Bait and switch!

Those bastards!

Okay, I renounced the prize money, right? Because after having cheated in, I counted, five different ways for three months, I not only lost a larger percentage of body mass than anyone else, I also achieved a kind of moral nirvana in which I became more honest and true to principle than anyone else in the contest at least and probably the entire country. And once again all because of horseracing, the sport of spotless saints.

At the "awards" "banquet," I found out from the hastily appointed leader of this farcical affair (a sweet, harmless boy who should never have been saddled with this nightmare--he hardly qualifies as a Gym Person, and it is my hope that he will escape before he becomes... Like The Others) that even had I not lost a single pound during that final ten days when I ramped up the cheating to heights never before achieved except by jockeys who are dead today, I still would have beaten Slick. I had only to maintain. So no spitting, no hotbox, no evil, cynical blood donating, no renal failure. When I heard that and thought about the chunk of change I was giving up in refusing to sign the purity pledge, I almost collapsed, and not just because all I'd had to eat that day were a couple loaves of bread and a pineapple and a turkey. I thought I would have to spend the rest of my life kicking myself. But I was very wrong in this surmise. In fact, I have never before been so richly rewarded for momentarily declining to indulge in the delicious falsehoods that are my usual fare. To say I dodged a bullet would be a crime not so much because "dodged a bullet" is a cliché but because it would be such a monstrous understatement.

This post is about what happened at the potluck awards banquet.

First, here is all the bad stuff I nipped neatly around:

*The feeble opener: they announced that they'd changed the rules. Now instead of a first place winner and a second place winner, there would be an overall male winner and an overall female winner. Translation? No glory whatsoever. I could've shambled along in low gear the whole way and been two points behind Slick and still won top honors. Pa to the thetic.

*The bombshell: They announced that they weren't going to award cash prizes. Apparently, any prize over $600 they have to fill out forms with the IRS and you have to report it on your tax return. So why didn't they give the first place winner $600 and $150 worth of Rice-a-Roni? Why didn't they give the second place winner $350 as per the original contract? Because they are a bunch of shifty double crossing GYM PEOPLE, that's why! I shouldn't have trusted a word they said from the get-go!

*The nuclear warhead: the "prize" to the first place winners, plural, male and female, was nine months free GYM MEMBERSHIP and a few hours of time in the company of your choice of the know-nothing personal trainers (Earlton excepted from the know-nothing class). I could have colleagued with Satan and signed their purity pledge. Then I'd've won nine months more of going to Step, Jump and Pump and PowerJamz "classes." Nine months of being told to "engage your core." Nine months of looking at other patrons' CoolerThanThou steel water bottles. Nine months of yogablab, which is Hindi translated into English and then re-translated into new millennium Americanese about breath. I don't want to listen to you tell me to listen to my breath, Gym People. I don't want to hear you say the word "core" or the word "breath." I don't want to hear you tell me to "take it to a march, take the march to the right, now give me a knee for four! Grapevine left!" I don't want to hear you Gym People. I don't want to hear you. Ever. Again. (Earlton excepted. I love Earlton.)

Next, great stuff that happened!

* My friend won! My friend (who didn't cheat in any of the five ways or any other ways that I know of) won FIRST PRIZE! And my friend likes the Gym and the Gym People--all of them, not just Earlton! So the nine months plus training sessions are actually an okay prize, though, of course, bullshit compared to the $350 that would've been the prize had the doublecrossing bastards stuck with the original contract we all signed.

* My friend and I had the wrong guy pegged as Slick! The real Slick was not the demonic blancmange I had been thinking, but this totally inoffensive quiet chappy with a ponytail who never made a moment's trouble for anybody. The other Slick was also pretty inoffensive and quiet and also made no trouble, but somehow the difference in haircuts enabled me to pile on the hate for the imposter Slick. Bizarre, and probably the result of decreased lipids to the brain.

