Healing Gaze

So I woke up the other morning and walked out into the living room to find my mother on the couch watching a DVD. The DVD was about this guy from Croatia who apparently has the power to heal people – simply by staring at them. I swear I am not making this up. He simply goes by the name Braco, and he has supposedly rid people of cancer and helped people walk again and is reportedly the mastermind behind Britney Spears comeback (okay, so I made that last one up). Apparently he has the ability to manipulate energy or something and heal people, and does this by just staring at rooms full of people.

I wasn’t really surprised that my Mom was watching this; my Mom is one of those people who is always trying the latest weird healing methods. Technically, nothing is ever wrong with her except for the fact that all she ever does when she isn’t at work is sit on the couch eating snacks and watching DVDs about mystical healing methods. At various points, our house has been filled with things that sounded like ingredients to a magical smoothie. At one point, we had tons of cases of something called gogi berries. At the moment she is preaching some things she learned in a book about eating right for your blood type. She told me that since I have blood type O, I am supposed to avoid pork, milk, cookies, meat, fish, lettuce, tomatoes, air, frozen foods, refrigerated foods, red foods and any foods with more than three vowels. According to this diet, I can basically eat only celery and dirt (unless you are one of those weirdos that count “y” as a vowel).

Anyway, so these new “gazing sessions” are her latest fad. Apparently Braco is in Hawaii, so my Mom asked me if I wanted to come with her to a session. Since my New Year’s resolution was to be open to trying new things, I enthusiastically jumped up off the couch and said “No.” Then I sat back down, because sudden movements hurt my back. I am the opposite of my mother; I’m not a big believer in any sort of medicine or healing. When it comes to healing, I believe in the holy trinity: sleeping, eating and beer. So I was not about to go pay some money to have some guy stare at me. I mean, I had my doubts that somebody staring at me would make me feel better (unless that somebody was Megan Fox).

But I was a bit curious about how this whole thing worked, so I eventually went. Plus I was really, really bored. Besides, it was only $6. Apparently the guy is loaded and doesn’t need the money and practically does this stuff for free. I mean, except for the fact that you have to pay for his plane ticket and his hotel room and buy his instructional DVDs and jewelry and autobiography.

So after we got our ticket, we took a seat in our room. We were told to sit wherever our “energy” directed us. And as with most of my college classes, my energy was directing me to the back row where I could sleep, because I used up all of my energy trying to figure out where to sit. But my mother’s energy apparently was telling her that we should sit in the smack-dab middle of the room, next to the weird couple that was clearly way too into this.

The first thing I noticed was that the crowd was clearly made up of a certain demographic. That is to say, everybody was old and white. I was easily the youngest one there. Part of it is that there is actually a warning outside that prohibits people under 18 and pregnant women due to – again I’m not making this up – “the potency of the energy.” At that moment, all I could picture was Yoda using Jedi mind tricks to fly me across the room, and I was beginning to wonder if that was the real reason my Mom wanted to come to this thing.

Anyway, the session lasts about 30 minutes, but Braco is only involved in about eight of those minutes. The first fifteen minutes or so was people sharing their experiences, and of course the first person to speak was the lady next to me. She started talking about seeing “balls of liquid crystal” and “bright rays of light,” which raises several questions. What type of drugs is she on? Where can I get some? What the hell does liquid crystal look like? Not coincidentally, she and her husband also had tropical drinks from the hotel bar, so maybe showing up drunk helps with the “energy.” Give me enough Mai Tai’s and I’ll be finding balls of liquid crystal everywhere.

Finally, we all stand up and Braco comes in and gets on a stand in the front of the room. And then for ten minutes he just stares at you, and it is indescribably creepy. He doesn’t say anything (in fact nobody has heard him speak publicly for years) or do anything, he just stares out into the crowd. Some people also hold up photographs of loved ones, because supposedly his gaze is supposed to be able to go through photos (apparently it can also work through Skype). But mostly, you are just supposed to stare back. It's like a really bad first date.

After it is all done (and the guy next to me stopped having weird spasms), you just leave the room. And I’ll tell you what, despite my cynicism and disbelief, I left the room feeling something very strong deep within myself: hunger. Frankly, I was starving, and standing up for ten minutes and staring at this guy was exhausting.

In conclusion, I have no idea why I am paying money to go to school when I could be making money by staring at people. So I’ve actually been practicing on people here, and I think it’s going well so far. I’ve only been pepper-sprayed five times.

My Toe Hurts

People always told me that wearing rubber slippers in the winter would one day come back to haunt me. Of course, I always thought that they meant I would get frostbite and my toe would fall off or something. But on Wednesday I found out that wasn’t what they meant.

