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My wife and I were watching TV the other night when a clip of Mick Jagger came on. He was prancing around the stage, preening and strutting as only Mick can do.

“My god he’s skinny,” my wife said. “And ugly as a boot.”

“Yeah, but he’s still banging all those hot young chicks,” I said. Not that I was jealous.

“That’s only because of his money and who he is.”

It dawned on me that here was yet another revelation about how men and women are different. At any given time, all around the world, there are hundreds — heck, probably thousands — of young, supple women who would be willing to let those slobbery lips and wrinkly old hands explore every inch of their firm naked bodies, if only to be intimate with a living legend like the “Mick”.

The man is over 60 years old and looks like an exhumed Egyptian mummy, but they would still throw their clothes off and jump his brittle arthritic bones. They would gleefully rub Bengay onto his sunken pasty chest each night and change his adult diapers if it meant Hollywood parties and millions of dollars in the bank.

I’m not trying to be sexist, but it seems that women are much more willing than men to sacrifice themselves for a shot at wealth or status. Maybe it’s a cultural echo from the days when women were unable to secure their own wealth or status and had to pick the best provider. Maybe its a biological urge to find the most successful man to father her children. Or maybe it’s just the dumb chicks with no self-respect. But reverse the situation and I couldn’t imagine any young man who would willfully churn Elizabeth Taylor’s congealed butter, or sleep with some grossly overweight, low-class piece of trash just because she had a few bucks and could offer him career advancement opportunities (Tom Arnold excepted).

Somehow, Donald Trump always has a ready supply of models ready to replace the latest tart who either has the nerve to turn 30 years old or gets too close to the secret of his magnificent coif. Bands like The Darkness, who are so ugly that in medieval times they would’ve been drowned in the river as infants as devil spawn, feast on a banquet of fresh female flesh each night. Rich athletes dilute the national IQ by breeding with opportunistic blonde-bombshell bimbos, and then cheat on them with painted-up, silicone-enhanced super sluts with stretchmarked lips and bedsore-encrusted backs.

Again, not that I’m jealous…

For several years now I have faithfully played the Lotto 6/49 here in Canada, hoping, like millions of others, that I would win enough money to retire and stop working. Being a Nova Scotian, the dream of not working is one that is close to my heart.

Now, I confess that I’m not the most mathematically gifted guy walking around. In fact, during my grade 12 final math exam I can remember staring hard at the question paper, hoping that answers would magically appear in the spaces where I knew that answers should be, waiting a full fifteen minutes before realizing that nope, they weren’t gonna show and getting a well-earned 8/100 for my efforts. I don’t know what I got right—probably just the numbers in the date.

I’m not sure why I did so poorly in math. Maybe it was because I didn’t understand what the point of it all was. It was just a bunch of numbers and letters (freakin’ letters? What the hell was that all about?) without any sense of rhyme or reason, they were just there arranged in a myriad of confusing equations and you had to figure ‘em out. So x=3.75…so what?

Now I think that math was more about a “way” of thinking, a way of better understanding the complexities of the world. Like illiteracy, “innumeracy” can leave people unable to recognize misinformation, make them more susceptible to scams, and lead to irrational beliefs in pseudoscience and other shadows on the cultural fringe. Math teaches us to think and process information in a logical, rational and definite manner, and when we do it properly, the true answer lies distilled before us.

Now back to the lottery. According to the data I found on this page (like I could even begin to calculate this myself), the odds of getting all 6 numbers right on any given draw is approximately 14 million-to-one. Thems real bad odds, folks. It gets even worse: the odds of matching only one number is 41.3% and the probability of matching two is only 13.2%. In order to win even one prize ($10) you’d have to match 3 numbers, and your chances of doing this is a pitiful 1.8% , or about a 1 in 50 chance. So you’d have to buy an average of 50 tickets just to win a lousy 10 bucks.

The chances of winning absolutely nothing at all? 98.1%

I’ve heard the term “a tax on stupidity” to describe lotteries and now I see why. The odds are so staggeringly against you ever winning a substantial amount of money that it isn’t even worth it to try. And the biggest patrons of lotto booths are the lower middle-class and poor people, people who should be buying into investments and real retirement options, not the unattainable fantasy marketed to them by the Atlantic Lottery Corporation.

As a reformed “innumerate” (next week I learn about fractions!) I will be bidding farewell to my lottery retirement dreams. My parents still play so if they do end up scoring the Big One I’ll still be able to cash in…right guys?

*Innumeracy is a fantastic book written by mathematician John Allen Paulos. I highly recommend it to other math ‘tards like myself.

