AKRON, Ohio — The man from Germany sent a credit card to Donna Simpson with specific instructions: Buy pizzas, Chinese food and other takeout.

He wanted Simpson to use his money to become as large as possible, and he got excited knowing he helped feed the 600-pound woman, she said.

“He didn’t even need to see me,” she said. “Just the fact that he was feeding me was enough of a thrill for him.”

For years, the 44-year-old mother of two was a star in the fantasy fetish community that worshiped the overweight and the feeding that led to it. Simpson had a website where men paid $19 a month to watch her eat. She flew around the world for various events. And she became famous in the British papers.

…

She has turned away from the fantasy world, replacing her pre-recorded videos of her with a blog about her journey to health. She already has lost about 85 pounds, and she hopes to join a gym soon to begin walking in a pool. She has modified her eating, as well.

“I realized that I was their fantasy,” she said. “Here I was getting bigger and bigger, and they had their thin wives, with 2½ kids and a picket fence.”

…

But Simpson said she earned at one point $1,000 a month from the pay-per-view eating.

“That’s pretty good for eating Ho-Ho’s,” she said.

See also, this image from The Huffington Post.

I’ve been there, too, and I’ve gone pretty far in my frugal ways over the years. If you haven’t already noticed, I really hate spending money.

It’s obvious to me through all this that there is a strong difference between having a high standard of living and having a high quality of life, and very few people ever think about how each fits into their life and whether they’re achieving it or not.

Ideally, we’d all have both, but very few of us do, or at least not the extent we think we deserve.

For most Americans, having a high standard of living means you have good food and water available to you and at your disposal. It means you have a spacious and furnished house in the “good part” of town with cable TV and high speed Internet. It means that when you want or need something, you go get in your car in the garage and go out and buy it and you don’t just look at the lowest priced item. This usually means you buy a nice car, “nice” meaning “late model year”. You probably have entertainment at your disposal, like movies, books and TV shows. There’s gray area here for sure; things like yachts and butlers may factor in at the high end, but I’m talking about the average here. And we know what that means: your car doesn’t make funny noises all the time or have big rust spots, you don’t eat Ramen noodles or boxed dinners, etc.

Having a high standard of living usually comes attached with some strings, though. For most people, this means you pay for things on credit, you have a car loan, you might have a mortgage, etc. In other words, you have lots of stuff and very little of it is actually yours. You’re only ever one medical problem away from losing it all.

On the flip side, there’s having a high quality of life. This is the emotional touchy-feely stuff that actually matters, but no one seems to have a handle on. It means you feel loved, you’re able to go to bed at night feeling like you accomplished something and you can wake up knowing what you need to do and you do it. It means enjoying your work, it means not feeling tired or grouchy or sloth-like all the time for no good reason. It means you’re in good health mentally, physically and financially. It means when a bill comes, you pay it and move on like it was just part of the day. It means when the water heater explodes, you can get it replaced and not feel anxiety. It means you have hobbies you enjoy and you take pride in what you do. It means you feel content and in control.

They’re rarely any strings attached to having a high quality of life. For the most part, with exception of companionship and love, all of that is very much in a person’s control. You can look for hobbies, you can change jobs, you can get your health in order assuming you’re not battling a cancer, etc.

What’s overlooked is that you can’t have a high quality of life until you get your standard of living under control first.

Most people go through life and say to themselves, “Once I have X, I will be ok.” No, no you will not. It’s the new American Rat Race. You won’t win. The only way to win is to not play that game. How many people go to work and do a job they hate, all so they can afford the car and the stuff they say they need and want? How much sense does it make to drive to work to pay for a car, for instance, just so you can have a car to get to work? Do people realize what this means? “I have to have a nice car so I can get to work to earn the money to pay for the car I use to get to work.” Or, “I have to go to work to make money to pay for the hobbies I like, but never have time for because I’m always at work and too tired to do anything when I get home.”

For a long time I thought I had to have a new car, the best clothes, all the latest gadgets. I don’t anymore and I’m better off for it. I think I’ve hit a level of maturity, that at the risk of sounding like a pompous ass, that most people much older than me have not.

