Scaling Literary Heights and Other Fairy Stories

My totally elegant Soehnle scale.

I just weighed myself and I gained weight. I know I did as I have a swanky scale from one of those Norwegian, Swiss, Swedish or other such Norse-type land where they're typically renown for growing beautiful, lithe women whose skin glows with the dewy innocence of one of those ethereal fairies in that "faked fairy photographs" hoax perpetrated by two little English girls. Those sweet little "innocent" girls, along with the "prim and proper" British doctor who snapped the infamous, but equally fabricated, Loch Ness Monster photograph...admitted years afterwards they duped unsuspecting people whose only fault in life was hoping too much for magical, wondrous things.

Whilst innocence lost is a sad, sad thing...weight loss is another thing altogether.

Anyway, my nifty scale lets me know how much I weigh, how much body fat I have, how much water's in my feet (I guess - as that's the only part that goes ON the scale), and how much muscle I have. It does this all in a couple minutes...going to a doctor to ascertain all this would take hours...and then you'd have to wait for the test results they never tell you about unless they were bad...or they forgot...or they said they called but they didn't as you have caller ID and you know damned well they didn't call at all and "just didn't leave a message" because you weren't there to have it delivered personally.

So, I now weigh a whopping 110.8 pounds.

I can hear that collective sigh of contempt mixed with hatred clear across the Internet here. "One-hundred ten pounds??? Are you insane??? I WISH I weighed 110 pounds!"

But, you don't see my plight. Oh, yeah, I have one. Listen...

...I lost about 15 pounds here in the past year. Of course it comes straight off the boobs...but even without that bit of "too much info" - a person who is tiny to start with doesn't have a lot of room to lose weight. When I got down to about 107 I started to worry...when I got down to 105 I started to freak.

When you weigh a bunch, losing a pound or two or five or ten doesn't necessarily cause a sense of panic... I'm sure it's more like a feeling of elation. When you weigh 107 or 105 you wonder "Just how much more weight CAN I lose before I really have to worry about it?"

So, when I stepped on the scale just now and saw I was almost...almost 111...I felt really good.

You see I've never had to exercise. Never had to jazzercise, never had to aerobocise, yogacise or Tae-Bocise. In fact the only "cise" I do where I think I'm any good at...is criticize.

That I do extremely well. And you can lose a lot of weight doing it...especially if you "worrycise" at the same time.

Mostly I'm critical of my own self...but when I, as a wannabe writer, get a whiff of another "writer's" work, especially when I could have possibly done that work and done that work a LOT better (or at least "quite a bit" better) - I go into criticize mode.

Anyone who fancies themselves a writer knows exactly what I mean. You never read a news article as "just a news article" - you read it as a news article with an inordinate amount of grammatical mistakes. You read all comments below these articles and inwardly complain to yourself, "People who really want to be taken seriously should at LEAST know how to SPELL correctly!" You peruse the book aisles in any massive book store and continually balk and roll your eyes and say extremely naughty words under your breath. You can't conceive of anyone actually making money on something you'd have been embarrassed to show your own mother when you were in third grade...but there they all are, as bright as day. Or day to any vampire who could attest to it in any of those 20,092 books they're selling there that has a vampire as a protagonist or an antagonist or a misogynist. All I know -- is the gist of it...is nearly pure crap...as I could surely do better...

...you know, if I actually tried...or knew someone...or lowered my standards enough.

So, after all my criticism is eventually vented out and all is said and done and I finally drift off to la-la-land in my Ambien-induced coma...I'm hoping the only thing I don't lower, other than my perceived high and mighty literary standards...

...is my weight.

And, I do believe in fairies...I do believe...just like I do believe I'll be a real writer one day.

(Thanks again to my friend, Phil, for planting that "cise" seed in my brain and egging me on to write this after listening to me vent...for the umpteen-millionth time.)

No Small Feet to Accomplish

I want to believe.

I want to believe so badly that I spent another two hours (or was it one hour - with TiVo...the time drags out sometimes) of my life watching another bogus show talking about things like Bigfoot.

