Fat or Fit

Over on Barnes's blog, the subject of health and fitness comes up now and again, and usually as a corollary, obesity. It tends to get handled somewhat delicately there.

Not here.

My quick-and-dirty research indicates that about half of Americans are overweight, and a third of adults are overweight to the point of obesity. This is a medical term, and involves the percentage of lean mass to body fat, and simple obesity is not the same as morbid obesity, but they both mean "too fat."

A little too fat, could lose a few pounds; or, dangerously fat, blowing out joints, killing hearts and kidneys, blood-pressure working up to a stroke.

In discussions of avoirdupois, somebody always quickly hauls out the excuse, "Well, yeah, but some people do have hormone problems and all like that."

Yea, verily. A certain percentage of folks do have genuine medical reasons, physical, and even psychological, to the extent that dieting to lose -- or gain -- weight is difficult in the extreme. Give them that. They have hormone problems, skewed metabolic systems, hyper-efficient ways of using and storing food. Menopause; Thyroid is shot; medulla oblongata is haywire; certain drugs necessary to keep folks alive against killing diseases have awful side-effects vis a vis holding the pounds on -- there are legitimate reasons why some folks get a pass. It really isn't their fault.

Thing is, these legitimate folks, in re medical problems, number about three percent of the population. You could bump that up 1%, if you are being generous.

That leaves the other 96-97% of of us who bulk up without an excuse, save, in the end, we like eating more than exercising, and that our discipline is insufficient to overcome the inertia and set-point that wants to keep us tubby. What they used to call biscuit poisoning, down home. Too many biscuits ...

Easier to be a couch potato than to run six miles, or spend an hour at the aerobics class, dining on roots and twigs, instead of pork chops and rice and gravy, with a side of buttered French bread and bacon ...

In the olden times, fat was a survival characteristic and it is hardwired into the system -- bad days on the hunt, you needed the stored energy.

For centuries, being Reubenesque was considered attractive, and an instant measure of wealth -- fat folks must have money, else they'd be skinny, like the poor.

These days, morbid obesity -- note the word "morbid" -- is bad. The hunt down at the Safeway isn't so hard, so you don't need the storage. Save for rare cases, severe obesity almost always affects health adversely, everything from physical problems, to bad self-esteem, to being made invisible socially. A lot of folks out there won't even look at somebody who weighs four hundred pounds, they just won't.

Mostly, people who are fat aren't happy about. Mostly, they aren't so unhappy about it that they will do what needs to be done to fix it. They try, but they give up. It's too hard, it takes too much work.

Ultimately, diet and exercise are the keys. Eat less, eat better, work out more. You will feel hungry and you have to sweat. If it took fifteen years to pack it on, you aren't going to get rid of it in a few weeks or months. Until you reset your burners, homeostasis will want to gain it back. It is a long slow process, and it requires a change in the way you do things for ever more.

I'm not the guy to tell you to lose weight, that's your choice. But for most of us, somewhere about 97% of us, it is a choice. Yes, obesity is a disease, but it's like alcoholism -- you have options. It's not like catching plague because a squirrel flea bit you while you were raking the leaves out in the back yard.

If you don't like being fat, (and you are not among the small percentage of folks who have a very high hill to climb due to an illness that truly wasn't your fault,) then it's up to you to own it. Nobody else can do it for you.

I Am Large, I Contain Platitudes ...

Just love to mess with knee-jerk pigeon-holers. I'm not really a joiner, but I signed up for both these on the same day ...

The Benefits of a Bad Knee

In the look-for-the-silver-lining category, having screwed up my knee has given me one benefit, vis a vis my martial arts game. It's taken away my reliance on being able to get there fast, and instead required that I get there carefully.

Not that I want the knee to stay screwed up. I am doing all the things one is supposed to do -- RICE, then heat, working it with balor, babying, wearing a decent brace.

(Though not a really good brace. The best off-the-shelf sport model, the Ossur CTi OTS Pro Sport Knee Brace used by motocross guys and jocks who have to keep playing, is somewhat spendy -- $579, on sale. Spendy, but even that is not a patch on the custom jobs. Now we are talking mucho dinero.)

Most of my time in various arts, I have been enough of a jock to gut my way through. If I didn't have the technique down cold, I could muscle it. Seldom been in an art where I wasn't in as good, or better, shape, than most of the other students, and this is both good and bad. Good, because being in shape helps across the board. Bad, because it does allow you to cheat. Cheating is good -- but not if you are cheating yourself.

