Cheap Skate

Many people at the gym ask me for help with certain exercises and I am more than happy to help. Part of the reason I’m a personal trainer is because I find satisfaction in helping people improve themselves. There are those people though who take advantage of my kindness. For example, there is this little guy that has been asking me questions in the gym for months. I take my personal time and show him how to squat properly and so forth. I have no problem with this.

Recently he asked me to sit down with him to discuss his diet. So I put him in my appointment book and we met. I told him what I thought he was doing wrong with his diet and workout--which both sucked and might be why he weighed 130 lbs and 20% body fat. My suggestion was to use carbohydrate cycling and a body split workout. I told him I would give him a basic diet but that for training he would have to buy a few sessions.

The diet took me about an hour to write up. I E-mailed it to him and several days later I saw him at the gym. He said he had been sick and would E-mail me after he had a better chance to look it over.

I then ran into him this past weekend at the gym as I was getting in my car. He stopped me—again asking for me to give him more of my time—and then he proceeds to show me a body split workout he got off the internet and wants me to critique it. Can you believe the audacity of this guy? I was starting to get a little irritated and basically told him the workout sucked, because, well, it did. Obviously he wasn’t going to by any sessions.

Flash forward a few more days and I still haven’t heard back from this guy and it really pisses me off. Personal training is how I make money on the side. Again, I don’t mind helping people out but my good nature has caused people like this to take advantage of me. So, I am going to change the way I deal with people. I will still help people with an exercise or two but I will not give out diets or workouts unless I am paid. The only way you get free workout or diet information is if you are a close friend or family member.

I don’t have some fly by night personal training certification. You have to have a four year degree to even sit for the certification I hold--which is consider the best in the field. I must take continuing education classes and so forth to maintain my certification. This plus my yearly insurance runs around a grand. I also buy books, DVD’s and other training materials. There is also the hour upon hour I spend reading about the best training techniques. To sharpen my own physique and to broaden my base of knowledge I work with a nutritionist and of course this costs me money too. And lets not forget 27 years of workout experience. All those hours in the gym while other people were sitting on their couches eating chips.

I have a suggestion for people who think I should be giving them workout information for free. Why don’t you become certified and accrue all the expenses I do to stay on top of the training world. If you want information search out the best sources and read for hour upon hour.

And I don’t want to hear that this guy doesn’t have money. It is a matter of priority and I have made being the best I can be in this profession a priority. I pay to be in shape and to know what I know. If this guy were a butcher I wouldn’t come to his butcher shop with a side of beef and ask him to cut it for me for free. Can you imagine how incensed the butcher would be if I asked him to cut my side of beef up for free? Well, then maybe you know how much this guy and people like him have pissed me off. Sorry, no more Mr. Nice Guy…

A Bus for You

I hope you get run over by a bus. Don’t get me wrong. I hope it is a nice bus. A real cruiser with a mural on the side and wire rim hub caps made from the grills of former rappers. I hope it is polished and gleaming. It would be cool if it were Willie Nelson’s biodiesel fueled touring bus run on used cooking oil. As it ran you down you would get a whiff of weed smoke and French fries…

Dating Questionaire

In light of my recent dating experiences I have devised a comprehensive dating questionaire to be filled out by each prospective date. The test and directions are below:

Each candidate should study the questionaire extensively before answering. Please circle each correct answer using a #2 pencil. Test scores will be sent via USPS overnight express mail within two weeks. You will have thirty minutes to complete the test. Good Luck.

1. Are you crazy?
A. Yes
B. No

Thank-you for taking my prospective dating questionaire.

Big Guy Coming Through

I have a problem with guys whose claim to fame in life is that they’re “big”. They are usually blobs and talk about football games of days yore. They have names like Big John and Big Mike and Big Jim. If a fight breaks out the big guy’s friends call on him. Of course no one ever fights Big Mike because, well, that would just be plain stupid. He is after all BIG and everyone knows that BIGGER is the best. Or is it? Is it possible that we have watched one too many Godzilla movies where the giant lizard crushes fleeing Japanese villagers and believe that these BIG individuals are equal in destructive power? Further scientific research will either confirm or deny this assertion and really the result is of little relevance because BIG is BIG and that means…what the hell does that mean exactly?