If I could go back in time to talk to my 15 year old self with what I know now, I’d tell me:

• Don’t ever worry about your credit score, because it’s just a number assigned by banks to help them make money off you.
• Don’t ever spend a dime on school you can’t pay out of pocket unless you’re going into a highly specialized field, like law or medicine.
• Don’t ever take out student loans; the payoff isn’t always that great and isn’t guaranteed.
• Academic inflation will keep happening, whether you have a degree or not. For most subjects, learn to teach yourself and then do good work that gets noticed.
• Don’t ever buy a new car; they depreciate too quickly and you lose too much money.
• Don’t ever buy a car that costs more than $10,000 — and pay for at least half of it in cash at the time you buy it.
• If you can, don’t even buy a car. For most college students, urban dwellers and single people, you probably don’t need one anyway.
• Make time for exercise, and find a sport or activity you love, because it’ll make you feel a lot better about yourself.
• Don’t ever eat processed food; have you ever seen someone eating a Big Mac that said, “I’m really glad I ate that.”? You’ll feel and be better off if you eat well.
• Always do just the things you’re comfortable with. I know people say you should “break out of your shell”, but you don’t have to try everything to know whether you’ll like it or not. I’ve never been hit by a train, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like it if I were.
• Be very careful about who you lose your virginity to; you’ll only ever lose it once and you’ll remember that moment forever.
• If you think you can’t handle a credit card, don’t get a credit card.
• Never take a job just because it’s a job. No one ever had a good time working at a fast food joint. If you’re young and don’t have anything to lose anyway, share space with friends and do what your heart really wants to do. Think and figure out a way to make a living out of that.
• Don’t feel guilty about pushing people out of your life; sometimes it’s for the best.
• Stop being so naive and dumb; read the news and read as many books as you can. It’s the only way to develop a sharp mind, and you don’t have to get a degree in everything just to learn about something.
• Writing is a more important skill than math, so devote your efforts accordingly. Sorry math people, but most people just plain write and communicate more than they do general math.
• Don’t be swayed by marketing and what other people do “just because”. Remove yourself from a situation and make a decision based on what’s best for you in the long run.
• Just because you’re young doesn’t mean you have to get something pierced, tattooed or dyed. Ask that 70 year old guy with an ugly ink blot on his arm what he thinks of that 50 year old tattoo today.

When you start doing what actually makes sense, and realizing that sometimes it’s okay to work harder or devote time to one thing and not another, you can actually achieve a high quality of life without having a necessarily high standard of living. Luckily for me, I’ve done most of the things I mentioned above, either by sheer will or just plain dumb luck.

An unhelpful guide to Washington County

I think I speak for everyone when I say, “Transparent government is good.” The ability for a unit of government to act as open as possible is healthy and necessary for a democratic society.

At the state level, here in Indiana, we do pretty well. You can watch Supreme Court arguments online, you can read every appellate court’s opinion, research school data and test scores, budget information, see census information, meeting information, how to setup a business, tax information and a lot more. Indiana has a really informative site compared to a lot of others. It’s also completely self-funding, meaning IN.gov runs entirely on the revenue it brings in from online license sales.

And then there’s local government. This is where most every county in Indiana falls flat. I’m a professional website designer, and I’ve been doing this with great success for many years now. I’ve organized web development conferences, met many of the leading developers in the country, I teach it and I do it daily. I say this with some level of authority.

So I’ve paid some attention to www.washingtoncounty.in.gov, the official website for the county.

First, from a transparency standpoint, they do a couple of things well. Meeting times are posted clearly and the officials for each department are listed respectively. You can easily find out the names of who runs what.

You can also view county court case records, thanks to a program funded by the Indiana Supreme Court. You can also do a land records search.

However, when you think about some other things you’d really want to know about, you can’t find it. The county’s site has very little information on tax information — just basic statutory information. The county’s budget isn’t published anywhere online, either. It’s completely void of tax rates and how the money is allocated.

Speaking of budgets, county and independent audits, contracts, and projects with open bids are not available online, either. If the county had an open bid for a project, unless you show up to every meeting, you have no way of knowing what’s going on. Plus, wouldn’t it be great to know how much a contractor got paid to pave a stretch of road?

There isn’t much information about the county commissioners or the county council online. You can see when they’re meeting and the address and phone numbers of the office holders, but it stops there. If you wanted to know what they do, where they’re from, how long they’ve been in office, other positions they hold or an electronic means of contacting them, you’re out of luck.

There’s little information on building permits and zoning. If you wanted to establish a business and knew nothing of Washington County, the county’s website directs businesses to the Chamber of Commerce site (which is very similar to the county’s in style). The Chamber’s website doesn’t have this information either. If you’re a factory owner and you wanted to relocate, zoning and tax rate information is probably at the top of the list of things you’d want to know, and it’s not there.

The county’s website doesn’t disclose if it belongs to any taxpayer-funded lobbying organizations. The county lobbying isn’t necessarily bad — this would cover regional compacts (like economic development groups) or subtle things like hosting a luncheon for state or federal legislators. Perhaps the county doesn’t do any of that, but we have no easy way of knowing without a disclosure.

