January 30, 2003

Last year, in an effort to generate sympathy for myself, while simultaneously increasing the number of you who own Schlock Mercenary originals, I ran a small contest in which readers were invited to guess my serum cholesterol level. The winner walked away with a lovely (and absolutely free) inked drawing on 5"x8" Bristol Board of a Schlock Mercenary character of his choice. By curious coincidence, that's the same prize I'm offering this year.

You're guessing numbers already. I can tell.

Here are some baselines for you to be aware of. In 1993 at age 25, I went in for a thorough physical, and my cholesterol was 209. In 1999, at age 31, I had a myocarditis-related (and very mild) heart-attack. As part of the rigorous testing they do when hearts act up they measured my cholesterol: 100. Three years after that I ran the first 'guess my cholesterol' contest, and I came in at an arteriosclerotically exciting 258.

For the overgeneralized record, 100 is considered very healthy, and 210 is the point at which the doctor will tell you to start medicating or dieting. For some reason I completely neglected to tell my doctor about that little 258 number. Whoops.

In 1993 I was eating whatever I wanted. In 1999 I was on a low-carb diet, and getting upwards of 10 hours of good exercise each week. In 2002 I was alternating between careful diet and stress-induced binges, and had been in and out of the gym with criminal irregularity. This year I've been dieting pretty well for the last month or so (low carb thing again) and getting much more regular exercise. What does this mean? Well, I'm pretty sure my cholesterol is somewhere between 100 and 325. Or maybe 525.

If you want to play, start by registering with the KeenSpot Forums. Then go to this discussion and post your guess. You'll find more rules and details in the first post on that discussion. In short, You can't pick a number that's been picked already, and if you do (don't be careless!), the first person who picked that number wins. If two guesses are equidistant from the correct number (like if 101 and 103 were guesses, and by some miracle of cholesterol-dissolving magic I come in at 102) then the LOW guess wins. This is because I'm still optimistic enough to round down.

"Schlock Mercenary: the only web-comic that annually allows you to play long-chain-hydrocarbon roulette."