Terrifying Tales of Terror #2 – Bad day for Brains

I shambled into the living room where my wife laid waiting on the blood soaked coach.

“Brains?” Joleta asked hopefully.

I could only shake my head. “Bad day for Braiiiiins.”

“Awwwww” Joleta whined before dragging her torso over to the lounge chair and curling up into a ball.

Damn if there hasn’t been a lot of bad days for brains since Joleta done got had her legs sheared off by that so called “zombie hunter” fella with his damn axes and road flares and whatnot. Before HE showed up…. back in the good old days, me and Joleta had been a brain hunting force! We was smashing and eating so many brains that we could almost function at a normal human level… well normal for the residents of ‘Jumpin’ Jimmy’s Trailer Park and Barrel Dump’ before “the big spill” anyway.

We were what the humans considered the worst kind of zombie, FAST zombies.

Heck, old Joleta once used to use those long, sexy, still attached to her legs to chase down a jogger I swear to god. You shoulda seen the look on the face of that feller. All screamin and whatnot. Good brains too. They were just the right amount of squish in em.

My name is Digger Dan. People call me that cause I used to do most of the digging in the barrel dumping section of the trailer park. In return I would get a small stipend and a real good deal on my lot for my Trailer.

We didn’t have one of them fancy double-wides, we had what they call a One and a halfer. My brother Choppin Jim modificated it up by cutting a shed in half and affixin it all up on the side. All we had to do was put carpet remnants on every surface inside and we had ourselves a genuine rumpus room.

Me and Joleta used to rumpus up a storm in that room. Never did make no babby though. Probably cause of me being too much of a man or somethin.

Anyway, when I first poked a hole in them special drug company barrels and done turned into a zombie, I was happy as hell. I could kill anyone and I was damn hard to kill my own self. Then I poured some of that stuff on Joleta and she wasn’t quite so happy, but I didn’t eat none of her brains so she can just shut the hell up about it.

Those first few months were like a shang-grid-lock of brain eatin fun. We did our first double brain hunt with Mark and Gladys Martin from next door.  They used to let their damn dog crap right in front of our shed. (a different shed than our rumpus room shed but also carpet remnanted up the wazoo for class and practicality)

I waited until dark then I walked over and picked their damn dog right up over my head and threw him right in their damn window. They were not happy about that course of events I can tell you. Then big Mark comes out with a baseball bat like he’s tough. I showed him what tough was when I let him hit me right in the head then I kept on a comin.

Whack! Whack! He kept swingin and I kept comin. “You dealin with a zombie now fool!” is what I would have said had my jaw been in place. He about peed himself when I finally put my cold dead hands on him, snapped my jaw back into place and put a chompin on his forehead like you wouldn’t believe.

I was about incisor deep in his brain pan when Joleta comes flyin out of nowhere to jump up off the hood of our old Camaro about seven feet up in the air swear to god and right through the broken front window to tackle the screaming Gladys.  I looked up just to watch her bite off that screaming biatches ear so she could suck the brains out slowly.

It were great.

We did stuff like that like a bunch a times. We charged through a hail of bullets to eat Sheriff Reggie and Deputy Dave. We ate a priests brains. He was all throwing holy water at us and waving his cross while we were all like “Say it don’t spray it god dude, give us some brains.”

Thems were some good times.

Then that damned “zombie hunter” showed up. It weren’t long after we had eaten up the whole Waffle King restaurant breakfast rush during Super Sausage week and I had had me my first brains with syrup on them… (not as good as you would think) when we first saw him.

We knew he was a strange bird because he wasn’t runnin away or screamin or nothin. He was a big muscley fella who just kept pulling all these different weapons out of the trunk of his Black ’75 Nova.   What a sweet ass car that was.  The only one that had me a little worried was the big ass flamethrower he had pulled out of the trunk but just as he got it out, Joleta was on him like sticky thangs on somethin that is very receptive to those aforementioned sticky thangs.

When I got there I thought Joleta had done had the battle already won when that feller did some sort of rolling flippy thing I never did see before. Well, it knocked poor Joleta up into the air and as she was flipping back over he chopped both of poor Joleta’s legs off mid-thigh with one big swing of this huge double headed axe he had pulled out from the underneath his car.   How cool is that shit?  Between the car and the weapons and the coat and the fighting moves, this dude was a total bad ass! I decided that the honorable thing to do at that point would be to throw a handful of sand in his eyes, pick up the screamin part of Joleta and skiddadle the hell out of there. So I did and we’ve been laying low ever since.