Right now, someone is saying, “Well, Justin, if you want to know all that you can come into the courthouse and file a public records request.” I’d do that, except the county’s website doesn’t have information on how to make such a request. And I think I speak for everyone when I suggest that in 2011, people shouldn’t have to drive to a special building to find out information on their publicly funded governing bodies. When I hear that, I hear, “Making this difficult is a feature, not a bug.”

And the most egregious issue: the site flat doesn’t work on millions of devices. If you use a smartphone, tablet or new Macintosh computer, the site fails to load because of an archaic chunk of code on the site’s homepage.

Everything I’ve mentioned here doesn’t cost money — the county doesn’t need to spend thousands of dollars to invest in anything it hasn’t already. All it takes is the time of a few employees to compile the information in an easy to read, easy to access format and publish it. For most of this stuff, it’s just a matter of writing some additional content.

With that in mind, there’s no reason why Washington County can’t capitalize on the failings of every other county and leapfrog the competition on the most public-facing and highly visible piece of marketing the county has already invested in.

For years, the can’s looked like this:

Perfect. Big, easy to open, keeps stuff fresh and you can shove your entire face into the can. Now, because they’re thoughtless assholes, they’ve changed their package design. Probably in the name of “corporate rebranding” or “enhanced product placement” or some other bullshit. This is what the new package looks like:

Yeah, that sorry piece of crap. That’s me trying to shove my mitt down in there. What’s the first thing you wanna do when you pop off the lid? You wanna stick your grubby hands down into it and pull out a big handful of fried onions to eventually shove into your maw.

Instead, with this new god awful container, you can’t get more than four fingers down in there. If you expect to be able to move your fingers, you can stick in three and under no circumstance can you get your thumb down in there, too. Which means you can’t get any of them out of the container unless you stand on one leg, say a prayer, sacrifice a goat and pretend to tickle the bottom of this stupid container like some three-fingered sloth.

Terrible. Just terrible.

I’m switching to the store brand. I’ll never buy another can of French’s Fried Onions for as long as that can sticks around.

A northern Indiana hospital that erected billboards with the message “Obesity is a disease. Not a decision” is facing a backlash from people offended by the signs’ suggestion that obesity isn’t a lifestyle choice.

One opponent to the billboard says:

“There is no disease that causes your body to drive to McDonald’s to go get some fries. There is no disease that makes your hands unwrap a candy bar. It’s all habits,” her email said.

And the hospital says:

…the reasons why a person gains and carries weight involve more than just eating.

Sleep, stress, access to healthful food, a decrease in movement due to technology, people’s genes and even what a mother eats when she’s pregnant all impact weight of adults, Stanish said.

And one area resident says:

Ward said she was compared to her thinner sister, who ate the same food she did. She said she tried to get the weight off, sometimes eating only vegetables and cottage cheese.

“No one comes in the world and says, ‘I want to be overweight,”‘ she said. “It’s with you. You don’t choose that.”

After having two daughters, Ward had gastric bypass surgery and lost about 150 pounds. She now has a personal trainer and rides bikes with her daughters to help them live a healthy lifestyle.

So, let’s recap: a hospital thinks being fat is a disease, some people think that’s ridiculous, because what kind of disease makes you eat a Big Mac? A doctor doesn’t seem to grasp that sleep and access to healthy food aren’t all that difficult, considering that crappy food keeps you awake (laden with sugars, harder digest, etc.). And I’ve not been in a grocery store in my life that didn’t have a produce section. A head of lettuce costs 99 cents. A box of hamburger helper and the hamburger is about $5-$6.

The doctor doesn’t seem to grasp the correlation between “sleep”, “stress” and a “decrease in movement due to technology” as all lifestyle choices. Has he ever considered telling his patients to, you know, move? Moving sorta makes you tired, right?

And an area resident sped up the process by getting her stomach tied. Oh, and she started biking and eating better. The two may or may not be related.

I get that if you’re really, really overweight that exercising is almost impossible because of your size. But for a lot of people who aren’t quite “lift me with heavy machinery size”, this does not need to be hard. I refuse to believe that suddenly being fat is a disease. It sounds like restless leg syndrome. If my grandparents didn’t have this problem, I don’t see how it can exist today. People haven’t evolved that much in 100 years. 1,000, maybe, a generation or two, no.

Marketing!

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This is a bittersweet time of the year for me. In November, when most people celebrate Thanksgiving, I do not. No one in my family really does anymore since my mom died. November is also the month I put in my resignation to quit my job at the State. December 1 marks the two year mark for me running my own business.

