IF I HAD A FOOD BLOG….

Have you any idea of how bad a food (or travel) blogger I would have been? People would have called my posts ‘flogging‘, akin to vlogging that people do to realise the cost of the webcam they bought (originally to do the dirty things the internet supposedly encouraged but they never found courage for). Do taste the flavor of my flogging, once you repeat after me, “Long Post Alert!”

I have been known to enjoy my holidays, and have blogged about them before, and a not-too-past trip to South Africa was outstanding in every way.

 So, you could say I was spoiled there with good food like braised lamb shanks.

I even loved the exotic steak meats like the crocodile and the ostrich.

The fearless gourmet in me even dared to sample the kind of foods even those bred on eating meats would baulk at—sample the typical jerky-style dried beef, ostrich, deer, antelope, and bigger game. 

(These jerkies would go well with beer and a game of football, the Africans would have you believe.)

At Cape Town’s famous restaurant Mama Africa, I chickened out of 

the invertebrates in the menu!

And all the exotic food and drink were enjoyed in backdrops that are the stuff of dreams and hallucinations.

Don’t miss the author’s celebrated feet as he savors his cheap and excellent South African wine in the midst of the Kruger while watching elephants mate (or whatever it is that they do when not taking gigantic craps).

So (hello, readers, are you still there?) with this African experience not having entirely receded from my mind, I ventured off recently to Thailand with minimal expectations.

I had been to that country several times before, and what would be different this time? Leela was very kind when giving me a list of places to eat, and I thought I would somehow endure the few days of holidaying in Bangkok and Phuket.

As my cynical mind suspected, I was spot on.

In Phuket, the weather was gloomy, as we saw from the hotel.

 The room had only two verandahs with ocean views, and only one of them was air-conditioned! Gasp, I thought, what has this world come to!

In addition, there were little animals in the room, which kind of competed for space in the tiny suite provided.

The nearby events in Samao and Indonesia were reminders of how perilously perched our world often is.

The Thai Engrees made things more fun.

(helloo! Can you hear me?)

(come in side, but chill out side, geddit? Hopefully, the verb meant a form of leg movement!)

In Phuket’s Jung Ceylon mall, there is an excellent food court, with Wine Connection (a restaurant that serves the most incredible chocolate moose mousse and caramel custard,  unfortunately un-captured in photographs as they had incredibly short table lives) standing out for class. The KFC in there (and in other places) has a Thai curry-style fried chicken that is an experience! Such a spicy and delectable chicken dish is really unusual! My son had it every day (I kid you not), not heeding my stern warnings about trans fats and atherosclerosis.

In Bangkok, as Leela had recommended, I decided to have dinner at Cabbages and Condoms. However, I had not reckoned with the awesome traffic.

In fact, bikes and scooters were riding gaily on the pavements, a la India. 

 At the restaurant, the starters were exceptional, specially the prawn with peppers, the tom yum goong, and the catfish salad (it has spiced raw mangoes in it).

The restaurant, in spite of its name and its social purpose (they serve condoms in place of mints), is tastefully designed.

I was wondering what the heck the fried thing in the salad was, though the name said it was catfish. It was as if egg fritters were fried in hot oil. Delicious and unique. The chicken tom kha soup I had was good, but slightly sweet. Not bad at all, but I love a more creamy tom kha.

The entreé of deep fried pork in garlic pepper was disappointing (they burned the garlic, I think), but the chicken in lemongrass was excellent. In the pic, you can see the pork and the jasmine rice (including a unique red variety) in the background, and the chicken in front.

I must say I had planned to eat Tab Tim Krob, the delicious water chestnut sweet, after Leela’s post on it. I was not disappointed. This was in one of the Be Siam (or some such) restaurants.

Bei Otto:

Another evening, it was time to try Bei Otto, a German restaurant (possibly the only good one in Bangkok)  located in Sukhumvit. 

A simple grill platter of German bratwurst, pork chops and veal cutlets, served with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes, was enough to sate three of us, though I had, gastronomically speaking, a relative off day. Dessert was mangoes served with cream and ice cream and a light filo pastry. Amazing. Definitely worth a visit every time!

Restaurants apart, even the food courts in the many malls of Bangkok offer uncountable treats for the foodie. I had sushi like I have never had before. Cream pastries. Cakes. Miso soups. Pad thai. Oh, I am already tired, with so many foods I have yet to list!

The street food is eclectic. You can find incredible junk, and you can find delicious local specialties like grilled bananas. I believe they sell frog legs but I never got to eat or see that!

 So, in summary, I hope I have convinced you that Thailand is one country I am definitely not planning to visit in a long time, till next year, anyways. Especially considering that I gained ten pounds in eight days.

The only reason that I can think of is it might, just might, get me a guest post in some celeb blog like  http://www.shesimmers.com. Or maybe not. Once bitten, twice Thai, I mean, shy!

WHEN BLOGGING IS SHOT DEAD….

Why do famous bloggers stop blogging?

1. Is it because they forget their username/password and get locked out of their blog?

2. Is it because they start new websites and write for the development of that site?

3. Do they lose their speech because some greedy female fan bit off their tongue (a species of Ardentophilus linguophagicus)? Aside– do ‘they’ have a tongue or several tongues?

4. Do they get elected President?

5. Do they rub shoulders in fashion events with scantily clad nymphs who look like Asian Paints representatives? 

6. Do they lose their sense of humor and start writing columns for other websites?

In case you guessed it, here is a holiday for two to Alaska from me– here is a priceless depiction of the erstwhile blogger Rambodoc (now occasionally seen, like a horse in pajamas, in social media like Twitter or Facebook) on the ramp. The pictures of sundry Asian Paints representatives rubbing their ample assets on his strong arms have been deleted by the Indian Government. 

Oh, and about the Alaska trip? Just buy the tickets. I will buy you a bear beer.

THE RAMBLE ENDS

Here is the second and final part of the ramble on America’s food and fitness, at the Six Pack Doc’s blog.

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 07-10-09

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

Mark Sanford of South Carolina still hasn’t resigned. He spent 5 days visiting his mistress in Argentina. His wife Jenny has reportedly already signed a book deal and I don’t think she likes him very much any more. So who do you think was safer over the the 4th of July weekend: Joe Biden in Iraq or Mark Sanford with his family in Florida? I’m guessing Joe Biden. (Rich Orwell)

Have you tried the new Sarah Palin cocktail. Russian vodka over ice with bitters and a garnish of sour grapes. Potentially powerful, but you want to quit half way through. (Janice Hough)

A lot of us are still mourning the loss of one of America’s most entertaining figures, who left us all too soon. But don’t worry, folks, Sarah Palin will be back. Comedians everywhere are praying. (Conan O’Brien)

So Sarah Palin has said she will cede power to Alaska’s lieutenant governor. And as a New Yorker, all I can say is: “Sure. What could possibly go wrong?” (Marc Ragovin)

Okay, John Edwards, Dick Cheney and now Sarah Palin. Hard to believe that the least embarassing V. P. candidate in recent memory is Joe Biden. (Janice Hough)

A pending law would put guns in Arizona bars. Normally packing a gun is dangerous, but the risks are minimal thanks to the calming and sensible effects of alcohol. (Alex Kaseberg)

Police say that more than a hundred bodies from an Illinois cemetery were dumped in mass graves so their plots could be resold. But luckily for those bodies this did happen in Illinois, so they are all still registered to vote. (Jake Novak)

Vice President Biden said that he and President Obama “misread” the severity of the recession. And former President Bush said “See what can go wrong when you read?” (Janice Hough)

This might be too soon, but right about now you have to think Jenny Sanford is wishing her husband’s “soul mate” had been Sahel Kazemi. (Janice Hough)

The two-hour Michael Jackson Memorial service took place on Tuesday in Los Angeles’ Staples Center. Kobe Bryant and Magic Johnson both spoke, and when you throw in Michael Jackson you’ve got three of the best ball handlers in history. (Jerry Perisho)

BLOG VACATIONS AND JETLAG

The Sixpack Doc explains why this blog has been unattended for so long, and what changes have elapsed in the interim. Check out his post on ‘Random Thoughts on an Unfit America‘. More later!

THE ADONIS EFFECT

(A note: My absence from blogging has to do with my writing having gone indefinitely to the dogs. I dedicate this post to Gauri, who has no compunctions declaring her poor taste in public. After writing this, I feel a longer break from blogging (like a permanent one) would do wonders to my writing. Like killing it mercifully and sparing my long suffering readers.)

With my six pack abs threatening to break out any time now (definitely before we see another Communist Chief Minister for West Bengal), I am in imminent and eminent danger of getting kidnapped by some amorous babe.

Why do I think so, you ask, with an incredulous look crossing your pie-face?
Well, for one, Nature is telling me that. The street dogs that are chasing me these days are all female. I have ways to tell that, and I am not telling. Some incredibly attractive and slim chicks recently propositioned me on Southern Avenue during some of my evening walks, but I heard later that they were all shemale prostitutes. Sigh, what is this world coming to?
And this Italian gymnast: did I tell you about her?

This Italiano was all gaga over me, mamma mia, and even made a CD for me, professing her eternal love. Included were pictures of her in positions that can politely be referred to as contortionately promising (or compromisingly torsionate, whatever). I, to my internal regret, rejected this cd rom-antic proposition. If you looked at her postures you would think she would never break a bone because of a singular lack of visible osseous tissue, but this rejection surprisingly broke her heart.
This led me to mull over why women find certain men irresistible, and I have found some factors, based on several randomised double-blind* trials (and tribulations).
*both parties in love being blind.

1. Clean navel: I have a sinking feeling that this is a mandatory requirement in the days when women don’t think twice before drifting caudally in their own pleasure seeking trails. A tatooed belly button would take you to new depths of a relationship, surely.

Even collected lint looks distinctly better in the dark when offset in the backdrop of a splendid tatoo. Not to talk of the taste: not Lindt, at any rate!

2. Seat, not suit: You think the ladies feel a thrill learning how much you splurged on yourself for that striped suit that looks like the ones prisoners proudly wear to the marriage party when their jailor’s ugly and visibly pregnant daughter gets packed off to one of them (always keep your sentences short and clear, as well)? Women want to see you buy things for them, not for yourself. Also, they prefer to see some stuffing in the body part where men land when they have disputes in public beer bars. Such stuffing, apart from arousing some romantic notions of horse-borne knights, also reassure them that the prospective victim is of reasonable physical and financial well-being.

3. The Collar of Money: Wear a crisp shirt, but if your collar lacks the stiffness outstandingly evident in the Aussie upper lip post the non-racist diurnal attacks on Indian students, your appeal will not be sticking its neck out for attention. And if you think the ‘Collar of Money’ is green, you must be an Oriya.

4. Waist not, want not: It is a common sight to see a man with a bulging waist strung together by a strip of leather. Now, this will just not do, unless your woman is similarly predisposed, with the rewards of a thousand desserts tucked under the petticoat. Slim is in, in more ways than you can reckon.

5. Inwaist wisely: Now that the bulls are on the ramp-age, you have to know more about the correct inwaistment.
When I was more younger, I was taught that women like a bulge above the waist line. I spent the better part of my youth pursuing ways to buttress my aging middle. It was only much later that I realised that the required bulging had to be below the waist line. I tried carrying a lot of visiting cards in my wallet to create the effect before I actually understood the exact location of the prescribed prominence (I know, finally, why my hydrocele patients often sport nice looking wives).

Now, in my advisory capacity of Master of Love Affairs (MLA), I do better. After all, a Master better. Do better. You know what I mean.

6. Tie Tonic: If you want to attract a girl with a sense of humor, all you need to do is to wear your best ties

and look for the one sinking on the floor, hysterically pointing fingers at you and choking on her words. Trust me, this kind of girl (and you may find many) will talk to you when you approach her.
7. Pocket Appeal: Keep at least three pens in your shirt pocket.

At least one of them should have a torch or camera in it, and should stand out in prominence. This is primal body signal to available women that you have a large pen. You know, a large pen is always useful.
Though it may dig a hole in your pocket sometimes.

8. Check Mate: Wearing large multi-colored checks on your shirt is a clear signal that you are looking for a check-mate in life with your Queen. It is a different thing that the girl may be looking for a different kind of check from her mate, or she may actually be a different kind of Queen.

9. Sole-mate: If you can’t meet her expectations of being a check mate, at least wear large shoes. So that when you open them, she can see that they are very large.

Chances are she thinks other parts of you are comparably large. If she is bitterly disappointed later on, tell her to “lump it“, or “go sue, Sue!” If you are one of those awesome lispers, chances are you won’t be missunderstood.
10. You tell us: what thing in a man turns him into an Adonis in your eyes?

(pictures from Google Images. Credits missed this time, sorry.)

