I'm experiencing extreme withdrawal. If any of you have ever been addicted to heroin, tips would be much appreciated right now. Today is the first day of six 30-day trials, the most important being a rerun, a classic, a killer, a challenge about which epic love songs have been written - no sugar. I don't know why I do this to myself, I would not approve if I were me. So far I've managed to slip into daydreams about candy roughly every 10 minutes. If I could just do a reality check every time I craved a piece of chocolate, I'd have already had 50 lucid dreams today.
The other trials are:
2. 300 pushups / planks mix & match, where a 2 minute plank is equivalent to 50 pushups. In 30 days, my lower back will have bigger pecs than my chest and I won't be able to do planks anymore because my abs will touch the ground. Children will use me as a rocking horse.
3. Read with Yuan Yuan in English for 30 minutes. Currently we're halfway through Lamb (The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal), hopefully we'll finish that this month. I'm accepting suggestions for the next book. Candidates need to be either extremely funny, or at a middle school reading level.
4. Being vegetarian. Piece of cake as chocolate is the only meat I care about.
5. Stretching - 2 mins each of 5 different stretches. I hear that being flexible can extend your lifespan and it makes sense; corpses are the least flexible people I've ever met.
6. Blogging every day. This one started yesterday. I've failed the previous two times I attempted this one, but will never admit it.
No sugar is undoubtedly the hardest; I've yet to invent a doable 30-day trial that's harder. Even the trial of doing 25 pushups every time I wanted to sit down, and the trial of no sitting down at all for 30 days (except to poop), pale in comparison. I've been to the fridge more times than I've done pushups and there's never anything new there. I've forgotten all about Mario. Unless it's secretly him that my subconscious is looking for in the fridge.
Showing posts with label sugar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sugar. Show all posts
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Breaking News: Milk-in-a-bag Spoils
I made an absolutely stunning discovery today, truly world-tipping, given a flat or cow-shaped world, and mind-blowing, given you have a mind and not just a head full of brain. I had just gone five straight minutes without consuming something sugar-rich and nutrient-free...which reminds me, why don't they print that on snacks? I want to go into the store and see an honest Coke can that says in big letters cut from a Santa Claus suit: "No nutrients. Just calories." Assuming Nike doesn't own the rights to that phrase yet. Then I'll probably look around to make sure no one's watching me and grab the Coke Zero instead. They could be making billions with this strategy. If only people were up to date on their Jewish humor.*
Where was I...ah yea, I had just gone five straight minutes without consuming something sugar-rich and nutrient-free and was crawling like the legless T800 from the bed to the squat little table that houses all my snacks, intent on making myself a cup of coffee. The current coffee-making procedure, honed by a year of...honing, is as follows:
1. Buy a 90 (Chinese) cent packet of coffee+sugar+stuff-not-on-ingredients-list.
2. Buy a 200ml bag of milk.
3. Get a Chinese girlfriend.
4. Wait till said girlfriend gives you a cup for a present. It's one of those few things in the universe that even entropy is powerless to prevent. That and my pants from falling down without a belt.
5. Take the cup and fill it with recently boiled water, which will be known as "really hot water" from now on.
6. Wait 10 seconds. Empty the cup.
7. Pour the contents of the coffee packet into the cup.
8. Fill the cup approximately halfway with really hot water.
9. Mix.
10. Add milk to taste.
You know those games where you can't save? Where you go back to the very beginning if you die? Think Wii Tanks, the original Prince of Persia, Einhander. When you first start playing the game, it's mildly annoying, having to redo the first 2-3 levels over and over. Then as you get better things get a whole lot worse. By the time you can make it to the second to last boss, you probably have no hair left and the walls are spattered with blood.
Something similar happened here. I fulfilled all the requirements. I bought the coffee, wooed the Chinese girl, got my cup and all for nothing! Cause when I added the milk, my coffee turned into a Pollock painting, though slightly better-looking. The milk had gone sour. I smelled it to be sure. Who knew? Maybe those chunks coming out of the bag were chunks of unspoiled milk. They weren't.
However, on the whole this blood-curdling experience has led to a very positive discovery. Namely that the "milk-in-a-bag" is real milk! Hmm, that might be a bit of a stretch. Ok, it contains real milk. No, still not it...ok, it has something organic as an ingredient. And it's taken me a year to discover this as no matter how long I've kept the milk-in-a-bag unrefrigerated prior to today, it has never gone bad. Bag open, bag closed, bag empty with the contents in a puddle on the floor...never. If it weren't for the lack of coffee coating my synapses, I'd have jumped up and down excitedly. As it was I crawled back to the bed empty-stomached and gagging on an unwritten blog entry and sour milk fumes.