Speaking of December, when most people celebrate Christmas, I do not. The last memory I have of Christmas was in 2000, when I was 14, with my mom sitting on the floor of our living room, her shaved and scarred head wrapped in a thick layer of gauze. She had had her second brain surgery to remove a brain tumor just a month earlier. Like always, she made sure there were presents under the tree for me and my grandmother and my dad. And like always, she made sure to have each of them neatly wrapped and labeled. Except this year, as she sat on the floor, she wasn’t able to write so well anymore. Her spelling was off, her once pretty handwriting had been reduced to scribbles. She didn’t have enough labels, so she was forced to scribble over misspellings. The wrapping paper wasn’t as neatly folded as it once was because her vision was starting to fail in one eye. My memory from that year is of me sitting on the couch, looking down at her, as she squinted at the labels on the presents and refused our help to sort them. It wasn’t long after that that she became completely immobile, blind, deaf, incapable of coherent speech, constipated and in pain. She lived most of 2001 that way and then she died in January 2002, just two years and two days after she was diagnosed.

And in January, this January 18, 2012 at 11:14 a.m., I will travel to a small cemetery outside of Pekin, Indiana, in rural Washington County where mom and her grandparents and her little brother (who died two days after birth), are buried. I will place a wreath of red roses (her favorite) on her grave and mark the 10 year anniversary of her death. She was born on August 26, 1961. She was 41 years old.

Now, a decade later, I’m 24 years old. I know and have experienced a few more things now than I had then. Then, and up until somewhat very recently, I suffered from chronic depression. Taking care of my dying mother, living for two years knowing that she could die at literally any second, coming to terms with my sexuality, puberty and enduring the American Hell that is high school drained me. In recent memory, working at a depressing and draining job, struggling with dating and breakups, close friends that seemingly moved away in a constant stream, balancing finances and avoiding the debt for school, my dad’s near constant four-year unemployment and other things left my physically and emotionally void.

For a while it was incredibly difficult for me on a variety of levels for a variety of things, things that I’d rather not bore you with or rehash at this moment, but know that I’m speaking about things that most people don’t suffer with or endure much (or ever) in their lifetime. I’ve never told anyone personally about the things that happened to me during a period of time in my life between about 2008-2010.

And for a while in 2010 I tried medications to help with the stress and depression. I was diagnosed with kidney stones that year, too, and racked up medical bills that, thankfully, I’ve managed to pay off with the “help” of the insurance company (the same one that later revoked my coverage for ulcers and urinary tract problems). For a while, I tried modifying my diet to reduce some things, but it proved difficult because of my relationship at the time. It was the same ol’ problems, around and around.

And now, in 2011, I feel like I have the knowledge, the experience, the solution and the living proof to my problems of ulcers, depression, kidney stones, headaches, lethargy and weight gain: my diet.

I’ve long sworn-off fast food. I haven’t touched a fast food burger in about 7 years now, since 2005. But it wasn’t until 2010 I got a little more serious, by removing sodas and other sugary and carbonated beverages from my diet. I did it because my research lead me to believe that most kidney stones and urinary tract problems were caused by sodas. I also started filtering my water religiously to remove as much as I can from the city water. In addition, some stones are caused by calcium bond formations in the kidneys, calcium that’s usually delivered in large quantities by red meat.

So, I tried reducing the amount of meat I ate. And I started to feel pretty good.

And now, for the last month or so, I’ve taken my diet to a new level: I eat only whole foods and whole grains, based entirely on plants. I exercise more now than I ever have in my life by cycling, which I found that I love. For it, I feel better now that I have my entire life.

Some say that my diet is too extreme, too hard to live by and too restricting. To that I say: “Name me various kinds of red meat.” To which you will reply “Beef, pork, chicken.” You could go on to say venison, sheep, buffalo, etc., but really, people eat three main animals: cows, pigs and chicken because that’s what’s lining the shelves at the store. And then I will say, “Name me various kinds of edible plants.” To which you will reply, “Grapes, strawberries, cashews, peanuts, lettuce, wheat, corn, green beans, peas, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, potatoes, bok choy, celery, oranges, apples…” and on and on. I imagine the combinations of vegetarian dishes works out to many thousands. I do not think three meats can do that. Maybe if you’re generous and pretend that different cuts of meat are in fact different “things”. But in my book, chicken tenders, chicken breast and chicken nuggets are all the same.

Going to a whole foods diet sucks for the first couple of weeks. I lived my entire life around concocting meals by asking, “What meat do I want?” And then throwing “something else” around it. Now that I’ve gotten my bearings around this new style of cooking, the food’s actually just as easy and tasty to prepare as any meat dish ever could be. I don’t miss it.