The thing is, the longer we go without brains, the slower we get which totally sucks ass. I didn’t realize just how many brains Joleta was bringin in. Now she’s just a useless, legless slow zombie. That’s why she can’t have any brains. You see, it’s always a bad day for brains for Joleta. I need the brains. That hunter ain’t going to quit. I jus know that he is out there lookin for us. For me. I need to keep my speed up as much as I can.

When that feller shows up I got a little surprise. A little bit of that juice that came from the drug company barrels. The stuff that made me and Joleta great.

I’m fixin to get myself a new partner… one with a badass car.

Terrifying tales of terror! Chamber 1- Poor Dead Steve’s Hand

It’s Halloween time so I am going to terrify you with the first of my “Terrifying Tales of Terror”!  Why not?

Chamber 1:  Poor Dead Steve’s Hand

Janet was trapped in the kitchen, as the twisted severed hand scrabbled and clawed towards her across her fabulous faux Linoleum floor.

As the gnarled and clawed fingers struggled to find purchase on the smooth surface in order to reach her, Janet couldn’t help but flash a bit of an annoyance toward dead her poor dead Steve for questioning her taste in wanting ruby, purple, and gold flakes and brave, bold swirls on a subtle mauve background.  That bastard had wanted “regular linoleum” as if some backwater linoleum pattern designer could hope to match her sense of style!

Poor dead Steve’s severed hand had now adopted a flip-flopping motion in a vain attempt to gain some momentum across the recently waxed expanse… splattering blood with each flop.  Just Great!  Now the splatter has gotten on the previously unstained hardwood cabinets (not her choice, she had wanted that classy tattooed leather cover) and all the way up to her beloved “Rooster Buddies” tea-towel.  It’s not like those go on sale everyday down at the Roosters N’ Such at the mall.

Shaking off her fury and terror, Janet realized that there was no way out of the kitchen that didn’t involve getting close to the surprisingly spry disembodied hand.  Janet was starting to feel a tinge of regret for butchering poor, not dead yet, Steve, burying him in the garden then having that ritualistic orgy involving a witch-doctor, a witch-nurse, a warlock, two Druids, a Baptist, and a curious schoolmarm on top of his freshly buried corpse.

Sure, like most things that start on Facebook, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but in retrospect…  I mean, just look at this kitchen now!  Even in his unholy and unnatural bid for vengeance from beyond the grave, Steve was a slob.

Steve’s hand flopped forward once again.  Eight to fourteen more flips and it would be all over for Janet.  Or would it?  Janet shook her head and rolled her eyes at her own foolishness.  What was she scared of exactly?  It was just a hand.  She was a whole person with access to large bowls with lids on them.

“HA!” she yelled at the struggling hand as she grabbed a container from the cupboard.  She hoped that the famous “Burp-Ware” guarantee that it will “seal in ANYTHING” included animated bits of the undead but figured that if it didn’t, she could take it back to K-Mart for a refund and pick up that sweet bright pink blender she saw in the paper.

CLAMP.  Oh hell.  It had reached her ankle.  No matter, she was in control of herself now.  It was surprisingly strong as it  began to pinch her calf when she plucked it off using some Rooster festooned bar-be-cue tongs.  Victory!  She held it up to her face and taunted the squirming hand..  “You think you can scare me Steve?”  The hand flipped her off.  “Well I’m glad you’re dead!” she screamed and cackled. She began dancing and bobbing the hand in front of her face.  “Ohhh… I’m such a scary haaaaand.  ooooooooo – DAMN!”  The last part was cut off as Steve’s hand had flicked her right in the nose hard enough to really sting.

“All Right!  Into the container with you!” Janet sneered.  Slam-pop-seal-burp and that was that.  Janet could bury the nasty hand back in the Garden and maybe get together a zombie hand banishment spell orgy together via twitter.  (what else is twitter good for?)

It wasn’t until she heard the squishy footstep and smelled the rotten, putrid stench of too much Axe body spray (also death) coming from behind her that Janet thought about the rest of dead Steve’s body. She had only cut off the one hand so the rest should be mostly intact.