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 05-30-09

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

There are some people who are saying that maybe Dick Cheney is setting himself up to actually run for president. You know, it makes sense. Republicans are looking for fresh blood, and Cheney just had some yesterday. (Bill Maher)

We had another earthquake the other night. You know, California is the only state where you don’t know what is going to bounce first, the ground from the earthquake or your check from the state government. (Jay Leno)

Republicans will ask what Sonia Sotomayor wants done about Roe Versus Wade expecting her to say, “Any which way they can get across the border, row or wade? ” (Gil Stern)

Somehow Michael Phelps seems to have developed a pot belly. (Jeff Funnekotter)

Okay, which will close first –Guantanamo or GM? (Gil Stern)

The latest rumor is that Alex Rodriguez was making out in a New York club with Kate Hudson. It looks like A-Rod is trying to pull a Capt “Sully” Sullenberger: get lucky and land on the Hudson. (Alex Kaseberg)

Good thing it wasn’t October, or A-Rod wouldn’t get to first base. (Cam Hutchinson)

This week, a woman in Texas admitted she cheated with a guy so soon after having sex with her husband that she had twins by two different fathers. And all I can say is, “Damn, that John Edwards is good!” (Bill Moher)

Helio Castroneves breezing to victory in Sunday’s Indy 500 was hardly even taxed. (Gary Loewen)

A report says that U.S. students are lagging in biosciences. That’s hard to believe when we have so many teachers who will go the extra distance to teach their students about biology first hand. (Jim Barach)

A teenager from Germany who auctioned her virginity on the internet for $14,000. was notified she must pay half in taxes. Apparently in Germany virginity goes for fifty cents on the dollar. (Bill Williams)

Cheney again spoke on TV. What is it about vice presidents that makes ’em talk too much? Don’t ask Joe Biden, he’ll tell us over and over again! (Gil Stern)

When Dick Cheney was vice president, he didn’t say two words, now he can’t shut up, he’s talking more after being vice president. Can you imagine if this happens to Joe Biden? We’d have to shoot him. (Alex Kaseberg)

Wayne Allwine, who was the voice of Mickey Mouse since 1977 has died at 62. Apparently the role will be taken over by Manny Ramirez, which explains all the female hormones he was caught taking. (Jim Barach)

California lawmakers proposed adding a two-dollar tax on cigarettes Tuesday. The U. S. may add three dollars a pack. Cigarettes are so valuable that pretty soon people will be using dollars for currency inside prisons and cigarettes for currency outside. (Argus Hamilton)

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 05-23-09

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

Rush Limbaugh, as head of the Republican Party, is less qualified to be VP than Sara Palin. Rush can’t see Russia from his house. (GCH)

The exacta (the 1-2 finishers) in the Preakness were a filly and a gelding. Or as Hillary Clinton calls it “A dream team.” – Sort of ironic, the horse, Mine that Bird, who came the closest to chasing down the filly, Rachel Alexandra, wouldn’t know what to do if he caught her. (Janice Hough)

The U.S. government now borrows $1.00 for every $2.00 it spends. We’re almost as stupid as the people who lend us the money. (Frank King)

President Obama has found a way to quickly close Guantánamo Bay. He’s going to turn it into a Pontiac dealership. (Jay Leno)

“Keep the prisoners shackled to the walls,” said Dick Chainey. (Rich Orwell)

Sarah Palin’s signing to write her memoirs with publisher HarperCollins turned out to be a mistake. They thought they were signing Tina Fey. (Doug Austen)

Why do they call it American Idol when it is taped in Los Angeles? Because the Lakers in games 1,4 and 6 against Houston basically copyrighted “Los Angeles Idle.” (Janice Hough)

A six-month-old puppy in England was hospitalized after eating thirty fridge-magnet letters. That poor thing is going to have a heck of a “vowel” movement. (Pedro Bartes)

If a slugger using a female fertility drug makes you uncomfortable, just think of it as Manny giving himself an early Mother’s Day present. (Dwight Perry)

Manny Ramirez insulted the Jewish community when he said that he does dread lox. (Warren Alexander)

In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is calling for the legalization of marijuana. He’s calling his program “Weed the People.” (Jay Leno)

In a move seen as equal parts symbolic and cost-cutting, the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes will play all their home games on thin ice next season. (Dwight Perry)

Chrysler says it is going to shut down 800 dealerships, which will put thousands of car salesmen out of work. I really feel sorry for those guys—an entire closet full of plaid sports coats and nowhere to wear them. (Bill Mihalic)

The price of a postage stamp went up to 44 cents this week. Isn’t that unbelievable? They said they had to raise the price because fewer and fewer people are using the mail these days. That’s government thinking, isn’t it? “Hey, nobody’s buying our product. Let’s raise the price.” (Jay Leno)

Dick Cheney says that Rush Limbaugh is more of a Republican than Colin Powell. And I think, well, yeah, about 300 pounds more. (David Letterman)

A California man has been convicted in a scheme to buy and sell human body parts. The amount of money in the plot was never mentioned, but court records indicate the parts cost an arm and a leg. (Jim Barach)

A survey claims 5% of men say they never masturbate. Come on, women, let’s give these guys a hand. (Alex Kaseberg)

On mangling a foul-ball call early in his Hall of Fame career: “I wanted to say, ‘Hot shot hit foul!’ It did not come out that way.” (Vin Skully)

Shirley Jones, the 75-year-old actress from the “Partridge Family,” may pose nude for Playboy. She said after 50 years in the business, she’s ready to let it all hang down. (Jimmy Fallon)

Miss California, Carrie Prejean, gets to keep her crown. Not only that, she gets to keep her implants for another year. Donald Trump reviewed the racy photos and approved. I like that he calls himself “The Donald.” You can get away with that when your name is Donald. That doesn’t work when your name is Colin Powell. Or Dick Cheney. (Jay Leno)

American Idol contestants Adam Lambert and Kris Allen each got millions more votes than any of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s California special election ballot measures. Guess the next time California elects an entertainer as governor, maybe we should make sure he can sing. (Janice Hough)

Los Angeles is going to begin water rationing next month. Kids will still be allowed to run through the sprinklers, just not with the water running. Dick Cheney has been told to switch to sand-boarding. (Tim Hunter)

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 05-09-09

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

Gary Cicio, NYC podiatrist, did the research, and asks us to choose one of the two options to see a Mariners-Yankees game this season, and from the very best seats:
Option 1: Two tickets to Tuesday night, June 30, Mariners at Yanks at Yankee Stadium, cost for just the tickets, $5,000.
Option 2: Two round-trip airline tickets to Seattle, Friday, Aug. 14, return Sunday the 16th, rental car for three days, two-night double occupancy stay in four-star hotel, two top tickets to both the Saturday and Sunday Yanks-Mariners games, two best-restaurant-in-town dinners for two. Total cost, $2,800. Plus-frequent flyer miles. (Phil Mushnick)

Happy Cinco de Mayo to uno and all. Cinco de Mayo is actually a bigger holiday here in the United States than it is in Mexico because we have more Mexicans here than they do there. (Jimmy Kimmel)

The Centers for Disease Control admitted Sunday that the swine flu was no more deadly than regular flu. It turns out the threat to America didn’t really exist. We’re just lucky that we found out before we invaded Mexico and toppled the government. (Argus Hamilton)

It was a gloomy weekend for Republicans. In the Senate they faced the specter of Specter while Obama sought a suitor to replace Souter. (Pat Costa)

The Catholic Church is encouraging the use of Twitter to send prayers. This new technology is changing liturgy. “Our Father who art in heaven” is now replaced with “OMG.” (Alan Ray)

Drug manufacturers have dumped 271 million pounds of pharmaceuticals into waterways that serve as drinking water. Turns out Michael Phelps was getting higher swimming in the pool water than he was when he was using the bong. (Jerry Perisho)

The president may have a nominee for the Supreme Court by the end of the week. Does it bother anybody that it took him 10 times longer to pick a dog? (Craig Ferguson)

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced it might be time to study the legalization of marijuana. Actually, recent polls of Californians show most people support such legalization. I guess they feel that it’s high time. (Janice Hough)

Just a day after saying he wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places like an aircraft or a subway because of the swine flu, Vice President Biden rode a train from Washington to Delaware. You know what that means? Not even Joe Biden listens to Joe Biden. (Jay Leno)

Miss California, Carrie Prejean, who has now been confirmed to have had her “boob job” paid for by pageant officials, is going on the road. Apparently to talk about her view that marriage should be between a man and a surgically enchanced woman. (Janice Hough)

A source close to Manny Ramirez said Thursday that the illegal substance for which the Los Angeles Dodgers slugger tested positive was prescribed to address Ramirez’s erectile dysfunction. Apparently, he was striking out pretty often… in bed. (Pedro Bartes)

Russia insists it has no plans to step up its military presence in the Arctic. Sending troops up to the North Pole can only mean it could be the start of another Cold War. (Jim Barach)

Porsche has unveiled its first four door sedan. It’s for the man who is having his mid-life crisis but just can’t quite yet afford to abandon his wife and kids. (Jim Barach)

Alex Rodriguez was accused Thursday of tipping off pals on opposing teams to the pitch that was coming. He’s now had three cheating accusations in three months. Everybody figured he would break Henry Aaron’s record but nobody ever thought he’d break Bill Clinton’s. (Argus Hamilton)

I hear that President Obama called the IRS to see which tax evader he could nominate for the U. S. Supreme Court. (Bob Holzer)

Fox is already cowering down to the President– In response to President Obama’s complaint that FOX News doesn’t show enough Black and Hispanic people on their network, FOX has announced that they will now air ” America ‘s Most Wanted” TWICE a week. (M. Hennigan)

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 05-02-09

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

Not so very long ago we were all told that a black man would be President when pigs fly. On the 100 day of Barack Obama’s Presidency… swine flu! (Author Unknown)

Remember the good ol’ days when we thought the only bad pork was in the federal budget? (Jay Leno)

They’re saying that the swine flu comes from Mexico. Thank God we have an airtight border with Mexico. (David Letterman)

Americans are becoming more optimistic about the nation’s economy, a new survey showed Wednesday. This explains why Fox News didn’t carry the Obama news conference. No need to alarm Republicans. (Joe Hickman)

I’m glad you’re all in a good mood, but I’m a little bummed out today because I made a bad investment. So stupid! I opened a Chrysler dealership in Mexico City. (Jay Leno)

With the new tax, cigarettes now cost $10 a pack in New York. Cigarettes are so expensive, second-hand smoke has been renamed “pre-owned” smoke. (Bill Williams)

No matter how bad your job is, remember: You are not the Mexican Minister of Tourism. (Will Durst)

I had a rough day yesterday with this swine flu business. I walked into my bank wearing a mask — it was all downhill from there. (Jeff Showell)

Hollywood is working on a new movie about Chrysler: “Chitty Chitty Bankrupt.” (Jake Novak)

Hey, have you all started making your summer vacation plans? I’m not sure what to do this year. I’m stuck between a Somali pirate cruise or a trip to a Mexican pig farm. (Jay Leno)

A Chicago cemetery unveiling a Wrigley-themed mausoleum. Can you imagine, if the Cubs ever break their current one-century slump, everybody rolling over at once? Best guess is it would spark the mother of all urned runs. (Steve Schrader)

The home runs are flying out of the new Yankee Stadium, to give you an idea, ex-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer could score there without hiring a hooker. (Alex Kaseberg)

Miss California Pageant officials admitted Thursday that they paid for breast implants for Miss California Carrie Prejean to help her win the Miss USA pageant. Their little plan backfired. Just her luck, she got a gay judge who only looked at her shoes. (Argus Hamilton)

THE MAY CHALLENGE!

My brudder, the Six Pack Doc, has issued a May Challenge that calls for a 10 lb fat loss in one month while getting stronger.
Is that even possible? I think you can either lose fat or gain muscle, but not do both at the same time.
Check it out yourself then!

COMPENSATING A BAD MEAL

Over at his blog, the Six Pack Doc talks about balancing caloric intake after you have had a bad nutritional day, pigging out on food and causing nutritional havoc.
If you want to share the gory details of his nutritional excesses, please go there, and spare me!

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 04-11-09

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

How many miss the good old days, when America was just morally bankrupt? (Gil Ross)

One day the market is up the next it is down, up and down up and down, on and off, on and off, this isn’t a bull or bear market, it’s a Paris Hilton market. (Alex Kaseberg)

Hey, before we get started tonight, I want to remind any potential cabinet members you have until April 15th to not pay your taxes, okay? (Jay Leno)

London hosted a Group of Twenty meeting Wednesday amid chaos. Chinese communists are now the capitalists, France’s president is Hungarian, the Anglo-Saxons are being led by a socialist and a Kenyan, and Germany is refusing to send troops into other countries. Astronauts aboard the Space Station report the Earth is spinning backwards. (Argus Hamilton)

A seismologist said that his warning of the quake in Italy was removed from the internet. Officials said his warning was based on shaky research. (Robert Stupple)

Plaxico Burress, released by Giants, awaits next shot with another team. (Dwight Perry)

President Obama received a private audience with Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace Wednesday. She spoke quite firmly with him. She reminded him that if the United States is going to return to absolute monarchy she’s got first claim on the job. (Argus Hamilton)

Washington State’s execution team has resigned. Apparently they heard that the economy was going to cause a lot of heads to roll. (Jim Barach)

BLOG BAZAAR CHAOS (BBC)

In one of those infinitely crazy moments that have always exemplified His Non-existence, the Great God overseeing the Virtual World (Webramha) decided to amuse himself by putting together a bunch of virtual people and getting them to interact with each other, with each taking up the last thread of a mad conversation. Some of these folk may resemble familiar people, but you alone are responsible for assuming any resemblance. The following is the excerpt from the BBC WordPress Report.

Dirtymindoc: Hi, gays, I mean guys! How are you feelin’? Heh, heh, if you know what I mean? My old girlfriends always had hard feelings for me, you know?
Pal’s Coughing Phallus: I had a late night thought: do feelings go through your hands and mind at the same time? And if my Hand’s feelings are due to Hormones, are my Mind’s feelings due of Mormones?
Dirtymindoc: Yes, more moans, Pal! That is our religion.
Kool Karni Nita: In India, according to the last Special Committee on Religions Report, there are more than 743 of them. Of this, there are 733 variations of Hinduism.
Flabbydoc: There are 733 variations of the push-up. Would you like to see one where I keep the scapula protracted?
Dirtymindoc: Interesting. Can you keep your scapula protracted when you are, you know, pushed up? Heh, heh!
Pal’s Coughing Phallus: I had a late night thought: Can Don do push-ups?
Kreema: I saw Don 23 times and blogged about it 24 times. Did you read them, ki na?
Litterabuse: I have don something akin to it 42 times. :-p
Shefolly: Why did Michelle Obama smiley at the Queen? Read my latest blog post over at my other blog. Just make sure you are wearing a tie. And please don’t go beyond smiling.
Flabbydoc: Smiling is an aerobic exercise. As research has shown us again and again, it is anerobic exercise which can burn fat in 7 days. I challenge you to smile intensely for 7 days and see the difference.
See-smut: It was the difference that caught her eye. He was so strikingly unsmiling. She thought, a warm summer breeze would freeze near him. The river stood silently beside her. Brooding. Grim. Cold.
Shefolly: It is cold in London today, as brilliantly shown in Penniless Dope’s latest blog post. However, many (less intelligent, hélas!) deny this, while the Pope….
Pal’s Coughing Phallus: The Pope is (according to the Authority on Authoritarians) God’s Weapon of Mass Distortion. I had a late night thought: is Distortion of Reality part of Reality or a part of Distortion?
Cracked Nippil: You get Distortion of Reality if you drink too little beer. I would normally drink real fucking beer back home, not the kind of donkey piss that I am forced to have now that I am stranded in Mumbai with a stacked chick and that I am suffering from what my fucking doctor calls as ‘Nippil Distortion‘, that perverted jerk!
Kreema: Distortion was one of my exam questions this year. As you know, I am one of the most awarded bloggers in here. I even did an award-winning tag on ” Eighty Distorted Things in My Life” where I had 127 smileys in the main post and 289 of them in the 66 comments that followed.
Kool Karni Nita: Me too don’t like too many comments. That is why I have made a limit of 15,000 comments for each post. That way, I don’t have to answer too many comments, and I get more time to devote to my hubby and my freelance work.
Dirtymindoc: Yeah, I like ‘free lance‘. Heh, heh!
Rada: He…he… he was actually trying to touch my feet, imagine that!! Thinking he could get pubbed in Dishypundit, but am so not into all this, you know?! I was with my daughter when this…
Danish Bobby : You know, my daughter asked me, “If you get free speech in the US, where do you get a free lunch?”
Shocki: It was a free lunch where Kavita met him. His manly looks instantly got her attention, but it was when he smiled that her heart went fluttering. Subconsciously, she fingered her wedding ring, while the baby in her belly gave her a smart kick. Choking her tears, she looked away.
Flabbydoc: Looking away is a great way of exercising the sternomastoid muscle. If you really want to develop six packs in the neck, you must look away and up, and hold it for ten seconds. Repeat a hundred times in one set, and four sets of this will give you great results in a few years. But you will look different (though in a weird direction)!
God: I am the One giving Directions here. Cut (the freakin’ crap)!

