The Free Thinker

Oh man I loooove making up new words. So let's say you're a gay man who's sleeping around a lot. Like, a lot. You're not using protection, and of course you're in Toronto so that's pretty much begging for HIV. What are you?

You're a suiskank.

Genius! Now I'll just sit back and wait for the honorary degrees to start rolling in.

It's funny, when you really, really get into the drug scene you learn to treat yourself like one big chemistry experiment. You learn to manipulate your body and mind to make them do what you want, when you want.

I want to act like this. I want to feel like that.

And of course the "health food store" has everything you need to counteract the side effects of the other stuff. Take this to avoid depression. Take that to help you sleep.

Finally the scientific community is recognizing all the great, uh, work I've been doing. A friend tipped me off that CAMH is doing a study into whether ecstasy causes brain damage. So of course I was right on top of that shit.

It's sort of like those studies where they give you some experimental drug to see what it does to you. Except I've been voluntarily taking it for the last 8 months.

Of course there's always the risk that this place has the same owners as my evil gym, and they're just trying to get me in so they can sell me some expensive rehab or something. Let's hope not.

The downside: the thought that I might have brain damage. The upside: at least I can make some cash off of it. The irony: funneling the money back into the drug budget.

I left a message, now I'm just waiting for a call back. Wish me luck!

PS Forgive me for being so flippant on the matter, but I've read up a great deal on the subject, and previous studies have found it causes no permanent damage when taking non-insane doses.

Totally clever picture of a guinea pig courtesy of Just A Screenager.

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.

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.

Damn, I was doing so well. This weekend seemed like a slam dunk. Since I've been sick all week I thought it'd be easy to avoid going out. And it was. All week it was the last thing on my mind. And then something terrible happened.

I got better.

If I'd been sick just one more day I would've been home free. Where the hell is all that antibiotic-resistant bacteria when I need it?

Anyways, I went out to a bar Saturday night with a friend and had a decent time sober. Got home at 2 AM and went to bed. I set the alarm for 6 AM, got up, showered and headed you know where. It was funny, actually. I felt like such a fine, upstanding citizen walking down the street at 7:30 AM on a Sunday.

So I got there at 8 AM and started having a pretty good time. I figured I'd leave around four or so. Then it was five and I still didn't feel like leaving...Then one "sketch hour" later it was 9:30. And before I knew it was 2 AM. I was at the club for eighteen friggin' hours, smashing the sixteen hour record set the weekend before. I swear there's a rip in the space-time continuum in that dank basement of joy.

I had a blast, and I don't really regret it, but let's not make a habit of it, okay self? Regardless, a few lessons learned:

• If you buy drugs in bulk to last you a few outings, you'll go out at every opportunity because in your mind you only have to pay for cover.
• That mega-sketchy girl you remember from the first time you went to the Zone doesn't want to talk to you.
• Don't lend your driver's license to somebody to crush up something, then forget about it and wander off.
• Do take a picture of yourself with the sketchy bathroom attendant and show it to everyone.
• People who would normally ignore you or be absolute pricks will turn sweet as sugar if you offer them gum.
• Deko-ze is too busy when he's spinning to notice you blowing him kisses.
• The club is way more fun in the late afternoon when there's actually room to dance.
• Going out from 8 AM to 2 AM when you work at 9 is a bad idea, but you can pull it off if you really want to.
• Of the people you'll meet in a night, at least half of the conversations will start in the bathroom.

That's all I can think of at the moment, but at least I didn't get gum in my armpit this time. Oh, and I can almost see my abs now. I've got washboard-mostly-immersed-in-water-but-still-barely-visible abs!

It'd probably be a good idea to take next weekend off, but unfortunately I've already bought my ticket for Rauhoffer, so that won't be happening. Looks like I'm going to have to go home the weekend after just to break the cycle.

As a former j-schooler I feel qualified to criticize those who were actually good enough to take up the craft. It helps me feel better about my college roommate being the Toronto correspondent for the New York Times.

So when, once in a while, I come accross a story where the reporter hasn't done his homework I call them on it...to myself. Like years ago, on CTV, there was a story about this study that showed that putting dogs in retirement homes cheered up old people. I can just imagine the meeting where they decided to cover this:

Reporter: "Breaking news boss, people like animals and we've got the science to prove it.

