I watch what I eat. I see all kinds of nasty things pass by -- cookies, donuts, pecan pie. My sweet tooth will someday retire to a glass case inside the Smithsonian. My doctor -- Mike -- thinks I'm headed for diabetes.

"It's only a matter of time," he said, checking his watch as if he meant seconds.

Dr. Mike suggested that I eat fruit, but fruit only angers my need for chocolate. After some tense negotiation, we agreed that I would eat sweets only twice a month, two days marked with giant red lollipops on my calendar.

When Sweets Day rolls around, I act a little strange. Werewolf strange. I catalogue all of my favorite sweets, then go from bakery to market to deli buying them up. By the time I get home, my plate is so packed that no human could take it.

But I try.

I sit down with my guests -- Little Debbie, Mrs. Fields, Ben and Jerry -- and together we straddle the stars. When I've eaten so much that I start to feel queasy, I just gobble faster to sneak it past my brain. One day the doctor will find me in a diabetic coma and have no choice but to end my life by shouting, "Hey! Kool-Aid!"

Finally, I push the plate away and stare into the long dark night of my soul.

Maybe it's human nature to obsess. Somewhere in the distance a scientist is logging it on her clipboard: The rats choose chocolate over vegetables nine times out of ten, but they always feel guilty about it later.

Dr. Mike is still peddling fruit, but he doesn't understand the blood-bending bliss of eating your 16th Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, sick but not sick enough. Never sick enough.

My wife and I went for ice cream, single scoop, keep it real. The server was ringing it up by the time we finished speaking, such was her hurry. She printed a receipt and there, by the total, was a place for a tip.

For a scoop of ice cream!

Vanilla!

As much as I support the ice cream industry, I couldn't do it. This young lady worked in an ice cream parlor. IT'S HER JOB TO SCOOP.

My wife argued that servers are not paid well and rely on tips, and there-oh-there is the chewy center. Restaurant owners have hidden behind this tipping scam far too long. Why can't they pay employees like everyone else? It's not for want of business: Half the time they page you when your table is ready.

Surely if we tip the ice cream girl for scooping, we should tip teachers for teaching and nurses for nursing and carpenters for ... carpentering. We're ALL in the service industry. Even parking attendants serve somebody.

I dream of a world without tips, a world where employees are paid fairly and the customer is not guilted by a tip request when his wife is looking over his shoulder wondering how cheap he'll be.

It all left such a foul taste in my mouth that I had to go back for hot fudge.

Have you ever waited your whole life to meet someone and then, when you get right up close, roll up like a pill bug?

Find below Exhibit A.

Some time ago I had the privilege of meeting Wayne Dyer, a man who so shaped my views that when we met, the only thing I could hear was, Oh-my-God-I'm-talking-to-Wayne-Dyer.

The irony is that Wayne -- as I now know him -- was helping me with meditation, or to put it another way, presence. You’d think that I would have the courtesy to LOOK at him.

I don't know how the whole thing works, but I'm pretty sure that rogue clowns are scripting our lives, and when we die we can expect to find them laughing.