How to Back Swing a Mouse

I was in line at the checkout counter in my neighborhood grocer when this lady in a white lab coat offered to check out people's Body Mass Index (BMI) for free. My turn came when she proclaimed that I was underweight and gave me a chart of the Food Pyramid for Adults.

As a licensed nutritionist, she recommends that I use fats, oils and sweets sparingly but I can drink a lot of Nestea and Nescafé mixes. Aren't they made of refined sugar and hydrogenated oils? And calcium is important for women, so drink milk because it's the most complete food. Yes, cow's milk is complete for calves but not for humans. That explains why most humans are lactose intolerant because cow's milk is not easily digested. Maybe goat's milk has a similar structure to human breast milk. Anyway, the issue is calcium deficiency. We can get more calcium from eating fresh broccoli, tahini (sesame seeds), leafy greens, almonds, seaweeds and miso.

And you can take Nestlé yogurt if you're lactose intolerant, she added. Well, isn't that milk-based too? I wanted to find out how updated this nutritionist was just by asking her for other sources of nutrition especially since I am a vegetarian. It was pointless and a waste of my time.

I can see that we were practically in each other's nerves by the time I signed for my purchases. It was then I realized why I was ticked off. It was clever of Nestlé to hire professionals (licensed nutritionists) for their Choose Wellness campaign. She was no more than a paid promo girl disguised in a white lab coat subtly dispensing Nestlé products to add to one's diet. It is tricky for clueless people who are led to believe that drinking 8 or more glasses of Nestea (aside from water) constitutes healthy living. I would have appreciated a sexy chick in a gym outfit doing the promo thing. At least it's worth the eye candy value - sugar-free and no calories.

No wonder I get bored easily because I learn quickly. Then I learn how to play dumb, so I can relate to people even if I find myself succumbing to mind deteriorating small talk.

This Lenten season signals the passion, pain and suffering of Christ. What better timing I had than to meet up with my old painful self. How much of other people's shortcomings do I have to take? How many times do I have to hear the same dialogue carried out by the same characters? How much crap do I have to subscribe to every time the local dailies print about political anomalies? I am going insane, no matter how I tried accepting, creating or recreating my reality.

Between bouts of laughter and tears, I came across fibromyalgia. No one really knows what causes fibromyalgia but the most prominent symptom is pain. Studies have suggested that people with fibromyalgia have abnormal levels of chemicals that help transmit and amplify pain signals to and from the brain. Other symptoms include fatigue, migraine, abdominal pain, bloating, irritable bowel syndrome, limbs tingling, jaw pain, dry skin and cognitive difficulties characterized by feelings of confusion, memory lapses, word mix-ups and difficulty concentrating (brain fog).

So what if I seem to have all these symptoms? The sight of pink golf shoes with matching pink gloves cleared up my brain fog instantly. I have a low handicap when it comes to mood swings. For lack of golf balls to hit, all I have to do is watch Dr. Frasier do a back swing on a mouse with his right slipper.

Just like golf, address your stance and grip properly and do a slow back swing with your eyes on the mouse. Take a forward swing at the mouse as you hit the sweet spot, and follow through just enough to leave it dazed not dead.

Take the dazed mouse by its tail and seal it in a plastic bag with a printed warning "Danger of Suffocation". As Christ would have said those magic words at the cross: "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing", a soft squeeze on the chest signaled the last squeak of death.

Init ulo? Go ahead. Take it out on an innocent little mouse. Better yet, nail the rats on a two hundred grand lamppost.