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Something happened in Chicago this week. I don’t know if you heard about it or not but apparently a seventy-one year old curse was finally lifted and the Chicago Bulls won the Stanley Cup or something like that. I’m not clear on the details: I don’t really like sports all that much. But I do like a good story! And this week I have two of them.

Curse of the Billy Goat

I don’t doubt anyone following the Cubs at all this year hasn’t heard of the curse. For the potential few who haven’t, here it is. Billy Sianis opened Chicago’s famed Billy Goat Tavern in 1934 (as shown here in the accompanying image © 2006, Jeremy Atherton). Apparently, the guy liked goats. But in a good way.

Being a fan of the Cubbies, he attended the 1945 World Series. Being a fan of goats, he brought his pet goat Murphy to the game. Who can blame him? I might take a much greater interest in sports if people always brought their favorite barnyard animal to the games. But that’s just me and Billy. No one else appreciated his furry, cloven-foot friend, though. In fairness, the goat shouldn’t have been drinking everyone else’s beer. But, hey, that’s what goats do. Billy and Murphy were ejected from the game under the charge of “You’re too awesome for the likes of us.”

Clearly upset by this act, he set the goat aside. The crowd backed away in awe as he pulled out his gnarled wizard staff, put on his pointy wizard hat, and cried out, “Jokalari hauek ez dira irabaziko berriro bi mila hamasei arte!” Lightening struck and thunder rumbled and the curse was laid. The Cubs lost that World Series and the team went 0 for 11,502 games after that.

Until this year. Way to go, Cubbies!

That’s What Goats Do

I want this next story to be true. I’m not saying it isn’t. Quite apart from the silly take on Billy’s Curse above, as far as I know, this story really actually happened. But there’s simply no way to verify it. I only know it from my dad’s telling of it.

My parents moved to Chicago in 1965 and my dad took to working downtown. One way or another, he found his way to the Billy Goat Tavern. I have extraordinarily vague and fuzzy memories of this place when I was young. About all I can remember is it being dark and a sort of woody and hazy feel to it. The bathrooms were marked billies and nannies. And up on the wall, an illustration of Billy Sianis as a goat:

My dad took me to this strange and wonderful place several times. (At least once was after getting my hair cut at what I can only describe as an “old school” barber shop in the Wrigley Building.)

But the one visit I don’t remember happened when I was probably three years old. On that trip, we were there at the same time as Billy Sianis and my dad wanted me to meet the legend. I’d probably had one or two beers too many in me already, but after being introduced to Mr. Sianis I glanced over at the logo, then back at the man, then at the logo again. At which point I head-butted him.

Nearly nine months ago, I outlined a plan of attack for my various works in progress. Let’s see how things turned out!

First, let’s review the more realistic parts of the plan:

Spring 2016: This blogger finishes the move to the new house. There’s just no way around this and he has to realistically budget plenty of time for it.

September 2016: This blogger publishes his “cancer book.” Yep, for real.

April 2017: Right on the heels of that, he publishes Ronald. True, this isn’t a lot of time from the end of the last book. But that’s okay because: 1) he’s already written the basic storyline and 2) it’s only going to be a novella, if not shorter.

December 2017: This blogger finishes Elsewhither, the first book of the Underhaven Trilogy.

How’d we do?

Whelp, we sold the old house and moved into the new. That alone was a major accomplishment. And if I did nothing else this year, I couldn’t feel bad about it.

And how about that cancer book? Obviously, that did not get published. But at least this time it was due to a calculated decision. I actually did finish writing about 95% of it. The end needs some cleanup and then there’s another editing pass. But it really did come together. But September rolled along, for some reason the release timing didn’t feel right and I wanted to hold it until my five-year anniversary, next April.

I then changed my mind about the next two things: Ronald and Elsewhither. Because a few weeks ago, I just got it in my head that the time was ripe to remove four years of dust from Winter’s Gate (a.k.a. Tuesday Night) and finish that one first.

Why? No idea. This is all my brain’s idea and it never consults me before making important decisions.

So that’s where I am now. I’m trying to fix up some major mechanical issues with the story and then use this year’s NaNoWriMo to get ‘er done.

How’s it going? Well, if you’d asked me two days ago I would’ve said, “Great!” Today, though, I got stuck again. So, “Not so much!”