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 04-04-09

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

So, it’s pretty crazy. Look, we’re bailing out Wall Street, we’re bailing out banks, we’re bailing out car companies. In fact, did you know there’s a special box on your tax form this year you can check if you want a portion of your taxes to actually go to running the government? (Jay Leno)

Ruth Madoff is now accusing Bernie Madoff of having an extra-marital affair. Like Bernie wasn’t screwing enough people before. (Alex Kaseberg)

President Obama is in London but he is still following his Final Four – Chase, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan and Bank of America. (Janice Hough)

MTV, Music Television, is putting actual music videos back on their network. If it works, Fox News said they’ll start doing actual news again. (Craig Ferguson)

Researchers at the University of Westminster in England have developed a simple and convenient way of screening for STDs which involves sending a used tampon through the mail. The company said they might start testing this for free with some women… no strings attache (Pedro Bartes)

Last night, the audience was as quiet as a General Motors showroom. (David Letterman)

The Senate is reviewing how college picks the number one team. Thank goodness they finally have the economy back on track and the war in Iraq under control. (Jim Barach)

In a speech in Anchorage, Alaska, Sarah Palin took kind of a cheap shot at her former running mate, John McCain. She said she couldn’t find anyone to pray with during the campaign. She’s not the only one. Between Jesse Jackson and Reverend Wright, Obama couldn’t find anybody to pray with either. (Jay Leno)

One day the market is up the next it is down, up and down up and down, on and off, on and off, this isn’t a bull or bear market, it’s a Paris Hilton market. (Alex Kaseberg)

The average American now works to support one spouse, three kids, four banks and two car companies. (Sid Knowles)

China says it wants to replace the U. S. dollar with a new global currency. They want to move from a gold-based standard to a lead-based standard. (Jay Leno)

The Senate Judiciary Committee plans to hold hearings on the Bowl Championship Series in college football. They want to probe anti-trust violations. When the BCS installed a Microsoft operating system in their computer they were just asking for it. (Argus Hamilton)

UNWISE VICE-CRACKS

So this patient of mine (and it was a tough day, lemme tell ya) is asking me in my Outpatient Department room, “So, Doctor, when you say drink a lot of water, why do you say that?”
Me: “Because it is getting hot, and you would lose a lot of fluids from your body.”
Patient: “And how much should I drink?”
Me (increasingly restless with the thought of more such specimen waiting outside): “Around 5 liters…”
Patient: “Should I drink all of 5 liters in the morning?”
Me: “Yes, definitely, if you can. But remember, if you do so, you should NOT drink any more water for the rest of the day.”
Patient (in auto-TV reporter mode): “And how should I drink this?”
Me: “By chewing every mouthful of water properly. Every time.”
There is a class of patient (usually the relative of one) who is born to be a TV reporter. One patient’s husband asked me questions like, “How do you know this doctor (the referring physician)?”, “Where did you study?”, “Are you a South Indian?” and even about my physical lackings (you know how people in India think you have TB if you are looking thinner and ask, “You have become so thin. You used to be more healthy in the past. Why is that?”). To this last question, my patience (not my patients, though) ran out and I said crisply, “Because camel’s milk, which I love to drink, is not available in the stores any more. Can you get me some?”
Then there are patients’ relatives whose stories would need blog posts in their own merit, so honorably funny they were.
Have you encountered the reporter types in the past?

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 03-28-09

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

I have a plan to end the war in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Here’s what we do. We bring all our soldiers home. We send in our investment bankers. They’ll screw up the place in six months. Six months! (Jay Leno)

There is a heavyweight boxing contender named Christobal Arreola. And contender is no titular title, this Arreola is no boob, he is quite a knocker in the ring, but we will keep you abreast of Arreola’s progress. (Alex Kaseberg)

Earlier today, President Obama filled three of the remaining top jobs at the Treasury Department. Their job will be to collect taxes from all the other cabinet members that haven’t paid them yet. (Jay Leno)

President Obama told reporters Tuesday that his budget will build a foundation for economic recovery. He warned it could get worse before it gets better. Things are so tough that even people not in Obama’s administration aren’t paying their taxes. (Argus Hamilton)

Special Relationship starring Dennis Quaid as Bill Clinton and Julianne Moore as Hillary begins filming in July about the Lewinsky scandal. It faces delays. The producers want to audition two hundred more actresses for the role of Monica Lewinsky. (Argus Hamilton)

A local high school student explained global warming was due to the extra hour of daily sunshine due to daylight savings time. (Stan Kegel)

At a newsconference last night, President Obama promised to reduce the deficit by borrowing another two trillion dollars. Looks like someone at the White House forgot to lay off President Bush’s speechwriters. (Jake Novak)

Yankee Stadium is being sold, everything must go. Madonna wants to buy home plate. It’s for old time’s sake because everybody on the Yankees has scored with Madonna. (Jerry Perisho)

Former New York governor Eliot Spitzer is back in front of the TV cameras to talk about the AIG scandal. It is very appropriate, if you think about it. Who is better to talk about screwing people than Eliot Spitzer. (Pedro Bartes)

The ex-wife of former corporate CEO George David is asking for a divorce settlement of $53,000 a week. She says she isn’t asking for alimony. Just call it her end-of-marriage bonus. (Jim Barach)

In his upcoming tell-all book, Bob Barker says he once seriously considered an offer to appear in porn movies. But, oral sex just isn’t the same when someone keeps yelling, “Come on down!” (Jerry Perisho)

President Obama on Sunday proposed a cap on executive salaries in all publicly traded corporations in the United States. This idea will never make it through Congress. All the executives have to do is tell Barney Frank that they won’t be able to afford to make campaign contributions and the salary cap will die in committee. (Argus Hamilton)

THE 7-DAY CHALLENGE

Over at the other blog, the Sixpackdoc throws the 7-Day Challenge at you:
“A lot of people need a kick on a part of the body occupied by the gluteus maximus muscle in order for them to do something good.
People like these (and include me in this august majority) can’t change anything in life, including the way they feel and look. Unless severely provoked. In such circumstances, ordinary people do extraordinary things.

(pic: http://1stepcloser2im.blogspot.com/2008/05/cda-bike-course-computrainer.html)

This post is for those of you who need to shed fat. I am throwing this challenge to all of you:
Starting this Monday (or any day of the week), can you go for one week (seven days, or one hundred and sixty-eight hours) without eating one milligram of bad food?
Specifically, do you have it in you to do ALL of the following, for one full week, no excuses?
If you want to know if you have it in you to take up the challenge, read on and do it!

HOW TO STAY FIT IN RECESSION

Over at my new blog, I posted on the above topic, something I put in for DR of Health Habits.
I was among an elite group of health and fitness bloggers (from whom I learn on a daily basis) contributing to Fitness Guru DR at his blog Health Habits.
This is my contribution, and check out those of others by clicking this link:

The intro:
“Indians are always geared to recession, though you may not understand that from the media reports of a resurgent and shining India. Indians are generally conscious of not wasting money, especially while giving it off to people (ask me, I have to take my fees out from my patients through their body orifices!). But, in these difficult times, being careful with your money is a policy that resonates easily with everyone here. We are all finally in one recession-hit global village today!
I have some suggestions:”
Go there if you want to read it.

BROWNIAN THOUGHTS

* Since I have not given you (much beloved) people much food for thought, I am posting a couple of totally random and erratic (therefore Brownian) thoughts so that you can use it as a bailout plan for your mental retardation brought about by listening to news readers, political leaders like Mr. Obama, Mr. Karat, Mr. V Gandhi, Mr. Everybody, and also the intensely silly statements issued by whothefugisthis starlets in your local newspaper supplement (“I have a glass of carrot juice and an apple for breakfast, I love Gucci shoes and Ermenegildo Zegna ties for my boyfriend, and I MUST shop for them when I tour abroad for my shoes shows”, etc.)

*A man who remembers everything from age five is said to be suffering from hyperthymestia, a rare disease affecting only four other people, who remember every crap they took in life. What a life, and what a disease to have, poor things! It is better to sustain some related affective disorder of the brain. Like gynecomestia, something I have. Not gynecomastia (which means male breasts-something I, er, don’t have, and which many women find sexy), but with an ‘e’. Extract from Wonkipedia: “A disorder, exclusively affecting heterosexual males, where they remember every girl they have loved and not loved, married and not married…” These dudes are always seen to be having retrograde ejaculation, which means they are making exclamation remarks about some girl or the other they remember from the long post past at any given point in time. Of course, doctors know retrograde ejaculation to mean something else, but who cares for doctors, ejaculating or otherwise?

*** I could blog more frequently if I could write on fitness and health issues, but I respect my readers’ preferences for my inane barley-water humor, and I refrain from inflicting my views and experiences of things like the Glute Ham Raise. Whatever. Would you like that? I can hear the dismay already!

**** Update: I have created a new health/fitness blog: the name is (cringe) “six pack doc”. I am truly sorry, but the deed has been done in a moment of madness.

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 03-21-09

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

Now it turns out AIG gave $35 billion — not million — $35 billion of our money to bail out European banks. See, this is how a global economy works. Our hard earned tax dollars are used to bail out German banks for making bad investments in American companies that shut down because their Japanese owners moved the whole thing to India, China and Mexico. You follow? (Jay Leno)

March Madness. Are you excited about college basketball? The N.C.A.A. tournament starts out at 65, then it goes right to 64, then 32, then 16, then four, then down to just one. I mean, it’s like G.M. stock, really, when you think about it. (David Letterman)

Banks used to close at 3PM. Now they’ve started four closure. (Bob Dvorak)

Former New York governor Eliot Spitzer is back in front of the TV cameras to talk about the AIG scandal. It is very appropriate, if you think about it. Who is better to talk about screwing people than Eliot Spitzer. (Pedro Bartes)

Adult film star Jenna Jameson gave birth to twin boys Monday. Talk about traveling down a well-worn path. (Tim Hunter)

Police in Houston have busted an upscale prostitution ring with more than fifteen hundred clients. Hookers in Houston are offering the “Apollo 13 Special”. For an extra 20 bucks, they’ll go ’round the world before grabbing the joystick and bringing you in for a perfect splashdown. (Jerry Perisho)

Now look, this can’t be verified but, by gollie, it has the ring of truth about it. Late last year, after the Presidential Campaign ended, then President Elect Obama crossed paths with Rush Limbaugh in a New York restaurant. The two had a brief chat. Limbaugh allowed as how he was really quite impressed by Obama’s two books and then added: “Who wrote them for you?” Obama’s response to the de faco head of the Republican Party was: “Who read them to you?” (Jim Mica)

This is a chance for President Obama to step across party lines. You know who he should nominate for Food and Drug Administration commissioner? Rush Limbaugh. No, no, think about it. Who has had more experience with food and drugs than Rush Limbaugh? (David Letterman)

A.I.G. might have accomplished the impossible: making Nadya Suleman look deserving. (Janice Hough)

According to CNN, the recession is bringing new terms to the public’s vocabulary. Actually, I think all seven words were previously identified by George Carlin. (Bill Mihalic)

WHY GOVERNMENT BUSES RUN EMPTY (AND SIMILAR SUCK-CESS STORIES)

Many of my old readers surely know how big a fan I am of Big Government. After all, the tax money collected in the interest of the destitute and the poor needs to be spent on things that are crucial for the poor man on the street. All are agree?, a question Government resolutions are frequently preceded by. Among the various ways our taxes are spent include:
1. Giving employment to unemployable youths.
2. Subsidies to grains, kerosene and sugar so that they can be sold by ration shop owners at a higher price in the open market (after all, the market knows no morals, as everyone knows).
3. Build statues of the great leaders of our country who have saved several billions of dollars of the nation’s monies by transferring them to Swiss banks, thereby ensuring steady and safe growth.
4. Build and run hotels so that the poor relatives and workers of political figures can stay when desire strikes them.
5. Run airplanes that can be used by the poor when regular private airlines are packed to capacity.
6. Pay the bills for helicopter rides and private charter planes that carry our beloved leaders to their farmhouses or mistresses.
And so on. Why rehash this old crap, you ask?
Well, I recently heard of a way whereby another great public service our Government provides us, the Public Transport system, helps us.

(source: http://www.travelindiasmart.com)

Here is an example:
A State Express bus, traveling around 50 kms from point A to point B, is often found to be, in official records, to be running nearly empty. The puzzling contradiction is how those empty buses are never seen in reality. The mystery has been resolved by a group of inspectors who have found that the conductors of the buses are charging a ‘subsidized’ rate, especially from ‘old (monthly-pass) customers’ and allowing them travel without the need to issue tickets. The money is generally split between the hard working driver and the conductor.
Protesting passengers are discouraged– if necessary by eviction from the moving bus. Needless to say, our paying public has found a way to manage this, and a compromise struck with the employees, many of whom have bungalows and cars and marry off their daughters in non-Governmental style. Role models for our wayward youth, surely!
A similarly enterprising group comprises of workers in various Government Hospitals, especially the large teaching institutes.

(source:www.oxfam.org)

A typical example is of a technician in the Radiology Department who performs dozens of x-rays every day, using dyes that are used in the x-ray procedure.
For example, a study called the IVU needs two ampoules of a contrast material (as the dye is correctly called). Now, each ampoule usually contains 50ml. Our enterprising technician uses 40 ml in every case. Every fourth case or so, instead of opening a new ampoule of contrast, he uses the 40 ml of saved material, uses it for the last case, and pockets a brand new ampoule (which has been bought by the last patient).
This ampoule, along with many others that accumulate from his enterprising cost-cutting, is sold to the same neighboring pharmacy from where these patients are asked to get contrast from. Sweet, is it not, how our hard working State employees manage to make some extra money in these hard times?
Extrapolate this to drugs, including third gen antibiotics, anesthesia drugs, suture materials, disposables, implants, catheters, and a hundred other things, and what do you have?
A full-fledged cottage industry of larceny and fraud, complete with 100% tax exemption and 100% job security.
Let us, on this note, dedicate ourselves to Eternal and Enterprising Government!

