R.I.P. Lifestyle Family Fitness

A bit of a disclaimer, part of this blog was written a while back:

So far this year, I lost my job at the school and my gym at Cardinal Fitness. So imagine my shock to get an email from Lifestyle Family Fitness telling me that I will be out of a job at the end of November because they decided to close half their gyms and focus operations entirely in Florida. So Life Time Fitness bought two of Lifestyle Family Fitness's gyms in Indiana and all of LFF's members and stuck us with the task of keeping order until closing time. With two weeks to know I am losing another job due to reasons out of my control, you can imagine how well I handled it. All along, my supervisors kept telling me that no matter what, the are going to take me with them, that I am one of them, I have nothing to worry about, and they had me fill out new hire paperwork for Life Time and very quickly moved me to one of the gyms that Life Time purchased to continue running the desk until a management job came along. It was nuts. Things moved exceedingly fast. By the time it was all said and done, I found myself hired into two Life Time locations with a strong possibility that I will be moving into management soon.

It was funny because Life Time is where I wanted to be all along. After seeing the main gym I tried for three years to at least get an interview and kept getting passed up. And now I am an employee and they see that I am easily relocatable and very much want this.

I never thought that taking a job with Lifestyle Family Fitness would land me with a company that I have wanted to work for, and while I miss some of the members there, I can tell you that I am glad that company is also behind me.

The comedy left turn

I've been working in the fitness field for nearly a year and a half now and I've seen and dealt with a lot. Now in my case most of these experiences come from one severely dysfunctional gym member, but today I will not talk about that giant ball of madness.

Today, I will talk about this giant ball of madness: a woman comes into the gym today to cancel her membership due in part to reasons I will talk about in full soon in this blog. The short version is that the gym I work at is closing in a few days and a different gym already bought up everyone's memberships. This woman was a member at the gym that bought said memberships and she is absolutely not going to go back to that gym for personal reasons. I give her the phone number to make the call to cancel and she gives me an endless run of shit saying she's been trying to cancel that way for a week now and she just can't get ahold of anyone. That's always a red flag in the customer service world because trying for a week usually means spent five minutes on the phone, if that, and didn't get the immediate result she wanted. So I pretty much called her on it and delved deeper into why she's so adamant about not going back to that gym. She says the people there are crazy and she can't be since she is blonde and looks like an Italian leather boot. I asked her to explain what she meant by crazy since I've been at that gym several times lately and haven't run into any of the silliness she claims is going on, so I'm absolutely positive this woman is the problem and not everyone else around her. And the answer I got knocked me on my ass. The short version is that this woman is racist, she hears all those other people talking in other languages and it absolutely must be all about her. She thinks black people are gross. So she's just going to join the women's only gym because she is so sure it will only be filled with the whitest folk around because she deserves at least that because she's white, you know.

I've heard a lot of reasons people want to cancel their gym memberships but racism is an entirely new one on me.

Murder By Death

I spoke so far of the skateboard demo that pretty much made me realize that I needed to evolve and embrace weightlifting. And the video game that made me realize I need to put that stuff down and focus on more important things such as my health.

For a while, I had been struggling with the fact that my ideologies will not lead me to personal happiness and since the group of people I ran with largely shared the same ideologies, I realized that I was stuck in a rut. But the fruition of that realization hit me while waiting in line for a show.

The band was Murder by Death, a band I had not heard of but knew was popular within the punk/indie scene so I was interested in checking them out. They were playing in Bloomington at a theater so I got there about ten minutes early and waited in a very short line. Within a couple minutes, the line grew very quickly and was largely made of of people dressed in their punk costumes - their black dyed hair, jackets with patches everywhere, that sort of thing. After one long look at the line, I decided not to attend this show. I stepped out and walked home.

Punk is fun for a few years but if you choose to become educated you realize you are always angry for the sake of being angry. Something will always keep you in a pissy mood. The idea of standing against for the sake of standing against becomes old.

As for the way of dress, why still dress like an early 80s punk rocker? Why show the world you and your ideologies refuse to evolve no matter how far you get left behind?

I still have never seen Murder by Death, nor have I even bothered to search them out on the internet to hear some of their stuff. Not really sure if it matters.

R.I.P. Cardinal Fitness

Very recently, it was announced that Cardinal Fitness has closed several locations without notice with the remaining locations closing at the end of the year. L.A. Fitness bought out all their member contracts and are setting up Cardinal's member base within L.A.'s clubs. Now I am not a fan of L.A. Fitness as I feel they are not kept clean, very disorganized, and nothing more than a selling atmosphere. So to have canceled my membership when I did meant I dodged a bullet since my membership wouldn't be transferred to L.A.

Oddly enough this affected me. I planned on returning to Cardinal as a member should things go badly at the gym I work for, but I can't do that anymore. Additionally, this is the gym I joined after college and got to know everyone there. So while I am devolving to blathering, I just need to say that I will miss this place.

The Psycho Path

This year for Halloween, I was invited to a bar for a costume party. While it sounded like it could be both a fun and a supremely annoying experience, I found myself taken in an entirely different direction...

Instead I found myself east of town at a campground. A low income campground just a few miles from the job I was laid off from and has several residents that attended that school. They had a corn maze, a path through the woods, and a haunted hay ride through the woods. Additionally they had a fat guy badly singing cover songs for drunk people and a small cafe. We thought it would be a good idea to go through the corn maze first but couldn't find it. The employees told us to go to the top of the hill and the maze should be there. Well, that wasn't the case and a few residents told us to go to the bottom of the hill near the road and we should find it. And that wasn't the case either. So after giving up, we did the Psycho Path, and it was a pretty uneventful jaunt through the woods as was the hay ride.

So after that we stopped off for some hot apple cider at the little deli and the entire thing really took a turn. The lady serving us was a mother of a couple children attending said job i was laid off from. She said she recognized me from the school and wondered where I have been. I told I had been laid off a few months ago and she apologized profusely for bringing it up. I have since moved on from all that and a more than ready to move on from that. She felt so bad about it that she offered up free refills for all of us in my group. I didn't take advantage as I had some pulpy hot apple cider that has since left me with a sore throat.

It was an odd turn for the night as the realization that for a good portion of these people as they are just living their lives set in. After we finished up and left, I got some odd sense of closure on the whole deal with that job. Quite a bit sobering. And to think I could have worn some ridiculous costume at a bar and got hit on all night.

Rest

During my workout Monday, I noticed my shoulder was popping with each and every single exercise. It was definitely not painful but consistent enough to make me take notice. So on Tuesday I woke up extremely tight in my shoulders and that's when I knew the time has come to take time off from working out my upper body. I took off Tuesday entirely and let my entire body tighten up like my shoulders. Same goes for Wednesday but I have come to the realization that doing cardio would help things quite a bit. I can ride a bike and not put stress on my shoulders and the blood flow should loosen me up a bit. So I did just that. 35 minutes of cardio since five were spent talking and riding. Obviously one day of cardio will not undue the nearly two years of not doing any cardio, but it has loosened me up just a little bit. It could be that and a combination of the rest in general. I guess I should look at the big picture.

X Songs part 5

That moment

I've been lifting weights for 5.50 years now and are now 220 lbs. solid muscle. Obviously my life has changed entirely.

But what was that one thing that led me to actually stick with lifting weights? Oddly enough it was my favorite video game series - Dragon Quest. You see, Dragon Quest 7 came out for the PSOne and while the graphics are sup-par to say the very least and the music is merely alright, I absolutely loved it.