I was minding my own business, walking out of the bathroom when somebody decided that they would blast open the bathroom door. The bottom of the door then proceeded to rip off my big toenail. Now, it is still attached at the base, but just at the very base. I looked down at my toe and said several eloquent words that out of politeness I will not repeat here, but to summarize, it was something along the lines of, “Owwie.”

For the first few seconds I didn’t realize exactly what had happened. I thought I had just scraped my toe. Then I touched my toenail and it began to gush blood like some sort of B-movie horror flick. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really do too much about it, because I was in between classes. I wrapped a napkin around it, put some tape on it, and limped into my writing class, where I probably proceeded to gross out every one in my group.

So for the next two days, I walked around with my toe wrapped. Or at least I thought it was wrapped. Baddie and Midget informed me that they had seen untrained monkeys do a better job of wrapping up toes. They of course had come over as soon as they heard about my unfortunate incident, since they take great enjoyment out of seeing me in various types of physical and mental anguish.

Anyway, I finally went to the doctor on Friday, since I was slightly worried that my toe had still not stopped leaking blood. I figured that the doctor would give me a better idea of what I did to my toe, maybe give me some pain medication and maybe teach me how to properly wrap my toe (or get the monkey to at least).

This just shows how stupid and naïve I am. Every time I go the doctor I never get what I want. You think that after my last visit I would have learned my lesson. You might as well just sit at home and save yourself the trip, because the doctor is never going to tell you anything that you don’t already know. He informed me that I had two choices: I could leave the nail on and hope it didn’t get infected and it fell off on its own, or get it surgically removed. Being the little weenie that I am, I heard the word surgery and said “Hell no,” and tried to run out of the room before I realized that it hurt to run.

Since I was not getting my nail removed, he prescribed me some antibiotics. But he was not done yet. You see, doctors follow something called the Hippocratic Oath, which states that they are not allowed to let a patient leave until they have stabbed them with a needle of some sort. Just as I was about to leave, my doctor realized that he had not done this yet, and was at risk of getting his medical degree stolen by the needle fairy.

Doctor: I think I need to give you a tetanus shot.

Me: I’m not sure what this has to do with my toe, but I already had my tetanus shot anyway.

Doctor: But this tetanus shot is different. It treats whooping cough.

Me: So it’s not a tetanus shot. It’s a shot for whooping cough?

Doctor: Shhh…

Now, I don’t want to sound like I don’t believe him. I mean, I only have an undergraduate degree in journalism, while he probably spent ten years and lots of his parents’ money in medical school. But I don’t see how a shot for whooping cough is supposed to help my toe stop bleeding. But before I could object, some random lady comes in, stabs me in the arm with a needle and walks off.

Now, they told me that the shot might make my arm a bit sore. At first I didn’t notice anything. Then I woke up Saturday morning and it hurt to even move my arm. So to recap: I went to the doctor with a sore toe, and left with a sore toe and a sore arm. I somehow left the doctor’s office with more things wrong with me than I went in with.

Thankfully my toe for the most part has stopped bleeding and the pain and the swelling are going down. But the plus is that he told me that I should wear slippers to let my toe breathe, so now I have a medical excuse not to wear shoes. Sure, my toe is now a strange shade of purple and now my back hurts because I’m walking off balance. As it turns out, your big toe is an important part of walking. Oh well. At least I won’t get the whooping cough.

Hallelujah Health Care!

As I’m sure you have heard by now, the big news is that yesterday, the new health care bill passed the House and is coming very close to being enacted. I think. The whole process of bills was always very confusing to me, maybe because my only experience with them was that darn School House Rock song that I don’t really remember. I think it went something like “conjunction junction, what’s your function.” For all I know, the only thing they voted on yesterday was what font they wanted the bill printed in. But judging by the way people are reacting, this vote seems to be a big step in finally getting this health care reform. This is a good thing, because frankly we need to get this whole thing over with so the media can move on to covering something important, like Jennifer Love Hewitt’s love life.

Now this whole thing was a big surprise to me since I assumed that, like me, Congress was on spring break and was spending their entire day watching basketball and NCIS reruns. But unlike me, these legislators not only managed to get off of their couches but also worked to pass a bill that appeared to have a blunt’s chance in Boulder of passing. It really was a remarkable display of non-partisan cooperation. Of course, by “non-partisan cooperation,” I mean “Democratic gang-rape.” None of the Republicans in the House voted yes on the bill, but the Democrats had enough numbers to overcome that.

