Large and in charge

We all know how annoying some people can get when they see pictures of themselves, or hear their recorded voices played back.

"Is that what I look like," they'll gasp. "Omygawd, do I really sound like that?"

Irritating as hell.

So I almost feel bad about saying ... Damn! Do I look like Chewbacca on a bicycle, or what?

Maybe I should make sure I'm photographed only when riding the fat Pugsley. It might make me look a beer or two thinner.

Maura sent me an e-mail last night asking if I intended to do the Frosty Bottom 50. I told her I was tempted. A little while later, I stepped on a scale and found out I've already gained six pounds this winter. And it's only the first week of December.

I think I'll do the 50-mile race, even if it turns into a death march for me (and it probably will). It's time to start suffering for my sins of consumption.

As soon as I finish this bottle of wine, I'm cracking down and gettin' back in shape.

I mean it this time.

Oh, shut the hell up.

Keepin' it real

I was taking a break from running my snowblower (again) when I came across this cartoon on Martino's site about the same time my younger brother and I were having an e-mail exchange about this great essay in The New York Times.

My brother is a physician who feel that too many people today are being overmedicated, and too often told they have this or that "syndrome" instead of being told to change their lifestyles and take more responsibility for their own health.

Before returning to private practice, he used to teach at a medical school where he forbade his residents and students from using the term "metabolic syndrome," which he considers to be a bullshit diagnosis.

He made them call it "fat, with side effects."