In the last month I’ve lost about 10 pounds. This morning I weighed in at 158.5 pounds. I’ve been losing about a half pound every two or three days and I still eat about as much as I used to in volume. Heck, I’ve got two dozen oatmeal raisin cookies sitting on the counter right now.

My mood is extremely better, my body is clearly (and trust me on this one) pushing out a bunch of crap. Literally. I didn’t know a person could have so many bowel movements in a day. The high amount of fiber I’m taking in is working.

But enough on that matter; the point is this: I feel and am a whole lot better than I was just a month ago. I’m leaner, happier, more focused and more energetic. I rarely feel “stuffed” anymore, to the point of sickness, but instead I feel “completely full”. You know, like how you feel when you eat at a buffet right before you cram in “just one more plate”. And it doesn’t break the bank, I spend just as much on groceries as I did when I bought a lot of meat. I just spend it on different things now.

I’m able to cycle 20-30 miles in a weekend, plus another 30-50 miles throughout the week. This week I’ve not started my car once; I’m not even sure it will start at this point. Who knows; and I don’t even really care.

I’ve done some research, only after I’ve started eating whole foods, and it backs up what I’m experiencing. I’ve read books from the library, including “Diet for a Small Planet“, which is probably the most all-encompassing that I’ve read. I could go into the science behind it, but I won’t. However, I will say that it seems very clear to me that the science is there and repressed a great deal by concerned interests, particularly in the government. I mean, just this week Congress voted to make pizza a vegetable because it contains 2 tablespoons of tomato paste for sauce. Why? Because the frozen pizza companies, yes, those Titans of Industry, didn’t like the idea of not selling all that gray, frozen pizza to school cafeterias.

The gist of the science is this: plenty of things give you protein, not just meat (ever eat a peanut? Those fuckers are great, aren’t they?). In fact, your body can only absorb so much protein, which isn’t much. The rest is wasted, which means most of that protein in your steak just gets wasted or stored as fat.

Why am I so adamant about this now? Why do I see fit to tell everyone I can about this? Because in addition to knowing and experiencing this now at the age of 24, I also know that the shitty diet you have of sodas, fast food, processed frozen crap like frozen pizzas and fries and macaroni and cheese in a box plus the money-driven drugs for your depression, anxiety, pain, jitters and emotions is killing you.

It killed my mother, that’s for damn sure.

We lived in the wide open countryside of Washington County. We didn’t have pollution problems. We had water from a natural well under our front yard. Mom was a homemaker, so she didn’t have stresses of a job. Dad made good money at his factory job at the time (it’s since gone), so we didn’t have terrible financial troubles. I went to a good school and got good grades, I was not causing her any stress.

Her diet, however, consisted of sodas. In the 14 years I knew my mother, I never once saw her drink a glass of water. It was always sodas or heavily-sweetened tea (I still drink plenty of sweet tea, but only with two tablespoons of natural sugar per 8 cups of water). Mom drank so much Big Red soda her tongue was often just as red. We ate a lot of fried foods, particularly sodium-heavy ready-made things like Hamburger Helper meals, things that came frozen like frozen pizzas and fries, plenty of red meat like pot roasts and pork chops and steaks. In the summer we’d eat a lot of fresh tomatoes from the garden, because that’s what my dad would always grow. We’d slather them on white bread (which is completely void of anything nutritious, at all), Miracle Whip and bacon, hold the lettuce. It was a BLT minus the L (the healthiest thing).

Then, after mom was diagnosed, that’s what we kept eating and drinking. Mom went in for three surgeries, endured intense amounts of radiation — even going as far as implanting radiation and chemotherapy wafers directly into her brain — and was on medications galore. She took a pill for something every hour of the day around the clock, including numerous “experimental pills” that the doctors at University of Louisville and Norton Healthcare claimed did “very, very well in the clinical trials” at reducing the sizes of tumors.

Well, you know what, of course they did well in the clinical trials. Has anyone ever heard of a drug that didn’t do well in a clinical trial? Of course you haven’t because they always “do well” at something.

Then, after mom would have surgery or visit the hospital, they’d feed her Jello and white bread (toast); she’d have a Pepsi to drink. Really? Seriously? Did no one think it prudent to maybe give her carrots or tomato juice? Mom loved tomato juice — it was the only thing she’d drink when she was pregnant with me because she said it was the only thing she could keep down. That and 7 Up, because again, she never drank water.

If I could go back in time, I honestly believe that if mom started a whole foods diet in the mid 90′s or even the late 90′s, she’d still be alive today.

You’re saying to yourself right now, ”Well, Justin, we’ve all gotta go sometime! And if we do, I want to enjoy my cheeseburgers.”

