If you’re looking for inspiration as we stretch 23 days away from your New Year’s Resolution to cut down the amount of noxious swill inexplicably forcing its way down your wobbling gullet, try reading Kevin Smith on his decision to improve. Choice quote:

I don’t have a weight problem. There are people who can work their asses off to lose weight only to find that their genetics conspire against their best efforts. I’m not one of those people. I can lose weight – I just have a problem with getting off my fat ass. What can I say? I’m just a lazy fsck.

(About that last word – Yes I changed it. I’ve no problem with swearing in its place, and his site is a great place for it, I just don’t want to trip anyone’s work filters.)

I have a bad knee, following a dramatic accident a couple of months ago – I was walking sedately up some stairs when, shockingly, my knee gave way under me and hurt somewhat. I know, it’s a disturbing story, I should have warned you in advance.

Anyway, after visiting the doctor a month ago to get the standard “give it time” diagnosis I made another appointment for tomorrow, as it was still playing up. Naturally now, 12 hours before the appointment, it’s just fine. Best cure known to man.

Add on about 17 years, and attach dangling weights to the boy’s legs, and this could have been me down to the last detail. Except for the detail about running marathons afterwards. And tennis, I suck at tennis. And I only stayed in for 12 months (plus another month when I was 12). And I was there during the 70’s, not the 50s/60s. But apart from that, it’s me.

There is a section of the religious community that believes that contraception using the pill is abortion, because it hasn’t yet been proven that it is impossible for the pill to block implantation of a fertilized egg. These people want the pill to be banned, therefore, along with all other abortion techniques. Now it looks like they’ll have to add smoking to their banned list of abortifacients. I’m happy to see smoking banned (except when I’m in a libertarian frame of mind), but I suspect this would be something of a hard sell.