Red No. 40 is the New Vitamin D

The cover story in this Sunday's Chicago Tribune is on the potential harm of artificial food coloring. Supposedly, research suggests that the synthetic hues used in food are linked to rashes and attention disorders, especially in children. This infuriates me. I’ve eaten colorful food-like stuff my entire life and…wait, what was I writing about?

Anyways, the title of the article asks, "Are Food Dyes Worth the Risk?" Duh! People, come on already. You can’t live your life in a cave and expect to become the star of car insurance commercials. You have to go out and take risks. Besides, it’s not even that big a deal. I mean, if it just affects kids, who cares? They don’t have jobs. They aren’t the president.

For those of you concerned about "the future," allow me to give you a scientific history lesson. Humans evolved. The ones who survived were good. The ones who died were bad or old. At one point in time, every person was lactose intolerant. Then, some genius was born with a mutation that allowed that genius to consume animal milk without puking. That genius had sex with lots of people. This filled the planet with milk-drinking humans. This is how we came to be. It’s called survival of the best, and it makes us better, attractiver, and smarterer people (trust me, cave chicks were not that hot). My point is, we should be encouraging genetic mutations, not playing it safe. And yes, there are still people who are lactose intolerant today, but they are ugly.

Nowadays, you have all these books saying this and that about food. And they do it to the movies too. All that stuff is nonsense! In the movies, the real ones, do you see people in the future eating vegetables? No, only food from tubes. The next thing you know, these "authors" will be telling us we shouldn’t be eating the packaging the food comes in! I got to hand it to Morgan Spurlock though. That guy was on to something. Still, he was too weak. People like him need to die. If you can’t flourish on a diet of McDonald’s and Go-Gurt, that's fine, but don't get in the way of superhuman evolution. Besides, we need to protect the food product industry. If it disappears, how are we supposed to eat? What jobs will we have? You can’t expect people to farm in ties and pant suits. And even if we did farm, how would we know when to stop? And what if it rains?

Blue No. 1 and Orange B are not killing me. They are making me, you, and our species stronger. And if I have to endure some itching, so be it. I just hope that my dietary commitment to the superhuman is enough to combat the ill intentions of those who eat food that comes out of the ground.

A Hiker's Rough Draft to the Galaxy

This weekend I went hiking at Starved Rock State Park. We got lost on the way there. This totally makes sense because Starved Rock sounds like a really skinny rock, which probably makes it hard to see.

Immersing myself into nature changed my life. I got to experience things that only happen in the wild. I laughed at an abandoned recliner in the Illinois River. I became friends with a fish named Roger. I smeared mud on my face to signify my regression into noble savagehood. I karate-chopped a waterfall. And I vandalized a bridge by writing “vandalizm not permitted” on it.

While I was busy challenging the limitations of the human spirit, Marj (my hiking partner) was busy tumbling down the side of a jagged canyon. “Golly,” I said under my breath. “Maybe I should start taking this time as a serious opportunity to learn more about myself.”

And that’s exactly what I did. Marj cleaned up her wounds with a mapkin (*1) and I began a hardcore soul search. I searched, and searched, and searched, but to no avail, I returned to civilization still unable to understand Tyler Perry movies.

*map-kin (n.)
1: a wet map used as a napkin.
2: a map drawn on a cloth or towel.

Become a Warrior

For the past 3 months, I’ve been training for the Warrior Dash, a 6K obstacle course which will have me swimming through mud pits, scrambling over mangled cars, and leaping over fire. But training to become a warrior has required more than just preparing to complete dangerously awesome physical feats. I've also been living by the Warrior Code of Honor. Here is a list of things you can do if you hope to one day become a warrior like me:

• Crawl up hills. If it’s one you’ve crawled before, try to beat your previous time. If for some reason you can’t crawl up the hill (like if you’re on your way to a job interview where you need to be especially clean), you should at least predict how fast you could crawl up it.


• Visualize often. Like a lot. Suck at visualization? No prob. Visualize about visualizing (also known as meta-visualization).


• Take risks when you play softball. Run fast and slide hard. A 9-inning game should result in at least 3 bloody wounds on your own body.


• Climb ropes. Ropes are like hills, except it’s more difficult to run up a rope. Be careful to use proper hand protection if sliding down a rope. Rope burn is embarrassing (but on the plus slide, it allows you to make up badass stories about how you beat up a tiger shark after it repeatedly made passes at a lady who wasn’t interested).


• Get a Mohawk. Having one is the equivalent of sliding into every base just because you can. True warriors give themselves Mohawks by lining their heads with medical tape so they don’t shave the wrong parts.


• Eat salmon for breakfast and yogurt at least twice a day. On the warrior diet, three veggie dogs equal one serving.


• Train like your ancestors. Warriors don’t life weights at the gym—they use playgrounds to build natural upper body strength.


• Blog. Great warriors keep the warrior spirit alive by blogging about warrior tradition and lifestyle. They also name their blogs after things that 6-year-old girls like.