The fitness phone could kill

LITTLE ROCK — I must admit that I had misgivings about Japan's new "samurai" diet. I feared that if I did not lose weight at a sufficiently brisk pace, a fierce robed warrior would appear and chop off my head.

The man would say, bowing. "I have just removed from you 30 pounds of unwanted fat."

(Devotees of the samurai diet did suffer a setback recently, but it had nothing to do with the forcible removal of body parts via sword. A middle-aged man died of a heart attack while jogging. Which way you choose to go is a matter of personal taste, I suppose.)

But the Japanese are nothing if not innovative, so I was not surprised to learn that the Japanese had moved on from the samurai diet, which is really just another name for the tired old wheeze of sensible eating and exercise, to other forms of weight control.

And wouldn't you know that they managed to combine two of the things I hate most: diets and cell phones.

Called a "fitness phone," the new gizmo targets overweight, middle-aged men with bad breath. I fully expect to find one under the tree this Christmas. (The phone, not the middle-aged man.)

The fitness phone has many, many buttons and functions, as all new technology must these days.

It would be an incredible loss of face if the Japanese marketed a phone that had just one button that, when pushed, emitted a voice that screamed "Put down that doughnut!" or "Get off the couch and move, lard butt!"

So don't expect anything like that. Instead, you get a phone that comes equipped with a pedometer, a heart-rate monitor and a Global Positioning System, presumably so you'll know exactly where you are when you have your heart attack.

The phone can also take your pulse, check your body fat (I'm not sure how this function works. Maybe a hand comes out of the phone and pinches your love handles, I don't know), time your jogs, assess your stress levels (presumably by not yelling at you about the doughnut you have clutched in your chubby mitt), and even give you a pep talk.

"That was an excellent five-mile run you just completed, Mr. Grimes. Mr. Grimes? MR. GRIMES!! Oh, my God! Somebody call 911! Wait, I can do that myself! I'll just push this little button right here! Dang! That's the one that checks his body fat! Must be this one here. Drat! That's the one that beeps the satellite! How about this one? Nope, that's the one that sniffs his breath. Well, at least that's improved."

So the fitness phone is probably not for me. I'm still trying to figure out the remote control for my DVD player, and it may be years before I'm able to successfully operate my digital camera.

By that time, an upgraded fitness phone will be out with even more bells and whistles that I will be unable to comprehend.

So, you see, the reason why I don't diet and exercise is not because I'm a lazy bum with low self-esteem.

It's technology's fault.