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?

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!

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!

Fears

What if Slick just didn't weigh in last week and in fact he has lost seven pounds and is 3 percentage points ahead of me?

What if one of my thigh muscles snaps? You know how when you were in gym class with some sociopath like for instance Earlton and they told you to duckwalk all over the gym and then they told you to run sprints? You know how you feel like your thigh muscle is going to snap? What if it did?? If my thigh muscle snapped, I'd be paralyzed and then how would I get my cardio?

What if Ditchweed Guy NEVER comes back?

Awwwwyeeeeeeaaaaah!

Bye bye, Mr. Slick.

I'm ahead by a teeny tiny little fraction. Now all I have to do is cuddle that newborn baby lead close and water it with my starving tears so it will grow up big and strong.

Plus I today found more puffballs in the neighborhood on the way to the bus stop. Just a little nesting in front of a once-proud cottage now surrounded by condos and abandoned.

I have a plan: when I find a puffball in the spore stage out in some random inconvenient field, I'm gonna stick it in a ziplock and take it home. Then I'll take it out of the ziploc and let it poot its lil spores in likely spots on the way to the bus stop. If it works, I'll end up with a little secret commute farm. People say you can't grow wild mushrooms because they're so picky, but puffballs don't seem that picky, in fact they seem to be opportunists. I think these worksite puffballs might enjoy a little diaspora action.

Bacon, lettuce and tomato salad

I certainly couldn't eat one of these today, what with Slick breathing down my neck and Earlton cancelling classes right and left, but back in the early days of the competition, I ate a number of these delicious bacon, lettuce and tomato salads. Here is how it is done:

Get a big mixing bowl and fill it with bitter greens--mesclun or what have you. I get from the farmers' market, where they have such as baby mustard.* Chop up a b-load of tomatoes, fry some bacon, maybe say four strips, throw on mayonnaise, crumble your bacon over, salt and pepper, stir, consume.

Two more pounds down. No notion what Slick is up to. Results supposed to go up tomorrow. I'm nervous, but I still got a couple tricks up my sleeve.


*"Such as" used that way is stolen from Roast Beef.

wrst F33rz 2tlly r3@lizd!

Ditchweed guy was not there
and neither were the ditchweeds. I was forced to buy zucchini and cucumber instead. Zucchini and cucumber of dubious pedigree, too. My heart is cold with fear: what if ditchweed guy is kaput for the whole summer? I will be forced to SUPPLEMENT with MAINSTREAM FOOD!

More Bulletins:

• Slick is STILL in first place.
• I walked up some stairs.
• Earlton's Klass is tonight!

The Devious Mr. Slick

The other day in Earlton's* Klass, I observed my rival, Slick, minutely to determine what occult powers have enabled him to reach 1st place (for now) in this competition. I discovered that at all times, whether at work or at rest, be he standing, sitting, or lying on the floor groaning and not doing his core strengthening moves, Slick sluices great cataracts of sweat from his every pore.

So! I have discovered your secret weapon, Mr. Slick!

All I have to do is spend the last week of the competition up to my neck in a sealed, heated barrel sucking ice chips and spitting out the meltwater. I'll get plenty of cardio batting away the flying toads and other hallucinations I'll start to have once my brain begins to shrivel in my skull like an oyster left ajar in the noonday sun. Hell, jockeys and Ana kidz do this type of thing all the time. Piece. Of. Cake.

Speaking of cake, after I win I am spending my $750 on cake.

*Not his real name.

I am in second place.

There is one dude, I'll call him "Slick," ahead of me by... 00.34 percentage points. I think. Unless I messed up the math, which is possible: I lied last week when I said I lost 18 pounds. I've only lost 16 so far. But whatever: out of 35 people, I am second from the top. I shall destroy "Slick." He will not win. He cannot win. I will win. The end.

Here's how to make hard boiled eggs:
Boil a bunch of water.
Gently lower eggs, cold from the fridge, into the water. Use one of those wire baskets on a bamboo handle that they sell at the Asian marts.
Bring water back to boil.
Turn it down so they're just simmering.
Wait 13 or 14 minutes.
Immerse eggs in cold water.

My Greatest Fear
When I get to the farmers' market today, ditchweed guy will have quit selling ditchweeds. Then what? THEN WHAT, AMERICA?