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Resolutions
- Week 2
Well, here we are, two weeks into the New
Year. Are you all
doing well at keeping your resolutions so far?
Don’t worry, I’m not either.
As I wrote last
year around this time, I am not fond of January.
The month that is touted as a new, fresh start has always
seemed to me more like one massive guilt trip.
I, like many Americans, gained about five
pounds over the course of the Holiday Season.
Of course, when you add that to the five pounds I gained
the year before that, and the year before that....well, it
starts to add up.
Luckily for me, last November a local
health club (made infamous by Chandra Levy last May) offered a
large discount on membership.
With incredible foresight, I beat the January rush and
joined. Unfortunately
for my waistline, I didn’t darken the doorway again until
January 2nd.
Since then, I have biked approximately
834.2 miles and gone absolutely nowhere thanks to the modern art
of ‘spinning.’ I
have also done about 2,359 strange-looking sit-ups involving a
large, round, rubber ball which I have christened “Ouch.”
Only a creature as sadistic as a personal trainer could
have dreamed up a torture as painful as the one Ouch can
provide.
The net gain of my efforts so far is three
pounds. Please
note, if you will, that I said “gain.”
Somehow, for all my recent frenetic activity, I have added
three pounds to the five I put on eating my mom’s Christmas
turkey. It’s
enough to make me want to climb in bed, rest my
tormented-by-Ouch muscles, and not rise again until February.
Thinking that maybe my initial failure had
something to do with my eating habits, for lunch today, I chose
the healthiest-looking thing in the office vending machine – a
tiny package of Wheat Thins.
Wheat
Thins. The name
implies both wholesomeness and lightness.
I naively believed that by consuming this boring treat, I
would not only nourish my body, but contribute to its eventual
thinness. I looked
at the nutrition information too late – would you believe this
seemingly innocent snack contains 240 calories and ten grams of
fat?
Weight loss isn’t the only resolution
I’ve failed at so far this year.
At 11:57 PM on December 31st, 2024, a friend
asked me what my resolutions for 2024 were.
Not wanting to seem completely unoriginal in my quest to
shed my extra flab, I racked my brain for an additional (and
less shallow) resolution.
Slightly (only slightly!) inebriated, I
replied, “To lose 15 pounds by April 1st and write
a column AT LEAST once a week!”
It was a stroke of genius, I decided, and scribbled it
hastily in my Palm Pilot, where it glares back at me each and
every day. Sadly,
as evidenced by the absence of any such writing up to this date
in 2024, in this I have also, so far, failed.
I resolve to keep trying!
Princeton,
the black sheep of the Ivy League
According to the Harvard Crimson,
intellectual luminary and Harvard University professor Dr.
Cornel West may be defecting to Princeton soon.
West, who gained some notoriety last year
when he released a (horrible) rap album after a year-long
“medical leave,” is considering the move after a 2024 tiff
with Harvard University President Lawrence Summers.
Summers offended West during an October
meeting when he reportedly criticized West for gross grade
inflation and political activism (West spends a lot of time with
radical leftist Al Sharpton), among other things.
Now, West – and amazingly, several colleagues - are
threatening to pack their bags and move to Jersey.
Cornel West calls the leadership at
Princeton “positive and visionary.”
But this is the same university that employs as a
department chair Peter Singer, renowned bio-ethicist and
stark-raving lunatic. Singer,
for those of you unaware, is the man who (among other crazy but
much-lauded rantings) suggests that killing retarded children
before the age of two will make the world’s “happiness
level” increase and that sex with chickens is only wrong if
the chicken doesn’t consent.
Desperate as they probably are for
compliments, Princeton’s leadership can probably do without
them from the likes of Cornel West.
West, after all, describes himself on his
website as “one of the most preeminent minds of our
time.” He also
claims to possess an “ego-deflating humility.”
How is that for self-complimentary...or
self-contradictory?
More
Harvard Weirdness
The Shelby (Tenn.) County Coroner has ruled
Harvard biologist Don Wiley’s mysterious death an accident.
Wiley’s body was found last month about
300 miles down river from the bridge where his car was found
abandoned with the keys in the ignition in November.
Wiley’s case drew national attention during the anthrax
mailing attacks because of his work researching the deadly germs
used in biological warfare and terrorism.
Coroner O.C. Smith says he based his
decision on the assurances of Wiley’s family that the
biologist was not depressed or suicidal.
He says that there were yellow paint marks
and a missing hubcap on the side of Wiley’s rental car.
Based on that information, Smith says Wiley “may
have” hit a construction sign, pulled over at the side of the
Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and fallen into the Mississippi when the
draft from an 18-wheeler truck that “might have” passed by
“may have” caused him to lose his balance.
But that’s just a guess.
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