The Free Thinker

Trying to take the weekend off of the club but still need your House fix? I've got you covered.

Welcome to my first mix of the week. This week I found a kick-ass set from Brookes and Bown. One thing that bugs me about a lot of sets is that the start or end is too...mild. I've got a quite a few where the first 6 minutes is nothing but a drum, or it peters out toward the last 15 minutes. Not this one. The start and end both have great tracks, with a bunch of excellent stuff in the middle. It's got a fair bit of variety too, mixing the gay anthems I'd expect to hear at Fly (Toronto's gay drug club) with the dirty beats you find at the Comfort Zone (the all day party with a mixed crowd). Highly recommended!

Get this set now! You can listen to it without signing up, but to download you have to get a free account. For some reason you click the "Podcast" button to download. Somebody explain to these people what a podcast is. Anyways, enjoy!

Today the man that brought you sketch out and poutine queen is happy to present the latest word to emerge from his top-secret alphalab: vicey.

While not as original as "poutine queen," I think turning this oft-used noun into an adjective is very appropriate. I'm a vicey guy, and if anyone can think of another adjective that conveys the same message so succinctly, I'd like to hear it. There's sketchy, but really sketchy conveys a certain lack of trustworthiness. One can be vicey without being a bad person. Just look at me: Filled with vice but also generous, friendly and a really good lay.

So there you have it folks. I predict vicey will follow truthiness to become 2007's word of the year. Start saving up to replace all those dictionaries!

I was going to post something light-hearted today, but then I found this story. Get ready for something a little...heavy:

A man who once weighed well over a half ton left his house for the first time in five years Wednesday -- wheeled outside on his bed to greet neighbors and see a mariachi band.

"The sky is beautiful and blue and what I want is to enjoy the sun," said Manuel Uribe, who had once been certified by doctors as weighing 1,235 pounds.

Though still unable to leave his bed, Uribe has lost 395 pounds since he began a high-protein diet a year ago. He now weights about 840 pounds.

To celebrate the milestone, six people pushed Uribe's wheel-equipped iron bed out to the street as a mariachi band played and a crowd gathered. Then, a forklift lifted him onto a truck and the 41-year-old rode through the streets of San Nicolas de los Garza, a Monterrey suburb.

Now, as I've written before, I have a fascination about the obesity epidemic. The great thing about this guy is that he's so freaking gigantic that I can write whatever I want about him without offending any of my readers. No matter how fat you are, blog visitors, you will never make me throw up in my mouth like dear Manuel nearly did.

I was reading the comments on the Digg story and people were posting things about genetics and all that. I'm willing to accept that we all have different body types and metabolisms, and I've got it easier than a lot of people. But you cannot use that argument to explain this freak. Quite simply, if you're eating a normal 2,000-3,000 calories a day, there's no way for this to happen. If your body could manufacture 1,000 pounds of fat out of nothing it'd be violating the laws of thermodynamics!

Just for fun, I ran this guy through a BMI calculator. For those not in the know, BMI is a rough estimate of whether you're at a healthy weight. It doesn't factor in fat vs. muscle, so it is a blunt tool at best. A healthy BMI is from 18.5-24.9. Obese is over 30. Assuming he's six feet tall, Emanuel's BMI was 167.5 at it's peak. In fact, for Emanuel to have a healthy BMI at 1,235 pounds, he'd have to be 15'7" tall!

How the hell does this happen? I mean the guy didn't leave the house. Somebody was buying groceries for him. Somebody was probably cooking for him. Why not offer to bring him nothing but fruits and vegetables? We're not talking about sticking your nose where it doesn't belong here. We're talking about a person who's eating enough to feed a grade four class. Don't you think it might be time for a little tough love?

Kudos to him for dropping all that weight. In the past year he's lost almost 400 pounds, or 2.75 Adams. But somebody should have intervened a long time ago. When your friend or family member no longer fits through the door, it might be time to give them a salad or something.

Image courtesy of WSB-TV Atlanta.

After a month of cancelled appointments I finally made it into the gym for my "fitness consultation" today.

Going to the gym for a "fitness consultation" is sort of like going to a used car lot for a "transportation consultation." No matter what your circumstances, you absolutely, positively should buy one of these lovely rustbuckets.

In this case, instead of slimy salesman trying to hawk me some piece of crap Buick, he was trying to sell me personal training.

I have no problem being asked if I'm interested. It's a service that every gym offers, and certainly a legitimate one. But my gym forces you to go in for this goodamn sales pitch just to get your membership card.

It started out well enough. He asked what I was doing, what my goals were, and so forth. Measured my body fat, took me upstairs and checked my form on a few exercises. Then we went back to the office and he drew up a suggested program.

The weird thing is, the program he drew up would've had me spending six weeks working on my "core strength" before I moved up to a more advanced program. By more advanced, I mean the program I'm doing right now.

Quite frankly, it's a gay gym, and this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of why gay men go to the gym. Does a guy ever say "Wow, check out the core on that guy!" No. So we don't care. We're a very superficial people. Actual strength gain is secondary to improved appearance. Know your audience.