One of the other trainers at the gym pushed me too far. He stole a client from me off the consultation sheet. You see, the consultation sheet is a place where potential clients sign up to meet with personal trainers. Yesterday I called a client who I had gotten off the list. When you take a client off the list you write your name next to his or her name so everyone knows that this potential client is yours. Well, when I called this potential client she told me she had been pulled aside by another trainer and the she was training with him.

What happened is this little cocksucker read this woman’s name on the consultation sheet, with my name next to it. He then waited for her to come into the gym and solicited her before I called her.

This morning when I went into the gym to do my cardio this other trainer was there. I laid into him. I am not good at confrontation but this needed to be done. He has been stealing clients and taking all the consultations for months and months. There is another trainer that is one other scumbag weasel who does the same thing. Who the fuck do these people think they are? They are just lowlifes in my opinion.

All I want is a fair distribution of clients from the consultation list. I am a good trainer and I will do fine given an opportunity. These guys don’t want to give equal distribution because they suck as trainers and they know they won’t get any business. People complain to me all the time about how bad they are. Management needs to step in and get rid of them…

Did you get a cigar? You didn’t? Well then which would you like “It’s a boy” or It’s a girl”? Yes, I am a father. That’s right and depending on your sex you may be a mother or a father too. This occurred to me this morning as I ate my breakfast and watched an interview with that freak of a woman with the giant fake lips that had octuplets after being implanted with fertilized eggs. She was clearly not mentally stable and you probably already know she is single, doesn’t have a job, and already had six children.

So, guess what? You—the tax payer—will get to support her children and all the health problems that going along with multiple births through in vitro fertilization. I think the doctor that doctor that impregnated this lunatic should be responsible for the millions of dollars its going to cost to raise these kids.

The Steelers Win!

This has been a very good sports year for me. I am a Phillies fan and a Pittsburgh Steelers fan. It's not very often your favorite teams win championships in one year. It happened once before but who knows it may never happen again...

When I went out to get my recycling bin last night you can imagine how surprised I was to find a tiny little man underneath it. He tried to run but I took off my shoe and pegged him with it. He was only eight inches tall and I was sure I killed him but when I picked him up he bit my thumb. Startled, I nearly dropped him but managed to catch him by the back of his tunic.

“What in the fuck were you doing under my recycling bin?”

“It is the place I call home.”

I held him up to eye level. “Well, it’s a shitty home. You don’t have rabies do you”

He frowned. “No.”

“Good, come on I’ll take you inside and get you a snack.”

“I would most enjoy a snack. I’ve been living off what’s left in your recycling bin. The remnants of peanut butter and salsa from a jar you threw out yesterday. Too bad the garbage men took away my food supply this morning.”

I carried the little man into my home and placed him on the counter top. He sat on an upside down coffee cup and watched as I prepared a pot of boiling water. I added onion, celery, pepper, salt and garlic powder.

The little man stood and tried to peer over the top of the pot but I stood in his way. “Wait until I’m done.”

“No, no I’m hungry.”

I moved aside. “Well okay. Here let me help you. I lifted him up and he peered into the pot.”

“Hey, wait a minute.”

But of course it was too late. I grabbed him by the neck, snapped. I then removed his tunic, skin and gutted him and tossed him in the pot.

It was during the second month of the great famine of 2030—which we all know was caused by the Bush administration’s policies--and although this little man would have normally been a medical curiosity I didn’t have the luxury of passing up a meal. He tasted oddly like pork and after my dinner I cleaned my teeth with his femur.