* Two beggars are sitting reclined against a wall, their cups in front of them. Each one also has a sign.
One sign says: "Please help an old war veteran."
The other sign says: "Please help an old Jew."
The passers-by provide a continuous stream of coins into the soldier's cup while largely ignoring and often snickering at the Jew.
Finally one passer-by asks the Jew: "why don't you change your sign? Can't you see you're getting nowhere with this one?"
At this, the Jew turns to the other beggar and says: "Did you hear that, Moishe? This goy wants to teach us how to run our business!"
Where was I...ah yea, I had just gone five straight minutes without consuming something sugar-rich and nutrient-free and was crawling like the legless T800 from the bed to the squat little table that houses all my snacks, intent on making myself a cup of coffee. The current coffee-making procedure, honed by a year of...honing, is as follows:
1. Buy a 90 (Chinese) cent packet of coffee+sugar+stuff-not-on-ingredients-list.
2. Buy a 200ml bag of milk.
3. Get a Chinese girlfriend.
4. Wait till said girlfriend gives you a cup for a present. It's one of those few things in the universe that even entropy is powerless to prevent. That and my pants from falling down without a belt.
5. Take the cup and fill it with recently boiled water, which will be known as "really hot water" from now on.
6. Wait 10 seconds. Empty the cup.
7. Pour the contents of the coffee packet into the cup.
8. Fill the cup approximately halfway with really hot water.
9. Mix.
10. Add milk to taste.
You know those games where you can't save? Where you go back to the very beginning if you die? Think Wii Tanks, the original Prince of Persia, Einhander. When you first start playing the game, it's mildly annoying, having to redo the first 2-3 levels over and over. Then as you get better things get a whole lot worse. By the time you can make it to the second to last boss, you probably have no hair left and the walls are spattered with blood.
Something similar happened here. I fulfilled all the requirements. I bought the coffee, wooed the Chinese girl, got my cup and all for nothing! Cause when I added the milk, my coffee turned into a Pollock painting, though slightly better-looking. The milk had gone sour. I smelled it to be sure. Who knew? Maybe those chunks coming out of the bag were chunks of unspoiled milk. They weren't.
However, on the whole this blood-curdling experience has led to a very positive discovery. Namely that the "milk-in-a-bag" is real milk! Hmm, that might be a bit of a stretch. Ok, it contains real milk. No, still not it...ok, it has something organic as an ingredient. And it's taken me a year to discover this as no matter how long I've kept the milk-in-a-bag unrefrigerated prior to today, it has never gone bad. Bag open, bag closed, bag empty with the contents in a puddle on the floor...never. If it weren't for the lack of coffee coating my synapses, I'd have jumped up and down excitedly. As it was I crawled back to the bed empty-stomached and gagging on an unwritten blog entry and sour milk fumes.
* Two beggars are sitting reclined against a wall, their cups in front of them. Each one also has a sign.
One sign says: "Please help an old war veteran."
The other sign says: "Please help an old Jew."
The passers-by provide a continuous stream of coins into the soldier's cup while largely ignoring and often snickering at the Jew.
Finally one passer-by asks the Jew: "why don't you change your sign? Can't you see you're getting nowhere with this one?"
At this, the Jew turns to the other beggar and says: "Did you hear that, Moishe? This goy wants to teach us how to run our business!"
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Rash Decisions And Other Staples
Today is the third day of a really nutty 30 day trial. The rules of the trial are a bit ambiguous, but several items have been agreed upon:
1. No sweets (excluding ones that grow on trees (excluding ones that grow on trees in Johnny Depp's Chocolate Factory (exluding ones that also grow on trees outside the factory))).
We can pretty much stop here because it's already enough for full-scale clinical depression. I'm an extreme sugar fiend. I eat chocolate before and after a meal, floss my teeth with Twizzlers and use a Jawbreaker for a retainer. When I make myself a cup of tea, it doesn't matter in the least what flavor the tea it is because I drown the flavor in copious amounts of miracle powder. In fact, if I can tell what flavor tea I'm having by the time I finish a cup, I make an appointment with my physician; it is extremely aberrant.
So it's day three now, and I can't help but notice that I suddenly have tons of free time. At least three extra hours. Granted, now I spend them prostrate on the floor of my room, suffering from withdrawal, but they're extra nonetheless. If you could have an extra few hours of life every day with no ultimate changes to your lifespan, with the "BUT" (fancy word for "caveat") being that they were full of suffering, would you take them? I would without a second thought, but only if I were on a 30-day trial of taking them.
Generally, I'm feeling more deflated across the board (hmm, can't think of a way to not be redundant in this sentence, oh well). I experienced this before - during my 4th attempt to quit drinking soda. The abrupt disappearance of the sugar high renders life gray and uninteresting. I'm sure glad I'm giving up sugar and not heroin (NEVER giving that one up).