By this point, there hadn't been a new Dragon Quest game in the U.S. since Dragon Quest 4 for the NES. Basically this game was so different from back in the NES that I almost couldn't believe it is part of the same video game series. This game had puns galore, while still having the spelling errors and odd translations that made the series so endearing to me in the first place. The long and short of the game is that the only landmass in the entire world is a small island with no monsters. After nearly an hour of exposition, the hero and a couple of his friends head out to play in the abandoned shrine and wind up in the past. As they complete the scenario this landmass returns to the present. After restoring the world, you learn that God and the demon Orgodemir had an epic battle that sealed off everything in the world but the little island you started out on and now it's time for you to fight Orgodemir himself. Obviously there's a little more to the story and I have to say that while there are parts that drag on way too long I found myself completely enthralled. There's some hilarity like a teammate who's an old man who once fought alongside God, and then going on to fight God after you beat the game. The game has a cool town building scenario where you send people to your new town and the final transformation of the town is highly dependent on what types of people you have residing there - i.e. more merchants turns the town into a huge bazaar with awesome weapons and armor for sale. And the game has a really cool class system in which changing vocations only alters your character's stats rather than making you go through class specific weapons and armor and the like. So there's a lot to do is what I'm saying.

Even better is that you can play the game one handed. The right analog stick and the triangle button are all you really need. I used to play the game over breakfast, lunch, and dinner. My first run through the game turned out to be about 200 hours long. Those were 200 satisfying hours. So me being me, I played through it a few more times clocking in at about 150 hours each time. On my fourth time starting out, I realized I dumped a whole hell of a lot of my life into not only this game, but video games in general. I stopped and started cutting back on video games and finally getting into weight lifting for real.

It's funny to think that the very first RPG I ever played was Dragon Quest and it started my life long love of RPGs, and that the 7th one in the series was the one that made me realize I have got to start doing something with my life.

The very definition of college rock

Imitation Rock

I heard this song for the first time recently and decided I need to comment on it in this blog. For one, I was surprised to learn it came out in 2006/2007 and flew completely under my radar. Now this was the time of my full break from music in general so I guess it's whatever. To me, this song represents music's progression to a pale imitation of music I used to love. These guys sound like The Offspring during their heyday. Every part is calculated out exactly in a way I would like, but I just don't. Is this post-punk or am I post-punk for not liking it?

Soreness

I haven't been this sore from exercise in quite a while. My gym has a boot camp class and I took a teaser with a member last night. Turns out my cardio is much worse than I thought and I damn near puked on a couple occasions and was really seeing stars at the end. But not being one to call it quits there, I went ahead and finished my own workout to which I must say that my legs feel like they are going to explode today. I finished up with chest as usual but my chest isn't too sore, but by the time I got to my chest workouts I knew there was no way I would be able to get through them all. I need to start doing some cardio workouts is what I guess I'm trying to say.

Well this song is horrible

Lack of understanding

Last week, a lady came into my gym with a guest pass to try it out for the day. As this is very much part of my daily routine, I have her sign in and go about her business. But the odd part is that she seemed to be intimidated by the freedom to work out. I told her that if she had any questions, she should feel free to ask and I started to go about cleaning up the gym for the evening.

About a half hour goes by and she worked up the nerve to start asking me how to use the leg machines. I go over each of our three variations on squat machines and start to get a feel for where she stands on the workout knowledge continuum. As it turns out, she knew nothing. Absolutely nothing. She proceeds to tell me that her main focus is to become muscular but without looking like a guy. I informed her that becoming so muscled that a woman looks like a man is pretty much impossible unless that woman were taking steroids. And then I let her know that I completely understand wanting to be muscular and that I have put on 70 pounds myself. She really warmed up to me at that point so we began a marathon of going over how machines work, what they work, and how to use them properly all the while I am trying to sell her a membership as she is clearly wanting to join our gym.

On what had to have been our fifteenth machine, she drops on me that she had been in before and the membership consultant was trying to set her up with a personal trainer. Now the guy is the most expensive trainer we have, and he is the size of a diesel truck, so clearly if you are looking to put on muscle mass he would be your first choice. She didn't want to go with him at all because she felt he was too expensive and that she didn't want to buy and do a whole bunch of trainer sessions up front. She basically wanted to work with a trainer a couple times a month. I informed her that since she knows so very little about how to go about reaching her goal, that several trainer sessions would likely be the best way to start out and she could ween herself off of them once she has developed the knowledge and aptitude for working out on her own. She kind of understood my point.

I offer up a different, much less expensive trainer to her to help her get started along with membership options for our gym and she still resisted doing anything. The second trainer is shorter than and a bit smaller than the first but I would have no doubt the second guy could make himself the same size as the first one without any problem. I gave her the trainer's information and sent her on her way. The total time I spent with her was 45 minutes.

So the next day I come to find out that one of our membership consultants spent and hour and a half trying to get this lady to join. And the real big trainer talked to her over the phone about trainer sessions and membership options for an hour, along with me spending 45 minutes with her, and none of us got her to join yet.

So all of this begs a couple questions. If you want to join a gym and have a trainer, why would you expect to not have to pay anything for those things? For better, for worse we are a private business and we operate as such. Also, why would you deal with us upward of four times without even joining at the end of one of those conversations? Clearly the interest is there.

After all that, she asked if she could just work out with me. Now, obviously that is not going to happen. Just because I've turned myself into a semi, doesn't mean I have any desire to work out with someone who knows not a single thing about exercise just for the sake of making a sale. It's kind of a conflict of interest. And I don't have workout partners for a good reason. My lifting time is me time, time to exorcise my demons as mentioned in a previous post. So yeah, I took issue with that question.

With that said, I passed her on to trainer number two for him to work with. It would be nice to get her in after all the time we've already put into trying to convince her to come work out at our facility. I just don't understand why it would be so hard for a person to commit to a membership if she's already been in several times.

Climber

Back when I started to lift weights, I also took up climbing as a way to work out different muscles, and as a way to use said muscles I work out at the gym and climbing will keep me toned and doing it regularly will keep me from getting too big too fast. Now that last part sounds a little odd, but I was seriously scared I would swell up to an unbelievable size very quickly if I weren't somehow making use of the muscles I was building. And even more odd is that I don't seem to really care about how much bigger I am going to get anymore.

So with that said, I bought a membership at Hoosier Heights in Bloomington and would alternate climbing and lifting days. At this time, I didn't like leg workouts at all so I would very rarely do them and you can imagine how much I overworked my upper body. I absolutely loved my overall workout routine as it kept me from getting bored, I got to meet new people, and I got to face my fear of heights head on.

As far as climbing gyms go, Hoosier Heights has been, by far, my favorite one. They have a huge bouldering room, 50 foot ceilings in their top rope room, and a very nice grade on the lead rope wall. In there, I could dick around for hours on end and it didn't even matter how much or little effort I put into actually following the tapes routes I would always walk away exercised. It was awesome. It was there where I learned that even I can get pumped muscles regularly. Within a couple hours I would get jacked and just stay that way for a while. Loved it. But on the rope and the instant pump halfway up a wall never felt good and seriously hindered my progress.

I eventually became able to climb the 50 walls with no problem, though this was largely dependent on who belayed me. With someone near my size or larger and was attentive, I knew I would be in good hands. There were times where I had a female friend belay me and I would only go about two thirds of the way up and then climb back down because she just would not pay attention. I would belay a dude who routinely slipped and fell on his way up so I had to stay on top of it the whole way. He seemed really stressful to belay.

I made a bunch of friends there and introduced a dude to climbing who in turn made it his life. He shoots videos, judges, participates, you name it. I gave this guy a direction.

After I graduated college, I moved about two miles from a climbing gym and find myself just not going. They are designed to be for beginners so most of their routes are just too easy. In addition, they only have 19 foot walls and they have the gri-gris anchored to the floor and they don't want anything attached to the belayer, which is just not how I learned. And the crowd is completely different. People at this gym don't talk to each other. There's no sense of community. The place is alright just to get a change up to my routine but I just don't care for it.

The last time I went was about nine months ago and I've put on twenty pounds of muscle since my heyday of climbing a lot which really makes a difference when go to climb. I stopped lifting to help the muscles needed to climb and just started lifting for size which ironically threw me down to beginner climbing level. And so it goes.

