“If you think about it, it really starts to drive you nuts,” says Corndawg. “I’ll just be lying in bed and thinking, ‘Why am I here? This is a place for sick people. This whole place was built to help sick people… but I’m not sick, and that’s why I’m here… wait, why am I here?’” Corndawg is here, in this cinder block Glendale medical center, because he’s participating in a medical research study for some giant pharmaceutical corporation, trying out a new cholesterol pill. He’s here because he’s trading his body for money in the name of medical research, and it doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. They give him one 5-milligram pill and then he stays under constant observation for nine days while they make detailed notes on the side effects. And then he walks out with $2,300 in his pocket.

Aside from the stuffy sterile surroundings, the conditions of Corndawg’s nine-day imprisonment aren’t so bad. He has his laptop and cell phone and he’s been watching the second and third seasons of “Lost” in back-to-back marathon sessions. Once an hour he’s allowed a brief respite from the fluorescent lighting– a few moments of fresh air on a secluded hospital balcony. Corndawg recommends avoiding the longer studies, however. In an 18 day study he once partook in, the effects of confinement began to set in quickly. Without exercise and meaningful human interaction, he sunk into a deep depression and slept 12 hours a day (actually, I probably should have asked if those feelings might have been related to the medication they’d had him on).

Over the course of our conversation, Corndawg draws alternate analogies for his medical trials: at times he calls them a prison, but the next minute they become a vacation: “Sometimes I’ll fly out to a distant city, planning my trip around a medical study, and it ends up paying for itself.” That seemingly contradictory coupling accesses the heart of capitalism– his studies are just another way of exchanging time and personal risk for wealth and freedom. Corndawg’s willingness to bring it to such romantic extremes is either valiant or ludicrous, but it seems to be working out pretty well for him.