2. No snacking. Only eat when hungry.
Snacking all but disappears when you eliminate sugar from your diet. Now I only have the urge to snack every three minutes as opposed to after every successful swallow. I spend a lot of time in my room upstairs working up my hunger to earn permission to indulge my mouth. "I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I'm hungry," is the mantra of the month.
3. Decide what to do for the generalized version of this 30 day trial.
The original plan was to give up all impulses. Obviously this is only feasible for living Buddhas and select igneous rocks, but there's a saying about bars and settings that's popular in this house - something along the lines of "set the bar high for everyone else." After much fruitless discussion, we decided to start off with the obvious sacrifices - #1 and #2 (not the ones you're thinking of...well...definitely not the ones you're thinking of after reading this sentence), and then kick it into high gear the second to last or last week of the trial. I'll let you know how that goes if it goes anywhere.
Went to New York today as a chaperone for Gene on his field trip to the dentist. Gene dropped me off at 80th and Broadway and went off to the torture chamber. I took a slow walk to Barnes and Noble a few blocks away, scaring pidgins and people with my hasn't-seen-the-light-of-day-for-months pale zombie face, and read about three pages in half an hour. I decided I was better at walking and went back out to partake of some pollution.
Later, I came to check up on Gene and he was still being held prisoner. The warden said he was due for release soon, but time passes very differently inside and outside the prison; I ended up waiting for another hour. Anyway, I went outside again, and just then this guy passed me carrying a box. The box read "China" and nothing else. Thank God I'm practicing stifling my impulses, otherwise I would have snuck into that box and prayed it was on an express delivery route to Shanghai...and probably would have ended up as dinner. Still, it's obviously a sign that China's anxious for my arrival.
On the way back from New York, we dropped by the King Fung Food Market - a Chinese grocery store in my town. At checkout, Gene, with his usual lack of sensibility, casually mentioned to the Chinese cashiers that I study Chinese. All of a sudden, there was a blinding tornado of blood and headless torsos, followed by an investigation into my abilities. I came out relatively unscathed, being 38.9% Chinese by the latest estimate, but I fear (and am secretly eager) to return. Sometimes enjoying life as a masochist is so easy it's unfair.
1. No sweets (excluding ones that grow on trees (excluding ones that grow on trees in Johnny Depp's Chocolate Factory (exluding ones that also grow on trees outside the factory))).
We can pretty much stop here because it's already enough for full-scale clinical depression. I'm an extreme sugar fiend. I eat chocolate before and after a meal, floss my teeth with Twizzlers and use a Jawbreaker for a retainer. When I make myself a cup of tea, it doesn't matter in the least what flavor the tea it is because I drown the flavor in copious amounts of miracle powder. In fact, if I can tell what flavor tea I'm having by the time I finish a cup, I make an appointment with my physician; it is extremely aberrant.
So it's day three now, and I can't help but notice that I suddenly have tons of free time. At least three extra hours. Granted, now I spend them prostrate on the floor of my room, suffering from withdrawal, but they're extra nonetheless. If you could have an extra few hours of life every day with no ultimate changes to your lifespan, with the "BUT" (fancy word for "caveat") being that they were full of suffering, would you take them? I would without a second thought, but only if I were on a 30-day trial of taking them.
Generally, I'm feeling more deflated across the board (hmm, can't think of a way to not be redundant in this sentence, oh well). I experienced this before - during my 4th attempt to quit drinking soda. The abrupt disappearance of the sugar high renders life gray and uninteresting. I'm sure glad I'm giving up sugar and not heroin (NEVER giving that one up).
2. No snacking. Only eat when hungry.
Snacking all but disappears when you eliminate sugar from your diet. Now I only have the urge to snack every three minutes as opposed to after every successful swallow. I spend a lot of time in my room upstairs working up my hunger to earn permission to indulge my mouth. "I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I'm hungry," is the mantra of the month.
3. Decide what to do for the generalized version of this 30 day trial.
The original plan was to give up all impulses. Obviously this is only feasible for living Buddhas and select igneous rocks, but there's a saying about bars and settings that's popular in this house - something along the lines of "set the bar high for everyone else." After much fruitless discussion, we decided to start off with the obvious sacrifices - #1 and #2 (not the ones you're thinking of...well...definitely not the ones you're thinking of after reading this sentence), and then kick it into high gear the second to last or last week of the trial. I'll let you know how that goes if it goes anywhere.
