Get hooked up.

I was going to talk about free food today, but I'd rather talk about the larger issue of which free food is only a part, and that's getting hooked up locally.

This is sortof an amorphous concept, but it's way key. Here's one aspect of it: I get free shrimp and free oysters and occasionally free all sorts of other sea creatures because I signed on to be an oyster taster over to the aquatic foods lab.

Every few months they'll do another experiment where they, for instance, compare oysters from all over the continent to determine whether there are any qualities specific to oysters from a certain area.

Or the industry will come up with some revolutionary (and always revolting) method of processing oysters for shipping or storing and we oyster tasters will be required to eat the proceeds and report the patently obvious: "freezing oysters and then hurling them at a wall to bust them out of their shells and then sweeping up them and a few bits of their pulverized shells and throwing the whole mess in a big ol' plastic bucket, refreezing it, and trucking it halfway across the country may save you $0.03 per oyster in shelling/shipping costs, but it loses you money in the long run because unless they're a stressed out middlemanagement demon tasked with stocking the buffet table for a cocktail party in the ninth circle of hell, there is no one on earth or below who will buy that nasty 'product.'"

By declaring myself willing to eat swill occasionally, I make myself eligible for the occasional supertreat. For instance, sometimes the oysters are good. If you like oysters, good oysters is a reason to eat bad oysters, and that's really saying something, because there is nothing worse than a bad oyster. Nothing. I don't mean "bad" as in "spoiled"--a spoiled oyster isn't the worst thing in the world; eating it would bring on merciful death. I mean bad as in gravely mistreated. But good oysters make it worth it.

Sometimes? They have extras? And they send us home with bagsful. Bags full of live, fresh, salty, happy, icey, bivalved darlings. Two, three, four dozen.

It is worth it.

So that is one of a few ways I'm hooked up. Get hooked up. Find out what's around locally. Nose around. Take all offers.

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!

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.