One doesn't become a wildly successful webmaster read by literally dozens readers per week without being in peak physical condition, perfectly honed in both body and mind.  However, as all health freaks and roid-heads worth their wheat grass and methamphetamines will tell you, one has to be constantly striving to become better and more ripped than they already are, always trying to become the best they can be in all aspects of their lives.  Since I have become totally cut and developed superior rippling biceps and washboard abdominal muscles with little to no effort I have concluded that the best I could become would be the most unstoppable ultimate killing machine that has ever lived and a physical specimen the likes of which this world has never seen.  To that end, a couple of weeks ago I decided to begin honing my skills to their peak efficiency level, and this week I intend to describe the trials and tribulations I encountered in my efforts to become the übermench so that you become awe-stricken while you become the best that you can be, which is merely someone who I allow to bask in my glory.  You should be honored, since this is the pinnacle of your puny lives.

My glorious arm.

Step One:  Working Out
Nothing makes you feel like a miserable pathetic pukebag weakling asshole quite like going to the gym for the first time.  I found this out the hard way when I made my first ever venture to that human equivelant of a hamster wheel two weeks ago in the hopes to begin my quest to become the ultimate killing machine and the connsumate man.  Like the unwitting dolt that I am I had signed up for a gym even though I had never been to one before, foolishly thinking that a paragon of strength such as myself would fit in easily amongst the musclehead jock douchebags and anorexic silicon bimbettes known to frequent such bastions of giant mirrors and nutritional protein shakes.  Unfortunately, no one bothered to mention to me that contrary to popular belief the gym is actually not for people who want to look better or get stronger, but rather for people who are already better, more attractive and more incredibly powerful than you could ever possibly hope to become if you worked out seventeen times a day and replaced every ounce of blood in your body with anabolic monkey steroids.  These genetically-altered supersoldiers apparently don't even need to work out since all they have to do to increase their muscle mass by five hundred percent is just stare at scrawny History majors all day and laugh mockingly at them when they have trouble on their tenth rep on the bench press.  These people also feel that when someone has cruelly defiled their glorious machines by lifting anything less than two hundred and ninety thousand pounds with their teeth while hanging upside down and having rocks thrown at them they need to restore the honor of the equipment by doing a couple reps with a retarded amount of weight and then glaring at the weak pathetic loser who soiled and disgraced their fucking hallowed Bowflex with his puniness.  It also apparently is necessary to violently jostle your balls and spit while doing this to further accentuate your point.  I'm just guessing here, as no one has yet been so kind to inform me of the rules.  I assume it's something they let you in on after you first crawl out from your special Uruk-hai Mr. Universe breeding pits where your vat-grown muscles are developed by evil scientists and government technicians, but that's just wild speculation and should be treated as such.  Luckily, I have been able to figure out at least some of the rules of the gym in my last two weeks there, and since they don't make any sense to a rational human being I will try to do my best and articulate them here.

1. Stand Around and Do Nothing
   In my pursuit of man's ultimate goal - cracking a Brazil nut between my bicep and forarm - I have encountered a few obstacles which have stunted my progress.  First of course, there is the actual act of lifting weights, which has caused quite a significant problem in and unto itself.  The real issue, however, is that I was apparently completely devoid of even a the slightest familiarity with weightlifting etiquitte, the most important aspect of which is to stand around aimlessly staring at chicks on the treadmill.  Strangely enough, it appears that the best way to increase muscle mass (other than laughing at the new guy) is to do one set of two repititions once every fifteen minutes and then stand around the rest of the time flexing, striking awkward poses, walking around the weight machines, gently kissing your muscles, sweating and stretching.  Being the rationally-minded person that I tend to be from time to time, I don't understand this concept and as a result I always seem to be the only person around that's ever actually lifting anything, which is probably also why I'm usually done with my workout before anyone else.
   
