Upshift!

Operation Sirloin

Back in the saddle after my day of rest.

I began Operation Sirloin with a can of salmon last night at around 11:30. (Eating when you should be sleeping is a great way to gain!) I made the salmon into a simple "salad" by adding delicious, versatile mayonnaise, the condiment of champions. Some people think that this kind of salad needs things like relish or celery or capers or chopped walnuts or whatever other horror-nubbins they can scrape off the fridge floor or their back teeth. Those people are what I call nutjobs. Tuna salad is tuna and mayonnaise. Chicken salad is chicken and mayonnaise. Salmon salad is salmon and mayonnaise. Ham salad is ham and mayonnaise. Egg salad is egg and mayonnaise. What makes a wad of animal byproduct into what the human community has agreed to call a "salad" is the addition of mayonnaise; lipsticking the pig with your little bit of pickle is just nothing but sad.

Hey, check it out: you can get good canned fish at your small independent grocery store where they sell the Dr. Bronner's and the green algae toothpaste--see if they have it. That salmon was seriously good for canned fish, and according to the blab on the can it was sustainably caught wild Alaskan salmon. The tuna from the same people was good, too, and just as bleedyheart. We ought all to be eating sardines, of course, and that's what I aim to do as soon as I can find some that haven't been drowned in mustard.

This morning thanks to the decent food of yesterday I managed to get out of bed in the morning and do what I have been trying to get up and do all week: I brought my beloved mechanic a box of brownies from the yuppie bakery. I also dumped the leftover Mexicolas on him--he's got three sons and they're at the shop on their feet all day playing monkey in the middle with spent car batteries: I figure they can handle six Coca-Colas between 'em with no lasting ill effects.

I had breakfast at Steak 'n Shake: two flavor-free eggs; four sad, limp bacon strips; two wagon wheels of insipid sausage. A modest effort, but I'm just starting out. I did manage to shake about a tsp of salt on the eggs, which should help with my endgame effort to retain water. Steak 'n Shake is perfectly calibrated to appeal to my demographic. The air conditioning is freezing cold; it's all diner-ey inside--black and red and white and steel and tile and glass; and they play, like, "Roxanne" and "Karma Chameleon" and stuff. So it's like the fifties as imagined by the eighties! Which is great: Steak 'n Shake can make even the dreadful, inexorable passage of time all warm and bite-sized and batter-fried.

Downshift!

I am eating oranges and drinking black coffee, and I am happy again.

I was going to do this gradually by trending off swill onto "healthy whole grains," but when I looked at the maniacally grinning multiracial yuptastic couple on the Kashi box this morning, I Just. Could. Not. Go there. "Good Friends" my fat, raddled ass. Tonight the brown rice, the whole wheat bagels, the bread, the rotini, they go. They all go. Out, you bastard Kashi. Out! I'm glad I managed to finish the challah. But the storebought sourdough is untouched and I don't care: it's going. It's all going, probably to the home of a certain underweight lad I know. I dumped what was left of the carton of OJ down the sink, though. I couldn't inflict that stuff on any lad, no matter how underweight. Nasty weird opaque boiled tasting swill. Down the drain and straight to hell with you! Away! Away from me and mine.

Coca-Cola epilogue and fry rant

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I think I drank five today. My head is kindof killing me a little bit, and I have a backache that I think is related to a the sudden development of a new counterweight situation in the frontal zone. I need to invest in some guywires.

Meanwhile I am completely falling down on the calorie intake front. I ran out of hershey's kisses yesterday and all I had today was a few cups of pasta with butter and a Snickers bar. I meant to hit Krispy Kreme for lunch, but I couldn't get it together; maybe I will do that for a pre-dinner snack. Dinner will be some tubs of movie popcorn. Of course. Like you needed me to spell that out.

Yesterday I had some Sonic meal items. The annoying thing about Sonic is, they play loud rock music so you can't listen to bonehead NPR unless you roll up the windows. Then it's really hot. Are they trying to get me to run the car so I can have the AC on while I await the rollernymph with my burger, fries and shake? Is corporate America not run by money-hongry Connecticut honkies as we've all always expected but in fact run by life forms of Pluto who wish to create an all CO2 atmosphere Earth so that they can raise their CO2-breathing, 50-foot space snails here? Think about it.

Furthermore, here's something: there is one thing these burger places do right and that's fries. Given that they do fries so right and everything else so very very wrong, is it too much to ask that the one fargin' time in like six years I go into one of these hellmouths and order fries they fry them in oil from, like, maybe this month? Instead of oil from before Christmas? Could that happen? No. No, Sonic cannot make that happen.

Coca-Cola: the final chapter

I bought a 24-pack, which I thought I could dispatch no problem, but I'm seeing an issue, here. I have just today and tomorrow, and I have like ten or 12 left. I've already had two today. So far the maximum per day intake has been four. What am I supposed to do with the leftovers? I heard that you can clean the toilet with Coke, but I tried that after a bunch of people brought mixers to a party I had. It's not really very effective. I read somewhere that you can dissolve car paint with it, but then I read somewhere else that that's a myth. Anyway, I don't have any pressing need to dissolve any car paint right now. What do I do with all these frikking Cokes? I guess I could take a small plane up over the Kalahari and throw them out the window, thereby starting cargo cults among the bushmen. Except that all the bushmen have been shoved off the Kalahari. Dang. This is a 100% letdown spiritually. I can't believe I couldn't polish off 24 12-oz cokes in a whole week.

Coca-Cola, Chapter III

Huge breakthrough!
Coca-goddamn-Cola is starting to taste good. After only five days of relentless, dedicated pounding, I have succeeded in destroying my taste buds. They have succumbed at last to the mighty, syrupy fist. Can colossal weight gain be far behind? Signs point to hell no! Hooraaaaaaay!

Lunch: an emotional roller coaster.
I consumed a "P'zone." I made the air quotes when ordering the P'zone, and the Pizza Hut lackey said, "Do you want it with quotation marks?" I was all, "Har!" Then he said it was going to take fifteen minutes and my balloon popped: booooo. Then when I was waiting in the car for it to be fifteen minutes, George Carlin came on Fresh Air: yaaaaaay. But it was an old one because George Carlin died yesterday: boooooo. Then, totally unexpectedly, the Pizza Hut lackey brought the P'zone out to the car, so I did not have to walk in and get it: yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

Coca-Cola: Chapter II

Esteemed reader who may one day be mine, do you drink flocola in the A.M.? Why do you do that thing? Can you help me to "grok," as the kids say?

My breath smells like caramel. Everything is sticky. There is a brown film over the world. And I have three more of these to take care of before 4 pm. H-hOW? HOW?

I probably sound as if I protest too much. Indeed not. I feel a strong inclination to barf. True, I did also finish a pint of creme brulee ice cream this morning, and maybe half a bag of potato chips. But these are minor actors. It's the refreshing cola beverage that's trying to kill me. Well, forget it, CocaGoddamnCola! As God is my witness, as God is my witness, I'm going to lick this. I'm going to live through this. And when it is over, I will never drink soda again. No, nor any of my folk.

Say it with me, folk!

As God is our witness, we'll never drink soda again!

Coca-Cola

I am drinking a Coca-Cola from the Messican store. It is made with delicious sugar, rather than evil satanic subsidized sirop of maize. I am having it on top of some fresh, tasty ice. Despite the fact that it is made with pure, wholesome produit du cane, it is still making the inside of my mouth taste as if something complicated died there, a very long time in the past.