Early workout

My brother was in town for a couple days and due to his lack of communication and planning, I wound up taking him to the airport at three in the morning today. After dropping him off, I headed down to LFF Greenwood to get my workout in and screw around town a little bit before heading home. Keep in mind I had probably all of one hour of sleep the night before, but was on a five hour energy drink and two cups of coffee. My workout started at six in the morning and I have never worked out that early, and decided to work legs and chest since I missed my workout yesterday due to hanging out with my brother. So in short I am completely crazy for going for that combination with no sleep. My legs never seem to wear down enough to just move to a different body part, and the upper part of my legs gets so freaking pumped up now that they rub together when I walk. After getting my legs pumped up ridiculously large, it was time to do the same to my chest. And to that I will just say mission accomplished. I love working out my chest so I always get these workouts right. After that, I did my measurements and found the weight gainer must be working. I only gained one pound but my body fat is way down. So I am definitely getting bigger. That's always good news.

So it was off to my second breakfast of the day so I can get some food down and wait for stores to start opening. After that, I went down the Comics Carnival only to find out they have shut down permanently...That was my favorite comic book store because they had so much cool stuff in addition to the comics. I bought video game soundtracks, toys, obscure movies, and other assorted stuff over the years from them. But they are gone now. So I just went home. Nothing else would have been worth going to. So my day was basically done by nine in the morning. Good thing I chose to sleep the rest of the day away then.

Real Steel

I had a couple free tickets for a preview screening of the movie Real Steel last week, and boy howdy, is this my topic of the day.

Hugh Jackman plays a guy who owns giant robots and uses them to fight for BIG PRIZES only he's kind of an idiot that will take on any appearance and utterly fail right out of the gate. His robot fights a steer at a rodeo only to have the steer completely dismantle the thing within seconds of the right starting. Hugh Jackman just is not doing so hot. And it turns out that he kind of paid to get his kid brought around for a little bit, which kind of makes him a douche as well but who can say no to those muscles, am I right ladies? The kid is your typical whiny child actor and he and his dad fight endlessly.

Jackman bought a new badass samurai looking robot and is now ready to fail harder and faster down at the   robot fighting ring. And fail it does. So after Jackman and the kid go through their silliness, they head out to get pieces to make a new robot from the junkyard.

For some reason they have to sneak in the first few feet of the junkyard and no further. And the kid stupidly falls down a pit and was saved by a robot arm that was sticking out. The kid convinces the dad to take the robot home, clean it up, and see what they can do with it.

From here was somehow even more of an obvious rip-off of "Over The Top" with Sylvester Stallone. The kid takes the robot slowly to the top of the heap and challenges the top robot in the Robot Fighting League (or RoFL) in a joke I just wrote that is so clever I bet your head exploded. I'm patting my own back.

So they take on the robots at the RoFL and win their way to the top only to take a pummeling from a robot shaped like an extreme bodybuilder. Once the tank of a robot breaks the protagonist robot's controls, it gets switched to mimic mode in which it mimics all the moves of Jackman. Thanks to human meddling, the giant robot still wins overall, I guess, but the protagonist robot is congratulated because it was the underdog that made it that far. I think that's what happened. I kind of tuned out by this point.

Basically this movie is an awesome remake of Over The Top. Not a single cliche went unused and way too much time was spent with the hu-mans and not the robots. It's worth a riff once it comes out on dvd.

Charlie Sheen Roast

So last night, I went against all better thought and watched the Charlie Sheen Roast. Given that this guy has basically made a career out of imploding and flameouts, I expected some funny. Too bad I was wrong. Dead wrong. First off, Seth Macfarlane hosted. That douchebag is absolutely unfunny and in addition to smug, he is in love with the sound of his own voice. That's a big ass strike right there. And then they threw in some dude I never heard of and thought he was also a smug asshole. The entire thing came off as over-produced and trying so very hard to be hip and edgy what with the audience constantly making the same stupid reaction to every joke. It was so bad I drove one of my friends down to the gas station so he could buy cigarettes and I could buy a muscle milk and get away from that horrible trainwreck of a tv show. In short, it was as funny as being diagnosed with cancer. Do not watch.

Always gets a laugh

Short post today. Wiki-How has a detailed tutorial on how to hide a boner. And it has over one million views. I always thought this was pretty much instinctual by virtue of being a guy, but apparently I am wrong. Have yourself a laugh and you might just learn something new about yourself.


http://www.wikihow.com/Hide-an-Erection

Today's Stupid Video

Do you remember "Friday" by Rebecca Black? Do you remember just how completely awful that song was especially when paired with a video shot mostly on a green screen with loads of the most world-weary teenagers you've ever seen? Well apparently not a single damn lesson was learned because here is a song and video that are remarkably similar. This plays at my gym job all the time and it's just so stupid I had to make up a dance. Keep in mind that it is likely the funniest dance you will ever see in your life and have a laugh at your imagined comedic genius that I possess.

CXWORX

At my gym job, they unveiled a new core class called CXWORX that I have attended on launch day. Basically this class uses a lot of resistance tube action along with some strange song choices to get your ab workout on.

Now I haven't done a lot of ab workouts since I strained my abs muscles back in February and the weight gainer has me kind of fat right now so this first time didn't go so well for me. Combine this with the fact that I have never done a group fitness class and you can pretty much envision me just trying to take in the atmosphere of this whole thing along with trying to do things right.

To be honest, I really enjoyed it and are planning on getting in there at least once a week for this class. My abs were sore in the good way for the first time in months. Will do again.

Weight Gainer

So yeah, I've been having some difficulty hitting my ultimate goal weight. Granted I'm about 6 pound shy of that goal so it's not too far off. With that said, my co-workers at the gym have been telling me to go to this specific supplement store because the prices are awesome and the owner gives us a ten percent discount on all purchases. And every time I go out to that store I wind up at the comic book store about a mile down the road. I am clearly doing it wrong.

I had the first of three interviews at Costco last week and afterward I just went to the supplement store. I told the owner my ultimate goal weight wise and that I am just a few pounds off. He suggested said weight gainer and wrote down directions for me to use it. I got it for real cheap and went on to get my workout on before closing the gym that night.

So in short I have been using weight gainer for nearly a week now and man this shit makes me sluggish. I sleep at least 12 hours a day and are bloated all the time. My appetite isn't too great either. I haven't weighed myself yet so I don't even know what the outcome has been so far since I haven't weighed myself lately. I can tell you that my workouts have been intense and my shirts are getting smaller. So there's that.

Sore

I finally decided to start putting ab work back into my workouts and I obviously plan to start slowly. Along with legs and back exercises yesterday I did a couple different ab exercises with low weight, low repetition. So after a heavy leg and back day and a light bit of ab work, I finished up and headed out.

Next stop, cancel my membership with Cardinal Fitness. I had been torn on doing this for a while now since I have put on twenty pounds of solid muscle over my three years of membership there. But I haven't been in there since I got laid off from the school and didn't see too much reason to head out there anymore. Additionally, since I work for Lifestyle Family Fitness and have been in there seven days a week either to work, workout, or both I think it silly to keep paying for a membership with a different gym. Ultimately I went in and canceled and really didn't have this strange emotional upheaval I kept expecting. I just knew it was time to move on.

So after that a trip to the mall to screw around for a little bit. F.Y.E. played the entire Foster the People album so I stuck around for a little bit to listen to it. During my screwing around, I had that album, a few nice dvd sets, a few DS games, and other assorted crap before I realized I wasn't really there to buy anything yet. I went over to the GameStop and looked at 3DS games since buying that is also on my eventual purchases list. The dumbass employee I talked with about the 3DS apparently thought I never played a video game in my life, and I never knew that Zelda is a series that has been going on for 25 years now. I kept shooting him down but he kept on this high horse, I'm smarter than you crap so I left. Fucking gamers.