   
2. Be Prepared for Some Shitty Music
   I'm sure this is different from gym to gym, but at the place where I work out you had better be prepared for a Fat Joe-sized helping of crappy bubblegum pop and disco funk monster ballads.  For every half-decent Alkaline Trio or Rick James song you'll hear there are about ten thousand live acoustic Paul McCartney/Dishwalla kazoo anthems and Evanescence covers of early twenties show tunes blaring through the in-house speaker system like an unavoidable wall of acid destined to fuse your eardrums directy to your brain.  Whenever the one overplayed Harvey Danger song comes on I get so pumped up you would think that all four of the Ramones just showed up at my front door to bash in the heads of the annoying college kids camped outside my bedroom window and then let me jam with them on their next world tour, which would be especially impressive considering that there's only one of them left (R.I.P. Johnny Ramone).  The worst part of it all is that no matter what songs come on that day I always catch myself absently humming Avril Lavigne's "Complicated" as I'm leaving the gym for work, and there are few things in the world more depressing than that.  I blame the gym and the recording industry for drilling that song into my head approximately twenty-two hours a day every day for the last three years.
   
   
3. The Hideous Lair of Old Balls
   An intense frigid grip of paralyzing fear clenches my chest every time I go into the men's locker room, as I know that the second I round the corner to the locker/shower area I am going to be assaulted by the hideous accidental glimpse of some old geezer's mutated shriveled balls.  Now, I never see these particular old men actually working out while I'm in the gym so I can only assume that they are hired by the facility to stand around naked in the locker room ten hours a day and serve as an example to gym members of how they never ever want to look.  Catching the god-awful sight of some seventy year old dude's pale wrinkled hairy ass is enough to make any man want to be euthanized the second they turn gray in an effort to spare the rest of humanity such a wretched sight.  It all just makes me feel like Tobias Fünke from "Arrested Development" every time I'm in the locker room ("I'll never understand?"), but I fucking hate being around naked old dudes and their nasty balls with the ungodly realness.  Unfortunately, I am quickly finding out that this is totally unavoidable as long as these old men insist on being naked all the time, which is sad and I want them to stop.

Step Two:  Eating Right
Now that I'm benching three hundred pound dumbells with my eyelids I need to start regulating my substance intake because any nutritionist will tell you that what's on the outside is a reflection of what's on the inside.  This is also why Richard Gere looks so mousey all the time.  Here's a list of the crap I'm injecting into my system to make myself more of a man.

Hungry Man Hungry Man is a real man's microwave lunch.  It's one full pound of dehydrated precooked meat by-products containing about three thousand percent of your daily recommended sodium intake in every single bite.  This is the lunch food for tough guys who aren't afraid of clogged arteries, stone pancreases or stomach ulcers and who floss their teeth with babies and drink used motor oil without the aid of a bendy straw.  Actually, that's not true.  Real men don't floss at all, which is why I need to get about five teeth drilled every single time I go to the dentist.  The point here is that I eat a Hungry Man every day for lunch and as a result I'm going to become huge and ripped and awesome and not die of cardiac arrest before I'm thirty.

Horse Growth Pills Every diet needs nutritional supplements.  I have found that the one thing that compliments Hungry Man nicely is raw horse growth hormone pills.  They tastes a lot like hay and make my urine day-glow yellow but they're essentially pure Creatine and HGH, which is as close as you can get to steriods and still remain quasi-legal, according to my urban street pharmacist.  So I'm basically turning myself into a giant living Frankenfood, which is awesome.  I can only hope that one day in the near future I'll start to glow in the dark and grow a tail.  I'm also drinking Whey Protein shakes daily, which is far less dangerous, awesome or interesting.  I'm not even sure why I shared that with you.

      Hm.  I guess there are really only two things I'm doing to pump up, but given that I'm pretty cut already without ever having gone to a prison exercise yard or injected rhinoscerous blood into my eyes before I can only assume that those things will make me even bigger and more desirable.  Yes, it is only a matter of time before I'm eating steel tacks for breakfast, punching through brick walls and crushing pianos in my ham-sized fists of fury. 

And I'm still never going to be as cut as Andrew.