If you really want to sell the program, tell me I'll have a six pack, and rock hard chest and ass in six weeks. Make me feel like I'm going to get laid more thanks to you. Not that I'll be better able to balance on a fucking rubber ball.

Of course after he was done designing the program, just as fellow gym members had warned me, the axe fell. "Now if you really want to get the best results, it's important that you have a trainer with you."

I feigned poverty to no avail. Just $75 a month! You'll make so much progress! I told him I like working out alone, which is true. And frankly personal trainers annoy me. They're so artificially upbeat and they're always making this forced go-nowhere small talk to appear personable.

Anyways, it took me a good five minutes to convince him he wasn't going to sell me anything. I should've just told him the money would cut into my ecstasy budget. That would've shut the bastard up.

Once he'd finally got the message his friendliness suddenly vanished. He took away the paper with the program he'd just drawn out, and filed it away. Isn't that a little bastardly? Like let's try to maintain the illusion that we're going to help you whether you pay for sessions or not. Apparently at this place you don't get the bait unless you bite the hook.

That wasted a good hour of my time, and by the time it was done I was so hungry that I just headed home and didn't get a chance to actually work out. The funny thing is, he acted like I'd just wasted an hour of his time. I didn't even want to do the fucking thing, I just wanted to get my membership card already.

Of course they don't care if you're pissed off or not, because they've got you by the balls with your contract. It's like the cell phone industry. Except Rogers didn't make me attend a session on the benefits of picture messaging and mobile web browsing before they let me use the phone.

I'm already a paying member of your gym. If you're going to pout because you can't sell me extras just leave me the hell alone.

Image courtesy of Xtreme Simpsons.

The ex would tell you I have a lot of trouble setting priorities. He'd be right.

I've been pretty much living at the gym for the last week and a half. Before that I was going steadily, but this whole three-hours-a-day-every-day thing is more excessive than I'm used to. And you know what? I can't stop. I'm getting into that state where if I miss a day I'm going to be very cranky.

I guess I've sort of replaced partying with exercise, for the time being. Of course I'll continue replacing it with sex whenever possible, but I don't have as much control over that.

This is good, and it's bad. Obviously it's good to exercise. But, as always, I've taken it too far. You're looking at someone who can find three hours a day to spend at the gym, but struggles to find 90 seconds to take out the garbage. Somebody who would rather cancel coffee with a friend than miss the gym, if he had to work late. Somebody who is now completely antisocial on weekdays because he's too busy lifting weights and doing crunches.

I've stopped returning calls promptly. I've reduced my daily social time to a few minutes on MSN before bed. Every time I show up to the gym, I fear the attendant will utter those awful words, "Sir, I think you've had enough."

But I don't see myself having enough until I can replace the weights with a cute boy. You're looking at a life-long gym junkie. Who wants to be my methadone?

Image courtesy of midiman.

Virgin Vacations has posted their picks for the top 11 subway systems in the world, and I'm sad to say I'm not surprised to see no mention of dear old Toronto. It was a little surprising to see Montreal on the list at number eight, right behind New York City. Here's what they had to say:

The Montreal Metro is a modern system that was inaugurated in 1966. It is a small (37.8 miles reaching 65 stations on four lines) yet unique and modern system that was inspired by the Paris Metro.

Highlights: Diverse, beautiful architecture and unique station art (each station is designed by a different architect). Pleasant riding experience (smooth rides: the trains run on a rubber surface to reduce the screech of train cars). Trains are frequent and fairly comfortable.

The Toronto and Montreal subway systems are the only two I've had the pleasure of exploring, and I have to say there's good reason to give Montreal the nod. As someone who spends an hour on the Bloor line every day, I'll give you one word to describe the experience: depressing. Pretty much the whole subway system is a little lacking in aesthetics, but the Bloor line is especially bland, with the same cream coloured tile everywhere, now covered in filth, and nary a bright colour to be found.

The Montreal subway might not run nearly as often, going down to 15 minutes at night, but it's a hell of a lot more pleasant. The stations aren't so dull and claustrophobic. If you've ever been to the breath of fresh air that is St. Clair West station, that's what the Montreal Metro is like.

The sad thing is it seems the TTC will never, ever bother to make these stations more aesthetically pleasing. Hell, even bringing the Bloor line up to the level of the Yonge line would be a major improvement. The people in this city spend a good chunk of their lives underground for Christ's sake. Shouldn't we make it as enjoyable as possible?

Images courtesy of Duchamp and sillygwailo.

Well it was needlessly painful, but I've finally replaced the template on this sounding board of the damned. I like it. It looks...grown-up. I looked at a cached copy of the old version and I can't believe how long I put up with it. It looks so gaudy by comparison. Take a look and compare for yourself.

Today's lesson: Google is not infallible, 'cause Blogger ain't all it's cracked up to be. Regardless, I whipped the bastard into shape and now I'm calling the shots.

If only I could alter my appearance as easily as I can alter that of my blog. I'd give myself bigger...everything. Of course it'd be a little embarassing to walk around with my nose on my ass because some idiot fucked up the HTML, but at least a fix would be just a quick edit and refresh away!