But that’s okay. Because I’ve got a plan!

I like to think of myself as intelligent. I don’t have an IQ of two hundred or anything like that, but last I checked it was a little above average. This brain thing also comes with an intense desire to learn new things, research things, mentally take things apart and put them back together again. And above all, it comes with a level of humility and modesty that can only be described as enviable.

But in all my self-enrichment over the years, one thing has become clearer and clearer: the more I know, the more I find I don’t know. And the more things I find that I don’t know, a larger and larger percentage of them are things I’ll never understand.

Which seems like the perfect topic for a series of blog posts.

So! With a seemingly infinite number of things in this category, it’s kind of hard to know where to start. Might even be harder than trying to figure out what I like best about the fall season. To help wrangle this, I wrote up a list of twenty seven thousand things that I’ll never understand, cut them into little slips of paper, and pulled one at random out of hat.

Here we go!

Things I’ll Never Understand #1. People stealing other people’s food out of a common area fridge.

I like to joke and keep things light around here. I enjoy both exaggeration and self-deprecation in measured doses. But I’m flat out serious when I’m telling you: I will never understand this. The neurons in my head are simply not wired in a way that will ever allow me to comprehend this behavior.

Who does that? I think to myself, every single time it happens to me. I try to put myself in that person’s shoes. This is one scenario:

Boy, I’m hungry! I wonder what’s for lunch? Let’s see, I could go out for a bite. There are a half dozen places around here within a five minute radius. There’s the cafeteria. Or maybe something quick out of the vending machine. Hmmm. Let’s see.

Ah! Here we go. A large, rectangular box. With two doors. What are these doors? Hmmm. I’ll just pull open the top one. BRRR! What is that!? That was freezing. Let’s try the door below it. Hmmm. Cold, but definitely not as much as that other door. But . . . but . . . what is this? It’s full of food! Let’s see what we have.

Well, there’s a package of Doug. There’s a container of Julie. I see a thermos or something full of Steve. Oh! This Tupperware item named Tina looks good. I’ll just eat that.

So maybe that’s one possibility: people just don’t even recognize the food as belonging to others. A variation on that is:

It’s that big rectangular box again! I bet I could get more food out of that. Although, when I ate that Tina Tupperware, it was weird. Because we also have a Tina in the office and she seemed pretty upset the rest of the day. I don’t know if that’s related, but I’ll just grab something without a name on it to be safe.

“Hey!” I hear someone yell as I pull the unlabeled container out of the microwave. “That’s mine!” Doug is walking over to me and he doesn’t look happy.

“I didn’t think it belonged to anybody,” I explain.

“But you know YOU didn’t bring it, right?”

Not following you.

And these are just the benign scenarios. After that, things go south. There’s just outright theft. Like, “I know that’s not mine, but I’m going to take it anyway.” And then worst of all (yes, there’s something worse than outright theft), is the person who knows the food who isn’t theirs but for whatever reason they feel entitled to it.

I’m the CEO of this twenty-person firm. Therefore, everything in here is mine. All the food in the fridge? Mine. All the snacks on your desk? Mine. Those leftovers you just brought in from your lunch outing? Yep, mine too.

I’ll never understand it.

Ah, it’s that time of year again. Fall.

It is, without a doubt, my favorite time of the year. The weather changes (for the better). The trees change (for the prettier). And there’s just something about Halloweentime that touches me deep in the DNA.

Fifteen years ago we moved to Austin. There’s plenty to like about the relocation, but one lingering aspect that will likely trouble me forever is that my least favorite season (summer) is twice as long as it should be. Consequently, it squeezes my most favorite season down to about half as long as what I grew up with. (That said, I’ve never been buried under seventeen feet of snow here, so overall, I think I’m okay with it.)

If I had to pick just one thing about the season I like above everything else . . . well, I couldn’t do it. There are simply too many good things to pick from. I think this is one of those areas where each individual aspect is my favorite and I just rotate through them.

This would, come to think of it, give me a distinct advantage if I were ever on Jeopardy and got a whole category on the subject. I bet that would probably go something like this:

Alex Trebek: “Starting our next round. The categories are Things, Stuff, Objects, Items, Doodads, and Fall For It. Charlie, the board is yours.”

