Trading calories for DVDs

I've seen the best and most promising of diet plans of my generation destroyed by madness. Hysterically they bounced from option to option, never reaching that stage in which any of us would want to see them naked.\nUntil, my roommate entered my life. \nNow, Jeff Clawson does not only share my rent, but he presides as my dietary guru, preaching a new way, as it were -- a hope for weight-loss conscious souls everywhere.\nHenry David Thoreau was wrong when he urged us to live simply -- especially if we expected to lose weight. Oh, no. Ivory tower anti-materialism is not the true shining path. \nInstead, I offer the Clawson way: Take the money you spend on food, and use it to buy things you like.\nSome of you may find this approach shallow, sacrificing your vital, everyday needs for DVDs and video games. I contend just the opposite. It is the very antithesis of vanity. \nIndeed, I believe that an intelligista's shunning of the sunshine of man's multitudinous wonders and consumer products far surpasses the materialist in a lack of depth. Yet, this new way recently given to me has enabled me to become one with nature, fully appreciative of life's caverns of experience and information, and still respect and enjoy flavored toothpaste, cellular phones and track lighting.\nI have found a balance between the body and its environment. I'm down to a 30-inch waist and have money left over to buy cigarettes. \n Adversaries of the new way tell you that such a lifestyle will only further separate humans from their respective spiritual realms. Again, this is nothing but an utter falsehood. While one who saunters in the fields may feel he communicates with the great ghosts of the land, I have so finely tuned my relationship with the Creator, I can keep him on hold while I instant message my broker. \nThe simpleton living by the pond lacks the discipline I control. While he finds truth in nature by shunning the material world, I find truth in both nature and the material world. A balance is reached, a life of moderation is achieved. I assume the advantages of both lifestyles, all while never having to suck in my gut at the pool.\nI say, heed Clawson's advise. Delight in the many trinkets that civilization has to offer. Do not turn away from the corporate machine like the black patch on your book bag tells you to -- fight the desire. It will only cause you to indulge in food, warmth and the other daily essentials which make the body lazy and unfit.\nLet the scholar live in the woods, I say. There, with his ax and brute neighbors, he will die alone. I, on the other hand, will take to the woods with my modem. I will contact my human neighbors and we will swim in the pond together. There, we will take underwater photos, scan them and send them to relatives in arid lands. We will then fall asleep under the moonlight and starry dynamo while listening to the smooth sounds of Tony Bennett on my Sony stereo.