Expose Yourself #5 – Cool Cat

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Don’t know what Expose Yourself is all about? Check this out.

Today’s guest has done a considerable amount of work for public TV station WJCT, such as public affairs, producing documentaries, reporting, fundraising, and for eight years he produced the Jacksonville Jazz Festival. The local CBS affiliate also had him working as a cameraman and assistant director!

Writing has always been his passion, and he’s done a lot of it, including three award-winning young adult novels about an extraordinary cat named Windrusher, a multiple-award-winning murder mystery set in northeast Florida, Matanzas Bay, headlined his own humor column in a community paper, and has even been published in Florida Trend Magazine. I met him when I attended one of his speaking engagements, which he does several times a year at libraries, book festivals, and conferences because he’s a regional director of the Florida Writers Association. Please welcome Victor DiGenti!

JC: Vic, good to see you again! You look like you’re having more fun than a barrel full of monkeys.

VD: My wife often accuses me of monkey business, but I do try to weave some fun into the business of writing.

JC: So I've heard. Where are you in your life or career or pursuit of your goals?

VD: There’s a line in my newly released mystery, Matanzas Bay, where protagonist Quint Mitchell waxes philosophically, saying, “… there comes a time when we look back on the things we’ve done and it weighs heavily on us.” The same can be said of the things left undone. In my more callow years, I had fantasies of being a foreign correspondent and a network news anchor. Later, when I became a novelist, I dreamed of making The New York Times Bestseller list. Of being on the Today Show and Oprah. Of having Windrusher made into a movie starring Nicole Kidman. After the movie premiere, she’d invite me to her Malibu Beach house where we … No, wait, that was completely different fantasy.

JC: Sounds like a story for the “After Dark” edition.

VD: Don’t jump to conclusions, Jaycee. I was going to say we would make some popcorn and watch the Windrusher movie again. But to be serious about your question, I’m feeling good about where I am right now. I retired from a career in broadcasting at a relatively early age and jumped into something I’d always wanted to do, which is writing novels. Thanks to organizations like the Florida Writers Association, I was able to learn how much I didn’t know about writing and publishing. But after several years, I’d published the first in my Windrusher trilogy. And now I’ve published my first mystery, which is part of the Quint Mitchell Mystery series. To put things in perspective, though, much of my time was also devoted to volunteer work. I’ve served on the boards of several organizations since my retirement, including chairing the St. Johns County Tourist Development Council’s event funding committee (which came about from my years as an event producer with WJCT), was president of the Friends of the Ponte Vedra Library and still serve on the board, and am active with FWA as Regional Director for NE Florida where I oversee six chapters, and lead the one in Ponte Vedra Beach. I find this part of my life quite fulfilling.

JC: That’s a lot on your plate. How did you get started with all that?

VD: Even though my career was in broadcasting, writing was my first love—and reading, of course. I was one of those geeky kids who would devour anything with words on them: cereal boxes, road signs, you name it.

JC: You too? I thought I was the only one who read every cereal box and billboard.

VD: Most writers, I would guess, started out as voracious readers. From that love of the written word, somehow we were programmed to tell our own stories. That’s how it began for me. I was on my high school newspaper staff, wrote very bad short stories and poetry in college, and wrote a good deal in my job, including scripts and press releases. I also kept writing on the side as a freelancer, including writing a so-called humor column for a community newspaper for almost ten years. As I said before, it wasn’t until after I retired that I turned to writing long-form fiction. One of the turning points in my young life happened back in the 7th grade, when I entered an essay contest sponsored by the American Legion. While I didn’t win the contest, my essay took second place and, if I recall correctly, the prize was a $25 savings bond. That was cool, but I was also required to read it at a school assembly. I was terrified. Standing behind the lectern, no one could see my knees shaking, but they probably heard the tremor in my voice. But the amazing thing was that after I finished, all the kids and teachers applauded. And that response provided me with positive reinforcement and more than a little ego satisfaction, which helped direct me toward a life and career in the communications business.

JC: How did you get where you are?

