Quest for Fitness

It's important to be specific, at least about certain things. For that matter, it is important to know the difference between those things that demand specificity and those that don't.

For example, if your mate smiles beatifically and says, "What a lovely morning it is." and you reply, "Just exactly which aspects of this morning contain loveliness, in ranked order from least to greatest?", be aware that you are about to be struck with a frying pan or golf club or whatever solid object happens to be handy. So don't do that. Consider it an important safety tip.

Health and fitness goals, in contrast, are best spelled out in detail. It's not a law, but as a general rule most people do better at sticking to icky diets and sweaty exercises if they have pre-defined numeric objectives and a well defined plan for how to reach them and when.

Making a deal with the Devil works, but you have to be extremely careful, because Old Scratch is a tricky son of a puppy. You gotta cover every loophole because if you leave out just one little thing (like dying, for example) he will jump on that and it will bite you in the butt. You can't just say "I would like to make a deal for health improvement in 90 days, please." No! Sure as anything, 90 days after the blood dries on the contract you'll wake up with lots of muscles and washboard abs in a Federal penitentiary or working as an intern in Bill Clinton's office.

Unequivocal definition is critical. The Devil might well consider liberating your soul from your body to be "health improvement". And when you are flying down through the floor toward a light with a suspiciously reddish tint, it is way too late to complain about the way the terms were interpreted. Your attorney will join you soon enough, but that may provide slight consolation.

Some people, knowing that the Devil aways finds a way to take something away to spoil the benefits, will try to target the inevitable loss. "Oh Mr Lucifer, sir, I would truly love to have a physique like Olympic swimmer Micheal Phelps/Amanda Beard so I could impress the hotties down on the boulevard." Try that and you'll find yourself buff, but with no drivers license and your fancy Covette convertible destroyed in a mysterious fire. That's okay if you were planning to get rid of that car anyway and you can take the bus to work, but don't let The Dark One catch on that you played him or the next thing you smell burning might be you.

So I'm not doing that. As tempting as instant fitness via Satanic intervention might be in exchange for a few eons in purgatory, we all have limitations, and one of mine is that I can't play poker. People always know when I am bluffing, so there is no way I could be tricky enough to outwit The Trickster. For me, this is a "don't even go there" proposition. I really have no choice but to do it the old-fashioned way. As distasteful as it may sound, I will have to lose weight and get in shape using diet and exercise.

Welcome then, to Day One of my 2009 six-week fitness quest.

Are we TOO secure?

This week I will be changing online banks. I don't want to. The bank I am leaving provides excellent service at good prices. They are large and established and I trust them. As a company, I would deal with them with confidence for years.

But I can't log in to my account.

It's those damn security questions everybody wants you to answer these days. They frustrate me to no end and I always end up wondering if it is possible that I could be that much different than everyone else around me. Do people really actually truly have fixed answers to these obscure queries? In most cases I do not.

What is your favorite color?

When I was a child I played favorites with all of the other children. Not far into adolescense I decided that having favorites was limiting, so I tried to open up my mind to be more flexible. I can possibly tell you what color appeals to me this morning, but I would not have a clue what color I was enjoying six months ago when I was forced to log an answer to that question while filling out a security question screen.

What is your favorite sports team?

I like golf and tennis and swimming and Olympic sports. I don't have any favorite team. Am I really alone in this? Apparently so.

Even when they get away from the dreaded favorites and try to ask questions with specific answers, I am still in trouble.

What was the name of your elementary school?

Which one? We moved to three different states when I was in elementary school. Perhaps they are asking for my favorite elementary school. Oh oh, I didn't have one.

What is the name of your favorite teacher?

Here, I almost have an answer! My second grade teacher was a great influence who helped inspire a love of learning. But wait, I had her in both second and fourth grades, and she got married while I was in third (I am not making this up), so she had two different names. Once again we have no single fixed answer.

What is the name of your best childhood friend?

Forget it. Lots of friends, not one comes to memory as "best", all great. What is this fascination with ranking things. Do people really live in this Highlander mindset where in every category "There Can Be Only One"? Perhaps I am actually a space alien and don't know it. It appears my brain does not function like those of the humans around me.

What is the name of your favorite movie?

Oh PLEASE give me a break here! How is one supposed to choose between classics like Die Hard I, II, or III?

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Most companies do give you a list of security questions and ask you to select the ones you want to use. I frantically scroll down the list looking for the only two I know I can answer:

What is your mother's maiden name?
What is your father's middle name?