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 03-14-09

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

Politicians in the state of Iowa have voted to rename their Department of Elder Affairs. They’re changing the name to the Department of Aging. Have they thought this through? I mean, now, elderly people will be calling the D. O.A. (Jay Leno)

A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that more Americans say they have no religion at all. Which is weird because every time most Americans check their 401(k) they say: “Oh God!” (Pedro Bartes)

Tobacco-rich North Carolina is close to passing a law banning public smoking. No smoking in North Carolina? Next thing you know the state will make it illegal to marry your sister! (Jake Novak)

History is a story that repeats itself; right now it’s on Chapter 11. (Gil Stern)

Americans in rapidly growing numbers have ceased using “Bullshit” or “B S” for statements that are ridiculously stupid, biased, and untrue. Instead, they call such statements “a Limbough” to honor the man whose every utterance seems to epitomize the term. (Stan Kegel)

President Obama will reverse the Bush administration’s limits on government spending for embryonic stem-cell research today. The White House is hoping scientists will discover a way to use stem cells to regrow the stock market. Nancy Pelosi is especially excited about the move, as she is hoping to use stem cells to help her grow a penis. (Jake Novak)

Iowans asserted their need for that two-million-dollar congressional earmark to study pig odor. Now’s the time. They would have asked earlier, but it wasn’t til the presidential candidates left that Iowans were sure the smell was coming from the hogs. (Argus Hamilton)

There’s a new swingset up at the White House for the Obama girls. This will mark the first time there have been swingers at the White House since the Clinton administration. (Tim Hunter)

In North Korea, they’re grooming President Kim Jong Il’s son to take over for him. You know, we should let the of people in North Korea know, this doesn’t always work out the best. (Jay Leno)

President Obama wants public schools to go beyond math and reading proficiency and include classes on “creativity” and “imagination.” Kids who grow up with more creative imaginations and less math and reading ability have great career opportunities in the White House budget office. (Jake Novak)

Two junior high school teachers in Utah are accused of having sex with the same 13-year-old student. Isn’t that a sign of the bad economy? Teachers cannot afford their own students and now have to share. (Pedro Bartes)

In a stunning announcement, Citigroup showed a profit and had its best quarter since 2007. They made $8 billion dollars in profit. That just shows you: If you give a company $45 billion in government bailout money, they’ll show you how to turn it into $8 billion in profit. (Jay Leno)

Britney Jordan, the top NCAA women’s basketball scorer at 31.3 points per game for Texas A&M-Commerce, once worked as an exotic dancer in Philadelphia, The Dallas Morning News reported. No wonder they’re moving up in the poles. (Dwight Perry)

The FDIC hinted Friday it might have to borrow billions of dollars in order to insure everybody’s bank deposits. The overall economy is to blame. In the last four months fifty million Americans have had to switch brokers, from to stock to pawn. (Argus Hamilton)

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 03-07-09

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

In light of recent developments, the famous phrase “Not for all the tea in China” will be changed immediately to “Not for all the T-Bills in China.” (Paul Feehan)

The case is finally coming to court of a North Carolina firm that collected human body parts for transplants, which was closed because the owners kept inaccurate records. It appears the owner just doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Although the owner put his heart and soul into it, he just didn’t have a good head for business. (Jerry Perisho)

So they got a swing set there on the White House lawn and I got to thinking, “Wow! There really hasn’t been any swinging at the White House since that heavyset intern.” (David Letterman)

There was a huge snowstorm in Washington, D.C. They are calling it the city’s biggest snow job since that stimulus package. (Jay Leno)

I’ll miss New York but both New York and California have their downsides. California has earthquakes, mudslides, and brush fires; New York has the Knicks, the Mets and the Jets.” (Conan O’Brien, whose NBC show is relocating to Los Angeles)

President Obama says it’s only the “rich few” who oppose his spending plan. What he meant to say was that after his plan is enacted, only a few of us will be rich. (Jake Novak)

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced he plans to go after tax evaders after failing to pay his own taxes. It is all part of the government’s “Operation Do As I Say, Not As I Do.” (Jay Leno)

Cubs outfielder Kosuke Fukudome’s monthly batting averages, March to October, for the 2008 season: 1.000, .305, .293, .264, .236, .193, .178, .100. No word on whether he answers to the nickname of “Stock Market.” (Dwight Perry)

Rush Limbaugh spoke to the Conservative Political Action Conference in a speech that was televised live from coast to coast. He’s enjoying record-high ratings for his radio show and people cheer him wherever he goes. So far the only American to benefit from Barack Obama’s policies is Rush Limbaugh. (Argus Hamilton)

Rush Limbaugh has challenged President Obama to a debate. A White House spokesman said the President has bigger things to worry about. I’m thinking, “Really? Bigger than Rush Limbaugh?” Have you seen Rush lately? (Jay Leno)

According to a new study, people are sleeping less because they’re worried about the economy. I think also it might have something to do with the fact they’re sleeping under bridges. (Craig Ferguson)

The Weather Channel showed a huge winter storm dropping snow from New England down to Georgia Tuesday. The timing was perfect. If college kids want to play in the snow this week they don’t have to go to Mexico and get killed trying to buy some. (Argus Hamilton)

THE LINES OF HADES

After the minor display of irritation shown by some local youths in Lahore (that the world perversely perceived as a terror attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team), the ripples are rolling like the surface of a hijab blown by the wind. Cause: comments by the Brits.
Now, we all know how crazy they are.

(pic: the Jugum penis-UK, 1880-1920, device to prevent incontinence and masturbation)

Look at some of their historic medical devices– a large number being designed unsuccessfully to prevent men from becoming master baiters. They had too much time (and some other things) on their hands. Now, is it not obvious that Chris Broad is as crazy as the rest of them? At least that is the opinion of the 100-odd people in Pakistan who can tell the difference between a bazooka and a mashooka (most people in that peaceful country think they are both names for bombs). Former Pak cricket captain Mr. Javed Miandad, that high priest of reason, has called for Mr. Broad to be banned. A broadband connection is not difficult to make in Pakistan, these days, apparently.

Mr. Younis Khan, current Pak captain, is of the same opinion. Any reasonable man would realise that the world, recession-hit and with free time in hand, is plotting to give a bad name to Pakistan, whose reputation is right up there with Michael Jackson. Mr. Khan has said that “On top of that, if the kids here stop playing cricket when we become pariahs, they will become terrorists”. Which, Government sources say, would be a big deterioration from merely marrying into their families.
All sane men who carry assault rifles to the toilet understand this reality. The problem, as the Government sees it, is how to make the world understand that it (the world) is like a drug addict that needs to wake up.
Elsewhere in the world, Sanjay Gupta refused the offer of US Surgeon General because he wanted more time for watching pornography and self abuse (the technical term he used was ‘marriage’). He was puzzled to note some missed calls from Bill Clinton.
In an interesting coincidence, the New England Journal of Medicine published a paper showing cultural differences in sexual education and the ‘first time’ the young learn to have sex. The ‘Conclusion’ section is reproduced below:

American youth first learn to do sex when they lick ice cream cones or try charging iPods with their asses. A small minority learn sex around the same time they can pronounce the word ‘innocent’.
Indian boys first learn slapping and kicking, while the girls learn to deliver and breast-feed babies and get addicted to K serials, by which time they begin to understand how things might work.
Rich Indian-American boys learn the ‘withdrawal method’ first.

Mr. Sanjay Gupta will soon be doing a live program on this important subject, according to a spokesman identified only as a Mr. Larry K.

WHY NANDAN CANNOT FIND INDIA ON A MAP

I have not had any urge to write all these days, and I can’t say I am in the best of mindsets to do a good job. However, here is a small essay written, with my active help, by my son. I hope you tolerate me for this. You cannot find a drier piece than this, I am sure.

I live in the city of Kolkata, surrounded by dusty buildings, most of them made of bricks, and some of them of a mix of thatch, wood, mud and plastic. The latter type of building makes for the shanties that freely thrive in my neighborhood.
In one such shanty lives Nandan. I have been seeing him for the last two years. Nandan does not study in my school. He works in a garage next door, by the side of the street.
At those times when the ball flies out of the building walls and lands in the garage (whenever we play cricket in our compound), Nandan is found ready with it, handing it over to us reluctantly. I have sometimes heard him being rebuked by his master for wasting time looking for the ball beneath some damaged car or the other.
Nandan looks like a grease monkey. Really. He works on his back, lying on the rough muddy ground and hands over tools to the car mechanic who is his teacher and mentor. As the day goes by, the muddied lubricants from the spare parts of the cars find their way from his hands to his face and neck. The only thing the black paint cannot hide is his brilliant smile. But that is something I have seldom seen.
Nandan does not play with us, as he is busy at work. When we are at school, he is at the workshop, and when we are playing, he is right there. We got talking sometimes, but not much.
While me and my friends are getting plumper watching TV and playing on the computer, he is thin as a rail. He cannot even find his country on a map, I found! He told me one day that he wanted to learn English and maths, and asked about how my school looked. I don’t know whether he believed me when I told him how grand and old my school was.
At home, Nandan gets to eat with his brothers (while I have none), but his mother is too busy with household work to talk to him or put him to sleep. Or else she is too busy fighting with other ladies in the shanties over whose turn it was at the toilet or the water pump. I have seen this many times from my verandah, high up in my building.
I am sure he must be getting bitten all over at night by bugs, while I sleep in comfort a few storeys above him. I sometimes wonder whether I deserve being better off than him, but then, this is not the age when I need to handle tough questions!

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 02-28-09

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

People magazine revealed that Obama will finally get his daughters a dog in April. The Obama’s joke that Barack will be the official Pooper Scooper; after all, Obama has experience; he’s been picking up all the crap Bush has left. (Pedro Bartes)

The term Broadband is derived from the two primary uses of high speed internet access: downloading porn (broads) and illegal MP3s (bands). (Dave Hitt)

According to a survey among historians, out-going President George Bush was only the 6th-worst president we’ve ever had. Another example of why we need a national playoff system. (Tim Hunter)

Octo-mom Nadya Suleman has been offered $1 million and benefits to make a porn movie. Filmmakers told her to “shake her babymaker,” and she pulled out a rack of test tubes. (Jerry Perisho)

The NBA is producing “Vaccines For Teens” public-service announcements, featuring Grant Hill and Lisa Leslie, on the importance of getting timely inoculations. Baseball’s version, we hear, stars Jose Canseco and A-Rod’s cousin. (Dwight Perry)

On actress Meryl Streep’s record 15 career Oscar nominations: I hate to say it, but someone puts up numbers like that, it’s just hard not to think “steroids.” (Hugh Jackman)

Cheez-Its has created a new type of cracker that looks like Scrabble tiles. Perfect for people who like to play with their food. (Tim Hunter)

The Power Within motivational group has dropped Michael Phelps as a speaker. Talk about charisma. When he walks in, he tends to light up the joint. (Alan Ray)

My daughter has a book of Presidential jokes throughout our country’s history. It was disturbing to discover the chapter on Bill Clinton was comprised primarily of limericks about Nantucket. (Alex Kaseberg)

A 73 year old college basketball player in Tennessee has been ruled ineligible to play. He’s so old that the years it will take until his graduation have been renamed “the final four”. (Jim Barach)

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 02-21-09

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

There’s an exciting new concept to lower the unemployment rate. If you’re over 45, you’re not unemployed; you’re on “early retirement.” (Robt Stupple)

President Obama signed the stimulus bill in Denver, Colorado. He picked Denver because our debt is now a mile high. It’s symbolic. (Jay Leno)

There are a lot of new taxes coming. California state legislators want to solve our state’s giant deficit by taxing marijuana. Meanwhile, Oregon wants to increase a tax on beer, while New York wants to tax Internet porn. You know what this means? By the end of spring break, this whole thing could be paid for. (Jay Leno)

On Tuesday, New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez admitted to taking drugs. Barry Bonds called A-Rod and advised him, “Don’t go getting a big head!” (Jerry Perisho)

Ah, spring training. There is nothing like the sound of the crack of bat, the smack of the ball hitting the mitt, the smell of fresh mown grass, the pop of the plunger coming out of the syringe. (Alex Kaseberg)

Now Senator Burris is putting out another story of how he got picked by Blagojevich. No wonder folks look at him as if he’s a crook; he’s a second-story man. (Gil Stern)

Alaska officials have told Governor Sarah Palin she owes back taxes on the thousands of dollars she received in state per diem funds while living at her home in Wasilla. You know what could be next: Yep, a cabinet post in the Obama administration. (Tim Hunter)

Barack Obama says the Food and Drug Administration will enforce tougher standards for food safety inspections. The president means business. He doesn’t want to end the war in Iraq just to lose four thousand people a year to peanut butter. (Argus Hamilton)

Local libertarians are proposing the quickest and surest way of stopping the recession would be abolishing the income tax. Congressmen would not need to worry about their income as it would be adequately provided by lobbyists. (Stan Kegel)

“Dancing with the Stars” has chosien Lawrence Taylor as a contestant. Do not — I repeat, do not — tell him to go break a leg. (Frenchie McFarlane)

That’s the trouble with politicians. They think the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth are three different things. (Jay Leno)

The country is suffering a nationwide nursing shortage. There is only one way to fill the nursing gap; Salma Hayek. She’ll nurse anybody. (Jerry Perisho)

Rihanna’s album sales have gone up since she was allegedly assaulted by Chris Brown a week and a half ago. You know what they say in show biz, a big hit helps album sales. (Pedro Bartes)

Well, here’s the latest on the bailout. Democrats may have to bail Senator Roland Burris out of jail. (Jay Leno)

Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss halted plans for a male-staffed brothel in Nevada to service women. It didn’t work. The business had the same problem that every other business in America is having, too many job applicants and not enough customers. (Argus Hamilton)

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 02-14-09

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

Monday is President’s Day. Legend has it George Washington heaved a silver dollar across the Potomac. To commemorate the event, this week Congress will throw lots of money away. (Alan Ray)

Money talks and taxes are how it eats its own words. (Gil Stern)

Spring training is just around the corner. Next week, pitchers and catchers and pharmacists report. (Gary Loewen)

Michael Phelps relationship with Kellogg’s has gone up in smoke. (Tim Hunter)

I just noticed that if you divide the 2009 FDA budget by the population of the US, you get $6.25, exactly enough to buy every American a bulk pack of Keebler’s Cheese and Peanut Butter Crackers. Coincidence? I think not! (Paul Benoit)

When we came on the air back in 1993, the Federal debt was $4 trillion. Now, $4 trillion is how much President Obama’s Cabinet owes in back taxes. (Conan O’Brien)

People are sick and tired of the cold weather. Here’s how cold it was today in Washington, D.C. Vice President Joe Biden put his foot in his mouth just to keep it warm. (David Letterman)

Today, the heads of the eight largest banks testified before Congress. Bank C.E.O.’s in a room full of politicians — they had to flip a coin to see who’s going to tell the first lie. (Jay Leno)

The Labor Department said Monday women are still paid seventy-eight percent of what men make. For every hundred dollars a congressman makes, a prostitute makes only seventy-eight dollars. This violates the law requiring equal pay for equal work. (Argus Hamilton)

President Obama says without Lincoln’s presidency, a black man might never have been elected President. All due respect to Lincoln, but without George W. Bush’s efforts, a black man might not have been elected President.(Janice Hough)

To give you an idea how bad the economy is, in New York people are going to Knicks games just to see something that sucks worse than Wall Street. (Scott Witt)

A woman who ran an escort service servicing Wall Street gave an interview to ABC and said that some of the banks CEO’s were her clients. I don’t believe her, why would the banker pay to have sex if they have been screwing the country for free for years?. (Pedro Bartes)

In the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated, model Brooklyn Decker is naked except for a world map painted on her. Many Americans previously clueless about geography are expressing a sudden interest in the Netherlands. (Marv Kaminsky)

See, the whole theory behind this salary cap is if you’re not performing well, and you’re taking taxpayer money, then that should be reflected in lower wages. Of course, under that criteria, everybody in Congress should get like, what, 2 bucks an hour? (Jay Leno)

President Obama’s admission that he screwed up vetting cabinet appointees drew raves for his honesty Friday. The last president never admitted screwing up on the job. It took a DNA test to get the president before that to admit he screwed anything. (Argus Hamilton)

Sarah Palin celebrated her 45th birthday Wednesday. And she did it like always with her traditional chocolate moose cake. (Pedro Bartes)

These days Barack Obama has to be thinking, Elizabeth Taylor had honeymoons that lasted longer than this. (Janice Hough)

EFFING!

