…and this exchange:
Whistler: I want peace on earth and good will toward man.
Bernard Abbott: We are the United States Government. We don’t do that sort of thing.
Somebody please shoot me. Preferably in the arm, with an IV of food.
There are two things in this world that I can’t stand to eat: blue cheese, and my words. When I arrived in this office, about this time last year, about half the women in the place had just signed up with Weight Watchers. For the next month, just about all I heard, especially in the lunchroom on meeting days, was points this and points that and how many points does that have? One day, a client brought in a huge jar of pretzels (deli pickle-jar size) and nobody would eat them until someone posted a sign on the jar saying “3 = 1 point.” (Over half the jar was gone in 30 minutes.) I couldn’t deny that the program seemed to be working for most of the ones who took it seriously, but the level of obsessive commitment freaked me out. I swore I wouldn’t become one of the herd next time it came around. Then I watched myself pack on 15 pounds over the next year.
Mooooooo.
The whole thing would have to start on a day when we have no groceries in the house and are coming up on a weekend. I ended up with oatmeal for breakfast because there wasn’t anything else in the place I could eat and still have points left for dinner. Especially when there’s a darn good chance that dinner will be eaten somewhere besides home. I can’t believe capellini friggin’ pomodoro is 6 points for half an order while a strip of bacon is only 1 point. (Must be all the olive oil.) At least I’ve found a mug that makes drinking indiscreet amounts of water palatable. (The 9-11 memorial freebie we got from some vendor, of all things. Holds 2 cups!)
What I can’t figure is where they get their daily points ranges. The upper end has been lowered for nearly everybody since the last time the other women did this, so instead of the 22-29 I’d have had then, I have a max of 27. I’m trying to budget for 6 per meal and then add in snacks. I honestly don’t know how people with an 18-23 range can survive on that little. I’ve been hungry all day, and this is with half a bag of baby carrots sitting within arm’s reach (they’re gone now).
And I ran the numbers on what I used to eat in Arroyo Vista, spring quarter of freshman year, when I lost 15 pounds, reached what doctors would just barely call a healthy weight for my height, and felt like crap the entire time. I was eating between 30 and 35 points on the days I followed my formulaic meal algorithm, and I was losing the entire time. So where they get off maxing me out at 27, I have no idea. Maybe they figure 99 percent of people are going to cheat? Maybe if they put the max back at 29, fewer people would.
At least I don’t have to eat blue cheese.
Sleep and the art of punctuality maintenance
My alarm clock is a stupid mofo. Of course, considering that I got it specifically because it was simple to operate and didn’t have any strange features, that shouldn’t surprise me. But it’s beginning to piss me off that I have to turn the alarm function completely off every morning to shut it up, and then remember to turn it back on every night (because if I do it immediately after turning it off, it just starts up the alarm cycle again). I’ve woken up late (i.e. initial flying-open of eyes takes place more than 15 minutes after the desired time) about six times since getting this clock, which is more than I’ve done in the last five years, maybe even more than in the last 10.
And the corker is that any other clock I might get is going to piss me off just by its existence. I mean, have you shopped for bedside alarm clocks recently? They’re all postmodern sculptural chunks of weird, and badly balanced for trying to hit a specific button when your nervous system isn’t quite up to par. Boss-types trying to unravel the mystery of a chronically late worker should ask if their clock is the type where the only button you can find in the dark is snooze, and the OFF button doesn’t work if you’ve hit snooze so you have to wait for it to go off again or make your bedpartner do it for you. My last radio worked that way for the last year of its life, but only because the OFF button (which was nicely marked with a little raised bar) refused to work consistently and had to be rattled like a machine gun. The last thing a sleepy person wants to do is play Braille with an array of trendy little buttons, all alike, just to get out of bed. The second to last thing is knocking the radio over because it’s taller than it is wide, or hitting the volume control with an errant finger.
Now that I think about it, the last thing a sleepy person wants to do, actually, is get up. So clock hatred comes naturally. Good thing you can’t get arrested for a hate crime against a clock. Yet.
Snrglt…
The woman across the cubicle keeps talking about someplace in Wildomar, and every time she says it, I hear Voldemort….
Super-Hero Weddings
Over the past few weeks I’ve been going through the Silver Age Flash series, cataloging character appearances. I’m almost done – only 25 issues left – but it reminded me of something:
Why is it that super-hero weddings are almost always interrupted by super-villains – even when the hero’s identity is secret?
Is it just that readers expect a story with some sort of fight in it, and if it’s just a wedding they’ll be disappointed?
Consider these examples:
- Flash II (Barry Allen) and Iris West: the wedding is interrupted when Professor Zoom disguises himself as the groom, and the Flash has to get rid of him and then make it to the wedding himself.
- Flash II (Barry Allen) and Fiona Webb (after Iris’ death): Zoom returns, Flash spends the whole day chasing him around the globe, and eventually Fiona gives up and runs out of the chapel, just in time for Zoom to try to kill her. (Flash stops him with a last-second choke-hold which breaks his neck, leading to a manslaughter trial, the disappearance of Barry Allen, and finally the cancellation of the series.)
- Flash III (Wally West) and Linda Park: at the moment the rings are exchanged, Abra Kadabra kidnaps Linda, sends everyone home, and casts a massive forget spell, erasing all memory and records of her back to the point she met Wally. Eventually she escapes, Kadabra is tricked into reversing the spell, and they hold a new wedding – 18 issues later.
And it’s not just the main characters who get this treatment: Continue reading