The Weak In Rock

I’ve railed often about the plague of abject stupidity in our nation and the world at large, but today’s post from Scott Adams on his Dilbert Blog has made me reconsider.  We need the morons, the nitwits, the ultramaroons to save our bacon.  Money quote:

Our past economic booms depended heavily on morons. Those wonderful stimulators of the economy had to buy stock in perpetually unprofitable tech companies, or invest in real estate after it was clearly overpriced. Every economic boom is powered by the clueless.

All hail the imbeciles!  May you be fruitful, multiply and buy lots of useless stuff.

Technorati Tags: Scott Adams

I used to clutter up this space at the end of every year with a smart-allecky list of the top records of the year, followed by feeble attempts to find a witty way to say “I have no idea who any of these artists are, but they all suck.  Now get off my lawn ya darned kids before I fill yer britches with rock salt.”  I gave that up a couple of years ago, mainly because it was depressing me to feel so disconnected from youth culture and so obviously middle-aged and bitter about it.

Don’t get me wrong.  Being middle-aged and bitter can be very entertaining.  But I think I’d sort of shot my wad on that schtick.  Personally, I like Patton Oswalt’s approach - write a list of the best things you think are coming in the new year.  Here’s his list of music we can all look forward to in 2009:

ALBUMS

I Also Fingered a Girl in a Kiddie Pool of Wesson Oil
Katy Perry
In another collection of songs written for her by the editors of MAXIM Magazine, Katy Perry tries to stretch five minutes of titillation into a careers-worth of relevancy.

Night Grooves
Fugazi
Ian McKaye shocked his fans with this catchy, can’t-stay-in-your-seat collection of dance tunes.   Includes “Shimming the Beat”, “Dew-It Witchu” and “Positive Power Slide”

Gimme Dat
2-Fly
The Wyoming rap corridor finally found its Dr. Dre.

Go Get ‘Em, President Smokey
Toby Keith
Toby’s misguided tribute to our new incoming president effectively ended his career, but what a way to go!

A Very Metal Arbor Day
Mastodon, Anthrax and 13 other bands remind everyone to plant a tree and worship Satan.

Nice.

Patton, you’re an evil man.  Please come over to my house for dinner.  I’ll make steak.

I particularly like his skewering of Katy Perry.   Her hit from last year had all the depth of a latrine dug by a parapalegic Boy Scout.  The funny thing is there was a feature story on the wires last week about how *shock* Katy Perry’s new video featured her making out with a guy.  When she moves to Tijuana after she’s blown her royalties on hot pants and eyeliner she’ll make a new video about kissing an equus asinus.

Speaking of Jackasses - if only Toby Keith’s demise in the public eye could be so poetic and appropriate.

Seriously Patton.  Call me.  Steak’s on me.

Technorati Tags: Patton Oswalt, Katy Perry, Fugazi, Ian McKaye, Toby Keith, Mastodon, Anthrax, Boy Scout, Tijuana, equus asinus

On the one hand I’m depressed at the disintegration of print journalism as the result of the economic non-viability of the newspaper business model.  On the other hand we have this whole Michael Phelps bullshit bong brouhaha that makes me eager for the demise of what passes for journalism today.

I’d like, very much, for someone to explain to me what public interest has been served by outing Phelps as a guy who stuck a bong up to his face at a party (because, absent any blood tests proving anything else, that’s all we know for sure that he did).  Even being generous, there’s no public interest served by labeling him as a drug user.  Plenty of halfwits will argue that “he broke the law” or “set a bad example for kids who look up to him.”  I call bullshit on both counts.

Let me ask this question - if the photo in question was of Michael Phelps hoisting a can of Bud instead of smoking bud would any news outlet have run it?  The answer is no, and the reason the answer is no is because our national attitude towards intoxicants is illogical, hypocritical and blatantly stupid.  America isn’t at war against drugs.  Americans love drugs.  We ingest 1.5 cups of coffee per day, with about 135 mg of caffeine per cup.  Read up on your caffeine folks.  It’s a powerful and extremely addictive drug and it’s not entirely benign.  I had to eliminate caffeine from my diet 7 years ago in order to correct a serious medical condition (the details of which I’d rather keep to myself).  And I’m not even touching on the amount of caffeinated sodas consumed per capita in the US each year.

Then, of course, there’s alcohol.  Sure, there are a fair number of teatotaling Americans who would tsk tsk Phelps for drinking booze as much as for taking a bong hit, but generally speaking we Yanks love our hooch.  We’ve built elaborate consumer industries around alcohol, not to mention entire segments of popular culture that are utterly dependant on the presence of liquor to sustain themselves.  If you like popular music you can thank the distilled beverage industry for heavily subsidizing rock, country and jazz and making their continued practice possible.  Confused?  Let me explain - live music venues depend on the revenue generated by the consumption of beer, wine and spirits to sustain themselves.  Without the money brought in through selling drinks none of these venues would stay open and the opportunities for live music fans and people who just like to dance to pre-recorded music would evaporate.