But ultimately last night was a going away party at the bar. The personal trainer manager at my gym took a job with a gym in Chicago and is moving up there. We had wings and pizza and I decided to actually try to act like I drink so I ordered a rum and coke and then several coke refills. Well, the bartender didn't hear me correctly so she filled a tumbler with rum. In thinking it was already mixed, I took a big swig and was in for a surprise. That shit is rough going down. I ordered a coke, drank it down, and then mixed the drink myself. It tasted a lot better and I likely wound up a bit tipsy. Obviously the crowd were from the gym, and were largely the guy's clients so obviously we talked gym stuff all night. It was cool and we had a lot of fun. The party went on downtown and I was pretty much done for the night. Another one of my co-workers wanted me to go bar hopping with him as though he has no idea I am just not a bar person. After a lot of bickering he went on his way and I went home.

So today I woke up really sore in my abs and with a sore throat from yelling over the music at the bar. And after a chest, shoulder, and arm workout today I am sore everywhere else. But somehow one mixed drink and like six cokes left me really ripped, so there's that.

The size seekers

One of my co-workers and workout partner at the gym job has decided to really start training the both of us for size, even more so than I have done in the past. He's a very skinny dude as of right now but has played a lot of sports in high school and college so he knows how to exercise. His plan is for us to do 3 sets of 20-25 reps of each exercise and we alternate stations doing exercises without taking a break. The plan is do be that much more of an intense workout and it will last only an hour rather than an hour and a half to two hours each time. It seems working so far as I am sore from exercise again and I don't try to fit every single possible leg exercise in on leg days. I leave more pumped up than normal so it's all good. Hopefully this new way works and we both put on a good deal of size.

Excalibur

During my teenage years I read a lot of comic books. The Uncanny X-Men was my favorite as it featured Colossus, a hulking Russian dude who can turn his skin to steel. He is a badass, through and through. Shortly after his sister Illyana died and he was written out of the series for a while, I began to look elsewhere for a new comic to enjoy.

And I stumbled upon Excalibur. This series had Nightcrawler and Shadowcat, two X-Men which I also really liked. I came in at an extremely awkward time in the series's run. The entire team was Britanic, Meggan, Daytripper, Nightcrawler, Shadowcat, and Moira MacTaggart. And when I started reading, Douglock was brought in, of which was possibly one revived member of two former New Mutants team members. I enjoyed that these stories had little to nothing to do with the main X-Men stories and therefore have very little impact on their proceedings. Here was a whole new part of the Marvel Universe with a couple somewhat familiar faces and everything was new once again.

So I had to fill in the blanks and get ahold of the earlier issues and was shocked to see that the book was nothing like its present incarnation. I instantly came to like Rachel Summers as Phoenix and the rest of the cast grew on me, despite the fact that most of them had very little to add to the plot. Their dimension hopping and other silliness was so far removed from anything I had read in a comic before. I was engrossed. They faced off against goofy ass villains like Technet, a team of 8-10 beings and each of them had a pretty cool power but they were woefully unable to act as one, and The Crazy Gang, a twisted vision of a bunch of Alice in Wonderland characters. An early issue had a character closely connected to Captain Britain die and replaced by an evil parallel version but it took well over fifty issues for this to even come to a head. And Widget, a small round robot that looked kind of like a floating head took about 40 issues to transform into a really cool looking robot and it took another 20 or so issues to reveal that Widget was actually the future version of Shadowcat from Rachel Summer's timeline who was combined with a Sentinel.

Now I will say that the first 67 issues were really only good when Chris Claremont and/or Alan Davis were writing and mostly when Alan Davis was doing the art. Some fill-in artists on early issues were truly awful. Alan Davis is one of my favorite artists and a panel from issue #50 is tattooed on my body. I keep wanting to get the cover to issue #66 (pictured) tattooed on somewhere as it is my favorite comic book cover of all time.

After Davis left the book sucked outright until Warren Ellis started writing and Colossus joined the team. At the time I didn't know better. I wanted to read anything with Excalibur on the cover. After Warren Ellis left and Ben Raab wrote the book just petered out to cancellation. Raab was a horrible writer, though I will admit he got better the more issues he wrote. From issue #68 on the book had little to do with anything Claremont and Davis did. It went from odd little stories and dimension hopping to X-Men style action stories. I stuck this book out all the way to the end because I liked those characters.

I have all of the trade paperbacks put out for this series and everything that is worth a damn is out. I have my doubts these would be huge sellers. The series as a whole seemed geared toward my own entertainment needs and those are very specific.

Stupid music video of the day

Today's stupid video and song is about being "Free, free, free, free, free. The night is young. Free, free, free, free, free, free." It is sung by a woman who is clearly dealing with aging and desperately wants to connect with the younglings. I guess that really is all I have to say about this.

Band ideas

Over the years I have wanted or attempted to join/start a band several times and each time it fails. So today I shall speak of my genius ideas that have never come to fruition and you will pretty much see why I just will never be in a band.

First off, I have absolutely no musical ability which would make me a shoe-in for punk. I can punk sing, talk sing, and kind of hardcore scream. That's quite the range right there. Why aren't people lined up at my door?

Back in my first years of college, a couple of my friends who were in bands wanted to start a band called nerdcore and have me sing/scream the lyrics. Every song would have been about how Microsoft is evil. Obviously this never happened. And it's really just a one trick pony.

So a few years later, I wanted to start a band called Madame Maria and Her Twirling Ass-Ponies in which we would do covers of a wide variety of songs from indie rock to 80s New Wave. So obviously my built-up ass would be strutting around shirtless on stage for all of these songs. But the real kicker? Madame Maria is a lady who stands off to the side making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches during our live performances when she's not providing backup vocals. She hands out sandwiches and dudes walk away feeling good. Performance art!

And more recently I have been rolling around the idea of a cover band where we only cover songs that have backup vocals. And the comic twist here? All of the backup vocals are not sang but rather very plaintively stated.

As you can see, I have a ton of great ideas! You should probably go ahead and subscribe to this newsletter.

Going full retard

I have bitched about the media lot in my previous blog and have yet to really get back into that with this blog. But I have to post this lovely bit of utter stupidity from MSNBC's site:

"Sorry you're sick, but wow, you're
so skinny!

People suffering from illnesses often get weight loss compliments."

That's American news media folks. It's no wonder people are so stupid.

Direction

Since being laid off, I've been throwing the idea around of going back to school. For what? Physical Therapy, Nutrition, Exercise Science, Accounting, or even going to Gallaudet University for Sign Language interpretation and K-12 physical education. Thoughts, anyone?

Exerciser

Kind of short. There was a guy that worked out at my gym who had been working with our biggest trainer. This trainer is a massive dude and I would like to eventually get some sessions in with him also. So this trainer had this guy do this ridiculously hard bicep curls and this guy basically had me spotting him and more or less pushing the bar into his chest when he fatigued. Now that I know it's a good one for size, I've been trying like hell to build myself up to be able to do it. What is this exercise? Well, you do it on the bicep machine. I chose 30 pounds to start. It's 20 reps at 30 pounds, then 15 reps at 45 pounds, 10 reps at 60 pounds, 8 reps at 75 pounds, 8 reps at 90 pounds and then 8 reps at 105 pounds. You do this all straight through, take a couple minute rest and then start at 8 reps at 105 pounds and then back up to 20 reps at 30 pounds. Needless to say, it's just too much for me. However, today was the first day I've been able to make it halfway through this madness. I wasn't able to do any other bicep exercises but that's fine. Halfway is a lot further than I've done previously.

The other one is a set of pushups that are rough. You start with diamond pushups for ten reps, then to neutral pushups for ten reps, wide pushups for ten reps, and then neutrals pushups and back down to diamond pushups. I have to rest before the final set of diamond pushups, which isn't too bad.

And I've finally started to do ab exercises again since straining those muscles twice. I've been going real light on them.

