An observation

Chris writes better sonnets than I do. And I’ve never even tried a triolet.

I keep forgetting I have pickles

I’m back down to 280.5 today, but I still feel like I’ve wasted a week. Well, five days. I was hoping to be down into the high two-seventies by now. There’s a milestone waiting for me, 270 pounds, the low point I think I managed to reach in September 2000, but can’t be sure since it turned out the gym’s scale was broken. (I’ve got my own scale now.) I can see it, taunting me. You never did reach me, really, it was just the broken scale, you’ll never get below 280, hah hah.

I picked up 12 ounces of extra-lean ground sirloin tip the other day, and I’ve had a couple of burgers. Mmm. I’ve also picked up some more greens so I can have salad if I feel like I need more food. Cucumbers are one of the things I’m allowed to eat of much of as I want, and I’ve got one in the fridge, but I’ve also got a jar of garlic dill pickles that I keep forgetting about. Think I’ll have one or two now.

I bought some Krylon workable fixative today, so I can asphyxiate myself in an attempt to keep pencil, charcoal, and pastel drawings from smudging. I suppose the next step is a window fan, if I can find one that’ll fit my narrow (22") livingroom windows. I’ve also discovered Wolff carbon pencils — nice! I want to experiment with washes over dry media.

They forgot "Wear sunscreen"

Chris just emailed me a chain message called the “Lotus Totus”. Passing it on is supposed to give good luck, which is clearly bullshit, but the actual advice is reminiscent of Mary Schmich’s “Wear sunscreen” column which got emailed around as an MIT commencement speech attributed to Kurt Vonnegut. Only the “Lotus Totus” is less witty.

The message alleges to have “originated from the Anthony Robbins Organization”, and that it needs to be sent on within six minutes or some unspecified bad thing will happen, because if your friends are lazy or not good with computers or have a funky net connection you want them to have bad luck, I guess. Yeah, yeah. And the author doesn’t win any points from me for using phrases like “not superstitious, agnostic, or otherwise faith impaired”. Anyway, since this might become the Next Big Meme (the copy I got had been forwarded enough times that it was well on its way to being trace alphanumerics in a sea of greater-than marks, the heat death of email chain letters), I figure I might as well present the 21 points:

(  Click here for net.bullshit  )

Feel free to not pass it on.

John M. Ford's "110 Stories"

Just go read it. Thank you, roadnotes, for linking to it. (URL changed)