My Pet Fat

A few weeks ago -- after only seven years of procrastination -- I finally got around to joining the fitness center at my office. My body includes a great deal of, erm, "safety padding," and I figured as long as I'm getting ready to quit my job and entirely uproot my life anyway, maybe this would be a good time to try to pick up a more consistent exercise habit.

Things have been going pretty well. Before this, my activity patterns tended to be very uneven -- IE, a month or two of couch-potatodom, followed by the occasional strenuous exercise, such as climbing pyramids in Mexico or playing snow football in Pennsylvania. Typically said strenuous exercise would result in aches and pains the next day. So I was expecting the same thing from the workout program. So far, however, I've been pleasantly surprised. Apparently using actual, approved workout equipment and a reasonable exercise plan avoids the stress of my former (in)activity patterns.

This is all leading up to a hilarious blurb I came across in today's paper. Inspired by the pet rock craze of the mid-1970s, it seems that New Jersey marketing specialist Jay Jacobs has come up with the idea of My Pet Fat as a motivational tool for those with abundant portable strategic energy reserves.

Pet fat is available in several sizes, with a 1 pound gob (representing 3500 calories) going for about $35. According to the article, "[t}hey are made of vinyl plastic, they are soft and pliable, they are slightly oily, they are amber-colored, with touches of red that suggest capillaries -- and they are gross."

(Note: while writing this post, I also came across this "virtual pet rock" software for MacOS. I've gotta get me some of that!)