ATOMIC DOG

There are times when I just can't make up my mind.

Not about stuff that's really important, but inconsequential stuff.

Things like which movie to watch, what shirt to wear, or whether I should go with the Mu Shu Pork or the Eggplant Lo Mein.

There were even times when I couldn't decide between women. By the time I made up my mind, Kelly and Ashley had gone to their respective apartments, put on their rejuvenating turtle placenta facial masks, slipped into their Victoria's Secret Pink® flannel pjs, and queued up the new Melrose on the DVR.

It's often the same when I'm trying to think of topics for this-here column.

I mentally collect facts all week long and by the time I sit down to pound out a column, at least one of them has started to congeal or coalesce.

Not so this week.

Oh, I had plenty of possible topics, but like Robin Williams facing all those brands of coffee in Moscow on the Hudson, I couldn't make up my mind.

But rather than have a breakdown in the grocery store, I said screw it and decided to go with all of them. Presented below are various pensées, which are short thoughts expressed in literary form.

Men Who Stare at Tits

You know, I've heard there are men who, if they stare at tits, can actually make them keel over dead.

Or maybe I'm confusing tits with goats?

No matter.

The new greeting on my answering machine is, "Hel-lo bomb-shell!"

I got it from the Victoria's Secret ad campaign of the same name. It's for their new double-strength push up bra that increases a woman's cup size by, like, 10,000 times.

You get a woman to wear one of these things and you could open up a skateboard park.

You get a woman to wear one of these things and you and your friends could spend your weekend ascending Mount Baldy, hoping to crest at Areola Peak by sunset, at which point you'd break out the tents, build a fire, and cook up some beanie weenies.

Regardless of how the bra is used, thanks Victoria's Secret.

Hel-lo Bomb-shell!

Insulin at the Ready

My buddy Joel just got back from Vegas. He and his girlfriend wanted some pancakes for breakfast, so they took a cab to Blueberry Hill, which is, according to my friend, the Lourdes of pancakes.

As their breakfast arrived, a family of fatties arrived at the table next to them. Among them was the fatty matriarch, who, either because of her girth or some unapparent medical malady, was confined to a wheelchair.

The fatties pushed Big Momma up to the table, stretched a woefully inadequate napkin across her immense lap, and then appeared to rearrange her silverware.

As the troupe took their seats, my friend took notice of her place setting. There, next to the fork, knife, and spoon, was a loaded insulin syringe, at the ready for Big Momma to inject into her thigh after her first bite of glycemically devastating pancake.

Cut, shovel, chew, inject.

"Vegas—always ready for action," remarked my friend.

You can put all the health incentives you want into the impending health care legislation, but people like Big Momma prove it ain't going to do a lick of good.

Acai Took the Wrinkles Right out of my Scrotum

It did.

For real.

Acai took the wrinkles right out of my scrotum.

It's true. My scrotum is now taut and fuzzy and it looks—except for the color—like I'm packin' two brand spanking new Wilson tournament tennis balls.

That's not all. Acai cured me of gout, caused my webbed feet to revert to normal, and made my breath smell like a stripper's bosom, all vanilla and cinnamony.

Jesus, ain't there anything acai doesn't allegedly fix?

As you might have noticed, acai is the latest wonder food, having replaced pomegranate as the chosen fruit.

Listen, acai is a nice fruit. It contains omega 3 fatty acids, and it contains antioxidants, but anything that's from a plant contains antioxidants.

While acai marketers routinely claim that a serving has more antioxidants than, I don't know, a full-scale mock-up of Denise Milani's breasts made from packed blueberries, it's not really true.

It seems that while acai contains more antioxidants than apple, orange, or cranberry juice, it doesn't contain as much as grape juice, blueberry juice, or black cherry juice.

Furthermore, real acai is hard to find. The fruit spoils easily and packaging is challenging. Every berry has to be shipped from Brazil and unless it's stored in the hermetically sealed hoo-hahs of Brazilian supermodels, it arrives in the states a tad stale.

As a result, while acai juices seem to be plentiful, finding raw berries is rare, leading some to speculate that some of the acai berry preparations seen are adulterated with other, supposedly less potent, domestic berries.

Berry buyer best beware.

The Apprentice

A friend of mine, a non-lifter, suddenly decided he wanted to start working out with weights.