VD: I’d like to say that I followed a grand plan developed after years of meditation and research. I’d like to say that, but I can’t. What I can say is whenever I have a difficult decision to make, I turn to a higher power. And my wife usually has the answer since she’s the one with the common sense in our partnership. But I guess I have to take responsibility for where I am at this point, since much of it has come post-retirement. When people ask me if I miss the “glamour” of producing the Jacksonville Jazz Festival (coming up later this month), or of being part of an important community institution like WJCT, as I was for so many years, I have to tell them that life is a series of doors we pass through. We don’t know what lies ahead, but we do know that what we left behind is in the past, behind a closed door, so we should make the most of every new opportunity.

JC: And not dwell on the past.

VD: I jumped into writing with both feet, which was kind of messy, and more than a little destructive for my keyboard. My first attempt at writing a novel turned out to be more successful than I had any right to expect. Windrusher has gone through four or five printings, it’s won several major awards, as have all the Windrusher books, and attracted a wide audience of readers of all ages.

JC: Congratulations!

VD: Actually, I don’t believe I do very well in the two to six year-old demographic.

JC: They’ve got such a short attention span, what with their texting and Gameboys and cruising the malls. Don’t feel bad.

VD: I continued to work at my writing, trying to get better with every page, chapter, and book I wrote. I attended workshops and writers conferences to hone my craft, network with other writers and publishing representatives. Everything I learned contributed toward getting me to this point in my writing career. That and my drive to make my mark so that the obit writers have something to write about other than, “DiGenti placed second in an essay contest in the 7th grade.”

JC: At least it’s short enough to fit on your tombstone. Where are you going next? What’s the next goal, the next step, the next whatever?

VD: I’ve just launched myself into ePublishing, releasing Matanzas Bay on both the Kindle and Nook platforms. My Windrusher books are traditionally published through Ocean Publishing, but I’m now an independent publisher under the imprint Windrusher Hall Press. As such, my role has expanded to include both creator of product and businessman. My most ambitious goal is to break into the Kindle Top 100 sellers with Matanzas Bay. I also hope to complete the second Quint Mitchell Mystery, Bring Down the Furies, by the end of the year, and to publish a collection of short stories as an eBook. All of this is being done under my new persona as author Parker Francis.

JC: You’ve already got a name to bank on. Why another one?

VD: After some thought, I decided to use a pen name to separate my darker, edgier mysteries from the Windrusher books, which have a wide audience of young readers. I’m working on the next book, and finding new ways to promote Matanzas Bay to an audience of mystery readers who are probably asking themselves, “Who the hell is Parker Francis?”

JC: How are you going to make it all happen?

VD: Everyday I try to split myself into three people: Vic the Writer, Vic the marketer, and Vic the house-husband in charge of cooking, vacuuming, and cleaning litter boxes. It doesn’t always work out, but using what I’ve learned from my past life, the marketing end comes easy for me. The problem is that it can overwhelm the writing end if you let it. But I’m determined to keep writing. To keep introducing Parker Francis and Quint Mitchell to new readers, and to keep helping other writers. I figure if I can do it, anyone can. But there’s so much to do and so little time left. As Satchel Paige once said, “Don’t look back, someone might be gaining on you.”

JC: I’ve got one more quick question for you: how do you feel about the growing chaos in the publishing industry?

VD: In many ways, the publishing business is crazy-making, as a co-worker of mine was fond of saying. It’s a strange business model that is now being challenged by the booming ePublishing end of the business. Will traditional publishers go the same way as the record companies and retailers went after Apple introduced the iPod and iTunes? I think we’re about to find out.

JC: Thank you very much for stopping by, Vic, I feel like I learned a lot today. I’m sure glad I got to spend a little time with you and find out all this great stuff about how you stuck with your dream and how well it’s working out for you. Folks, take a peek at Vic DiGenti’s fascinating website, where you’ll learn all about Windrusher and Quint Mitchell. Windrusher has a huge fanbase of his own that any cat lover will want to be a part of. He’s got links there to preview and buy his books, but here are a couple links just in case you gotta have it NOW for your KINDLE or NOOK! (or see below)

VD: Thank you, Jaycee, for this opportunity to visit with you and your readers. You’re providing a real service by helping to motivate and inspire people to follow their dreams.





















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More articles to make your eyes drool:
"Expose Yourself"
To Your Health - Part 5
What we mean when we say we will never forget
What you should know about the military before you join

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Something Big Coming Up

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You've probably noticed that lately, I haven't published as much as I usually do. Things have been pretty busy with my writing, updating some of the site's content, making new friends in the Ohio Police Department, and a couple other projects that may change the world, so I haven't deluged you with as much excitement as I normally would in this particular channel. And with something new coming up for the next few weeks, I'm still going to be a little rare for a little while. I'll definitely have some interesting stuff for you, it just won't be quite as frequently as you're used to until next month.