But enough about how the bill was passed, let’s focus on what is truly important: how this reform affects you. By “you” I mean “me.” I don’t really care about you. Anyway, luckily for those of you who don’t understand health care, I happen to be an expert on the subject. My qualifications include knowing the Pepto Bismol song by heart and once diagnosing myself in a doctor’s office (“hey doc, I think the problem is that there is a knife sticking out of my foot”). So I’m going to make health care easy to understand by completely making up facts and using inappropriate metaphors and puns.

Now there was a time was a time when there was no such thing as health care (if you live in Africa, that time was two minutes ago). To demonstrate, we finally bring back our cavemen Wog and Oog.

Wog: So what seems to be the problem?

Oog: I think I have a cold sore.

Wog: I’m sorry to say we don’t yet have a cure and you’re going to die. But we can make your death as quick and painless as possible.

Oog: How?

Wog: We are going to hit you over the head repeatedly with a club until you die.

So things have gotten a little better since those days (doctors these days use axes), but there are still a lot of people in this country who are uninsured. This health care reform will give health insurance to 32 million uninsured Americans and make health insurance mandatory. Of course, all of this money has to come from somewhere and many high income people are complaining that it will end up being them. To them I say, “HAHA nanny-nanny boo-boo.” Because if there is anything that makes me happier than watching rich people suffer, I sure as heck haven’t found it yet.

Another part of the reform is that insurance companies can no longer cancel or deny policies to people with preexisting health conditions. This only makes sense to me. I mean sure, a diabetic person may have a higher risk of health problems than a healthy young man in his twenties. But the odds of that healthy young man getting hit by a bus tomorrow are probably greater since the diabetic had his foot amputated and can no longer walk.

Speaking of healthy young men, I should also benefit from this reform. The new plan would allow unmarried people up to 26 to remain under their parents’ insurance as long if they don’t have a job that offers them insurance. Why unmarried? Probably because the insurance companies know that marrying women is one of the biggest health risks to guys. I’ve seen CSI; if the husbands have any sort of life insurance, the second they piss their wives off BAM they’re dead.

Of course all of these benefits are nothing compared to the person who was truly saved by this vote: Barack Obama. Now as a fellow Hawaiian, I like the guy, even if his bracket sucked (I mean, come on; Kansas?). But even I have to admit that he was taking some heat for failing to really change anything aside from the oval office furniture. At least now he can hang his hat on the first health care reform since the 60’s. Then again, I would avoid doing anything that hasn’t been done since the 60’s. I’m pretty sure there was a good reason for stopping most of the things that went on in the 60’s other than The Who.

Anyway, at least this is a step in the right direction. Or the wrong direction. At least we are walking somewhere as opposed to standing there and looking confused like a Brit in a dentist’s office. Only time will tell whether or not we’ve taken a step towards happiness or Candianness. Speaking of which, I hope this free health care means I can finally get a Canadian doctor to look at this raccoon that has been clamped to my foot for the past three days. It’s starting to look infected.

Watching Our Weight in the New Year:.. And There It Goes

So the entire world is really obsessed with this whole earthquake in Haiti thing, but that is sort of depressing so I’m going to talk about a much funnier story of buildings falling down. This story is much funnier because it involves fat people. Everything is funnier with fat people. How else can you explain why people still watch Jay Leno?

Anyway, apparently a building in Sweden where a local weight watchers club regularly met collapsed during one of their meetings. For one thing, I had no idea that they had weight watchers in Europe (Sweden is in Europe right?). I always thought that obesity was one of those problems that only the U.S. had, like bad beer and “Jersey Shore.” Of course, it doesn’t help that I have no idea what weight watchers is. It sounds a little too similar to whale watching to me; like you just get on a bus and drive through Texas and take pictures of fat people dancing in the McDonalds’ dining room. In fact, it’s probably way better than whale watching because half the time you go whale watching you don’t see whales and they have to give you a refund. This is because whales, as it turns out, spend most of their time under the water, where you rarely see boats (or at least working boats).

Getting back to my point, to cure my ignorance about weight watchers, I decided to take my second nap of the day and think about it. When I woke up, I decided to go to their website. Apparently weight watchers is not a diet plan as much as it is “Fat People Anonymous.” The way it works is that you go to a meeting to talk to other fat people about being fat or where to find the best all-you-can-eat buffets in town. Maybe they do it while eating donuts. And just in case you were wondering, they do have a meeting location in Boulder, which is funny since most of the Boulder population is one tofu shortage away from starving to death.

