Exercise Log: December 8 - 12

I ran, biked and walked 27.65 miles, burned 2357 calories and weigh 141.4 pounds.

Light week in terms of exercise because of Radio MASH. Very successful - collected toys for about 5,400 children. Once again, the Brazos Valley comes through.

Received an early Christmas present in the form of a Garmin Forerunner 405. Used for my 18 mile training run this morning. Collected all kinds of interesting data. I can run quite fast in short bursts even during the latter part of a long run.

Need to set the distance units back to non-metric. Accidentally set them to metric while playing with settings last night.

Icky Female Content

This post contains icky female content. If you're squeamish go away now. Here is a nice place: http://ihasahotdog.com/

I await menopause with great anticipation. Please get here soon. I'm tired of this monthly bullshit. 27 fucking years so far. Maybe I shouldn't be so angry and bitchy about a natural process but the copious amounts of Midol I've taken so far don't seem to be working. I'm in pain and I want it to stop. Please don't justify it with Old Testament theology. Adam & Eve ate the damn fruit and I get punished with this pain.

Wonder why women get so damn bitchy once a month? Guys, imagine this: starting around age 13, every month, someone visits your home, work or school and hits your nads with a baseball bat. After a while you might get a little pissed off at this and maybe give a hearty fuck you to anyone who says that this is natural and part of God's plan or punishment. Maybe get a little peeved when medical people and others don't take your pain seriously.

The over the counter meds suck. But because of some stupid crackers that lack self control I can't access more effective medicine without visiting a doctor who will probably say it's just female problems and not that bad compared to others. I am stronger and have better self-control - give me something effective.

At the moment I don't give a shit about the magnitude of others' pain. I just want mine to stop. 1,500 milligrams of acetaminophen and I still feel like someone is slicing my abdomen from the inside. I'm just pissed off that I've endured this crap for 27 years and there is no one I can blame, punch or shout at. At least the there is an entity in the bat analogy written above.

I don't know how or why I've endured this shit for 27 years. If I person did this to me I would have done something long ago. The pain will pass and I will forget about it until next month.

In about 5 minutes the office holiday luncheon will start. I have to make nice even though I don't feel nice. The annoying part is that this crap is joked about, trivialized and women are taunted if they express a bit of irritation because of this. Men injuring their nads is considered comedy gold but no one expects a man to be nice & polite while enduring the pain.

I'm in pain and I don't want to be nice. I just want it to go away and some space to be grumpy until it does.

Santa, I want menopause this year and an Evel Knievel stunt bike set.

Lunch 9/9/09

Healthy Choice Grilled Chicken Teriyaki - the package. Nice design with the exclamation point.

The reality after microwaving:

The apple stuff always splashes into the broccoli. Piece of broccoli invaded apple stuff compartment. No pineapple. Sauce off target.

Radioactive

Neat trick. Adrian does her impression of the Virgin of Guadalupe. I wonder if that will leave a mark on the wall?

Adrian, take your fingers out of your mouth otherwise you will spread the flu virus. Should we call you "H1N1 Adrian"?

Excitement in Mary Worth!

I bet Joe Giella had a great time drawing that second panel. After weeks of drawing old people sitting around eating salmon squares he finally gets to draw some action. I hope this raid gets caught up in the Mary Worth time glacier. Days and weeks of glorious police action.

Santa Royale police could not afford a megaphone or helmets. Budget cuts.

How much protection does sitting inside the box provide?

Mary has been absent for 5 days.

Grr!

Awakened this morning while in the middle of a dream. A dream where I was yelling & throwing things in anger. I might have beat up some people, too.

My alarm went off. The dream dissipated but the emotions remained. Not a good way to start a day. Hit snooze in hopes that a few minutes would calm me down. Only led to more irritation because 5 minutes was not long enough. Hit snooze again but remained awake to try to get into a more positive frame of mind. Got out of bed at 5:40 am. Still angry.

I hate to think what these interrupted dreams are doing to my health.

Breakfast & a walk with Loki helped but still mostly irritated.

I don't get Labor Day off. Part of the building is a sauna (fortunately not my part). Got to listen to a reading of an e-mail about how Barack Obama is taking money from productive people and giving it to the poor and illegal aliens.* Pandora One refuses to work but I got around that. It's Monday. I ate over 800 calories for breakfast and was hungry again at 9:00 am. Getting these whines off my mind is helping.

*I don't mind populist anger. Populist anger led to some very good things - 40 hour work week, voting rights, workplace safety rules, minimum wage to name a few examples. Anger is the only thing that gets people in power off their butt. Fear of the people is good for those in power. Helps keep them in line and realize that their power does not give them the right to abuse people.

