People do some crazy things for love. I’ve fallen head over naughty bits for a summer student at work who has been ‘off’ refined sugar for about two years. So what do I do before the long weekend but swear off sugar for the remainder of the summer. I must be insane.

Funnily enough, till now I had never realized how large a part of my life - indeed, many lives - refined sugar constitutes. Drowsy afternoons eating Marshmallow Alpha-Bits (R) and reading the Discworld series; the daily Twix bar at lunch, laughingly shared with my new paramour’s boss; my midnight tipple of syrupy cranberry punch; French toast on Saturday mornings encrusted with brown sugar, so you have to use both hands and two forks to break through the glistening layers. Wow. I’ve given all that up.

The sugar cravings weren’t too bad for a day or two, but now they’re getting ridiculous. I eat raisins and frozen green grapes and dried apricots, but the mouth can tell the difference between fruit sugars and the other kind (the good kind - the kind you get in saltwater taffy and Swedish Berries). I guess that’ll wear off. It is kind of weird, I admit, eating peanuts instead of peanut butter and rice instead of bread - but my energy level is at an all-time high and I’m sure I’m getting all sorts of fiber and vitamins and crap from trying to satisfy my sugar cravings with fruit. Let’s just see how long this lasts…

My brain has only produced two coherent thoughts in the last eleven days:

1. Parents Are Fucking Up Their Children
An otherwise rational friend at work is debating letting her twelve and ten year-old sons see the new ‘Star Wars’ movie, because she’s heard that it’s “dark.” (I’m going to the midnight premiere: dark indeed.) This is just one example of countless ways parents are fucking up their kids. If you plan on procreating, hear this: the world is full of profanity, death, sex, drugs, guns, and baby-eating Satanists. If you as a parent manage to convince your child that none of these exist, and then send said child into said world, you will be stuck with far bigger therapy bills than if you just let them hear the occasional cussword.

2. I’m Afraid of The Turkeys
In my hot little hands I now have one of a mere handful of five-turkey movies : ‘KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park.’ It looks so bad I’m actually afraid to watch it now that I have it. Hey Mark, I’m thinking of coming to Calgary for the Canada Day long weekend. If I bring this movie, will you help me watch it?

What is the deal with girls and horses? I read in some pop-psych magazine that we’re attracted subconsciously to the powerful hindquarters, which are supposed to make us think, on some primal level, about ‘thrusting.’ This may apply to girls old enough to boink, but it doesn’t explain why some eight year-olds have 92 My Little Pony toys and all the ‘Horse Of Her Own’ books.

And it certainly doesn’t explain why I, world’s biggest suburbanite, got talked into going to my pal Dana’s acreage a few weeks ago to ride a horse. Incidentally, My Little Pony toys would be more convincing if they bite, buck, kick, and poop all the time.

The picture on the top is the one I sent to a guy I know the day of the actual riding, since the digital photos hadn’t been e-mailed to me yet. The one on the bottom is a photo taken that day shortly before the batteries cacked. I think I had been on the horse for ninety seconds at that point. Do I look terrified or what?