So the last few weeks, I have been doing my djurus very mindfully, because torque lets me know in a hurry that I really ought not be doing that. And moves in class require attention, too.

I should always have been paying that much attention, but the truth is, I haven't.

Am now.

It remains to be seen what Mr. Medial Meniscus and Mr. Anterior Cruciate Ligament are going to do. Heal, I hope. Else, it's The Knife ... and I wouldn't rather not, thank very kindly.

If life hands you a lemon ... (Though, there are times when life does that? I want to shove the lemon down life's throat, and the snake it slithered in on, too ...)

Fun With Language

Here is the Washington Post's Mensa Invitational, which once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are the winners:

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2. Ignoranus : A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
3. Intaxication : Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
4. Reintarnation : Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
5. Bozone ( n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
6. Foreploy : Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
7. Giraffiti : Vandalism spray-painted very, very high
8. Sarchasm : The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the Person who doesn't get it.
9. Inoculatte : To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
10. Osteopornosis : A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
11. Karmageddon : It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
13. Glibido : All talk and no action.
14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
16. Beelzebug (n.) : Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
17. Caterpallor ( n.): The color you turn a fter finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words. And the winners are:

1. Coffee , n. The person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted , adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
3. Abdicate , v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Esplanade , v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly , adj. Impotent.
6. Negligent , adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
7. Lymph , v. To walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle , n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulence , n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash , n. A rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle , n. A humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude , n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon , n. A Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster , n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism , n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent , n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men

Hardcase

I mentioned Mickey Spillane in passing, and thought I'd expand on that a bit.

In 1952, Life Magazine said about Spillane: "No major book reviewer, anywhere, ever said a kind word about Mickey Spillane."

The images above are of his second wife, Sherri, who posed for the covers. They apparently met during a photo shoot for one of his books, and it is perhaps too easy to speculate on the attraction -- he was in his forties, she in her twenties.

That marriage ended in a nasty divorce and ugly lawsuit, and Sherri became a theatrical agent.

Readers loved Spillane. Literary critics blew fuses when his name came up. He was the Harold Robbins/Danelle Steel of his day, and he, like Liberace, cried all the way to the bank.

Spillane wrote about a number of anti-heroes, and his heydays were in the late forties and early fifties. The guy who spent the most time on the page was Mike Hammer, a New York City private eye who would just as soon shoot you as look at you, and, as you lay dying, kick your teeth in just because he felt like it. Said as much in one of the books.

Hammer carried a .45, and regularly smashed in heads and punched tickets with it. (Apparently somebody did a partial body-count -- in a half-dozen novels, fifty-eight people who ate lead from Hammer's rod ...)

Hammer was a product of the the post-war world, and as politically incorrect as they came. He was in love with Velma, his secretary, but he didn't want to spoil that, so they didn't sleep together (until both of them were way long in the tooth.) Meanwhile, if he had a chance to partake of any good-looking broad in reach, he did, sometimes two or three different ones in the same novel. Then he would have a steamy kiss -- no more -- with Velma and go home to bed alone.

Spillane wrote thirteen novels featuring Hammer. The first three are the best, the last three, unreadable. There were movies, at least two TV series: Darren McGavin starred in one, Stacy Keach in one; and Spillane himself played the role in a 1962 movie, The Girl Hunters.

I, The Jury
1947
My Gun is Quick
1950
Vengeance is Mine!
1950
One Lonely Night
1951
The Big Kill
1951
Kiss Me, Deadly
1952
The Girl Hunters
1962
The Snake
1964
The Twisted Thing
1966
The Body Lovers
1967
Survival ... Zero!
1970
The Killing Man
1989
Black Alley
1996

Past 1966's The Twisted Thing, Mike Hammer was, in a word, pathetic. He was a man who didn't belong in the world, and like a champion fighter who stays on too long past his prime, sad. He should have gone down, gun blazing.

Spillane did other novels, tried to write about spies and secret agents, but he was best with street guys. My favorite Spillane novel was The Deep, 1961, in which an ex-gang member comes home and starts to shoot up everybody who pisses him off, and a lot of mugs do that.

Spillane claimed to not be a tough guy, but the pictures showed a buzz-cut, cigarette-smoking man, often in a T-shirt or rolled-up sleeves, with muscles, and at various times, he was shot out of a cannon, bounced on a trampoline, did stock car racing, was a pilot, a fencer, and scuba dived for sunken treasure. During the war, he was a flight instructor.