I'm close to my goal weight and I keep finding new ways to put more stress on my body for bigger muscles, which is great. The only drawback is that I'm getting very close to getting stretch marks along the edges of my chest. I need to get cocoa butter to take care of that.

Troll feeding

I have come to really like the band Foster the People. "Pumped Up Kicks" took some time to grow on me but "Houdini" is such a great song that it sold me on these guys. The music videos for these two songs were basically comprised of the band playing in bars. Nothing groundbreaking but with YouTube does it really matter how artfully done the music video is anymore? Well, this band went ahead and made a music video for the song "Helena Beat." This song is decent, nothing too memorable in my book, but the video is the very definition of trying too hard. Let's watch, shall we? I'm trying to post the video under the text but apparently either I'm a moron because it will either post above or next to the text.


So anyway, some dumbass posted this comment: the symbolism in this video is satanic in nature,,,to the avg person this seems like just another creepy video but theres much more lurking in the shadows,,,the concept of the new man,,,,transhumanism, the luciferian initiation,,,the destruction of the old world to bring in the new world order,,,where evil reigns supreme,,,truth is trampled upon and the father of lies prevails
Wow that was deep. You have to admire certain people's ability to see the devil in absolutely everything. The use of commas like that makes this person look so much more intelligent. So anyway, I knew better than to comment. You ignore the trolls, not feed them. But I didn't. I commented anyway, and it was to the effect of "Michelle Bachmann is here to set us straight. Hooray!" Then I got this beautiful message:

you need to look into the nazi concept of the new man,,,thats right,,,,THE NEW MAN,,,then look up transhumanism,,,and then the RFID technology,,,then look up satanism in the music industry,,,,then look up the new world order,,,,then go to the website the rainbow swastika,,,,the concept being portrayed in that video is not new,,,,theres a meaning behind it,,,but unless youre really into the occult you wouldnt understand,, ,,,this is a promotion of a satanic agenda,,,this is not hidden ,,,,this is not a secret,,,its common knowledge for anyone who follows politics on a serious level,,,a world government is being put together,,,thats why you see all of these gov around the world imploding at the same time,,,
and what you see in that vid is social engineering its not new,,,look into it,,,this isnt a joke,,,this is serious

In short? Loved it. Here is someone who took a goofy music video to an entirely new level. I didn't even reply to this person. This level of clear stupidity/trolling is something I am not even going to deal with.

Pretentiousness

This video plays quite a bit at the gym where I work. It is, in my opinion the height of pretension. Watch and see for yourself:

I made a student film in college where I over-act every emotion available. It was in black and white and kind of a parody of those learning films from the 50s and kind of a parody of silly arthouse flicks. This somehow puts me in mind of that. It also puts me in mind of this classic clip from The Critic:

So in short, don't be all high and mighty with your art.

Gyms

Three years ago, I took a tour of LifeTime Fitness because it has a climbing area, two large basketball courts, five raquetball courts, three pools, two hot tubs, cardio equipment, the all important weights, group fitness rooms, a pilates room, a spa, cafe, chiropractor, daycare, and towel service. The weights, climbing area, and hot tubs appealed to me. So anyway, I got walked around the gym by a mostly plastic chick who really didn't seem to give a shit about her job. She quickly rushed me around and didn't even show me the weights. We walked upstairs and very quickly back down to her office. I learned that this place, while posh, was out of my price range. So I left it alone and tried like hell to get a part time job there only to be ignored entirely.

So then I went down to Cardinal Fitness and signed up that day since they waived all the fees and I only have to pay twenty a month. Sure the place is only weights and cardio, but that place has put nearly thirty pounds of muscle on me. I seriously went from being one of the most normal sized people there to becoming one of the biggest. I love that place and its people.

And then I got hired at Lifestyle Family Fitness nearly a year ago. I have very slowly warmed up to this group of people and while I mostly work out at Cardinal Fitness, I enjoy workouts at Lifestyle. Lifestyle has a gym nearly three times the size of Cardinal Fitness and the group fitness classes and all that. All of their machines are great and a number of them work different angles than the machines at Cardinal. It is a nice addition to Cardinal so that I can put on more size.

So finally today, I decided to "mystery shop" LifeTime Fitness. I went in and got handed a sales rep that didn't even listen to a word I said, charged me thirty bucks for a day pass, and let me on my way. I was there nearly three hours today working out and farting around. Their weight area really did not impress me. Most of them are old machines that don't even max out at a good weight for me. The squat racks were just too short for me so I didn't even bother. So I maxxed out just about all the leg machines and then moved on to my chest. After a very mediocre leg workout I started my chest with many a pushup because I didn't even want that to go badly. I did chest for about an hour and then decided to go on and check out the rest of the facility. The climbing area was closed the entire time. I didn't want to play in the raquetball court by myself so I skipped it and I don't like basketball so I skipped it too. I donned some swim trunks and headed into the hot tub for a bit. It wasn't as hot as the hot tub at one of the Lifestyle Family Fitness gyms but whatever. I sat in for about fifteen minutes and then farted around in the outdoor pool for a little bit before heading back into a hot tub. After drying off and putting my shirt back on, I checked the climbing area one more time so see it was still closed. Sucks. Oh, and they do not allow gum chewing in the weights area, which is completely and totally stupid. In the end, I am left with neither a good or a bad opinion of that gym. I certainly would not be able to put on a lot more size, but the climbing area is pretty sweet, it it is ever open. I could easily see myself spending two-three hours a day there if I had a membership but at their prices it just wouldn't be worth it. Their sales reps outright suck. So in the end, I learned that I really am happy with my gyms and this "Cadillac" of a gym was just dressed up real pretty with not a lot to really help me reach my fitness goal. So I guess learning that the grass is always greener was my lesson for the day.

Now back to Cardinal and Lifestyle to focus of getting bigger.

This chest is on fire

So once again I got turned down for a new job...

So I headed off to the gym after work and blasted out my chest in a way I have never done before. Climbing pushups with the Smith Machine at 12-20 reps at each notch; Dips 3 sets narrow grip 10 reps and 4 sets wide grip 10 reps each; Pec Deck at 3 sets 220 pounds with ten reps, Military Press 120 pounds with 3 sets and 10 reps; Incline press 145 pounds 3 sets 12 reps; Incline dumbell flyes 40 pound dumbells at 4 sets with 12 reps; Decline bench 135 pounds with 3 sets 10 reps; Flat bench 155 pounds at 3 sets 10-12 reps; Cable chest flyes 40 pounds in each hand with 4 sets 8 reps and finally decline pushups on a Bosu platform until failure which by that point it was about 15 reps. All of this took place in the span of 45 minutes.

Is that overtraining? Oh very likely. But my chest can take quite the beating and come out larger so I am fine with that. I am very surprised I do not have more stretch marks from today and I wore a full shirt to work out in. I've gotten so used to sleeveless and slit shirts for working out which is much better for me once I get pumped up. An uncut shirt just gets real tight.

My chest is burning along with my lats. And I am so unbelievably sick of job searching so I sit here in a deep depression. I likely will not sleep tonight.

Good or bad?

The following three songs have qualities about them that I like, but at the same time there are qualities I really dislike. With that in mind, here are songs that walk the line for me. Are they good? Are they bad? Or are they just part of the middle ground?

Rune Factory

Today's topic of conversation is a video game series. The game series "Harvest Moon" is definitely a Japanese outing in which you farm, raise animals, and pick yourself a wife from a small range of ladies living in the nearby town. Sounds boring? Oh hell yes. I will say that a good portion of the Harvest Moon games pretty much suck and that they are all largely the same game, but there are games in this series that are addictive and a good time.

