The short end of the Knicks.

Poor Nate Robinson. Per his blog (which you can read here), the refs are not letting guys get away with anything this year. Here's an quote in which he complains about picking up a few undeserved technical fouls: "I saw that Carmelo Anthony got T'd up twice and kicked out of a game for throwing his headband to his bench...I think (and I hope) that eventually this will quiet down a little bit. I think the refs will eventually ease off a little bit. You have to let guys react with emotion as long as they're not going crazy with it. The players will also adjust and tone down their acts. In the meantime they're making a lot of money off of those technicals! "

Ha-ha! Amen to that my diminutive friend, but fat chance. Sounds like the refs have it in for Nate and Carmelo. The lockdown is still effect and the rich are going to get even richer as the refs blow another situation out of proportion and eject everyone on the floor - including Nate and Carmelo. Coincidence? I doubt it.

First, they act like J.R. Smith got fouled on that play. I didn't see any contact. Did anyone else? Then they acted like Robinson was involved in that civilized discussion about the call. Life just ain't fair to some guys.

Fattyrunner Named Time's Person of the Year!

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/12/16/time.you.tm/index.html

Also, this evening I came across the funniest sentence ever constructed. It comes from The Onion via The Best Non-required American Writing of 2005. Are you ready?

"Fritolaysia breaks off Chiplomatic relations with Snakistan."

If only I had come up with that I could die happy.

Fattyrunner's Lament

One of the unpleasant side-effects of being Fattyrunner is the high rate of chub rub I experience. For those of you who are not familiar with the term, chub rub is what happens when your legs are large enough in circumference that they rub against each other while you run. Run enough and you develop a rather annoying chafing which becomes a stinging nightmare as soon as the water hits the affected area in the shower.

Chub rub, for me, does not just occur on the thighs. Unfortunately, even when I'm thin I have large thighs. When I am a couple stone heavier than I ought to be, as I am now, my upper thighs are, like a pair of childhood friends, inseparable. Unavoidably, other apparatus come into contact with my upper thighs as I run. The result is a chafing of my manly parts which not only makes it feel as if a lighter is being held to my testicles as I shower, but which also becomes a completely distracting condition for the remainder of the day.

Lastly, when your ass cheeks are overinflated, you can also develop this same condition in the area where they meet, making wiping after taking a dump a delicate operation which, as we all know, must be performed blind.

This is the state I am in after six miles last night upon arrival here in Delaware and five miles this morning about twelve hours later. While I'm encouraged by how good I felt on both of these runs, my optimism is tempered by two things: 1) that there are no hills that gain more than a foot of elevation anywhere near here, and 2) that I am going to have to start tomorrow's ten miler with a case of chub rub that is about as bad as that with which I normally finish a long run.

I'm sure that by the last mile I'll be drawing stares and gasps from passing motorists in their shock at seeing a man running down the road with what appears to be unstanched menstrual flow running down his legs. Hopefully the pain I'll endure in the shower tomorrow won't permanently scar me psychologically.

Note to self: inquire about whether there is Vaseline in this house.

I'm soooo inclined.

Six miles tonight after two beers at lunch. I wouldn't recommend running after drinking. Of course, I did have lunch with a bunch of people who were drinking after having given blood this morning -- some just a few minutes earlier. So you decide which was a better idea.

Would have done seven, but had to take a dump quite urgently in the last mile and somehow that just ruins a groove.

I've been seeking out instead of avoiding hills lately and I think I'm starting to reap the benefits. I feel much lighter (even though I'm not) and my fitness is improving much more quickly than it normally does. Heed my word, runners: hills are your friends. Be warned: They're not like the friends who have watched all of the same movies as you and who know and love all of the same quotes as you. They're not the kind of friend who will listen to you when you're upset and don't know what to do. A hill is never going to buy you a beer because hills don't fucking drink, be-yotch.

No, hills are more like the friends everyone says they want who who no one actually wants: the ones who don't bullshit you and don't permit you to bullshit yourself.

You approach a hill. You say, "Hello, hill. I'm going to run up you to see how good I am right now." The hill replies, "You are not good at all. In fact, you suck. Further, you will continue to suck for a long time. However, since I am your friend, you may come run up me any time. I will always be here for you, but I will continue to tell you how much you suck until you no longer suck. Then, when you stop sucking, I will tell you that the sucking has ceased and you will know I am telling you the truth. In short, I will not make you feel better. I will just make you better."

Shaved my chest, stomach and back two nights ago. Don't know why.

I didn't realize just how chubby I was getting until I looked down and saw my unflatteringly hairless belly. When you see those "Bod" commercials, the guys are always perfectly shaven and have sharply defined six packs. You never see them showing some guy with a killer six pack covered by a pelt of dark hair. If you had a killer six pack, I guess you'd want to show it off; especially if you were going to be in a commercial.

