Category Archives: Health & Lifestyle

Vegetarians Unite As World Watches

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This week is National Vegetarian Week 2011! I’m sure you can all join me by giving a big round of applause to all those individuals with enough fortitude to go without meat for an entire lifetime.

I have great respect for vegetarians and almost became one myself, back in the day. A co-worker kept putting literature in my employee mailbox outlining the ill effects of various types of meat on the body. At last I decided I owed it to myself to give it a try, since by her calculations I would probably die tomorrow if I didn’t.

It started off easily enough on the first day. I skipped the bacon at breakfast and picked the sausage out of my breakfast burrito. I declined my usual two slices of ham and said no to a delicious looking t-bone steak. After a breakfast consisting of a cup of tofu yogurt and a handful of ground up tree bark, I headed to work, eager to share the good news with my co-worker. She was thrilled and offered to show me the ways of the dedicated vegetarianite.

By lunch I was starved and craving meat, but I held firm and forewent my usual hamburger, deep-fried steak, and bbq chicken wing basket in favor of a crab grass salad and a cup of all-natural pine cone tea.

After work, I could hardly haul myself out of the office and stagger to my car. My vegetarian friend was leaning against the side door waiting for me, her hemp pants hugging her thighs suggestively.

Drumsticks… I thought.

“So how’s it going?” she asked, bending down to save a beetle that was wandering across the parking lot. As she stood, her shirt slipped up and I caught a glimpse of her slim torso.

Ribs… I thought. My mouth began to water.

Looking back, I fear I may have misunderstood what she said next. At the time I thought I heard her say, “Would you like me for dinner?” I now feel she had probably said, “Would you like to join me for dinner?”

In any case, that particular employee no longer works for my company and I have gone back to eating meat. However, it was a valuable lesson. Not all of us are cut out to be vegetarians, it seems, but that shouldn’t stop us from celebrating their special week with them. So let’s celebrate National Eat A Vegetarian Week! The only advice I would give is to shop carefully. A lot of them are kinda stringy.

5 Ways I Knew My Mother Loved Me

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Mother’s Day is such a tender time of year, as we take the day to remember those who spent so much of their lives to care for us in our formative years. Every mother is different, of course, but most have and express a mother’s love for the child, although this expression takes different forms. Some mothers buy their children candy, some mothers read them bedtime stories, still others allow them to skip brushing their teeth once a week.

In honor of this year’s Mother’s Day, I would like to share a list of the ways I knew my mother loved me as a way of saying thanks for all she did to make me the person I am today.

I Knew My Mother Loved Me Because…

1. She never used the cat-o-nine tails, even though she threatened on several occasions. Instead, she always limited herself to the chains from the snow tires.

2. Locking me in the closet never lasted for more than a couple of days and she always slipped a little delicious stale bread under the door.

3. Christmas was never a disappointment. She always let me know well in advance that I wouldn’t be getting any presents and that Santa hated me and was dead besides.

4. She always let me take an hour per day away from cleaning the house, making dinner, and other household tasks to play. Exhausted, I usually ended up sleeping for the entire hour, but she would have let me play if I’d wanted to. It was my choice.

5. Anytime I needed money, she was always quick to let me know that I was a lazy bum who needed to get a third job to support her crack habit. She never minced words and loved me enough to tell me the truth.

I hope all your mothers were even half as loving as mine and that you take a minute or two to call them up today and wish them a Happy Mother’s Day. Be a good offspring and respect your mother!

NOTE: As I’ve been inundated with responses from readers not understanding the humor of this site, let me say now that I AM TOTALLY JOKING and that my mother was likely the best mom on the planet. I’ve even been able to cut my therapy sessions in half.

Majority of Dentists Insane, New Study Finds

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I don’t know of anyone who enjoys going to the dentist. It’s right up there with sucking a gorilla’s nose until its head implodes, sliding down a fifty foot razor into a bucket of vinegar, or running five miles on bare feet through a field of sharpened bamboo shoots. And then people would choose going to the dentist. It is simply a reviled and anxiety-provoking activity.

