i am not necessarily good with my money. There are a great many people my age who are on track for an early retirement, with 3 months’ salary in the bank in case they get sacked, and maybe a few bucks floating around for a nice pair of socks. Or at least that’s my perception. Meanwhile, it only takes a cursory glance at my home to realize that most of my scratch funds my complex addiction to toys, games, and treating friends at restaurants. My right pants pocket runneth over with receipts from The Bagel Hutch and Los Sandwichos and tons of other places at which i can’t ever remember having eaten, but the proof is on the VISA bill. And whatta VISA bill.

Recently, a friend of mine who i like to treat at restaurants expressed genuine concern (between mouthfuls) that i would run out of money if i kept treating friends at restaurants (like the one at which i was currently treating him). The truth is, i was already out of money - i live month to month toeing the zero-balance line with a forgiving borrowing account to save me in case of (inevitable) overages.

My philosophy about treating friends at restaurants is borrowed directly from Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. The musketeers live large when the money’s there, and when they’re hard-up for a meal, they’ll always have friends who are willing to cover them. i like that. Of course, i’m covering friends when i don’t have the money, and who the heck are the musketeers, anyway? Those fools use their swords instead of their muskets. i know it’s more romantic and all, but if i have the choice of swashbuckling my foes, or taking a hater down at 50 feet with a load of buckshot, you can bet i’ll be pulling the trigger.

But where i’m reckless with my money, i’m safer than some. i don’t know how many people i talk to who are actually loaning their money to banks that charge them to do it. The concept is ridiculous to me. i be lending my money to your bank, but i have to pay you more of my money if i wanna take it out. Or put it in. Or move it around. Or just let it sit there.

Guy: Hey, brother - can i borrow five bucks?
Dumb Guy: Sure. (digs for change)
Guy: Oh - that’ll cost you 25 cents if i’m gonna take your money.
Dumb Guy: Ok. That sounds reasonable.
Guy: Thanks!

Later …

Increasingly Dumb Guy: Hey … can i have my five bucks back?
Guy: Sure. But it’ll cost you 25 cents.
Increasingly Dumb Guy: 25 cents? For you to give me my money back?
Guy: Uh … yup.
Inreasingly Dumb Guy: Uh … i dunno …
Guy: i’ll tell you what. i’ll offer you a package. You pay me another buck fitty, and i’ll let you take your money back twelve separate times this month. But if you go over twelve times, i’m gonna need that 25 cents again.
Really Dumb Guy: A package, hmm? That certainly sounds like a deal. Here’s a buck fitty. Now gimme my five bucks back.
Guy: Ok. There you go. But …. oooh. You’re gonna have to go ahead and pay me another buck.
Really Dumb Guy: What the Hell for?
Guy: Because i actually repaid you more money than you were owed.
Really Dumb Guy: But i paid you five bucks last week, and i just asked for my five bucks back. That’s even.
Guy: Erm … no. Because in the week that i’ve been holding onto your five bucks, i had to pay myself 25 cents out of your money. Takin’ up space in my pockets, y’know? That ain’t free.
Unredeemingly Dumb Guy: Uh … ok, yeah. That makes sense. Here’s another buck.
Guy: Thanks, chump. Say, you got nice … soft skin. So smooth, so … supple.
Unredeemingly Dumb Guy: Why are you caressing me like that?
Guy: Hush up your purdy mouth, now. This’ll be our little secret.

… And so it goes. i run across scores and scores of people who fall victim to this scheme, and i gotta ask them why they’re doing it. i mean, it’s a better idea to keep your money under your mattress and gamble against a house fire. At least your mattress doesn’t charge you an account fee. Better yet, you’ll go with a no-fee bank. There are two in Canada, and either one of them would be a safer bet than banking with the those multi-billion dollar wallet rapists out there.

Whenever i have the heart and energy to educate people about all this, i hear the same weak arguments. And when i say “weak,” i’m basically playing Mother Theresa here, because in truth their arguments are downright mentally retarded. If the Special Olympics ever hosted a debate, you’d hear the same rebuttals.