Charlie: “I’ll take Fall for It for ten thousand, Alex.”

Alex: “Ten thousand isn’t an option.”

Charlie: “Oh. Okay. I’ll take Fall for It for . . . two hundred?”

Alex: “Fall for It for two hundred. This near-omnipresent flavoring effectively defines the fall season.”

*beep beep beep*

Alex: “Charlie”

Charlie: “Pumpkin spice!”

Alex: “Your response needs to be in the form of a question.”

Charlie: “Pumpkin spice?”

Alex [muttering to himself]: “I knew I should’ve retired last season.”

Charlie: “Shouldn’t we be getting on to the whole point of this blog post?”

Alex: “Best question I’ve heard all day.”

The History of Pumpkin Spice

Pumpkin spice is a blend of spices most commonly used to make the greatest dessert ever: pumpkin pie. It is made up of:

  • Cinnamon
  • Nutmeg
  • Cloves
  • Crack cocaine

Early on in American history, around the year 1995, if you asked the average person what this spice was for, the answer would be, “Uhhh. Pumpkin pie. Duh.”

Later on in American history, around 2003, Starbucks decided that its stock price needed to triple. To further expand the definition of “holidays”, they developed a new fall flavoring. The process involved roasting pumpkin pies, grinding them up, and sprinkling them over every single product they sold. Reception was extremely positive. In fact, The Pumpkin Spice Latte is single-handedly responsible for the creation of Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube.

Thus began another beloved craze. In the decade or more since, the application of pumpkin spice (which, ironically, only occasionally involves actual pumpkins: instead just the spices associated with pumpkins) has increased 177% per annum.

You might be complaining about this. I am not. I’ll fall for any product that has pumpkin spice slapped on the label: pumpkin pies, cookies, muffins, pumpkin pies, bread, pumpkin pies. The list goes on.

You might be thinking, “Enough already!” I am not. There is no such thing as too much when it comes to pumpkin pie spices. To that end, I would like to add a few recipes of my own, for your season enjoyment.

Charlie’s Pumpkin Spice Recipes

Pumpkin Spice Oreos
Serves 1
While you can already buy these off the shelf at this time of year, you can enjoy them year round by following this recipe. It’s like putting crack on crack.
Prep Time
5 min

Total Time
5 min

Prep Time
5 min

Total Time
5 min

Ingredients
  1. 1 to 4 cups pumpkin pie spice
  2. 1 package Oreos

Add ingredients to shopping list

If you don’t have Buy Me a Pie! app installed you’ll see the list with ingredients right after downloading it
Instructions
  1. Open package of Oreos.
  2. Twist off the top cookie, exposing filling.
  3. Spread on table.
  4. Dump pumpkin spice over open-faced Oreos.
  5. Eat immediately.
Print
Charlie Hills https://charliehills.com/blog/

Pumpkin Spice Tomato Soup
Nothing can top a hot bowl of soup on a cool fall day. Nothing, that is, except pumpkin spice.
Ingredients
  1. 1 can of tomato soup
  2. 1 cup of pumpkin spice

Add ingredients to shopping list

If you don’t have Buy Me a Pie! app installed you’ll see the list with ingredients right after downloading it
Instructions
  1. Prepare soup according to directions.
  2. Dump pumpkin spice on top of soup.
  3. Serve immediately.
Print
Charlie Hills https://charliehills.com/blog/

Pumpkin Spiced Clorox
Why just bleach your clothes when you can bring the full impact of the fall season at the same time?
Ingredients
  1. 1 gallon of Clorox bleach
  2. 1 gallon of pumpkin spice

Add ingredients to shopping list

If you don’t have Buy Me a Pie! app installed you’ll see the list with ingredients right after downloading it
Instructions
  1. In a five gallon bucket, mix Clorox and pumpkin spice.
  2. Apply to your clothes.
Notes
  1. Note: adding Pumpkin Spice Clorox to your clothes may alter the color of your clothes. But that’s okay, because pumpkin spice.
Print
Charlie Hills https://charliehills.com/blog/

You’re welcome.

