Beware the Evil Serpent Appearing in the Sweet Little Creek

Some days you try to do what you're supposed to do, and are dang near patting yourself on the back for doing it, and then the Serpent shows up anyway, fang-first.

Case in point: Yesterday I went to Gold's Gym, where I regularly endure the unholy, exaggerated grunting sounds of meat-necked roid-ragers in order to use a treadmill and a few Nautilus machines. The treadmill is quite boring, especially when you go as slowly as I do. I'm not a runner. I walk. And my walking is somewhere near the geriatric end of the spectrum, at least when compared to the wiry little skinny bitch next to me who puts the treadmill on Anorexic Death Pace and runs as fast and hard as she can, lest that half a kiwi she had for lunch catch up with her sexy ossified frame. But I digress.

There are 8 TV screens to watch while treadmilling. I saw that Oprah was on, and I jumped onto the treadmill nearest her. I loves me the Oprah. Of course, these TVs are muted, and there are captions. I put on my snazzy 19 dollar Sony Radio Headphones and listened to music and watched Oprah.

Her guests: The son and daughter of the man who created the Dove Bar. They told the story about how their dad had first owned a candy store, and each day his feelings were hurt when his kids ran outside the split second they heard the music from the Good Humor truck. So he came up with his own ice cream treat. The Dove Bar was born.

Nice story. Now let's move on, I thought. Let's not talk any more about the Dove Bar, which Oprah claimed is the "most decadent ice cream treat ever." Shut up, Oprah. Some of us are trying to treadmill here. Some of us are trying to lower our blood sugar. Some of us cannot afford to hire doctors to get into a fancy shrinking machine so they can be injected into our veins and then use microscopic shovels to scoop some glucose out of our blood. We have to do it the old fashioned way.

But Oprah wasn't done with me. Next on the screen was a lengthy, torturous tour of the effing Dove Bar factory, and endless, creamy, frozen, tear-drop shaped chunks of ice cream being dipped into their secret recipe chocolate, a recipe so secret that it is written down nowhere lest Al Quaida should get it. I watched the screen as though each of those naked Dove Bars on the production line were little benevolent dairy messiahs come to save me. Please Oprah, please shut yo' mouth, girl. Or your next "light bulb moment" will be the low-wattage bulb over your bed in the ICU, when you wake up post-surgery from having those Dove Bars pulled outta your ass.

She did not stop. Next, her flurry of gay backstage boys flittered out, each with a silver tray of Dove Bars held high, samples for the entire audience.

I was OK. I dealt with it. Hardly anyone said a word to me after I climbed up and balanced on the bars of the treadmill and grabbed both sides of the suspended TV and shattered the screen with my forehead.