My long-suffering readers know that I am not famous for using intemperate language in this and other blogs.
The taken-aback, perineally loyal Rambophile may wonder, “Pagla gaya kya?”, which is a Hebrew expression meaning, “I love him, V Day to D Day!”. Speaking of which, incidentally, I posted on Facebook that I was wondering if, at my tender age, I should be celebrating this:

Tender, incidentally, is not a politically correct word, in this age and context.

Do check out my short piece called ‘Microvalentine’s Day’ (old post).

Before I wade into another mile of this nonsensical ramble, I should set the record straight:
I don’t mean Effing in your kind of effing sense.
This is a radical, new verb. My invention. It intends to describe an activity that “uses E-sources for Food and Fitness.”
Brilliant, wouldn’t you say?
So, let us carry on about Effing.
This post, following on from the earth-shaking previous one titled ‘The Fat Loss Plateau and Beyond’, is focused more on the same, by popular demand.
I promise you I will talk sense, and will not bore you with statistics and evidence. I will, instead, use my anecdotal example.
I started working out in the gym an year ago. I found I was getting stronger, but I knew I had a long way to go before I could be considered fit. I also found that I had lost only so much fat in spite of a lot of effort. This is the very common conundrum that is called the fat loss plateau.
I used certain tricks that are threatening to make me the next Adonis with a six-pack neck (anywhere else, it is all so passé, so upwardly upper class!).
I got a free account in FitDay. This made me focus on exactly what I was eating on a daily basis. The results astounded me. Take a look.
This is a typical day’s intake when I was working hard and yet seeing no fat loss worth the name:

You can see that a huge truck-load of calories was coming from carbohydrates in the flour and other grain sources, apart from sugars. Luchis are fried breads, aloo dum is fried potatoes in gravy, and samosa is a savory- fried flour pastry stuffed with spicy potatoes and a few minor vegetables.
I decided to cut that out. On the day when I fast and then break it, eating gustily in the four-hour window (read previous post on the subject linked to above), see what happens:

I still ate rice and pancakes (the Indian equivalent) but I logged less than a hundred grams of carbs (and far too low of the proteins I need), and only half the calories I could have eaten. But that was because my mother cooked for a family get together, and who can miss out on mothers’ cooking, right? Incidentally, you can see how badly balanced a South Indian vegetarian diet is (the last four items were ‘aloo curry’, ‘sevai’, ‘kirai’ and ‘appam‘) from the chart. The names ‘ON’, and ‘ON’ powder refer to the whey protein supplement made by Optimum Nutrition. Casein is ‘channa‘- milk protein.

So, I cut out grains from my diet. I checked again, another day:

I was still eating some rice, and worse, I was getting a lot of calories from the occasional ‘treat yourself’ sweets and the modest alcohol I drank on a given day (a get-together of family or friends). This was revealing: in spite of a conscious effort, I was still letting things slip, thereby blunting the results. I became more vigilant. Look at the typical IF day chart now:

Violá! I was hitting the sweet spot: I was actually consuming more proteins and fats, and getting closer to the 50 grams daily dose of carbs I was looking for. I think a carb intake of up to 100 grams daily should be good enough for fat loss, especially if you eat clean and keep within your total caloric requirements. Think Primal Living.

So Intermittent Fasting works well to reduce total calorie intake, but you have to be very careful and diligent if you want to reduce your carb intake. Too often, even geniuses can eff up with their resolve, allowing the calories to slip in.
If there is one thing for the reader to take home now, it is the fact that so much of your intake is what you would forget when asked: “I don’t eat at all, but I still gain weight!” The blame is shifted to last year’s hysterectomy, gall bladder surgery, thyroid problems, baby, genetics, and even the weather!

Eating clean will bring in results, especially if you are active physically, and not merely doing what my son said (when asked about his exercise of the day), “I worked out my fingers really hard, playing FIFA World Cup on my Playstation!”

Keeping an online journal lets you be objective in analysing your results:

So, I know how much tighter I should control my food, or when to be a little easier on myself, without losing track of the larger goals.
I also keep a mini-diary in the site, like this:

So you think you burn a thousand calories in the treadmill, so you can hog that dinner tonight? Look at this:

I believe I burn more than 3500 calories a day, but that does not make an effing difference to the computer! So, sadly, we have to believe the records. Moral of the story:
Keep your food journal diligently, and learn from your mistakes. It takes 5-10 minutes a day. It gives you more rewards than Twitter/Facebook/blogging, and other things for which we try to carve out some time.
Happy eating, this Valentine’s Day! Incidentally, if you think of gifting me a bottle of Ballantine’s for next year’s V Day, think of a fifty year old single malt instead. It’s twice my age!

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 02-07-09

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

The trouble with the economy is that we’re operating in the red while hoping to get money out of the blue. (Gil Stern)

I don’t want to just ruin everybody’s day, but there is discouraging news everywhere. Unemployment is high. Foreclosure rate is high. Michael Phelps is high. (David Letterman)

If we learn anything from the current confirmation hearings, it is that we could significantly reduce the national debt by routine audits of senators, congressmen and other elected officials. And why not add CEOs and other executives of major corporations to that list? (Stan Kegel)

Barack Obama’s Kenyan half-brother George has been arrested by police in Nairobi on charges of possession of marijuana. It seems like a tradition that high ranked politicians have a brother than taints their names. Bill Clinton had his brother Roger, Jimmy Carter and his brother Billy, and Jeb his brother George (Pedro Bartes)

There was a huge scientific breakthrough today. Researchers say they’re very close to finding someone from Obama’s Cabinet who’s actually paid their taxes. (Jay Leno)

I tell you, the economy is so bad, even people who have nothing to do with the Obama administration aren’t paying their taxes. (Jay Leno)

You sound happier than Barack Obama when he found out Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton both paid their taxes. (Jay Leno)

Another one of President Barack Obama’s nominees is having tax issues, which proves one thing: The Democrats like raising the taxes, but they hate paying them. (Craig Ferguson)

According to a CNN survey, almost 50% of office romances lead to marriage. The other 50% lead to job promotions. (Pedro Bartes)

Beleaguered Citigroup, which had secured the naming rights to the Mets’ new ballpark for the next 20 years, is reportedly thinking about backing out of the deal. Assuming there’s no penalty for early withdrawal. (Dwight Perry)

US Airways is now charging $7 for a pillow. That’s sort of high considering they get their goose feathers for free. (Norm M)

Mothballed basketballer Stephon Marbury hasn’t played a minute for the Knicks this season but is still collecting his $21.9 million salary — or nearly as much as Serena Williams, the highest-paid women’s athlete in history, has made in her entire career. Just think,Serena plays tennis, but Stephon has the bigger racket. (Dan Daly)

Republican Senator Jim DeMint says the White House will “create crisis” and “panic” to push President Obama’s stimulus bill. DeMint says creating crisis and panic should only be used in order to start a war. (Jim Barach)

Because of a huge budget crisis, California is now going to delay paying tax refunds. To which Tom Daschle said, “That’s why I didn’t pay them in the first place.” (Jay Leno)

Nancy Killefer withdrew her nomination to the Obama administration because of tax problems. Running from a job over taxes — in Washington this is becoming known as the 100-yard Daschle. (Doug Austen)

A California woman who already had six kids gave birth to octuplets after taking fertility treatments. Fertility treatments for someone with six children? Isn’t that like giving a laxative to someone who has just eaten at Taco Bell? (Jim Barach)

A Florida couple paid $155,000 for a clone of their dog that died. Those people need to be spayed and neutered. (Bob Barker)

THE FAT LOSS PLATEAU AND BEYOND

Long post alert!

Many of you may not have realised (as I have not) that this blog has become one of the most Googled sources of fat loss info in the web.

Oh, sorry! I had initially set for this intro to the post to appear in 2025, so let us not move that far ahead. Restart (not you, moron)!

I am writing on fat loss because of the insistent demands of many of my wild-eyed fans like her. “Rambodoc”, they say in different accents, “When will you shine the light on my fat? When will I lose that handle around my waste waist so that I can start looking as young as you, you delishius hunk of meat, you..” And many, many words to that effect. No, Rads did not say any of this, but we can all expect her, as a mark of her eternal gratitude for this post, to send me one of her used 7-series BMWs or, if she feels cheap, the keys to a property in Manhattan (such low prices these days!) or somewhere. Anywhere, actually.

Okay, let us now get serious here. Restart.

Fat loss stops after the initial effort in a program of diet and/or exercise. This is common knowledge. Let us first see what are the reasons for the fat loss plateau:
1. You are not working out the right way.
2. You are working out the right way (maybe you even have a great coach) but you are not eating right.
3. You are eating less calories, working out long, but your metabolism is too slow, i.e., your body burns calories slowly. A common ‘note to self’ by women, men, older men and women, hypothyroid men and women, post-menopausal women, and some other groups we may have forgotten about.
In the next few thousand words (kidding!) I will give you the juice from the research of around 935 (again!) research articles without boring you to death with the sources.

(Fat people are easily seen everywhere even in India)

Let us simplify issues: if your body needs 2000 calories as its basic metabolic demand (known as BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate), and if you spend another, say, 400 calories in your activities, then you would need to eat less than 2400 calories a day consistently to run a calorie deficit. Right? Many of us know that you will lose a kilogram of fat if you run up a calorie deficit of around 7000 calories. So, a 500 calorie deficit a day should result in the loss of one kilo of fat in two weeks. A pound a week. Clear?
There are lots of compounding issues to this simple equation, but you still have to keep touching base with this simple reality to achieve fat loss:
Calories burnt must be greater than calories eaten.
The most important way to accelerate fat loss is to eat less calories. Not in working out. Trainers are fond of saying that “you can’t out-train a bad diet”. Very true. Unless you are Michael Phelps who, at last Census, was not known to have met a fat loss plateau.
“Oh, no! He is going to talk of diets? Not again?!” Was that you saying that? Can you see me nodding my head sympathetically, like a politician at election time?
Some more basic truisms:

All diets work. But only for some time.
Diets don’t work by themselves in the long run.

What do we do then? Studies show that only 5 percent of people on a supervised diet manage to sustain weight loss. The rest fail. That includes you and me. Let us, therefore, rephrase this:

Diets don’t work; lifestyles do.
If you do lifestyle, you never feel that you are doing something special or stressful. It comes naturally.
What is this stupid, airy, hair-splitting, you ask?

(a typical dinner of mine, and ALL mine!)

Many people (author included) follow a lifestyle where you mimic the lifestyle of primitive man (an animal who probably did not have obesity). Which means:
* Eat whole foods that are available in nature.
* Don’t eat processed foods (meaning colas, diet colas, bread, cake, pasta, noodles, biscuits, etcetera).
* Avoid grains (rice, wheat, corn, etc.) and artificial sugars.
* Don’t eat meals at a religious rhythm (like 3 meals a day or 6 meals a day).
* Mimic the movements of primitive man (imagine Caveman Rambo with a pointed object hunting a bore boar): sprinting, waiting, sprinting again, crawling, pulling, pushing (imagine wrestling the boar before killing it finally), lifting heavy weights (taking the hunt back to the cave) and then eating it. If he fails to kill it or find some other source, he starves till the next time.
How will you do this in your 9 to 5 life in the US, UK or India?
Easy. Try these:
1. Don’t jog or walk. Sprint (as if chased by a wild dog in heat) for a few short seconds (take 20-30). Rest for a while (as many seconds as you ran or even a minute). Repeat ten times, or six, depending on your ability. That, ladies and gentlemen, is called High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) or the Tabata workout (Tabata kept a work:rest ratio of 2:1).
In other words, stop wasting time on those cardio machines in your gym or at home. Four to twenty minutes of hard effort (including the rest periods) is enough cardio for you. A month into this, watch yourself improve your stamina and reduce the inches gradually (remember, you have to give your body time- think of one or two years, in many cases).

2. Push or pull your body weight in major, compound exercises like pull-ups (most women I see are unable to do this unless they are well advanced in fitness), push-ups (keep doing ten more than yesterday), squats, and burpees (the best of them all, I think).

3. Stop doing machine-bound training. In other words, don’t waste time in isolation exercises like biceps curls, preacher curls, pectoral decks, ab trainers, etc. You are not going into a bodybuilding competition, are you? If you want maximum bang for your buck, do the bodyweight exercises above, and also do weight training (squats, deadlifts, or anything that involves pulling or pushing a free weight against gravity).

4. Don’t waste time on ab exercises. Do a couple of planks, holding on till you die. You will have done more than enough for your abs and core stability.

5. Didn’t I say ‘crawl‘?! Yes, I did.
You can do mountain climbers, which is not really crawling, or you can actually go on your hands and feet and climb the stairs, first straight up (head first) or reverse (feet first). This would double as a great cardio workout as well.