Okay. I’ve never done this before. I’ve never talked politics on this or any of my blogs. There are a number of reasons for this, the primary one being that it’s completely off-topic. If I had to pick a second reason, there’s simply no upside to it. Linus van Pelt taught me that lesson long, long ago. “There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people… religion, politics, and The Great Pumpkin.”

But man, I just can’t hold back this time.

Don’t worry, though. I’m hoping that unlike most political rants this one won’t be offensive. And that’s probably because I’m not in a frothing fury about the general state of things. No, I’m just exasperated. And maybe you are too.

The Candidates

Let’s talk about a man and a woman. This man and this woman are running for President of the United States. The man got his start in business. He built up a successful company on his own, employing many, many people, and making millions of dollars in the process. The woman is no stranger to politics. It’s not even her first attempt at running for president.

The man has been involved in controversial topics. His foreign policy has been questioned. His political party affiliations have changed in the past. Those who would otherwise vote for the person in his position claim he doesn’t truly represent their party.

The woman is also not without controversy. She’s tweeted things that she meant to be one thing but which very much went the other way. She supports traditional liberal issues, believes in promoting women and minorities, and has issues with the unchecked proliferation of guns.

I’d like you to meet this man and this woman: Gary Johnson and Jill Stein.

[Insert cliche needle-scratch sound effect here]

“Uhhh . . . Who?”

Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. You know, two of (the thirty or so) people running for President of the United States in 2016.

“Um, Charlie . . . did you say thirty or so? Because I watch the news every day and follow Twitter and find things on Facebook and I’m one hundred percent positive there are only two people running for president right now.”

Yes, you would think that, wouldn’t you? And this is part of my exasperation: this fixation on a two-party system in a country that clearly supports more than two parties. Why is that?

Is it because (as conventional wisdom goes) that the two major parties are for “normal people” and those other parties are for “weirdos?” Is it because the human brain has a far easier time choosing one out of two and not one out of thirty? Is it because if indeed all thirty got equal media attention and actually ran neck-and-neck that the president would be chosen by a “majority” of 4% of the electorate?

Who knows. Still, it might be nice if third party candidates got a little more attention. Theodore Roosevelt made a good go at it in 1912 as he attempted a third term. Ross Perot popped up eighty years later. There were others, of course, with varying degrees of success. But it’s looking like Millard Fillmore (1850) will be the last third party candidate we’ll ever see elected, and that kind of makes me sad.

Current State of Affairs

Okay, I can’t leave without saying something about the current election. I count myself among the group of people dismayed by what’s going on.

By all accounts, I should be thrilled by an outsider, speaking his mind, and wanting to shake up the establishment. On paper, that sounds cool. Similarly, I should be thrilled by the prospect of the first female president. I’m not only all-for that idea, I would actually be behind a law requiring we elect forty-four women in a row, just to even things out.

Instead, it feels like we’ve somehow ended with this weird situation where neither candidate actually wants to be president. Instead, both of them are getting toward the bottom of their Bucket List and are simply trying to check off “Get Elected President.”

I’ve been trying to identify a single aspect of this campaign which, more than all the others, bothers me the most. With so many things, it’s hard to choose just one. I could go on for another ten thousand words, which, thankfully, I won’t.

But if I were forced to pick just one thing that really captures it for me, it’s what I’ll broadly call “saying stuff.”

It bugs me to no end that all you have to do is “say stuff” and you can win people over. The stuff can be just whatever randomly pops into your head. It can be an outright lie. It can be purposefully calculated to score a point. But in the end, while people might greedily gobble it up, “saying stuff” isn’t going to solve anything.

And maybe it’s not the “saying stuff” itself that bothers me as much as the fact that there seems to be no consequence to it. Trump famously quipped, “I could shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” and the thing is: he’s probably right. And I can’t stand that.

Big Announcement

That’s why I’ve decided: I’m going to run for president. Not way off in the future. Not in 2020. But right now. And I’m going to do it on the proven and winning platform of “saying stuff” because clearly that’s all you have to do. I’ve never served in government or anything, but that’s okay, because President of the United States is an entry level position in public service.

Since most of the major parties seem to have already nominated someone, I’ve just started my own party. Stealing an idea from the film Brewster’s Millions, I’m going to call it the None of the Above Party. And I’m happy to announce that the None of the Above Party has just unanimously elected me as their nominee for president. Here is my acceptance speech.

