I do most of my best and most disconnected thinking when I’m in my car. Maybe it was being cut off in traffic by the umpteenth person with a Jesus fish on their bumper…..or better yet, a Jesus fish eating Darwin. Anyway, I got into this weird religious tangent (which I do pretty often), and all of a sudden the next greatest bumper sticker idea hit me……”If you can be FAT and still be a Christian, then you can be GAY and still be a Christian”. Pretty wordy, but absolutely theologically sound. There are a million little semantic issues with it…..and I’m definitely not saying that being gay is like being fat (and I didn’t know there were gay fat men until I met ‘da bears). It just stems from a lifetime of never understanding how fat preachers can pick and choose what is sin and what isn’t, yet still say they are biblical literalists or “black and white” thinkers. You have to turn their “a sin is a sin is a sin” mantra against them whenever possible. Plus they love catchy t-shirts, bumper stickers and all that “I’m going to make a statement even though I’m not any different than you” flair, so what better way to make people really uncomfortable than with a smarmy catch-phrase. Plus, it’s just totally solid……how many evangelicals will die from obesity related heart attacks and strokes while living in the fear that every gay person (not that they’ve ever actually met one) is out to convert their children with all them queer tv shows and kill them all with a big dose of AIDS. And this is coming from a fat straight guy……so you can take my words to the bank. I should have thought of this stuff back when I was still a minister. I would have been the darlin’ of the Assemblies of God. Those guys are strangely concerned with the gays………
I’ve been working from home for the past couple of weeks, and today was my first day back in the office. I had a doctor appointment out that way this morning (total loss of 42 pounds in the past month!), so I thought I’d see how I handled the workplace. Overall things went okay, I had a ton of energy in the morning but really faded after about 2pm. I’m sure it will take a while to get all of my energy back, and I know the best thing to do is start taking the dog for walks ever day. Repetition is the key. Packing breakfast and lunch for work was a lot of fun because it’s just so damn easy now.
Speaking of lunch……I want to take this opportunity to give a shout out to my favorite low calorie, non-carbonated drinks up to this point (I like plain water just fine, but when you have to get 64 ounces of water into an egg-sized stomach every day, variety is mandatory). Of course all of the Crystal Lite flavors are some fine workhorses, but I managed to find these bottles of “Fruit Refreshers” at Price Chopper. They are basically heavily flavored non-carbonated waters in flavors like Pomegranate, Cranberry, Strawberry Lemonade, Cherry Limeade and Mango Tropical. They are fantastic, and a special bonus is that they are sweetened with sucralose instead of aspartame….which I really do want to stay away from as much as possible. The Diet Lipton green tea and white teas have been a lifesaver….though they do have a little bit of caffeine. Not nearly as much as coffee, but enough for me to avoid them at night. Great, light flavors and they come in big 1.5 liter bottles that make it easier to count my daily intake. I think there is some mental benefit too….if I can finish one bottle during the day at work, then I just have to finish one 16 ounce bottle of water at night. Anyway, that is today’s excitement. Now to investigate prices on custom bumper stickers…….
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