Before I sign off for the day, I've got something special for you coming up in the morning which will keep your gigantic brains occupied until I can be here full time again.


See you soon, and thanks for all the support!
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Allah be Praised

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Praise Allah for finally deciding to clean up his house! With Obama bin Laden dead at the hands of American soldiers - Navy SEALs no less - this is pretty clear proof that Allah wants nothing to do with the bastard. Together with all the upheavals going on in the Middle East and North Africa, it seems to me that blaming wholesale murder and personal greed on an all-powerful entity was a bad idea.

Let's look at this. When someone tells you to kill other people and live in abject poverty because he claims some all-powerful being told him to tell you to do it, shouldn't you stop and wonder at his proof? How do you know Allah told that guy to tell you to kill people in the most horrible ways imaginable? Why should you live in misery while he lives in a palace? Isn't Allah capable of obliterating anyone he wants obliterated?

And so he has.


Usama Bin Laden was killed in Islamabad, Pakistan, this past Friday. Praise be to Allah for delivering us from the pretender who abused Allah's name for his own personal gain.

The Christians figured out how to stop doing that a couple hundred years ago when the Inquisition was put to rest and the Crusades became passe. Let's hope the Muslims and the Jews figure it out really soon too so we can all play nice and let everyone believe what they want to believe about their Creator.

Now what should we do about Pakistan?

One thing is for sure: let's not do the bastard the honor of defining ourselves and our history with words like pre-bin Laden and post-bin Laden, okay?

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Politically Retarded

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I saw a news item the other day in which some idiot claimed it was "politically correct" to refer to Easter Eggs as "Spring spheres". Naturally, I was abhored at how assinine someone had to be to demonize chicken eggs delivered by a bunny rabbit, but also a bit pleasantly surprised and shocked that such a thing had made news. Had someone finally had enough of this ridiculousness? Was a major news organization going to take off its Radical blinders and report on the mass-murder of common sense?

The newspeople did have a protest, much to my delight, but when I found out what it was, I was appalled. To my intense disappointment, the newspeople were NOT protesting the fact that "political correctness" has gone too far, nor that its purpose is to deceive the masses. No, they were protesting something much more mundane.

The factual error of calling an egg a sphere.

A sphere is a perfectly round object, like a ball. Basketball, baseball, tennis ball, ping pong ball, even the Earth itself is more or less a sphere. An egg, however, is a spheroid. Those three letters make a big difference.

And that's all they cared about: mislabeling a spheroid as a sphere. Not that someone was mislabeling Easter as a mere "Spring Celebration", and certainly not that there are so many people with nothing better to do than invent ridiculous, even obscene language conventions so as to deny all Humans their basic right to free speech and free thought. Goodbye Easter, goodbye Christmas, goodbye Ramadan, goodbye Hannakuh...

Wait a minute!

No one's advocating the destruction of Muslim culture; anyone can celebrate Ramadan or pray five times a day or wear a face mask in their official picture ID. Likewise, you'll get labeled an anti-Semite if you were to even suggest suppressing Hannakuh or Passover or any other Jewish celebration. So I guess it's only Christians who are being attacked in this way. Pretty hypocritical, huh? Discrimination at its ugliest.

Likewise, no one would dare publish any of the crimes committed by an Imam or a Rabbi, nor would they dare burn a Koran or a Torah in protest - look at the global ire raised when someone threatened to burn a Koran - but if the press is to be believed, every single Catholic Priest commits pedophilia on a daily basis and Bibles were printed expressly for the purpose of being burned.

And have you ever noticed how it's "politically correct" to believe that all men are evil and all women are victims? Or that all whites and ONLY whites are racists? How insane does the world have to get before the people who are having their personal power robbed wake up and realize it?

"Political correctness" is as much a misnomer as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It has nothing whatsoever to do with avoiding hurting peoples' feelings or being polite, and there's certainly not much correct about it.

"Political correctness" has only two functions.

