Terry Cakebread: Human, Part II

My name is Terry Cakebread and this is the fucking story of my life.

Previously:  Part I

8:00 AM October 31, 2052 Ship Time (ST)

It had been eight years since I left Earth.  I was not getting nearly the amount of work done that I anticipated up to this point in my travels.  Being this deep in space, and the fact that I am was smarter than nearly all other humans, gave me an incredible advantage over any other scientist of my caliber, of which there are few.  I assumed I would be disproving modern theories of the universe handily by now, the way string theories and M theories of the past were dismantled.  The truth was that I was flying at near light speed, warping the very fabric of time, and as I did years were flying by on Earth.  My friends and family were all dead by now and unless humans started to colonize other planets or sent more people out like me, then I was likely the last one of my kind:  a lone human, hurtling through an infinite void, alone.

The whole mission started to seem pointless to me, I thought about how it would feel before I left on this mission and assumed I could deal with it better.  The thoughts were abstract then – this was real.  No one would ever feel as alone as I felt.  There was no hope that I would ever see another human for the rest of my life.  I tried to distract myself by doing the work that I intended to finish.  I became overwhelmingly distraught by the fact that no one but myself would ever benefit from the advances I made, and that during the thousands upon thousands of years that passed on earth since I left many people probably discovered far more than I could realistically do in a lifetime.  I thought I could deal with these feelings since I had always been a loner.

8:00 PM September1, 2027 ET

I stood at an intersection in Washington D.C.  I looked around me and couldn’t help but think that the nation’s capital was not all that I thought it would be.  Everyone around me looked so dirty and poor.  The fact that I was standing at the intersection attempting to hitchhike in my only suit, a blue suit I bought in 10th grade which was fashionably small at the time, and a bright red computer backpack did nothing to quell my nerves.  I did my best to comb my otherwise messy brown hair into a respectable order because I had the biggest interview of my life that day.  When I say interview I mean I was just going to show up at the NASA headquarters and start asking people questions.  I may have been a genius when it came to math and physics but when it came to people, I had no idea what I was doing.

I tried for two days straight without sleep or luck to find someone who would listen to me.  Late on that second day I saw a vivacious blond woman in a pantsuit walking by me as I tried to plea my case with an official who was having none of it.  She must have pitied me because she came over and asked what I was trying to do.  If my social skills left something to be desired for the average person, then they were virtually nonexistent when talking to a beautiful lady like her.  I couldn’t look her in the eye and attempted, without success, not to look her in the chest either.  The best I could do was go full blown nerd on her and show her what I had been working on at school.  She was very impressed by my work and agreed to let me intern at the research and development department at NASA, even with my limited schooling.  Ms. Bosomchest changed my life and it would be a long time before I watched WWE again.

These nobodies in all honesty were lucky that I took my talents down to NASA in the first place.  During the first two weeks I was there the scientists tried to give me the most tedious jobs that no one else wanted to do.  But my genius could not be contained; I had an appetite for answers that could not be satisfied.  I would stay at the headquarters day and night working on my own theories by myself, inspired by all that was going on around me.  By the time I started showing the others what I was working on, people started to take notice.  The fact that I did not have any letters after my name or a degree to fall back on stopped holding me back when people started to listen to what I had to stay.  I began to work closely with Ms. Bosomchest on a daily basis.  She was one of the smartest women in the whole world but the stuff I was working on was much too difficult for her to grasp.  She did the small stuff for me and allowed my mind to concentrate on making real progress.

She became infatuated by me, by my dismissal of her flirtatious attempts, and my sheer intellectual dominance of any room I was in.  When I was stumped I used her, she became my WWE.  She fancied that we were in a relationship at the time but she was the only one connected.  Thinking back about her would be one of the worst things about flying out here in space.  I had someone who wanted to be part of my life, who wanted to share what I had to offer and I just used her for my own advancement.  I thought no one could ever be enough for me, that my only chance to be happy would come from within my own mind.  That is why I was the only one to volunteer for this mission.  That is why I knew I could handle it.

I was wrong.

8:00 AM December 25, 2058 ST

Four years ago my “internet” went down.  The whole thing was wiped out. The only thing that I had left was 24 hours worth of my most recent activity.  This amounted to 24 hours of WWE wrestling videos.  I also had a few books on the universe, a dictionary, and my notebooks full of unfinished theories and calculations.  I used none of these things anymore.  I had been on this ship for fourteen years.  I was in another galaxy so far from earth it is impossible to comprehend the distance in your mind and I couldn’t even summon the enthusiasm to walk over to the windshield and look out.  I tried to watch WWE sometimes but just seeing other people on TV, people I knew were dead, and a species that died long ago was just too depressing.  Mostly I drank and drew pictures.  I brought along 70 bottles of whisky, one to celebrate each potential year on the ship on New Year ’s Day.  I only had five bottles left.

