The One About Sugar

Category: weekleez

The One About Sugar
March 5, 2003

hi kids,

several weeks ago i was sitting around trying to figure out when spring break was and then i was curious about what day easter was going to fall on (les and mere’s b’day it turns out) and then i thought about lent. lent seems like a heavy word doesn’t it? it’s like onomatopoeia, it’s the sound one of those giant catholic bibles makes when you drop it.

every year for lent i say that i’m going to give up cussing. and you would think i could hold my foul mouth in check for 40 days, wouldn’t you? heh.

but the thing is, for me, not swearing just isn’t practical. i guess it might have something to do with the fact that i don’t have a problem with swear words and so giving it up for lent would be kind of like giving up chewing gum. i only chew gum on tuesdays and thursdays. chewing gum is really not a big deal.

incidentally, don suggested that i give up giving up swear words for lent for lent. heh, i called him smartass.

so anyway i was talking to some friends and one of them, and her name is debbie, said that every year she gives up sugar for lent. well i thought that that really sucked and i told her so i said, “holy cow, that must suck.” and she said that yeah it’s tough but really it’s heatlhy and yadda yadda yadda.
i thought to myself, “self, you could never do that. so don’t you even think it.”

y’know, i should know myself better than that by now. i think that everytime i have told myself that i’ll never do X, that the very next week the oppotunity to do X somehow arises and i always always end up doing X. i’ll just tell you how horrible it is, the last time this happened i said, “feh. i’d never buy a kylie minogue album.”
i know.

so i began to really consider giving up sugar for lent and in about .4 seconds i decided i’d give up all sugar for lent, an absolute no sugar diet. i figured i should go whole hog.

the first thing i did was call laura and told her that i was going to go on a no sugar diet for lent. she said, “you mean a low sugar diet?” i said that nah, i’m just not gonna have any sugar at all, it’s only for 40 days i think i can manage. and she said, “jaimie. hon. that’s impossible. everything has sugar in it.” i said, “whatever.”

so then i thought that i’d better read something about no sugar diets to see what i can eat. well it turns out that laura was right. everything that is edible (except maybe shampoo) has sugar in it, mostly. i should also mention that laura does not own a kylie minogue CD. so feel free to ask her questions about anything because it’s obvious that she has more sense than someone like let’s say for instance, me.

so i read tons of stuff and did you guys know that sugar is like, evil? yeah i know. apparently it’s like more addictive than caffiene and oreos combined. or something. it’s really like a drug! but that doesn’t really bother me.

i also read that we, as in the western world, which i’m not entirely sure what all that entails but i think it means everyone who does not have a violent dictator in charge of thier country, did not even have sugar until the 1500s or something like that. we had honey, but not the precious, precious sugar cane. but that’s not what’s bothering me.

so then of course, we had to have african slaves to you know, mine the sugar or whatever it is they do to get sugar. and of course that went on for years. and so we’ve used slave labor to get us where we are today and that’s a nation hooked on sugar! but that doesn’t really bother me.

we are a fatty nation, hooked on sugar, eating “low-fat” foods which are low in fat but more importantly high in sugar and so we starve ourselves eating this low-fat shempfood that tastes like flavorless cat yuck, meanwhile obesity is still on the rise and see what happens when you spend the day on the internet looking up the evils of sugar?
oy, but that’s not what’s bothering me.

i also read (and i really wish i had printed all this stuff out the other day so that i could give you all these great links about sugar but i’m just not that organized and you should expect that from someone who owns a kylie minogue CD) that if sugar had been invented say, 5 years ago, that the FDA or USDA or OSHA or WHOEVER would not approve it because it’s just not good for ya and it’s so darn addictive. i find that very interesting, but that doesn’t really bother me.

what really bothered me about all this was that while i was reading up on being down with sugar, i found out that there is a sugar lobby. ugh. i hate finding out stuff like that. i mean, i think i’ve always known that milk is a huge scam. deep down in the cockles of my cold, cold heart i’ve always had a mistrust for milk. milk lies. and i know, i just know that if something as “wholesome” as milk could lie to me, then fer sure sugar has been lying about everything it’s ever done from merely sweetening my coffee to making oreos the best thing in the world to possibly cheating on me (sugar and i have been together for 25 years and as i read those articles i think that sugar has been with other people, lots of other people) as it is now to be assumed that sugar is a crackwhore.

now, if there’s one thing i need less of in my life right now it’s crackwhores. so i might as well start with the sugar.

ok, so i might happen to own a kylie minogue CD, but i’m not a total shemp, and so in thinking all this sugar filth through i decided that me going without a bag of peanut m&ms for 40 days would probably be an eye-clawing experience so i have to admit the last three weeks in february i cut way back on my sugar intake. so maybe i’ll actually make it 40 days.

thing is, today being fat tuesday (phat tuesday, yo!) i should be glomming as many sweets as i can, but i just don’t want to. i haven’t craved sugary things in several days. lucky for me, i’m a kylie minogue CD owning idiot and there was this container of oreos at work and i think i ate about 14 of them. not because i wanted them, nay, but because i thought, “hey, i’m gonna have an oreo! i haven’t had an oreo in a long time and it’s fat tuesday, i’m eating it and no one can stop me!” it was the best thing i’ve ever put in my mouth. it crunched. it was sweet. it was chocolate. it was double stuff.
i crammed two more in my mouth and sighed. then the phone rang. “keffy simes” *crunch mumble cough*

then on the way home i stopped and bought a pepsi as a last fat tuesday hurrah. but i haven’t been drinking sodas much lately in fact i hadn’t had a pepsi in weeks. well, about 20 minutes ago the oreos and pepsi kicked in, if you know what i mean. sugar, i hate you.

now i’m not even going to pretend that i know what the deal is on giving up stuff for lent. i just figure that giving up something that’s not good for me anyway for 40 days can’t be a bad thing. and i figure that if i use my sweet-cravings as a way to remind me to check in with the big guy, which is something like 4 or 5 or 46,000 times a day that i’m thinking about beowulf or those cheap sugar-wafer cookies, i mean, harnessing that power for good instead of crackwhore-sugar evil can’t be a bad thing.

anyway, i’ll keep you posted.

this weekly would have been more complete had the Godfather not been on. of course, it would have been even more, more complete if after watching the Godfather, the Godfather part II had not come on. i could no more change the channel than i could stop myself from buying that damn kylie minogue CD.

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