Anyway, I thought this information would be helpful since it is just after New Years, when a lot of people are still pretending to stick to their New Year’s resolutions. Do you want to know why people always make these promises on New Years? Because a lot of people consume a lot of alcohol on New Year’s Eve, that’s why. Now, I’m not going to lie, I also made a New Year’s resolution. It was to stop setting unrealistic goals for myself, and so far I’ve really stuck to it well.

For instance, I have decided that going to school every day is expecting way too much of myself. Really, who goes to school five days a week? Which is why I’ve reversed the typical work week; I go to school two days a week and have five off (okay so I have one afternoon class on Wednesday, but the class is made up of me and six girls, so I don’t really count that one). This allows me to wake up at one in the afternoon almost every day. Which is good, because my other New Year’s resolution was to get more sleep.

Okay so there are some of you out there shaking your head at what a shame on society I am. The rest of you know me and have already gotten past this. I used to try and make New Year’s resolutions, but I would rarely keep to them. A year is a long time for a guy to stay in a commitment. I mean I’ve had classes for three days and I already had to be talked out of skipping some. So there is no way that some stupid promise at the beginning of the year is going to last until next week, much less December.

Do you know what we should do instead? New Day resolutions. All you do is make a resolution to keep to for the day. For instance, my resolution today was to not get hit by a bus (in order to fulfill this, I have not left my couch, where buses rarely go). Think about it, no long term commitments, so even if you pick a hard one, it’s not like you are really doing a lot of work. I mean if you make a New Day resolution to lose weight, just take a dump before you go to sleep and voila! (which means “poop!” in some foreign language). And of course if you fail, you don’t have to think about how big a failure you are for an entire depressing year. You simply make a new one the very next day!

Isn’t this fun?! Once again I’ve brought lowering standards to even lower depths. Speaking of which, my New Day resolution today is to not embarrass myself dancing. Of course, now that my roommate’s ringtone is “Love Machine,” this might be a harder task than I anticipated.

Say "Aww S**t"

So instead of being on the beach today, I’m sitting here on my sofa wasting away on my computer. Why? Because I just recently had to have one of my wisdom teeth pulled, and per doctors orders I am stuck at home mumbling and drooling on myself even more than usual. Of course I pulled my first two wisdom teeth when I was in eighth grade, so it’s not like this is a new experience for me; but it doesn’t make it any more fun. As with many things in my life, I blame it on my dentist.

Now it’s nothing personal against dentists, but I hate them. There may be no activity in the world that I hate more than visits to the dentist (at least that doesn’t involve dysentery and/or the Jonas Brothers). At least with doctors, you go in when you see something is clearly wrong with you, such as your foot is facing the wrong direction or there’s a knife sticking out of your stomach. But with dentists, you have to go every six months so they can find something wrong with you. Oh and trust me, they will find something wrong with you. By golly, they didn’t pay all that money for grad school just so you could waltz out of there with no problems they could charge you ridiculous amounts of money to fix. They have to pay off all those grad school debts after all.

So the first thing they do is lean you back in a chair and shine a ridiculously irritating light in your face. You half expect Dick Cheney to show up with a bucket of water and a cattle prod. Then they grab everything they can get their hands on and shove it in your mouth. I bet they have bets in the back room on who can get the most and weirdest things into patients mouths. “Hey, did you hear Bob actually managed to put a putter and a shotgun in that kid’s mouth?” I particularly hate this part, because I don’t like people sticking things in my mouth. (You can give yourself a pat on the bat now for all the “she said jokes” you’ve just made.) Although to be honest, there are times when I feel sorry for them. I mean, mouths are disgusting places; I wouldn’t look in my mouth knowing all the things I’ve put in there. (Really? Again with the “she said?” If there was any other way to say this I would).

Anyways, they will then proceed to lecture you on the importance of flossing. If you were to listen to dentists, flossing would solve all of the world’s problems, including war and famine. Even though I don’t know any normal people that floss regularly (then again, I can’t say with any certainty I know any normal people period). Now I’ve been lucky enough to have pretty healthy teeth for most of my life, no braces and only a few cavities. But I just recently switched dentists, and apparently this guy has a very large grad school debt, because he was intent on finding things wrong with my mouth. They took out this thing they call a cavitron, which sounds more like a character from Transformers than something I would want to stick in my mouth. Speaking of characters from Transformers I would want to stick in my mouth, all of the critics need to stop criticizing Transformers 2 and Megan Fox. There was clearly a plot (robots fighting, Megan Fox, robots fighting, Megan Fox, guns) and character development (for instance, Megan Fox changed outfits several times).