Anything else about these exercises? Lots, but suffice it to say that you should train harder than you think possible, and not merely go through the motions. Only then can you see results! Each workout should have a decent volume, which means you could do, for instance, three sets of ten reps for each exercise, with 30-60 seconds rest in between sets. Be strict with the rest periods, avoiding chatting and vacantly meditating.

Let us now move on to nutrition, the cornerstone of fat loss management.

Most people are eating way too much to see results. They are also not eating enough proteins, which reduces their muscle building abilities.
One way to address a fat-loss diet is to cut down on carbs (carbohydrates). This is one of the most tried and tested ways of achieving fat loss. Most of the benefits of a low-carb diet accrue from a total caloric deficit. If you are given the liberty of eating loads of fats and proteins (as in the Atkins diet), you won’t be able to eat all that much for too long. Result: lack of variety in foods leading to weight loss. Someone even lost weight on one month’s continual fast food (McDonald’s, etc.) diet!

Low carb diets are often difficult for many people to follow, for cultural and habit reasons. In such a scenario, losing weight is more difficult, but a caloric deficit needs to be created.

Eating six meals a day (a popular advice for most people) is largely impractical in the long term, not least because designing a diet with such low calories is difficult. Imagine a meal with only 300 calories, for example (if you need to eat six meals within a caloric budget of 1800)! In this regard, a more doable lifestyle is IF: Intermittent Fasting.
In IF, you fast through the day, and then eat within a four hour window. You can choose to fast once a week, or every day, for 15 hours, or 24 hours. Your choice. One of the big things going for IF is that celebrities (like myself) endorse it. I fast for 24 hours once a week, and 15 to 18 hours one or two more days in the week. IF is a lot of posts on its own merit, and check my resources at the end of this chapter post, if you want to learn more. Suffice it to say that it reduces blood insulin levels, is a great way to eat ‘normally’ and yet maintain a caloric deficit. I have found that on the days I fast and then eat in the four hour window, I can’t exceed 1400 calories (I don’t pig out with junk food)!

Does when you eat matter in your fat loss plateau?

Is fasted cardio better than cardio in fed state?

Is breakfast the best meal?!

Dinner is the best meal, and you should avoid breakfast like the plague!

Controversies, controversies! Forget all this, and stick to the basics:
eat clean, work out hard, and be happy. Get enough sleep. Drink less. Be active physically. Read fitness articles and blogs. Enough!

So, if we can sum up, how does one overcome the fat loss plateau?
Reassess your diet (definitely keep an online food journal like FitDay), start IF, train harder than you ever have, change the way you are training, avoid long duration aerobic cardio in lieu of High Intensity Interval Training. Take adequate rest and get enough sleep.

Blogs on Fitness/ Primal Living I silently follow (in no particular order at all):
1. Turbulence Training
2. Fitness Black Book
3. Brian Devlin
4. Health Habits
5. Tom Venuto
6. Caleb Lee
7. Straight To The Bar
8. Mark Sisson’s The Daily Apple
9. Muscle Hack
10. Go Healthy Go Fit
11. Alwyn Cosgrove
12. Son Of Grok
13. Robertson Training Systems
14. The Nate Green Experience
15. Gym Junkies

IF Resources:
1. Brad Pilon
2. The IF Life
3. Leangains

Science-based Nutrition/Fitness sites (heavier stuff):
1. Lyle Macdonald’s Bodyrecomposition
2. Alan Aragon
3. Dr. Michael Eades

I heartily recommend any and all of the above, and I think they contribute hugely to the needs of the public seeking help over the internet. I am also very grateful to them for their advice and availability for people like me and you. I am quite sure I am missing out on some of the others I read, but I hope I can include them later.

Disclaimer: I am not a Fitness or Nutrition guru. I use my medical knowledge and apply it to my personal quest for health and fitness. If you feel the need to heed my advice, you are welcome to, at your own discretion and risk. If you suffer from any physical or mental disease or infirmity, please consult your doctor and get properly (mis)guided!

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 01-31-09

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

And so just how popular is our new president? The way I see it, if it ain’t Barack, don’t fixate! (Tom Mitchell)

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s impeachment trial is scheduled to begin on Monday, so it looks like Illinois is going to break even. They will have one politician sitting in the White House, and the other one sitting in the big house. (Jay Leno)

Governor Rod Blagojevich will be the guest on “Larry King Live” Monday night. Viewers are invited to call in with their questions — $5 for the first minute, $1.50 for each additional minute. (Todd Long)

Blagojevich showed that a high-ranking politician in the United States can be disgraced without hookers or gay sex in a public bathroom and I think that’s refreshing, right? (Jimmy Kimmel)

The email system in the Obama White House crashed Monday morning. Political historians say the last thing to go down in the White House was Monica Lewinsky. (Jerry Perisho)

Al Gore has done everything. He won a Nobel Prize, won an Oscar, and was elected president. (Craig Ferguson)

They’re closing Guantanamo. That’s how bad things are, ladies and gentlemen. That’s how bad the economy is. You know it’s tough, you know the economy is bad, when even the terrorists are being laid off. (David Letterman)

Remember that plane US Airways plane that landed in the Hudson river? Great news. FEMA just showed up to help the passengers get out. (Alex Kaseberg)

President Obama says he needs nearly a trillion dollars to help kick start the economy. That’s a lot of money. Do you realize with that money, you could give every man and woman and child in this country $3,300? Or you could buy shoes for everyone in South America for life. Or you could cover the New York Yankees’ payroll for a season and a half. (Jay Leno)

Earlier today, the world’s top economic advisors gathered at a luxury ski resort in Switzerland to find a solution to the global financial crisis. So far the best idea is to stop traveling to luxury ski resorts in Switzerland. (Conan O’Brien)

PETA is angry at NBC for refusing to air a commercial for them during the Super Bowl. NBC said the commercial was too suggestive. It showed women getting sexy with vegetables. If I want to see women getting sexy with vegetables, I’ll look through the window at Hugh Hefner’s house. (Craig Ferguson)

The Super Bowl is Sunday. The NBC play-by-play team will be there giving the most in-depth analysis. Of what’s up later on NBC. (Alan Ray)

In Tampa, where Sunday’s Super Bowl game will take place, there are 43 strip clubs, many within walking distance of the football stadium. Dancers at strip clubs during Super Bowl week can make $2,000 per day. And, there is no “illegal use of the hands” rule. (Jerry Perisho)

Speaker Nancy Pelosi told the Sunday news shows that Congress spending two hundred million dollars on birth control will help stimulate the American economy. This is crazy. An economy that is screwing this many people doesn’t need any more stimulation. (Argus Hamilton)

The U.S. Navy seized an Iranian ship carrying arms to the Palestinian terrorists Friday. There’s outrage. The Arab states say it shows that Barack Obama is hostile to Muslims and the Rocky Mountain states say it shows that he’s hostile to gun rights. (Argus Hamilton)

SMART TECH FOR THE FUTURE

Mark this day as you read this post: you are now officially informed that there are some products certain gifted people who don’t blog are working on, just so that we have a more complicated future in the next decade or two.
For a truly awesome read, try the New Scientist.

Some of the devices that sound as unreal today as Mamata Banerjee’s sanity are as follows:
1. Superman vision: Radar devices the size of briefcases could pass waves through doors and walls and detect the presence of a living man. Think of counter-terrorism.
2. Invisibility Cloaks: we have all read about them in the Wonder Boy’s chronicles. Soon to be a reality, perhaps.
3. Zap-and-stop: A handheld ultrasound device (a high-focus ultrasound) can deliver a zap of sound waves to seal a bleeding vessel. Think US military and DARPA (and the articles I have written on them before).
4. Crouching Tiger Walks: You remember the award-winning Chinese movie where people walk laterally on walls and fly up and down trees as if gravity was only for the rest of us? That could become real in a way, with artificial nano-hairs that can stick to any surface and resist gravitational weights.
5. Jet-log: A backpack on you, and you fly to office. No more pesky office-hour traffic!
6. Translators: personal devices that translate any foreign language while it is being spoken, like they show in that disastrous flick called “From the Subprime to the Ridiculous”, better known as CC2C.
Read that article!

WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD!

One of the things I committed to myself at the turn of the New Year (yeah, I still do the occasional silly thing, while modifying it to give it some respectability) was that I would give more importance and time to the Real World AND get more organised in my work. I have, therefore, tried to focus on things that really matter to my existence (blogging, honestly, does not, to most people I know- unless you have an internet-based business/network). For this reason, I have been off most of the blogs (including my own) and getting to be less visible in the world. How is this working for me?

For one, I am writing much more drily now- I feel like I have lost the capacity to write funny things, and when I try, it sounds like I am trying to suppress an enormous burp in public, drawing similar looks from neighbors. In the last few days and weeks I had written posts several times, but deleted them mercilessly each time because they were just not good enough. Ditto my comments in your blogs.

Two, I am supremely focussed on my fitness: I am losing more body fat and building strength every week, as I promised myself. At home, I spend time reading up fitness sites that give me more ideas to implement in real life, like IF (Intermittent Fasting). People who train me find me very focused and keen…. (cutting myself off, I am boring myself).

Three, I am keeping in touch with colleagues at work far better than before, with the result that I am getting more offers for one or the other. Today, I am going out of town, alone, for a prospective contract with a hospital that will result in more work and bring an extra carton of eggs to the table. Someone asked me recently, “So is your next car going to be a BMW?” To which question I told him BMWs don’t ride well in the street I live. In real fact, I (as a humble laborer-class surgeon) would qualify to buy the rear wheels and the brochure, but it probably wouldn’t get me anywhere. See, I told you? I am boring myself with my attempts at humor: they suck.
I am feeling suckcessful in life now. But I miss that feeling of getting a good post on the front page of the blog.

Four, there is the distinct (and unusual) lack of mischievous women around me. Is this further evidence of my engulfing andropause? Or have I become so focussed that I don’t notice them anymore? Point to ponder on my way.

On this unhappy note, I take your leave. I don’t even feel I know how to interest you in commenting on all this.

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 01-24-09

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

Every single TV network was covering the inauguration except Fox; they’re still doing a recount. (Jay Leno)

Obama’s getting things done fast. In two days he’s taken as many oaths of office as Bush did in eight years. (Doug Austen)

Lake Erie is supposed to completely freeze over. Which is interesting, because a lot of people were predicting something would freeze over before we elected an African-American president. (Jimmy Kimmel)

Amazingly enough, even with two million people on the mall, there were no arrests in D.C. Not that were was no crime. After all, Congress was still in session. (Will Durst)

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts made a mistake during the swearing in of Barack Obama. That’s the second mistake the Supreme Court has made with a president, if you count the time they declared Bush the winner. (Jay Leno)

President Obama re-took the Oath of Office Wednesday because the Chief Justice forgot to make him say the word faithfully. Everyone had the same thought. If that had happened when Bill Clinton took the oath there’d have been no grounds to impeach him. (Argus Hamilton)

For we comics, losing Bush is like losing a trusted drug dealer. (Will Durst)

President Obama signed an executive order on Thursday to close the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Rumors say Dick Cheney will buy it and turn it into a fancy hotel and gun range. — A place where congressmen and senators can go to relax and shoot off their frustrations, at lobbyists expense, of course. (Joe Hickman)

In his inaugural speech, Barack Obama promised change but that every person in the US is going to have to sacrifice and work hard for it. To which every person in the US said; “Whoa. When we said we wanted change we didn’t mean we wanted to have to do anything.” (Alex Kaseberg)

Historians and sports experts generally agree Barack Obama is the fittest president in history. Do you know who our second fittest president was? Bill Clinton. He once did fifty push ups in a row. And that was just on one intern. (Alex Kaseberg)

The most successful Olympic product pushers of all time: 1) Decathlete Bob Mathias, Wheaties cereal. 2) Gymnast Mary Lou Retton, Energizer batteries. 3) East German women’s swim team, Colonel Conk’s Moustache Wax. (Dwight Perry)

Fertility clinics in L.A. are paying attractive women $8,000 for their eggs and they pay men $50 for sperm. That is so sexist. I’m not asking for equal pay here but 160 times more pay? Where is that scary feminist lawyer, Gloria Allred? Get her on the phone. (Alex Kaseberg)

LeBron James’ being will be on the cover of the February issue of GQ magazine. Meanwhile, NFL star Plaxico Burress will be on the cover of Guns & Ammo. (Jerry Perisho)

A HOME TRUTH

The wife needed to go to the tailor and was one driver short. This was one of those occasions an alpha male finds himself poorly fitted to oblige. However, when one is the guarantor of the other’s debts, one has but little choice. Not for this occasion the male choice of resting from the rigors of city life in one of the clubrooms or the (environmentally friendly) dimly lit lounge bars where one can be with the kind of company where discretion is the sole chaperone. The ones quite favored by business owners when cooking the books with their auditors in a public-private venture.
Anyway, I drove her to the depths of Wellington, Central Kolkata, to which hellhole this Muslim tailor had shifted. Incidentally, all half-decent tailors in Kolkata are Muslims, and I dare say the same applies to specialists in gold filigree, embroidery, etc. in other metros. Wonderful word that: ‘etcetera’: comes in very handy when you want to escape the imminent public visualisation of the bottom of your knowledge.
After reaching somewhere near the destination, I showed immeasurable common sense in parking my car, and engaging a hand-pulled rickshaw to the ultimate spot and back. Now those of you who live in places with flat roads may get shocked. “Why couldn’t you walk or take a cab? How could you ride on a hand-pulled rickshaw, a living symbol of the depths of mankind’s cruelty and oppression?”
To which I nod my head, South Indian-like (a Zenthil), and say, “Quite, quiet!”
A polite way of putting duct tape on protesteth os oris.
When you have delicate female folk who can’t walk except on named streets like Bond Street, Fifth Avenue or Champs D’Lysée, you have a big problem in life. You need to deal with violent retching, the covering of face with nearest available clothing (one important reason for women to use a dupatta or stole), and the “Omigod, it is so dirty!” (repeated till you begin to retch), as if you were personally responsible for the recent decline in civic standards.
So you cop it, and do good to the rickshaw-pulling industry. You refuse to get up, but concede to public demand, and take pictures.

At the tailor shop, Her Majesty got a calendar as a token gift. Women, some men believe, are inherently brimming with the frothy cappuccino of human goodwill and bhadrata (‘gentility’ is a close translation, perhaps). When we got off back at the car, she (spontaneously) offered the calendar to the rickshaw-puller.
“Didi, I live on the pavement. Where will I hang this calendar?”, he asked with a smile.
The lady went red in the ears, and was muttering remorsefully to herself. Or to me, but I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about how I (ever the consumer in the open market) reduced the rickshaw puller’s initial demand of the fare by ten rupees, to which the clever rascal immediately consented.
I went there the next day, and yes, he was there all right. I gave him his ten rupees back. He smiled again.
Sometimes, being kind, being a sucker and being charitable are entirely different things. What do you say?