Thank you for this great honor. If elected president, I will grow the economy and eliminate the national debt. I will reduce crime and I will stop ISIS. I will fix immigration. Guns won’t be a problem any more, because I will buy everyone one free gun. I will make sure health care is free for everybody and I’ll get Australia to pay for it. We’ll also be safe from gun violence because I’m going to take everyone’s guns away. I will finish the war on drugs. If you vote for me, all of your wildest dreams will come true.

And, in 2023, when the people complain and say, “Why didn’t you reduce crime? Where’s our free health care? You promised us that!” I have the perfect reply all ready to go.

“I never said that.”

Tuesday Night is one of the two working titles for my first (and likely last) foray into science fiction. The name has nothing to do with the evening of the second day of the workweek. No, Tuesday Night is the name of the main character. She’s a seventeen year old high school senior who uncharacteristically falls asleep in math class one day and has a very strange dream.

The other working title is Winter’s Gate. The name Winter has nothing to do with the season of the year and everything to do with a man who goes by that name and who (in my mind) looks a heck of a lot like Paul Bettany. (Sadly, Paul Bettany won’t play Winter in the film adaptation because by the time that happens, he’ll be about seventy years older than the character.)

You may note there’s nothing remotely science fictiony about the prologue. But just like works that people would consider “well written,” the prologue introduces the protagonist and establishes some important story points.

I will go on record and state there are a number of issues with this: issues I definitely plan to fix. I debated a good while about fixing them before posting today, but in the end decided to put the flawed version out there for posterity’s sake. In spite of the flaws there are few things I really like about it.

Read the Excerpt

Historical Note: the featured image of this blog post is a shot of Fermilab just outside of Batavia, Illinois. I took it (almost) exactly six years ago in September 2010 when I made a surprise visit to Chicago for my mom’s birthday. Somewhat coincidentally, today is her birthday so I’d like to give her a shout out. You might find this hard to believe, but she’s exactly six years older today than she was in 2010. There’s a link between this photo and Tuesday Night / Winter’s Gate which may or may not be apparent later, depending on how much I change it.

“It was a dark and stormy night.” What a sentence. It has a subject and a verb plus a noun with not one but two adjectives. It is a perfectly fine, well-formed English sentence. Take a look at it in action:

It was a dark and stormy night when the good Anthony arrived at the famous creek (sagely denominated Haerlem river,) which separates the island of Manna-hata from the main land.

This excerpt is from the 1809 book The History of New York by Washington Irving, but it’s not what turned this perfectly fine, well-formed English sentence into a cliche. That didn’t happen until 1830’s Paul Clifford, the “much maligned much parodied repository of Victorian purpose prose” by Edward Bulwer-Lytton:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Much maligned? That’s pure gold. But it so happens, neither of these instances is where I myself first came across the phrase. No, that honor goes to Snoopy. Like me, Snoopy wanted to become a World Famous Author. And, like me, he began his novels with this phrase.

“Wait a second, Charlie. What do you mean, like you? You haven’t written any novels.”

While it’s true I haven’t finished any, I’ve started several. And as it just so happens, I like starting them with, “It was a dark and stormy night.” Let’s take a look at the two novel excerpts that I published on this here blog, one on April 8, 2016 and then another on April 28, 2016. From Elsewhither:

Though it was still late afternoon, the land lay under thick, wet clouds, making it appear as if night had already fallen. The light rain that had begun during the carriage ride now quickened its pace, as if purposely worsening my plight. Distant thunder, perhaps aroused by the old woman’s shouts, approached with increasing curiosity.

“Whoa, Charlie! I remember reading that, but never caught the dark and stormy night reference! And you’re saying you did it again?”

Yep. Here is the one from Tenner Heed:

It was dark, as you might expect. People rarely get into trouble like this in broad daylight. It was also wet. Save fire, nothing quite makes a bad situation worse than having water poured all over it. Tenner huddled behind a stack of wooden crates, listening for the sound of footsteps. In his hand, he held a small box. The small box held a secret. He had just stolen both, but Tenner was no thief.

“Holy cow!”