I also brought on this trip a huge stack of notebooks.  I preferred to write out my calculations by hand, my mind just worked better that way.  I filled those notebooks, mostly, with pictures of penises or peni as I like to pluralize it.  If I thought that another human would read my life story I might have left that part out, but since I doubt highly the possibility that anyone will ever know about Terry Cakebread I see no reason not to be honest about the whole thing.  At some point during the trip the subject of the penis, particularly my penis, the last, final penis, or the lone penis, as I referred to it, became infuriating to me.  It became very symbolic of my life.  It, like my life, really had become useless since this whole trip began.  It would never get to do what it was designed to do or accomplish its purpose.  It was an endless reminder that I was lonely and it fucking mocked me.  I would awake each day with acute onset of Bonair’s disease, and find it staring me in the face.  Other times it would just hang there depressed, making me depressed.  But mostly it was just there, being useless, the way I was just there being useless.

I tried to draw other things.  I tried to draw Bob Marley but it just looked like a penis with dreadlocks.  Motorcycle perhaps?  Penis with wheels.  Watergun?  I think you see where this is going.  This day was just like any other, I was drunk like many of the days before lying in my living room amidst a floor strewn with pencil drawings of peni.  The fact that it was December 25, on the ship was just an abstract measurement.  It wasn’t Jesus-mas back on earth and it didn’t feel much like Jesus-mas here either.

Just then the ship started to shake.

The artificial gravity of the ship was disabled and I was floating in my ship.  I was incredibly drunk at the time and I thought I might be hallucinating.  Suddenly I flew up to the front of the ship and was knocked unconscious.  When I woke up I was no longer in the only place I knew for the last 14 years.  I was in a dark square room that smelled like thai food, by myself.  I often had dreams of being outside of that goddamn ship but I could tell that this was no dream, something had me.  The only way I could have been taken out of that ship and still be alive would be if aliens abducted me.  I wondered what they would look like, what they would do to me.  Then the door at the far end of the room opened.

ET

He looked like fucking ET.  I thought that I might be killed but at least I would get to see what aliens really looked like.  But no, I get abducted by aliens that look like fucking ET.  Spielberg , nice fucking guess, thanks for ruining my day.

“Wheres Alf?”

It didn’t answer me.  It just walked around me staring silently.  I felt my butthole tighten up, everything I’ve ever read about aliens tells me that they are going to stick something up my ass, and Spielberg already guessed right once today.  He pulled out a long wand.

He's going to stick that up my ass.

He waved the glowing light over my body like a metal detector.  I didn’t move, I’m not sure If I could have moved or not, but I didn’t.  Then when he was done ET walked out of the room without making a sound.  I sat there dumbfounded.  I didn’t know what to think.  At least they were probably going to kill me, that would be ok.  But what if they just kept me as a test subject?  That’s what humans would have done.

Fuck.

To be continued . . .

Terry Cakebread: Human, Part I

My name is Terry Cakebread and this is the fucking story of my life.

October 31, 2044 Earth

The clock read 7:55 AM, as I double-checked the wall of endless switches and monitors that covered the inside of my spaceship.  I could not concentrate on what I was doing despite the potentially morbid consequences of my lack of focus.  This was essentially my funeral – it was a day that I knew, and hoped, would come since I was seven years old.  I was an incredibly gifted child if I do say so myself.  I could always breeze through math problems that gave others difficulty and my ever expanding interest in all things science put its splendors easily within the reach of my mind.  When I was in second grade my teachers implored my parents to move me up to a more difficult grade or at least sign me up for advanced classes.  Let’s just say that my parents were not endowed with the same intellectual gifts that I was.  My parents were two bleeding heart burnouts, who would not allow me to be brainwashed into placing importance on the things dictated by society.  This is why I remained in the second grade.  I remember, at times, attempting to hide my intellect from them so they would not think that I was being too absorbed into “the system” that they fought so hard against.