First, it's designed to rob you of your First Amendment Right to say whatever you feel like. Not being able to say something robs you of your ability to think. Anyone who has read George Orwell's 1984 is familiar with the trick of removing words from the language to prevent you from having certain thoughts. If you have no word for SPADE, then you can't very well call a spade a spade.

Second, it's an attack on America's culture, specifically Christians, males, and whites. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood up and spoke out against injustice, it was not an attack for or against any specific group of people. He wanted EQUALITY for ALL. Not just for the hypocrites who want freedom to do anything they want to the rest of us while they deny us the same freedoms (like nearly any politician or religious fundamentalist does), but for ALL people.

We need a new word, while we still have some semblance of the First Amendment to allow us to do such a thing. We need a proper label for this process that describes it correctly.

"Politically Retarded" works well. Far better than "Politically Incorrect," which implies that PC has value.

We use the word "political" because politics doesn't make a whole lot of sense, nor does this process of cultural destruction. It's very confusing. Okay, actually, it's about power; having power over someone else, and that's what politics really is; it's enslaving someone else to your will.

We use the word "retarded" because if you look it up in the dictionary, you find out it means something is less advanced, or held back in some way. Like a retarded aerial bomb has special fins to slow it down rapidly. The education systems in many countries are retarded in comparison to some others. A human who is developmentally retarded may have physical or mental (or even social) limitations that prevent them from having what the rest of us call a normal life. So it's perfectly apt to say that if you believe in being destructive that you are retarded. You can take that any way you like, but no one intelligent will tell you it's incorrect in any way, so keep your developmentally challenged parents out of this.

So now that we have an appropriate and correct term to describe the willful, pedantic destruction of American culture, let's be sure to use it whenever it rears its ugly head.

Call an Easter Egg an Easter Egg. Wish people a Merry Christmas. Enjoy being whoever you are, whether you're black, white, purple, male, female, or something in between. When someone tries to hassle you or attack you with something obviously Politically Retarded, feel free to put the proper label on it and then go on doing right.

Don't let Politically Retarded people destroy your country or your culture. Allow TRUE equality to reign. Insist on having your rights to free speech and free thought, or they WILL be taken away from you.

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More articles of a similar vein:
I'm Totally in Love with this Lady
In my Quest to Offend You
Profiling: Is It Good or Bad?

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The Tax Man Cometh

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Hope you've got your taxes done. Today's the day. If you don't have it done, even though the Constitution says you don't have to pay taxes, you'll get thrown in jail to serve as an example to the rest of us. We wouldn't want our able Congresscritters losing their paychecks, now would we? This ain't a land of laws, it's a land of guns, and if you don't do what the guys with the guns tell you, regardless of whether it's the law, you're the one who gets in trouble. So be sure to get your annual tithe in and hope the people you're paying to do their jobs will actually do them this year.

As you were.

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Easy Computer Basics

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In my browsing the internet, I came across this little gem. For those of you who love to complain that you barely even know how to turn your computer on, this guidebook has the basics of how to use Windows 7. It looks like they've published the whole book, and it covers a lot of basic topics in plain language. Check it out!

Easy Computer Basics for Windows 7.

There could be a test.

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Stuff that's way cooler than sliced bread:
Loud TV commercials to be CALMed
Did you vote?
Trucks trucks everywhere! Part 1

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Gas Thieves

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Outrageous! Gas prices continue to skyrocket, with nothing but more bad news in sight.

When you go to the gas station, chances are you've seen a sign there warning you that gas thieves will be prosecuted and have their driver's license revoked. (Not that it's possible any more to pump gas without paying for it first.)

Back in 1995, I worked as a cashier at a gas station/truck stop. (This one, in fact.) I usually worked on truck side, but there were a couple nights I was on gas side. I remember one night, someone came in, got on one of the non-prepay pumps, gassed up, and drove off as fast as he could. It really ticked me off, and not just because I got in trouble for it.

But today, when the gasoline cartels have a stranglehold on our economy, I'd bet most of you get absolutely livid, because THIS is gas thievery.

For the past few years, the petrol cartels have been crying about how expensive it is to charge a reasonable price for gasoline, and how they have no control over the price of gas, and how they can't afford to cut prices or increase supply. There's always some excuse why they have to raise prices. And then they go and make record profits. And I'm not talking about oil industry records, I'm talking history-of-capitalism records! As in, no other company in human history has made so much profit! And they have the audacity to say they can't afford to lower the price of gas? We're talking about enough profit to send $147 to every man, woman, and child in America, including the illegal aliens. If we assume a family of four, that's about $600.

