No Diets Ever Work for Anyone Except That These Diets Work for You

Dear Friends,

The Hard Taco song for September is called, "Jelly IA." This song is not about a city in Iowa or an NCAA sports division, as the name may suggest, but a celebration of the seafaring life! You may notice that the lyrics are inspiring, but nonspecific enough to serve as a rallying call for all nautical peoples, from merchant marines and whalers to Argonauts and high school crew teams. Shanty on, my friends!

Are you ready for some foosball?

I raised a few eyebrows in my fantasy foosball draft last week by picking The Row of 3 Foosmen ahead of The Row of 5 Foosmen. Some of the ESPN pundits have predicted that The Row of 2 Foosmen has "deep sleeper potential" and "plenty of upside." Is this possible? No, because it is The Row of 3 that has all of the sleeper potential and upside. Smack.

Your Neighbors at Hard Taco Want to Help You Make Healthy Choices

For years, I've harbored a nagging sense of guilt about the prevalence of obesity in America. Have I been surreptitiously endorsing the consumption of tacos, thereby encouraging my adolescent readers to become or remain fat? Some have suggested that I should remove this subliminal impetus by changing our band name to Hard Fiber Supplement or perhaps, Flax Taco. No, my dear chubbies, that's just the kind of thinking that made you fat in the first place. Rather, I will take a page from the Philip Morris playbook and provide my audience with dieting strategies, while continuing to openly plug the smooth, satisfying taste of the hard taco.

Here, then, are three infallible ways to shed those kilos without having to sacrifice taste (or volcano virgins.)

1. The 51 Cent Stamp Diet

This one is easy, but requires patience. All you have to do is eat lots of salad greens, and replace the dressing with generous portions of 51 cent stamps.  Top nutritionists agree that this diet will be so effective that we can all let ourselves go until 2014 when these stamps are first printed. In the meantime, you can spend the same amount on postage by sprinkling a 3:1 admixture of 3 cent stamps and 42 cent stamps on your salad greens. This practice will not affect your body weight in any way, but it will enable the restaurant to ship the leftovers to your house so you don't have to carry a doggie bag around all night.

2. The Oelectrolyte Diet

Her Majesty's Registered Dieticiaries have long known that the secret to maintaining a healthy weight is a daily allowance of essential oelectrolytes. Not surprisingly, the richest sources of essential oelectrolytes are English traditional foods, including:

• Pea meal
• Bladder treacle
• Blood crisps
• Kidney Tea
• Clotted eels 'n gravy
• Mutton batter

3. The Iron Chef Diet

A stoic Japanese chef will take whatever food you crave most and prepare a perplexing five course meal using it. Do you feel like a slice of pie before bed? Iron Chef Chen Kenichi wrest that pie from your hands and return one hour later with a crispy sunburned pork in a pie reduction sauce, roasted spicy pie over skordilia, flash-seared pie and cantaloupe terrine, and a marinated soft-shell turtle in a pie weave dressed with a veal-tongue champagne. Allez cuisine!

With warmest regards,

Zach