Potbellied Jogging

I don't understand runners.

You'd think I'd understand a bit more about them than I do, but I don't. Half of my friends are racing/ jogging/ runner-health machines that crack walnuts with thighs (probably their own) and can wind-sprint past cheetahs (a handy skill here in the states).

They know what a trans fat is.

They know how many calories they should be ingesting each day... and ingest accordingly! This blows my mind, as it should be noted I am typing this blog with Cheeto fingers.

To each their own I guess, but it effects my life. And when you mess with the Big Bull's life, you're catching the horns (I, for the purposes of that last sentence, will be "The Big Bull". No one has ever referred to me as a The Big Bull, nor do I resemble anything that might garner such a nickname, but it sounded cool and since no one will call me "Duke", I'll try Big Bull for a while).

I got off the topic. What was I saying?

Do trans fats hinder one's shirt-term memory?

Ah wait, I remember now... my healthy friends.

And we're back.

Running itself confuses me. It's so simple.

It's too simple.

It's suspiciously simple.

I'm wary. Wary mostly of the runners themselves. The runners that I am aquainted with are not, by and large, simple people. They are complicated highly intellectual beings of muscle, blood and tissue. Nothing else that they do is simple, except for running. It's like everytime they decide to run, something snaps in them and they turn primalistic. One minute they are developing new theories on binary logarithms and the next they drop everything to go run in a circle for twenty minutes.

It doesn't add up.

Runners always say that running helps them think. How powerful must those thoughts be to get physically propelled onward by them? I consider myself a fairly introspective cat, but usually smoking a pipe and watching rain droplets slide down the pane of a big bay window is all I need to explore my inner self. Is no one else worried about the thoughts swirling in a person's head whose best response is to exhaustingly speed away?

Why is no one looking into this?

The head-clearing joggers are the ones that scare me; the healthnik joggers are the ones that I can deal with. But even with the healthniks, I still sense a large disconnect.

I guess the largest disconnect between myself and runners is my metabolism. Up until now (and I suspect for another seven years or so) I have been blessed with a metabolism that allows me to eat fried chicken and orange sodapop for three weeks straight and at the conclusion of that time, be six to seven pounds lighter than when I started.

When you are young and don't gain weight, running doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Not that I'm necessarily bragging about my metabolism. I'm in big trouble when my metabolism finally gets winded. I'll have the eating habits of the entire Florida State football team and have no way to combat it.

And that's another problem that I not only have with runners and healthniks, but that they have with me as well. I try to treat all people with respect and dignity, I try to make everyone laugh, I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

I listen.

I care (or at least try to care) about people's problems and yet, by the end of the year, my hyperspeed metabolism is going to make all the healthniks in my aquaintence angered. If you are not a healthy eater, you are probably a disgusting eater. Healthy people eating healthy things and living healthy lives look up from their roasted chicken salad, fresh granny apple and ripoff bottled spring water with the same disgusted look Lemmon gave Mathau in 'The Odd Couple' at the sight of me squirting Cheez-Whizz onto a hunk of beef jerky wearing nothing but boxer shorts and a Calvin & Hobbes tee-shirt.

And I can't say I blame them. Come to think of it, I really should be dead by now.

Runners and various other healthy types seem really bothered by people like me that still enjoy a good Big Mac. The McDonalds coorporation has really taken a beating in the last decade or so for being so horrifically unhealthy. But I'd like to defend a multi-billion dollar coorporation. 

Why I am doing that, I have no idea.

