Hugo

                 With a grand, perhaps almost foreboding entrance into the Jackson Square food court, reminiscent of a thick cumulonimbus cloud billowing just before a new-found horizon, thus looms Hugo; the utmost bane of cardiologists and nutrionists the world over. A thickened plate of petrified bacon grease and high-fructose corn syrup envelop the motorized scooter that propels Hugo forward, beyond the terrified and utterly confused stares of Hamilton’s more well-fit citizens (the sorts of people who will almost certainly never conceive of the joy and sheer unbridled glee that overtakes oneself during the consumption of fourteen Big Macs with extra mayonnaise). Burger King cashiers recoil in disgust at the shapeless mass, possessing the collective weight and appetite akin to that of the Oakland Raiders stood overshadowing them. Perhaps they would even have been able to serve him; had his order not been so lengthy, or better still, if they’d even stocked enough inventory sufficient to accommodate him. Any sane mind would deny that a man of such self-destructive a conscience would be probable to exist, and if he did, it would truly be one who had to despise himself, but there loomed Hugo, the epitome of this law, a creature of such ill taste and gross, debilitating negligence one would think utterly improbable, but alas, we behold Hugo.

                Begotten by mystery and shrouded in salami grease, Hugo’s appetite was responsible for 7.5% of the net earnings of the Food Festival food court in the heart of Jackson Square. Hugo was an addict, the drugs of choice for him being French fries, cheeseburger combos, double cheeseburger combos, rice, triple cheeseburger combos, KFC, and Chinese food (just for the sake of multiculturalism). Every morning, the 850 lb. behemoth would arise monumentally from slumber to pay the daily debt of his consumer obligations. He ate day and night, holiday and weekend; bulk tubs of cookie dough ice cream were relentlessly devoured during the thick, sweaty summer months, whilst Hugo’s fangs sunk deep into whole rotisserie chickens when it got really cold out (provided courtesy of Swiss Chalet). Poor Hugo was confined to a rascal scooter, after decades of binge eating took its inevitable toll of his knees, which upon giving up on supporting the absurd mass of lipids any longer, thus rendered useless. Hugo ate, and ate, and ate, and ate, and ate; yet despite of this fact, He was relatively empty inside. You see, Hugo (as he was known) knew nobody, and of course nobody knew Hugo. Nobody wanted to hang out with Hugo, nobody wanted to get drunk or smoke pot with Hugo, and of course, nobody wanted to take fistfuls of MDMA and rave for seven hours to Yolanda Be Cool songs at the London Tap House until revived by paramedics the following week with Hugo. Hugo just continued to eat and grow. 

His only other companions were the other variously crippled and insane people who add a much needed flavour to Hamilton’s Downtown core (and if I must say, do a mighty fine job scaring away pesky tourists). The crazy man who has conversations with the plush Maple Leafs doll he carries around with him, the schizophrenic women on the 5A Delaware bus who looks like the female version of Quentin Tarantino, the bearded man with the trench coat who talks to pigeons at the Public Library, and of course, all the other sorts of various beggars and minstrels who linger about on the corner of King and James; these were Hugo’s only friends, the only ones he talked to, the only ones he hadn’t already eaten (and it’s probably safe for us to assume that the aforementioned lunatics don’t taste very good). Diabetes would have claimed Hugo’s entire left leg, had he bothered to show up for the surgery three years ago, and upon hearing of the procedure, slipped into a deep depression, in which he consumed 5 more than his usual 12 cheeseburger combos a week. Some say Hugo has not feelings, no emotions, no desires; his only urge is to eat, and eat, and eat.