I can’t leave this subject behind without talking about prescription pharmaceuticals.  Mood altering prescription chemicals make up a gigantic segment of the pharma business.  The generation that once gobbled illicit chemical mood alterers at outdoor rock festivals now consumes larger quantities of compounds that have many of the same properties of their hippy precursers.

Yup.  We Americans love our dope.  But in typically puritanical hypocritical fashion we only approve of people who get stoned or stimulated in very specific ways.  Business people who get jacked on caffeine every day = fine.  Bars full of tottering boozers = no problem.  Suburban tract homes full of mood-altered residents funneling their savings into big pharma = it’s the American way.  One of the greatest Olympic athletes in history sucks down a bongload with some friends at a party = he’s a bad example who needs to be punished.

Again, bullshit.

The real message of that photo, and the teaching moment, if you want to call it that, is that when someone works hard to acheive great things he needs to chill every now and then, and most people who are under great pressure and stress need a chemically induced nudge to successfully take the edge off.  Instead of telling our kids that Michael Phelps is a bad guy and a disappointment we ought to tell our kids that what he did was very little different from the successful business person who caps off his or her day with a Martini.  And then follow that with explaining that yes, pot is currently illegal, but it was not always so.

Instead of telling our kids that some drugs are evil and some are good, which is really what we do as a society today, is to tell them that all drugs are potentially dangerous and should be approached with caution and care.   Instead of preaching this ridiculous and blatantly false story that gets sold in the D.A.R.E. program that if you ingest intoxicants your life will get messed up (a story that most kids figure out is nonsense, by the way, which leads them to mistrust adults and to discount and toss out good advice that comes from the same parents and teachers as equivalent manipulative bullshit), we should be using someone like Michael Phelps to say, “in spite of that crap they’re teaching you in school it should be obvious to you that Michael Phelps is not a loser or a failure, so it is possible to imbibe on occassion without it ruining your life.”

Of course that’s a complex and layered story to tell, and we Americans are getting progressively worse at complexity as times goes on.  But I can dream, can’t I?

Technorati Tags: Michael Phelps, bong

No one said this was going to be easy.

This was a major backslide week in terms of nutrition.  I fault the Super Bowl and the party we threw.  There was entirely too danged much food in our house this week because our guests simply failed to live up to their responsibility to EAT EVERYTHING IN SIGHT.

In all seriousness, post-Super Bowl we had left-over buffalo wings, chips, beer, brownies and all manner of other stuff that is hard to stay away from.  The damage seems to have been minimal though.  I am below 153 lbs, which is better than I should have reason to expect consider the rampant over consuming I’ve done in the past week.  For this I credit sticking with my workouts.

Now before any of my gentle readers get their proverbial panties in a twist and think I’m turning into some kind of pleasure-denying food nazi let me say that I see absolutely no problem with indulging now and then. One of the secrets I’ve learned in this quest to de-blobbify myself is that people who deny themselves pleasure in eating and restrict their caloric consumption to weird formulaic combinations of precise measurements of protein, carbs and fats usually end up losing some bulk, slightly improving their health and appearance temporarily and then, in yo-yo fashion, get fatter and less healthy than they were before.  On a smaller scale, if you don’t treat yourself you’ll binge and blow your program.

The important thing is to eat reasonable portions, and to make that into a habit.  What I try to do is to have one day a week when I let myself give in to my cravings.  I don’t pig out, generally speaking, but I do eat what I want.  The one way I do restrict it though is that I try to make sure that the treats I’m giving myself are worth the trouble.  No crappy fast food (McDonald’s, Burger King and Taco Bell are off the list - if I’m gonna have a burger or a burrito it’s going to be a really good one, made from high quality ingredients) and no bowing at the trough of mindless junk like store-bought cookies or bags of Doritos.  But making myself a chocolate milkshake from Breyer’s ice cream, real milk and good quality chocolate sauce is A-OK.  Likewise cooking myself a burger or going to a good restaurant.  If I’m going to treat myself I want a genuine treat, not a bag of empty calories that will end up making me queasy.

I also keep in mind that overeating once a week requires some extra physical exertion to balance it out.  When I started riding longer distances on my bike a couple of years ago one of the things I’d tell myself was that after riding for 3 or 4 hours I’d burned enough calories to justify getting a sundae somewhere.  The logic was sound, but the problem was that doing a 3 or 4 hour ride once a week was the only serious exercise I was getting.  Meanwhile I was eating way too many calories (my favorite lunch stop was Chipotle - for gringo burritos they’re very good - but one Chipotle chicken burrito with the works and a bag of chips will give you 1545 calories, which is enough fuel for my body for a full day thatincludes a run, and I wasn’t running back then).

My other comment for the week is about how the running is going.  I’m about to wrap up my 3rd week of the Couch to 5K program and it’s finally gotten hard.  The first two weeks I was able to cruise through the runs.  Now it’s tougher.  This week’s program consisted of 4 intervals - warm up; 90 second run; 90 second brisk walk; 3 minute run; 3 minute brisk walk; 90 second run; 90second brisk walk; 3 minute run; cool down.  At the end of my last run my calves and my shins werekilling me.  The thing that was weird was that prior to doing this program I was doing intervals of 10 minutes running broken up by 5 minutes ofwalking and didn’t get pains like this.  Then it dawned on me that it’s all the transitions that are causing the pain.  It’s the process of slowing down on the treadmill that’s getting to me.

