2003 is the year, my friends - the year that THespos finally cleans up his act, health-wise. I implemented the first stage of Operation Get Your Shit Together on January 6th of this year. On that day, I smoked my very last cigarette. Stage One was a success, and I haven’t smoked since, so I figured it was okay to move to Stage Two. (You can’t kill all your of bad habits at one time. It’s too much to do at once. So divide and conquer, I say.)
Stage Two involves making some changes to my eating habits, including:
[list=1]
[li]No more consumption of entire 1 lb. bags of peanut M&Ms right before going to bed[/li][li]Strict 2,000 calorie/day limit[/li][li]Fuck Ben. Fuck Jerry. Fuck all 50 of their flavors.[/li][li]Introduction of new food items into diet, namely “fruits” and “vegetables”[/li][li]Snacking on rice cakes instead of entire sides of beef[/li][/list=1]
To address #4, above, I bought this. The purchase was an incredibly exciting thing, as I now get to play Mad Scientist and combine various forms of fruit/vegetable DNA to produce the Ultimate Nutritious Beverage.
Some of my early experiments…
Bloody Mary Mix
I threw 4 tomatoes and 2 stalks of celery into the damned thing, and added horseradish and black pepper to what came out of it. Then I remembered that vodka=mucho calories, so I stuck the stuff in a Tupperware container and found a nice spot for it in the back of my fridge, next to the box of Arm & Hammer. It is not likely that the Bloody Mary Mix will see the light of day again.
Homemade Apple Juice
I used the Granny Smith variety of apples, which produces a neat beverage that tastes like ground-up sour apple SweeTarts in suspension. Love it.
Kiwi-Carrot Juice
After much experimentation, I found this unique combination. Sounds like it would taste like ass, but it is truly the Nectar of the Gods. I will be drinking Kiwi-Carrot juice for the rest of my natural life. It has replaced the blue Slurpee as my Favorite Non-Alcoholic Drink Substance.
After about 50 or so experiments like the ones described above, I began to notice that the bananas I purchased earlier in the week were starting to show their age. “Hmm…” I thought. “I haven’t yet tried bananas. I have no idea what banana juice would taste like. Let’s have a go.”
I peeled several bananas and turned on the juicer. I fed a banana into the chute.
“Grrrrrrrrrrrrnt,” said my juicer. But nothing came forth from the spout.
So I tried another.
“Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrnt,” said my juicer. A little louder this time. Still no juice.
So I cram another two bananas into the chute.
“Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnt,” said the juicer, loud enough to cause my upstairs neighbor to possibly think that I was feeding a manatee into a wood chipper.
Then, something bad happened.
The juicer started hopping up and down, making even more noise. I was reminded of the scene in Contact where the machine’s rings are whipping around so fast that the viewer knows that Something Bad Is About To Happen. So I did what any brave soul would do in such a situation. I closed my eyes and stuck my fingers in my ears.
Something hit me in the center of the forehead. Before opening my eyes, I said a little prayer…
“Dearest God, please bless me and ensure that the cutting blade has not flown clear of my juicer and embedded itself in my forehead.”
I opened my eyes. I wiped something off my forehead with two fingers. I tasted it.
“Not blood. That’s good. It kinda tastes like…bananas.”
Surveying the kitchen, I found that my juicer had somehow managed to coat the walls next to my counter with nasty-looking banana puree. I shut the damned thing off.
After a thorough cleaning, the juicer still works fine. That is, it works fine on relatively firm fruits and vegetables. But bananas are bad. And I shall never again attempt to create banana juice. Probably tastes like shit anyway. If I were one of those litigious, anti-personal responsibility chuckleheads, I’d probably sue. After all, where the fuck was the warning label? But I’m not. So I permanently lost 30 minutes of my life and a moist sponge to the cleaning gods. Such is life.