There was only so much I could do – my mind was racing in a thousand different directions and on October 15, 2014 at the age of 7, I found my purpose.  I was browsing my parents Netflix account as they slept.  I typed science into the search bar.  My mind was so absorbed with science at the time that I had already read my entire science book cover to cover by the second month of the school year.  I was now moving on to documentaries.  I moved the curser slowly past a number of movies.  Sometimes I think about what would have happened if I didn’t make the random selection that I did.  Maybe I would have developed an interest in the subject afterward, as I like to think, but maybe my life would have been a lot god damn better if I would have skipped this movie.  The curser landed on Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking.  In the next month I watched and re-watched the entire series a total of four times, but one episode piqued my interest more than any other.  I watched the episode on time travel every night that month and during the course of my lifetime I must have watched it a couple hundred more times.  I used to have dreams of traveling to far off galaxies and planets in a single lifetime, living out sci-fi fiction in real life.  When you are 7 years old anything seems possible and I was from a long line of dreamers.  I would chase that dream for the rest of my life.

My parents were sobbing, proud but distraught.  I knew that this was the last time I was ever going to see them and they knew it too.  The image was tough to get out of my mind.  I thought of my girlfriend too, a voluptuous blond by the name of Veronica Bosomchest.  I could still envision the tears streaking down her face and neck to be swallowed up by the deep ravine of her ample bust.  She was inconsolable.  I had to bite my lip hard to keep myself together and if there was any time that I ever needed to keep myself together it was now.  If time travel was like the movies these goodbyes wouldn’t have been so hard. There would be an old man running around like a lunatic screaming, “Plutonium!” and warning me not to bang my mom.  But there was no old man and no one was telling me not to bang my mom.  The reality of time travel bordered on melancholy, to say the least.  I would be accelerating my space ship for seven and a half continuous years, and at the end of that time the ship would be travelling very near the speed of light.  When a person travels near the speed of light, time slows down in the spaceship for reasons that only I and a handful of other human beings can understand.  Everything still feels the same on the ship but for each hour that passes on the space ship many more will pass on earth, so many more, in fact, that my family, friends, and even the entire human race, would all perish long before my journey would be complete.  Once that space ship took off I would have nowhere and no one to return to.  I would be alone, in space, the last of my kind.

“You ready, Terry?” I heard coming from the inside of my helmet.

“I think so.”

“Good luck Terry, we all hope this works.”

“Thanks for the fucking confidence.”

I hastily turned off the speaker in my headphones and initiated the launch sequence.  Within moments the ship was moving and I began my travel through time.

8:00 AM October 15, 2047 Earth Time (ET)

I had been traveling on my long tube of a spaceship for three years.  The spaceship was similar in size to a fairly large ranch style house but the design was heavily influenced by the principles of aerodynamics for obvious reasons.  The ship was equipped with a very advanced gravitational simulator so that I would not float from one end to the other for the rest of my life.  The only thing that separated this from a regular house was an enormous pantry at the rear, built to hold 70 years worth of food riddled unrecognizable with preservatives, and the front of the ship that contained an elaborate control panel and a window betraying the fact that I was actually hurtling through space.  There was also an exercise room to help me stay in shape but I figured that if I was going to be eating food that was supposed to last for the next 70 years, that the exercise room was not really going to help me all that much. I would spend most of my days back then trying to figure out difficult equations that might help me determine more about the universe, reading, or having video meetings with my mission directors in my living room. I also had the pleasure of having regular video contact with Ms. Bosomchest two times per week, where she would provocatively pretend that she hadn’t forgotten about me yet.  I played along with her rouse, and I was well aware of it being a rouse, after all I am the super genius flying through fucking outer space.  This day was the day, however, I calculated that my speed would not allow my communications to function properly.  I attempted to tune in to my standing appointment with Ms. Bosomchest and my pants were already shortening by about a ½-inch at this point if you know what I mean.  I was not surprised when I did not get the pleasure of seeing the bountiful Ms. Bosomchest on the screen as I assumed that I wouldn’t.  What did hit me was unexpected.