Some people count sheep when they’re trying to sleep. I count women at the gym that I would sleep with. I usually make it up to eighty some women before I doze off. Does this make me a pig or does it simply say that I am normal? Please advise…on second thought don’t bother, I really don’t give a shit if it does…

Okay, I was going to promise not to complain about people at the gym but its fun so I’ll keep doing it. Last night, after my workout, I went to sit at one of the tables in the gym. These tables are for eating and sitting to read and drink protein drinks and so forth. Well, since it is winter lazy people in the gym have decided to use the chairs at the tables for coat racks. This is particularly annoying when trying to find a place to eat your dinner, which is what I have to do when I’m done working out and I have clients afterwards. Anyway, I couldn’t find one open chair despite all the tables being open. So, I took a skanky old Eagles jacket off a chair and laid it on a chair next to it.

About five minutes later a 65 year old woman came up and snatched the Eagles jacket and under her breath says, “You could have put the goddamn jacket on the back of the goddamn chair.”

Now, I’m not some puny little punk. I’m not huge, but I am five feet eight inches tall and weighed 194 that day and am very lean right now so I look pretty darn big. Especially to a woman this approximately 5 foot four and weighs 90 lbs.

I get up out of my chair and walk over to where she is standing by the door. I said, “Listen, those chairs aren’t coat racks. You’re supposed to put your coat in a locker.”

She snapped at me, “Well, everyone else puts their damn jackets there!”

I so wanted to go off on her but I had to remain calm. “Well, they’re not supposed to put their jackets there. And for your information I didn’t move your jacket (I lied).”
“Well, someone moved my jacket!”

“Maybe that filthy fucking jacket has so much bacteria on it that it got up and moved itself you old bitch.”

Okay, I only thought that last line. I was smart enough to walk away despite being slightly irritable from dieting down. I want to ask: what the fuck is up with people?

Next Please – For several months I lived in the basement of an abandoned building, a church to be exact. Actually, I purchased the church and was fixing up the inside and chose to live in the basement while I turned the upstairs into a place to dwell. It had gone on the market after its congregation had died off and no one was left to attend. I bought it for a dollar at auction. That’s a lot of Jesus for one buck.

I learned through neighbors that the denomination had been strange, nothing anyone had ever heard of before or since. Something made up? Or perhaps the dream of a slightly off kilter religious zealot and drunk--this devote bunch worshiped box wine. In fact the building was made of cement blocks poured into the empty boxes of wine.

No, no, they didn’t give communion in the common sense of the word, they EMBIBED quite heavily and were often said to leave the parking lot zigzagging in their Ford pickup trucks. They believed Jesus’ blood (wine) would fortify their souls against the cruel cruel world.

The neighbors also told me that the downfall of the church was no surprise, that there had been a death pool—that the local grocer Mr. Langley had won—and that it took only four years to kill off the entire congregation. It started with the liver failures which were rampant in the congregation and that some died in domestic disputes caused by the wine. Still others wrecked on their way home from the church after service and perished—of course they were completely tanked.

One day I was tearing out the altar and had wrenched it away from the wall when I noticed a secret passageway. The altar had a false side panel and this is how the person or persons must have gained access to the passageway. I got my flashlight and made my way into the passageway. I crawled for fifteen yards or so when I came upon a room. I scanned the room with my flashlight.

“Who the hell is that!”

I nearly dropped my flashlight. There amongst a mountain of boxed wine sat a little old man in religious garb.

I shined my flashlight in the little bastard’s eyes. “No, the question is who the hell are you? You are in my building.”

“Bullshit, this is my building.”

I stepped into the room. “It fucking stinks in here.”

“Well, what do you expect? I’ve been shitting and pissing in empty wine boxes for 10 years.”

“That’s fucking gross…wait, you’ve been in here ten years?”

“That’s right, when my congregation died off I used the last of the offering and bought ten thousand boxes of wine. I’ve been in here ever since drinking them down.”

“What do you eat?”

“Cardboard from the boxes. It has a lot of protein in it.”

“Cardboard doesn’t have protein in it.”

“Well, it sure does taste good with ketchup.”

“You have ketchup.”

“No, I ran out 9 years ago. Now, if you’d kindly take that flashlight out of my eyes you can leave now.”

