the North Shore diet involves rowing a 14-foot boat for hours a day in heavy swells and I just don't have the time

Garrison Keillor is back on Salon! Contributing an article on weight loss:

My plan to become slender and willowy and alluring is not working out and the reason seems to be that though I go for days and days eating only celery and RyKrisp and a soup made from birch twigs and lichen, I black out occasionally and when I regain consciousness I am crouched over the half-eaten carcass of a gazelle and my hands and face are red and sticky and I'm disgusted, of course, and yet very rare gazelle does taste good when you're hungry, and the exertion of chasing one and bringing it down does make a person ravenous.

When Mr. Keillor used to write the Mr. Blue advice column, his advice often made me wish it were biologically possible to have two dads, so he could have been one of them. Not that I think he'd be my mom's type. Nor do I wish retroactive menages-a-trois on her. (Am I really blogging about this? I am a comedian; all is excusable).