Argument #1: Those no-fee banks start out alright, but they slowly roll in the fees until you’re paying the same charges as the rest of us.

Me: Well, it’s been over five years, and that hasn’t happened. Even if my bank turns around tomorrow and starts charging me fifty dollars a day to hold my account, and a representative personally comes to my house and punches me in the neck, i’ve still gone five years without fees, and i can switch banks in a heartbeat.

Argument #2: It isn’t that much more money. i mean, it’s not like i’m paying every time i withdraw. i have a package.

Me: You’re an idiot, and you oughtta be spanked. i don’t care if your package is 20 withdrawals a month for five dollars or 8000 withdrawals a month for a nickel, it still doesn’t beat free, you tit.

Argument #3: Aw, but i’ve got all my stuff tied up in that bank. My automatic withdrawals, my credit card …

Me: Once again, this perceived value is working against your ability to logic and reason like a creature with opposable thumbs. Automatic withdrawals were not invented to make your life easier - they were invented because they’re cheaper on banks. And if you think for a second that a credit card company - bank-related or otherwise - exists to offer you a service, you gotta give your head a shake. These people want your money. You think it’ll be a hassle to get a card anywhere else once you’ve proven you can line VISA’s nest with your money? It’s like a pretty girl saying “i just desperately want someone to look at me in the nude, but my boyfriend’s probably the only one who’s interested.” Think, friends.

Think, and if you play your cards right and bank properly, you too can own as many Muppet Show action figures as i do, and fill your right pants pocket with abundant receipts from your Sunday brunches at the Noodle Bin. The choice is yours. Let it weigh heavily on your heart.

As an interesting side-note, getting your wisdom teeth out is apparently like entering into a dentist’s version of Bizarro World.

Unlike every other visit you’ve had, suddenly the dentist tells you that for at least a few days, you are not to brush or floss your teeth UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. Also, you are to eat as much Jell-O, ice cream and Kool-Aid as possible. Everything is opposite. It’s like your doctor telling you “OK. i want you to take this pen and stab yourself in the kidneys as HARD AS YOU CAN.” i think it’s a very unfair batch of advice to give people when they wake up from heavy anesthetic, because they can’t necessarily sort out fantasy from reality at that point.

“The dentist is telling me not to floss. An elf is burrowing under my skin. The dentist wants me to eat lots of ice cream. Bison are untying my shoelaces.”

Everywhere i go, the machines lie to me.

And i’m not talking about teevee. Teevee lies to everybody, and most people have that figured out by now. Teevee doesn’t even really count, because it has peoples’ faces on it. The kind of machines i’m talking about are the faceless ones - the ones with no personality. The ones with digital read-outs. Specifically, the machines that were designed by The Hated. At every turn, i am lied to by the fitness machines.

This is true for the simplest fitness machines right down to the big, industrial ten thousand dollar fitness machines. i ate a bunch of cereal one day, and the so-called toy inside was a digital step counter. i was about to throw it out, but i could hear the cereal’s marketing department laughing at me from their board room in deepest Corporatia, so i decided to keep it just to spite them. They probably thought it was funy that i didn’t get a toy, but i’d show them - i’d have the last laugh with this thing.

Not so the step-counter. It was built by The Hated. i strapped it onto my hip and started walking. i counted 10 steps. The step-counter said 8. i adjusted the gait setting. Then i walked 15 steps. Counter said 11.

Now this is a step-counting machine. And by its very nature, it is one flimsy plastic free-in-a-box-of-cereal LIE. It does not count my steps. It counts the number of times that a little weight inside of it rolls from one side to the other. But The Hated, in their infinite wisdom, did not call it a Tiny Rolling Weight Counter. i was able to shake the thing to produce a 100-step readout. What good is this, i asked? It was a jittery pelvis readout displayer. It was a hula contest monitor. It was for keeping track as you shake your money maker. It did not count my steps.