Okay sorry, back to the point. My visit was almost over and I thought I was actually going to get out without something wrong with my teeth. I am clearly an idiot. Because my doctor said that I needed to remove another wisdom tooth, and frowned at my x-ray to show his level of concern. Having had multiple wisdom tooth surgeries, I still do not understand the whole concept. Apparently humans are filled with numerous body parts that we don’t actually need: appendixes, spleens, brains, etc. For some reason, we also have an extra pair of molars which we apparently evolved in order to eat trees. Or something like that; I could be mistaken with beavers. But apparently we stopped eating whatever we were eating because we stopped needing our third molars. So when these third molars come down from your brain or wherever teeth come from, they start messing up things in your jaw. But this is the part that still confuses me: not everyone has them. I’ve talked to people who have never had their wisdoms pulled, while others have all four pulled. For instance, the dentist said that my fourth tooth will probably never drop down so I don’t have to remove it. This concerns me, because that means it could be anywhere. For all I know I have a large hostile molar drifting around my brain, and one day I’m going to be talking and this tooth is going to stab my brain and I’m going to start seizing randomly.

So needless to say, I was a bit mad when I went in yesterday to have my surgery. Of course, it’s not the surgery I hate. The surgery in fact is awesome, thanks to the miracle of sedation. I just remember getting injected and the next thing I knew I was sitting on my couch at home feeling way happier than I should have considering there was a large bleeding hole in my mouth. It’s the recovery that isn’t too fun. First off, there is the aforementioned large bleeding hole in your mouth. You ever wonder why vampires are always so mean? It’s because blood does not taste good. And of course, that is all you will taste, because your dentist gives you a list of things that you can’t eat after surgery, which leaves you eating pudding for the next three days. They also told me to avoid strenuous activity, but that’s a personal policy I adhere to at all times anyway. On a positive note, they give you the tooth. I’m going to put it under my pillow and see what the tooth fairy gives me for it. I hope it’s a lot of money, because I needed the sedation mainly to deal with the bill.

I Can See Clearly Now

The one thing about going to school on the mainland is that I have to take care of all my medical visits during my short visits back to the islands. That means that my break is often a parade of physicals, teeth cleanings, pap smears, etc. Yesterday I once again found myself reading old issues of National Geographic and watching Discovery Health in the waiting room, this time while waiting for my eye exam. Supposedly you’re supposed to get your eyes checked every year or so, but I was going for an eye exam to get my prescription for new glasses. I play basketball with them, and being as I am a clumsy idiot, I eat it a lot and my glasses have numerous scratches on them from skidding across asphalt courts; as a result my vision is permanently interrupted by about twenty floating white objects. And good vision is very important and always has been, as we can see by bringing back our two cavemen, Wog and Oog.

Wog: What is that thing running towards us? Looks like a mammoth, no wait, maybe a bear. Hmm, should we run?

Oog: Don’t spear it, it could be my mother.

Wog: Okay, but if it is she’s slimmed down AHHH!!! (Wog is eaten by a large moose).

Oog: Mom?

I first figured out I needed glasses in the 8^th grade, particularly in my Algebra class. I would sit there in my sit and squint as hard as I could and try and make out what the teacher had written on the board, devastated that I couldn’t join my classmates on the journey of knowledge. Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating a bit. I actually just came in and went to sleep since I knew I couldn’t see what the heck the teacher was putting on the board. My algebra teacher just saw me there making faces at the board and muttering to myself and assumed I was retarded. So finally, I finally decided to get my eyes checked.

First, they check how well you can see without glasses, which means that poster with the big E on it. I’m not sure what that E is for; the doctors never even ask you to read it, they just start at the fifth line. I mean, the thing is huge, and even if you can’t actually see it, everybody knows it’s there. I mean, Stevie Wonder could walk into the room and read that top line. Then of course they tell you to cover your eye with what appears to be some kind of spatula they took out of their kitchen. Once you’re done with that, they put what appear to be fifty-pound metal glasses up against their faces and start to flip different lenses and ask you which one looks better. If you’ve never gone through this, it’s a lot more stressful than it looks. In the beginning, it easy because in lens two makes the words clear while lens one appears to be filled with giant black clouds. But as you go on, the difference becomes so small you have trouble making up your mind and you don’t want to choose the wrong one or else you’re going to be bumping into poles the rest of your life.