CLAMP.

Quickler #3 – Babies!

Who doesn’t like babies right?  Sure there are some bitter hateful weirdo’s out there who say they don’t like babies but nobody cares what they think.  This of course helps perpetuate their cycle of bitter hateful weirdness.

Back to babies… I bring them up because my nephew has a little baby he found out about in a very Jerry Springer like manner.  But he is taking full responsibility which is good.  By ‘taking responsibility’ I mean he often has his parents watch the baby while he is at work.  Just kidding.  He’s trying.

But that baby is as cute as the dickens!  (I’m not sure what a “dickens” is but apparently it resembles a button)

Somehow in all of this I ended up watching the baby for a while and it turned out that he had a cold. A big “stuff is coming out of every hole in my head at once” cold.   The kind of cold where you really don’t want to touch the baby for fear that you will disturb their protective slime coat and they will end up with fin-rot.

But still, you want to take care of a baby no matter how gooey it is.   I’m pretty sure that is hard-wired into us.  If it wasn’t, Humans wouldn’t have lasted much longer than the first few booger coated infants.

That’s why I don’t trust people who don’t like babies. These people are clearly an evolutionary mistake whose DNA is not going anywhere and it makes me wonder what other weird anti-self propagation mutations they may have.

Perhaps they have two eyes located on their inner thighs.  The sight of that would stop any propagating that might have occurred.  “Oh baby, here let me… Oh my god!  Did your crotch just wink at me?”

Or one eye and an ear down there.  Nobody with “Picasso crotch” is getting any action.

I think similar things about people who don’t like dogs.  I have a couple of friends who hate dogs.  How can you hate dogs?  What the hell is wrong with you?  Humans and dogs have developed a great symbiotic relationship over thousands of years.  Dogs get food, companionship and fake bacon snacks while we get a loyal and stinky friend or guard (also stinky) or helper for the blind (stinky as well) right down the line of all of the great ways dogs can be helpful and stinky.

They both say they hate dogs because a dog bit them each when they were little.   So what!  A full grown St. Bernard charged me and shoved me into a spiky bush when I was four years old and you don’t see me holding a grudge or thinking every St. Bernard is going to push me into a spiky bush.   I do however hate all spiky bushes.

So again I have to conclude that there could be a lot more that is “wrong” with these people… in the crotch area.  I have to assume they have “bacon crotch”.  It’s the only thing that makes sense.  If I had a condition that made my crotch smell like bacon I would be very afraid of dogs…  assuming they had teeth.   I probably wouldn’t have too many other problems to worry about.. except bears I guess.  I think you would have to live in the city with that kind of condition.

That brings us back to babies.  Actually it doesn’t but I have to wrap up somehow.  Luckily, if you don’t like babies and you don’t like dogs you are entitled to your opinions.  The Constitution doesn’t exclude bitter crotch-mutants from Free Speech… at least the version they ended up passing doesn’t.  Damn that Ben Franklin and his silver tongue!

Quickler #2 – How to sell Life Insurance

I “work” in the “insurance industry” and I keep getting these marketing emails on how to sell more of their insurance.  They always have some reason that some segment of the population will need their insurance (and they are right in theory… if you can afford it)

I wish I had the opportunity to write these marketing pieces and make up reasons for people to buy life insurance.  So I will.  Right now.

Here is my plan:  Target the paranoid and the hypochondriacs first.

If you can’t find one, create them through powerful suggestions like “You know that JFK turned down a policy right before… ‘they’ got him.  That’s how ‘they’ work.” or “Did you know that people without life insurance are 100% guaranteed to die?”

If that doesn’t work, look for stupid rich people.  Just follow them home from the mall and knock on their door and introduce yourself as a “cash for death promise paper peddler”. (The term “Insurance salesman” is too crude and will frighten people away)

After you’ve concluded your “ice breaking activities” which include asking for cookies and beer, ask them about the financial security of their kids or dogs or whatever they have.  Ask them if they feel secure and if they say yes, jump up and swipe right next to their head with the large bowie knife you have previously hidden inside your notebook.  Ask them how secure they feel right now.  Repeat as necessary.