The cure, or at least the one I’m trying, is more warm up prior to the run and more stretching after.  We shall see.

Ok, so this week wasn’t great, fitness-wise.  I didn’t get to the gym as often as I’d planned to or do all the workouts in my program.  I did manage to get in 2 runs though, which is good, for a total of 5 miles.  Somewhere along the line though I pulled a muscle in my back, most likely through doing a lifting routine wrong.  I was in agony for about 2 and a half days with this really sharp pain in the middle of the left side of my back, right below my shoulder blade.

The pain didn’t abate until last night when Karen (I owe you a couple for that, sweetie) gave me a gentle backrub.  This was also how we figured out that I’d pulled a muscle because she could feel the obvious swelling where the pull was.  It’s not all better yet, but it doesn’t hurt anymore.  It just feels a bit tight.

In spite of these minor failures I still dropped some weight.  As of this morning I’m at 155.5 lbs.  I haven’t been below 155 lbs. in at least 10 years, so this feels like quite an acheivement.  The other thing that feels like an acheivement is my running progress.  I switched up my running program from what was a pure endurance regimen to give a shot at the Couch to 5K program from Coolrunning.com.   Since I’ve been running for a couple of months regularly I stepped it up a notch to meet my fitness level, which is somewhat higher than the audience they’ve designed the program for.

This week’s running plan was to warm up with a brisk walk for 5 minutes.  For me a brisk walk is at a 4 miles per hour pace.  From there I’d run for 60 second intervals with 90 seconds of brisk walking between.  Since I’d already been running for a bit I set my running pace at double my walking pace, or 8 miles per hour.   I finished up with 5 minutes of cooldown - half at my 4 mph pace and the other half at a casual walking pace of 3 mph.  Altogether this results in just over 2.5 miles distance covered and 30 minutes of a fairly intense workout.  This week I’ll shift up to 90 second running intervals - provided I don’t pull or strain anything else.

Technorati Tags: fitness, running

If you want to know how the new President is doing in relation to his campaign promises then bookmark this site:http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/

So far, pretty good.  5 promises kept with 14 in the works, 1 compromise deal made and 1 stalled.  Many other have said it, but it seems like it’s worth saying it again - It’s nice to have a real President again.

That’s not to say I’m going to like everything Obama does - I, for one, think more tax cuts are stupid idea when reduced tax revenue is a given during a recession and the other things that I do want to see the Government do, like healthcare reform, are going to cost a lot of money -  but I do have more confidence that this Administration actually understands the nature of the job they’re there to do.

Technorati Tags: Obama

Ok, so with the momentous inauguration of Barack Obama as the new President just hours away how do I observe it?  By being a smartassed wiseacre, of course.

Naturally, Deadspin beat me to it.  Here’s their list of the Top 10 Ways Sports Can Improve Over The Next Four Years:

1. All youth basketball players must be taught to play man-to-man defense. Zone defense to be banned at any level below college, and coaches must be trained in the fine, lost art of footwork, blocking out, man-ball vision and taking the charge. This will make America strong once again.

2. Dick Vitale, Billy Packer and Joe Buck to be set adrift in the Pacific in a dinghy with only a sextant and a jug of rum.

3. Excessive NFL celebrations not only allowed, but encouraged. And scored by the officials.

4. Soccer gets only a certain number of chances to catch on with Americans, like with Baseball Hall of Fame eligibility. One more shot in 2010, and if it doesn’t take, that’s it.

5. Curb on stadium financing; no more funding elaborate playgrounds for the rich with public money.

6. Creation of a Supreme Court for Athletics. Kige Ramsey is the first Chief Justice.

7. Brett Favre must vacillate on retirement for at least six more seasons. This will keep many newspapers in business and save thousands of jobs.

8. U.S. to withdraw all military from Middle East; invade nations only to stop bullfighting.

9. Wii Olympics to replace regular Olympics.

10. Al Davis to be handcuffed to Richard Simmons for one year for our amusement.

I especially like the last one.  I’d give that old coot about three minutes before even being in close proximity to Richard Simmons would cause him to keel over, thus ending all once and future Raider fans’ long nightmare.

I’m also very much in favor of #3.  I find it beyond absurd that showboating in the end zone is frowned upon as much as it is.  When T.O. called his mom from the end zone I thought it was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen any sports figure do.

This was a good week, fitness goals-wise.  As of this weekend I am down below 157 lbs. for the first time in many, many years.  I kept mostly on track with my workouts, running a total of about 10 miles over the course of the week and not missing a single session of circuit training.  I also got myself a new pull-up bar, although the odd doorjambs in our house made trying to find a doorway to use it in something of a challenge.

Hurray for me.

Seriously, this is good progress.  Now I just have to figure out a way to fit in time for swimming and bike riding in my program so that I can be ready for the sprint tri in June.