#7: Team X-Treme Gets Artistic

Spring Break 2002.

Sitting at Manny's Beach Club with almost all of our closest friends, Alan draws in a composition notebook I brought along as part of my master plan to not be viewed as a crazy jock party guy but as a sensitive, composition notebook-carrying guy.

It didn't really work out.

But I wrote a poem inspired by Alan's drawing and the pandemonium that is Mexico during Spring Break. (As always, the picture is a link to the larger version.)

Waves hesitant to reach shore
Almost pulling back from the skeletons of long-since-living creatures
glorious still among the broken glass that sparkles so

Competing for attention and indeed the victor becomes
the one who draws the most blood

Stinging pain Reminding more the glory of living
the all-consuming desire to be and remain so
Than even resting on the bones of the Earth and water
Could suggest in an eternity
to those who have long since stopped seeing

Cursing all that carry the title, "The Fragile,"
That may never stop to wonder
why the waves would hesitate

Since I'm Here And I'm The One Who Brought It Up...#11: Thoughts On Weight Loss

Weight is only a guide to health.

As I joked, if I really wanted to lose weight quickly and permanently I would stick my arm in a wheat thresher.

That weight sho' ain't coming back!

To lose weight quickly but not permanently, I could just stop drinking water for a couple of days. It works, just ask Olympic wrestlers. Of course, that's incredibly dangerous. I used to weigh myself before and after I ran just to check how much water weight I would lose.

Five pounds.

I would lose five pounds after running for an hour. So in theory, if I ran for 36 hours straight I would blink out of existence. All that would be left would be a pair of shoes. Heh, kind of like that monster in Loony Tunes, the one that was all hair.

To avoid this, I had to make sure to drink about a gallon of water after I ran. A gallon of water weighs about eight pounds, so I was still three pounds heavier after a run.

There is also the time-honored tradition of not eating entirely. This also works well if weight loss is your ultimate goal.

Unfortunately, the human body is smarter than the human mind, at least in this case. Not eating for about 24 hours or so will trigger "starvation mode," in which the body begins to convert everything eaten directly into fat for storage.

While doing this, the body will begin to break down muscle tissue for energy. This effect is two-fold; there is a great deal of stored energy in the muscle, and having less muscle equals less calories spent moving said muscles.

Score one for the human body:

Body-1
Mind-0

And since muscle weighs more than fat, sucking out all the muscle in my body and replacing it with fat will still have the effect of causing me to lose weight. I'd be slugging around like a...slug.

But I would weigh less, overall.

I don't have a problem being heavy. I'm a very dense guy. I always have been.

When we would go swimming when I was little, I couldn't float. In the deep end, I would sink down to the bottom of the pool and just stand there, looking up enviously at all the happy, floating children.

Oh, that reminds me. I need to find an underwater photographer. I had an idea of taking a picture of me standing underwater like that. I would be engrossed in a book entitled "How To Not Drown."

If I ever get published, that will be my poster for those Celebrity Read things. (They have a new Orlando Bloom one, if anyone is interested.)

Where was I....photographer...Orlando Bloom...dense...

Oh, dense. I'm dense.

I should be able to safely lose 5-8 more pounds before I would begin to affect my ability to exercise. If you have ever had the urge to beat up a body-builder, wait until they're about to do their routine for a show. They will be starving, dehydrated, and weak, so you'll have the best chance then.

Right now, I'm eating whatever I want. Last night I went over to Tracy Sagalow's house with Brian and Joey to watch the film she made. Tracy was so kind as to supply us with several quarts of ice cream, which we ate happily.

I'm tired of talking about weight.

#2: In Which Donaldo And I Are Mean To Our Mormon Friend

When my younger brother Donaldo was in town this Christmas, he, Boston, and I all got drunk and then stumbled over to IHOP on Mill for some breakfast. While we were waiting for our food, we got onto the topic of our old friend Christine whom we hadn't seen in a while. Apparently, she was now Mormon. She had been Catholic before, so that was quite a leap of faith.

Donaldo had called her on her phone. The hour was pretty late, and it wasn't even a weekend night; this was the middle of the week.

He had left a long message in which he roasted her for being many things, including being Mormon. It was quite hilarious. I didn't agree with calling her up at such a late hour, but hey, the damage was done.

"Later on, Mormon!" he said as he finally hung up. I pretended to look pissed off.

"Give me the phone!" I demanded. "That was messed up."

I hit the redial button and again, the answering machine picked up.

"Hey, Christine, this is Guillermo. Look, I'm really sorry about my brother calling. He's pretty drunk. I apologize for what he said. Look, he didn't mean it. You're not Mormon."

She didn't call us back that night. Nor has she since.

Man, some people just can't take a joke.

#3: Thoughts On Alcohol Dependency

Eh, it's been two months without a drink. I feel good...different...strange...I don't know, I need more time to think about it.

I've been in bars, in clubs, at parties. I've had alcohol offered to me, gifted to me, practically forced on me.

It was easier than I thought. Too easy, really.

I always treated alcoholism as sort of a running gag. It's turning out that that's exactly what it was to me. I could never pass up a good joke.

The oddest thing has been not having the escape, I guess. The dulling of senses, the retreat, the disregard. The excuse.

I can't say anymore "I'm sorry; I was drunk." But on the upside, I haven't had to say "I'm sorry," at all. Except for when I stepped on the dog, but to be fair, I didn't make him walk under my foot.

I don't know where to go from here. I know I can stop drinking. I don't even really want to drink anymore. At least, not enough to get drunk.

But from what I remember, the Kiltlifter at Four Peaks was an excellent beer. So was the beer we had at the Rock Bottom in San Diego.

I'd like to believe I can sit down and just have one beer. But I won't know until I try. My hopes are not high. My personality type is pretty well described by the phrase, "all or nothing."

Questions, questions, questions.

How do you live without alcohol? How do you live without anything, for that matter?

You learn how to live with yourself.

I'm still learning.

This drawing was in the same notebook as Alan's. I drew it two years ago on Valentine's Day weekend.

While working the graveyard shift, I had gotten around to reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. It had come highly recommended and I was skeptical. How good could it possibly be?

The next weekend found me on a Greyhound bus headed towards UCLA in Californa. After finishing the book, I had discovered that The Objectivism Student Conference was to be held there. I was burning with questions about Objectivism, so I went.

The fact that Annie Melchor was attending UCLA and had offered me a place to stay might have also had something to do with it.

It was great. I got to speak to Leonard Peikoff and Yaron Brooks, and hear them speak. I got into arguments about stuff that I had never even thought about before and was promptly obliterated by the other students who were more familiar with the philosophy.

It was great.

Sleep is also great.