* A little consolation prize: I signed up to bring a quiche to the "awards" "banquet", but the quiche in Q refused to set up in the oven despite the fact that I left it in a full 40 minutes longer than it said to in the recipe. Which meant that I brought something that looked delicious and all Martha Stewart but that nobody obsessed with healthy eating could touch, since it was essentially a panful of lightly browned raw eggs. So I, the purest of conscience and the paragon of low bodymass, wronged, deprived of my prize by the throngs of lesser-thans surrounding me, I at last revenged myself by eating everybody else's food. And I did not have to share my own perfect food with the tiresome children and significant others of a bunch of low-percentile gobblers of steel-cut oats who could not reduce their body mass if they had both hands tied behind their back and their hair was on fire. I went home with my quiche unmolested and put it back in the oven and my friend the prizewinner and I ate a pile of it while we watched the debates and drank elephant liquor (recommended). Then for the next several days I and my other beloved friends and my dear, cherished family polished the quiche off and no Gym Person had so much as a crumb of its delicious pecan crumblecrust. This is my kind of Gym People potluck.

Seabiscuit awhirl in its grave

My conscience slumbers undisturbed again. Upon advice from counsel I am going to renounce the $750.

Do not weep, beloved reader. My attorney says the money is probably "full of white snow. Spiders. SPIDERS!" I don't know what he means, but it sounds negative on the balance.

(That's me in the hat.)

Today I'm having some field peas! You boil them and while that's happening you sear a red or yellow pepper in butter and then you throw the cooked peas in with the pepper and shake on salt and curry powder and grind some black pepper and the whole thing takes maybe ten minutes. The pepper is so sweet it gets candied.

There is still the end-of-the-contest banquet to go to, and I mean to go to it with my quiche. I will report what transpires when I renounce the dough.

I won! But...

I beat Slick by over two percentage points, scoring a victory for dead jockeys everywhere.

But.

But now they want us to sign a pledge that we didn't "dope" by doing anything unhealthy or ill advised. As you may have deduced, my last week was pretty much the director's cut of the documentary exposé of everything unhealthy and ill advised. So now I'm in a new competition: a competition with my conscience. Even though they should have made us sign this pledge BEFORE we entered the contest and they did not. Even though the contest is a continuation of a completely amoral and cynical television circus farce where neither health nor morals were considered for a moment. Even though it probably was not just me but a lot of people in the contest who found ways to stretch the concept of "healthy" to include praxis at which Lance Armstrong would recoil.

None of that matters because my conscience is completely perverse. It lies all curled up like a little snoozy worm for months all the while I'm doing something godawful, and then right when I'm about to reap the bounty of my evil ways, it leaps roaring to its feet and suddenly it's the size of the Empire State Building and louder than Megadeth. I may be forced to do something drastic and very unLanceArmstronglike like give back the dough.

There are two things I keep asking myself.

One, do I have renal failure? (It can take a few weeks to show up.) In that case, moral considerations go out the window: I'll need the money for my dialysis treatments.

And two and most of all:

What Would Seabiscuit Do?

Now we wait.

We won't know until the big gala Friday who won, me or Slick. I myself don't care. After I ate the six tacos lengua and the quart of guacamole, I ate a chocolate bar and two garlic knots and I drank a Newcastle and part of a Yuengling tallboy and I started to eat a pizza but then unaccountably I stopped after half a piece. I just didn't seem to want to continue with the project. Weird. Anyway, right now I'm having a nice salad with ginger dressing that I made my ownself with fresh ginger and tahini and then couldn't touch for a whole week because it had soy sauce in it and soy sauce has salt and salt might make me retain water and lose to Slick. After my salad I'm going to have some cold pizza. When the pizza is finished, I will desist with the carbohydrates in an effort to go from bloated stunted highschool girl to robust highschool gir, or maybe even totally ripped highschool girl. But I am not going to throw away perfectly good pizza. I hope that Slick is right now tucking into a plate of fajitas or a cheese souffle or a Boston cream pie, and I hope it is delicious. Now that I am living decently again, all of my animosity is gone. I feel a great fondness for the meringue formidable. He never tried to be no jockey, that's for sure.

Maybe I could be a jockey, after all.

All I'd need is a sauna and I could definitely make weight. I'm obviously crazy enough. The only thing is, I'd rather clip my toenails than ride Poppy's Little Candy Legs in the Preakness. So there's still a hurdle, there, I guess. I guess you're supposed to be a little more motivated or something. Also, I can't read Seabiscuit. If that's a requirement, forget it. And then there's the fact that I'll stab myself in the eye with a shish-kebob skewer before I do competetive weightloss again. That, as well, would constitute a stumbling block.