I had prepared for this moment for many years.  Even before I ventured onto the spaceship, I knew that this moment of “singularity” as I liked to call it, would come.  My chest started to tighten up, it felt like I had a cinderblock on my chest.  I could not breath, I sucked desperately at the air and even wondered if the spaceship had been breached.  I never had such extreme feelings of anxiety before.  I was able to slow my breathing after about ten minutes or so before the panic attack finally subsided.  I felt totally drained. I sat there in a living room that looked no different than any other living room on earth, condemned to a life of solitude.  I was too distraught to finish my calculations for the day or do any reading, so I did what I always did when depression set in.  I watched professional wrestling.  Due to amazing advances in computer storage capacity I was able to have the entirety of the internet at my fingertips even though my communications with the earth were terminated. I would not, unfortunately, be able to receive any new information placed on the internet since my communication with earth ceased.  The touch screen wall of the room changed as I heard my voice shout out reflexively “Play the Undertaker match from Hell in a Cell 1998.” I found myself suddenly immersed in a  screaming crowd, where a seven-foot giant of a man was about to toss his seemingly lifeless opponent twenty feet to his demise. The wretched opponent fell to the earth demoralized as the crowd erupted.  I felt normal again.

I started using WWE to self-medicate my depression in college.  I started college at Penn State University for aerospace engineering.  I was going to change the world.  Depression started to set in for me over my coursework.  My classes seemed so easy and trivial at the time.  I was not making the advancements I wanted to make and was going nowhere near the goals that I set for myself.  To combat this I started to spend most of my time in the library by myself, learning on my own.  I spent most of my nights that first semester trying to figure out a way to create a power source that would sustain the acceleration of a spaceship for years on end, because I felt that this would be the limiting factor for deep space travel.  I thought I was on to something when I imagined a wireless power source at a distance from the ship, very similar to the way the wireless charger worked for my cell phone at the time.  But I still had to find a way to create the astounding amount of energy necessary.

My classes were only getting in the way. It was bullshit.  I was doing all the work, learning on my own and I had to pay them to get in my way.  Just so I could get a piece of paper that said I didn’t fuck up a lot.  I was smart, smarter than any of those has-been’s who were my teachers.  The thoughts of the injustice of it all often clouded my mind and I began to see what my parents thought of this whole “society” thing.  I started to watch some WWE in my apartment to clear my mind.  There was/is something about those spandex tights, poor story lines, and terrible acting that captivated me.  The melodrama of it all called to me like the pied piper called to his rats.  I found that after a small WWE binge I could solve problems that had been plaguing me easily, and my creativity was through the roof.  With the help of professional wrestling I began to progress my theories in leaps and bounds, and had almost no time for my school work.  I had to drop out, and I did drop out after just a year and a half.  There I sat many years later twelve hours deep into a WWE binge with no intentions of stopping, traveling into the future.

To be continued . . .

KeyPAP Expressions: A Superfecta of Haikus

by Louis "Satchel" DiFez

Winter Lust

Eyes gaze longingly

Pulsating, her hands run down

Graze my bulge, Bonair's

6:28 AM

Throne, without a king

Strewn over the clear abyss

Calm thyself.  Now, poop.

Feeding Time

The table is set.

Succulent smells fill the air.

Fried shitty foods. PAUNCH.

One Pump

Enter the darkness

Cavernous slit of pleasure

Love explosion . . . moan

16 BuzzFeed Article Ideas You Never Thought Would Make You LOL

After recently experiencing an alarming rise in blood pressure due to the amount of BuzzFeed links seen popping up on Facebook, Smits finally saw the error of his ways and embraced the new cultural phenomenon.  If everyone loves BuzzFeed, it can't be so bad right?  So what if it's just a cesspool of stolen images and shallow content, is it illegal to reminisce about your childhood or think cats are cute?  I don't think so!

After dedicating several of his precious minutes on Earth studying the content of the popular website's top articles, Smits now believes he has what it takes to become a BuzzFeed "writer."  That's right, ye olde readers, a few minutes is all the time it takes to be good at something.  Malcolm Gladwell and his 10,000 hours can drink my grundle juice.

KeyPAP encourages our readers to vote for your favorite article idea by writing in the comments section below.  If you choose the winning article, Smits will personally deliver you a swift kick to the cunt!

16 Reasons A Show You Watched A Couple Times During Your Childhood But Barely Remember Makes Your Generation Way Better Than The Current Generation

Remember that you enjoyed watching reruns of Growing Pains or Step By Step when you were a little kid?  Yeah, those shows were way better than today's shows.  I said it, so it's true.

22 Ways Being a [insert common profession here] Makes You Better Than Everyone Else And They Had Better Appreciate You Now

The only thing Facebook-addicted nurses and social workers like more than helping others is making sure everyone knows they're helping others.

25 Sluts You Probably Contracted Syphilis From If You Went to [insert large university here]

Thank you, JuicyCampus

14 Of The Cutest Cat Faces

Sad, happy, confused . . . it doesn't matter, the single female 30 and 40somethings will eat this shit up faster than you can say "spinster."