You do, however, see many examples of very hairy dudes with large guts. In fact, if you watch TV at all, you might think that hairiness is some sort of side-effect of obesity, or perhaps a contributing factor. Conversely, you don't see many smooth, shiny beer guts. Thus, the only examples of what an ideal stomach should look like come in only a couple of versions: hairless or hairless and slightly sweaty. That's why seeing one's own shorn torso is a shocking thing.

I'm going to call the lousy American beer company that has those "Man Law" ads and ask them to add another: Men without six packs may not shave their stomachs and chests. It is, however, always ok -- nay, preferred -- for men to shave their backs.

I will be posting from the first state this weekend. Perhaps I will have Joseph Biden as a guest blogger.

Stay tuned.

Fattyrunner: A brief retrospective.

There have been periods in the last eight years where I've been something more than a jogger, but still less than the racer I once was, however mediocre. I was at my best in the first half of the summer before my junior year of college. I had lost almost twenty pounds, ran eight to ten miles a day, with a fourteen to sixteen miler on Sunday and after six weeks of that I ran a 15:58 road 5k. That was the only time I ever got under sixteen minutes. Not coincidentally, I didn't have much access to alcohol that summer.

I got back to school where beer was much easier to get my liver on and starting gaining all of the weight I had lost. I had started the cross counry season weighing 145 lbs. By November I was about ten pounds heavier than that and running 30 seconds slower for 8k than I had been when the season started.

Ever since my freshman year of college I have had a problem keeping weight off. In my freshman year my roommate's parents sent care packages on what seemed like a weekly basis. They were primarily full of chips, candy and soda, with some granola bars thrown in probably to ease their consciences about what kind of diet they were promoting for their son.

Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs, if you're out there, don't worry. Your son was an absolute angel when it came to nutrition. I was the painting in the closet to his Dorian Gray (I know, the analogy isn't perfect). While your son was busy working out to maintain his six pack, I was back at the room licking the crumbs from the bag of Cool Ranch Doritos you so generously sent. My roommate was trying to be nice by telling his you that he was eating all of the stuff you were sending. In reality, it was just me, but he figured if I was eating it, he may as well tell his parents to keep sending it.

I went from 135 pounds on the day I arrived at school to 145 pounds by the end of the cross country season. Nonetheless, I had a good season. I ran just under 30 minutes for 8k in my first race and ran 27:27 a couple of months later. During that season, a friend and I ran sixteen miles which included a two mile climb to the top of a mountain, averaging 6:45 pace for the run. Last summer I ran 6:45 pace for a relatively flat 15k and that was all out.

I finished the cross country season better than I had started it, but not as well as I had hoped. That 27:27 came a few weeks before the end of the season. At regionals I didn't run well. I didn't even make it into the top group of freshman from the region. Rather than use this as motivation, I started questioning whether I really wanted to keep running competetively. In high school I had been used to winning nearly every race. Now I was getting my butt kicked on a weekly basis. I wasn't even one of the better freshman in the region. If I had been made of sterner stuff, I would have done some honest self-reflection about whether I was really doing what it took to be as as good as I wanted to be. Instead, I just felt bad for myself and sort of mentally threw in the towel for a while.

I kept running, but I didn't do indoor track. I ran a open 3000m race in 9:42 off of nothing but eight miles a day of comfortable running, but even then I told myself that a truly talented runner would run much faster than that off of much less. In other words, I was letting things that were beyond my control prevent me from making myself better.

Looking back now, it seems so stupid to have let self-pity get in the way of finding out how good I could have been. What was I so disappointed about? That success wasn't coming as easily as it once had? Did I think that I somehow deserved to be winning races? On some level, I think I probably did. Winning, or at least coming close to winning, had become part of my identity. I think I thought that because I loved running so much that my reward should necessarily be success. It was a childish way to think, but that was the way I thought.

Looking back, I think this way of thinking is part of the reason I started drinking. Sure, nearly everyone drinks in college. Some people started in high school, although I never had. In fact, I abstained for the duration of the cross country season, but my whole "who cares" mindset after it ended made it much easier for me to justify finally trying it.

My first beer was Molson Ice. I had three of them at a dorm party. I remember going to the bathroom to piss and looking at myself in the mirror and smiling like, "This shit is great! We're going to have to make sure we get more of this stuff on a regular basis!" This stuff made me feel good and required no work on my part beyond peristalsis. As the Guiness guys would say, "Brilliant!"

I could go on and tell more stories about my love affair with alcohol and how it affected my running, and I probably will later on in this blog, but sufice it to say that after those three beers, I was never the same. I wonder more than I should about what would have happened if I hadn't had them. Would I have worked through all of my lugubrious self-pity without a crutch and figured out that if something isn't handed to you, you have to find a way to go take it? If I had, would I still have become so hooked on alcohol once I inevitably tried it?

Obviously, I don't know, but I suspect I probably would have. Some people can just have a couple drinks to loosen up in social situations or to unwind after a stressful day. I'm not one of those people even though I sometimes try to be. I'm learning that if you have to try as hard as I have to be one of those people, then you're not one.