I weighed in a few hours ago and found that I have achieved the mass of a stunted high school girl. Of course, now I've had six tongue tacos (sans shells) and a pint of guacamole (sans chips), so now I have the mass of a bloated stunted high school girl, and man, does it feel good!

My co-workers are busy stinking the place up with microwave popcorn and various frozen Stouffers preparations. If I had to be them, I'd read Seabiscuit and develop an interest in the fortunes of Poppy's Little Candy Legs, just so as not to have to eat anymore.

Eight and a half pounds in 10 days. All thanks to horseracing. If Slick beats that, then I will be sanguine and shake his hand: he's a champion cheater.

It's STILL not over.

Well, first of all, I don't think I will ever become a jockey.

I'm scared of horses, I'm too tall, and I am no good at spitting or hotbox. I didn't try flipping--there was nothing to flip--but I'd bet I'm pretty bad at that, too. Another career avenue closed.

I spent the weekend not eating and trying to give myself renal failure. WHY? Because they moved the weigh-in date up to Monday. Today. Another two days of bending abruptly from the waist to get my head below my knees so as to avoid passing out cold in the grocery store (where I was buying not groceries of course but "Smart Water." It has calorie-free electrolytes!!!). Another two days of not being able to do more than one flight of stairs without a rest or lift heavy things like my car keys.

This morning I awoke at 4:30 and prepared my weigh-in outfit by cutting off all labels and any unnecessary decorative elements. (There weren't any.) Then, since the weather is deliciously cool, today, and thus I can't do poorman's hotbox by sitting in my rubber raincoat in my car with all the windows rolled up in the noonday sun,
I put on my winter silk underwear under some flannel pajamas and layered several blankets on the bed and tied a thick babushka sort of thing over my head and climbed in to roast for a few hours before it was time to go to work. I raised my heart rate by listening to a little NPR about the Mother of All Bailouts. At eight I arose and threw away all the bedding, pausing several times to bend at the waist to avoid unconsciousness. I prepared a simple breakfast of: nothing and drove to work, practicing "spitting" on the way.

Spitting is disgusting, so I won't describe it, but it traditionally involves Jolly Ranchers. They didn't have any normal Jolly Ranchers at the grocery store, just the hot cinnamon kind, and I'm pretty sure you need citric acid to do it right, so I used some "country time lemonade" lozenges I got at the Big Lots. Worked fine, but I had trouble keeping it up longterm. Because it's nauseating.

In fact, this is the most disgusting thing I have ever done.

As a rule I don't like to tell people what to do*, but I'm just going to come out and say this: Don't ever do this crap. Never never never no matter what. Trying to get into a wedding dress by June? Get a bigger wedding dress. Want to be a jockey? Be a really short guy. Do not do this thing that I have done.

Finally, champ, if you're here trying to find out how to give yourself renal failure, forget about it--that's not the sort of coveted information you can get online for free.

*That's a huge lie.

Reverse Vampirism

I donated a pint of blood today! Everyone should do it, it is so fun and easy and you can help your fellow man while watching Sarah Palin speak in tongues on Fox News!!! Why I personally today in the year of our lord two thousand and eight donated a pint of blood for the first time since I donated a pint of blood under duress from my high school civics teacher in nineteen and eighty five is that I wanted to support our troops. Okay, sorry, no, I lied again. That wasn't it. I donated a pint of blood today because I wanted to commemorate my deceased aunt Louise who was a thirty-galloneer- whoops, no, I don't have a deceased aunt Louise. All my aunts are alive today praise heaven, and this may be because they are the self-absorbed variety of aunt who prefers to hang on to her bodily fluids to use for her own purposes. No, the truth is, I donated today because it has been a long time since I've seen my blood, and I missed it. Also, incidentally:

A pint's a pound.

A pint's a pound the world around. Slick don't seem too literary. He might not know the little rhyme.

Now, though, of course, I've eaten two bananas to keep from fainting dead away in the blooddonor Laz-E-Bwah and being taken to the hospital and hooked up to a disastrously nutritive IV, so now I've got bananas to deal with. Never fear about those bananas, concerned reader. I shan't give you any details, but recall the image of the elephant falling from a great height into a tiny pool of water. It may be a little obscure or enigmatic, but it does offer some clue into what will happen to the bananas. I'm sorry to any delicate first time readers.