To that, I say, “You’re flat wrong.” If you think it’s normal for human beings to sit around like sloths because you’re “always tired”, or for people to die before they’re 40 for something that wasn’t a surreal accident or that it’s normal for people to be grotesquely fat or for you to have random aches and pains in your 20s or 30s, then fine, go ahead. If you think it’s normal to take a pill because you’re always “angry” or “upset” or that it’s normal to give kids pills to make them calm down or that it’s normal for elementary school kids to have diabetes or be so fat they have to use special reinforced chairs, I hope that cheeseburger is freaking delicious. Add a few more and you’ll be dead, or, at best, living on a diet rich in expensive drugs designed to treat symptoms just so you can function.

As proof, one only need to visit Japan. Ever see a fat guy in Japan? No you have not. Ever hear of a cancer epidemic in Japan? No you have not, because they have one of the lowest rates in the world for overall cancers. Rates of some cancers, like breast cancers, barely infects half a percent of their population. This is, of course, changing now that the Japanese are leaving their diets high in fish and vegetables for…”the traditional western diet.” KFC and McDonalds are growing fast there. In addition to the Japanese, this is why I don’t worry about the Chinese, because our diet will kill off their people with hardly anyone paying attention as to why.

Hippocrates believed that the body had an “innate ability to heal itself”. He believed that it was up to the doctor to help springboard the recovery of their patient by just giving them the right vitamins and minerals. The human body would take care of the rest. You have to agree that as our diets have gotten worse, the amount of deaths by cancer keep growing, even after the outlays in spending to research cancer treatments grows and grows each year. I don’t think that’s just a coincidence. And when’s the last time you felt like your government was really doing anything useful for you anyway?

Our medical system is so expensive because we have the worst diet of anyone in the world. All that crap people eat is killing our hearts and brains and keeps us inventing other things that don’t naturally exist to help the problems that also shouldn’t naturally exist! Granted, our system is great at trauma — if you get hit in the head or get stabbed with a rod in a car accident, our system does wonders. But disease? It’s pathetic.

I’m convinced eating crap turns you into crap. I’m convinced that the drugs people take for a medley of issues are completely made-up and designed to “temporarily cure” the symptoms, but never the problem. What use is it for people to take Prozac once if they can’t ever take it again? Keep taking it and paying for it and hey, everything’s “better”. Your Big Macs make you sad and depressed, not your life. If you have to take pills just to “function”, why does that seem normal to you? Do you think people in the colonial era had problems with ADHD and stress and depression? Certainly not at the rates we see today.

You can take expensive pills, or just eat foods rich in Niacin (Vitamin B3; like mushrooms, peas and beans), which has been proven to lift a person’s mood. At a fraction of the cost, that’s for sure. Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous suggested that his patients take Niacin to help their recovery based on his own experience and research of dozens of patients. But, by the time he suggested it, other medical groups had already inserted their influence and decided against that. They favored new drugs on the market instead. Somehow, in our society, a multivitamin can be dangerous in large doses, but Ambien is just fine (another pill, of which, I took for a while because of sleeping problems caused by two years of waking up at odd hours of the night to be with mom).

At the very least, stop eating white bread (look for “whole grain”, not just “whole wheat” — by USDA standards, a bread can be considered “whole wheat” just by sprinkling the wheat grains on the top of the bread after it’s been processed out, which makes it completely nutritionally defunct, like sprinkling boiled and rotten apple slices on top of a doughnut.). And stop eating fast food — tacos aren’t supposed to cost 69 cents and come in boxes labeled as “MEAT PRODUCT”. Food isn’t supposed to be manufactured, period.

Why isn’t everyone shaking their heads and wondering what’s gone wrong? How are people not questioning things they put into them more?

I know I’m right about this. I just wish I knew it in 1999.

Occupy Wall Street (and all the associated movements) completely defies what is amazing about today. I hate it because it’s sending young people every wrong message. Instead of inspiring the youth of today to create amazing things that add value to the world, it’s inspiring them to complain.

It’s a little generalized, but does point out my frustrations with the Occupy Wall Street crowd. They sit. They sit in front of big buildings or in places near some place they don’t like. And they sit. They pitch a tent, or play the guitar, and they sit.

I can’t stand sitting. At least not in the sense of “I’m not doing anything”. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good sit every once in a while to sit and ponder the universe, but not to just sit for the sake of literally occupying a space.

I’m fine with the protest, I just wish they’d do something. Throw a bottle or two at a window, hell, if you really want to get some attention go punch a banker in the face because, let’s face it, some people are just going to have to get hurt in order to make this work like we all know it should.

Complaining has a place, but these systems aren’t “too big too fail”, they’re just the only solutions to real problems people have, like needing a bank. They’re just crummy solutions; so go make a new bank. These guys are.