Now that they are in the mood to buy, constantly begin shifting your eyes to spy out hints around their home to find out which of the five senses they favor and customize your sales pitch accordingly.

Use this script to watch your sales numbers soar!: “As you know (this makes them feel smarter than they are and like they “should know”) , incidents of [insert corresponding body part for sense: ear (if they have a large music collection), eye (art or photography around the house), nose (flowers or scented candles), fingers (if they have large stacks of pornography), or tongue (for the fatties)] cancer deaths are skyrocketing each and every day while the families of those unfortunate many are often left with nothing but a never-ending rage that their cheapskate relative didn’t have a six figure life insurance policy.  That’s one of the reasons grave defiling rates are off the charts so high that you likely never hear of them.”

Then you hand them the policy to sign while continuing to nod your head up and down in an extremely exaggerated manner.  This gets people in an “agreeable mood” and also creeps them out so they want to get you away from them as soon as possible.  Make sure they understand that the ONLY way to get rid of this nodding freak armed with a bowie knife is to buy that life insurance.

If you follow this simple formula, you will soon see that your sales will double, nay – Triple! and you will soon be basking on beaches with sexy people of various genders of your choice while drinking beverages through the orifice of your choice.

Doesn’t that sound great?  Now get out there and remember to give me my (industry standard) 47% of everything you sell.

Quicklers!

I’ve decided to start making more posts here and in order to do so I needed to use some shorter form rather than my typical 12 page rambling diatribe… so I introduce… Quicklers! – a much shorter form of rambling diatribe.  (I am so going to copyright that for my book)

Quickler #1

Thanks to marketing emails, I learned that in order to be financially secure, I needed to spend more on insurance.

Of course, when “’Aldi’s beans’ and ‘Meatfarm Acre’s weenies’” night expanded to 3 days a week, my family seemed to be more and more interested in exactly how much insurance I have on my life and the exact sequence of events that had to happen to collect on said insurance. Recently, while looking through my wife’s purse for Chiclet’s Mascara, and tampons,  I found an invoice from ACME for a rocket suit, a piano, some rope, and a “Free Bird Seed” sign.

I’m not sure what that was all about but I hope they don’t give away all of that delicious bird seed.  I personally love that stuff and I can’t help but to make a beeline to it when I see some laying in a pile… unless it costs too much.

Save the Economy! (an open letter to Tiger Woods)

I know the world has been sitting on pins and needles while waiting to hear my thoughts on this whole Tiger Woods fiasco and it’s time I let you and Tiger in on my plan. 

You know he’s reading this in between updating his profile on Matchmaker.com from “Married Millionaire Manwhore” to “Single Wealthy Manwhore” (I am just assuming those are pre-set check boxes you can choose) and editing the book of pick up techniques he is working on with Bill Clinton and the NBA Players Association.  (So far it consists of just two lines that are guaranteed to work: “I’m an incredibly rich and famous athlete.” and “I’m the President.”)  I’ve used them both on my wife and they do work… eventually.  Sometimes. 

Anyway, on with the letter:

Dear Mr. Woods,

I know you are going through some rough times that quite honestly you completely deserve and brought on yourself.  But that is not my concern, that is your private business.  My concern is getting to watch one of the worlds most dominant athletes do what he does best.  That’s you.  Much like Spiderman, you swing around town shooting your fluids everywhere they will find purchase but also like Spiderman,  with great power comes great responsibility.

Everybody is all up in arms over when you will come back to the PGA tour and what you will say and how nobody will like you anymore, how contrite you should be blah blah blah.  Don’t listen to them.  They are all idiots.  Don’t

Tiger, take it from me, a random guy with a blog.  Here is what you need to do: 

You need to take the “Hulk Hogan in 1990’s” career route when he went from being the most beloved good guy in wrestling to becoming the most hated bad guy.   Become the golfer we love to hate the most.  Colin Montgomery isn’t doing much with that crown at this time so take it from him!

Just think about it.  You may not have many sponsors at the moment.  So what.  That won’t last long.  

To start out you should wear a hat that just says “Kiss my Ass!” , a black “Punisher” T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and worn out torn jeans complete with a chewing tobacco wear mark in the back pocket. 

Make a putt with this standing across the green Phil Mickelson. 