But Harvest Moon is missing a major gameplay amenity that would send it up quite a bit higher on my list of great games. That thing would be adventuring in dungeons and fighting enemies. So the series "Rune Factory" sets out to fix that problem. Again, all the games are very similar - the hero wakes up with amnesia outside a town and is given a house and farmland and slowly becomes part of the town as he farms his way to their hearts and fights bosses in order to learn more of his past and save the town from eventual destruction. Now that's a game I can sink my teeth into!

I will say that the first Rune Factory is the weakest one. Everyone is very polygonal, in a bad way. You get some pretty nasty slowdown if there's too much going on the screen, which actually makes the last couple boss fights extremely easy. You can pick a wife but it has not a single bearing on what happens after and she has a baby down the line and that baby does not grow up at all. And you can absolutely break the game by mining rocks and selling all the expensive ores you get. I traded this one in for a different game after I beat it just because I knew I would never touch it again.

Rune Factory 2 starts out pretty weak like the first one, but once you get a wife and she has a kid, the game moves forward until the kid is around ten years old and the kid becomes the star of the game since the father has disappeared shortly after the wife gave birth. The kid can sit through classes and learn how to make things and he's small enough to get through all the barriers blocking off most of the dungeons from the father. The story gets pretty damned ludicrous in the final act where the kid learns his father went out to fight a dragon once he regained his memory only to be felled by said dragon. The dad's ghost helps the son fight the dragon at the end of the last main dungeon and you get the second round of end game credits. After that, there's a series of bonus dungeons that will allow the kid to revive his dad after all is said and done, thus leading to a third round of end game credits. This is a great game out of sheer length.

Rune Factory 3 streamlines a lot of things that needed to be streamlined. The hero moves a lot faster, and there are dual swords which are far more badass than the rest of the weapons. Farming goes a lot faster. So this hero is a half-monster and half-human and it's his job to ultimately bring together the people of the town and the nearby monster village. This is a fantastic game out of sheer gameplay.

The nice thing about this series is that there is not a single thing pushing you to get the story moved forward. You can fart around the farm all day, mine for ore, try to land a lady, whatever you want and there's no consequence for taking forever to do it. It is the best game for dicking around on a lazy day.

Muscle

I've been reading the book Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder again and today I shall talk about it. Basically this is the story of a skinny college grad who's journey into bodybuilding takes him into bizarre and dizzying lows. The young lad graduated an Ivy League college and finds himself in New York scared of everything around him. He can not go a day without the fear of being attacked or mugged, so this fear led him into the YMCA where his plan is to get so grotesquely swole up that no one will ever mess with him. He takes up with the biggest guys there and very quickly rises among the gym's ranks. He turns his back on his job with a publishing company, his family, and his entire upbringing as he takes residence inside a tiny little basement in order to continue his quest for ludicrous size. After hitting a plateau, he decides to head to California to break the plateau and continue growing forever. While there, he moves in with three bodybuilders who all use steroids heavily and get him started on it. And finally comes the competitions, they being the bench press in addition to the tiny pants one. At that point, the realization that this is all been one long joke finally hits him backstage before a bodybuilding competition. After finishing on stage, he ultimately walked away from bodybuilding and back into the life he led back in the beginning of the story.

While this may or may not be partially fabricated doesn't really matter. I really enjoyed the read. This guy peppers his college learning and thus observations throughout his experiences. I really liked the blunt and pointed psychological observations as I tend to think a lot in that same fashion.

I understood being skinny and wanting to overcome that and thankfully I have the mind to know that there will be a stopping point for me. I have no desire to morph into a muscle balloon like the author, and is largely due to the fact that I am not doing it out of fear. I also have no desire to walk across a stage mostly naked showing off my body and have no idea why that seems to be the end all of muscle building. You can be built up and not have to have your body judged while you flex for an audience.

Anyway, I recommend the read if you are into fitness and are a total nerd, like myself.

Ramblin' man

Wednesday, I finally managed to bring my chest to failure during a workout. It was pretty cool even though it took nearly an hour to get there. I really could not pick up another weight to use on my chest. I was pumped so damned hard.

So after that, I took Thursday off in order to rest and not work out six days this week. I've been back on that schedule though it was kind of by accident. There's a new sales guy at the gym and he needs to bulk it up a bit. He's short and very skinny and he wants about 40 pounds of mass put on him. Since I passed up the 40 pounds gained marked a long time ago, I feel like the best man for the job. Or at least the free man for the job. So after work on Sundays, he and I go through the exercises that will quickly put on size. He's very weak as well so he does his weight and I do my normal weight which doesn't help his self-esteem. I try to do a short round of exercises with him knowing that he's not going to last an hour and a half and still be able to finish his shift at work, but I still go pretty intense for myself. Anyway, why not take Friday and Saturday off instead? Fridays are the days I really are stoked on chest exercises and can't wait to hammer until I'm pumped up big.

So today, I went in for a workout after an interview that I feel went mostly well. Again, I will have to hear from them and I know how well that's gone lately so why would this go any different? And today I took my legs to failure for the first time. Again, I took a hell of a lot to get there and my thighs were rubbing together by the time I was done. I'm sure that's going to be permanent soon. After I could not move another weight with my legs I moved on to chest and obviously went a bit lighter than I did on Wednesday. I noticed my left shoulder was extremely tight near the end of my workout when I was doing flat bench presses. So after that, I donned my swim trunks and headed into the pool to relax my shoulder muscles. I spent a good deal of time on shoulder stretches underwater and attempts at swim strokes. After that I sat in the hot tub with a jet shooting right into my left shoulder. It loosened up quite a bit and I definitely need to give it a rest.

Obviously I am under a hell of a lot of stress which makes me work out a lot more. And every time I work out six days a week I gain a pound a week versus 1.5 - 2 pounds gained a month working out five days a week. Yes it will get me to my goal that much faster but there's only so long I can do that before I injure myself. I'm 216 pounds now and I definitely look different. Also working out six days a week increases my appetite tenfold. Where I will drink a cup of milk with whey protein after a workout under normal circumstances, I drink damn near half a gallon of chocolate milk, eat two no-bake cookies (my favorite cookies) and a handful of peanuts before going on to make dinner. It's impossible for me to regulate eating when I work out six days a week. And today I took in about 1200 calories for lunch. I was nervous before the interview so I stopped at McDonald's for sweet tea and ended up with a sweet tea, ten nuggets, fries, two apple pies, and a small caramel coffee that one of the ladies made for some reason. I got the coffee for free. The lady claimed she made it when she didn't need to and needed to get rid of it. I know that's code for "I want your body." So I drank her coffee.

Where was I going with all this? Yes, I'm still getting big and it's still very cool. Once again, I might have a new job. And yes, I have come to love sitting in the hot tub.

Gimmick shoes

Since I will eventually be buying shoes for running, I have been thinking about getting "performance" style shoes that will aid more in my quest for the last few pounds of muscle I want to put on. With that said, I went over to Dick's to check their selection. These shoes should offer at least at much support as running shoes. I found a pair of Reeboks that I liked but the tops were made of this cheap ass looking canvas I'm sure I will tear through in a week. So no I'm not buying. But what brings me to this blog are the sheer amount of shoes claiming to help you with support, toning your ass and all manner of things. I get a laugh at the ridiculousness as my cynical side can't seem to buy into it. The big one right now are the Reebok Zig Zags and they have this silly looking soles that claim to take the shock out of your legs during a workout, run, tennis, skydiving, whatever. The tops are also that cheap canvas, by the way. So I tried them on just to see how they felt and I must say it was a good feel walking around in them, which kind of surprised me. But they added about two inches of height on me and being a very tall man already this wouldn't seem to help matters in the gym. Would these shoes do what they claim? I'll never know.

Quick question

This is a famous song from the 80s by the band Dire Straits. And this is a reworked version of the song with the singer from Dire Straights and a woman. Listen closely and tell me which one is the lazier singer. It's a real horse race.

X Songs part 4

Sociology Major after all

Recently I learned that IU is doing away with their Continuing Studies program as of next year. This leaves me more than a little pissed. And why would that be? Read on...