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 01-10-09

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

George W. H. Bush, father of President George W. Bush, said his son, Jeb Bush, would make a great President. If Jeb Bush does become President, the White House would have seen more Bush than, well, when Clinton was there. (Alex Kaseberg)

Las Vegas oddsmakers installed USC as a 2 ½-point favorite over Texas and the Florida-Oklahoma winner by 7 ½ over Utah in next week’s football Final Four semifinals … And then the blasted alarm clock went off. (David J. Wardell)

The F.D.A. has approved a new drug that will give people longer eyelashes. Well, thank God we are not wasting time and money on cancer research. (Jay Leno)

Bill Clinton is being considered to replace his wife as a senator of New York, making it the first time Bill is interested in Hillary’s seat. (Pedro Bartes)

Couple of days ago in New Jersey, there were UFO sightings. Believe me, it’s not an invasion. The aliens are actually here because they want some of that Federal bailout money. (David Letterman)

A plastic surgeon here in the United States has rigged his car so that it runs on fat left over from liposuction. That’s right, Middle East, a car that runs on fat. Now who has the greatest energy reserves in the world? U.S.A.! U.S.A.! (Conan O’Brien)

Hustler’s Larry Flynt and Joe Francis of “Girls Gone Wild” are asking for $5 billion in federal bailout money. Speaking of federal money going to those doing lewd acts, when does Larry Craig start drawing his pension? (Jerry Perisho)

The Boy Scouts are launching a campaign to draw more Latino members. Apparently, now old ladies not only need help to cross the street, but also the border. (Pedro Bartes)

How shocking was the much-maligned Pac-10’s 5-0 record in bowl games? That’s like turning on the television on election night,and finding out Ron Paul is ahead. (Brad Dickson)

According to several plastic surgeons, the bad economy has reduced the number of breast implants. So now, if you want to see big boobs, you have to see those who manage the country’s economy. (Pedro Bartes)

Lynn Tucker got a late start on her boxing career, but she has a great excuse. The 30-year-old mother of seven, set to debut in Friday’s local Rough N’ Rowdy Brawl, stated “I’ve always wanted to do this, but I’ve been pregnant my entire adult life. I got married when I was 18, and I’ve been pregnant ever since. The factory’s closed.” (Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail)

Democrat Al Franken has defeated the incumbent US Senator from Minnesota Norm Coleman by 225 votes. Wow, what a close vote! You know what Minnesota needs? They need a Rod Blagojevich to help streamline the election process. (Jerry Perisho)

THE NAUGHTY IPHONE!

(This article was written for the New York Times but David Pogue couldn’t take the competition, so he got the story assassinated. RIP.)

You want to buy the iPhone because you want to look hip? Or because you actually think it is the coolest accessory for anyone wanting to be taken seriously? Or because it is arguably the ultimate mobile device for man or woman?
Sorry to say this, but these reasons are now as passé as bell-bottom pants. You may be amazed at some of the reasons for which people are using and buying the iPhone. Hitting the top of the charts is the wildly popular iFart Mobile (“There’s something in the air” is their line), which, hold your breath, creates fart sounds on your iPhone (for 99 cents). Apparently, you can distract terrorists by suddenly letting your iPhone rip one out behind a jehadi (if you are near one), thereby scaring the shit out of him. Critics are sniffing at the sound quality of this app, and are pointing to rival app Pull My Finger, which has fallen off the popularity charts. In fact, the creator of the iFart has already sold $100,000 of his product already, says Silicon Alley Insider. What next, people ask, an iBelch or an iVomit?

An audacious new app is ‘I am a Man’. Innocuous though this sounds, this app helps you keep track of your partner’s menstrual cycle and mood. Not only that, you can keep track of the periods of several girlfriends. To top the audacity of this, even if your girl accidentally opens your list, she will find only her name, as the other names are hidden and password-protected!
User reactions have ranged from outrage to good-natured chuckles. Some have even regretted not having this application before, as it has cost them the odd relationship. Clearly, this is an application for a uber-modern society.

What next, we ask? Ideas have already come in: an iFake (one that recreates a noisy female orgasm) seems to be a hot suggestion, in more ways than one! After these, the Flirt Tester (you and your girl put your thumbs on the screen, and the iPhone tells you whether you are in for true love or a one-night stand!) and the Love Letter (it creates a romantic letter for you based on what you choose as your basic template for the occasion) look right down primary school stuff. An application similar to the latter is the imaginatively titled app called ‘I Love You’ which helps you create romantic emails and gives your pathetic love life that much needed edge!

If you and your partner are not having a stable relationship, maybe your communications with each other needs to improve. Designed by a ‘PhD Relationship Expert’ this, ‘Gps Talk’ is an application that shows you ways where you and your partner need to improve to take your relationship into more convivial territory.
In more ways than one, the iPhone is finding a place deep in the personal lives and bedrooms of users. The world of the iPhone is changing, and so are we!

Postscript: As a Mac fan, I am very disappointed with the iPhone: it is way too primitive in non-web, non-media applications like sms, camera, etc. You can’t send a group sms, and if you get a call while writing an sms, your message disappears! Plus many other suck-worthy points.

WHAT’S NEW THIS YEAR?

Every year, my friends, promises to be new in some undefined way. Unfailingly, it remains the same. Even the way one wishes for the current year to end, as if that would take the sting off life, remains the same year on year.
In the midst of this splendidly non-productive philosophical eructation, I got some people from Washington asking me to become the next US Surgeon-General. I was honored, and rightly so, you may say. After all, I have been serving millions of Americans by my healthy posts on vaginoplasty, phallic enhancement (among others), on top of promoting a universal respect and love for all things feminine. And doing this with a child-like intensity makes me a doubly more politically correct choice.
The fact that my political views are construed to be on the right side of the libertarian stance went in my favor, as Mr. Obama is surrounding himself with the few Americans left over who oppose him, so that there are no opponents to respond to those pesky reporters who take popularity counts of Presidents.
Mr. Obama also likes the fact that, outside of the unemployable Mr. Cheney, I am the only credible person who can call Ms. Hillary Clinton a canine equivalent and get a point across. He specially liked my parody of Ms. Clinton in the immortal Harry Potter story I wrote a while back.
All things not said and even less done, I have respectfully declined.
Mr. Obama says I will make a great Surgeon-General.
I said, “Listen, you want your next Surgeon General to put a sticker on cigarette packs saying ‘If you choose to kill your self by smoking, the US Surgeon-General will support your right to do it’ “?
He was aghast, “No, you won’t do… that?”
“And more: I will send you a recommendation to privatize the Center for Disease Control. Can you take that?”
“Say no more, Doc! I get the message: You will make a great General Surgeon, but a horrid Surgeon-General!”
I said,“Mr. Obama, I hope you will make as great a President as you were a Presidential Candidate.”
End of the day, the offer goes to Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Heard of him?

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 12-27-08

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

So the Bush years are coming to a close. It’s the end of an error. (Jerry Smith)

Congress has given itself a $4700 a year pay raise. They want to make sure that they make enough money so that if a lobbyist wants to bribe them, it will have to be really worth it. (Jim Barach)

When did Mark Tiexeria become Willie Mays, Ted Williams and Mickey Mantle rolled up in one. Oh, I remember now. Right after CC Sabathia became Sandy Koufax. (Mitch Hammons)

In other news, the Yankees signed Prince and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to provide live pre-game music in the clubhouse. (Scott Ostler)

Last night’s studio audience was terrible. I call them the Federal Reserve audience — their interest rate was zero. (David Letterman)

Barack Obama says he’s going to get to the inauguration by train. This comes as a surprise to a lot of people who thought that Obama was going to get to the inauguration by walking on water. (Craig Ferguson)

Apparently there are problems with the cell phone connections from Hawaii to Washington, D.C. President-elect Obama has called several times to President Bush recently asking the first thing he should do upon taking office. And all he hears is Bush saying, “Pardon me?” (Janice Hough)

President-elect Barack Obama and his family are in Hawaii this week. To which President Bush said, “You know, I prefer spending my Christmases right here in the United States.” (Jay Leno)

Gov. Blagojevich came out and said he hasn’t done anything wrong, and he isn’t guilty of anything. So that’s the second big snow job Chicago got over the weekend. (Jay Leno)

Up in Chappaqua, Bill and Hillary accidentally got into the same bed. It’s that cold. (David Letterman)

I was disappointed in some last-minute Christmas shopping. I went to Victoria’s Secret when they promised bras half off! (Steve Denny)

Another Christmas has come and gone. This time of year means exchanging gifts. Thursday you exchange them with relatives. Friday you exchange them with Macy’s. (Alan Ray)

President Bush has approved a $17.4 billion loan for Detroit. True to form, each of the Big 3 automakers immediately invested that money with Bernie Madoff. (Jake Novak)

Mark Felt, identified as “Deep Throat” of Watergate fame has died at age 95. When Bill Clinton heard that “Deep Throat” had passed away, he said he didn’t even know Monica Lewinsky was sick. (Jim Barach)

MARY KISS MASS

Though I am a hard-headed atheist since the time the infant Rambodoc slipped mischievously from his Ma’s lap and hurt his little head, I have a soft spot for a little head. This soft spot includes celebrating religious holidays like Kiss Mass Day.

Today being accepted by broad consensus as such Day, I went out of my way to ‘enjaay‘ the holiday. To this end, I went into a multiplex armed with a fistful of tickets to a movie about cloning. The movie was called Ghajini. This was about a The Incredulous Hulk clone made into a movie that was cloned from a Tamil clone of an English/American movie.

Except that this desi Hulk does not seem to eat anything to justify his muscles. He just keeps getting whacked in the head, and this seems to stimulate as much Growth Hormone release as claimed by the various supplement companies who live in my Junk folder with the sole purpose of inducing me to buy their wares, to give an additional three inches to my manhood. To which temptation I have never succumbed even when the pickings were short in the lean seasons. If you can understand my tortured metaphors.

To get back to the movie, Aamir Khan’s muscles grow from his brains to his ears, after making a business class round-trip to his legs. When tears cloud his eyes, you can see 58 muscles twitching in tetanic fury. When he gets walloped from the back, you can see the haarmoans pumping up his delts and traps, and he swats mutant Ganjas like a gesticulating Amar Singh in Parliament while denying allegations of bribery. All in all, very impressive. I mean Amar Singh’s escaping those allegations, and more so his great contributions to the poor of the world. Like Bill Clinton.

One thing about this movie is that it seemed to attract all the gays in the city. The guy next to me (he was alone, and this is always a negative feature in a guy, according to my wife) was singing along with Aamir in the song sequences. There were some other (equally single) guys who stood up and clapped when Aamir came out of a BMW, as if they had been paid for that errand. So the general impression from the straight perspective was that “That guy is a gay. Imagine clapping for a guy! I can accept getting the clap from a girl, but this! Fagging gays!”

The morning show started around 10 in the morning, as promised (you know, there is a 10 PM show in the evening, too, but the movie guys took us in the morning, as they said they would). By the time the last punch had landed, Aamir Khan had put on around 300 lbs of lean muscle, and the sun outside had set. We had to make the most of the Great Holiday and left even as the last song was threatening to spill over on to dinner time, with the producers of the movie exhorting us not to leave, and to get every penny of the ticket price back with bonus decibel points. “Thanks so much, but we will be back for the sequel, whenever you find a suitable clone, that is”, we said, and took a much needed toilet break.

I then went down and bought groceries. I will soon drive a couple of hours till the next block where I will, with family pulling the leash, give a gift at a party, and rush back quickly in another two hours so that I can shut my eyes on another great, memorable day.

How was your Kiss Mass Day?

GOODBYE, WORLD!

No, don’t have a heart attack, I am not bidding a piqued adieu, this year-end, to the world.
I am telling you about how scientists envisage the end of the world.
Read this article for details.

1. Dr. Ray Jayawardhana, Canada Research Chair in Observational Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, explains what will happen when the expanding sun engulfs the earth and roasts the planet.

2. Dr. Vicki Kaspi, a Professor of Physics at McGill University, explores the irradiating effects of a giant gamma ray burst.

3. Dr. Laura Ferrarese, a Senior Researcher at the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Victoria, suggests that a rogue black hole may set its voracious appetite on Earth.

4. Dr. Peter Brown, a researcher with the Meteor Physics Group at the University of Western Ontario, tells us what will happen if a giant asteroid plunges into Earth and pulverizes us.

5. Dr. Richard Peltier, Director of the Centre for Global Change Science at the University of Toronto, has a chilling scenario: the earth becomes a Popsicle planet and puts a freeze on photosynthesis.

I am simply amazed at the level of their imagination. They need to eat some Punjabi tandoori food to give them some fire in the belly and some material for fermentation.

How about we try our own list of how the earth will meet its end:

1. The Chinese take a monopoly position in the toothpaste market. The toothpaste contains radioactive poisons that cause destruction of the teeth and gums of the entire populace. The resulting misery leads to an inability to eat, in spite of the world having overcome the subprime crisis, Keynesian bailout economics and the Pakistani hallucinatory crisis, among others, and having a food surplus to boot (no pun intended). Hunger destroys the planet.

2. Manmohan Uncle becomes Indian Prime Minister again. In an ambitious move to make his own name immortal, he launches an ambitious campaign to make crow the international food of the world. He succeeds. The world eats these every day, and everyone dies of diarrheal diseases or drowning. Bird flu gets eradicated because there are no birds, only birdbrains.

3. Shah Rukh Khan gets an Oscar for Best Actor, and most of the world dies by choking while laughing hysterically. Upon hearing about the award to the undisputed Numb-er One , Aamir Khan gets convulsions while doing his 1000th decline push-up, slips down and drowns in his own sweat, but forgets to die.

4. Barack Obama is caught in a double sting–smoking and using bad English during an off-the-record interview with the New York Times for an article quoting “highly placed sources in the White House” on how Hillary Clinton is power-obsessed and a control freak. The world gets a cerebral hemorrhage. US citizens, now enjoying the benefits of ‘free’ medicine, are all living in hospitals. They get strokes, too, but don’t die because they are kept indefinitely on life support. It’s free, after all!

5. You tell the rest of us how you think the world is going to end. Or say something vacuous and irrelevant, like a Minister. This season, you are forgiven for everything. Even for bad blogging.