I had the dubious honor of fulfilling a dentist appointment today. All the way to the torture chamber, I mean, dental office, I kept telling myself that I had nothing to worry about. These were professionals, after all, and would never do anything to intentionally cause me pain and anguish. What I didn’t figure on was that dentists are professional psychopaths! Not only do they relish in causing pain and anguish, but they even charge you for it.

I walked into the office and was immediately taken back to the Pit of Doom, I mean, procedure room. I was made to recline on a leather chair that was hooked up to all sorts of scary implements of torture. A mind-control device, cleverly disguised as a light, hung over my head. The dental assistant puttered around, arranging needles, drills, and various other pointy objects on stainless steel trays presumably for the convenience of the inquisitor, I mean, dentist.

Finally, the dentist walked in and calmly explained that she would be taking a thin piece of sharpened metal and by inserting into the tender flesh of my mouth and gums, would inject a mysterious substance that would cause me to lose feeling on the left side of my face and might rob me of the ability to speak clearly.

“So basically you’re causing me to have a stroke.”

“No…I’m numbing you so you don’t feel the pain when I use my drills and metal picks to grind your tooth down to the nub.” She looked at me curiously. “Are you all right? You seem a little nervous.”

“I’m fine,” I said, casually discarding the arm of the dental chair that had somehow come off in my hand.

“Fine, then we’ll get started,” she said. “Open up as wide as you can.”

Afraid she might ask me to pay for the chair, I complied and even managed not to scream as a needle the size of a railroad spike pierced my mouth. The process was repeated five times and by the time it was over, I was a trembling wreck. The dentist seemed a little worse for wear, as well, and kept putting her finger in her ear and wiggling it around.

“Wax?” I asked, trying to be polite.

“What? Oh, no. It’s just that all your screaming made me kind of deaf. Are you sure you’re not nervous?”

My mouth had started to feel kind of funny and I noticed I was having trouble speaking. “No, I…I’m noth nervuth,” I said. “Why would you think I wuth nervuth?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe it’s the layer of cold sweat you’ve managed to spread all over the room. You’ve completely ruined the chair.”

Suffice it to say, they finally had to just put me out entirely in order to perform the operation and when I came to, I was pleased to discover I had a brand new tooth. And a healthy respect for dentists…they leave me alone, I leave them alone. It’s a deal we have.

Eating People…?

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In the stats for the online magazine, I can track what search terms people are using to find the site. For the last two days, someone has searched for “eating people” and managed to find my website. I have some questions about this: why would someone be searching for information on eating people and what could I have written to enable this search result?

The more I thought about it, however, the more the idea appeared to have practical application. In an age of spiking food prices, we may well be forced to partake of one another in an attempt to self-sustain. Every family has at least one useless member, that weird uncle who never brings anything to family potluck dinners, but hogs the shrimp and boneless ribs or that obese, judgmental aunt who wears way too much makeup and spends Christmas complaining about her myriad of health issues. Now they could be put to good use as the entree. They would serve a good purpose and holidays would be a lot more peaceful.

There would have to be government oversight of this program, of course. For example, children would have to be off-limits, because they are often too small and scrawny to warrant the intensive preparation required to make such a dish presentable. Other than this, choices as to who would eat or be eaten would be held to a family vote, with the member receiving the lowest tally agreeing to hop into the oven. This could prove awkward to families of two, who would be reduced to flipping a quarter.

Farmville Can Get You Dumped

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A website will now breakup with your significant other for a mere $10. The site, iDUMP4U.com, was founded by Bradley Laborman and offers this service as a way to allow people who feel unable to face their soon-to-be exes and break the bad news. The site also records many of the phone calls, which are available on YouTube for all to hear.

One of the best scenarios I heard was a girl who hired iDUMP4U to breakup with her boyfriend because he was playing too much Farmville. Of course you all know what Farmville is, right? (By word of mouth, of course, not through actual application…) Anyway, it is a game by Zynga that allows you to start a virtual farm and populate it with virtual animals and virtual crops, which you harvest at a particular time. If they are not harvested in time, they will wither and die, thereby costing the player valuable points to be used in upgrading the farm.

I should admit here that I have, in the past, played Farmville. The graphics are cute enough and it was fun to watch the crops grow and be harvested. However, it becomes highly tedious after a short time and the average person soon begins to wonder what the ultimate goal of the game is, as there never seems to be a point at which you can actually “win” the game.

