weighing in

Today's dictionary.com word of the day: maunder \MON-dur\, intransitive verb.

1. To talk incoherently; to speak in a rambling manner.

2. To wander aimlessly or confusedly.

Maybe I should rename my journal.

I've joined Weight Watchers.

Again.

I didn't have a choice. Over the course of the last six months or so, I've gradually felt the effects of a more sedentary lifestyle combined with richer and bigger volumes of food. My pants grew increasingly tight. My thighs grew increasingly big. My entire body became increasingly, er, voluptuous, in a stellarly unsexy way. I was, if you can imagine it, a massive breast, with my head as the perky nipple. In the reflection of the glass doors at work, I turned into a perfect sphere.

Ironically enough, where it could have done some good, I remained almost aggressively flat-chested.

My sister, who -- like my mother -- has the metabolism of a hummingbird and the body of a triathlete, not to mention the aesthetic sense of a disco queen, expressed dismay at the prospect that I'd lose some weight.

"You'll get thin in your cheeks," she protested. "You won't be as cute."

Right. Okay. So anybody out there who hasn't ever seen me, imagine a koala. Strip off the fur. Reduce the nose just a little bit, and put on a pair of specs. That's me.

I started on a Monday. Now it's Friday. In the course of the four intervening days, I've learned some things about our culture. Important things, which I hadn't really realized until I was back on this weight loss program.

Item 1

Every single commercial on the effing television is about food. Bar none. Oh, sure, there are other commercials that claim to be about other stuff, but even in the 'drugs cure cancer' ones, there's food steaming away on the counter in the set behind the actor. There is. I'm fairly sure it's a Marie Callender black cherry pie.

Item 2

Americans waste a lot of food.

A hell of a lot of food.

Ever notice how on the sides of boxes, they say ludicrous things like: 'Serving Size: One Grape'? Yeah, well, that really is a serving size. Americans eat more food than they use in calories. That's a waste, isn't it? And then we have to go on these lame-ass diets where we find out that our normal eating habits are those shared by the common pig. (Did you know it's nearly impossible to find out the scientific name of porkers? Maybe I'm doing this search wrong. Don't fail me now, Google!)

(---damn.)

Consider that our average daily diet is probably the same amount of food eaten by your average group of 30 in Ethiopia. (This is, by the way, a statistic I whipped up out of my ass, but it sounds impressive. People love statistics; tell them 9 out 10 people who stop breathing eventually die, and they'll all go out to buy oxygen tanks.) At the cafeteria at work, they always serve me enough food for me and the Firecracker, who lately has taken to asking for half of my meal as some sort of tithe. I think she's turning into a bully. If it weren't for the fact that she views my chin from below, I'd be less cowed than I am.

Item 3

The invisible people in my ears want me to stay fat.

They must have been feeding off of the extra food I was eating. Maybe they were chewing on my crumbs, I don't know. All I do know is that they don't like this diet thing. They don't like it at all. I can hear them right now, holding a little conference in the back of my mind. They've been drinking all night now, so they're a little aggressive, and a little hostile, and they're eyeing the box of Ranch flavored Keebler Munch 'Ems sitting on Indian Mom's desk. One of them is headbanging on my motor nerves, trying to get me to reach for them.

I've taken to gnawing on things in order to get them to think I'm gnarfing on something bad for me. If I'm ever murdered and dumped in the woods somewhere, they'll be able to identify my body from the perfect dental cast preserved for posterity on this bottle of Eucerin skin lotion.

Addendums.

Of course, I realize, reading this, that Item 3 had nothing to do with our culture. However, I thought it an interesting factoid in and of itself, so I put it in anyway. I'm sure nobody will mind, except for the invisible people in my ears. Tomorrow I'm going to go out and invest in a really solid earpick.

Also, The Hunger Site, -- I could really go for some spareribs right now -- is back up. Between now and the 30th, the funds generated from the site will go to aid victims and survivors in New York and DC.

I added a notify list registry for people who want me to send them an email when I update. It's canned CGI, not something I coded. If I coded it, I would know it would work. Probably. Maybe. (I think.) Anyway, I figured it could spare me some bandwidth from people constantly checking when I'm notoriously flaky about updating, anyway.... Posted by yhirata at September 21, 2001 12:28 AM