I've always found it amusing that Spillane was one of Ayn Rand's favorite authors. His black-and-white way of looking at the world went well with her unworkable philosophy of objectivism, though I'm sure that at least some of the people who went and found Spillane's book on her recommendation must have had some jaw-dropping moments ...

King of the pulp writers when he was at his peak, Spillane, and nobody on the page was rougher, tougher, harder-drinking, faster-to-get-laid than Mike Hammer.

Crave's Tapas and Wine

I don't usually do restaurant reviews. Mostly that's because I don't eat out much, and what can you say about bento at The Chicken Bar?

However, we took the dogs and the camper out over the weekend, and spent a couple days near in the little town of Florence, which is down at the edge of the big sand dune park on the central Oregon coast. Since the RV site is close enough to walk to old town, we did so.

While people in Portland were broiling at ninety-five, we were enjoying a sunny and seventy day with a nice breeze off the Siuslaw River, three-quarters of a mile from the ocean.

Florence, once a fishing and logging community, is now focused on tourists. Shops, places to eat or drink, like that. In the used bookstore, I found a Mickey Spillane novel I somehow missed back in '51 when he wrote it. Mike Hammer, living up to his name, .45 working as a sledge or pumping lead, a cigarette going from the time he got up until he went to bed, killing commie scum every which way. Smoke it, drink it, screw it, or kill it, that's Mike. Talk about politically incorrect.

Wandering around the town, we came across Crave's, a restaurant a little off the main drag, billing itself as a wine and tapas bar. Being a culinary barbarian, I had no idea what "tapas" were, but my wife, whose palate is more educated, did. Small Spanish appetizers, enough of which can make a meal.

There was a guy out front, it was late, and we stopped to chat and explain that, even though he had never seen one that color before, black and white and brindle Cardigan Corgis were not unusual for the breed. (I think the weekend set a new record for people who had never seen one that color before.)

We liked the guy, who turned out to be one of the current owners, so we decided to come back for dinner the next evening.

Boy, are we glad we did.

Aside from the tapas, they also had a dinner menu. We each had a glass of dry red wine that was excellent, for six bucks. Dianne had a penne pasta with chicken and asparagus, and I had roast duck and small red potatoes. We shared a banana pudding with crusted sugar dessert, and a glass of excellent port to go with it, and not only was it the best duck (and chicken pasta) I've ever had, the meal cost maybe half of what we'd have paid for it in Portland.

The chefs were a husband and wife team, very young, and when we passed by the kitchen on our way to wash up, the place was immaculate.

Now and then, you eat a meal that is perfect. Simple food, but done expertly. The flavors of the ingredients blend exactly as they should, none overpowers the others, everything is cooked precisely, talking jaw-dropping good. Part of that was because we didn't expect anything special. The most part was, it was simply that good.

The couple at the next table were wondering if it would be completely barbaric to pick up their plates and lick them, and that thought crossed our minds, too.

We let the waiter know how much we enjoyed it, and he passed it on to the kitchen. The female half of the chef-team came out to deliver the dessert and we allowed as how we thought she and her husband were our new favorite cooks. She was embarrassed, but we got a nice smile out of her. She looked to be twenty-something.

How did they wind up there? Family moved there from somewhere -- mother and sister, grandma, like that, and they followed.

I certainly hope Crave's prospers. They were doing a good business, but the place wasn't packed on a Saturday night, and if there is any justice in the world, it soon will be. The waiter was talking about how they planned to offer fruits and lettuce that had been picked the same day ...

If you ever find yourself in Florence, Oregon, find Crave's -- it's on the corner of Laurel and Maple. If you like fine food, you will be happy you went. If this place doesn't get four stars from somebody real soon, I'll be surprised.

Narrative Hooks

Here's an opening paragraph for a novel:

"You have a secret. You consider it beyond embarrassing; it is vile, disgusting, and you know that if anyone found out, they would shun you. Your children would despise you, your spouse would abandon you, friends would turn away, your life, your job, they would all be gone. And you would accept all this as just.

I know what your secret is."

So, the question is, if you read this in a book you picked up off the rack, would you be inclined to keep reading or not ... ?

Not a Perfect Video, But ...

It is an interesting way to spend three minutes to see how somebody who knows how to use a morphing program plays with images in western art. Not much ethnic variation -- no women of color, talking Europeans, but still, fascinating to watch.