So back when I was at IU, I had to take College Algebra as part of my pre-requisites to graduate. Fair enough, I thought. That level of algebra is very much a weak point of mine. I failed through it in high school and I managed to pass Basic Algebra back at VU after a few attempts and landing in a class that taught it entirely on a scientific calculator. My advisor at IU strongly recommended I take this class through the summer because it is shorter and quite easier, I was told. So I did that. And I failed it very early on. And I could not drop the class due to financial aid so I had to fail all the way through to the end. And of a class that started out with something like seventeen people, only five passed. And we had a teacher who could not ever explain correctly how these problems work, and would often get the wrong answer when doing it on the board and tell us he got the wrong answer and then say that it was fine since we know how to do it anyway. The teacher could not explain half the shit we had to learn in terms we could all understand, and the tutors at the math lab treated us like we were total morons for even asking how these problems work. I had never taken quite a beating before in my life.

So in the midst of all this, I went to the Continuing Studies program because it was my last ditch, I want the hell out of college with a goddamned degree, effort at finishing this thing that never seemed to end. Despite all the credit hours I already had, I had to take an additional 20 credit hours in order to get this degree. Were they pumping me for more money? Oh, you bet! With that, only six credit hours were necessary to complete a minor in Telecommunications. All the rest were blow-off classes, which was good as my GPA took quite the beating with an F due to that algebra class. I took a nutrition class which I got quite a bit of real world skills out of because it really helped me learn how to eat for size.

So I graduated with a degree that is useless in a concentration that is going away within a year. Isn't that special? So from here on, I am a Sociology major. That won't change anything with the usefulness of my degree but at least I feel that I can call it the degree I went there for to begin with. No one really checks that stuff so whatevs, I says.

Really now

Since I have yet to have found a new job, I decided it might be a decent idea to apply to a company I had worked at for three years prior and try my hand at getting a pharmacy tech position with them. My god that was too much to ask.

I get called for the interview last Friday and nothing was said as to what position I would be interviewing for, but they wanted to to come in on Sunday right after my shift at the gym for an interview. I agreed to do so and asked outright if this is for a pharmacy tech position and they lady on the phone only replied with "I have no idea, I was just told to call you." Knowing this was going to turn out to be something ridiculous instead of what I want, I decided what the hell I need a new job anyway.

So Sunday comes around and I finish my shift at the gym, squeeze my big ass shoulders and chest into a tiny shirt, and I went up for the interview. Once it started, I noticed that on my application was a post-it note that read "Cashier" and was underlined. Knowing immediately where this thing was going, I was trying to find the best possible place to say that I did not even apply for that position without destroying the interview entirely. The Human Resource moron was going over how I have to have open availability if I am to be a full-time cashier and working the gym on weekends was just not going to fly with this company. Knowing that this job would be a giant pay cut, I finally brought up the fact that I already worked for this company before.

At that point, I watched the interviewer unravel entirely. He went over my application and saw that yes indeed I already worked there, and was a meat clerk last time. He also finally found out that I have a couple college degrees, and that I applied to work in the pharmacy. In short, he never read the application. I very politely called him a total dumbass and he told me he would look into the pharmacy to see if they could take anybody. He also tried to veer back to the cashier interview but nothing doing. He lost all control and I was good and pissed for him wasting my time in a few ways.

So yes, this is the distillation of everything I've been dealing with in this job search.

Small block

I finally got my A/C/I CPR + AED certification this weekend. Having been certified a couple times through the American Red Cross, I must admit that the American Heart Association session was different. Not enough to really throw a person off, obviously, but different enough. But obviously it was very easy for me to get. And with that said, a small block in my way has finally been removed. I can now go for a few more gym jobs that I need to have this certification for.

I had been wanting to get this done for quite some time, but would always balk at paying for it myself since I used to get it for free through work. But since I work at a gym now, I am once again able to get it for free. With this done, and with some other news coming down the pike, I may finally get my trainer license finished after all and start training people part time to live healthier or more muscular lives. It's their choice.

Time to redouble on the job search effort now, but I never know. I may just have one soon...

25 Things

This is from a posting from an old blog. It all still stands today so I figured I would post it here as well. One could argue I am trying to fill out a blog, and you would be correct. I am not particularly in the mood to write new material tonight.

1. Dragon Quest is my favorite video game series and I base entire console purchases on where it's going to be. No other video games have that kind of hold on me.
2. I never played sports until the day I graduated high school and that's when I took up skateboarding.
3. I skateboard a lot less these days because of age and I've moved more into weightlifting and climbing, but I still consider my skate my best friend.
4. I am one angular badass.
5. I have partial sleeve tattoos. One arm is black and the other is a negative of shattered glass with a heart in it. Also there are negative Xs inside my arms because I am straight edge. Why tattoos that bold? You won't find that out in a list like this...
6. I have my third straight edge X on my chest over my heart and it is literally an X I scribbled out while in class. It's rudimentary but it's my favorite.
7. I have gained at least fifty pounds since I started lifting weights in 2006.
8. I have a book on straight edge that I am working on and two comic books series that are loosely based on my life in high school and I seriously want to get one of these published.
9. I am a published writer. A short story that I wrote over a week at about three in the morning for a class at Vincennes University got published in their annual Tecumseh Review, though I really don't think it to be my best work...
10. I tried to get published at IU through the Canvas Arts Magazine with a narrative titled "Eating Asphalt" in which I told in great detail of the first time I ate shit skateboarding. It didn't get published, I accidentally lost the file, and then was pissed to see a narrative about a college student having his first boner while watching "Saved By The Bell."
11. I lift weights five days a week and enjoy a good long meditation session afterwards every time.
12. I have no idea what I want to do with my life, where I ultimately want to be, and all the attendant things that go with it, and are stressed about it just about every day.
13. I loves the punk rock, emo, and hardcore in small doses, but I feel that all music these days just totally sucks. I still can't figure out if it's just me or if it really is this bad.
14. Believe it or not, The B52s were my first favorite band and they had an album come out last year and I fell in love all over again. Those guys really know what entertains me.
15. I've saved lives.
16. I'm smart as hell and love to be a smart ass.
17. I really don't consider myself to be a good looking person.
18. I know American Sign Language, took it at IU, and really want to do something with it career-wise, though I have no idea where to start. I keep thinking that being a personal trainer for deaf people would be quite an awesome job though.
19. I'm not planning on a long term girlfriend until I start to get it all sorted out and I don't want kids. And yes, I'm fine with being a genetic dead-end.
20. I tend to think. A lot.
21. I love bad movies, and picking out a bad movie to watch is an artform. And talking about said bad movies on my myspace blog is a whole other artform that usually involves laziness, apathy, or pure rage.
22. I've worked pretty much the widest range of jobs imaginable and I kicked ass at all of them.
23. I had a friend from high school live with me for a couple weeks when I lived in Greenwood while she found her own place and events one night led me to piss in a milk jug in the laundry room in my building, then take the milk jug to the dumpster across the parking lot to throw it out.
24. Overall, I regret moving to Bloomington and going to IU. Hoosier Heights, the SRSC, and friends made along the way are the exception.
25. I love long drives and they really help me clear my head.

X Songs part 3

Rarity these days

For new music that I like, it just seems like songs I like are getting fewer and further between. But this one is pretty damned awesome. Way to go!

Blue Mile

So in preparation for whenever the hell I get a new job, I dropped by a running store today to get an idea of pricing on running shoes should I ever get around to talking to a National Guard recruiter and making a decision on the military or going for a job with a police precinct again. And in general I should start running a pretty regularly as my cardio is not very good and my size is ever increasing.

Fishers has a store called Blue Mile and they check out how you run on a treadmill and find the best shoes for you. So I took my shoes off, rolled up my pants, and hopped on the treadmill for a short recording. They played back the video of my run and it turns out that I am a forefoot striker and they say I have a very efficient run. To me an efficient run just means I wear myself out faster, amirite?