The cross-trainer lied to me tonight. i got on it for the first time in a long time, because i am fat. It asked me how much i weighed, and i told it. Then it guessed, incorrectly, that i must be 900 years old to have grown so large. It was wrong. i told it my age - 27 - and it gave me the choice of two programs: fat burn and cardio-rama, or something equally demeaning. i told it i wanted to burn fat. So it said that i must maintain my heart rate at 125 beats per minute. That seemed kind of low, but i figured the machine must know best.

Within three seconds of cross-training, my heart rate had reached 125. It must have been the rate at which my heart beats when i comb my hair, or when i think about something interesting, because i barely had to do anything to get it there. When you “work out” on the cross-trainer in my fitness room, or “scarcely exist” as i was doing at 125 beats per minute, all you have to look at it a big mirror. The Hated all think this is a great idea, because they look fabulous. If i looked fabulous, i’d probably hang mirrors everywhere - above the toilet, inside my jacket … but for fat people, staring in a mirror for 45 minutes while a machine tells you that merely breathing has become fabulous exercise for your wide load is hardly encouraging.

Any time i’d speed up, even for half a second, the machine would marquee a big block-letter warning across its display, saying “SLOW DOWN, FATTY! YOU DON’T WANT TO OVERDO IT!” or something like that. It got pretty aggravating across 45 minutes, because the longer i went, the more dangerously close i grew to breaking a single bead of sweat, and so the machine kept increasing resistance to slow me down. By the end of the “workout” i was going so slowly that the machine actually turned itself off a couple of times because it thought i was no longer moving. i had to pick up the pace to a (comparitively breakneck) zombie stagger to make it perk back up, at which point it would scream “SLOW DOWN, FATTY! YOU GOTTA KEEP THAT HEART RATE LOW!”

So here i was, walking through unbearable imaginary quicksand, staring at my fat form in the mirror, as my ample bosom heaved and surged in slow motion like the tides. The motion kind of reminded me of Bo Derek in “10″ as she bounded across the beach, except that i was somewhat more of a fat guy than a young blond woman in a yellow one-piece swimming costume. Everywhere around me, people came and went, hopping on treadmills and tearing down the fictitious track at lightning speeds, while tubby the tortoise plodded along miles behind.

Slow and steady wins the race.

The difference between “fat” and “fit” is “i.”

After i work up the courage, at least a few days from now, i will employ the most Hated and deceitful machine of all. i will step on it, and it will purport to tell me how much i weigh. And as further punishment, it will enact some voodoo science on me to determine my body fat percentage. And at this point, it will LIE. It often enjoys telling me that the percentage of me that is fat is thirty-three. THIRTY THREE. That’s PERCENT, people. i don’t even think that’s possible. That’s like drawing a line across my chest and declaring everything above that line BLUBBER. i mean, clearly there are some eyeballs and teeth in that part of me, and - i don’t know my anatomy that well, but i’m guessing there are at LEAST a couple of ribs.

One THIRD of me is fat. So sayeth the machine.

The scary revolution described in countless comic books where machines take over the world and run our lives is upon us, my friends. But instead of scary walking metal monstrosities that look like Arnold Schwarzenhammer, they come free in cereal boxes. They have come to rob us of our livelihoods by calling us fat, and by messing with our heads while we try to do something about it. They tell us to lose weight, and then insidiously suggest that everything from the nips up is fat … so the logical conclusion is that if we exercise as much as they tell us to, we will burn off all the fat and end up with no heads. Zero percent fat headless drones stumbling around the city, waiting for little digital step-counters to leap up onto our shoulders and commandeer our bodies for their nefarious purposes.

And who engineered this abhorrent nightmare? The Hated, that’s who. So i’m asking you all to find a fit person, and kick him in the shins. Hard. And then run. He will probably catch up to you because you’re chubby. And then he’ll pepper you with many hard punches to your fatty upper ribs.

Subservient brainless bodies and daily beatings from healthy people. That’s what we have to look forward to. The moon runs red as blood. The seventh seal is broken. See you all on Judgment Day!