Completely out-of-place Star Wars reference right at the end. Don't miss it.

I didn't realize it at first, but the past few days have been a sort of farewell tour for many of my favorite foods. Pizza, sausage rolls, steak fajita quesadillas, coney dogs, sesame chicken, brownies, pie... I've partaken and enjoyed, but grudgingly. I'm supposed to be losing weight, or at the very least, I'm supposed to be getting healthier. This food I've fallen in love with simply will not do.

I've been doing a lot of weight-lifting (a lot for me, anyway) and I'm really starting to enjoy it. It doesn't hurt that I'm starting to see major results. I'm getting pretty beefy, ladies. Unfortunately I'm not burning any fat. I'm adding muscle and, thus, adding weight. So I've decided to make some changes.

The first change might seem kind of drastic, and I'm sure after the first day I'll be jeering at myself right along with the rest of you, but here it is: I'm going on a ten-day juice fast. I'll consume nothing but water and fresh fruit and vegetable juice. For ten days. Mm-hm. I even went out and bought a juicer and a butt-load of mangos, which kind of sounds like a punk band.

Right now I'm drinking my last can of soda and I'm baking my last pan of brownies... at least for the next ten days. After that I'm going to be far more aware of what I eat and I'm going to attempt to take more responsibility for my body.

And for those of you who claim that my tauntaun will freeze before I reach the first marker, I offer this rebuttal, "No, it won't."


Thank you,
      Matt Beers

I still have mixed feelings about this toy...

Watch this commercial from a thousand years ago and, when you're done, I'd like to talk about it.



I wanted one, plain and simple. I wanted one more than anything, even legs. I had legs, you see, and they weren't that great. I was pretty sure a stuffed Ewok would be WAYYY more fun than legs.

Until...

You know how sometimes nightmares start out as dreams? Well, this one sure did. Before going to bed that night I had finished my Christmas list. At the very tippity-top: Stuffed Ewok. Somewhere below the tippity-top: legs. As I said before, I already had legs, but I thought that another pair might come in handy. Anyway, I made my list and went to bed. That night I dreamed that I got my very own stuffed Wicket W. Warwick, the very bravest of all the Ewoks (but I would have settled for a Princess Kneesa). I was so happy. Wicket and I laughed and romped and smashed AT-STs with logs and got into all sorts of shenanigans. Oh, tra-la-la! And then things went downhill. Fast. You see, Wicket sprouted sharp fangs and tried to eat me.

As soon as I woke the next morning I grabbed my Christmas list and quickly scratched "stuffed Ewok" from it. I also scratched "legs" from the list because, who am I kidding? I didn't use the legs I had. Why would I need another pair?

Thank you,
      Matt Beers

Medieval torture devices of Northern Indiana

Betsy's dad is a big antique guy. I don't mean that he's large and old, I mean that, at an auction, he knows what stuff is valuable and what stuff is firewood. Anyway, he moved to Arizona a few years ago and there were a few items that he didn't want to take with him, but didn't want to sell because they had been in the family for hundreds of thousands of years (the fact-checker never got back to me on that one). One of those items was a pie-safe. Pie-safes were used back in the day to cool pies and other baked goods. They had these little panels made of tin that had fancy patterns punched into them with a nail. This made one side of the tin dimpled and one side very rasp-like. The theory was that to maintain proper airflow, the smooth side had to be facing inward, thus, any poor sucker who happened along and accidentally brushed up against it would be severely wounded (hence the phrase, "Bleedin' like a drunk on a pie-safe," which I just made up). For this reason, many antique pie-safes have had their tin panels flipped.

This may or may not be common knowledge, but "big antique guys," like Betsy's dad, tend to keep things in their original state whenever possible. This is why our pie-safe, the one Betsy's dad gave to us just before he moved to Arizona, has NOT had its tins flipped and is currently registered as a deadly weapon. The frickin' thing is like an inside-out iron maiden. It's literally safer to be inside it than to attempt a simple circumnavigation.

As a result of this seemingly innocent cupboard (covered in tiny, jagged spikes), I am currently sporting a Star Wars Band-aid on one knuckle of my right hand.

Thank you,
      Matt Beers

The Jedi mind trick would come in pretty handy right about now.

I'm taking a little break from rearranging our bedroom at the moment, so I thought I'd do a bit of blogging. You see, Betsy and I thought that, since we've cleared away so much clutter (with much more yet to clear away) in the hopes of enhancing our spirituality, we would also enhance the aesthetics of our bedroom. Several years ago we painted it a shade of blue that neither of us really liked very much. Then we picked out some dark red drapes and a bedspread with a great deal of cream in it, so now our bedroom looks like an interior-decorating colonial patriot attacked while we weren't paying attention.

We need to do some serious design repairs. That is pretty much where we stop agreeing. She wants to do a dirty, graffiti-style, which I would normally be all about, except for the fact that my super-minimalist attitude as of late has lead me to be very interested in the sterile and antiseptic world of corporate graphic art. Like this guy's art.

But we came to a compromise. We'll go with her idea, but I get to put up a Star Wars poster that I've had for years and never quite got the chance to put up.


If I had it my way, these would be the Star Wars posters going up.








How completely glorious are these images? Glorious enough that it's pulling me back toward Star Wars a bit. I like them so much that, looking back at it, that first poster seems kinda lame. Every time I look at it I'll be reminded of what could have been.

And just so I'm not ending on a down-note, here's an image that may one day become a tattoo.


Thank you,
Matt Beers

In a perfect world, Han ALWAYS shoots first.

My son is wise beyond his six years. We were watching Star Wars and we were right at the end. The Death Star had been reduced to metal shavings and the rebels were celebrating with an award ceremony. Jack sits up straight and says, his voice full of incredulity at the injustice of it all, "Hey! Why didn't Chewie get a medal?"

He might not know the word, but he sure does understand xenophobia when he sees it.

Thank you,
Matt Beers