Monthly Archives: July 2003

In the News

Male juror falls asleep while watching porn movie. (Friends and Co-workers will never let him forget this)

I’ve never seen a purple bear, I never hope to see one, but I will tell you if you care, I’d rather see one than be one.

Are those nanites in your pants, or are you glad to see me?

Glow in the dark elephants

The Hemlock Society is no more. R.I.P.

According to a scientific study Kansas **is** flatter than a pancake.

WW – 2 Years

July 18, 2003

July 11-18: gained 2.75 pounds

I’ve been in WW a solid 2 years. I stopped maintaining this website a year and a half ago, but I continued going to meetings. However, I haven’t kept to the program as much as I would have liked.

Whenever I do journal, and keep to the program, I lose weight. But I find I lack the discipline necessary to keep this up for long periods. Luckily, since I have learned new eating habits, and I now know how to eat sensibly, closing my eyes and “using the force” seems to result in maintenance rather than gain. A lot of this, of course, is due to continuing going to meetings, since I know when I go up a pound I have to apply myself the following week to lose it.

Most of those 2.75 pounds last week were due to going out and drinking the night before weigh-in. According to my home-scale weigh ins, that weight is gone, two days later. Once I reach lifetime, I’m set. I’m a Jedi Master when it comes to maintenance. But I’m still 15 pounds away from that goal. (My goal of 150 pounds hasn’t really changed, but 155 pounds is the upper limit for my height, and that is going to be my ‘official’ goal. That way I will build in a little padding to help maintaining lifetime.)

A little over 12 weeks ago I switched to an At-Work meeting, and my weigh-in day has changed from Wednesday to Friday. I decided this weekend to recharge this website, without even realizing the total coincidence of my last weigh-in day. I knew I had started in late July of 2001, but I didn’t remember it was the 18th. Exactly 2 years. Two years, 104 weeks, 35 pounds. 35 pounds that I’ve kept off, and are gone for good.

I’ve experimented with several exercise activities. I was walking daily at work with some coworkers for several weeks, but then the coworkers dropped out, and it was very difficult to keep it up when I was the only one walking. And then the summer heat in St. Louis hit, and there was no way I was walking in that. There’s a yoga class in my neighborhood on Wednesday evenings I’m thinking about trying.

My co-workers are different from my co-workers back in Week 19. Approximately Week 26, I was a participant in what the company lovingly referred to as the “Involuntary Severence Program.” Lots of other terms out there for it. As my WW leader at the time told me months later, “You could have responded by eating a lot, but you didn’t.” She’s right, but I couldn’t afford to. I finally found another non-temporary job March 10th, 2003. I am no longer a computer programmer, but write to corporate and private foundations and ask for money on behalf of a local non-profit. Grant writing. Rather than producing reams of code to benefit a Fortune 500 company, I am actually returning something to the community. My salary is about half what I was making previously, but I’m enjoying it.

206.6/171.5/150
35 pounds since July 18, 2001

More poems by Freemont C Gavroche

These have not been submitted to Poetry.com as they do not meet Dave’s requirements exactly…but I decided to post them here. Apologies to William Carlos Williams…

The brown german shepherd

So much depends
upon

the brown german
shepherd

suffering from hunger
pains

eating the toes
of mother.

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the toes
that were on
your mother

and which
she was probably
hoping
to keep

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and juicy

Make Louvre (Not War)

Installment #6 and #7 of my new comic strip. I’ve set up some standardized templates, so they should all be roughly the same dimensions in the future. My ideas don’t appear to be abating, and I’m enjoying this a lot, so for now it looks like I am going to continue.

There is probably a slight copyright issue involved with these installments. Being that I used sculptures, albeit ones that are several hundred years old, there was photography involved. And it’s not my photography. Ah well, I’m not making any money off this yet. Once I do, I’ll take a trip to several museums with my camera.
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Rover Dave Barry and Me

Dave Barry is encouraging people to go to Poetry.com (The company famous for publishing your submitted poetry in books you can buy for $50, and maybe you’ll win a prize). The catch: Enter it under a penname with first name “Freemont” and it must contain the line “The dog ate mother’s toes”.

There are at this point over 400 of these. (Easily searchable by first name)

Here is one of the most recent:

Rover

We’ve had Rover for ten years now —
a friendly, loving, dog.
He’d bark at the occasional mailman,
but he’d border on the edge of freedom kissing
everyone else.

We don’t know what it was exactly.
It might have been the news
that weapons of mass destruction
still hadn’t been found in Iraq.

It might have been out of sympathy
for Robert Wagner
who’s been cheated out of money
for his role in Charlie’s Angels.

It might even have something to do with
the Dutch company Tulip
resurrecting the Commodore 64.

Regardless
this morning
the dog ate mother’s toes.

Freemont C Gavroche

Political Cartoons

I have long thought I could draw some funny, insightful, satirical political cartoons if not for one small problem. I can’t draw. Oh sure, I can draw stick figures…but after a couple panels, the reader is sure to grow a little tired of them. I’ve toyed with the idea of finding someone who can draw, but I’d have to also find someone I can work with. Not necessarily an easy task.

I help edit Tribalsoulkitchen. It is an ezine for poetry, fiction, and essays. It began as a place for fans of Jim Morrison and the Doors to share their creativity, but it has grown a little beyond that. Anyway, as one of the editors, I find myself searching the internet for artwork to decorate literary submissions. For legal purposes, I focus on artwork created by people who died at least 75 years ago. I want stuff that is in the public domain. Occasionally I will contact people and ask for permission to use their artwork, but it is a lot easier to find items which I do not need to seek permission for.

Today I had a brainstorm. What if….Could I make it work?…There’s only one way to find out. Below are my first three political cartoons. Tell me what you think.
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