Lent

Happy March. In addition to the first day of the month that features the greatest three weeks in sports, today is the beginning of Lent. You might be asking, "What gives, GMYH? Are you some sort of Catholic nutjob?" While, I am a nutjob, it has nothing to do with the fact that I'm Catholic. In fact, the only thing Catholic that I do each year is give something up for Lent. There's your good old fashioned Catholic guilt at work.

Anyway, this year I'm giving up drinking during the week and fried foods. This is a bit tempered from my past givings up, but with good reason. Let's take a look at my last three years:
2005: Drinking, smoking, and fried foods. My intentions were good (to lose some weight before my wedding), but by giving up three things, I found myself more willing to cheat come Saturday night at midnight (because you're supposedly allowed to cheat on Sundays) or on days celebrating saints who ridded Ireland of snakes. You'd be amazed at how much you can drink in the hours between midnight and 2am or 3am on Sunday mornings.
2004: Along with my roommate at the time, Marc "Tron" Wiescinski, I gave up beer, and it ended up being my drunkest Lent ever because I would drink double Jack and Cokes as fast as I would normally drink beers. The race between Easter and cirrhosis was neck-and-neck, and I'm still not sure who won.
2003: Meat. I did this out of sheer laziness because I knew that if I gave up meat, I wouldn't forget to not eat meat on Fridays.

So with that backdrop, this year I decided to give up fried foods (not really too much of an issues, since I rarely eat them anyway--kind of like when I gave up banana Now & Laters in 1989 because I hated them anyway) and drinking during the week. It's not like I usually get hammered during the week, but a couple beers here and a couple beers there can add up. So there it is.

I also thought of some things that other people may want to give up. Some of them are for specific people, and other suggestions are ones that I'm just throwing out there for anyone still looking for something to give up. So, you can give up:

1. Chastity (I pitched this one to the wife--she was less than amused)
2. Sleeping
3. Not killing yourself (Kevin Federline)
4. Letting yourself go (Britney Spears)
5. Feeling ashamed when you look at tranny porn several hours each day
6. Not wiping (I'm looking your way, fecal phantoms)
7. Chemotherapy
8. Not paying hookers (or paying hookers, depending on your current practice)
9. Dressing up in drag (Barry Bonds--holy shit, that was one ugly woman)
10. Masturbating in your cubicle
11. Wearing that fucking fedora everywhere (to the guy that I always see around town wearing a fedora)
12. Your obsessive cricket playing
13. Work (and if your boss gives you any guff, call him/her "nothing but a typical, bigoted, elitist Protestant bastard")
14. Following the Gregorian calendar
15. Shitting (this is mainly for the men, since women don't shit)
16. Not speaking with a Scottish accent
17. Dying
18. Brooding (Ryan Atwood--although that's about as likely as him giving up kicking ass)
19. Not collecting model trains (choo choo!!)
20. Being considered for the men's basketball head coaching position at Indiana University (Steve Alford, Kevin Stallings)
21. Paying alimony and child support
22. Not ending every sentence (spoken or written) with a question mark?
23. Making love out of nothing at all (Air Supply)
24. Drinking (Ireland)
25. Referring to self in the 1st person
26. Herpes
27. Wearing a sport coat and jeans or, alternatively, thinking that wearing a sport coat and jeans is in any way acceptable
28. Dognapping
29. Not dying at the hands of an Islamic militant (some Danish cartoonist--man I hate Danes)
30. Catholicism