The weekend is here in Detroit, and with the warm weather this means people planting flowers, barbecues, and junkies overdosing on skunky heroin or cocaine. According to Wayne County, there have been 48 drug-related deaths within the past two weeks, which to the out-of-towner doesn’t seem like a lot for Detroit but heroine isn’t really the drug of choice here. Now this isn’t your normal run-of-the-mill heroin here so all you supermodels, post-teen idols, and out-of-work actors… read carefully.

The painkiller fentanyl, an analog to to morphine but fifty times as strong, has allegedly been produced in basement labs and cut into heroin and or cocaine. Unwitting buyers obtain what they think is heroin and don’t realize that there is a powerful painkiller floating in the mix.

If you happen to hold a grudge against a hollywood scapegrace and happen to have an assload of cash; you can rent the beautiful building that was hacked to bits for the RockStar Energy Drink and Penthouse SuperBowl party, invite said starlet to the event, bring in Detroit’s finest drug dealers, then sit back and watch the bodyguards stand there helplessly.

It’s been a few months since returning from a quick jaunt to the Philippines. I was warned that the country was reaching its hottest months before the rainy season. This made for light luggage consisting of 4 t-shirts, 3 shorts, underwear, and flip flops. Though the days were wonderfully mild, it was jarring to go from wearing warm fashionable layers to sweating through a single ill-fitting cotton layer. Although there weren’t any terribly uncomfortable days, I did put on trousers certain days so that I could blend in with the natives.

To further fit my native guise, I took meals without reservation. The cuisine was familiar and was like a refresher course in ancestral protocol. Food was constantly being prepared, served, offered, and talked about. My body must have reacted to eating so many meals and staying hydrated. Throwing out rules of any/all sensible and fad diets out there I just shoved it in. I admit that the freshness and quality of the food isn’t the same as we get here, but going on sheer volume of food consumed, I should have just worn an eatin’ dress. Amazingly enough I lost a good amount of weight, enough to notice that clothes weren’t fitting right but not enough to get paranoid about dysentery, tape worm, or dehydration.

I write this because it’s starting to warm up here in Michigan, and I want to recapture this magical cycle of eating and thinning out. We normally sit in the comfort of air conditioning but I’m thinking that bearing the heat is what my body wants. Coupled with smoking again… I’m on my way to becoming an emaciated relief map of veins for the summer. This is by no means a goal, I like my booty… but it’s so unfortunate that the world of factory-multiple fashionable clothing require a lot of alterations to look good on me. So, if you see a husky filipino boy eating like crazy out in the sweltering heat this summer, give him the thumbs up… he’s losing weight.

The picture below is the bizarro me. He’s a young professional, working his way to an MBA. What amazes me is how he can get by without knowing geeky things. Quickly using his braggadocio instead of his powers of reasoning, he does his job without touching a command line. His current assignment in the corporation doesn’t require him to form logical plans or know much about infrastruture. The department that he works for is in charge of one product, a very important product, but a product that has exacting specifications that everyone else has to conform to. So, his schtick is to look at project, see if everything complies with his product and says yes or no… that’s it.

Now, normally I wouldn’t be bothered with this, but I caught him in a meeting shuffling papers for one of his business courses and I thought… “what does this kid have that I don’t have?” The answer: white skin, youth, and connections. Oh the cruel world of big business.

I don’t know what kind of 12-foot munchkin boat this is… I don’t know if we will stay afloat on this thing.