Position: Town to town, packing and unpacking. Round and round, up and down the dial...

Currently Digging: The Communist Manifesto, by Marx and Engels. Just, you know, for the sake of being well-read. I'm not a Commie, or anything. I really don't agree with much of it at all. Except for the part about the laborers of the world uniting to overthrow their privileged, oppressive, capitalist running-dog overlords.

Currently NOT Digging: My new fuckin' calendar. I picked up a 16-month "Kittens" calendar recently to help me tick off the days of this coastwise tankerman Hell. It's got 12 kittens, one for every month of 2006. The last 4 months of 2005 are condensed onto a single kitten-less page, which means I've got another month-and-a-half to go before any kittens show up on my wall. And January's kitten sucks ass, to boot. Is there anything sadder than an ugly kitten? Oh, and fuck you. I like kittens, okay?

Note: The contents of this entry take place before Jb recently went off the deep end and descended into Ab-Land. Check out FTW Inc.href> in a couple of days for the full scoop.

I've been wrasslin' with a rather severe bout of depression since late September and several weeks ago began to wonder if it might be related to some sort of vitamin deficiency. Like, maybe there's a grain of truth to the modern myth that crazy people get progressively worse when they stop taking their medication.

Nah.

But I'd run out of multivitamins anyway, so I headed ashore for a refill and found myself in the local supermarket's GNC section.

Keep in mind: all I wanted was a simple multivitamin.

Also keep in mind: I'm the sort of guy who goes out to buy a new toothbrush and comes back with a 300 horsepower, gas-powered, concrete-chipping, testosterone-laden monstrosity with a diamond-plate grip that can also be used to clean teeth.

So once I saw the Mega Men line of multivitamins, there was absolutely no question that I'd be leaving the store with a case of the damn things.

Mega Men.

"The Maximum Performance Formula For Men."

Jesus.

They might as well call it "RodIron," or "ThrustMAX," or "The Shit That Chuck Norris Takes."

"The Raging, Ass-Kicking, Throbbing Hard-On Formula for Men."

Like I said, I ended up buying several bottles.

On the way back to the ship, I popped a couple of them before reading the label - a characteristically apropos act for Jb - and then began scrutinizing just exactly how "Mega" these vitamins actually were.



I'm no nutritiologist or nothin', but does anyone else out there think that 3333% of the Daily Recommended Value might be a little excessive? Don't get me wrong - I like thiamin as much as the next guy, but wouldn't 2000% suffice?

Hell, even 1500% still rings slightly of overachieving.

Also - and not to split hairs here - but since these are "Mega" vitamins, shouldn't their RDA excesses be in even increments of a thousand? Maybe it's the obsessive-compulsive in me, but I'd happily sacrifice 2333% of my thiamin in exchange for these pills being true to their gimmick.

I wanna see 1000%'s all the way down the label. You hear me, GNC?

Unfortunately, excess nonwithstanding, I've been popping these fuckers for about 2 weeks now, and I'm still not feeling spectacularly "Mega."

Or "Thrusty."

-Jb
CEO FTW, Inc.
11.09.05


(Man, I just made it through this whole entry without once making a dumb reference to Dr. Wiley, or the robo-dog-flying skateboard, or the stupid-ass robot that shot leaves at you.)