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 12-20-08

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

Dubya finally found them, Loafers of Mass Destruction! Maybe now people will understand the dangers of missle toe. (Paul Benoit)

What basic pass-catching rule did Giants receiver Plaxico Burress violate when he shot himself in the leg? He didn’t account for the safety. (Dwight Perry)

To save the economy, we have American know-how. The economy is not getting better no-how. (Gil Stern)

A Wall Street tycoon named Bernard Madoff has been arrested for running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme. You know what a Ponzi scheme is? That’s where they use the money of new investors to pay off the older investors, or as we call it, Social Security. (Jay Leno)

One of the possible victims of hedge fund king Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scam is former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Of course, Spitzer is used to paying a lot just to get screwed. (Jake Novak)

Did you notice that, in just two months, the unemployment rate has reached 20 percent? But enough about NBA coaches. (Dwight Perry)

Snow closed the airport at Las Vegas. I guess OJ Simpson was right, he is going to prison when hell freezes over. (Alex Kaseberg)

And the Feds are thinking of another interest rate cut. If rates go much lower investors will get back less money than they put in. Of course, Americans already have that option, it’s called “Wall Street.” (Janice Hough)

You know, the shoe-throwing incident has made Sarah Palin want to be president even more. “Free shoes? You betcha!” (Craig Ferguson)

Caroline Kennedy’s wish to be appointed as the junior Senator from New York is causing some controversy. Apparently there is resistance to the idea of having someone get Hillary Clinton’s seat just because of the family name. Instead, they feel a more deserving choice would be Andrew Cuomo. (Janice Hough)

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 12-13-08

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

An extra second will be added on at the end of the year so that we can stay in sync with atomic time. Wow, even the clocks need a bailout. (Tim Hunter)

Don’t you love watching congressmen lecture auto executives on how to run their business? I mean, you got people that put us a trillion dollars in debt lecturing people who put us a billion dollars in debt. (Jay Leno)

Wow, was it cold yesterday here in New York. I mean frigid. Ladies and gentlemen, it was so cold Plaxico Burress was packing two heaters in his pants. (Marc Ragovin)

Illinois Sen. Rod Blagojevich was arrested yesterday for trying to sell a seat in the Illinois Senate. He could wind up in prison, where his seat will be sold to the highest bidder. (Conan O’Brien)

At least when a New York governor goes down, he has some fun on the way. (David Letterman)

Don’t you love how these guys care nothing about the working man? The working girl, oh, they’ll give her all the money. (Jay Leno)

President-elect Obama says Governor Blagojevich should resign. Or, as Blagojevich would call it, “have a going out of business sale.” (Todd Long)

Hey, what are you folks getting for Christmas? Well, I tell you what, Illinois is getting a new governor. (David Letterman)

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has been arrested and charged with trying to sell the Senate seat formerly held by Barack Obama. The voters of Illinois are shocked. Thousands of them rolled over in their graves. (Patrick Gorse)

I’m trying to figure out what to buy my dad for Christmas. It’s between a subscription to Sports Illustrated or an Illinois Senate Seat. (Tim Hunter)

In a recent interview with ABC, President Bush said he is not a literalist when it comes to the Bible, or the Constitution either, for that matter. (Jay Leno)

Paris Hilton is lobbying for the role of Tinkerbell in a new Peter Pan movie. Is that a good idea? When Tinkerbell drinks the poison and Peter Pan pleads for everyone to believe in her to save her, I’m pretty sure Paris would be, well, screwed. (Alex Kaseberg)

O. J. Simpson was sent to prison for armed robbery Friday. Thirty-two years ago, O.J. was voted Most Admired Man in America. It stood as the biggest mistake in judgment Americans ever made right up to the day George W. Bush was sworn in as president. (Argus Hamilton)

You folks excited about the holidays? Remember Sarah Palin? She is so excited about the holidays she held a press conference today to announce that from her house she can see the North Pole.(David Letterman)

The White House Christmas tree has 25,000 lights on it. When they first turned it on, it had 26,000 lights. But Dick Cheney shot out a thousand of them. (Toms Lake Humor Company)

There’s been another legal effort to force state officials to produce a copy of Obama’s birth certificate. Apparently, some people believe he was born in Indonesia, which is ridiculous because we all know he was born in Jerusalem. (Pedro Bartes)

TWEETING, TWITTING, SHI…. SAME DIFFERENCE?

I am using this post to publish some random thoughts that wouldn’t fit in any other category than ‘random thoughts’. So I thought I would post them like people do in Twitter, a site that proves once again that the greatest and most successful inventions these days have to be the most apparently useless ones. Okay, enough to ‘provocate’ (which is, you might agree, a much more ‘punchy’ word than ‘provoke’) Twitterers (or whatever they are called).

But, first, the soft sell: follow me at Twitter.

Here are my random thoughts of the day (without the 140 character limits):

Dell Computers are taking $99 from customers if they want local American voices answering their phone calls. It would be better to ask them to pay $999, and give them an iMac or something. Do Dell computers really work? Can you give me the serial number of the one that does?

Arun Shourie wants to take out Pakistan, Bush-style: “Two eyes for one, whole jaw for a tooth”. What say we send him and Sunny Deol to take out the LeT camps across the border?

A patient of mine who needed surgery for gallstones tells me, “I don’t want to take the risk of surgery, I want some medicines”. To which I replied, “You know what, that is like me saying the stock market is too risky, I am investing all my money in lottery tickets these days!”

Pre-payment penalties for home loans are going to go, says the Economic Times. Now that Mr. Chidambaram is Home Minister, we will face payment penalties if we pay the home loans. Home loan waivers, as Ramesh Shrivats said, are the way to go!

Pranab Mukherjee had a hacking cough while gargling away the smell of the Hilsa fish he had for lunch. The Pakistanis immediately readied their army for war. You see, when he speaks English threatening dire consequences, they think he is just gargling, and vice versa.

Now I need to get back to work.

WOMEN ARE CHASTE, MEN ARE ROGUES, AND OTHER FAIRY TALES

The suggestively titled magazine More has found in a survey that “one in four young women has slept with more than 10 people, compared with one in five men who had done the same”. The poll was held in the UK, as you can read from this article. The new article was mistakenly printed in the New Cars section.

The article does not say how many of these ‘people’ are themselves or their pets, but that will be the contents of another one with 5000 Diggs.

Critics of the survey are quick to point out that while the article says “half of those questioned admitted they had been unfaithful, whereas only a quarter said they had been cheated on by a boyfriend”, it does not specifically say whether the respondents felt they had cheated on themselves by bonking their neighbors’ pets.

The survey also found that most young women would rather sleep with their MacBooks than with the men they married, because they did not believe in sex within marriage and sex with love. For that, they had themselves or their cheat-shits.

Scientists estimate that the average British woman surrenders her virginity as soon as she gets her first iPhone or iPod, which is around infancy, but say that these other events are “mere epiphenomena”. A venerable journal of social science, the Son Sun, recently reported that men with condoms stuck on the outside of their shirts were more potent and fertile than men who were more conservative, as deduced from their “wearing underwear over their trousers while catching the Tube.”

A spokesperson for the British Sluttistical Institute claimed that, by the yardstick of the More survey, most people in Britain have had sex with every other. The Secretary of the Institute, Mr. Bansi Lal, stated that the survey needed follow up to prove an exciting new hipothesis that “Indians in UK are the only Indians really getting laid.”

When questioned about the hipothesis being contradicted by the high birth rates in India, Mr. Lal said, “Arrey, that is because we are getting [bleep]ed by those Pakistani [bleep]ers!”

(Indian) Union Health Emperor Mr. Ambumani Ramadoss could not be contacted. His office said he is busy on a mission in the UK.

Ex-Home Minister Shivraj Patil was also unavailable, as he was busy generally [bleep]ing around.

RANDOM THOUGHTS OF A CEMENTED MIND

I have probably (almost) never used this blog to post random thoughts to voice my personal thoughts, or express my angst at various issues in my personal life, this being an inherently happy blog and all, but this is as good as any a time to show that we can do it, too.
No, I am not going to expose to you my dietary secrets (like how I eat around ten egg whites a day on many days of the week), or to allow a thought to lingerie in your mind that I wear red underwear (I don’t need to). You get the gist.

So, politicians and humans, here is a CT scan of my mind: a rear glimpse of a genius.

* I have suddenly had my bank account frozen because my Chartered Accountant ‘forgot’ to show in my income a large (by my BPL standards) sum of investment (ironically in bona-fide Government bonds) in my income tax returns. On top of that, he offended the IT Officer by not attending the summons in person. I had no idea, and bang! Yesterday on, I am frozen out of access to money! Did I hear some asshole write about how money was no longer a defining aspect of his life? If you see him sometime, tell him he is just that. I am not going to ask you to cough up a bit of your old family jewels fortune, so relax your sphincters!
In the meanwhile, life is very on-the-edge, almost like a battle for Chief Me-jester of Maharashtra. I am fuming, once more, about the essential brutality of the Government apparatus: it never gave me a warning or notice. It seems it is not required by Indian law. Perhaps not in any law. The motto of Government is ‘Pay your taxes, and then breathe. If you stop breathing, do likewise.’

* I am actually thinking of spanking my CA for being such a bad boy: he has had all my bank statements showing the course of the funds (all from my income, my savings, FDs, etc.), but he ‘simply forgot’ to show it. I have a feeling he did this to screw me, so that I end up paying a hefty bribe to the ITO, with whom he would then share the spoils. A classic bureaucratic trap for the sucker!

* I have had no time to respond to the several interesting comments on my previous post on Another Kind of Evil, including Shefaly’s ‘You Are Better Than That, Doc’ remark. Provocative, that, I tell you. Even Indians have a right to respond, though you wouldn’t know it if you go by our history.

* WordPress has taken a toilet break after coming up with the breathtaking new 2.7 version. If you see this blog resembling a wall of the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai, with gaping holes in places where your world-famous blogs were proudly linked, despair not, for I have alerted the Blog-wizards.

* I found a great site for listening to music: Songza.

* In the festive season, I am doing a great job of staying motivated in my eating patterns. I don’t deny myself any treats, but I have cut portions immensely. A nibble of cake, half a sandesh, one cookie, etc., all the while cherishing each particle of food in my mouth with my eyes closed. Satiety comes quick when you savor each morsel of food, with your mind single-mindedly (clever, that!) minding the flavor, texture, aroma, and overall experience of the food.

* Yesterday was the first time I saw a Punjabi wedding. What I found so remarkable was how sexist modern Indian society still is. The groom’s family kept the bride’s on tenterhooks by coming in 90 minutes late, while I was chafing at the hungry delay. Soon after the groom’s arrival, those of us from the ‘girl’s side’ were respectfully asked to let the groom’s (large) party sit at the tables. The latter then wasted no time to complain forcefully to the authorities how unacceptable the service was: apparently, the reason was there was no one to serve the jalebis! I wanted to offer my services, but certain people suspected that I would ensure ample spillage of jalebi juice on the expensive sleeves of the complainants, and my offer was gracefully and drily turned down.

* I was on a TV talk show late at night on, I kid you not, Maradona! My role was to lie to the gullible public how much I admire Maradona and football, and then talk a bit about his weight loss surgery and stuff. You know how it is: flanked on either side by two journos who have spent their lives chasing the God of Football, I was off-side, all at sea while the two guys kept boring holes in my brain with anecdotes on how close they were to him, yada, yada, yada. I literally begged the anchor to pull the red card on me, and I slunk off the studio at 1.30 am. The show continued till 3 am, when the anchor ensured that Maradona was safe in his hotel room and had moved his bowels for the first time ever on Asian soil.

* After a very long time, two posts on one day, one mourning morning actually!

Want more? Oh, yeah, I don’t miss no groans or howls! I hear ye, I hear ye!

WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 12-06-08

TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK

The Labor Department announced that over 1,100 lawyers lost their jobs last month. So lawyers are losing their jobs, C.E.O.’s are being forced to work for a dollar a year, and Ann Coulter’s jaw has been wired shut. In many ways, this could be the greatest Christmas ever when you think about it. (Jay Leno)

When he accidentally shot himself in the right thigh Saturday, Plexico Burrass also shot himself in the foot. (Jerry Crowe)

Atheists filed suit against the Kentucky Homeland Security office because of the mention of God in the state anti-terror law. Legal analysts doubt their chances. They don’t really have a prayer. (Alan Ray)

The Swiss are likely to approve legalized prescription heroin. Apparently they feel it could give their economy a real shot in the arm. (Jim Barach)

Bush says he wants to be remembered as the man who liberated 50 million people. Well, when you think about it, he did. Thanks to him, 50 million Americans are now liberated from their savings account, their 401(k)s, car payments, mortgage… (Jay Leno)

Right wing pundit Ann Coulter has broken her jaw, and the doctor has wired it shut. He didn’t wire it shut for medical reasons. He said it was the holidays, he wanted to do something nice for people. (Jay Leno)

Planned Parenthood is now selling abortion gift certificates on its website. Finally a Christmas gift your teenagers can actually USE! (Jake Novak)

The headline in yesterday’s paper read, “Obama could change makeup of Supreme Court.” I sure hope this doesn’t turn into another controversy over putting lipstick on pigs. (Gary Hallock)

General Motors announced that they are ending their endorsement deal with Tiger Woods. When asked why, a spokesperson for General Motors said: “Tiger Woods is successful, competitive, and popular. And that’s just not us.” (Conan O’Brien)

This week, President Bush was awarded the International Medal of PEACE award. How did that happen? (Jay Leno)

President Bush says he wants history to see him as the liberator of millions. Which is another clue that he will issue a blanket pardon to his entire administration. (Jim Barach)

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said that the latest economic decisions have put the economy on the right track. Shouldn’t we veer a little bit to the left? We have been on the right track for the last 8 years, and the economy is wrecked. (Pedro Bartes)

ANOTHER KIND OF EVIL

(CNN) — A Virginia woman whose husband and daughter were gunned down in last week’s terror attacks in India says the attackers should be forgiven.
“We must send them our love, forgiveness and compassion,” Kia Scherr told reporters Tuesday of the Mumbai attackers, nine of whom were killed by Indian forces. “As Jesus Christ said long ago, they know not what they do.

“They are in ignorance, and they are completely shrouded and clouded by fear, and we must show that love is possible and love overpowers fear. So that’s my choice.”

Full story here.

Am I alone in thinking that this attitude is evil? A philosophy of forgiving evil is tantamount to supporting it, and puts at risk the safety and lives of countless others. On top of that, evil should be condemned and destroyed because it is anti-life. However, Gandhians and Christians are known to be big on forgiving killers and other humans who are hell-bent on destroying life, security and happiness of others. The killers of baby Moshe’s parents did not know why they were torturing and killing them, is that lady saying that?

Another reason I hate religion. I know I am not being very coherent, but I hope you, dear Reader, will pitch in with your views and enrich this post.

So, what do you think?