The first couple of hours of my 104 hour drumming marathon went pretty well. Unfortunately, I should have realized that beginning at midnight was not a good idea, especially given that we live in a townhouse. Apparently my neighbour would rather get a good night’s sleep than live beside a svelte Guinness Book of World Records holder.

So, I guess I’m stuck with regular exercise and eating in moderation. Man, that’s just such a lame way to lose weight. I had pictured being skinny, and people saying, “You look great, man. What’s your secret?” And I’d reply with “Oh, just 14 days of fasting” or “You know, non-stop drumming for 104 hours”.

Wait, I just saw this awesome thing on TV about wrestlers and weight-cutting. Did you know you can lose 20 pounds by just spitting in a bucket for five hours and riding a stationary bike in a sauna while wearing a garbage bag? This is going to be so easy…

It’s 7:23 am, and it’s been 13 hours since I last ate something. The hunger pains are unbearable, and I don’t think I can hold out much longer. In fact, I’m waiting for my Toaster Strudels to pop any second. This fasting thing was a horrible idea.

If I can’t make up the 35,000 calorie surplus by dramatically reducing my caloric intake, then the only alternative is to undertake some kind of extreme physical activity to burn through the calories as quickly as possible.

I’ve examined the options, and I’ve decided to drum non-stop until I’ve burned 35,000 calories. According to the handy calorie calculator, I’ll have to play for 104 hours straight. That’s only 4 days and 8 hours, which is totally doable.

As an added bonus, I will set the world record for longest non-stop drumming, which was actually just set a few days ago by an Irish bloke. Details on his 102 hour marathon can be found here.

I’m feeling fat these days. Maybe fat is the wrong word. Pudgy? Rotund? Obese?

Over the past few years, my weight has kind of yo-yo’d. It’s gone as low as 167 pounds (thanks, South Beach Diet) to a high of around 194 pounds (my Fat Bastard phase). I seem to have settled somewhere in the middle of that range, which isn’t too bad. However, when you factor in my embarrassing lack of musculature, I’m actually approaching Kirstie Alley-esque proportions.

Being mathematically inclined, I wanted to calculate the cause of this weight gain. Here are the key facts:

·   I am 10 pounds over my ideal weight
·   10 pounds of fat equals 35,000 calories
·   I’ve gained this additional 10 pounds over the past decade, so my net annual caloric overage is 3,500 calories
·   The resulting net daily caloric overage during this period is 9.6 calories

WTF? I’m fat because of an extra 9.6 calories per day? That doesn’t sound like much. That’s like, what, one potato chip? Two Smarties? Three grapes? Put another way, it’s the equivalent of one old-fashioned glazed Timbit every week for the past 10 years.

Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to give up my weekly Timbit, so perhaps I should just do a bit more exercise to burn off the extra few calories I’m consuming each day. I wonder what I’d have to do to burn 20 calories?

According to this handy on-line calorie calculator, I’d have to spend:

·   5 minutes fixing a car or playing miniature golf
·   4 minutes playing my drums or sweeping the floor
·   3 minutes playing cricket or milking a cow
·   1 minute playing water polo or boxing

Wow, I’m exhausted just looking at this list of strenuous physical activities. I mean, where am I going to find 3 minutes per day to milk a cow?

This is the maddening thing about weight gain. If you do the math, it’s this tiny differential between calories consumed and calories burned that can have a big impact over time.

I’m not a patient man, so I’m going to drop ten years of accumulated fat as quickly as possible. Given my daily caloric intake of 2,500 calories per day, I just have to go 14 days without eating to make up for the 35,000 additional calories. It’s widely accepted that the longest most humans can go without food is 60 days, so 14 days should be a walk in the park. It also means I will still have a few weeks of summer left to show off my new physique on the beach.

I took the family to see WALL-E last night, and I have never been so disappointed in a movie in my entire life.

First, I felt totally ripped off. When I fork over $30 to see a movie, I expect some dialogue. The first half hour was basically a silent movie – the damn robot doesn’t say a word! Are you kidding me?  This is a company that’s made movies with talking fish, talking ants, talking toys, and they couldn’t give an advanced robot a voice? If I wanted to see a silent film, Pixar, I would have hopped in my time machine and gone back to 1915. Keep the arty stuff where it belongs – in those weird theatres downtown that nobody goes to.

My primary concern, however, is this film is leftist propaganda on a level not seen since Al Gore’s fantasy film An Inconvenient Truth. Worse still, it is marketed and targeted to children, presumably with the goal of fostering ecological fear-mongering on an unsuspecting and easily-manipulated audience.

The North American economy these days is fragile enough as it is. We don’t need these liberal whack-jobs pushing their anti-consumerism, anti-capitalism agenda on an unsuspecting public. Everything we hold dear as a society depends on us spending money we don’t have on stuff we don’t need, and I’ll be damned if some cartoon is going to change that.

I know I’m not alone in my feelings about this debacle. Here’s a sample of some thoughts from my fellow conservatives.

From the first moment of the film, my kids were bombarded with leftist propaganda about the evils of mankind. It’s a shame, too, because the robot had promise. The story was just awful, however. Nice to see that Disney and Pixar can make mega-millions off of telling us just how greedy, lazy, and destructive we all are. – The National Review

WALL-E is an assault on modern civilization, borne of deep economic and historical ignorance. The film shamefully betrays the efforts of countless heroic individuals who have raised humanity out of the muck of barbarism. Its anti-technological, anti-capitalist message needs to be exposed and countered by all thinking individuals. – Gennady Stolyarov II, Editor-In-Chief of The Rational Argumentator

I was also appalled at the insensitive depiction of overweight people. As a man of size myself, I was not expecting to be faced with such discriminatory attitudes in a family film. Others have also been disturbed by this obvious slight.

WALL-E specifically singles out and targets obese people as the primary cause of mankind’s demise, further perpetuating the stereotype of the gluttonous, slothful fat person. Furthermore, the film suggests that, in their exaggerated laziness, obese people disregard not only personal health, but also that of the planets, and are held up as the cause for the destruction of the environmental landscape. – The F Word

The “villains” of WALL-E…take the form of (the ever so original and not hackneyed at all) Fat! American! Couch! Potatoes! … This is so INCREDIBLY disappointing. I feel personally betrayed by Pixar right now. – Fatshionista

So, be vigilant, my friends. The leftists are out there, and they want to brainwash your children.  Liberal fascism is lurking just around the corner…