Oh, you also need to keep a shotgun in your bag and just bring it out and ‘clean it’ once in a while during a lull.  Mark your ball with a bloodstained tooth with the roots in tact or the skull of a chipmunk.   

Just totally embrace being the badass of the golf world. 

You know what?  You WILL get sponsors.  For every Nike, AT&T, and Gillette that drops you, you will have Tap-Out, Mountain Dew, and Hooters knocking down your door to wear their gear on the course and show up in their commercials. 

Heck, Billy Dee Williams is too old and Colt 45 needs someone new to carry the mantle… Tiger saying “Smooth Colt 45… it works every time” while standing in a bar (or waffle-house) surrounded by women would carry a lot of weight. 

You could claim that you were an innocent victim of circumstance merely because you sprayed Axe body spray on yourself.   Tell me they wouldn’t shell out the dough to make that commercial.  You know they would. 

It’s important for our economy too.

For the most part, people really don’t really care about what you did or didn’t do away from the golf course but your squeaky clean image is gone so why not just go with it.  Then you can get back to dominating your sport and people will have reason to watch television and to read the magazines, buy the video games and on and on. 

Seriously, nobody is going to buy EA Sports Jesper Parnevik Golf 2011 or use a Sergio Garcia putter (nobody straight anyway… so that leaves only 40% of the golfing public). 

You are worth millions to this struggling economy.  So come on.  The country needs you. 

Get out there and kick some ass… and then, during your off hours, you can work on stuff like staying faithful and not banging every waffle waitress in town.  I can help you out on that front as well.  I have a LOT of tips on the art of not banging waffle waitresses. 

Actually, in many ways, I am the “Tiger Woods” of not getting laid so you couldn’t have come to a better place. 

Now go piss off the world with a golf club in your hand!

Signed,

Commander Blogface

I refuse to go on Myspace. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Just to be clear, I’m not speaking badly of hives of scum and villainy. I’m not “anti” hive of scum and villainy per se… I don’t want to be ‘that guy’.   It’s just that I’m very selective on what class of hive of scum and villainy I will go in. There are some very nice, upscale and business casual hives of scum and villainy that I enjoy. I just like a lot of atmosphere in my hives of scum and villainy. No apologies. Always been that way about hives of scum and villainy… probably always will be.

I relatively recently started going on Facebook which is sort of in theory like Myspace only that’s like comparing a nice stroll through the park to running through a mosh pit at a GWAR concert wearing nothing but a G-string made of Methamphetamines.

Facebook is a nice little place to go and read some crap one of your friends thought was important like how their new shoes are a half size smaller than the size they thought they were or something equally important like how yummy McDonald’s new McMeat Fillet is.  (or some stupid link to their self important blog about Myspace)  But it’s nice, you read, you play some games, you become obsessed with the damn games and can’t stop playing the damn games and you become enraged when people won’t accept your invitation to join in your awesome elf and dwarf fight with cards game because you could RULE the whole damn magic card kingdom if only people would just JOIN each and every one of your game requests but they DON’T.  Of course you don’t reply to their requests to join their games because their games are stupid.

On the other hand, MYspace just assaults you on every level.  It’s a mishmash of images and sounds and it is just too damn LOUD.   It’s too “Look at MEEE!” for me.  (unlike this blog… which is totally different… shut up)  With MYspace, its all “Hey, you want to read MY posts?  Well you have to listen to MY choice of music while you do it and have seizures to MY choice of hypnotically flashing backgrounds of butterflies or skulls.”  Not to mention the viruses.  MYspace is the seedy(aren’t they all) nightclub of the internet:  Loud, too much flashing, and pants-loads of viruses just waiting for you to touch them.

So MYspace can kiss MYass.  There.  Now that’s out in the open. You can resume your day with the knowledge of what I think about that stuck in your brain.

(as a side note, don’t just go checking to see if “myass.com” is a real site while your child is in the room.  It is….  and I lunged for the back button just in time so he didn’t see it but it is in my son’s words when I took him to see “Watchmen” without knowing that it was R rated: “un-appropriate”. )

Let’s bring everyone up to speed!

OK, this is a great time to catch up on what has happened so far in my exercise extravaganza…

So we are jumping from the start of week 2 to the end of week 8.  Here is a synopsis of what we missed.

Week 2 – No spin bike.  They substituted stairs and lots of them.  Very hard workouts but no further ass damage so it was good.