Finally, has anyone read _Seabiscuit?_ this is not a plug for that excrescent piece of offal. One of my living aunts tried to get me to read it one time and she almost became a not-alive aunt after I read the first two pages. WHAT was she THINKing? Anyway, the relevant part of the foul thing is available online, as are many other valuable resources. Google jockeys + Jolly Ranchers or jockeys + hotbox or just jockeys + potassium deficiency/agonizing death and you'll get some fun tips for how to lose 13 pounds in 10 hours and then be so weak you fall out of the saddle and have to give up the race to some naturally pipsqueaked jerk and retire and have horrible arthritis for the rest of your life. My God but jockeys have it rough.

I tried consulting the ana kidz, too, but they turn out to be useless in the short term. They are all about the journey. They want you to post pics of dying jockeys and African famine peeps on your fridge to inspire yourself to eat and then heave a quarter of a Hershey's kiss each day for 7 months. I don't need inspiration, you useless damn ana kidz, I need a miracle and I need it yesterday.

THE SHOWDOWN IS FRIDAY!

FRIDAY! THIS FRIDAY! DO NOT MISS A SINGLE SCINTILLATING UPDATE!

HORRORS! TRAGEDIES! MAIMINGS! MEDICAL MYSTERIES! IN FACT, I CAN FEEL A STRANGE BUZZING SENSATION IN ONE EARLOBE... ALREADY!!!!

HAVE YOU SEEN THAT SCRATCHY OLD BLACK AND WHITE FOOTAGE OF ELEPHANTS JUMPING FROM HIGH DIVES INTO TINY MAKESHIFT WOODEN POOLS OF WATER FAR BELOW?

READING COVERAGE OF THIS EPIC STRUGGLE WILL BE LIKE THAT ONLY WITHOUT THE DISTRACTING VIDEO!!!!!!!

(SO IT WILL BE LIKE JUST IMAGINING THAT AN ELEPHANT IS JUMPING IN SOME WATER. SEE HOW MUCH BETTER?)

pizzullin' out the stizzops

That marshmallow atrocity lost five more pounds last week to my two. He is going to win this contest unless I do some seriously ill-advised things. Imagine you had no fear, logic, sense of perspective or moral code and wanted to lose five or ten pounds in a couple of days. That's what I'll be up to this week. Short of cutting off a limb, I intend to do everything in my power.

Catch you on the flip side!

We joined the Dance, Dance Revolution Revolution

I went with my friend and we got on these crazy dance pads and tried to move our feet in the way indicated. My friend did well, but it turns out I am "over traditional age" for this exercise modality. Next time I'm going to forget about trying to win and just crank it up to eleven and GO!

I made mayonnaise.

I used the Julia Child recipe, which turns out to be needlessly complicated and panicky because it's based on the stoneaged technology of the whisk. If you have a stick blender you don't really need to psyche yourself out with fears of curdling.

Problems I had:

• I should've made it in a big mug instead of trying to mess with a bowl. The stick blender wants a narrow, tall container, not a wide, flat container.
• Julia wants you to use yolks only. This means you are left with whites. You make an egg white omelet. You realize eggwhite omelets really suck.
• My free-range egg yolks are really yellow. My extra virgin cold pressed twice dated $7/oz California-hippy-excreted olive oil is really green. My mayonnaise was chartreuse.
• I was remembering the delicious warm aoli salad dressing I had at the French restaurant where my cousin that married the Smith girl had his wedding reception. But I used the juice of a crone of an old lemon I found lying around, and that plus the robust hairyleggedhippylady tang of the muscley olive oil I used and the oops, a little too much mustard made a real deisel-fueled product. Not a Smith girl mayonnaise. Sturgis girl mayonnaise, moreso.

Behind, ahead, behind, ahead--it's a NIGHTmare!