After a few routine tests, my optometrist decides he wants to inspect my eye. This is the part where he shines a light five times brighter than the sun and tells you to stare straight at it so he can see any injuries to your eye (aside from the one he’s causing with his light that is). Then it’s time to check your eye pressure, which is always my least favorite part. First off, I admit I’m a little sensitive about putting things near my eye; even eye drops freak me out. I always put the bottle above my eye and try and open my eye, but I always either end up blinking or missing and putting my eye drops down my nose or something (my fear of eye drops is yet another reason I prefer cocaine to marijuana). So for the eye pressure test, of course the first thing the doctor does is put in these numbing eye drops that it makes it feel like your eyelid is covered in road tar. Then he shows you what appears to be a large magic marker with a plastic tip and informs you he is going to poke you in the eye several times. I’m pretty sure if I heard that in normal situations I would cry, but at the moment the road tar in my eye has hardened and my eyelids aren’t working properly.

After all of these tests, the doctor finds that my vision hasn’t changed much. But then he starts talking to me about contacts, which I’ve never worn in my life. As I’ve mentioned before, my fear of putting things in my eye is the main reason, but they just look like a hassle. I’m sure you’ve been around someone with contacts before when they just all of a sudden double over in pain and start screaming and clawing at their eyes because one little fleck of dust got in their contacts. And then of course there’s always that one guy who loses his contacts and makes everybody stop what they are doing and crawl around on the ground looking for them (and of course 70% of the time they are just in the corner of his eye or on his nose or something). Besides, I think my glasses make me look sexy. If you agree with me, I think you might also need to get your eyes checked.

Final Answer: Just Shoot Me

Even though I am currently on summer break, my sister (who is a sophomore in high school) is still in school. Unfortunately for me, this means I have to drop her off at school in the morning, which means waking up early, something that I generally try to avoid. So now that I’m up in the morning, I’ve resumed an embarrassing habit that I have never told anyone about before: watching Live with Regis and Kelly. What, were you expecting me to say cocaine? Why would I have to wake up early in the morning to use cocaine? Why is cocaine use embarrassing?

Anyway, I love watching that show. Mainly because of Kelly Ripa, who is funny and pretty and for some reason has really muscular arms. Whereas Regis Philbin looks like a sad gerbil. I would probably still watch the show if it was called Live with a Random Hobo and Kelly, or Live with a Trained Monkey and Kelly. Regis just sits there and mumbles on about things that nobody outside of lower New York cares about while Kelly makes funny jokes and looks good. Plus, Regis has the worst taste in sports; I mean he’s a fan of the New York Yankees and Notre Dame football, which are both in my top ten list of sports teams I wouldn’t mind seeing deported to Sweden (along with the Lakers, University of Florida, and the entire National Hockey League).

I realize I may be ragging on Regis here, but I frankly think I am justified. My family used to watch Who Wants to be a Millionaire back when Regis hosted it and to me, deciding who to punch, Regis or the retarded contestant, was harder than the actual questions on the show. I mean, they would get a $1000 question that asked something like “Which of these fruits has seeds on the outside: a) strawberries b) peaches c) potatoes d) Ford F-150s.” And instead of just saying the correct answer (kiwis), the contestant will start to explain what interesting (as in boring to everybody else) event in their sad lives enlightened them to such an earth shattering realization as strawberries having seeds on the outside. It’s like therapy or those stupid ice breakers they always make you do when you go to club conventions. (Has anyone else noticed that when they ask you to name something interesting about yourself, everyone always talks about the bones they’ve broken? You don’t see me talking about my STDs to break the ice, so I don’t care that you once broke your collarbone.) Anyway, once this is done, Regis would ask “final answer?” as many times as possible, as if he were getting paid each time he said it. If one child died every time Regis said “final answer” China could stop drowning baby girls.

Anyway, getting back to my point, which was… er… oh yeah, Regis and Kelly. So anyway, I was watching an episode last week where Regis challenges a 100-year old woman named Emma Hendrickson to a bowling match. Sadly, she did not beat Regis, but she was still impressive none the less. She bowled a 64, which actually is below the average she normally posts in her bowling club. On a good day I can maybe bowl a 55. Since bowling is one of the few things to do at night in Kona, my friends and I used to go bowling a lot in high school, which most people are surprised to find out once they see how badly we suck. We would get our butts kicked in a Special Olympics bowling tournament. A friend and I once failed to break 50… with our scores combined (I had a 33, he had 10). So the fact that this 100-year old woman is still bowling these kinds of scores is inspiring. I would be happy if was peeing without any help at 50, much less still coherent at 100.

