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I need a pianist for the lounge act of my dreams. If you can play the tunes, we can get the gigs. Are you my ivory tickler?

Here’s a brief news story from the 90s about something brand new you may have heard of. It’s not a truck, but a series of tubes. And you have to watch it to believe it.

I’m really trying very hard not to turn this into a Diet Blog, but I did some astounding math and wanted to share it with you. By my estimates, it’s taken me a full 17 years to gain the 80.5 lbs I’m now in the process of losing. Now, 1 pound of fat stores a whopping 3500 calories. When, over any period of time, you eat 3500 calories more than you burn, you gain 1 pound. Similarly, when you eat 3500 less calories than you burn over any period, you lose 1 pound. That 80.5 extra pounds represents a 281,750 calories surplus I’m currently burning through. Now, if you divide that by 17 years, that’s an extra 16,674 calories per year, or 45 unneeded calories per day. A single greasy delicious hot wing has around 45 calories in it.

I got where I am over the equivalent of ONE EXTRA HOT WING PER DAY FOR 17 YEARS. You’ve been warned.

What if they really found the physical remains of Jesus Christ, his wife and their child?  Church historians believe that this sort of revelation (pardon the pun) would cause many modern Christians to lose their faith. If your faith is so fragile that mere facts can get in the way, then you believe nothing worthwhile anyway. We live in a world where we pit science and religion against one another as if one were completely correct and the other completely wrong. If the Bible contains factual errors, does that make it all untrue? Of course not. I think many modern Christians see the Bible for what it is: A book of guidelines and inspiration written by men in power thousands of years ago. The original intent is still there, if you look hard enough, but readers must realize the many translations and changes inspired by greed and power have taken their toll. Leviticus is not a “how to live your life” book at all, but more of an Old Testament price sheet for sins. If you read that whole book and not just the verses about the homos, you’ll see what I mean.

I rejoice in the very concept that they might have found proof that Christ was a real man who really walked the Earth. The miracles he performed need not be scientific impossibilities. He performed the same sort of miracles that Ghandi and Rosa Park performed — social change against impossible odds.

If you study ancient culture and carefully read through translation and open your heart, you can understand how Jesus really turned water into wine or raised Lazarus from the dead.  Culturally, you need a few additional details, like at weddings only the bride and groom drank wine.  As a sacrifice and well-wishing, everyone else drank water. If you drank the water, you got sick.  Jesus made sure everyone had wine so no one had to get sick. Miracle.  Lazarus had really hacked off the Pharisees and they had excommunicated him, which in the vernacular of the day was called dying, as you basically did.  You were exiled from the villages, no one spoke to you, and you hung around at the tombs until you died of starvation or animal attack.  Jesus refused to participate in the forced ostracism, and when Jesus rebelled, everyone else did, too, thus raising Lazarus.  Miracle.  Social Miracle.

Jesus was a cool guy even without magic.

Sometimes, when I surf, I come upon brilliant diamonds.  This is one of those times.  Jenova wrote his thesis on fun in video games — that magical point balanced between anxiety and boredom, between skill and anxiety.  He also wrote that Cloud game I ranted about some time ago, but this is something magical.  Go, play. Heck, download the freeware.  It’s Mac and PC cause it’s written in Flash… But I mean WOW.  It adjusts to your play style. Tell me what you think.

flOw

Admittedly, I’ve only seen two of the five movies nominated for Best Picture (Little Miss Sunshine and The Departed). And while both of them were certainly Oscar-worthy, let’s be honest. Martin Scorsese got this one because he was robbed of his Oscar so many times before (this was his first, can you believe that?!). Having nothing but respect for Mr. Scorsese and being a long-time admirer of his work, I have to say that Little Miss Sunshine was a better movie than The Departed.

And, the Best Picture of 2006 Chadademy™ Award goes to… Little Miss Sunshine.

If I stay on my diet, by next Halloween I will be merely chubby. Ah, to be that cute, chubby girl again. It is a mere 35 pounds away. It is quite shocking actually, when I think of how much I have already lost. I have found some of the best ways to make frozen dinners better too. You can make a diet Kashi meal 400% better and only add 40 calories by adding chopped sun-dried tomatoes! I am talking a WORLD of difference here. The Kashi meals are only about 300 calories as they are anyway and fairly decent, but they need a little kick. H.E.B. has a whole section of organic, dried fruits and veggies that are low cal. and my new best friends. Now, how I am going to survive Disneyworld without gaining weight, I am not sure. However, I know that you average about 8 miles a day there so I am sure I will be burning more than I take in.