Nowadays, $600 is enough to keep your car moving for over a month, or enough food to feed your family for a month, but only a few years ago, it would've bought about twice as much as that. Thanks to the rising prices of gasoline, a $20 meal used to be expensive, but now it's considered cheap.

Recently, with this flap in the Middle East, gas prices have gone up quite a bit, even though we in the United States don't get much of our oil from that region. We get most of it from Venezuela and Texas. Those companies who bring us oil from the Middle East should be the only companies increasing their prices, but ALL gas stations are going up. Whatever happened to capitalism? Whatever happened to competition keeping prices low? The oil cartel has a monopolistic position which they're using to strangle our economy!

Over the past years, there have been a number of ideas on how to break the power of the oil cartel, presumably to get cheap gas.

You've seen pledges not to buy gas on a certain day. How practical is that? Even if you could herd enough cats to actually pull it off, you've got the problem of what happens the next day: you still have to buy the gas, and even if you're successful in disrupting distribution for a day, guess what? You're going to wind up jacking up the prices to cover their losses. The only losers are us.

Another idea I saw was to "buy out evil". If we the people pool together some of our money, we can afford to buy out one of the large corporations, in this case, an oil company, and then use it the way proper capitalism demands: to provide competition by providing the lowest possible price on gasoline. However, this too has a significant flaw beyond requiring everyone to invest a few thousand dollars. You're giving your enemy a ton of money, which he'll just use to found a competing company, drive you out of business with his enormous cash reserve, and then jack the prices up even worse.

Since so many politicians are in the oil cartel's pocket, and they're as eager as all the rest of America's domestic enemies to bring us crashing down, what can really be done besides continuing to hang your head in defeat and hope they don't gouge us any more?

That's the question, folks.

Adding alcohol to gasoline isn't the answer; it only degrades fuel efficiency and raises the price of corn. And there isn't enough corn in the WORLD to power JUST the United States.

Liquid hydrogen? Dangerous stuff. Building the infrastructure to support it will take time and money, and the end result won't see cheaper fuel prices unless we're all given water-cracking stills and solar panels to power them.

Electric cars? Some of these hybrids are getting better mileage, but they're doing it by reclaiming the energy lost when you hit the brakes, or when you plug them into the wall. You've still got to buy new batteries every few years, and they cost more than you'd save in gas. An all-electric vehicle has the added problem of extremely low range. Maybe some infrastructure could hande it - build a LOT of electrical outlets - but who's going to foot the bill for it? And who's going to pay for the electricity?

There are really only two solutions.

1. Live within walking distance of everything important to you so you don't have to drive very much. This is likely to require some serious city planning, all the way to the extent of building arcologies. Japan is way ahead of us on this. Did you know that Tokyo has a higher population than all of Canada?

2. Invent useful superconductors. Power lines can be embedded in the roads to recharge electric cars as they pass by. There's little if any loss in such a system, because we're using superconductors. Ideally, the power company will start harnessing solar power too.

Either way, it costs a lot in the short term, but the long term benefits will be staggering, and in the meantime, I'm pretty sure building all this stuff will create at least a few jobs.

Get to it!

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More awesome articles from an awesome website:
Everlasting Trains
Watch your Words
Maps are freakin' awesome

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Put the Cat Down

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A branch of my family just lost their cat. Seems she was getting old and it was time to put her to sleep.

Hidey, as she was known, because she liked to hide when she was a kitten, was a very nice cat. Big and fluffy and fat, and very happy to let you pet her all day long if you wanted. She didn't know how to not purr.

But as she got older, she started showing signs that she hurt too much, and they didn't want her to suffer, so they took her to the vet and stayed with her until the purring stopped.

Now she's in kitty heaven.

Most people don't want an animal to suffer needlessly, and so when there's not much hope of relieving that pain, when the animal's life is obviously at an end, most people have no qualms about putting that animal to sleep. But for some reason, when a loved one wants to die with dignity, their family often becomes selfish and won't let them go. Why is it that sometimes ending suffering is justified and sometimes it's not?

Let's think about this. In the first instance, we have an animal, which is in pain, and is going to die. And even if it wasn't going to die any time soon, the pain this animal is suffering is great enough that we feel justified to put it to sleep.

