For The Sake of My Fat Ass...

Okay, so it's been a week since I've gotten out of the hospital, and one of the things I seriously need to start doing is taking off some of this excess blubber I'm carrying around. Truth to tell, I was absolutely flabbergasted when I stepped on that scale in the ER and the little LED display read...well, those numbers.

See, this Lunatic needs to lose approximately *cough-cough* pounds, which is an awful lot. Believe me, you never knew *cough-cough* could be such a terrible number until someone or something has pointed out to you that *cough-cough* would be impressive....if you were a fucking walrus. Thank you, smart-ass nurse!

Anyway, the problem becomes how to lose *covering mouth whilst talking* pounds.

As a younger man, I was quite athletic and keeping weight off was never a problem. I played baseball, roller hockey, soccer, softball, and could run for miles, and really enjoyed hiking. Heck, I can still walk for miles now without tiring, but despite the fact that I almost literally walk everywhere (at least 2 miles a day), it never seems to translate to a slimmer waistline. I've had someone postulate that because I was such an active child/teen, playing a lot of endurance sports, my body became "conditioned" to run at a higher heart rate, and so unless I can speed it up to ridiculously-high levels during exercise, I'm not likely to see much benefit from simply walking several miles a day.

I don't know if that theory is valid, but then again, that person works out at least three times a week and has for over a decade. So maybe she knows something I don't? I've asked a doctor specifically about this and all he could do was to shrug and say "it depends", which tells me that even doctors don't know everything they profess to know.

Now, I could go to a gym, and that has been suggested, except for three little problems. The first is that I hate gyms; I hate the whole gym atmosphere, I hate the whole gym smell, I hate the usually narcissistic jerkoffs who inhabit gyms building next-to-useless gigantic muscles in order to compensate for the speech impediment or the small penis, and probably both....you know who you are, Lou Ferigno.

I also hate the perky gym chick, who believes it's still 1985 and that it's quite okay (as if it ever was?) to dress like Olivia Newton John in that stupid "Let's Get Physical" Video. You have this annoying habit of making everyone around you hate you, what with your seemingly-endless supply of energy and enthusiasm that simply must come from a raging cocaine or amphetamine  habit. Because Honey, if that sort of boundless energy is natural, then Obama put all that Solyndra money in the wrong place; someone needs to run a power cord out of your va-jay-jay, I reckon.

Besides, you actually have to go to a gym, which is sort of like having to go to school, or work, or to the gallows.

I was thinking of getting a bicycle.

This seems a good idea until you remember where you live. Staten Island has plenty of bike paths, I can tell you, but the problem is getting to them. In fact, the problem anything bike-related in this city is getting to it. 

Despite having spent tens of millions of dollars on bike paths and special bike lanes, the Bloomdouche...excuse me...Bloomberg....administration has only managed to concoct a bicycle unfriendly environment in which paths and lanes go unconnected, sometimes abruptly start in the middle of a busy street, only to consequently abruptly end no place you wish to be. It;'s as if someone with ADD designed the bicycle path system, and what happens is that bicyclists are often sharing the road with cars and tractor trailers.

So that means sharing the narrow, congested streets of Staten Island with motor vehicles driven by complete doofuses who do stupid things behind the wheel of a deadly weapon. Like text, put on their makeup, turn around to slap the kids, dial their beloved to tell them they're right around the fucking corner, shave in the rear-view. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that half the people on this Island with a driver's license should be taken out and forcibly sterilized as a precaution against them producing another generation of bad drivers like themselves.

Red lights and stop signs are for other people. You have the right to make that goddamned left turn anytime you want to, especially if you're driving a tank, and who gives a damn if you cause an accident...that's what other people have insurance for, right? Teenaged maniacs (the girls are the worst, believe it or not) given Daddies "other" Beemer and sent forth to make nuisances of themselves.

My all-time favorite is the bundle of zits and baby fat that goes through all the trouble of putting a killer sound system into his 20 year old Civic, only to make a spectacle of himself at every red light. The tiny car vibrating so hard from the over-sized bass that the rust drops from everywhere and accumulates in little piles beneath the vehicle, the windows rattling to the point of shattering, too, the Ben Hur-style hubcaps, the classic Guido blue-light under the frame, and when the light changes and he floors it, the distinctive putt-putt-putt of last centuries' 4-cylinder Japanese engineering.

No, just being a pedestrian on this island is dangerous enough, since we seem to be hunted with cars in the same way the Plains Tribes hunted buffalo from horseback.

But, a bike might be my best option, so long as I can stay away from those Bike People...

You know the sort, the middle-aged, granola-snorting Yuppie/Hippie who dresses in spandex, and wears that dorky conformal helmet that looks like someone stuck a bedpan on his head? You know, the guy who lives, eats, shits, bikes, looks like he could have been a member of the Manson family, who spent a small fortune on his custom-made Austrian mountain bike -- complete with GPS, Frozen Margarita Dispenser, and enough fog lights to guide a cruise liner into a Third-World port at midnight? The kind of guy you see who is so wedded and dedicated to his biking habit that he actually brings his bike along with him on the Subway?

Well, actually he needs to bring it with him on the subway, because none of Bloomdouche's bike paths are connected!

Anyways, I figure I can handle a bike, even though it's been *Harumph* years since I've ridden one.

I had already begun the process of quitting smoking, and took all the sugar and caffeine out of my diet before I went into the hospital, specifically because I knew I was going to have to lose a lot of weight. I just didn't realize how much there was to actually lose. And I hope I don't find it all again later on, too.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.