I guess that maudlin rambling describes the impetus for this blog. I was going to get up and run this morning, but after drinking an entire bottle of wine by myself last night, all I felt like doing this morning was to sit here, drink coffee, think and write.

Hit Me.

If you got to this blog because your search terms matched one of the words or phrases below, I encourage you to continue visiting. I'll probably say something that will offend you.

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Man disproves global warming on local sports show.

I like having a used vehicle. I have a 93 Jeep Cherokee that was a gift from my in-laws. There are several things that either don't work at all or don't work unless you know how to make them work. You might find it odd, but I actually enjoy the fact that my Jeep is so mechanically challenged. It gives it character.

Your new Trail Blazer has XM radio? How interesting.

Because the antenna was broken off of the Jeep before I owned it, I can only get AM reception within a narrow corridor that begins about a mile south of my house and extends about two miles south of my office to my daughter's school. How serendipitous! Proof of a supreme being? You decide.

The reception goes in and out depending upon things like atmospheric conditions, whether it's day or night, and how close I am to high-tension power lines, busy intersections, or clusters of businesses. Even better, the display does not work, so there is no way to know what frequency the radio is tuned to until it reaches a station that comes in clearly. When it does, it's often the voice of some conservative bloviator. That's because here in Central PA, we basically have three AM radio stations: conservative talk, conservative talk and sports.

So I'll be scanning for the sports station and instead I'll hear, "Hidden deep within the recesses of the EIB compound, ensconced behind the golden EIB microphone, dispensing the alfalfa tablets of reassurance to the flock of bleating sheep that is my faithful audience, it is I, Tush Bigbottom!" Then some guy starts talking, "Aw gee, Tush, it's great to talk to you. Major, major mega-bleats from us flockers down here in Sodom and Gomorrah. Gee, Tush, if it weren't for you sending out the truth to the masses I think this country would be a lot worse than it already is. Why just the other day, some guy was talking about how screwed up this country has become and I...I...I just couldn't take it any more, so I says to him, 'Hey buddy. If you don't like living in the United States, why don't you move to Iraq with all of the terrorists?' God this country is so screwed up, I'll tell ya. When you can just go out in public and complain about America, well, I think that's a sign that we're off the rails here. When people go around talking about how America is messed up, well, I say, that's proof that it's more messed up than you can believe." It is usually at this point that I drive off the road and wait for the migraine to pass.

The other thing about the radio is that when I eject the adapter for my CD player from the tape deck, it doesn't fully eject it. Instead, it pops it out about halfway. Then it just keeps trying to pull the adapter back in so it can try to push it out again. It will keep doing this as long as the Jeep is running, so you have to manually remove it completely. The catch is, if you want to listen to the radio, after the tape deck pushes the adapter out most of the way, you have to wait until it starts its next cycle and attempts to pull the adapter back in. At that very moment, if you remove the adapter the radio will come on. If you miss the moment, the tape deck thinks the tape is still in and the radio will not play.

Anyway, I was listening to the local sports show and this guy calls in to talk about something. The host asks the guy how he's doing. He says, "Oh, I just got done chopping some wood and now I'm relaxing in my chair in front of a fire watching it snow outside. Must be global warming. Ha ha!"

It frightens me that people this stupid are allowed to purchase things like axes.

This is like saying that if I see a married couple talking civilly one day, even though generally all I see them do is argue, then it logically follows that there are no problems in their relationship. It's like saying that if the Steelers beat the Colts, then they must be having a good season, even though their record is under .500. It's like saying that if your dying grandma has a good day, that her cancer is a fiction. It's like saying if Ted Bundy helped an old woman across a street, that's proof that he wasn't a serial killer.

You get the point. Or, if you don't, there's a guy in front of a warm fire who'd love to talk to you.

Perhaps he dialed the wrong number. Perhaps his radio display is broken, too, and he thought he was listening to conservative talk. After all, listening to Notre Dame fans complain about how unfair it is that Brady Quinn isn't going to win the Heisman feels similar somehow to the complaints of conservatives blaming the failure in Iraq on liberals who disagreed with the war.

At least when he runs out of wood for his fire, he can burn his straw man.

Cop Forces Demeaning NFL Prediction out of Litterbugs

I don't know which is worse: that this cop forced these guys to rap in order to avoid a littering fine, or that they felt compelled to agree with him that the Raiders are going to make it to the Super Bowl...this year.

I don't see what the big deal is. I'm sure if a couple of white guys were pulled over for littering by a black cop in the south and forced to do some square dancing while singing a sappy country song about the the importance of not littering and then were asked to agree that the Titans are going to make it to the Super Bowl this year and then had it broadcast on TV the local community would be fine with it.

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Ran four miles yesterday; five the day before that. Hoping to go 8-10 today. If my scale is to be believed, I lost four pounds this week.