Thank you. And why did I do that? Well, that’s easy. Because I like it. Actually, that’s not quite true. It’s because I love it. There’s not much more I enjoy that a good, solid “dark and stormy night.” For me it’s about as other-worldly as normal, worldly things can get. And for me, nothing quite sets the mood like it. I’m planning on starting out everything I write with it. Further, I believe all current books should be retrofitted with the phrase.

The Hobbit

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, but one you’d love to spend a dark and story night in, like tonight, right before all those dwarves show up and eat all the food.

A Tale of Two Cities

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was dark, it was stormy, it was night.

Green Eggs and Ham:

I am Sam.
Sam I am.
That Sam-I-am! That Sam-I-am!
I do not like that Sam-I-am!
Would you like him in the dark?
Would you like him in a storm?
I do not like this old cliche.
Please just let me walk away.

See? It makes everything better.

When I retired my other blogs back in January and started up a brand new blog at a brand new address with a brand new theme and a brand new me, I only had one real worry: would anyone find me here? It’s always a big decision to abandon your readers for no real reason at all. Because even if you do leave a forwarding address in an overly-long good-bye post, there’s no guarantee that:

  1. They’ll actually make it to the end of that overly-long post . . .
  2. Then realize that the large photo at the end was a link to the new blog . . .
  3. And actually click on it.

As it turns out, my fears were unfounded. Readers did find me at my new place in space and I couldn’t be more happy. How do I know this? Is it because of the comments Biz leaves? Is it because Google Analytics? Nope. It’s because I’m getting fan mail again!

So without further ado, let’s read through a few recent submissions. It’s only fair and just that I take time out of my own busy schedule to write personalized responses to these dedicated followers, without whom, my life would have little meaning:

Great web sitewebsite! It looks very expert! Keep up the great work!

Thank you for visiting my web sitewebsite. It makes me happy to know it looks very expert, because when I started this web sitewebsite, I told myself one thing. I said, “Self, if your new web sitewebsite is only one thing, that thing will be that it looks very expert.”

Great blog right here! Also your website a lot up fast! What host are you the use of? Can I am getting your associate link in your host? I ish my web site loaded up as fast as yours lol

And then I said to myself, “Self, if your new web sitewebsite is just two things, then that second thing will be that it a lot up fast.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been to sites that don’t a lot up fast and when that happens, I leave a lot fast too.

Oh, and to answer your questions: I am the use of a host and yes, you can are getting my associate link in my host. Thanks for stopping by!

Appreciate the recommendation. Leet mme try it out.

This particular piece of fan mail requires a little context. The recommendation I gave is that this person stop leaving comments on web sites. You’ll all be glad to know that I leet hhim try it out.

I saw a lot of website but I conceive this one has ggot something special in it.

You conceive well, gentle reader! This website defintely has ggot something special in it: something I like to call correct spelling and well-formed grammar.

I see you don’t monetize your site, there is one cool method to make extra money, it will work with your website perfectly, just search in google for; tips and tricks by Fejlando

I see your website needs some unique articles. Writing manually is time consuming, there is tool for this task. Just search in gogle for; Fejlando’s tips

It’s one thing to have people stop by your site. It’s another thing for them to actually take a moment to comment. But rare is the reader who invests precious time in deeply analyzing my site’s content and monetization strategy and then offering to assist me in multiple key areas.

Thank you Fejlando, thank you. Because you took the time to help me out, it looks like the bags of money will start pouring in soon and I will never have to write another time-consuming post again. You’ve restored my faith in humanity.

Sadly, that’s all the time we have for today. But don’t worry. If I’m right in my reckoning, I’m sure there’s more fan mail to come. (Oh, and if any of my readers run their own blogs, just leave a comment below and I’ll tell you how to gogle for Fejlando’s tips. You won’t be sorry.)

I realized about a week ago that it’s been a good long while since I’ve published a diet update. Curious, I went to the local mall and took a poll of over three hundred people asking, “Should I publish another diet update on my blog?” Here’s what those friendly mall-goers had to say:

Humorous pie chart showing poll results

Clearly it looks like the people are demanding another blog post on Charlie’s Adventures in Dieting. I don’t know of any other way to read that.

For those of you keeping score at home, this is Diet #120. (And for those of you really keeping score at home, click here to travel back in time and read my very first “Day One” post over eight years ago. Or, on second thought, don’t. It’s depressing.)