Week 3 – back on the spin bike for Mondays and Wednesdays.  I sucked it up though and fought my most ingrained ass instincts.

Week 4 – More of the same.  You can see why I haven’t been doing daily updates, a lot of the same stuff…

Week 5 – I have to admit that my ass is getting used to it a bit and the gel seat definitely helps.  Now the big thing with the bike is when we do lengthy “standing and pedaling” sessions my feet literally go numb.  That can’t be good.  It’s like the bike is learning and adapting to cause me problems.  [Schwarzenegger voice] “At 5:23 PM, the spinning bike became self aware… at 5:24 PM, it fired it’s ass missles… finding them less effective, it began to attack the feet.”

I’ve also started to track what I eat on http://www.sparkpeople.com and I’ve found that I actually don’t eat enough food (seriously).  We don’t buy bread anymore, just whole grain tortillas, we have been eating many more vegtables and have not had a noodle based dish in weeks… that’s a big turnaround… especially for my son who basically lived on the CBAD diet (Chef Boy Ar Dee)… is that how you spell it?… if only I had access to some sort of engine that searched for answers for me… oh well.

Anyway… back to the synopsis

I also had an “Intro to the Nautilus Equipment” with a personal trainer who gave me one on one instruction and a lifting plan.  This makes a huge difference.  Even when I was in shape (long long ago) I would just randomly wander around the gym jumping onto any random piece of equipment, not adjusting the seat or other settings and doing as many reps as I could as fast as I could.  You either are or you see these people all of the time in the gym.  They wander around with no idea of what to do until they see an open machine and just sit down and start ‘working out’.  Hahaha fools!  I now work out with Nautilus on Tuesday’s and Saturdays.  This seems to have helped my metabolism a lot.

Week 6 – Arthur is sick, then I get sick so I only made it to Monday on this week.  Not the swine flu, just some sort of sinus infection that made me feel dizzy.  I had a dream where I passed out and fell off the spin bike but my feet were still strapped in and my legs snapped.  So no workouts until Friday night when I did some barbell stuff while I watched the Penguins play.  Will this set us back?  Oh no!!

Week 7- Water week!  We are in the pool this week.  We are on the bikes on Monday, with the kids in the pool, then everyone in the pool on Tuesday (switched from Thursday because Trick or Treat was on Thursday here), then just adults in the pool on Wednesday.  The substitute instructor for the Tuesday workout was weak and let the kids control the action so it was a very light workout.  The Wednesday workout in he pool with our regular crazy lady was very hard.  45 minutes straight of running and jumping and other wacky crap.  Strangely, the pool day was the hardest ‘high impact’ day for my knees.  Then Thursday was Trick or Treat which was about a 2 mile walk on steep hills canceled out by candy.  The groups nutritionist said to only have 2 pieces a day but our crazy instructor said we could have a handful… so we all went with the crazy instructor.  Then on Saturday, I walked in the local Halloween parade handing out shiny Trick or Treat bags.

Week 8 – Back to the bike with a vengence.  Holy crap… Crazy lady decided that we needed to start to do more “standing and cycling” which is good for the ass… but your quads and feet are doomed.  3 minutes straight of standing and cycling has you begging for ass pain.  Some weirdos pay money for this sort of treatment… anyway, from week 7 to week 8, my weight dropped 4 pounds… and I just ran to weigh myself and it says I weigh 330 so that is what… 8 lbs?  a pound a week is a good number especially when I am adding muscle at the same time.  I am down one belt notch which is a good measurement.   This isn’t biggest loser where they get paid to spend all day every day working out and obsessing about their weight with a fully stocked and staffed health kitchen.  My son has dropped 6 pounds… he has improved his food choices and works out on the elliptical and treadmill too.  My wife has dropped 10 pounds as of today and she hasn’t even been to most of the workouts… (she gains and loses 5 pounds a day all of the time… but still, she hasn’t been this low for a long time)

So what we’ve learned so far:  1. Exercise more.  2. Stop eating noodles. 3. ??? 4. Profit.

I will try to keep up with at least a once a week update.  I also plan on adding other categories so I can “blog” about other things… possibly using it as a weapon.  “I am so going to blog about this” can get you out of a ticket I hear.

