Have a donut for gosh sakes

I hate exercising.  Tonight, while I was finishing my 300^th sit up (OK, it might have been the 4^th) I had an epiphany: exercise is stupid.   Sure the health professionals will tell you that if you follow the correct diet (whatever that is) and exercise regularly, you will probably die in your late eighties after recently having sex with a 20 something model.  Or it might happen in your nineties, right after you were base jumping in the tropics.  (Health professionals really know how to lay it on thick.) The reason why we listen to these experts is because we don’t want to die.  We want to put it off for as long as we can because the goal, for whatever stupid reason, is to live as long as possible.   Except when we see an 89 year old in real life, being pushed around in a wheelchair, a thin line of drool hanging out of his mouth and his vacant eyes staring off into space… then we all turn to the person beside us and whisper, “If I ever get that old, just shoot me.”  The lesson to be learned is that you shouldn’t bother whispering.  That old guy couldn’t hear you if you screamed in his ear.

Many of you are probably saying, “Frank, even though you have beautiful eyes and a sexy dimple when you smile, you’re wrong!  Exercise is important!  And my grandmother is 94 years old and is so fit she can kick your ass!”  Well of course she can because I’m exhausted from doing 4 sit ups.   No, the point is that we are always told to eat right and exercise and that will give us a greater quality of life plus you will long enough until they come up with a cure for death.   It will probably be made by the guys at Pfizer who were trying to invent a pill that makes an erection last 3 weeks.

As I lay on my back at the gym, listening to the sounds of all these exercise nuts around me, pumping iron and making noises like they’re in the midst of an orgasm, I thought of two people:  Keith Richards and Jim Fixx. 

Keith Richards, as we all know, has drank, snorted and injected every vile chemical known to man and yet there he is, almost 70 years old and still rocking out.  Sure, you may say that he looks like he’s 128 years old but c’mon, he was ugly when he was in his twenties.   The argument could be made that he is an exception to the rule but my response is, “Is there even a rule?”  Despite all the posturing, no one knows why some people live longer than others.  It can all boil down to genetics but if that’s the case, then nobody is going to buy another exercise book or spend all their money on pills, potions or powders.   As an example (and a true one to boot) no one has found out definitively what causes cancer and yet experts everywhere seem to have a million theories on how to avoid it.  The fact is, no one knows and not knowing is what scares us.  The number 1 cause of death is… life.   We live, we die.  Of course it’s sad that you (yes, even you!) will die.  Even more sad than that, the greatest tragedy of all is that I (yes, even I) will die.   So instead of focusing on that (because it’s really depressing) let’s focus on quality of life.  But that’s where you smart asses all say, “Exercise and proper diet improve the QUALITY of life!”   Yes, not eating delicious foods and settling for things that taste like cardboard really is the spice of life.  No sugar, liquor, tobacco, salt, chocolate or fats… way to live it up baby!!  

The thing is, we could all get hit by a bus tomorrow.  Of course, tt would have to be a really big bus to hit all of us and we’d all have to be in the same place at the same time, milling around in the middle of a really big road and then this huge bus comes out of nowhere… anyway, I haven’t thought this through enough.  Oh yeah, the point is, we should just be happy.  So there.  

Oh, if you’re wondering about that other guy I mentioned… Jim Fixx.  He’s the guy that wrote “The Joy of Jogging”.  He died of a heart attack when he was 52 years old… while jogging.