Now imagine someone you care about is also in great pain and no longer wishes to suffer. Usually we think of old people whose bodies are shutting down, bed-ridden or otherwise immobilized, crippled by arthritis or who have had their minds or bodies robbed of them by Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. We're talking about a person who knows he or she has little to live for except knowing he or she will be a burden on their loved ones, who may be in a tremendous amount of pain, and who WANTS to die. Yet, to allow this person to take their own life, or in the case they're so debilitated that they need someone's help to do it for them, is somehow against our code of decency.

Since when are animals more important than people? Since when is it all right for people to suffer needlessly? Since when do we condone torturing our old and infirm just so we can have them around for another day? How selfish and unempathethic does one person have to be to do that to another? And what happens when we're put in the same position and through the miracles of medical technology, we continue to survive through such agony for years instead of mere days?

I love my parents a hell of a lot, and can't imagine the world without them. But I love them enough to let them go if they decide that's what they want to do. Can you say the same about your loved ones?

When I looked up Jack Kervorkian, the well-known advocate of human mercy killing, I noticed that not all of his suicide assistances were clearly for terminally ill patients. Several are questionable, in that they may have been done to ease someone who was merely depressed, and who could have recovered. Which begs the question: assuming there are times when it's right to kill, when are those times?

Few people would agree that a depressed teenager should be allowed to kill themselves, right? A lot more would agree that someone terminally ill, regardless of their age, should be allowed to do so, right? Being terminally ill seems to be a good dividing line, but what exactly is terminally ill? Aren't we all expecting to die some day? Isn't it possible a bus could run us over unexpectedly at any given moment? If someone is depressed enough to make a serious attempt at suicide, isn't that a pretty good working definition of terminally ill?

And what other dividing lines are important? Quality of life? What else?

Tell me. Use the comments below.

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Additional awesomeness you can't do without:
Do Bald Men Have More Sex Drive?
The Happy New Year Philosophy
Nikie St. Giles - 2000

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To Your Health - Part 5

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I hadn't expected to write a fifth part to this series, but with the recent developments, I think it's a good idea, and I feel like I have to share the good news: Over the past two weeks, I lost eight (8!) pounds by eating all the junk food I wanted!

Okay, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking my calendar broke and I still think it's April 1st and you're still upset that Mopjockey.com isn't actually the official website of Florida (yet). I couldn't possibly have feasted on chocolate and Doritos for the past week, could I have?

After you've petitioned Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio on my behalf, check this out:

A month ago, I clued you guys in on Tim Ferriss's Four Hour Body. I spent a bunch of time reading it and thinking about how to apply the precepts, and remembered key parts of my own weight-loss story in which I lost over 50 pounds throughout 2009. A lot of the ideas in Tim's fat-loss section meld nicely with my own experiences from that year. During that time, I ate basically the same, reasonably healthy meals over and over, and occasionally sucumbed to my craving for chocolate.

That's exactly the way Tim suggests you eat: the same meals, over and over, and then once a week go nuts without any guilt. For maximum fat-loss, he gives a handy list of the most effective foods you can choose from. Follow the plan for six days, and then on the seventh you get to eat anything and everything you want!

Two weeks ago, I assembled my particular choices of foods (which I'll tell you in a minute) and mostly stuck to them. I wanted to see how well I'd like them, and how hard it was to stick to the diet. I was pleasantly surprised to find it tasted okay, and it wasn't too hard to stick to it. I did "cheat" a couple times, but largely kept to it. And then on Saturday, I ate like a total pig.

I started my day with two huge candy bars, totalling nearly a pound of chocolate, and that was just breakfast! Over the course of the day, I had about half a package of peanut butter and chocolate chip cookie dough, some cookies, half a bag of Doritos, some pizza, and some other stuff. I was full the whole day, practically forcing myself to overeat. I didn't quite take it to the point where I got sick, or felt any pain from having too much food in my belly, but it was a heckuva gluttonous day! I ate enough that Sally Struthers will no longer speak to me.

Then this past week, I stuck strictly to my diet, straying only once because I had to have something for breakfast and didn't have time to peel a couple eggs, so I had a cup of fruit. Here's my diet:

Breakfast: Two hardboiled XL eggs, topped with cinnamon and a variety of spices to combat the blandness.