But anyway, watching Regis and Kelly along with countless elderly people around the world (the only other people in the world who wake up early) and watching this 100-year-old woman made me start thinking about getting old. I often felt that I would make a great old person. Sitting on a porch wearing adult diapers with a shotgun while farting and scowling freely sounds like something that I could get used to (actually, I already do these things). Also, nobody would tease me when I forget everything and don’t speak proper English. They would say “Aw, look at the old man.” Whereas now they just say “How the hell did you make it into college?” Speaking of college, I think dorm life is great preparation for retirement life. Think about it, we lived with other people our age, ate dinner at 5, anxiously waited for mail, and Jeopardy was a major event in our day. The only things missing were bocce ball tournaments and Viagra parties (well, at least the bocce ball…).

Anyway, I have been inspired by Ms. Hendrickson to live a long and fulfilling life. So I’ve decided that once I retire, I’m going to go on tour doing those eating challenges. You know the ones where if you eat an entire cow’s worth of steak you get it for free and they give you a cheap T-shirt? Those. I also plan to die while doing one of these when I’m 100. I’ll just fall face first into a five-pound steak in the middle of one of my greatest feats, like Houdini. Maybe Regis and Kelly will do a story on me and I will be a Jeopardy clue. And of course Regis Philbin and Alex Trebek will still be hosting these shows. Because evil never dies.

Losing Weight the Easy Way With Swine Flu

So in light of the fact that our school is currently in the middle of finals week, I found myself at 2 in the morning doing what any good college student would do to prepare for final exams: watching TV. You see, I figured out from the national media that I’m going to die of the swine flu pretty soon, so why should I care about finals? But seriously, you would think the way the country was reacting to the swine flu that it actually was dangerous or something. At least in salmonella and mad cow scares I get to buy cheap peanut butter and steaks, but this epidemic is just irritating. I mean the Jonas Brothers give me nausea and diarrhea, but you don’t see Dr. Sanjay Gupta doing reports on them do you?

Anyway, so we were watching TV for the better part of four hours even though we never actually found anything interesting to watch. As we were flipping through the channels, I realized that Americans truly are the laziest people in the world (the French come close considering all they do is sit in cafes and snicker at American tourists and say things in funny accents). But I realized we are still the champs of laziness as I watched countless infomercials for workout machines. I mean in the span of an hour, I saw infomercials for Total Gym, Ab Wheel, and a few other weird contraptions that looked like they were taken either from a daycare playground or Guantanamo Bay.

The whole concept of these weird workout machines is suspect for several reasons. For one thing, people watching TV at 3 in the morning are generally not the type of people who have a whole lot of motivation to lose weight (for instance, Ian and I were sitting there watching these workout infomercials while eating two plates of Chinese food each). Secondly, none of these things work. They all try and tell you that you can get “rock hard abs” and a “sleek physique” in something like ten minutes a day and will take all of the work out of getting in shape (never mind that the “work” part is what actually makes you lose weight). These machines always let you do something that you can do without a machine. So they always say something to the effect that sit-ups and push-ups are for cavemen and poor people in Darfur. They say that sit-ups only work part of your abs, while the Ab Wheel works all of your abs in addition to your legs, your core, and the inside of your uterus.

By the way, have you ever noticed that the people using the machine are already really fit and good-looking? Sure they always show those success stories, but I’ve always been suspicious of those. For one thing, apparently these people just take pictures of themselves in underwear when they are fat, just in case they ever do get fit so they can do the whole before and after thing. Also, if they just started selling the Ab Wheel, how did these people get one? Did they sneak a bunch of bootlegged Ab Wheels to some fat people so they could have something for the commercials when they released them to the public?

Plus, nobody that orders these things will ever use them. I would estimate that at least 75% of the nation’s garage space is occupied by unused workout equipment. I would know, because my garage at home is filled with useless expensive things like the Inversion Table, which my mother bought to “straighten her back.” An inversion table basically is the same type of device Dick Cheney has at home for waterboarding terrorists and insolent family members. You strap yourself onto this table and it flips you upside down, straightening out your back and giving you massive brain hemorrhaging. Needless to say, my mom and my sister used it for a few weeks, then their attention span ran out and they moved onto the next workout machine like a retarded kid running through a wishing well getting distracted by all of the coins.

You see, the biggest reason that people aren’t fit is that normal people don’t have the time or motivation to stick with a workout program. You ever seen that show “The Biggest Loser”? They basically take fat people, stick them in an isolated mansion, give them professional trainers with expensive equipment, cook them gourmet healthy meals, and then act surprised when they lose weight. I mean, give me a break, it would be embarrassing if you didn’t lose weight when the only thing you have to do all day is try and lose weight. Unfortunately, the rest of us out in the real world have jobs and school, which is why normal people, instead of working out, are eating cheeseburgers while typing out reports at 2 in the morning.

