Piano

Congratulations go the my missus who recently passed her grade one piano exam. Congratulations, Tracy

Add comment March 16th, 2006

Healthy living with karate

I’ve invented something that is sure to make me famous. I’m incredibly proud of it despite not knowing if it actually works or not.

I call it the ‘karate system’ - a way to achieve healthy living via good diet and exercise. And the best part is, it does not involve any karate whatsoever.

Frustrated by my repeated inability to eat properly or take good care of myself, I have decided to channel those needs through a ridiculous game that I can play with myself. I respond well to ridiculous games, so hopefully it will cancel out my addictions to junk food and physical lethargy.

The object of the game is to achieve ‘black belt’ status four times. You start on white belt and proceed through a series of (non-karate standard) colours until you reach a black belt. Once you have a black belt, you keep it and start with a fresh white belt. Once you have four black belts you have completed the game.

The sequence of colours (ranked by ‘coolness’) is:

• white
• yellow
• green
• blue
• red
• purple
• black

You can wear your ‘belt’ however you like, but I recommend a coloured wrist band. This way, you’ll see your karate belt every time you reach out to take a biscuit. If you spend a day eating nothing but healthy food (as defined by common knowledge) you get to step up a colour. A week of healthy eating will yield a black belt. If you slip up and go to burger king, you go down a colour. You will feel ashamed and weak. You will resent the colour around your wrist and feel compelled to eat healthily the next day.

There are more rules. Everyone knows that you should drink lots of water. If you don’t drink enough water, you get a pale-blue wrist band. Every day you don’t drink enough water you get another pale-blue wrist band until the blood supply to your arm is compromised and an apponted referee terminates the game.

Here’s the catch - you cannot proceed up the colour scale as long as you have water bands on your wrist. Drink properly for a day (and eat healthily too) and you can remove bands. Once all water-bands are gone, you can start ascending the colour scale again.

The same thing applies to treats (chocloate bars, biscuits, cakes, other common sense ‘bad’ items). Eat a cake and you get two brown bands to wear. It will therefore take two days to lose the stigma of a cake before you can start moving up the ladder again.

There are quicker ways to lose the water and treat bands - if you do some exercise (gym, long walk, a swim, other common sense exercise item) then you can lose a band right then and there.

If you have no bands, then you can gain a ‘get out of jail free’ band by exercising. An orange band can be achieved by someone who exercises and has no treat or water bands. This orange band can then be used to void the effect of gaining a treat or water band in the future, after which it is discarded. You can own no more than one orange band at a time.

I heard once that if you do something for a month, it becomes habit. That’s why the shortest possible route to completing the game is four weeks. If you can do that, then you will not need the game any more because your life will be transformed.

In conclusion, I’m a fucking genius. I need to pad that out to a book and sell it, I really do. It’ll be the next Atkins, I tell you.

Add comment March 2nd, 2006