Have a look.

Schwing!

So, Wednesday is gun night on The Outdoor Channel, and aside from all the things that go boom! in many varieties, there are certain commercials you don't generally see elsewhere: Gun supplies, sportsman's catalogues, laser sights, like that.

But the one that is the real howler is for a "male-enhancement" product. A simple capsule, according to Dr. Stein, founder of the you-never-heard-of-it Stein Clinic, designed to increase the size of that ... certain male body part. As opposed to uncertain male body parts, one supposes.

It is, as Bugs Bunny is wont to say, to laugh.

The ad goes on. There are on-the-street interviews with some guys who are supposedly real users -- all hooked up with babes -- who all say, "What can I say? I got bigger!" One guy even got a "heck of a lot bigger!"

The babes all laugh. Except the last one, who can't decide whether to laugh or frown, so she does both. Obviously not a method actress.

None of these users are what you'd call the most masculine of fellows, and one wonders what this means, vis a vis the purported increase.

Itty-bitty doubled is still small.

Well, one doesn't really wonder about that part too much: 'Cause it doesn't work. The ingredients in this wonder drug are all things you can buy over the counter in any health food vitamin section, and there is no evidence at all that they make anything bigger, save the wallet of the guy selling them. Look here.

True, some of the herbs do have an effect on blood flow and all, but if you are an adult male, what you now have is what you'll continue to have. (Though I do recall a short and unsuccessful campaign to legalize a certain weed a few years back in which the rumor was put forth that marijuana makes your johnson grow. Have to wonder how many redneck hippie-haters thought about that one and decided to have a couple tokes, just to see.)

And the side effects of some of herbs in this particular weenie-expander can be worse than what they give in return -- yohimbe, for example. It does help, apparently, but the effective dose is very close to the toxic dose. Read about the toxicity and decide if it is worth it.

Cripes, if this stuff worked? If it made. Mr. Happy add an inch or two to length, or more importantly, girth, they wouldn't need to advertise it on The Outdoor Channel. They'd have to keep it in Fort Knox under guards with shoot-to-kill orders (and peckers of great size to avoid temptation to sample the product). You could charge a couple of car payments per pill, and the waiting line would go round the equator ...

What is more intriguing is that they advertise it on the gun shows. Got to wonder about what their, um, target audience is ...

Bad News, Good News

You wouldn't think that a little plastic fairing that fits over the front bumper of a Mini -- a bit that I cleverly tore off my car on Thursday last, and I wasn't even drinking so I can't use that as an excuse -- would cost all that much to repair.

You would be wrong in such thinking.

As soon as the replacement gets in from where in the U.K. it has to come and gets painted, I get to leave my car there for a couple days for them to fix it. Seems the whole front end has to be taken apart to do the job, so the labor is going to be a bitch. Talking here the cost of a couple-three house payments, and a thousand-dollar deductible on the comprehensive policy ...

Ick.

The good news is that it can be repaired, good as new, and that we can -- eventually -- pay for it ...

I will drive more carefully from now on ...

More in the good/bad news department: It seems that I have a new book upon which to work. Can't tell you what it is until contracts are signed, but it will be another hoot to write and I am looking forward to it. So much so, in fact, that I started writing some set-pieces even before the outline has been approved. Not much risk there, but some -- they could decide to go in a completely different direction. I doubt they will, and I can rewrite what I have to fit a wide range of applications, that is the joy of a set-piece.

That's good.

Bad part is, I managed to cleverly save an older file over a newer one, thus losing ten pages of material that is simply gone. The new Macs have an autosave to a separate hard disk that backs up everything every few minutes, so even if you trash everything on your desktop, you can get it back. I, alas, have an older Mac, and when I not-so-cleverly went to back up the file -- and still unsure how I did it -- I overwrote today's file with yesterday's back-up

Ick.

This is going to result in a new procedure with back-ups, involving a fool-proof method that I am even now trying to figure out. And hoping I'm not the fool to prove it. Saving it, sending it offsite, then backing it up on the flash drive, maybe.

Rewriting ten pages from memory, even that which is only a couple hours old, is tricky business. It's happened to me before, and the rewrite is never exactly the same. Sometimes, it could be better, but you'll never know for certain, since you don't have the old version to compare to the newer one, and the assumption is always that it is slightly worse and that you left something out ...

So, my output today was twenty pages, but only ten of them count ...

Never a dull moment.