How many vegetarians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
I don’t know, but where do you get your protein!?

So, what’s up with all my blog peeps? Sorry for the long delay in writing stupid stories. I was busy ignoring my diabetes and practicing at being ignorant which caused my sugar to spike. This all ended up creating some neuropathy in my hands, legs and spine, which all led to a good ole middle-aged fear of death or serious bodily harm. All of which culminated in some very wild experimentations with multiple types of insulin in large doses that caused me to gain weight. That weight gain gave me an extreme case of sleep apnea and physical exhaustion that caused me to fall asleep every time I sat down to write my stories. So I stopped writing for a while to get things back into alignment. This is an attempt to redeem myself.

I was eating lunch with my regular lunch crew not too awfully long ago when Phil proclaimed that he was considering doing a 28-day colon cleanse in order to lose a few pounds; maybe get a bit more healthy. There’s nothing quite as effective at losing weight as when you’re eyeing a plate of “Phat Si-Lo” at your local Thai restaurant and someone starts talking about all the junk that comes out of your butt when you do a colon cleanse. Yummm! All I could think about were those little cashews nestled among Curt’s “Kung Pao Chicken” and wondering what it is that makes peanuts digest differently than cashews.

Anyway, after hearing all about Phil’s colon, I was suddenly stricken with this idea that I was going to have to make some radical change in my eating habits or I may never be able to lose this stupid weight. Then, as if my old friend Murphy was listening to that entire disgusting conversation, a nice lady named Carol came into my office after lunch wanting my advice on zoning a large piece of property for a “vegetarians retreat”. Of course, my selfish instincts instantly piqued.

To make a long story less painful to read, Carol gave me some web sites to study and some reading materials along with some free advice. Carol challenged me to go 30 days without eating any meat. The theory is that eating red meat in particular causes your body to become more insulin resistant. I’m not even going to try to explain about the quality of gut bacteria to help maintain your health or about maintaining a healthy intestinal barrier to prevent toxins from entering your bloodstream. That attempt, if I were so bold as to explain it, would be pretentious at best. But apparently bad gut bacteria will actually form new toxins from processed meats, and increase their ability to enter your body, making your body more insulin resistant and causing your pancreas to release less insulin simultaneously.

Apparently, nitrates in red meat, especially processed meat and bacon, get a lot of this negative attention. Although processed meat contains up to 50% more nitrate than unprocessed meat, nitrates themselves are only a problem when you have bad gut bacteria – which I was certain to have with all the crazy things I was eating. With an imbalanced gut flora, most diabetes experts say that nitrates lessen the release of insulin, which reduces glucose tolerance and increases our risk of developing type II diabetes which is the exact type of diabetes I and most diabetics have. This negative effect on glucose levels helps explain why Harvard researchers found that eating just one serving a day of processed meats (i.e. two slices of salami or a hot dog) was linked to a 20% increase in risk for diabetes.

I had no idea. In fact I have been a poster-boy for Oscar Myer bologna since before I was doing commercials for them in the 70’s. By the way, to answer the riddle at the very beginning of this blog – beans are how you get your protein – lots ‘o’ beans. I said I had been eating vegetarian earlier but I was actually challenged to eat vegan for thirty days to see what effects it would have on my diabetes. Weight loss was not the principle goal. I thought to myself, I can do anything for thirty days, right?

It’s kind of funny but I always wondered what a vegan really was and I remember that as a young fella I associated the word vegan with outer space. Kind of like those weird space aliens on Star Trek called Ferengi with the enormous ear thingee’s and British dental work.

But what I actually learned over the past couple months is that vegan’s aren’t aliens at all…they just attract aliens with their chemtrails. You know, when you become a vegan, even if it is short-lived, you must learn the secret handshakes, take the herbal supplements, and subscribe to weird people’s blogs. What I actually learned is kind of scary actually. Buckle up pilgrims.

Laura Eisenhower, great-granddaughter of President Eisenhower, is an expert on Vegan’s (notice I’m beginning to capitalize the word “Vegan”) and she’s also a medical astrologist, global chemist, and a cosmic mythologist (fancy way of saying airline hair-dresser) and she warns us that there are nanoparticles in chemtrails that we are absorbing into our bodies and the danger is that these particles will link up to an artificial intelligence system. Apparently, if we’re so bold as to expand our consciousness’, we can work with an alternate type of physics and potentially transcend to create alchemy (golden turds). It is all a matter of paying special attention to our personal frequency and vibrations so we can assimilate and alchemize the toxic energies vexing our bodies. According to her, we can combat this stuff if we support Gaia: whatever in the hell that is.

But, it may be helpful to know that her routine breakfast for supporting Gaia is an Ezekiel tortilla with eggs and potatoes with kombucha tea and alkaline water which makes a very healthy gut flora and immunizes her immune system with super high vibrations. Tumeric is good for that too as well as raw cabbage, she says.

One of the great things about being vegan for the past 2 months is that it’s provided me with a whole new source of procrastination. I generally don’t plan my meals, I just go to any ole restaurant and play it by ear – focusing my attention on anything that looks like a bean and ordering two of them. Bean burritos, bean burgers, and black bean salsa have been the go-to items to keep me satisfied. In case you have a difficult time figuring out what you can eat, just look at the things that don’t taste good and you’ve mastered it.

Of course I did have a 30-day anniversary weekend where I got to enjoy a real steak and meatloaf and other sundry carnivorous items. Oh yeah, and then there was Easter lunch – I did sin a lot on Easter which caused a rip-tide of bad sounding vibrations. But now I’m back on my track, having switched gears toward vegetarian and away from being a vegan. I can’t help it, I just don’t want any part of an alien visit. Aside from that, Emily got tired of washing my underwear with chemtrails on them and no one was appreciating all the high-vibrations.

All that said, I did lose about 20 pounds pretty quick but now it is slow go with the weight. The good news is that I have reduced the amount of insulin I take to about 50% of what I was taking. So, all in all, it does appear that a reduction in meat eating does make you less insulin resistant. Screw Wikipedia and all of the studies that no one ever reads – my results have been very good so I intend to keep up my vegetarian façade and only eat meat one weekend a month. That way, I can still support the beef industry and help my diabetes all at the same time.

A missionary was taking a walk in the African jungle when he heard the ominous sound of a lion behind him. “Oh Lord,” prayed the devout missionary, “Grant in Thy goodness that the lion stalking me is a good Christian vegetarian lion.” And then, in the silence that followed, the missionary heard the lion praying too: “Oh Lord,” he prayed, “We thank Thee for the food for which we are about to receive.”