Seriously?

Despite this, however, there is a segment of the population consumed with Farmville. When I worked for a public library in West Michigan, there would be people waiting at the door for us to open and as soon as the bolts were thrown back, they would make a beeline for the computers and immediately login to their Farmville accounts. They would stay for the entire hour of alloted time, planting, growing, and harvesting. It was one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen.

I was equally dismayed the other day at a local department store when, standing in the checkout lane, I perused the available gift cards and noticed there was one specifically for Farmville, a preloaded money card that could be used to purchase (with real money!) upgrades for one’s virtual farm. I threw up a little in my mouth and hurried to checkout.

So I have to admit that I took a bit of perverse pleasure in listening to the iDUMP4U phone call with the Farmville addict. I’ll share it here for your own amusement and as a lesson to those of you still caught within Farmville’s smelly clutches.

Normality Now A “Disorder”

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Oh, look, we have two new disorders to worry about. First we had anorexia and bulimia, both of which are actual problems people experience. These two new gems, however, may not be met with the same degree of respect, although orthorexia and Adult Selective Eating are both gaining consideration from JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) and Psychology Today.

Orthorexia is the idea of “correct eating.” People suffering from this “disorder” are consumed with eating natural, organic food, and against putting preservative-type foods in their bodies. Apparently an interest in healthy eating is now a disorder. Interesting approach they are taking, since the media usually spends its time telling us to lay off things like tobacco, alcohol, and snack food, and instead seek out these same natural, organic foods.

The other new disorder is Adult Selective Eating. Those who suffer from it were formerly known as “picky eaters.” We all know those picky eaters: the type of person who makes a scene at the restaurant because they don’t have a particular kind of pasta on the menu. To be honest, these people used to annoy the hell out of me. But now I can feel sorry for them, because I know they are suffering extreme internal torment. They aren’t simply self-indulgent little narcissists who never outgrew their childhood preferences and insist on inflicting their inner two-year-old on all their adult friends. Oh, no. They have a disorder.

Frankly, I’m getting tired of all these disorders that keep popping up all over the place. We need to either stop creating new disorders or let people make up their own. Because the latter would be way more fun, I’ve decided to go with that. I am now diagnosing myself with EATI, pronounced “eatee,” which is medically defined as an Extreme Aversion To Idiots. My symptoms include: flying into a rage every time I come within ten feet of an idiot, verbally raping any idiot who attempts to explain one of their idiot opinions to me, and writing vicious blog posts about how much I hate idiots. I feel I am a sick man and demand financial aid and medical attention from the government. It isn’t my fault I have a low tolerance for stupidity, nor that I was born with the patience of a gnat.

However, since the first step to recovery is always recognition of the problem, I feel I have made good headway. Unfortunately, the second step to recovery is wanting to be healed and I’m not sure I’m there quite yet.

Graycliff G2 PGX Toro

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I purchased the Graycliff G2 PGX toro (6 x 50) on a whim, never having previously tried any Graycliff products. Subsequently, I had no idea what to expect as I punched a hole in the cap. I became a little concerned as the wrapper near the head cracked when I tried to remove the puncher. I chalked it up to being a bit dried out and proceeded to light it up. Continue reading →

Cusano C10 Corona

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The Cusano 10th Anniversary (“C10″) is a smallish corona, measuring 5 x 42. It was put out by Mike Chiusano to celebrate his…wait for it…tenth year in business. Using a wide-ranging blend of tobacco from various countries, this cigar has received good buzz since it was introduced in 2005. They have since introduced a robusto size of this blend, but today’s review will feature the classic Havana-type corona that was Chiusano’s original vision for this cigar. Continue reading →

Rocky Patel Vintage 1990 Toro

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I’d heard good things about the Rocky Patel Vintage 1990. The reviews were good and the brand is highly regarded, so I removed the cigar from my humidor with a feeling of anticipation. The pre-light smell was pleasant enough, kind of earthy, but not too strong. I punched a hole and performed a pre-draw. It tasted heavily of cocoa, but it was a little odd, like cocoa that had somehow become freezer-burned. Continue reading →