“No way this is my church now and you’ll have to leave.”

He heaved an empty box of wine at me which landed five feet short of its mark. I laughed. He pulled out a gun but he was slow and drunk and really quite uncoordinated. I dove at him and beamed him over the head with my flashlight and killed him. Blood the color of chardonnay ran onto the floor. I hightailed it out of that place. It was creepy as hell. Also, I’d killed a guy and thought I needed to cover it up, so I covered the secret passageway with brick and never spoke of the ordeal with anyone.

After that incident there was no way I could live in that church so I changed plans. I bought a half dozen flat screen TV’s, hired a couple slutty waitresses and opened a sports bar. I figured its what the previous worshipers at the church would have wanted if they were beer drinkers and not box wine drinkers.

What I do may sicken some people but I assure you I have only a patient’s best interest in mind. You see I am a plastic surgeon and I thoroughly enjoy helping to transform people. Sure, I could have chosen a profession where I “save” lives sewing up hearts or removing arrows from brains but I chose to make the world’s people beautiful, which of course makes it a better place. You have only to look at some of my patients’ before and after photos to realize how much of a better place…

So, you may ask why I am sitting in this jail cell writing to the opt ed column of my local newspaper. I assure you that none of my patients were injured or maimed and that in fact—to my knowledge—I do not have a single patient that is unhappy with the work that I performed on them. The problem lies in my desire to save the environment. Yes, of course this needs explaining and that is what I intend to do.

You see, I had become quite alarmed by all the fat that I was throwing away after doing liposuction on people in my office. So, much energy being incinerated--so many cheese burgers, cupcakes and pieces of pizza simply stored on a person’s hips, stomach or ass-- never to be used. This kept me up at night. How could I use this fat and make a difference in the world? And then it came to me. I was lying in bed one night when I remembered the movie: Fight Club. I recalled how the main character made soap out of the fat from people that had liposuction done to them. Of course this seemed like a waste to me. What else could I use the fat for? This was pure energy? Have you guessed yet? That’s right I decided to make biodiesel out of it and run my Prius on it.

So I set about researching how to make biodiesel and after several months I was producing my own fuel and helping the environment. I did this for over a year and spent almost nothing on fuel—only the cost of processing it but then one of my secretaries found out what I was doing and reported me. The DA hauled me into court and now I sit in jail.

It seems that people don’t like me using their former ass, hip and stomach fat to fuel my car. These gluttons would rather toss out perfectly good energy--energy that they selfishly stored on their bodies while others in the world starved. Was what I did such a bad thing? If I’m driving around town using your former spare tire as fuel is that a crime? Please write the DA and ask him to free me. What I did I did for you…

I was in a shitty mood today when I went to the gym. This little cocksucker trainer that I work with took all the fucking clients on the consultation list. He weights 130 pounds and looks like a rooster with a nose bigger than mine on a body 60 pounds lighter than mine. You get the picture. Anyway, he is not only a trainer but he works at the gym so everybody that walks through the door as a potential new client he takes. I don’t hate him or anything. He’s not a bad guy except for the bullshit he pulls with clients. He lives way above his means—as evidenced my his new I-Phone—and now I have to pay the price. If he were I superior trainer to me then I wouldn’t be so angry but he is pitiful and really doesn’t know what he is doing.

I am constantly learning new training techniques and am even working with a nutritionist to lose body fat and gain muscle. I am down nearly 35 pounds, have lost a crap load of fat and gained muscle. In the past I felt I had lost too much muscle when dieting down and my nutritionist’s specialty is keeping and gaining muscle while dieting. I figured I can always learn more and so I hired him. My stance is that I don’t know everything and I can always learn more to help my clients and myself. Unfortunately, some people never grow, they stagnate in many areas of life and are content with what they know which in a lot of cases isn’t much.

I would be fine with every trainer taking a person off the consultation list until all four trainers have a person but this trainer is a greedy little pig. I can’t count how many people have come up to me and complimented me on my training and disparaged his techniques. The problem is they don’t realize this until they’ve hired him and then see me training other people. So, how do I win?

