In case I failed to mention it before, I've been working out. Yes indeed, I'm no typical geeky stick-thin weakling! Well, I used to be, but that was YEARS ago. Heck, when I graduated from college, I weighed in at a mere 130 lbs., and I'm 5'10"! That 130 lbs., by the way, INCLUDES my massive schlong and large brain. There's got to be 30 lbs. between them, easy.

And why the hell is "Pound" abbreviated "lb."?? What the hell sense does THAT make?

That all ended after I graduated, though. Once I got off the college diet of grass casserole and newspaper tacos, I managed to put an extra 40 lbs between me and and the rather remote specter of starvation. The beautiful part is that besides a hint of lovehandles, I don't know where it all went. Yep, I just filled out. 40 lbs. in 4 years.

Then I began working out. It's been about 6 months since I joined a local gym, and I must say, I have become rather impressively buff, at least compared with my starting point. No, I can't hold a candle to most of the guys down there, but by golly, I see a difference. I discovered that I DO have muscle between my skin and bone. And here I thought it was just Styrofoam.

It's tough, though. I can see the appeal to being a couch potato. Working out is kind of like suffering in a Vietnamese prison camp except without the fun parts. The pain, the inconvenience, the big steroid-pumpers laughing at you... It's a lot to take. One has to be really driven to take it up and to keep it up. I've missed a lot of TV in my quest for a better bod.

So why do I do it? Chicks? Sure, that's the EASY, obvious answer, and a part of me still believes that a stunning physique like mine will give me an extra edge in getting chicks. But then I look around, and I see very few guys with "decent" physiques at all. Sure, you got your neckless wonders with biceps almost as big as my weiner, but I lack the will to work that hard and the will to pump steroids so I'll never look like that. On the other extreme, you have the big fat blobs who are covered with chicks, and you need a lot of chicks to cover them, believe me. Therefore, it just goes to show that a jerk with a gut the size of Kansas is better off than a nice guy who busts ass at the gym.

So anyway, no, it's not because of chicks. So why do I toil away several times a week on something that causes me to miss TV if I'm not getting chicks?

I've seen a lot of old people in my day. Some are bright and spry well into the age at which I would kill myself. Many, though, can barely walk. Many can't get out of bed without help. Many can't even get up stairs without being out of breath.

My lingering fear is to be known as that Crazy Mr. Hall with all tarantulas, and all the neighborhood children would jeer at me and throw eggs knowing that I was too enfeebled by age to catch them. That would suck.

My desire is to be that Crazy Mr. Hall with all the tarantulas who ran down that little Johnny Matherson and fed him to the 50-foot giant tarantulas he keeps in his basement. Of course, that would just be the town rumor. I would have actually sold the bastard to an Indian sweatshop.

Yes, I want to still get around when I'm old. I want to be able to catch those little whippersnappers and make a tidy profit from their labor. I want to be able to bang chicks without worrying about my ticker exploding, or at least be able to jerk off to reruns of Baywatch on Nick at Nite. I want to cut a stunning figure astride my mutant arachnids as we storm the capitol! THAT is why I work out: So that when I RULE you petty mortals from my mighty Arachnid Palace, I'll be able to give my State of the Union address in Speedos!

And the chicks will swoon. 

Hey! Lb. stands for Libra, the Latin unit of measurement about equal to a pound! I love the Internet. Now back to our regularly scheduled booby-hunting.