Uh oh… I cheesed off the scary spinning instructor lady

OK…. so I started this long ago and then… stuff happened.  So this if from week 2.

So, week 2 begins and I was dreading today. My tailbone is still in pain and there is no way it is just ‘soreness’, it definitely has to be damage. I bought a gel seat cover on Saturday because I do want to give it one more try with the seat cover once I can sit on anything without pain again. I did some research and learned that tailbone injuries can take “months or even years” to get better. So that’s good. I walked into the “spinning room” with my “My ass hurts too much, I’ll be upstairs on the elliptical machine” speech ready to go but the instructor (I will learn her name someday) just says she understands and that she couldn’t sit for 2 and a half weeks when she first started the spinning bikes.

This brings the question up again as to who thought it would be a good idea to throw the fatties onto these bikes on day one… but my childlike ass-related whining did not fall on deaf ears and apparently a long discussion took place and we weren’t going to be on the bikes… at least for today… the threat still hangs in the air and I can tell the instructor is a little miffed about it but there is no way I was the only one with problems. I could tell from the reception the news got that the only ones who wanted to ride the spinning bikes were the two women who had been working out all along and the instructor. I forgot to mention that the instructor is a little bit scary… a little bit insane… but she is a very good instructor in my opinion.  Just, you know… a little wackadoodle in her noodle as the kids say.  (actually the kids don’t say that… and if they did, they would deserve a beating… they say stuff like “Yo yo yo, that bish is wack ya’ll” and so on apparently in an attempt to make you think they have brain damage.)

So anyway… we did other stuff like the “make yourself look ridiculous” pelvic randomizers where it looks like you are trying to hump invisible ghosts that are randomly darting around you and the “Squatting knee bombs” where you keep doing deep knee squats in an attempt to have your knee ligaments explode off of your skeletal system so you can’t walk anymore.  If you can’t walk, you can’t get to the refrigerator can you?  I know that this is part of their plan.

Day Three Report: The Cardio Room – A House of Lies!

Well, the ass is feeling slightly better but it is still a level 5 on the pain scale when I sit and stand.  I’ll try to not complain too much about the spinning bikes from now on so I will just include these pictures illustrating how the modern spinning bike came to be and move on:

Spinning Bike Design #1:

This was the first “test run” for the spinning bike by it’s inventor D.R. Mengele but it was changed because it was too labor intensive with all of the people required to haul you up and balance you on the pyramid like top.

Spinning Bike Design #2:

This one was much better because you could get on, be strapped in, and the class could begin.  I think they still have some at a few Bally’s around the nation but they were discontinued because the seats were too big.

Spinning Bike Design #3

There you have it.  The modern spinning bike.  It is essentially Design #1 with pedals and a metal wheel attached.

Anyway, on to the day.  The first part of the program day was “nutrition counseling”.  A dietitian (greek for: someone with good genes who frowns at your plate.) handed out health folders for the kids and went through some activities designed to teach the kids about proper nutrition with the various food groups and the proportions you should have of each.  Protein, Dairy, Vegetable/Fruits, Grains, and ‘sometimes’ foods.

Now, I know all about the proper way to eat… stop looking at me like that… knowing and ‘doing’ are two different things you know… shut up!

Actually, this was a very good thing because my son is one to take what I or his mother says about nutrition, nod, then demand more mac and cheese.  It was also apparently a very good thing for several of the participants as some of the parents came up with questions like: “If I ‘bake’ my french fries… is that a vegetable?” and the heaviest kid in the class asked my favorite: “Are Pop-tarts considered a Fruit or a Grain?”  I was with him there.  It should be ‘both’ and then you can have extra… but no.  They are a ‘sometimes’ food…. but not in the ‘sometimes I have Pop-Tarts and sometimes I have a Choco-Sugar Creme Doughnut and I alternate” sense, but in a “Sometimes you can have them but the dietitian will be frowning over your shoulder in your mind.” sense.

We got our blood test results in too.

My official starting numbers are:

Weight: 336.8 lb  (Recommended: 166lb)  I looked too thin at 180lbs when I was younger so I think they are a little off here, but let’s worry about that last disputed 20-30 lbs when we get there.

BMI: 50.5% (Recommended: 17%) I think this falls into the “awesomely obese” catagory.  Oh the huge Manatee!

