In case you care about such things, my extremely sideburned face is on the cover of this month's Poets And Writers magazine. In the piece, the writer says, "Pollack's books vary dramatically in form, but each contains, at its center, a grandstanding author's lustful humor, a search for truth."

Exactly. He really nailed the "lustful" bit, and the other stuff has relevance as well. For instance, I've lately been in search of the truth about creeping heart disease.

Recently, in another sign that the middle ages are crawling up on me, I was diagnosed with high triglycerides. What, you might ask, are triglycerides? A full definition can be found here. But let's just say that they're bad for my ticker.

On January 1, thanks to the Writers' Guild Of America (which has reluctantly accepted me as a member), I finally get good health insurance for the first time this decade. But this pre-Guild year, I went to whatever crappy doctor near my house that my bad, expensive insurance would take. In this case, I chose a kindly Armenian guy who stopped reading medical journals around the time of the Nixon resignation. He diagnosed me correctly, then told me to go on a diet that eschewed "anything white, creamy, or that walks on four legs." No cheese, no butter, no bacon, nothing.

Because Regina had done some pre-research, I knew for a fact that he was wrong. High trigylcerides can be caused by a number of things, but their main cause is excess carbohyrdates. I needed to cut out alcohol, sugars, and bread; I could easily go through a box of Stoned Wheat Thins in a week.

I questioned the doctor's recommendations.

"Nothing white, creamy, or that walks on four legs," he repeated, as though I were a two-pack-a-week smoker in 1975.

"What about exercise?" I asked.

"Nothing white, creamy, or that walks on four legs," he said again, and then he walked out of the room.

Now look, people, I'm not going to argue with you if you disagree with my approach. This is not a medical site. Comment away if you want. But thanks to amateur doctor Regina, I've been eating a lot of meat, and cheese, and leafy greens, have replaced alcohol entirely with marijuana, am exercising regularly, and I'm also eating a lot of fish.

The one thing the doctor correctly recommended was that I consume more Omega-3 fatty acids. These come from delicious fatty fish like mackerel, herring, sardines, and salmon, or, in other words, the display case at the local Jewish deli. At last, I can achieve my dream of becoming an soon-to-retire German-American factory worker by eating a can of sardines for lunch!

I'm also taking fish-liver oil and cod-liver oil pills. Didn't you want to know that about me?

The other night, I was in the living room, watching cartoons. Regina called out from the kitchen.

"Baby," she said. "Come take your fish pills."

"My what?"

"Come take your fish pills."

"Come take my Bushmills?" I asked, hopefully.

She poked her head in.

"No, old, deaf man. Your fish pills."

"Oh."

I went into the kitchen. Regina handed me a glass of water, two fish-liver oil tablets, and one cod-liver oil capsule.

"Here you go," she said. "Now we're never gonna die."

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