I learned recently that the average Indianapolis resident devotes about 30% of their income to transportation. I don’t remember where I saw that, but it’s one of those things that sticks in the part of my brain that is my Indiana Almanac.

30%! If you make the average salary of $47,000 a year, that’s $14,000 a year. Just to get around. It costs you $14,000 a year just to get to work so you can make money to afford the car you drive to work.

Granted, that average is no doubt inflated by people actually buying cars within a given year. Let’s be more realistic. Let’s say you already have a car and the average car payment is about $250 a month. That’s $3,000 a year. Let’s imagine it costs you $30 to fill up your car with gas and you fill up three times a month – that’s another $90, or about $1,080 a year (that is, if you never go anywhere really far away).

Your insurance probably costs about $1,000 a year, if you’re good. Since most people are young, have a ticket or accident, that should probably be higher. But $1,000 is a nice round number I’m comfortable with using.

Let’s be generous with your oil changes and say you get your oil changed every 5,000 miles. That’s about four oil changes a year, based on the average driver’s 12,000 annual mileage. At $30 per oil change, that’s another $120 a year. Let’s also be generous and pretend you don’t have any maintenance problems in a year. Your battery’s fine, your wipers are great, you don’t ever need a drop of antifreeze or wiper fluid and nothing makes any funny noises and you don’t lock your keys inside your car. That’s all highly unlikely, of course, because if you take your car for routine tune-ups like you’re supposed to, you’re out another few hundred (or several hundred) dollars a year for that.

That said, you probably spend about, drum roll please…$5,230 a year on a car, or $435 a month. That’s $14.50 a day, whether you drive or not. Keeping with our example, that’s about 11% of the average $47,000 income. If you make $30,000 a year, you’re spending 17.5% of your income. Your numbers may be lower if you own your own car with no payments, but if you do, it may well be because your car is older and you’ve paid it off (or it was just cheaper). That said, it’ll have more maintenance problems that can unexpectedly be very expensive, very quickly.

That’s ridiculous. If you have to pay to park a lot, add in even more. I know folks who work in Downtown Indy that pay $40 a month just to park.

Again, that’s ridiculous.

Personally, I pay about $13 a day for my 2003 Toyota Rav 4. My number is a little lower than average because I don’t drive much anymore and I don’t spend a lot on gas or oil changes as a result. Regardless, I hate my car. I hate cars, period. I’ve never looked at a car and thought, “Oh man, I wish I had that car.” I’ve never seen someone else’s car and felt jealous or envious, I’ve never lusted after a car, I’ve never wanted a car. It’s just some thing that I needed to have in order to get places. It was like paying rent or eating. It’s just something you have to have.

And then one day this summer I thought, “I’d like to take up cycling.” It’s rare that I get a wild notion to just go do something, so when I do, I know I’m probably prepared to go all-in. This is no exception.

I’ve clocked 400 miles since the beginning of August on my bike, a 2010 Giant Cypress Hybrid. It’s great and cost me $300 at the time and I’ve since added a slew of accessories to it, bringing the total expense up to about $450 (or, you know, one real month of owning a car). This weekend, I decided to upgrade for speed, because I realized now that I really, really like to go fast. Now I have have a 2011 Jamis Satellite Sport. It’s also great … in fact, it’s even greater. It cost $700 retail, or about a month and a half of the real cost of a car.

Here are some things I think you should know about riding a bicycle in Indianapolis (or anywhere, really):

• You’d think you’d get tired by the time you arrived somewhere, but you don’t. You have to get the right bike, a stock model at Wal-Mart won’t do. Most cheap bikes are mountain bikes and they are designed to do just what they sound like: climb mountains. I’ve never seen a mountain in Indiana, so don’t use those. They’ll wear you out quickly. My hybrid bike (a cross between a road [for speed] and comfort bike [for, well, comfort while riding]) wore me out once or twice when I first started, and that was only to go a few miles. But within two weeks, easily, I was able to go 40-50 miles a day without the slightest tinge of pain in my legs.
• You’d think you’d be all sweaty and miserable in the heat, but you don’t. In fact, when you get going on a smooth surface or downhill, the breeze is quite nice.
• You’d think you’d freeze in the cold, but you don’t. Once you get started, your body is your own furnace. I usually struggle to dress comfortably in the cold because I’m actually too warm.

With my two bikes for different purposes, equipped with racks and bags so I can carry stuff, I do most all of my errands on my bike. I go to the library to drop off books or pickup more, I go to the gym, I go to meet friends, I go out to eat or see a movie, all on my bike.