9 Reasons Why [insert celebrity here] Is Seriously The Best Person Ever

Did you fantasize about thrusting your meat stick through Angelina Jolie's beef curtains when you were a teenager?  Did you know she adopted a shit ton of little black babies?  She was hot and appears to be a good person based on what Us Weekly writes about her.  BEST.  PERSON.  EVER.  Don't worry, I'll be sure to upload every hard nipple/pouty lip photo of her you ever jerked off to.

It's working isn't it?

11 Ways Liking [Insert poular generagtion y children's movie here] Makes You Unique

Remember Toy Story?  I fucking loved that movie when I was a kid!  Since it was popular and taught us moral lessons which seem to trouble the world now, it makes me super unique.  Wait . . . what were those morals again?  Let me Google them real quick.

101 Recycled Memes I Found On The Internet But Didn't Cite

I collected every meme my "friends" ever posted on Facebook, and put them into this article.  It was a lot of hard work saving each file.

An Elderly Woman Walked Into The Grocery Store To Buy Peanuts, But You'll Never Guess What Happened Next

Hinting at an ironic twist?  Check.  It doesn't even matter what happened next.  She could have just paid for the peanuts and walked out of the store.  As long as you get a picture of an old broad with a bag of peanuts in her hands and post the link on Facebook, we get more traffic.  That's all that really matters in the end.  Gotta pay the bills, homeboy.

69 Of The [Greatest or Worst] Things That Could Possibly Happen to a[Teen/20something/30something] from [insert state or city here]

Are you a 19 year old dude who grew up in Pittsburgh?  What if they made the Squirrel Hill Tunnel a couple feet wider so that every shitty motorist on the Parkway didn't get claustrophobia at the tunnel approach and slam on their breaks . . . wouldn't that be the BEST GOD DAMN THING EVER?  Fuck, I'm getting a half-chub just thinking about it.

The Most [Inspirational/Disturbing] Video You'll Ever See About Cat Vaginas

Women love cats and men love vaginas.  It's biology, idiot.  "But how could a video about cat vaginas be inspirational?" Exactly . . . *click*

500 Cats That Will Make You Go LOLZ

Cat pictures with cute captions that someone else wrote.  It's spinster heaven and that lifestyle is totally in these days.

17 Reasons All Men Should Act More Like [insert effeminate, submissive, diffident male character from popular '80s, '90s, or 2000s sitcom]

e.g. Ross or Chandler from Friends, Robert from Everybody Loves Raymond, Carlton from Fresh Prince, Corey from Boy Meets World, etc.

41 Facts About You That Make You Just Fine The Way You Are

Forget that New Year's resolution to lose 20 lbs, don't you know that beauty is on the inside?  Also, please don't look at my next article.

The 20 Hottest Actresses Of All Time But Forgot About . . . Until Now

This article doesn't even require a single written word, just stolen pictures of a few actresses showing sideboob or rock hard nips.  Genius!

Wow, Just Wow

This is a nauseating phrase parotted by those in exasperation over a controversial topic.  If I just use the phrase as the title and put a picture of someone like Barack Obama or Bill O'Reilly in the link, I'll be sure to get like a zillion pageviews!

If You Don't Like This Video You Don't Have A Soul

Everyone wants to be "liked" (lulz). I'll just use a title that plays on their insecurities and link to some emotional video like Kony 2012 or a Dove fat chick commercial.

Thanks for reading, everybody. Let me know which ideas you like best!

Post by Maddox.

KeyPAP Perspectives: Milk Is Weird

by Dr. David Funk

In this edition of the KeyPAP perspective series we will be taking a closer look at Milk, and I will show you why milk is in fact, Weird.  Unfortunately for our regular readers across the globe I will be restraining myself, with no small effort, from using the salty language that you all are accustomed to.  For this I apologize, but I feel that this message must be suitable for the masses.  As for why salty language is not suitable for the masses, well that is a topic for future perspective series articles, but I digress.

Many young children have been encouraged to drink their milk regularly so that they will grow big and strong.  Regular Milk consumption has been encouraged to help form strong bones.  In practice, however, it has been observed that not only is milk bad for your bones, and a poor source of calcium for the body, but that it may actually increase your risk of fracture.  That, of course, is not what this article is about.  If you would like to learn more about why milk may be detrimental to your health then click here.  This article will be focused on the less important yet more entertaining issue of how weird milk is and why everyone ignores it.

