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!