My bike burns fat and saves me money. My car makes me fat and costs me money. The differences are pretty striking. Since this August, I’ve never felt leaner, healthier and better. Nothing is more satisfying to me than cycling past a long line of cars at a stop sign or behind some slow vehicle. My new road bike can easily ride at 20 MPH, often faster depending on the conditions. It’s not unthinkable that I could do 30 MPH in spots.

That said, I’m to a point where I want to sell my Rav 4. I hate having it, so why have it? I want to go bike-only. To me, that sounds incredibly hard, so I’m doing an experiment to see how long I can go without driving. Just leave the car in the garage (it has only a quarter tank of gas in it anyway) and see how long I can go.

Here are my worries going bike-only, and some solutions I’ve thought about:

• What happens if I get sick and need to go somewhere, like the store? Do I want to ride with a flu to go to the store? No, but the easy solution is to stock up early. That, and as an avid user of PeaPod (use that link for $10 off your first order and I get $10, too), this problem takes care of itself.
• What happens if I have to get to a meeting or someplace really quickly? The more I think about this, the more I realize this rarely happens. And if it does, I’m probably going Downtown. In which case, I can bike there in about 25 minutes. It takes me 20 by car, and that doesn’t include the time to park, pay the meter and walk where I’m going. The bike takes me right to the front door and I can park it practically anywhere.
• What happens if I have to travel really far — like down to my hometown in Salem? This could happen, and is my biggest concern, because I go to Salem with some regularity. The solution: just rent a car for that day. It costs $35 to rent a car one day; I spend that on owning my own car in just three days, whether I use it or not. Enterprise rentals will bring the car to my house, so I don’t even have to ride to the rental shop.
• What if I have to go someplace far, RIGHT NOW? What if my dad calls me at 3 am and tells me my grandma is sick and I need to come down right away? Well, I can’t get a rental at 3 a.m., so I haven’t figured out what I’d do. Honestly, I suspect this is a fringe example and if it did happen, I’d figure it out. Maybe I’d ask a friend for help or something. I honestly don’t know.
• Do you really want to ride in the winter? In Indianapolis? My attitude about this might change, but for now, I’m partially thinking I won’t mind it. I can layer up pretty good and assuming it’s not icy outside, I think I can be okay. We’ll see. Then again, if it snows a lot or is icy out, I don’t drive either.
• What happens if it rains? Well, rain is annoying, but, put on a coat or something. Do what people do when they have to venture out into the rain for any length of time. You just dress for it and carry on. Grow a pair for cryin’ out loud.

Some other interesting things I’ve noticed include mass transit issues. IndyGo doesn’t even strike me as a viable option. I have every reason to believe, based on their own trip calculator at IndyGo.net that if I wanted to leave my house and go to Castelton, say to that new Container Store, it’d take me 2 hours by bus. Google Maps (and my own math) tells me I can get there in 1 hour, 28 minutes by bike. Our bus system in Indianapolis is so earth-shatteringly poor that it takes 30 minutes longer by bus to go what is 1:28 minutes north of here by bike. In a car, it’s about 25 minutes. So I’m adding two hours to commute back and forth — consider a two-hour long trip to the gym built-in and you’ve capitalized on your time and you didn’t pollute or spend any money to boot. And you can save $14.99 a month on gym fees.

The diverse group of Democrats that will lead the City-County Council the next four years intends to champion race issues, but their options are limited by tight budgets and shrinking tax collections.

Half of the 16 Democrats elected Tuesday are African-American. Newly elected members Vop Osili, Leroy Robinson and Steve Talley will join holdovers Monroe Gray, Maggie Lewis, Vernon Brown, William Oliver and Jose Evans on the council in January. Talley is back for a second stint on the council.

The council also gained its first openly gay member, Democrat Zach Adamson, but lost its lone Hispanic voice, Angel Rivera, a Republican.

Interesting side-note, the second I saw a flyer in my mailbox with Zach Adamson on it I said to myself, “Oh. A gay guy’s running.” He’s either just that gay or I’m just that good at noticing.

Regardless, the point of the story is this: social issues can’t be tackled because there is no money.

Really? Seriously? Someone on the council has to explain to me why money is necessary to achieve harmony with blacks, gays, hispanics and other folks.

“Sorry, Indianapolis, we can’t buy things from a minority-owned business because there is no money. We have to buy it from the white guy instead.”

“Sorry, Indianapolis, we can’t do our part to work out matters with the Indiana General Assembly to allow gay people to get married and help us build Indianapolis’ reputation as tolerant because the city’s a little strapped for cash.”

Really? It doesn’t cost money to be a champion for those among us that could use some help. Money isn’t everything. Evidently to the Council Democrats, it’s a requisite just to think about it.