What Did We Learn Today?

  I might be a bit overly cautious.

  It took 47 minutes, but I feel pretty confident that no one will be able to use my old credit card. But just to be on the safe side, I'm going to spread the clippings out over several weeks in various receptacles, in separate zip codes.

  And I'll probably flush a few pieces down the toilet. You never know who might be tailing me.

  True story: I had to put a glove on my cutting hand because the scissors were hurting my hand.

What Did We Learn Today?

  That I’m developing a man crush on Seymour Hersh.
  At work we’re allowed to listen to music. Well, most people listen to music, I listen to public radio. When a preview came on for Fresh Air saying that Seymour Hersh would be on the show, I literally did the fist pump that Tiger Woods does after he sinks a crucial putt. I was so excited that I rearranged my work so that I wouldn’t have to leave my desk and made sure to take a bathroom break before the show started.
  Unfortunately, Hersh threw a lot of cold water on the “executive assassination ring” remark he’d made during a debate at the University of Minnesota. But still, Seymour Hersh; that dude’s all right.

They're Just Like Us!

  On the cover of one of those gossip magazines (I can’t remember if it was Celebrity Stalker Quarterly or Shouldn’t You be Worrying About More Important Things?) is a big picture of Jennifer Aniston and some quote about how she’s going to raise her baby as a single mom. I can’t remember the exact quote, because I was at the grocery store and more concerned with whether the ice cream I bought was going to go straight to my hips or my butt. Forget that I didn’t know Jen Aniston was pregnant, nor do I particularly care.
  I’d like to see one of those “Stars are Just Like Us” segments that states: They raise their children as a single parent! And: Over half their marriages end in divorce too! In the article on Aniston, I doubt it says that she’ll be moving back in with her parents and working full time while going to school in order to create a better life for her child. So excuse me for not having any sympathy for a successful Hollywood actress who’s made the choice to raise her child without the father. As much as the magazines and the public try to pretend that celebrities are like normal people, it’s just not true.
  I bet the article also tries to paint Aniston as an empathetic figure. Here she is, trying to bring a child into the world and that dastardly John Mayer runs off. Is he afraid of commitment? Does he really love her? Shouldn’t we instead be worried about the recession? How ever will she survive on her own, raising her child in a Beverly Hills mansion with her millions of dollars and ability to afford round-the-clock personal child care? She’s so strong!

  It's amazing that for many the housing crisis didn't resonate until Ed McMahon appeared on Larry King and explained how his own home was foreclosed on. People were calling in asking what they could do to help Ed McMahon! The neighbor down the street whose wife and three children are being put out on the street? We can't be bothered by them. Not when the Publisher's Clearing House guy has is so much harder.

  So by all means, let's give our sympathy to all the celebrities who have similar problems to us regular folk, except that they have enough money to cure their ails. I'm sure they toss and turn at night in their thousand dollar sheets and wonder whether five million is enough to make it through the next few months or whether they should cancel their vacation to the south of France. 

  Just like the rest of us.

Cut Off the Toe Despite the Foot

  I’m convinced that I’m going to lose a toe. Probably soon. It’s not that big a deal, really; I’m already over it. Whenever my feet get cold (which is frequently) I lose feeling in the middle toe on my right foot. And feeling doesn’t return until long after the rest of my toes have warmed up. Once, taking my socks off, I noticed that just my toe had lost all color, while the rest of my toes and foot were a healthy, fleshy hue. But such is life, right?
  Since I’ve moved on, I’ve already begun to look at the positives of losing a toe. Sure, it’s easy to point out the negatives: It’d be weird to wear sandals (but I don’t anyway); playing “footsie” could be a bit awkward; and I can never be a feet model. I still have one handsome foot. Ok, that’s a lie. Our soccer goalie in high school referred to me and a teammate as Frodo and Bilbo. From the Lord of the Rings. We both had hairy feet. Anyway.
  One of the positives is that I always have a good conversation starter. I think everything sounds better with “since I lost my toe” included. For example: “Since I lost my toe, I’ve found that I’m limping a bit more on my right side.” Or: “I think the treasury’s plan to bail out the same bankers who got us in this mess is outrageous. And that’s not just since I lost my toe.” Of course, I’ll need to come up with a better story when people ask how I lost my toe. It can’t be as simple as losing all feeling in it. I think there should be a hawk involved. But how?
  Losing a toe seems like it’ll be a momentous time in my life, right up there with the day I get married and the day I lose my virginity (hopefully!). I’ve decided to think of things in terms of whether they happened “before toe” (BT) or “after digit loss” (ADL). So while my birth took place in BT, my own children’s birth will most assuredly take place in the ADL era.
  It’s not as if I’m losing an important digit. Missing a finger or a big toe would create much more of imposition in my life. But the middle toe is sort of like the appendix; you don’t really need it and when it’s gone you end up with a neat scar. I wonder if the rest of my toes will grow closer together, or if I’ll have a gap there forever. Think about how cool it’d be if I got good at dropping knives into the space in my foot. I bet my other toes would compensate and I’d end up with four really buff toes that mock those wimpy five digits on my left foot.
  There could be a lot of upside to me losing a toe. Maybe I should get a head start. And what if I was missing two toes?

Me: A Primer

  I change up my facial hair more times than the average person changes their underwear. To questions of why? I answer with another question: Why does the blue jay fly or the cheetah run fast?
  Because he can; and he looks awesome doing it!