Annoyed

It is hard work—for most people—to make a significant change in their physiques and health. I know because I have successfully dieted down many times after bulking up. You see as a personal trainer I have noticed a phenomenon that is disturbing but unfortunately predictable. Most people that hire me want to see massive changes in their physiques but they don’t want to do the work to make these changes. They want me to sit them down on machines and cajole them into doing another repetition with a pathetically light weight. They believe the infomercials that tell them they only need to work out 3 times a week for 15 minutes to have a great physique. Bullshit.

You see, they want the result but are unwilling to put in the effort to make significant change and quite frankly to me as a personal trainer it is annoying as hell. Many people after leaving the gym stuff their faces with whatever crap they want. Maybe they will even make it through the week but the weekend will come and they will drink and eat like they are working for a gold medal in the calorie olympics.

On Monday they will come to the gym and not notice any changes in their physiques, which is predictable and frustrating for me. Some of them will blame me, not understanding that THEY are the ones responsible, that no matter how hard they work on the gym or how hard they think they work—which often isn’t very hard—they will not change unless they control their eating. So, what happens to these people? They eventually quit the gym and go back to eating like crap full time and drinking and believing that I failed them, when in reality I had nothing to do with their failure. These people simply want an excuse for why they aren’t what they could be. Well, I’m sorry but the truth of the matter is that many of you are just lazy. A good physique and good health take effort and if you are not willing to give this effort then have no one to blame but yourself.

I want to love…you…and I’ve been thinking about it but the steam from the water on my brain is blinding me. So, I’ve plugged my ears with pipes--yes the PVC variety that may or may not be PC—and harvested this abundant natural resource which I will use to fuel my ambitions. For what is a person without ambition? The ambition to love for one is a worthy endeavor and I have decided it is one I will pursue. Of course this brings me full circle, right back to you. See how complicated these things can be?

I came to a realization yesterday. Well, to be fair, I was talking to a friend who made a suggestion. She said that my recollections were based merely on my perceptions at those moments and that perhaps there was another side to these stories. Damn, that bastard was right—some of my childhood perceptions were still my adult perceptions, some of them hadn’t grown or changed. Perhaps what I thought was undeniably true was in fact skewed, in all aspects of the word WRONG. I wondered how I could have all this time never considered an alternate possibility to these situations. With this realization more of my past anger dissipated and I found myself a step closer to the peace I have been searching for…

I drifted and for that I am eternally sorry. In that time I contemplated becoming an attorney. It worried me that I didn’t have a more secure future, that writing might not sustain me financially in my old age. Fear can drive you to do many stupid things. It can rob of you of your sanity and send you down a dark and ever narrowing tunnel that eventually swallows you up. When the tunnel closes there are no remnants of dreams that blossom into fruition, these hopes wither and are lost, there are only the grooves in the path left taken.

If I had chosen law I would have died another lawyer and that is not to say that it is not a good life to lead. Many people are very happy to devote their lives to the law and are very good at it. My mother, two sisters and brother are such people however I am not such a person. Through the meandering road that has been my life I have come to one solid conclusion; I am a writer. There is no escaping myself and though I may never reach the heights of my favorite authors—Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Robbins, Jack Kerouac, etc.--I will continue to do what I was meant to do and that is simply to put words down on paper. The dream never dies if you are living it for better or worse and that will be enough to sustain me.

Quote - The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.—Bertrand Russell

You have five minutes to save the world. You have four minutes to make a difference. You have three minutes to have a lifetime ahead of you. You have two minutes to be human. You have one minute to tell me you love me. You’re out of time…

So long kid. It’s been nice knowing you...well, actually, it wasn’t but I felt as if I had to say that to so my reputation as a nice guy wouldn’t be spoiled. Hmm, perhaps I just sullied my good guy persona by admitting to an unflattering comment. Ah, being nice is overrated anyway. So kiss my ass…Of course I mean that in the nicest possible way.