Have you ever thought how great it would be to be able to shed a few pounds without the necessity of having to do any bothersome dieting or exercising?&t;!—-&t;.

Wednesday, February 27, 2002

Have you ever thought how great it would be to be able to shed a few pounds without the necessity of having to do any bothersome dieting or exercising?

Not a day goes by that someone isn’t telling us how overweight Americans have become. We need to lose this excess weight, preferably with no work on our part. We want to start exercising slowly and then taper off without ever having the need for deodorant.

I have found the way. I saw it on something called Fantasy Television. We get that channel at our house. I think the official name of the program is WOMBAT. That stands for &uot;Waste Of Money, Brains And Time.&uot;

Have any of you seen it? At first, I thought it was some kind of a comedic spoof of infomercials. It features commercials hawking electronic belts -&160;belts that if you will do nothing more than wear them, will give you washboard abs. Evidently, washboard abs are just ahead of world peace on most people’s wish list. Washboard abs have replaced buns of steel as the hottest body parts. These abdominal electronic muscle stimulators are marketed under the names Abtronics, Ab-Energizers, Abforce, Absurd (okay, I made this one up) and others.

There is no exercise required -&160;no walking, no lifting and no stretching needed to tighten, shape, firm, strengthen, flatten and mold your body. These flab-fighting belts promise that good things will come to those who wait. All you need do is to strap on a belt the size of a World Wrestling Federation Championship belt around your midsection. It is like a cross between jumper cables and an engine block heater. Once you strap on the belt, you are hot-wired just like a stolen car. You can actually kiss a sleeping spouse while you are wearing one of these belts and it will jump-start him or her in the morning. This ab machine will zap your tummy every so often -&160;perhaps whenever you think of a slice of pepperoni pizza -&160;and this zapping will cause you to lose weight. I am not kidding. You could even lose weight while eating pepperoni pizza as long as you are wearing one of these.

I hope these contraptions come with a warning that you should not wear them in mosquito-infested areas. All that zapping and slapping could lead to exhaustion. Wearing one of these belts is just like doing as many sit-ups as the average middle-aged man can do. That means that it is equivalent to about one sit-up.

Now let me just say that I am all in favor of any kind of self-improvement that can be garnered without any effort whatsoever. Even reading a book on self-improvement requires some effort. I can think of nothing better than slurping down a malted milkshake while my midriff becomes something that Britney Spears would be proud to bare. Who could complain about something that could give you an Olympic quality stomach that would make a world class athlete envious while you continue to train on fast food and doughnuts?

Myself, I have had a bellyful of these commercials. I think this belt would get on a fellow’s nerves. My gut feeling is that it would give the wearer the nervous energy of a coffee drinking squirrel.

Now I am the kind who believes in getting some exercise. There is no truth to the rumor that as a child I was so lazy that my mother had to suck my thumb for me. Digging behind the sofa cushions for that last corn chip is my regular exercise program and it leaves me drained. My wife sometimes accuses me of having all of the sincerity of a duck call, but I insist that I am going to achieve rock hard abdominal muscles the old-fashioned way -&160;with no painful groin pulls, no watching of Richard Simmons’s videos and no zapping. I’d probably forget about the belt and wear it in the shower. That would cause me to hit a high C while I’m singing in the shower and such a note would neuter the neighbor’s dog.

No, I am going to have rock hard abs by doing it the way men have done it for generations. I am going to suck in my stomach every time a pretty woman walks by.

I’ve got to go. WOMBAT is now showing a kind of breakfast cereal that can be used as kitty litter so people will have a use for it when the kids won’t eat it.

Hartland resident Al Batt writes columns for the Wednesday and Sunday editions of the Tribune.