But now that finals are over and I have the entire summer, I’m going to try and get back into shape (although that statement implies that I was once “in-shape”). As a little extra motivation, I am competing with Chris and Ian to see who can get into the best shape (whatever that shape may turn out to be). I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to go about doing this, but I think my mom might still have some of those Tae-Bo videos lying around somewhere. It’ll give me something to watch while I eat Chinese food.

Bad Medicine

I was feeling some pain in my knee the past few days (as people observed, “Mitchell, you’re walking even weirder than usual”), so I decided to see the doctor regarding my sore knee. I was pretty sure that my knee would get better on its own anyway, but I figured it would do me good to visit the doctor to get a general check-up since the last time I had been in a doctor’s office was four years ago. I now remember why I haven’t gone to the doctor in four years.

First you have to make an appointment time to see the physician. Of course, when they tell you that your appointment is at 3:45, what they mean is that the doctor is waking up at 3:45 that day. To bide your time, the hospital begins to start throwing random paperwork at you to fill out in the waiting room. At one point I was pretty sure I was filling out a magazine subscription order for the National Geographics they keep in the room.

Once you’re done with the paperwork (allow three to four days) a nurse comes to check you in. Now, I’m not going to argue with nurses and doctors since they all learned stuff at school while I’m trying to figure out how to order pizza. But I never got the reasoning that the best way to determine my health is to stick random things in my ear. Ears don’t serve any purpose. God gave men ears so that women would think we were actually listening (he didn’t want us to actually listen though, or he would have also given us brains). And yet here are these nurses spending all their time on my ear even though I had specified earlier that my problem was in my knee (which when I last looked, is about as far away from my ear as you can get).

Finally, the nurse is done checking you in and you get to see the doctor. Or, at least you get to see the doctor’s office. The nurse then tells you to sit on this stupid little table covered in giant toilet paper (of course, with my knee, I struggled to even get onto the table). The nurse just leaves you in there, telling you that the doctor will be with you in a short while. In reality you will sit in that room so long you forget why you came there in the first place (I think the hospital is secretly hoping you will die in the room so they don’t have to treat you). During my time there, I read the college degrees on the wall (all in Latin), a poster on how to stay healthy in foreign countries (avoid Mexico) and the instructions on a blood pressure monitor (made in China). At one point, the doctor poked her head in to inform me she would be with me shortly, but told me in a cheerful voice that she had to stop some bleeding. Then she smiled and left. At that point I considered running, since this woman was clearly crazy (but then I remembered I can’t run, which is why I was there in the first place).

Let me digress for a second. The last time I had been to the doctor was in my junior year to get my physical so I could swim for the high school. Now, every year I got my physical from one of two doctors. One of them was an older doctor who clearly did not give a flying fig about my health. He was my favorite. He would just look at me to make sure I wasn’t dead, ask me a few questions (“You dead?”) and then sign my physical. But Dr. Fong was a different story. He went through all of the questions on my physical, including the dreaded cough test (for women who may not know what this is, the doctor takes his cold, gloved hands, and then does something that you normally have to pay women to do).

Anyway, my doctor finally came in, and the conversation went like this:

Me: My knee hurts, especially when I bend it.

Doctor: (Bends knee) Like this?

Me: OWWWWW YES YES YES STOP!

Doctor: Hmm, pain when knee is bent.

She then asked me if I had done anything to make my knee worse since it started to hurt. I said no of course, even though since my knee started hurting I had played basketball, frisbee, bowling, and fallen down the stairs. I’m pretty sure she knew I was lying, cause she then sent me down to radiology to get my knee x-rayed. If you have never gotten an x-ray, it is not as cool as it sounds. For one, thing, there is no way the whole process is safe for humans. First, the radiologist (in my case, a woman with a thick Russian accent, probably named Helga) aims this huge contraption hanging from the ceiling at you. Then she puts a metal jacket on you that soldiers in Iraq would love to have. Then the radiologist runs behind what appears to be a bomb shelter to press a button that sends radioactive waves to liquidize your kidney. My doctor then showed me my x-rays five minutes later, which is pretty useless considering even though she apparently could distinguish many things from it, she could have showed me the blueprints to the building and I wouldn’t have noticed a difference.

So finally, she told me she wasn’t exactly sure what it was. Doctors never do. The only doctor that will ever know what is wrong with you is the coroner. The doctor guessed that I probably just had a knee sprain or strain with some fluid buildup and told me to ice my knee, take some pills, and don’t run around. Which is what I figured before I went to the doctor (even though I have done none of the things she had recommended). So I learned absolutely nothing from my three hour visit. Except that when I get sick, I’m skipping the doctor and driving straight to the mortuary.