Part One.

Once there was a man who couldn't see his feet. For years he longed to see them again. He could hear them so he knew they were there.

He tried everything. He cut out alcohol, lost a little but gained it back elsewhere; cut back on fat, ate more salad, exercised consistently off and on, cut out candy, ate only fruit, then only meat.

Everything worked, but only in his imagination. Then one horrible day the fat man and his wife had a big fat fight, and the fat man exiled himself to a faraway land to sulk, living in an attic over a garage with no heat or plumbing so his wife, who was skinny, would feel real real bad.

It was a dramatic time of the man's life. After many years of wanting to tell the whole world to go to hell, he was finally getting around to doing it. He began a novel, learned how to make do without plumbing, discovered that a rabbit hat with flaps makes a big difference when you can see your breath inside for longer than two weeks, and that it's possible to write fiction on a computer wearing gloves, but not mittens.

When the man got the flu and couldn't get out of his blankets on the floor to get water or answer the phone, his wife broke into his hideaway, carried his fat ass down the stairs and took him to the hospital where he was revived from dehydration and sent home. Even then he was still too fat.

He returned to his hideaway where his novel was screaming, "Write me!" and he did. He got a better heater and typed through spring and into summer, 6,000 words at a sitting with a 40-minute nap between, then back on it. His phone never rang because he never answered it anyway. Things got done.

One day, passing a mirror in the mirror section of Wal-Mart, which was on the way to the public toilets he now favored, he noticed a man he'd never seen before: hair long and wild, beard a crazy gray, and no belly. Looking down he saw his feet and realized the miracle had happened. Whatever he'd done it had worked, and he had to tell America about it, because if it worked for him, it would work for America! Then he went poo.

Those who expect me to cop to being this man can kiss my bony ass. Let's just say we're very close. Over the next month, I'll be blogging on the Don't-Buy-It Diet. It's a very simple concept with easy to understand guiding principles which I have managed to stretch out and expand and complicate beyond recognition for purposes of attracting a publisher or at least a few readers who appreciate the humor of trying to read yourself thin.

Stick with me and I'll show you how to not only see your feet, but your ribs.