Bringing Home the Groceries

  In today’s economic climate, budgeting your money is important. Setting firm limits on how much you can spend and on what will greatly help, because no one should be accruing debt with job loss a real possibility. I, for example, have a strict budget of how much can be spent on food. I may tend to go overboard, but for me, it’s been helpful to further break down my food allowance, setting amounts in categories like: fruits and vegetables; meats; cereal; beverages (non-alcoholic); and discretionary. It’s the discretionary category where I tend to get in trouble; this week, I’ve greatly exceeded my animal cracker budget.
  Perhaps I should rephrase that, since saying I have a set animal cracker budget kind of makes me sound like I’m eight years old. It’s not always animal crackers, that’s just what my spending was on this week. Sometimes it’s Goldfish crackers, other times it’s Teddy Grahams.
  The reason I overshoot my budget is that I can’t set boundaries. If I have a box of crackers sitting in front of me, I will eat most, if not all, of the box. (My dinner on Saturday was a bag of honey mustard and onion pretzel bits.) So if I gobble down all my discretionary funds two days after going to the store, I either can suck it up for the rest of the week, or give myself a budgetary exemption. Generally it’s the latter.
  To combat my habit of overeating, I’ve found it helpful to enforce the boundaries that ought to be in place. Using plastic sandwich bags, I divide the contents of each box by seven. Right now in my cupboard are seven bags evenly filled with Teddy Grahams. This way I know how much I am allowed to eat each day. I’ve also found this to be helpful with carrot sticks.
  With a continuing recession, it’s important to eat a nutritious and balanced diet, which might need to be done on an ever-shrinking budget. Now is not the time to waste food. And while having “treats” might seem frivolous, I prefer to think of my discretionaries as incentives. If I don’t finish my dinner, I don’t get any animal crackers. Or if I don’t eat all my vegetables, I won’t get to have Teddy Grahams. Self-imposing these rules allows me to stay healthy and make sure I’m not wasting my food money.
  And once I can put a stop to having my lunch money taken from me, I’ll be just a bit more financially secure.

What Did We Learn Today?

  That I need to grow my beard back.

  Recently I shaved my beard down to just a mustache, and after a month or so, shaved that down to a thinner mustache. A day later, I realized that wasn't working for me, and shaved my face naked. At work today, a woman in her mid-forties (who I've never spoken to before) said to me in passing, "You shaved your mustache." Caught off guard, I fumbled towards finally saying something like, "Yeah, I messed up on the mustache and had to shave it off." 

  I shouldn't have been surprised. If I learned one thing this past month, it's that older women love the mustache. I think it reminds them of a time when polyester shirts were hip, men had chest hair, and these women did close to their weight in jagermeister and poppers on a semi-regular basis. Those were the times...

  But tonight, meeting up with some friends, I almost wasn't let into a bar because my driver's license was thought to be fake. The guy looked at it, looked at me, held my license up, and finally said, "Uh, I'll accept it." Granted, I do look different in my license photo than I do now. I didn't think going from looking like a lumberjack in my photo to my current appearance of a cherub made me that unrecognizable. But I made my own bed when I had my photo taken looking like I did. So the only logical conclusion is to grow my beard back. Or get a second ID, in which I'm clean shaven, but I think that's illegal. Best to play it safe (and manly).

900 Calories a Day

  In case I’m ever kidnapped and dumped in the woods, it’s good to know that I’ll be able to survive for days, because I’m training myself to live on 900 calories a day. Now, I know what many people are thinking: “900 calories? That’s less than half the recommended daily caloric intake for a typical person. And it’s almost ten times less than the number of calories Michael Phelps ingests.” Well, true, but I’m not Michael Phelps, and neither are you. Nor should you be. That guy does drugs!
  Before I get in to the details of my diet, I should throw out a few disclaimers.
  First, this is not a good diet if you want to lose weight. This diet is solely to help you survive the apocalypse. If you’re looking for a weight loss plan, think about exercise. And lay off the Funyuns.
  Second, it’s easy to exceed the 900 calorie limit (all before 9 am), so pay strict attention to what you eat. You don’t want to survive a plane crash in the Andes Mountains only to develop hunger pangs two hours later because you splurged on a cinnamon roll the morning before.
  When approaching your diet, it’s a good idea to make a detailed record of everything you eat. Do this for a week to get an accurate reflection of your pre-rapture diet. You might be surprised just how many calories you take in each day. Your new diet is something you need to ease in to. It won’t do you any good to “shock” your system. I mean, what are the chances that tomorrow you’ll fall down the town well and no one will notice your disappearance for days? I’d say slim. But it might happen next week (and you’ll be ready for it!).
  The first thing you want to do is make small changes. How many Tic Tacs do you eat in a day? Maybe five? Well that’s seven-and-a-half calories right there. You didn’t think it would add up so quickly, did you? Once you’ve made all the minor changes you can without completely compromising your immune system, it’s time to consider your diet as a whole.
  Even though you’re eliminating so many calories from your diet, you still need to eat regular meals. If you don’t, your stomach acid will have nothing to break down and will eat away (and through) your stomach lining. And what good is that going to do you when the world’s oil supply runs out and we're living like people did before the Industrial Revolution and you can’t ride a bike (your only mode of transportation) because your abdomen hurts too much to pedal? So here’s what you need to do: eat breakfast, eat lunch, eat dinner. Do not snack in between meals.
  How you get your 900 calories is up to you. But I like to splurge for my lunch. Perhaps I’ll eat an apple or banana with my plain peanut butter on un-enriched white bread. What I add in a lunch, I have to take out at dinner. Remember, rice is a great friend to you.
  While the diet may be tough initially, you’ll be grateful the next time you pass out at a party in the slums of some South American country; because no one will want to harvest your organs when they realize that your kidneys are only functioning at half-capacity (if that) and it’s a small miracle you’re alive at all. What kind of money can someone get for half working kidneys? And you’ve just saved yourself a morning of an ice cube bath and fresh stitches. All thanks to your diet.