McDonalds was founded in 1948, but didn't become the fast food gotham that it is today until 1956. Back then, citizens smoked and wrestled alligators and huffed glue and no one realized that any of that was bad for us. Maurice and Richard McDonald (along with the help of mogul Ray Kroc) just wanted some cheap eats that arrived quickly. You runners should understand wanting to arrive places quicker - it's why you run. It takes a certain amount of chemicals to allows each menu ingredient to taste okay and remain on the ready for any passerby with a hankering for french fries, okay? So sue them if they tried to make our lives more convenient.
Skip ahead forty years. Our society decides it's too fat and plays the blame game with food and all food preparers. Whether it's the gym rats filling their heads with such things as lean-fat-to-muscle ratio or carbs-per-meal; nature geeks who enjoy a good swamp swim, braiding their hair so's not having to wash it and would rather forage for roots from the hiking path; or runners who jog for miles and miles on end with their iPod's strapped onto their bicycle shorts, jugs of water clipped to their biceps and guilt strapped to their brain because they added peanut butter to their celery stalks; they all came to the decision that McDonalds needs to get healthy or get gone.

But McDonalds didn't start out evil. It only appeared evil as we all started appearing fatter. Asking McDonalds to get healthy or get gone just because we evolved into healthniks is like asking baseball to incorporate tackles just because we now embrace football as our national pasttime.

Baseball is not about tackles and McDonalds shouldn't be villified for doing what they do.
What they've always done.

I apologize. McDonalds is very near and dear to my heart. We've gone through a lot of tough times (and McNuggets*) together and it pains me so, to see McDonalds lavished in such acidity.

So what is to be done? What is the understanding that I can come to? One day I will either a) be a fatty or b) be healthy: neither option of which I am looking forward to. But in the end, I am fairly physically active enough that it will just come down to paying attention to what I eat. And that will only happen under one condition...

I'm going to have to marry a woman who will cook healthy meals.

Now don't get up in arms. I'm not hunting for a wife to cook and clean and remain barefoot and pregnant. I've said many times before, I will do everything else. I will wash the dishes and shop for groceries and take out the trash and raise the children while my wife gets pedicures and shelter her from both her mother and my own - whatever she wants, so long as she cooks nice meals for me. That's it.

Well, okay that's not quite it. It's also important that she have a cool rock'n'roll name. I've always imagined being married to a woman named Bernadette and whenever we found ourselves in a big argument, I'd just break into The Four Tops' song:


Bernadette!
In your arms I find the kind of peace of mind the world is searching for.
But you, you give me the joy this heart of mine has always been longing for.
In you I have what other men long for.
All men need someone to worship and adore.
That's why I treasure you and place you high above.
For the only joy in life is to be loved.
So whatever you do, [Bernadette]
Keep on loving me, [Bernadette]
Keep on needing me, [Bernadette]
Bernadette!

And of course, I'd scream my wife's name each time the lyric warranted it (just like The Four Tops did) and my wife would remember why she fell so madly in love with me in the first place. I guess it doesn't have to be Bernadette necessarily. Layla or PeggySue or Freebird** will all suffice.

But if I am willing to ask so little from my own wife, is it wrong to ask that runners find a larger purpose for their activity than to carry hectic thoughts? Is that so awful of me?

Instead of running around and around without accomplishing much (besides exhaustion), why not play a sport instead? *** Or if competition doesn't put wind in your sails, why not try stealing something before you go running? Steal something of incredible value, something that will sure to get you noticed. Not only would this get you running, but the adrenaline alone would carry you for at least 50 miles before becoming winded. And not only that, but you'd have huge calves and sudden wealth.

Or you'd go to jail.

Either way, running would be much more worthwhile, n'est-ce pas?


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* While on the subject of McNuggets, I'm tired of all the naysayers out there claiming that a McNugget isn't real chicken. You know what? You don't know that. How dare you judge something solely on how it appears. True, a McNugget doesn't appear to be any real part of a chicken, but you've never talked to a McNugget. You've never asked a McNugget what it's life is like, or what it's feeling. You're just prejudiced. You people don't know what makes a McNugget a McNugget and so you automatically hate it? For shame. Most of you people could not build a television from scratch, you wouldn't know what parts are used in creating a television, but does that stop you from enjoying the programming a television has to offer?

No.

I hope you've all learned something here today.

** I am not opposed to marrying Native Americans.

*** Pick a sport other than soccer though. Soccer is just another example of running around and around without accomplishing much (besides exhaustion). So if you pick soccer, you might as well just stick with running.