Meaty Cheesy Big and Lonely

I was going to post last night after the one-two punch of seeing Wake Forest--the team I'd picked to go all the way in the office NCAA pool--fall to lower-seeded West Virginia, and I finally completed my eHarmony.com personal profile only to learn there were NO MATCHES for me! I didn't even know that was a possibility, really. I mean, I didn't have anything psychotic in there--maybe just too complex (I prefer to think)? I don't know. It really bummed me out, but what can you do? Maybe I'll try Yahoo singles or something. I wrote about a sentence of a new review or column but just couldn't get it up for anything else last night.

Instead, I watched my latest Netflix arrival, Morgan Spurlock's acclaimed SUPER SIZE ME, about his experiment eating nothing but McDonald's for a month, three meals a day, super-sizing if asked. I knew some of what to expect, yet I was still shocked. Shocked enough to really think about how often I myself eat fast food, especially now that I'm single and not cooking for my family but for a couple days a week, and those often prepared foods. I'd even got back into eating McDonald's fairly frequently due to its being the only fast food really close to work, and the $1 menu. But no more. Now, I'm not saying I'm off fast food entirely at this point--let's not kid ourselves--but I really do need to eat better, more fruits and vegetables and such. I'm not bad about the fruits but the veggies I buy rarely get eaten before getting moldy or freezer-burnt. Maybe I'll pick up a steamer today. Oh, and if you get this dvd, make sure to check out the deleted scenes. Most are not that great, but The Smoking Fry is essential: Spurlock dumps various McDonald's sandwiches (Big Mac, Quarter Pounder, Grilled Chicken), McDonald's fries, and a burger and fries from a local non-franchise restaurant, into separate glass jars. Then, in intervals of weeks, we see what has happened to the food. Predictably, the non-McDonald's stuff goes moldy quickly, and the other sandwiches follow at least a couple weeks later, the Big Mac looking normal for about a month. That's scary enough, but the thing is, the fries NEVER CHANGED! Not after 10 weeks! And that was when we are told an intern threw everything out due to the smell, mistakenly tossing the fries out as well against Spurlock's instructions. So the McFries could have gone on for quite some time. That's some weird grease we're putting in our body, closer to synthetic motor oil or embalming fluid or suntan lotion, it seems.

This NCAA thing is more stressful than I expected. 80% of the games, at least, are very close. As I write this, #2 Connecticut is down by 5 from the #10 seed, N.C. State. It makes me crazy!

Tried to fix my iPod last night, to no avail. Basically, it says I'm almost full (37 GB), when I only have 14GB on my iTunes, so what's the deal? I'd like to restore the factory settings and start from scratch, but I never get that option come up and don't know where to go. Anyone with suggestions, let me know.

Good to see Derek Martinez is blogging again: http://derekmartinez.blogspot.com. That's great news, though the reason he's got the time is, unfortunately, unemployment. We've all been there, Derek. Hang in there.

Almost done with Seth's illustrated and edited BANNOCK, BEANS & BLACK TEA, a memoir of his father's rural, poverty-stricken childhood. I'll comment when it's all done, for a change.