I recently had to see my doctor about a problem I’ve been having. At least once a night, sometimes twice, I’d be awakened by a sudden, burning rush of bile running up my throat. And this was when I hadn’t been drinking. Thinking I was about to take the Bon Scott or John Bonham nosedive, I’d jump out of bed and hurry to the bathroom.

A cold glass of water, some swishie with the mouthwash, and everything would settle down again. But after a few nights in a row it dawned on me that this probably wasn’t a normal thing. I started sleeping on my side and propped an extra pillow under my head to keep it elevated. I wasn’t quite ready for that afterworld jam with Bon and ol’ Bonzo just yet.

It turns out that millions of people suffer from this ailment, which is called Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (“GERD”), or simply Acid Reflux. Reflux happens when acidic content from the stomach escapes into the esophagus and starts making its way up into the mouth. Not quite a full-fledged chunk blow, but close. This can happen anytime but usually occurs while lying down after a big meal or suddenly exerting yourself. Certain foods can trigger it but it is also a common side effect of working night shifts (check) and higher than normal stress levels (check again).

Sometimes heartburn, difficulty swallowing, and chest pain can result from this ungodly backwash of gastric acid and digestive juices. Not to mention the most killer morning breath you’ve ever seen. Literally. And, like everything else, if left unchecked it can lead to cancer, impotence, and eventually death. Ok, maybe not death. Or impotence. But if you do happen to be, er, “engaged” when a blast comes shooting up, you’d better hope your partner has a sense of humor and/or doesn’t take it personal.

My doctor prescribed Zantac (150 mg ranitidine hydrochloride), a histamine receptor antagonist that reduces the amount of acid that the stomach produces. Of course, one of the possible side effects of taking this medication is diarrhea. Always the diarrhea. Why is it that diarrhea has such a monopoly on the side effect market? It’s never a runny nose or maybe a bit of mild itching; no, it’s always a bombastic case of the shits. The pharmacist doesn’t even have to say it anymore; he just hands me the pills, shrugs with a sympathetic smile, and points me in the direction of the toilet paper aisle.

Hopefully these pills cure my reflux. If not I might have to cut back on my excessive coffee drinking, fried baloney feasts, and spicy snacks just before bedtime. And that’s pretty much out of the question.

So it’s a good thing I bought the bulk-sized package of toilet paper.

In what must be the most blatant display of irresponsibility I’ve ever seen by a corporate entity (well, this week anyway), Hardees has released the all-new Monster Thickburger ™ .

Weighing in at 2/3 lbs of pure Angus beef, this heart-attack inducing “monument to decadence” (as described by their own press release) contains no less than 1,400 calories and 107 grams of fat. Layered with four strips of bacon, three slices of processed cheese and slathered in creamy mayonnaise, this artery-choker requires ” two hands, a firm grip and a serious appetite”. Not to mention an ambulance and a paramedic team standing by.

At a time when North Americans are facing an obesity epidemic and most fast-food restaurants are trying to distance themselves from their well-deserved unhealthy images by offering low-cal and lower fat menu options, Hardees is taking one giant step backwards. They are even running a promotion where “monstrous” NFL players will work the drive-thru windows at selected restaurants and donate the proceeds from every Thickburger ™ sold to charity. I hope they plan on giving a huge chunk to the American Heart Association.

I was hoping that the current backlash against fast-food places would snap some sense into fast-food executives, maybe start a trend towards developing healthier, less harmful products. The documentary Super-Size Me illustrated the obvious harmful effects of eating these fatty and chemical-laden “foods”, as did Eric Schlosser’s excellent book Fast Food Nation. Thankfully, only Hardees has thus far bucked the trend by developing a burger that not only contains twice the daily recommended amount of saturated fat, but also nearly a full day’s worth of sodium. It is the biggest, baddest beef burger on the block.

I’m starting to think that the entire fast-food industry is out to get us. Why else would they insist on dumping a ton of salt on my fries before even serving them to me, when all the salt I could possibly want is available in those little tiny packets on the condiment counter? And before some of them ended the practice due to public pressure from health advocacy groups, why were they always trying to upsell the “super” or “biggie” sizes? Sounds to me like they were trying everything possible to ensure maximum damage to your health and body, short of just giving you a gun and a bullet to get it over with.

Someday, after the masses finally catch on or the health care system finally exhausts itself from treating a pandemic of self-induced and entirely preventable diseases, the people who repeatedly stuff their faces with fast food will likely be regarded much like smokers are today. They will be ostracized to dark and dank corners, subjected to the snotty “ummmphh” of passersby as they turn up their noses and chomp their celery sticks.

If they live long enough, that is.

And hey, I’m guilty of throwing down my share of fast food crap like everyone else. But I would never—ever!—eat a Monster Thickburger™. Probably for the simple reason that Hardees doesn’t operate here in Canada…