Went to New York today as a chaperone for Gene on his field trip to the dentist. Gene dropped me off at 80th and Broadway and went off to the torture chamber. I took a slow walk to Barnes and Noble a few blocks away, scaring pidgins and people with my hasn't-seen-the-light-of-day-for-months pale zombie face, and read about three pages in half an hour. I decided I was better at walking and went back out to partake of some pollution.
Later, I came to check up on Gene and he was still being held prisoner. The warden said he was due for release soon, but time passes very differently inside and outside the prison; I ended up waiting for another hour. Anyway, I went outside again, and just then this guy passed me carrying a box. The box read "China" and nothing else. Thank God I'm practicing stifling my impulses, otherwise I would have snuck into that box and prayed it was on an express delivery route to Shanghai...and probably would have ended up as dinner. Still, it's obviously a sign that China's anxious for my arrival.
On the way back from New York, we dropped by the King Fung Food Market - a Chinese grocery store in my town. At checkout, Gene, with his usual lack of sensibility, casually mentioned to the Chinese cashiers that I study Chinese. All of a sudden, there was a blinding tornado of blood and headless torsos, followed by an investigation into my abilities. I came out relatively unscathed, being 38.9% Chinese by the latest estimate, but I fear (and am secretly eager) to return. Sometimes enjoying life as a masochist is so easy it's unfair.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Sugar
The last couple days have proved that it is possible to survive eating only sugar. I don't mean sustain oneself and not starve. I mean eat Tootsie Rolls for breakfast, pudding for dinner, and a 60%-40% Tootsie-Roll-to-pudding split for brunch, lunch and 2nd lunch, AND (this is the important part) not die or lose more than four teeth a day. I have accomplished this feat singlehandedly and have not even felt any side effects, though I wouldn't recommend it to the average weakling. The only hard part of this most worthy endeavor is getting Tootsie Rolls into your mouth when your arm and head are shaking at different frequencies.
Yesterday introduced me to a wonderful new show - Manswers. "You've got questions, we've got MANSWERS!" In one half hour session with Manswers, I learned invaluable street smarts. I now know three ways to survive a tiger attack, how tiny my bikini can be without getting me arrested, how much more the average pimp is making than I am, what set of sexual preferences makes a girl easier to get into bed, and why chickens and humans have identical tastes in women. Compare this to what I learned in four years of college - that it's only a temporary respite before you need to get a job, and I think we can agree America needs to rethink the education system.
I've been learning some Led Zeppelin songs lately. It's tremendous fun. It's also a bit like putting on glasses that flip your perception of left and right and then running around the house at top speed, but applied to rhythm instead of vision. I've realized now how relatively sane most rock/metal bands' music is when it comes to time signature. 4/4 time, 3/4, 9/8, even 7/8 are manageable when the whole song sticks to one or two, but in Zeppelin songs, you're liable to have measures thrown in seemingly at random with half a beat missing, or an extra three. And then, when you're back in 4/4 and you think it's smooth sailing, you get taken again. They mercilessly throw you a 9/8 riff over that 4/4 and your brain-fingers connection melts right down. Awesome.
...
We just went to Starbucks again. This time we planned out the whole operation and the result was a resounding success. We managed to spend somewhere between twelve and thirteen dollars from Mario's giftcard on two drinks and two scones. This is quite an achievement when you consider that twenty five dollars feeds the two of us for a week.
Yesterday introduced me to a wonderful new show - Manswers. "You've got questions, we've got MANSWERS!" In one half hour session with Manswers, I learned invaluable street smarts. I now know three ways to survive a tiger attack, how tiny my bikini can be without getting me arrested, how much more the average pimp is making than I am, what set of sexual preferences makes a girl easier to get into bed, and why chickens and humans have identical tastes in women. Compare this to what I learned in four years of college - that it's only a temporary respite before you need to get a job, and I think we can agree America needs to rethink the education system.
I've been learning some Led Zeppelin songs lately. It's tremendous fun. It's also a bit like putting on glasses that flip your perception of left and right and then running around the house at top speed, but applied to rhythm instead of vision. I've realized now how relatively sane most rock/metal bands' music is when it comes to time signature. 4/4 time, 3/4, 9/8, even 7/8 are manageable when the whole song sticks to one or two, but in Zeppelin songs, you're liable to have measures thrown in seemingly at random with half a beat missing, or an extra three. And then, when you're back in 4/4 and you think it's smooth sailing, you get taken again. They mercilessly throw you a 9/8 riff over that 4/4 and your brain-fingers connection melts right down. Awesome.
...
We just went to Starbucks again. This time we planned out the whole operation and the result was a resounding success. We managed to spend somewhere between twelve and thirteen dollars from Mario's giftcard on two drinks and two scones. This is quite an achievement when you consider that twenty five dollars feeds the two of us for a week.
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