This is how the conversation went:

Friend: You got some sort of routine, right?

Me: Uhh, yeah.

Friend: Well, just give it to me.

Me: You want to do my routine?

Friend: Yeah. So I know what exercises and weights to use.

Me: You think you can just look at my routine, the product of years and years of accumulated knowledge and expertise, and give it to you so you can make it your own, you whose only experience with weights is occasionally curling your wife's 5-pound dumbbell?

The hubris! The temerity! Listen, ectomporph, not only would you find it incomprehensible, but the idea of you knowing how to correctly execute even one of the movements in my workout is pathetically laughable.

I didn't really say that, but I thought it, maybe not in so many words, but conceptually. What I did say was that my workout might be a little tough for him, so I'd write one up especially for him.

The odd thing was that I had a helluva lot of trouble writing a routine for him. It'd been years since I'd dealt with a complete newbie. I couldn't figure out which exact type of routine would be best, which type of routine he'd be able to master without me holding his hand for several weeks.

It was eye opening for me.

I ultimately gave him one based on the fundamental lifts like squats, bench press, overhead presses, straight leg deadlifts, etc., but writing it was remarkably unsatisfying. I felt like a reasonably competent and skilled painter who'd been asked by an uncomprehending friend to paint a picture of her kitty so she could hang it up in her bathroom.

Monkeys and Talking Babies.

Say you own a company and you need an ad agency to devise a killer campaign for you. You take a meeting with some Mad Men types and they come up with an ad using talking babies.

Run the fuck away.

If your idea of humor is talking babies or talking monkeys, you ain't got nothin'.

My 62-inch plasma screen is permanently scarred from the fettuccini, chicken wings, and stale Cheetohs that I've hurled at it ever since those E-Trade commercials started playing.

Fuckin' shankopotami.

I have enough trouble just looking at drooly babies, so that alone is plenty offensive, but when you make them talk, a' la those shit talking-baby movies of the 90's that starred the voices of Bruce Willis and John Travolta, it offends my creative sensibilities.

Fuck you, E-Trade.

Sexy Beast

It's not Jessica, Jennifer, Giselle, or even that hunky androgynous Adam Lambert.

Nah, my vote for the sexiest mammal goes to the Naked Mole Rat.

For one thing, the rats are buck naked, devoid of hair, and for another, their nickname is "Sand Puppy," which is, coincidentally, what my Arab girlfriend calls my penis.

And really, take a look at the thing in the margin to the right. Tell me, is that a naked mole rat or is that me cradling my manhood?

Hell, you take away the legs and that's pretty much the spittin' image of my dick.

Anyhow, the Naked Mole Rat is also interesting because it doesn't get cancer. It's thought that this immunity to cancer is the reason it lives as long as 28 years, which is about 7 times as long as laboratory rats and mice.

Apparently, the cells of the naked mole rate hate to be crowded, so they stop growing before they develop into tumors. This cellular trait is called "contact inhibition," and it's one of the leading areas of study in human cancers.

So please, a little respect for this sexy little mammal.

I am a Loser

"I am a PC."

If I were part of the Microsoft Corporation, I'd want the losers in the Windows 7 commercials to keep it to themselves. Have you gotten a load of the various geeks, nerds, and computer-literate turds they feature in their commercials?

Get somebody to say, "I'm a PC and I have an 11-inch cock," and maybe I'll switch back from Mac.

The same goes for the guy in the Ford Fusion commercial that touts the fuel efficiency and all-round greenery of the hybrid car. It seems the car features a pixilated tree on the dash and the more fuel-efficient your driving, the bigger the tree grows.

The nerdy freak in the commercial, yellow teeth and all, flashes a rictus of a smile and admits (chuckle), that he's gotten that tree to grow pretty big.

Jesus! You couldn't find a more charismatic spokesman to hawk your car?

You've singlehandedly dealt a kick in the crotch to the environmental movement.

Toilet Water

My buddy, Peter, needed some leaky bathroom fixtures repaired, so he asked a friend, a handyman with some plumbing experience, if he could help.

The friend agreed to do the job for free and offered to come over the next Sunday to do the repairs.

Peter quickly assured him that the repairs could wait; he didn't want to ruin the handyman's Sunday.