Lunch: A can of tuna, half a can of black beans, and half a can of mixed vegetables, again topped with cinnamon and a variety of spices to combat the blandness. Adding tomato sauce helped a lot, but it's okay without it.

Dinner: Three slices of chicken or turkey lunchmeat OR some low carb peanut butter, on half a low-carb lavash bread wrap, plus 8 ounces of Vegetable juice and sometimes a few bites of raw broccoli.

Second Dinner: Repeat one of the above smaller meals, or 2-3 handfuls of unsalted peanuts.

And, of course, all the water I needed to feel full, generally about 12 ounces or so during each meal and probably another 24-30 between them. There's a small amount of variety to the above, but that's pretty much the whole menu for me. I've had some carrots to fight off between-meal hungers, which are recommended. Tim's list is bigger, but I took his advice to keep things as simple as possible and just stuck to these. I did basically the same thing the year I lost 56 pounds.

There aren't a whole lot of calories in the above, but more importantly, there aren't a whole lot of carbs, nor a whole lot of the "white poisons" (sugar, salt, flour, potatoes). I'm not being super-strict, because each meal is supposed to have a protein (meat, fish, or egg), legume (beans), and vegetable (mixed vegetables being best), but I'm not eating the forbidden foods either. (Not counting this particular bread, which is super-low carb.)
 
Each meal is somewhat boring, but they're also no-brainers to heat up or make and eat in a couple minutes.
 
I initially tried three eggs in the morning, but oddly, that was too much, and even with two I feel full enough for hours afterward. I eat about every five hours too. I also tried red beans, which were okay, and tried green beans as my vegetable, which were also okay, but decided to stick with the black beans and mixed veggies, and went to the veggie juice for my third meal.
 
And then, yesterday, I once again pigged out. I had lost eight pounds, and it was BECAUSE I had eaten so much crap the previous Saturday!
 
See, my diet is low calorie and low carb, and eating that way consistently will slow your metabolism. Going wild once a week keeps the metabolism high, so that you can continue to burn off the fat on the days you behave. Between a week of loose experimenting to see what I'd like and a week of strict adherence using what I did like, I lost eight pounds.
 
What makes this even more incredible is that I'm NOT exercising much at all. I walked five miles Monday and Friday, and two miles Wednesday. Otherwise, I've been chained to the computer.
 
But what's going to keep the pounds off? I lost over 50 pounds in 2009, and regained about a third of them very slowly over 2010. How to make sure the weight lost isn't found again, and retain the no-brainerness? You have to kill off the bad fat cells. Tune in next time to find out how.
 
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More awesomeness to whet your dhrystones:
To Your Health - Part 4
In my Quest to Offend You
Hey baby, what's your sign? (Updated!)

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We are the Official Website of Florida!

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Good news! In a press conference this coming Monday, Florida Senators Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio will announce in a bilateral agreement that we, Mopjockey.com, are the official website of Florida!!! OMG! Senator Nelson just called me up this morning to give me the good news and I had to tell you all about it right away! After I gushed for a while, I asked him why we were receiving such an honor, and guess what he said?

Go ahead, guess!


Because of all the websites whose owners live in Florida, this one, Mopjockey.com, has consistently garnered the most traffic and raised the most awareness of the solutions to the state's, country's, and world's problems.

Yeah, amazing, right? All a guy could ever want, and recognition for it too! Check out some of the reasons Bill enumerated:

The "Expose Yourself" articles, first and foremost.
Our local astronomy series, recently updated.
Our ever-popular To Your Health series, also recently updated.

And then there's all the celebrities I've met and whose careers I've boosted over the years, all the political commentary, and all the excellent, life-changing advice (which you can find listed by clicking on the appropriate article categories along the left side).

Now I have to pack for a quick trip up to Tallahassee, the state capital, where they'll present me with the award at a public ceremony, which I suspect will be attended by a certain former President from Florida, and I'll be up all night designing special site badges!

Thank you all for your support, and I'll see you on Monday! Those of you in the Daytona Beach area, come on down to the City Island Library at 12:15 tomorrow and you'll see J. W. Thompson speak about how to improve the size of your Facebook audience and get them interested in your books.

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More awesome and inspiring articles not published on the 91st day of the year:
Centennial Celebration
Breaking personal records is fun!
What makes for good TV?

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