Junkless 4 Jesus II: Electric Boogaloo ....

Well, it’s that time again folks.  Today is Fat Tuesday.  That means that tomorrow is the first day of lent.  As you may remember, last year I gave junk food.  In fact, last year’s lent was called “Junkless for Jesus.”  

And, it was a rousing limited success.  For the most part I made it through.  I think there were a few moments of weakness which resulted in a couple of Krispy Kremes being consumed.  And maybe a slice of cheesecake, if I remember correctly.  But, in general is survived.

Now, I realize that giving up junk food isn’t exactly as impressive as Matt-Man’s going “Meatless for the Messiah” or his decision to give up bread this year.  But, giving up chips, chocolate, fast food burgers, pizza and the rest of that awesome stuff isn’t exactly easy either. 

This year I did consider the possibility of turning it up a notch.  I thought about going meatless.  But, about ten seconds later I rejected that idea.  I thought about saying “no hot women on the blog” but rejected that because that would basically be forcing YOU to go through Lent with me, and I don’t want to make you suffer too.

I did briefly consider going off the grid for lent too.  Actually I very seriously considered it.  I thought about giving up blogs, twitter, Facebook and all internet forums.  Okay, so Facebook would have been pretty easy to give up.  Well, not really.  There are a few people who I only have any real contact with through Facebook and I would totally miss them. 

Anyway, in the end I decided against that.  Jesus agreed that while you’re supposed to give up something you love, it isn’t necessary to give up the only real fun and enjoyment you get outta life. 

What? You don’t think Jesus and I discussed this?  Oh, you totally believe that Jesus told Larry Craig and David Vitter everything was cool when they got caught getting  blow jobs from other men in public restrooms and using the services of a prostitute respectively, but you don’t think the J-Dude and I discussed lent?  Don’t be an idiot.

Anyway, I’ve decided that the best thing to do is to give up junk food again.  The added benefit of this would be to possibly, finally get junk food out of my life.  But, just to add a little extra to it, I’m also going to do away with soft drinks.  Even diet drinks.  No soft drinks at all.  Just milk, orange juice and water.  And beer, bourbon and tequila.

Okay, I agree with what you’re thinking.  I’ll throw the alcohol in there too. 

So, there you go.  For lent this year I will be giving up all junk food, soft drinks and alcohol.  

I’m calling it “Junkless 4 Jesus II:  Electric Boogaloo” 

As a part of the agreement that Jesus and I have hammered out …. What?  Oh yeah, Jesus is totally open to negotiating these things.   Of course, it helped that I discussed this with him while he was a bit distracted watching the upcoming movie “Chloe.  That’s the one which Amanda Seyfried gets all kinds of naked in.


He totally illegally downloaded that movie and watched on his laptop.  I don’t even know how he found it since it doesn’t come out for a few months, but, lets just say he has ways of finding these things.

Anyway, what was I talking about.  Right.  My lent agreement with Jesus is basically the same as last year.  While the official rules of lent allow for people to cheat on Sundays, or at least some people have those rules, I’ll do my best not to play that way.  However, I will once again be exempt on my birthday.  Again, if Jesus didn’t want to exempt me from lent on my birthday, he wouldn’t have arranged for me to be born during lent.  Jesus also agreed that anything that I fix for dinner, like maybe a cheeseburger or grilled ham and cheese, won’t be considered junk food.  Only if I go and get it at the drive through.  That’s totally fair too and really cool of Jesus to agree to that.  Which I totally expected cause you know, Jesus isn’t an asshole or anything like that.

Okay, so there it is.  Lent is set.  It’s not going to be easy.  I’ll be the sober one at the Twitter parties and I guess I’ll have to be the sober one when Annie and Burl host their annual drunk party on March, 13th.  But, I think there has to be some sacrifice, right?

Anyway, I’ll let you know how it goes. 

The Lentenator ...

Well Lent 2009 Extravaganza is over and so is my Junkless for Jesus™ experiment. And, I have to say it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it might be. I wasn't perfect. I confessed my sins once already. Since that time I did backslide a couple of times. Maybe a candy bar here, some ice cream there and Krispy Kremes for brunch. But, I did stay away from the afternoon of gorging on chips and nacho cheese and I didn't do the fast food and pizza thing. So, I can't give myself an "A" but I think I at least scored a high "B" which was better than most of my college career, so that's not too bad.

I have to say it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I didn't find myself desperately wanting to drive through McDonald's or Wendy's, although a couple of times I thought that Sonic or even Hardee's would be nice. Mostly though it was sitting around at night watching TV or on weekends watching basketball or whatever that things got kind of tough.

You know that "I'm pretty sure I'm hungry for something cause I don't have anything else to do" feeling? Yeah, that hits from time to time. And like I said a few times it resulted in a Butterfinger being consumed. But, I'm not going to beat myself up for backsliding. If I do that then all hell breaks loose and things really go downhill quickly.

I do want to take a quick minute to congratulate my buddy Matt-Man for completing his pledge to go Meatless for the Messiah. And, as if that wasn't impressive enough, Matt-Man decided to pile on and show off a bit by fasting the last 72 hours of Lent, otherwise known as "The Dead Period."

Very impressive Matt-Man. You might specialize in insulting all the true believers out there with most of your blog posts, but you made a commitment and stuck too it. Going without meat for 46 days for a guy who loves bacon like trailer park trash loves meth, was no small feat.

And anyone else out there who made it through Lent and never gave in to temptation and gutted it out, and did it all without using it as naval-gazing blog fodder, I salute you too.

But, back to me. As I said it wasn't really as bad as I thought it would be. I'm already thinking that maybe next year I should turn it up a notch and go for something bigger. Like no alcohol .. no, let's not do that. Maybe I will be like Matt-Man and go without meat? No, that's not gonna happen. I guess I could go with the no red meat and that would leave me able to each chicken and, you know, bacon. But, that doesn't seem all that hard either. (That's what she said.)

So, I don't know. I guess I'll think about it. Lent 2010 is still a long ways off. Who knows where we will all be or what social networking site will be the hot thing by then. And who knows what new addiction I will have picked up either. So, I guess I'll just give it some time before I start thinking about what I'll give up next year.

Besides, I don’t have time for that right now. My pizza was just delivered…