“NOBODY LOOKS GOOD IN SPANDEX…” (from NFTD Archives)

…I exclaim to the silvered glass, “…don’t think you’re the exception, you’re not, your wattles show, your jiggly adipose tissue flounces around behind all that rubber like silly putty and the tire wound round your plus-40 waist is stretched so taut your blue varicose veins are translucent…” I peel the shorts off like they were cosmolene and decide not to go jogging after all, nor ride the mountain bike nor for all that, nothing exerting I am bound for today, but rather another sedentary day of letting the muscles atrophy and flatten against this chair seat. Yawwwn…

Spandex, bicycles, jogging…what a nightmare!
Now roller blading, that’s something I’m hip to; it’s a spectator sport only, at least for me, but how supple the human form rippling down the byways on roller blades, don’t you think? Well, here again, unfortunately at that I suppose, this sporting observation is predicated on looks, appearances. Does she/he have the pecs, the abs, the boobs, the ass? I doubt that I, weighing in at a cool 1/8th of a ton, would attract much more than a little tittering attention as I thundered past on painfully-bended ankles, rippling the sidewalk as I rumbled over it like a train pressing down the tracks; no, I probably would not cause quite the stir a 19-year-old hardbelly – male or female – would cause as they flashed by.

I was never blessed with your basic beautiful body nor handsome face, if blessed is the word I want; I’ve had to settle for keen intellect, clever wit and charm, plus my natural animal magnetism, erudition and disarming modesty to get me by.
Who needs spandex?

Like Beethoven I want to be...

…tormented by my ills and aging (since I have them to deal with anyway) into creations of unsurpassed genius – painting paintings the likes of which have never been seen, writing my literary self into the literal history books, there to repose as a national treasure, ah yes, if life is to be an abbreviated trial then let it produce works transcending time; alas, unlike Beethoven, no genius I; plus I’m burned out, can’t hold any interest in holding a paintbrush but for a few unremarkable moments, dabs and splatters on a dusty canvas; and as for writing, ah me, the torrent of pithy remarks, of incisive wit and ever the clever, timeless commentary so much a part of my deathless (until now) prose and a certified trademark of NFTD, has become a dry wash dusted with alkali.