The first point I would like to make against cow’s milk is that this is what a cow looks like:

It is truly a filthy disgusting animal.  When most people think about cows they think of the black and white cartoon drawing of a cow on their milk carton.  It is some abstract thought that they associate with milk, like a logo.  A cow is not a logo, it is a real, huge, smelly, gross animal with machines sucking liquid out of a smelly swollen veiny pouch between its legs.  That should be enough to help you understand that milk is weird but I shall continue.

Milk itself is not weird when used for its real purpose.  When babies drink their mother’s milk it’s awesome.  The mother produces the perfect food to help her baby grow, a food completely designed for babies with the perfect amount of nutrients, immune boosting bacteria, and the like.  It’s really incredible.  What blows my mind is that people, at some point, decided that we should start drinking cow milk, designed for baby cows.  This must have seemed preposterous the first time someone drank it.  I have to believe it was in some sort of survival scenario.  Over the years it seems that humans have not even made a valid attempt to make milk any less weird.  It’s stored in a waxy cardboard box for god’s  sake.  Even crazier is the fact that human milk is now considered more disgusting than cow’s milk.  Think about it, if you let your child go over to his friend’s house and his father said, “well for breakfast we gave them some cheerios with some organic breast milk” I think that father would probably have charges pressed against him.  He would be considered a sociopath if not a borderline criminal because he offered your child milk from a human instead of a fat corn fed anonymous cow from god knows where.

Do you know where human milk comes from?  It comes from the most publicized, shown off, and obsessed-over part of the female body.  But it is somehow considered disgusting to the general public (to be clear, I am not in favor of drinking breast milk as an adult; I’m just highlighting the fact that it should definitely seem less weird than drinking cow’s milk).  I dare you to go to a farm, find a cow, take a big whiff of its essence, and look it straight in the udders.  Then say, "I’d like to drink whatever liquid leaks out of that!" Now human milk is for babies and jokes in movies.  I saw a movie where a man drinks breast milk by accident and in the TV version of the movie that part was cut out! He drank it from a glass and all they did was say it was breast milk and they cut it from the movie.  Hypocritical? Maybe if you have ever seen a commercial with The Rock's upper lip smeared with the remnants of whole milk or watched an Indianapolis 500.

In conclusion I hope that you have come to understand that cow’s milk is weird and that no human should ever drink it.  I would be lying if I told you that I am never going to drink cow’s milk again, but I will at least feel ashamed of myself when I do.  And that, I think, is better.

Positively Progressing from the Perils of Paunch

A Memoir by Louis DiFez

As 2013 A.D. ended as devastatingly as it began, I reviewed the year in my life thus far.  I am in the process of accomplishing my goals:  I will be graduating with my Doctorate in Podiatric Medicine in May 2014, the KeyPAP flourishes brightly as ever, and overall I am happy with my life and the direction that it is in.  However, as I perused the annals of my individual 2013 history, I came to a part in my life that I was extremely dissatisfied, and, frankly, thoroughly disgusted with.

The paunch.

In its noun form, it means “a large and protruding belly; a potbelly.” Or also, in nautical terms, “a thick mat that prevents chafing.” I believe the first is more appropriate.

"This turtleneck is so good at being thick and the prevention of chafing.  I get Bonair's every time I put it on!"

I let myself go.  I became lazy, unenthused, and bored with exercising.  In 2013, I viewed working out not as a goal to continually better myself, but as an obstacle that lay between my studying, eating, and facebooking.  Luckily, two things changed my thoughts:

#1 – Consistent harassment from the Founding Fathers of the KeyPAP.

Harassment not in the sense of, “I’m going to file charges against you for harassing me and saying mean things and I am not MAN enough to handle it.” But the good kind.  The kind that stirs in your loins, lights a fire from deep within, and looks to expel all of the terrible things inside of you in order to make yourself the best possible human.  Dr. Funk, Smits, the First Ladies, and lastly, The One Known as Beebles (TOKaB, for short) all constantly harassed me, and rightly so.  I was still muscular, but shapeless.  I had a midsection of Play-Doh®.  I felt as doughy as an uncooked stromboli.  I needed the abuse, I thrived off the abuse, and I turned it from a negative to a positive.

#2 – Smits MANLY performance as the first ever KeyPAP 2013 Strongman Performance of the Year.