It was one about Bigfoot, in fact. It was something on "The History Channel" and seriously, I hate the shaky camera technique and I really hate, in fact I'd go as far to say I despise, Brad Meltzer.* I never knew who you were before "Decoded" on "The History Channel" - but you are more than annoying and you, as my father used to say, "Don't think your own s*** stinks". I've never before said this about a person...but I'm saying it about you: You are a pompous ass who makes the late William F. Buckley seem like "Snuggle the fabric softener bear". You and your shaky camera technique can go take a flying leap off the cornerstone off the White House...or better yet, bale out of some airplane like D.B. Cooper. That's what I think of you and your annoying program. Your annoying program wouldn't be so annoying if it wasn't for the fact that: 1) You're an annoying pompous ass; 2) The shaky camera technique makes me think I'm going to have aneurysms and seizures, and 3) I've heard this all before - if you are going to have an exposé-type of show - at least give me stuff I didn't read in the same book I am sure me and Chris Carter (of X-Files fame) both checked out of the county library in the 1970s.

Now enter any show regarding Bigfoot, UFOs, Loch Ness-type monsters, or ghosts in the past three decades.

I, like Fox Mulder in the "X-Files" want to believe. I seriously want to believe. I really do. Not in the Peter Pan fairies way...but I want to believe in these things. I want to believe anything in Erich von Däniken's book "Chariots of the Gods" - was indeed alien-inspired and alien-made. I want to believe they've found some new evidence - I want to believe in crystal skulls and Nessie and "The Jersey Devil" (no, not Snooki), Chupacabras and the scariest of them all: Spontaneous Human Combustion.

I want to believe it all exists and I want to believe they are going to show me new evidence each time I fall for one of these shows on television. I am, sadly I feel, way too naïve.

I mean, what are the odds they found some skeletal remains of some Yeti and we didn't hear about it? What are the odds Houdini made it over and is finally getting a message across because he had to wait his turn in line patiently? What are odds I'm going to watch yet another show about some secret society or pyramid builders or lake monster next week if they show one?

I'll tell you: Pretty damned good.

But they NEVER find anything new. They might add something inconsequential I never heard of before - but no one ever saves a piece of a Bigfoot or takes photos of a giant squid...or has a new photo of some floating debris which six people now sitting around a lighted table can't argue 'yea or nay' about.

I have lived through the early 70s - and everyone had a UFO and Bigfoot in their yard then. Yeah, sure, there was also a show on television called H.R. Pufnstuf - and if you puffed enough stuff you'd be hearing lights and seeing sounds, too. But still...

...where's my monster?

I want some proof.

After all these years and countless programs - I'm beginning to believe the best place to put fake Bigfoot footprints IS 20,000 feet up. If you put them 20,000 feet up...who the heck's going to argue with you. "Yep...that's a footprint of something for sure...brrrrrrrrrrrr...now get me off this God-forsaken mountain!" If I'm going to fake something I'm going to fake it where no one is going to go to in order to "unfake it" later on.

But yet...I am starting to believe I don't believe. After all these years - all these people who believe sound more like the kids we sold oregano to in high school and less like the kids we made fun of for wearing white belts and pocket protectors.

I am sorry, not to be overly judgmental, but if you are professor of something or other in some prestigious university and you have a streak of purple running through both sides of your jet-black 'straight as a bone' hair, it's harder for me (and I'm sure at least five others) to take you seriously when you talk about how conclusive the evidence is to support the "X-Woman" theory. I'm just sitting here wondering if that's really your accent or if it's just a stud in your tongue and envisioning where all your tattoos are. I'm also wondering how many times you participated in naked Druid ceremonies...and if you've ever boinked Brad Meltzer.

I do walk away from these programs more inclined to believe more people have seen a UFO or Bigfoot than have ever boinked Brad Meltzer, but then again...I really want to believe some things...and some things I just don't EVER want to see.

*As far as I know, this show didn't actually have anything to do with Brad Meltzer other than running previews of his next show during some commercial breaks...but, as he REALLY IS a pompous ass - I wanted to take the opportunity to mention it yet again.