought maybe it was just an off day, you know, where my imagination was getting the worst of me. So I stepped on the scale.

WTF?

Oh, damn, this isn't making me feel any better. Maybe the scale is off? Maybe it's just gas and after a good fart I'll be back to normal? You know, I haven't farted all day. Maybe that's all it is?

Damn Thanksgiving holiday!

I hopped in my new Memphismobile and drove to the sandwich place that I always go to to grab some lunch.

As I stood in line waiting for my sandwich, a beautiful blonde girl came in and stood in line next to me. It was the very same blonde girl I had noticed checking me out one month ago in this very same restaurant.

I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. Was she checking me out? What was her reaction?


Her arms were crossed across her chest and she was looking away from me, avoiding any eye contact.

As I looked in her direction, trying not to be obvious, she crossed her legs, too.


She was standing up, and still managed to cross both her arms and legs in response to me.

Oh shit. Oh fuck. Oh damn fucking hell!

I'm not having a good day.


Rejected

* On a side note, did you know that whenever you comment out anything in your HTML code on Blogger now, it fucking deletes it? I was editing this post and commented out half of it to come back and work on later. I didn't delete it. But Blogger, having been written by fucking retarded monkeys, automatically deleted every single line of it, much as it inserts fucking carriage returns two and three times into posts that I didn't want fucking carriage returns inserted into. Someone needs to find the retarded monkeys who run Blogger and shoot them.