Blood Pressure: 137 / 82   (Recommended: 120/80)  not too bad for a big chunk of fat.

Cholesterol: 178 (Recommended: <200)  Whoo hoo!  I passed one!

LDL (bad Cholesterol) 116 (Recommended: <100)  Damn!  Just when the momentum was swinging my way.

HDL (good Cholesterol) 34 (Recommended: >40)  Damn again!  So my overall is OK but my types of Cholesterol are out of proportion.  Not enough fruits and grains. <heads to toaster>

Triglycerides: 144 (Recommended: <150)  Back in the winning column!

Glucose: 89 (Recommended: 70-110) Allright!

A1c: 5.5 (Recommended Value 4.5-5.7)  Cutting this one close.  This is something that tells your risk of diabetes or something, I will learn more about that later… and my son was at 5.8 (everything else other than weight was good for him) so I am concerned about this more than anything as my father developed type II Diabetes.

Good thing we’re in some sort of program to help!

So we get to the exercise portion of the day and a burly male instructor takes the adults into the Cardio Room while the kids went to the gym to do some kind of kid exercises.  The Cardio room is filled with various things like treadmills, elliptical machines and exercise bikes (normal ones, recombinant, and cool ones hooked up to video games where you race and chase dragons and stuff ).  We were immediately told to not use the cool ones with the video games as they would kill us (something about our heart rates spiking).  No big deal as I will not be sitting on anything at all resembling a bike seat anytime soon.  We were given a quick tutorial on the machines, told what to enter as a ‘max’ target heart rate (mine was 141) and said to go for 20 minutes today to start.  We could choose any one or switch to another machine at 10 minutes to see which one we liked best.  This instructor understood the importance of actually liking your exercise and not impaling yourself on a damn broomstick.  OK, I said I would stop, but I lied.

While explaining the machine settings he brought something to my attention that I never realized or thought about.

You know that handy ‘calories burned’ number those machines throw out at you as you exercise and when you are done so that you say: “Wow, I burned 30 calories!” right before glugging down a 190 calorie bottle of Gatorade?  Well it is a lie.

“What?” you say?  “The machine cannot lie!”

“But it is a lie.” I reply.

“But it cannot lie!” you say again.

I reply with this:

“Go ahead and believe the machine if you want to end up like this.”

You see, not only is it impossible for the machine to know how many calories you and your unique metabolism is burning, all of those machines represent a company.  A company that wants more and more of their machines to be purchased or leased.  They know that if you burn “more calories” in 30 minutes on their machine as opposed to 30 minutes on that hapless treadmill over there, you are more likely to use THEIR machine in the future, thus causing angry sweaty lines and cursing as their machines are just soooo popular that the club will have no choice but  to put more of their machines in and hopefully get rid of their competitors machines all together.  So, you see, the Cardio Room is a House of Lies!

Anyway, I went first to the fancy treadmill next to the open window and the TV.  It also had a faulty heart monitor that made me think I was dying.   It went from 89 then worked up to 99 and then just stayed there so I kept increasing the incline and the speed but it just stayed.  Then it jumped up to 136 right away and it just stayed there and stayed there and I was working up a sweat and thinking that my heart-rate just HAD to be higher… as I was considering passing out it dropped to 90 in one second.  I thought it meant my heart skipped or I had had a heart attack… but then the instructor told me there was something wrong with the heart monitor.  Great.  They told me how important it was to stay in my “target range” and not go above my max level for too long then let my fat ass loose on a faulty machine.  I could be ready to pop at any time for all anyone knows!

Potentially me.

But luckily I survived to 10 minutes and then switched to an elliptical machine from the ‘advanced shapes’ series of machines for another 10 minutes… someday I hope to work my way up to the ‘Rhombus Machine’.  The heart-rate monitor of that worked well so I was safe from exploding and using up all of their little ‘wiping towels’.

I forgot to mention that my wife actually was able to make it for this session so that was good.  I want to get her on that spinning cycle so she can ‘feel my pain’ and stop wondering why I spent all week holding my ass and whimpering like a puppy… but nothing good can come out of that.  Either she will completely destroy her mommy bits or I will have to start bringing  heavy power equipment to bed.

Wow, over 1300 words… TL/DR

We start up again next Monday!  I will post more!