We all saw the videos, heard the grunts of pain and agony, but reveled in his strength and mastering of the perilous weights.  He achieved victory as only a man of the KeyPAP can:  through a skin-tight, nearly bulge-showing, wrestling singlet.  Smits was a man of action, and I wanted it back.

I yearned for the sound of iron.  I missed the feel of the cold, never wiped-down, probably loaded with tetanus and MRSA, steel on my hands.  I pined as I would get ready to shower, seeing the abomination that I had become. “If I don’t think I look good, surely the opposite sex thinks I’m revolting,” thoughts ran through my head.  I needed to change.

I began to eat healthier and less.  I also began running to the gym from my Philadelphia house.  And when at the gym, I worked out like the old days of college - like a MAN.  No more of this, “I think I’m going to do 3x20 bench press of 135 lbs.” crap.  I began to bulk back up, like only a meatball can.

I am still in the process of changing my lifestyle and body, but I am fully committed.  2014 will be the year that the paunch is defeated.  Even as I sit here now, my muscles call out from within to be burned.  As the great Arnold once eloquently stated:

I will leave you all with 2 inspirational quotes that I use daily, while in the process of Purging the Paunch™.

“Be strong and of a good courage.  Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes . . . If death ends all, we cannot meet death better.” – James Fitzjames Stephen

“Time for dem gymtitties!” – Me

The Great Awakening

by Dr. David Funk

9:00 am EST

"What should I do at the gym today?" I shamefully asked myself since I had no plan of attack for the day.  It’s true, I have a workout routine over the last few months that is as shameful as it has been in at least 10 years.  This unplanned schedule is a breeding ground for future paunch, self-loathing and unachieved goals.  I realized this as I sat in my living room, fatly watching ESPN2 cover the three stories of the week.  In that moment I felt a surge in my belly, not in my ample adipose tissue hanging over the taut elastic of my pajamas, but deep inside where a man’s spirit lies.  I was compelled; I walked outside into the unusually warm December weather and looked out from my second story balcony to the highest point of my surroundings.  The surge said to me, "Today you will climb." It was not up for debate, it was a command issued from the depths of my soul.

The Trail

I set out toward my mountain along a trail that I was very familiar with, the sights and sounds of soccer moms and their puffball dogs were commonplace on this path.  I had never ventured off of this trail before.  It was well marked, it was level, it was safe.

When I arrived at the base of the mountain where I planned to begin my assault on the summit I discovered, much to my chagrin, that its base was completely surrounded by houses.  To continue on my journey I would have to trespass, in broad daylight, in a community that lands on the extreme right of political issues.  The risk was not a small one but it was one I was willing to take.  I daringly broke trail and stepped into a yard boasting a truck whose lift kit surely cost more than the machine.  I strode through the residential back yard dodging dog dumplings like landmines the whole way.  I gazed at the house all the while picturing a man, with more first names than teeth, bursting from it waving his second amendment rights in my general direction.  At the end of the yard I clambered over the stone wall that marked its end and began my accent.

The Ascent

I looked out into the terrain that I would soon be traveling on.  The ground was still wet with droplets from the morning dew.  A thin refreshing layer of fog hung low on the dead trees and rocks that formed the mountains floor.  The lay of the land was not intimidating, in fact the mountain itself seemed at first glance no more than a large hill.  As I began to walk up the gradual incline I could feel my heart starting to beat a little more quickly, I could feel the cool December air satisfyingly stroking my face as I pushed through the woods.  Something primal was stirred inside of me, a thought that this would be what the world looked like if humans had never left their grotesque mark on the planet.  I remained enamored with this thought, hardly able to comprehend it in my own mind, or why it weighed so heavily on it in the first place.  I thought about the fact that I could have easily passed this time by sitting on my couch barely moving except to gorge my face with salty foods, a practice I am no stranger to.  But I had made the right choice.  This, I decided, was where I belonged.  My pace quickened, even breaking into a childlike run at times, the kind of run where you just move your body through space and time out of pure excitement.  It was a kind of run, I thought, that is not commonplace in the morose land of adult decorum.  I wove my way in and out of the heavily wooded mountainside, walking on logs, climbing on top of large rocks. I could start to see the mountain rising at a greater slope and all at once the trees cleared and I saw what remained of my climb.

