By God, for once–and I hope this will be the only time–I actually have something to say about finding weird shit in my referral logs. It seems that there are an awful lot of people trying to look up the “Light as a feather, stiff as a board” incantation. I mean at least once a day I get this search (because the phrase is the page title of this entry) and my stats show it’s the most popular search string after “Weight Watchers Recipe Cards”.

What’s with this urgent need to practice hypnotic two-finger-lifting? Are there really that many slumber parties? And doesn’t looking this shit up on the internet kind of defeat the whole point of exploring the unknown? Seriously: this is occult wisdom that can only be passed down from the cousin of your friend Nicole’s sister who tried the spell on this one girl from Lyons Township who was so totally hypnotized everyone thought she was in a coma and Nicole swears to God she is not making this up. To learn it any other way is fucking blasphemy, I tell you.

Sarah at Tomato Nation has been looking for a man who was her “disaster buddy” in the aftermath of the WTC attacks two years ago. She first wrote about him in her account of that day and now she’s stepping up her efforts to locate and thank him. So I’m spreading the word.

So I started doing Weight Watchers online again, keeping track of the stuff I put in my mouth by using their snazzy eTools. One day I felt a sudden need to go to that site and log my daily POINTS�; something about clicking on all these little form fields and buttons seemed deeply compelling. And a few times a day now I get the impulse to go back and watch the numbers change and calculate what I’ll do for dinner or even the next day, and I’ve been surprised by my own instinct to do this and how it’s taken the form of a sweet little itch for simple computation and order.

Then I realized where it all comes from: I’ve been playing Virtual Drug Dealer almost daily for the past two weeks.

I’m serious. That fucking game has given me a case of the interactive click-clickies. And I am pretty sure that figuring out how much mozzarella I can have without blowing the eight points I have left for the day is essentially the same kind of brain activity that helps me decide how much meth I should unload if I want enough cash to snag some weak DesignerZ.

So for those of you who are reading this for advice: too much white rice can really screw you over sometimes. Same thing with crank.

Or something.

You may have noticed while reading the very infrequent (but lengthy!) journal entries that I have not gone to a gym since about May, when crazy-ass apartment moving activities and expenditures made additional exercise unnecessary and furthermore rendered gym too expensive and also somehow more of a pain in the ass to get to than before. So I quit and decided to rely on my trusty not-getting-fat-during-summertime tendencies for the time being. I guess it’s worked, but I know from experience that I can’t trust my ass past August. So now I’m looking for either a new gym or some kind of fitness class here in Chicago. Any ideas? These are my specs:

In general: Must be pretty much in this part of the city and not downtown. Gym: Needs to be cheap and have decent parking. Class: Anything in the evenings where I can jump the hell around but isn’t a step aerobic class; prefer kickboxing. Am considering: Well, Bally’s, I guess, if I can’t find anything better, though I know they’ll constantly try and sell me crap; a park district class, although there’s nothing close to home. Am ruling out: my recent former gym for aforementioned reasons; any Curves location because I already figured out it’s a boring and stupid place with lousy hours; my old old gym, because my lengthy research has proven that the place is totally ghetto. Vaguely considering: That yoga/pilates shit, but don’t try to sell me on it. I like to kick.

Write me if you know of anything good. Thanks.

Sometimes you lead a busy life where you have to stay home and write one night and celebrate your city’s German-American heritage the next, even though you yourself are not really very German at all, and when you can’t get your writing and German-beer-drinking schedules coordinated with those of your friends, the next best thing is getting to read their pretty freaking hilarious review of the aforementioned German-beer-drinking shenanigans.

and pretend he is a lazy ho since he hasn’t updated enough either:

Bitch, this the best motherfucking corner. Now work it.