I’ve decided that I’m at the beginning of act three of a frat house movie with my diet.

Act I: Wild and Wacky Fraternity Antics

Act II: Uptight Dean threatens Wacky Frat to SHAPE UP OR SHIP OUT!

So here it is, Act III, Scene 1…

Bacon: Dude, Dean Chad is really serious this time! I think he’s gonna make us really lose weight!

Stomach: Come on! It’s Chadsy! We’ve been here before with him! All we gotta do is lay low for a couple of weeks, drop a couple of pounds, and then he’ll get distracted and we’re back on the gravy train.

Sausage: We’ve already dropped ten pounds. That’s our WHOLE STASH! If he keeps up at this rate, we’re going to really have to lose the weight.

Stomach: Seriously? Ten pounds? We’re out of spare?

Chili-Cheese Dog: YES! Bacon, Sausage and I haven’t been able to set foot on campus in weeks! And Cheeseburger is so depressed he won’t come out of his room. Don’t talk to me about Ultimate Skillet. (sobs) He was so young!

Stomach: (getting serious) Okay, guys. You’re not out yet. I’ll just… well… lose the weight, I guess. You guys will just have to leave for a while until we can get it together. Then, maybe you can come back.

Bacon: (hopefully) Permanently? You’ll dump the Chicken and Tuna twins?

Stomach: I don’t know, Pig-Man. I don’t know.

(FADE TO - SPORTS TRAINING MONTAGE)

I finally sat down and watched the film and first off, Obi Wan looked pretty hot in it. A little less hot but more poised in this film than he does as Ewan McGregor. Maybe it is because when Alec Guinness is playing Ewan McGregor playing Obi Wan he is having to play it as an Englishman playing a Scotsman playing an Englishman. That has to be difficult, especially with a last name like Guinness.

Anyway, the film really is as good as people make it out to be. It does leave you wondering what the hell happened to Zhivago’s wife/son/dad after they were exported back to Paris. I like to think that she became a famous clothing designer and had a torrid affair with a very buff man who could please her in ways Yuri never could. As a result, Sasha (the son) grows up to be a male runway model and shakes it until he breaks it. The father dies of old age after having all the french tobacco he can smoke.

I do kind of have a couple of questions. I think I am supposed to believe that Lara was raped by Komarovsky (Rod Steiger), but that had to be the wimpiest rape scene I have ever seen. I saw the seduction cause them was some purdy dresses and he might have been a big guy, but a knee to the nuts is a knee to the nuts. So, what was up with the limp hand and sigh…talk to me people. Anyway, jerky for sure, especially after being called a slut. But rape? I dunno. I suppose the Colleen jury is still out on how sympathetic I feel for Lara. I mean she schtooped a sleeze for nice dresses…ok I can understand that, but on the other hand - she schtooped a married guy behind the wifes back…

For that matter…Zhivago just blatantly lived that “love the one you’re with” lifestyle in the middle of a civil war until his heart gave out. I have to say if we all could do this, we would have a great freaking world. Unfortunately, it goes against basic human emotions to be this evolved. Now I am going to have to read the novel, because it was not completed until the mid 50’s and I wonder if it has that underlying 60’s free love feel to it.

One more thing, every man should master the Omar Sharif stare. Look into your woman’s eyes like Omar. I mean the guy is not all that good looking to me, but can he give you a look, ohhhh yeah.

Damn it! Turns out an asteroid is going to hit the earth on April 13, 2036. That’s only a month after my 65th birthday. Basically, that means that I will retire on our about March 25th, 2036, and then the world will become uninhabitable less than three weeks later. Why am I contributing to my 401k again?! Stupid asteroid…

To give you an idea of how close it’s actually going to come (they’re saying that the chances of it hitting the Earth are something like 1 in 40,000 - MUCH better odds than winning the Lotto, by the way) I’ve grabbed the diagram to the left from Wikipedia.

The center of the circle is the Earth. That blue line is the path of the asteroid. That circle is the orbit of the MOON. That’s a little too close for comfort.