The handyman dismissed the objection, saying, "It would save me from spending time with my girlfriend."

I hear that kind of thing all too often from men.

If I can be so bold, if you'd rather spend your Sundays elbows deep in toilet water than hang out with your wife or girlfriend, do your eternal soul (and her's) a favor and break off the relationship or marriage.

Island of Dr. Moreau

I love dogs, but I'm slightly put off by the assorted lap dog breeds that serve no apparent function other than to appease their Blofeld-clone owners who derive some tactile psychotherapy from stroking them.

They busted the Nazis for contemplating eugenics. They berate stem cell scientists for considering the same. But what are these bastardized dog breeds but a eugenics experiment run amok, a real life canine Island of Dr. Moreau?

The further you breed a dog away from its wolf ancestors, the greater the crime of nature you're committing.

Sure, it'd be one thing if you were painstakingly developing a dog that could somehow harness the power of its farts to recharge your cell phone, but we're not doing that, are we?

We're breeding dogs to be pettable, or cute. Just don't let the bastards get wet after midnight, lest you cry havoc and let slip a new breed of Gremlins.

The Third Place

In the book, The Great Good Place, author Ray Oldenburg talks about "the third place."

It's become a term used in community building to refer to social environments separate from the two most common social environments.

Oldenburg calls the "first place" one's home and that includes the people that one lives with. The "second place" is the workplace, which is more often than not, the place where many people spend most of their time.

However, in order for people to have creative interaction, they need a "third place" that's pretty much an informal meeting place. It's considered an essential in community building.

The characteristics of such a third place are free or inexpensive food or drink, a highly accessible destination, and a high percentage of regulars who frequent the location.

Starbucks nabbed onto this concept with all the tenacity of the macadamia nuts that cling onto its tasty biscotti. In an effort to make the coffee chain a "home away from home," they've incorporated comfortable chairs, free electric outlets and wireless Internet access.

While most gyms could benefit hugely from this concept, few have taken advantage of it. "Juice bars" were once common in gyms, but they've become a relative rarity, probably because they were rarely designed with the "second home" concept. Instead, they were uncomfortable and unwelcoming.

While a lot of TMUSCLE readers might think that socializing is anathema to a good workout, the concept of the "third place" might soon become an economic necessity in a stark economy where the idea of a home gym is becoming increasingly appealing, from both an economic standpoint and a time-management standpoint.

Porn as Instructional Video

I read an article on Salon by Mary Elizabeth Williams about how men seem to be picking up lovemaking techniques through watching porn.

It dawned on her after some guy she'd picked up, while jack-hammering away "for what felt like hours," asked her, "You like that, baby? You like that?"

Well, she didn't. Like that, that is.

She posits that unlike bowling or baking pies, sex isn't something you usually get much firsthand experience observing. There aren't any schools for that sort of thing, nor are there any personal trainers to tell you your form is off.

Instead, guys "learn" sex from watching porn, which, according to Williams, is like learning to drive by watching The Fast and the Furious.

She and her friends puzzle over why various boyfriends, while screwing, periodically withdraw their members to thump the girls' rumps like they're the White Stripes' drummer.

They're puzzled over men who try to do the old upside-down fellatio maneuver, where they grab you by the waist and flip you upside down (extra points for holding them by the ankles) and expect you to blow them, which probably isn't all that sexy for women, unless they're fans of various gravity-defying rides at Six Flags.

I definitely see Williams' point.

If an alien were to explore human sex by watching porn, he or she would probably come to the following conclusions:

• Insemination occurs when a man ejaculates on a woman's face.
• Sex is often lonely for women, so it's best if they have one or more friends join in.
• Women often initiate sex by ordering a pizza.
• The penis sometimes accidentally slips into the poop chute, but women are far too polite to mention it.
• Thrusting speed must approximate the mixer used at the Ace Hardware.

Williams concludes by suggesting that "aping an adult porn star doesn't make a person a lover any more than playing Rock Band makes him a musician."

Instead, "good sex makes room for honest passion and uninhibited enthusiasm, and doesn't feel like an audition for AVN rookie of the year. It's messy and silly and profound. And unscripted."

I concur, mostly, but I swear I can't perform unless she's kept her high heels on. I guess some porn lessons can't be undone.