Miracle Nothing

As you know if you'd been paying attention, I joined Curves last week. It turns out that you can't actually get fit that way. You have to go to the workout. Drat. Anyway, in a similar fit of self-loathing, I, uh, bought something. I suppose if I had a television, I'd have bought some fabulous jewelry from the Home Shopping Network, just to make my fat self feel better, or maybe I'd have ordered an amazing exercise system that works all my muscles in only fourteen minutes a day, so I suppose I should just be grateful that I only have a computer, and that I only ordered twenty seven-ounce packets of Miracle Noodles.

Near as I can tell, these noodles are a vegetable fiber, even though they contain zero dietary fiber. They're a filler -- a carb-free, calorie-free, fat-free filler. Like tofu, they take on the taste of whatever's around them. I committed two recipes: an Asian thing with shredded cabbage and a hot peanut sauce, and my own delicious macaroni salad. It was a costume ball, with the Miracle Noodle masquerading as elbow macaroni. Its mask kept slipping off, the hat tipping, the robe sliding off the shoulder, revealing not succulence but pestilence.

The only real trouble with the Miracle Noodles is that I'm simply not going to cook. I discovered, too, from post-purchase research that most people say the noodles work best in Asian recipes. Heck, if I'm going to bother to cook, I want to cook something I love.

I spent forty bucks for the things, which includes shipping, and since they're packed in some gelatinous, translucent substance that smells a bit like fish (but may taste like chicken), they're heavy. And that's what inspired today's blog for me. If these noodles weighed, say, five pounds, I'd have tossed them -- and my money -- out with Monday's trash and been done with it. You'd never have known about it. But it's a whole different thing when there's such substance. I feel truly wasteful throwing out twenty pounds of stuff.

The hole was dug even deeper when, refusing to throw the noodles out, I offered them on Craig's List. I put them under Health and Beauty and am asking ten dollars for the whole mess. Since my ad will stay on the list for a month, I think I have to keep the noodles in my refrigerator, even if I change my mind about tossing them out. They're good till mid-November, as long as we understand that "good" means many things.

As a special offer to my Blog Friends, I'll let you have the things for FREE. Just come and get 'em.

But let's move on to more pleasant topics, like my new license plate. Notice anything strange? Yes. The tags expire in September 2011. We Floridians can now renew for two years at a time. The price jumps thirty-five percent on September 1, so people born in the last quarter of the year (and you know who you are) have the option of renewing early, to enjoy the savings for both years.



I did that yesterday and while I was at it, I personalized my Imagine plate with -- you guessed it! -- BIEN50. It will be centered on the plate, which will cover up John Lennon's self-portrait, but that's what you get when you mix art and bureaucracy. I'm convinced they let a Republican design the plate. The background sky could easily have been much better, and the lettering for IMAGINE breaks the very first rule of typography: Make it legible. Still, the extra money I paid goes to local food pantries, so it may be sadly ugly, but at least it does some good.

Olga was over here the other day. Yes, the same Olga who needs to upload a photo of herself as my Follower. She, like too many, appears to be in the Witness Protection Program. Ah. Maybe I'll call those faceless Followers Stalkers. Will that urge them to show their faces?

Anyway, we saw a butterfly dragging a dead leaf as it lumbered from one branch to another. I thought it was gathering material to build a nest, although it is the wrong season and, um, the wrong species. It turned out that it was carrying its Significant Other, with makin' whoopee on whatever they use for minds.

I never know in the insect world who's doing what. Bugs are just too alien to me. I mean, when monkeys are making babies, I get it. Ditto ducks and dogs. I think the water mammals might baffle me, though, and I know bugs do, so it took a moment to figure out that the butterflies were mating.

I know in the bird world, the males are the showoffs, strutting their brighter colors to capture the females' attention. Mammals, too, have the males pounding their chests and smashing their horns to show who's got the best sperm. Of course, we're mammals, so I don't understand why the females are the ones who, for instance, jump on the backs of motorcycles wearing leather short-shorts and teeny bikini tops while the males driving the bikes are covered (except for their heads, of course) in thick denim and leather. I suppose it's the same thing that made girls in my high school wear their fat winter coats over their above-the-knee skirts (jeans and even slacks making the dress code cover its eyes with the back of its hand and feel faint). Our bare legs were out there in the cold. We wore our little white sneakers (kept white with baby-shoe polish) and little white ankle socks. In the Buffalo Snowbelt.

Something got turned around. I mean, women's magazine covers hint at the treasures inside: How To Make Him Really Hot, Top Ten Ways To Turn Him On. Huh? When did that become an issue? Goodness. Just say yes. That'll turn him on.

Well, I guess we got civilized. We crawled out of the caves and moved to Madison Avenue and Wall Street. Now instead of roaring and charging, the human male mammal buys a car that'll do that. Okay. Maybe my metaphors are getting puréed here, but, really, look at our progress: The males spend a lot of money to show us they've got the best sperm, and we females spend a lot of money to make sure that fine sperm goes to waste. It's like my Miracle Noodles. I've found a food that delivers absolutely no nutrition or calories or fat or protein. Next thing you know, we'll be sending it to Ethiopia.

I apologize for that awful photo of the butterflies getting it on. All the others were actually out of focus, and it's an auto-focus camera. But did you notice the ACCENT MARK? I'm so thrilled! My friend Luis turned me on to that. Yay!