Editor: "My God! I'll warm up the chopper!"

Hey, kudos to the scientist who managed to get a big fat research grant to study this crap. But shame on the journalist for reporting it without a critical eye.

With that in mind take a look at this garbage. Allow me to pull out the most shocking revelations:

Yup, it's true. You can lie on the couch all day long, graze on snacks and still lose weight. That's right — no exercise required... Thing is, you'll have to reduce the calories you consume to lose that weight. And the less active you are, the more calories you'll have to cut.

This just in: your body burns a certain number of calories per day. If you burn more than you eat, you lose weight. If you eat more than you burn, you gain weight. You can increase what you burn with exercise or cut what you eat with diet. This is not news people. We've known this crap for decades, and the fact that this would surprise anyone is a sad reflection of the state of health education in our country. It gets worse further on:

Oh and don't bother doing specific exercises to target fat in certain parts of your body, either. Study says that doesn't work. You may get very good at doing sit-ups, for instance, but if you're taking in more calories than you're burning, those rock hard abs will still be covered by a layer of fat, if that's where it tends to gather on your body.

Wow, stop the presses. Of course you don't burn tummy fat by doing situps. Your body isn't like "oooh, he's using his stomach muscles, better use that tummy fat." Your arms would run out of energy pretty fast if they had to get it all from arm fat, wouldn't they? It's called the spot reduction myth and I can't believe people are still falling for it. Let's not even get into the fact that situps burn fewer calories than walking.

This whole obesity epidemic thing has caught my eye for a while. For me, it's hard to understand how that can happen to someone. But really, if people don't know these very basic facts about maintaining a healthy weight, whose fault is that? We have an education system for a reason, you know.

It reminds me of a scene from Super Size Me. This obese girl is attending a talk by Jared, the dude who lost a ton of weight thanks to Subway. She says she wants to lose weight, but can't afford to buy all those sandwiches. Because, you know, you can't make a sandwich at home or anything. It's not like they keep the ingredients a secret, you can see them all through the glass.

Anyways, if this "journalist" is anything like I was in j-school, he had a deadline coming, put it off too long, and had to come up with this lame crap to fill the space. But at least I wasn't getting paid.

I'm sure you're all wondering why I've suddenly disappeared off the face of the blogosphere. Well, turns out that when I hooked up this weekend I got more than just laid. I haven't been this sick in quite a long time. Seems like a high price to pay for sex.

So I missed work today. Really, I should've called in Tuesday and Wednesday too, but for some reason I felt so damn guilty even though I was actually sick. It's not because I'm particularly honest. Hell, at the bank I never used sick days when I was sick. If I was already miserable I might as well be at work, right? Why waste a sick day on being sick?

The thing is, my boss wouldn't care if I called in sick. She's so laid back that for some reason I don't want to take advantage of that. Even when I'm sick as a dog. It's kind of perverse really. I mean even if I weren't sick, we know everybody uses sick days as a sort of personal day, right? It's an unspoken agreement. Sometimes we just need a rest. Hell, I don't qualify for vacation until November people.

By the way, walk-in clinics suck. I really enjoyed my 3.5 minutes with the doctor. Way to earn your $200, ass-wipe. Makes me miss the smarmy British doctor from my hometown. At least he'd make a little small-talk first.

But in a way this is sort of a blessing. When you're sick, all your other problems seem smaller, less important, and entirely surmountable. Health is something you don't really appreciate until it's gone, and once it's back everything else is just gravy.

On the other hand, this happened literally seven days before my drug plan kicks in. You win this round, god!

I'm just so awe-struck that I'll let the story speak for itself:

Minnesota high school wrestling programs were suspended Tuesday because of a widespread herpes outbreak.

The Minnesota State High School League banned competitions and direct contact between wrestlers in practice until Feb. 6 after 24 cases of herpes gladiatorum were reported by 10 teams. The virus is spread by skin-to-skin contact, and symptoms include lesions on the face, head and neck.

The suspension is meant to control the current outbreak, allow time to diagnose new cases and prevent disqualifications at the state tournament, scheduled for Feb. 28-March 3.

All I can say is wow. I mean, wrestling resembles gay sex enough as it is. Apparently it has a lot of the same risks too. Can you imagine ending up with herpes for the rest of your life because you wrestled in high school!? Try explaining that one to your future dates.