Summit

I peered through the remainder of the trees trying to get a good look at the climb ahead.  I had anticipated a gentle grade that would lead me to a relatively easy summit.  Gentle grade this was not; this was a sharply inclining grade that culminated in a 90 degree wall of intimidating rock as craggy as a cancerous prostate.  I began to climb the steepening mountainside, each step harder than the last.  My lungs burned white hot and pleaded for a rest, I could feel my legs filling with lactic acid as they begged for reprieve.  I had gone into a trance; I could feel the summit beckoning me.  I finally paused, out of breath, when I arrived at the rock face that guarded the summit.

The stone rose beastly from the ground without warning like some sort of sinister push pop.  The wall was 12 feet high if it was a foot, and I had to form a plan of attack.  There were several somewhat easy routs over the wall but I was maddened by the climb.  If I may borrow from the great alpinist and author Jon “5 star” Krakauer,

“Climbing was a magnificent activity, I firmly believed, not in spite of the inherent perils, but precisely because of them.”

With those words in mind I took the most difficult rout I could handle.  I started up the face of the rock wall, the rocks were cold and much more slippery than I anticipated.  They were moss covered and it occurred to me that I may be the only person in a very long time to have been here.  I neared the top clumsily and my foot slipped from its hold.  I could feel my heart drop as I lost my balance.  Luckily I regained my footing, but not before I sent a dead stump hurtling down the mountain falling meters to a rocky demise that reduced it to unsanitized toothpicks.  My mind did not hesitate to make the connection that this could very well have been my fate.  I climbed to the top and expected to be standing triumphant over citizens of Shavertown.  To my surprise there was another climb that culminated in yet another wall of earth that was taller and more intimidating than the first.
 
I began to climb the second rock wall, the craggy moss laden demon that stood in my way toward the summit.  Midway up the wall I grabbed a small branch to hoist myself when - SNAP - the tree gave way.  My feet slid down the mossy slope of rock they were perched on toward the nothingness that marked the rocks end.  I was going down.  I reached blindly in the area of the broken branch and caught a root with my left hand saving me from tumbling down the mountain.  I stood there badly shaken.  My mind felt clouded, perhaps the beginning of hypoxia.  I had, after all, climbed hundreds of feet above sea level to perch myself on this precarious ledge. I was woefully underprepared for this moment. I was wearing a long t-shirt, jeans and boots. I had no carabiners, no ropes, and I was smack dab in the middle of a 12 hour fast.  The brashness of my preparation, or lack thereof was staggering to me in that moment.  I had never climbed anything before, and I was attempting to solo climb this rocky whore of a mountain without safety gear, without food, or water, and not enough clothing to make a bivouac until I regained my strength.  The climb back down the mountain was too treacherous, the rock wall I was on was too slippery and I would have to descend a second rock wall after it.  The thought of slipping on the wet leaves, as I approached the ledge of the lower rock wall, and hurtling over it was sickening to me.  I would have to climb up the mountain and find an easier way down. In that moment I thought of my wife, the beautiful first First Lady of the KeyPAP.  What would she think if I lost my footing?  The only people who knew I was out here at all were hundreds if not thousands of miles away from here and would not know where to look in the first place.  I could not place that burden upon her shoulders.  No, it is in her that I found the strength and determination to move on.  I struggled mightily to the top of the second wall battling my own limbs which trembled with fear.
 

 

On the top, the mountain smiled mockingly at me with a third rock wall.  There were trees twisting from the side of the wall, reaching towards the heavens, as if they were daring me to continue.  I realized that it was not up to me - in the end, the mountain would decide my fate.  I thought then that it might not be so bad to be seated on my couch vegitizing in front of the TV.  I shook the thought off and stormed toward the third rock wall, my blood boiling at the mockery of the mountain.  If the mountain wanted me, it was going to have to fucking take me.  I tore at the third wall tossing loose rocks by the wayside, climbing with great fervor and strength.  I was moving but it was as if my body was moving for me, I was just along for the ride.  In minutes I stood atop the nameless mountain.  The mountain, fittingly, did not reward me with a spectacular view, those heaven bound trees did all that they could to obscure it.

Descent

I was able to find an easy way down the mountain.  Once my descent began I noticed that I was absolutely drenched in sweat.  At several hundred feet above sea level this could have proven treacherous if the weather turned.  Luckily I was graced with clear skies the whole way down.  I stepped out of the woods on a road labeled Carverton.  I knew where I was, back to safety, and decided that I would stay there for a long while.  As I began the walk back to my apartment I looked ahead of me, away from the mountain that had spared me.  I walked around the bend of the road and saw through the clearing another mountain appear, dominating the horizon, looming over me something sinister, and I felt my spirit stir once again.