They pull out some shoes for me to try out that are more tailored for forefoot strikers. I tried them all on and could not get over the fact that the are all so bouncy, and garish (for lack of a better word) colored. I asked for more subdued colors, because as you know, for me it's all black or nothing. Turns out they did not have anything that wasn't quite so bright and with my size shoe I feel like I'm wearing clown shoes.

So I passed on it for now. I will get back to it whenever the hell I get a new job and hopefully I can find something a little less bright. Something tells me that just isn't going to happen.

Old soldier

So apparently that short blurb about me breaking a toilet seat again is the most popular post on this blog. Either that speaks to my writing ability or the quality of this blog. With that in mind, who would like to see a little more of a continuation of the old blog, i.e. a little more bitching about movies, the media and such?

Adventureland

A big thing I enjoyed about skateboarding was the adventure. To me it was to actually see and experience my surroundings in a much more complete way than it was to just sit in the car and drive around town. I have been on every single street in Vincennes, Greenwood, Winamac, Bloomington, and Monticello on my skate and I have rolled around on much of Evansville, Terre Haute, Castleton, Fishers, Huntingburg, and the south side of Indianapolis. I remember every single road I have touched with those four wheels. Days off from school meant I would throw my board in my car and go somewhere and just ride around all day long. My legs would completely give out on me after about eight hours and I would very slowly walk back to the car. There was always something so liberating about being alone with my four wheeled friend, something that gave me time to think, something that truly made me believe I would be able to find myself and this alien thing called happiness. There was nothing more exciting than coming over the hill in Evansville at night as downtown opened up in front of me. Downtown used to only be open to walking traffic so that was even better. And the street that ran along the river was really a sight. Today as I think back it was my favorite place because it was just so different from home and Vincennes, but tomorrow I may think I liked somewhere else more.

I always loved going for a ride at night. The air felt cleaner. With fewer people on the road I feel more free to move around. The city felt like it was mine, and had nothing but hidden spots and new places to see every time.

Down by the river in Vincennes I learned to ollie. It was also in that park where I really ate shit for the first time.

I guess I really do miss those experiences sometimes.

Literary joke of the day

Does anyone want to pull my John Galt?

Only if I don't get sprayed by your little fountainhead.

Food

A couple years ago when I went to my family reunion down in Kentucky, my mom's cousin was just blown away with how much I have physically changed since the last time he saw me. I became a man, and in his mind, a bodybuilder. He always went back to how much he's astounded with how much I have changed. The morning Mom, Grandma and I left, we had breakfast with a good portion of the family. Her cousin was there telling me about his bodybuilder friend. After I ate everything on my plate, he heaped more on there telling me I need to get bigger. Not being one to argue about that, I ate everything he put on my plate too.

Today, I worked on a computer for a guy from the gym and he cooked himself, his wife, and I burgers for dinner. He and his wife had a burger and a half ear of corn each, and he put two burger and two ear of corn on my plate. Now I don't eat like that on a normal day so I was a little surprised by my portion size. I ate everything regardless. But that just leaves me wondering how much they think I must need to take in and how big they think I should be.

Result

As for the result of the PT test - I failed the mile and a half run, but only by thirty seconds. As it went, I was seeing stars and my vision was starting to white out entirely so there was no way I could push myself harder without doing damage. Am I disappointed? Yes. Am I going to be depressed out it? No.

Some background information - I have never been a very good runner. We would have to do the mile in elementary school and up and I would always come in dead last. At Vincennes University, I took a running class because a friend wanted us to be in a class together and I would pull my right knee out something terrible every single time we would have to do a long run. The pain was horrible and I would limp the rest of the way, and I would have a bad limp for a few days after, which was usually time for another long run. I bought a soft knee brace but that only helped to a degree and my legs are so large now I would have no hope of wearing it again. I learned that my knees were fine skateboarding, and skateboarding was so much more fun anyway, that I would just do that instead. Every waking minute of the day.

So once I got the details of the test, I pretty much panicked. I'm nearly 75 pounds heavier now than I was then, and granted it's all muscle, but would being larger and older mean I would pull out my knee again? To me it almost seemed certain. I ran three days a week, as blogged about, and then did the rest of my exercises. The running usually went alright, also as blogged about. But I just had this feeling I would not be able to do it. I kept chugging away. Surprisingly I never once pulled my knee out.

The big day came along with excitement, adrenaline, and of course very little sleep. How would this thing play out? I've never done something like this before. It's certainly not the time to strut around in a cut-off baring the guns, shoulders, and some chest. I got some coffee and carb loaded beforehand. The other tests were very easy, but the sprint portion came and I pretty much started to doubt myself. I passed it and then the mile and a half came and I knew it was over. I pushed myself just short of bringing myself harm and failed.

On the way back in, two cops pep talked me, told me I have a great build and are clearly fit but need to run while I was snorting back snot, sucking air, covered in sweat, and seeing stars. They were very nice and told me to try again next time around and with just a little training I should vastly improve. I thanked them and limped to the car ahead of the rest of the crew.

I drove down to the nearest McDonald's for breakfast. After getting food, the adrenaline hit my like a bat to the back of the head. It hit so hard I was not sure if I would puke or pass out if I ate anything so I made a bunch of phone calls and stared at the food until the adrenaline surge passed.

After it passed, I felt as though someone else piloted my body through that test. It was such a strange disconnection from what I had experienced so early that morning. Yes I was sore but those memories do not feel as though they are entirely mine.

In the end, I am glad to know I can run without pulling my knee out. To me, 30 seconds off feels as though I cleared it and then said no to moving on. I can have some degree of running ability despite my age and size. And for the first time at a police department function, I feel as though I did pretty damn good.

Will I try it again? Possibly, but I need a new full time job first.

Not all that different

Through each phase of your life, you retain parts of it that ultimately make you unique. I, for one, have many a mental/emotional/physical scar, buzzed hair, stretched earlobes, and tattoos. Today, I will talk about smaller things that tie together.

Since I have been training for the police department tests, I attempted to buy a pair of shoes that are supposed to be more suited for running. In short they did not work for me. Why is that? I have never before wore a pair of shoes to do a specific thing. Since my skateboarding days I have worn Vans or something very similar to Vans, you know, something with very little padding and what I feel to be a great tread. Every pair is designed to be eaten by my skateboard so it does not matter how they look or how much mud and crap I step through. These are dude shoes. In the end, I went back to my regular shoes for running as they just do not do it for me. My regular shoes just feel natural. Is it bad? No, it is what I know.

Which brings me to another topic that may sound dumb. How have I found my talent in weightlifting? My skateboard. I have never been a great skater, but I have been a functional skater. If it helped me loco-mote I learned it. With that in mind, after studying pictures of other skaters pulling tricks and watching videos of pros pulling tricks, I obviously learned what these tricks are. Now as you think about it, these tricks tend to work your muscles at different angles in different ways. I eventually started to see these as different exercises. An ollie works you differently than just rolling off a curb. If I just ride around for hours on end, that is less exercise than adding in Porn Stars, End-Overs, Monster Walks, Ollies, along with attempts at Hospital Flips, Kickflips, Dropping in, and so forth. As skateboarding phased out and weightlifting phased in I slowly started to kind of apply the principal in the same way. My body is now the board and each exercise is a trick I can do. Like this week with only doing bodyweight stuff, I go from neutral grip pull-ups to chinups to attempts at burpees and then on to dips and a good ton of pushups. I don't know if this makes sense to anyone but myself but here's why I have gotten so good at putting on size.

And today I was doing pushups on the Smith Machine going up a notch until about level with my chest and back down and I really went slow and took notice of my muscles in action. It was very cool.

It really is still so hard to imagine this hard edged straight edger has become such a man of size and reason. Maybe one day I will have all the pieces of myself stitched together right.