This post, almost as pointless as Deal or No Deal

I'd say that I made myself sick in some writing whirlwind, but I clearly caught this cold from Elise. She probably caught it from some kid at Disney.

So I'm dropping the ball on that recent writing whirlwind. After 16 hours of sleep, I barely made the Ribcage deadline yesterday and even then, it was just a posting of the current revisions I've made on the old story, Animal Assignments.

Plus, I'm going to have to resign from any hope that I can get a story into that whole Columbia Journal / Amy Hempel judged contest. But that's okay... they seem like they're out of my league anyway.

I'm so bad with fevers now. Ever since I lost all of that weight. I get so fucking dizzy that the only thing I can do is lay under a blanket on the couch and watch crappy shows about tattoos or plastic surgery. Seriously. I was sucked in because they were doing these full body lifts on the plastic surgery show. People that paid $55,000 to remove excess skin like the skin that I have. Granted, they were far worse. What I didn't get was that this mother and daughter lost their weight with gastric bypass and were clearly still 30 and 50 pounds overweight respectively. All I could think was, they lost close to 200 pounds after their bypass, couldn't they push themselves for that final 30 and 50 before paying $55,000 each to tighten their skin? The doctor even said that they weren't use to doing body lifts on people that still had as much fat. Eventually, if they do lose the rest of their weight, they'll just need another surgery.

If I ever did that shit, you could bet I'd walk into that place the skinniest I've ever been. Then after, I'd bulk up with a little bit of muscle. You know, or I could put that hypothetical money toward a house or something.

Then I've been watching Deal or No Deal which is perfect television when you're in a state of delerium. There is no brain required to watch this show. It's basically Howie Mandel, whose head is very shaved, on a Who Wants to be a Millionaire-esque set and 26 cases of money and a contestant. The contestant picks a case and then they spend close to an entire hour opening the other 25 cases in slow motion. The cases have money amounts ranging from one cent to one million dollars. So basically, opening the other cases shows what isn't in the contestant's chosen case. After every couple of cases are opened and eventually after each and every one is opened, this fictional "banker" character "calls" on a telephone that looks like white Kryptonite and offers to buy the contestant's case for what is basically the average between the lowest and highest amounts yet to be opened. Then the contestant says "Deal" or "No Deal" and that game ends or goes on.

Dammit all... that show has no fucking substance to be so hard to describe. It's basically an excuse to give people money in a really long and drawn out way. Or not give them money... if they're idiots. Odds are a simple concept, I thought. If you have a one in eight chance of opening the million dollar case, driving the bank's offer way down and you go for it. Those are still great odds. Then the next round you have one in seven. Still great odds. Then one in six and one in five and one in four. All still decent odds. Except the continued risk in itself, is a bad bet. Even if the odds are in your favor in each round until the final one, what are the odds that the odds don't bite you in the ass in 25 rounds? Pretty bad, actually. So now I've watched this show three nights in a row. Watched five contestants and everyone takes an offer. No one makes it to the end and rightly so. No one has made more than $200,000 or something and for an hour long primetime gameshow that's only hook is that they're giving away large amounts of free money--that ain't that exciting.

I mean the show is purposefully stacked in the show's favor, casino style. How is that exciting? It's like watching someone play a slot machine for an hour or something.

But I watch it!