Okay, so now I'm ahead again by a teenyweenybeentzie weentz. I gotta say this does not fill me with the pure light of joy, it just makes me more and more fearful. Recently a co-worker who for some reason has an issue with my almost fainting every time I stand up mentioned that part of my little obsession problem might be capitalism. I said, "O, heavens, no, it's not the money, the money is only $750, I just want to WIN." She nodded sagely and inclined her head gracefully to mutter something to her slender clavicle about competition and capitalism. But you know what? Whatever! She's a bald-headed buditist, so what does she know. (She's not really baldheaded but may as well be, as budditist as she acts all the damn time damn.) In a minute she'll be asking me to spend my exercise careens through the trackless brownfields sweeping the path before me with a special broom to clear insects out of the way of my thrashing cross trainers. Actually, dag, that would get in a ton of upper-body work, wouldn't i? Say... maybe being a budditiss is not such a bad strategy. You basically don't eat anything until you prostrate yourself before the meager bowl 47 times for each compass point or something, and even then you're probably supposed to joyfully gift half of your thin chick pea gruel to the koi pond in order that the koi within can attain higher states of koi consciousness on their journey to meet bodhi satvah or whateverthehellitis. Damn! Buddhism is an excellent diet and exercise regimen! No wonder that lady has those krazy klavicles goin' on.

A friend has agreed to try my diet (not this crazy bullshit I've been doing since June in order to slaughter all competitors and achieve Capitalist Nirvana, but my real, sane, how I lost all the weight I gained in my 20s diet). Another friend is cautiously interested. I am lobbying a certain family member hard. I sent that individual some links to terrifying studies today. Next step, the horse head in the bed. Soon everyone I know will be eating ditchweeds and achieving metabolic stasis. And all because of the tenacious Mr. Slick!

The Path to Enlightenment

When you go for a meditative walk (or, if you're in a weightloss contest, a meditative deranged, hip-dislocating careen), you tend to figure a few things out.

Today what I figured out was that I can't know what shocking abuses Slick is capable of putting himself and his opponents through in his crazy, obsessive effort to win this contest. All that is out of my hands. All I can do is relax, forgive other people their excesses, and get to work on me. Be the best person I can possibly be!

To that end, from now until the final weigh in I shall eat nothing but steamed greens, soft-boiled eggs and water. And espresso. And diuretics. And amphetamines. And emetics. And laxatives (but not the chewables! They have sweeteners).

I have found a way to avoid walking across the sweltering commuter lot on my way around the lake! It involves walking through the woods where they filmed the Blair Witch Project. In same woods today I saw a persimmon tree whose persimmons I had to shun. And I saw a black racer and a pileated woodpecker. These ran from me, of course, because I look like the Crypt Keeper, now. But I don't care if I'm risking death by [SPOILER ALERT!] ghost-of-creepy-ol'-child-molester-who-makes-his-victims-stand-in-a-corner-while-he-murders-his-other-victims-and-breaks-their-university-supplied-video-cameras-they're-using-for-their-dopey-J-school-project-gone-bad. And I don't care if I'm causing a silent spring by frightening the area fauna to death. I'm sticking with the woods. My walk route is immeasurably improved. Anyone reading this who knows which commuter lot I'm talking about and wants to do my walk with me one day, perhaps in combination with a little Dance, Dance, Revolution, Revolution, which I can't help noticing we still haven't done, is cordially invited to accompany.

Worst Fears part Deux: the MURDERING!

I knew it!

Slick cheats like a Louisiana politician! How do you tell if Slick is cheating? TAKE HIS PULSE!

He posted a zero result last week because he didn't weigh in. This week he's posted with a five-pound loss. It's not surprising: he's built like a damn beachmaster.

Meanwhile, I'm nearly out of discretionary pounds. I'm starting to look like the Crypt Keeper. WHAT AM I GOING TO DO??

DAMN it I should've gained more at the outset. WHY didn't I go to Krispy Kreme? WHY WHY WHY? I look back now on all those nights I spent peacefully asleep in bed. Okay, sure, I missed a few hours of sleep most nights fighting the reflux, and I had to sleep around my island of a stomach, and sure: now and then I was up half the night from indigestion pains. But there were so many hours when I lay there quietly snoozing away packing in the REMs and fending off the pounds.

WHY WASN'T THE TV ON?
WHY WASN'T I EATING CHIPS AND FROSTING?

WHY AM I JUST SITTING HERE TYPING?????

GOODBYE!