I began this latest leg in my quest a month or two ago. I don’t even remember the exact date, and that’s part of the problem. My only plan this time was “stop eating all the damn time.” That’s it. Nothing fancy. Very straightforward.

How did it go? Well, it went awesome those first four days. As usual, I kicked things off with a fasting day. I logged well below 1,800 calories the next three days and by that first Friday, I had shed three pounds. I was down five the next week and not too long after that, found myself down seven or eight.

Fast forward to today where I’m now down . . . about seven or eight pounds. Yep, that’s right. I bottomed out almost immediately and apart from occasional one or two pound fluctuations, that’s the whole story.

The problem? Well, it’s pretty simple really. I have a lot of trouble sticking to the plan. Do I want to lose weight? Sure. Always. But I want a thousand other things too and many of them are mutually exclusive.

About a week or so ago, I was talking to my sisters. Jenn has been killing it since Christmas. She clearly wants what she wants and is not wasting any time getting there.

But when I mentioned bottoming out she observed, correctly, that this constant state of dieting honestly isn’t so much about losing weight but about not gaining it. It’s easy to think, “Man, what a waste of time all these decades.” But no, not at all. Because without all this effort I’m positive I’d weigh a thousand pounds by now.

So I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go grab a large pizza right now and celebrate.

Whatever you thought of George Carlin — funny, smart, crass, time-traveler, etc. — you can’t deny he was brilliant at pointing out the obvious in ways that mere mortals could never do. He made a career out of putting a mirror in front of us and holding it at such unexpected angles, we couldn’t help but learn all sorts of things about ourselves.

Of the hundreds of quotes attributed to him (ignoring the equal number of quotes misattributed to him), here’s one of my favorites:

Have you ever noticed when you’re driving that anyone who’s driving slower than you is an idiot and anyone driving faster than you is a maniac?

To me, this one is beyond brilliant. Because in a single, one-line joke George Carlin explains humanity. There should be graduate level psychology classes built around this one joke. (Maybe there are and I just haven’t taken them yet.) Nearly everything we do as a species, good and bad, great and small, wonderful and evil, grows from the root of this observation. In a word: egocentrism.

We tend to think of self-centric people as inconsiderate, uncaring, or that person photobombing everyone at the party. But the reality is, we’re all self-centric, and that’s kinda by design. It’s what keeps us alive and moving forward. Self-preservation is key to the overall preservation of the species.

But I digress.

The reason slower cars are driven by idiots and faster cars are driven by maniacs is because egocentrism is all about: “I am right and everyone else is wrong.” It’s amazing how powerful that feeling can be. It’s even more amazing how a person can not see it in themselves but very easily point it out in others.

But there I go digressing again.

The real point of this post is simply: I’m an idiot. Specifically, the very idiot George Carlin is talking about up there. You see, this isn’t a post about philosophy or psychology or egotism. It’s about me, the idiot.

You see, I’m the car that all those maniacs are passing. Why? Because I drive the speed limit. Like, all the time. If it’s a side street with a 25 MPH posting, I’m driving twenty-five. If it’s a 50 MPH two lane highway, yep: that’s me going fifty. If it’s a 75 MPH interstate, then I’m right there.

Why do I do it? It’s the law, that’s why. Besides I don’t feel that going five or ten over is going to make me a happier person. Might get me there two minutes sooner. Also might make me twenty minutes late and two hundred dollars poorer. But that is, quite literally, how I roll.

Oh sure, every once in a while I get stuck behind some idiot going five or ten under the limit. What THAT guy is doing on the road, I have no idea. Idiot. But most of the time, I’m getting passed by maniacs non-stop.

On one drive home, I was going fifty (the limit) through a construction zone at night. I counted at least two dozen maniacs passing me at a pretty good clip. I passed no one. And those maniacs are everywhere.

If I’m going twenty-five, they’re going thirty-five. If I’m going seventy-five, they’re going eighty-five. I swear to pizza, if the speed limit were eight thousand miles per hour, people would be whizzing past me at eight thousand and ten. Clearly, speeding has nothing to do with the actual rate of travel.

So fess up everyone. Are you an idiot or a maniac? Hint: the answer is neither. You and you alone are going the exact perfect speed. But you knew that.