16,874 Miles

I am now going to give you a lesson in how life works. By all indications, I'm the best man for the task at hand.

Last week, I said I was going to take some time off from blogging. The intent was to improve my writing and give you better stuff to read. Over the weekend, however, Sween decided to tag me on a meme. The meme involved telling you six things you probably didn’t know about me.

Yesterday, I decided that I wanted to post something short. I wanted to tie up a couple of loose ends and then direct you to my other blog, Bah! Humbug!, which had the usual once-monthly new posting. As I was finishing up, I remembered Sween’s challenge. I decided to close the piece with that, since I might be able to toss off a couple of quick jokes and make your visit here a bit more worthwhile.

I figured I could come up with six things rather quickly – not waste too much time on it – and then I’d take another week or so off, returning here just prior to my 50th birthday (it’s March 2nd, you know) with something really well-written. Instead, here I am again. Do you know why? No, you probably don’t. Nor will you probably want to, once you find out, but by then it will be too late.

The sixth item in the things-you-probably-didn’t-know-about-me list concerned self-gratification - onanism - masturbation, that is. I made an estimate as to how many times I’ve flogged the bishop over the course of my lifetime. As it turns out, approximately 11,000 times.

Stu, obviously with little better to do with his own life, did the math and figured that I was placing crank calls to Mr. Frankfurter about 12 times a day. Oh, OK, maybe he said per week. Whatever. While I’m fairly untroubled with rigidity problems, I’m not made of steel. The actual figure would be about six instances a week of pud pounding.

God help me, last night I decided to do some math. I wanted to truly find out just how much time I’ve spent putting a leak in the fireman’s hat. Are you ready? No, of course not. It doesn’t matter, though, because here it is.

I figure a reasonable estimate would be 15 minutes for each one-handed date. When I multiply 11,000 by 15, I find that I’ve troubled the talleywhacker for a contribution out of liquid assets a total of 165,000 minutes. Divide that figure by 60 and it turns out that I’ve been shaking hands with Cyclops for approximately 2,583 hours.

Further division – assuming that I get 8 hours sleep every night, which it would seem I might desperately need – shows that 161 days of my life have been spent batting the baloney. That’s more than five full months – almost six, if it’s February.

Wow. No wonder my writing sucks. In the time it took Melville to complete his masterpiece, all I've been doing is whacking Moby Dick upside the head. Call me Ishmael. Thar she blows, indeed.

On the good side, I figure that I’ve burned off at least a quarter-million calories priming my pump. If I didn’t spend so much time jerkin’ the gherkin, I’d weigh at least 500 pounds. Heck, if I could stand doing it 10 or 12 more times a week, I probably wouldn’t have to drop 15 pounds before softball season. I’d already have the body of a Greek God.

(Or maybe a Greek statue. That much wear and tear on my Johnson and it probably would have fallen off by now. On the bright side, I’d be able crush a Volkswagen with my right hand.)

(Now that I think of it, my softball coach is probably going to read this and have second thoughts about wanting me to handle any of the bats ever again. Oh, well.)

So, anyway, the life lesson here is that good intentions are nice, but they sometimes end up as just a five-finger stroll on the pole. You might intend to take time off from writing because you feel you’ve been wanking it, but then you end up not only writing again, but writing about wanking it.

Ah, what the hell, Jim. Maybe it’s not that bad. Get a grip.

P.S. You think you worked up a sweat on stairmaster? The title is derived from how far my right hand has traveled at a rather leisurely 90 strokes a minute. Of course, your mileage may vary.