Got 'em! Whew!! Two questions with fixed answers that never change. However, apparently those are too easy for a determined hacker to figure out through research, so they look for "soft" questions with answers that only exist in your head. Good. I understand the reason for those other questions, but I definitely do not like the questions they give.

In the case of the bank I am leaving, they require you have six of their obscure questions answered in your customer profile, then they pick three randomly out of a hat and demand answers to all three periodically or you are locked out of your account. I am locked out because I keep getting one wrong, and they don't tell you which one. So I am condemned to spending an hour on the phone with a helpful voice from Bangalore proving my identity seventeen different ways so I can get the block removed, after which I'm not sure I'll be able to log in anyway because next time I still might get one of the answers wrong again.

Hey! How about letting me define my own questions? Trust me to come up with stuff that cannot be Googled up from public records. Let me define both the question and the answer, and we are golden!

What is the name of the person you first had sex with, not in the Bill Clinton sense, but the "all-the-way, now you're going to hell" kind?

That seems a practical question for anyone but a Bill Clinton type, for whom the list is so long that the beginning may be forgotten.

What kind of weapon was in the hand of the first person who seriously thought about killing you, but didn't?

(Trust me, you don't forget that.)

What was the amount of the bet the time you won $500 on a slot machine in Las Vegas?

If this has happened to you more than once I hate you and you don't deserve my sympathy.

What kind of security question do you find the most frustrating?

Gee... I think that last one is my favorite.

The Twenty-First Century

Oh for goodness sake. It is 2009, and I really (really) thought I would be over the whole "year 2000" thing by now. But noooooooo...

Now, we are far enough into the new century (how far is a matter of dispute, but I get ahead of myself) for there to be articles, blogs, even books chronicling historical events that cross over the line betwixt the end of the twentieth century and the start of the twenty-first, which was also the vastly larger transition between the end of the second millenium and start of the third.

And that brings my old heartburn right back again. Here we are, partying like its 1999. Which, as we all (should) know was the year BEFORE the last year of the twentieth century, 2000, which obviously was the year before the FIRST year of the twenty-first century, 2001.

Why is this such a difficult concept? Why do people take for granted the rudimentary math error which had them calling the "year 2000 bug" the Millennium bug, despite the fact it took effect a full year before the turn of the actual millenium?

Look. If you're not following because you've been brainwashed by fiendish statisticians, here's how it goes: There was no year zero AD. The first year of the A.D. epoch was 1. That makes the last year of the first century 100 and the first year of the second century 101. Extending it out, the last year of the first millennium was 1000, making the first year of the second millenium 1001, and so on.

Now... admittedly even I am not so pendantic as to insist on the mathmatically correct statement that the last year of the 1960's was actually 1970 (although it technically was) and that the year 1960 was part of the '50s (it really was). It's just simpler to think of decades by their starting number, and I'm okay with that. However, centuries and millennia are just too darn important and, well... BIG, to mess with that way.

If there was a virus that would take effect on April first, would you call it "the March Thirty-First Virus"? If you had a vacation day scheduled for Labor Day Monday, would you call it the Sunday Labor Day holiday? Wouldn't make sense, would it? So why do people just nod and accept the Millennium Counting Error (or MCE, as I've just now named it)?

And yet I just read an article about the late (and wonderful) comedic actress Madeline Kahn, who died in 1999. The article went on about how terrific it is that her final movie was released in 2000, making her career extend into the new millennium. Excuse me? As much as I love and respect and cherish the memory of Ms Kahn, her last film was released during the last year of the 2nd millennium A.D., not the first year of the third.

Can we please just put this to bed and agree that I am right and everyone else is wrong. Again. Please? Maybe??

Baby Bat with Hiccups

Still stinging from the loss of my former friends the turtles, I seek solace with other denizens of the animal kingdom.

Fortunately, I was raised by bats, and they still remember me.

Traitorous Turtle

It happened to me. To me, the one person everybody thought was safe, but no... I don't know if I can ever trust my friends the turtles again. I guess I have to start calling them my former friends, but how can I just give up the bond we shared?

Here it is on video. I was just cleaning his shell, that's all. My old buddy Gamera. Gamera the gentle, Gamera the wise and witty. How could I have known he harbored a secret taste; a yen for human flesh? If I can no longer trust the turtles, who on Earth can I believe?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEFTcJlxf_k