This current wave of anger worries me. Seems undirected. No goals or ideas other than Obama sucks, taxes suck, bailouts suck, government sucks, tan foreign people suck, liberal media sucks, I've got mine - fuck you. The tax system needs reform. The debt being left to later generations is alarming. Corporate welfare is more damaging than personal welfare. I've come to terms with the fact that my Social Security payments are for the benefit of others, some of whom I care about, and that I won't see any benefits. Well directed anger can change these things but all I see on television and on the Internet is a bunch of white people throwing temper tantrums. Anger changes the world - temper tantrums just destroy whatever is nearby. I worry because I'm nearby.

Today's Lunch

The package: Healthy Choice Honey Ginger Chicken

The reality after two minutes of microwave heating:

It tasted good.

Exercise Log: July 26 - August 1

This week I ran, biked, walked and rowed 30.09 miles, burned 3086.9 calories and weigh 141.4 pounds.

Monday: ran 3.75 miles in 35:00
Tuesday: rowed 1,976 meters in 10:00
Wednesday: ran 2.44 miles in 25:00
Friday: ran 4.87 miles in 45:00

Thinking about the Cowtown Marathon in Ft. Worth, Texas or the 50K at the same location for my next long distance race.

Unintentionally Humorous Ad Placement

Click on image to enlarge.

Playboy of Charterstone

Original:

I bet Charterstone pool parties are quite awkward. Bare midriff in Mary Worth! I like Mary's pink pot and pearls ensemble.

Wordless:
In the first panel Mary gives a rude gesture to British readers and those who have spent many Saturday evenings watching Are You Being Served? on PBS. The gesture interrupted Delilah's blouse unbuttoning.

Liberal use of clone stamp and paintbrush.

Mary Wordless

Another installment of Mary Wordless.

Original: Yes, that is an adult woman that Mary is dragging away from an encounter with another adult.
Wordless:

Looks like a funky dance in the first panel.

Mr. Smith is too excited about getting a phone number.

Atlas Farted

I came across a funny bit of headline on The Onion: Area Man Insufferable Jerk for Two Months after Reading Atlas Shrugged.

I'm reading Atlas Shrugged and afraid the same thing is happening to me. I'm halfway through and wish to extend a pre-emptive apology for any insufferable jerkiness that results when finished. I finished the part in chapter 6, part 2 where the directives (Directive 10-289) that will attempt to stop progress are read and discussed by Wesley Mouch (a bureaucrat - I guess naming him Rob Leach would have been too obvious) and his advisers.

I'm seeing parallels everywhere. Even in beer commercials. Francisco d'Aconias is the most interesting man in the world and he drinks Dos XX.

I bought the book at a garage sale along with Anthem and The Fountainhead. I read a bit of the Fountainhead in high school but got bored with it. I read enough to participate in the discussion and have been exposed to Objectivism. Received enough exposure to be repulsed by its extremity. Have libertarian leanings but I don't fully buy the rational self-interest stuff. It assumes humans are rational and does not address conflicts between individuals with equally rational self-interests.

I decided to give Atlas Shrugged a try and to be able to say that I read the book when disagreeing with the philosophy. At this point I have several thoughts and impressions I need to sort out. I tried sharing some with Walter but he has never been exposed to Ayn Rand and I love him too much to make him read this stuff. Then I remembered that I have a blog.

Rand could have made her point in half of the pages. My God, this woman is long-winded. I read the introduction by Leonard Peikoff and he included some development notes. Four paragraphs stating the same point: using Atlas Shrugged as a concrete way to explain abstract philosophy. Each of the four paragraphs has that thesis. I got the idea after one paragraph but maybe I process things a little faster.

I'm approaching this like a marathon. I have the map and elevation profile and have even ridden part of the route but I really don't know what it's like until I actually run the race. Having a general outline of the novel has lead to some frustration. I've often flipped a few pages ahead to see if any interesting bits are ahead or a break where I can put the book down. The image of the Monty Python knights screaming "Get On With It!" often go through my head while reading some parts.

I might enjoy the book a bit more if this was my first exposure to Ayn Rand. I know where this book is going and wish it would hurry up and get there.

Rand's greatest achievement so far with this novel is making sex boring. I try not imagine just how screwed up her sex life must have been. I'm glad she never wrote the screen play for an adult film. I imagine it would have been 3 hours long: 2 hours 50 minutes worth of speeches with cheesy music playing in the background, 10 minutes of sex with 7 and 1/2 minutes of that consisting of the actors jerking off. The conversations between Hank Reardon and Francisco d'Aconias are more sexual than the actual sex. A few of the scenes with Reardon and d'Aconias would be at home in Star Trek slash fiction.

Keeping in mind that Rand is trying to convey a philosophy helps me tolerate the one-dimensional characters and the absurd extremes between the heroes (brilliant, competent, high standards of morality) and the villains (stupid, incompetent, false standards of morality). 1,200 pages and she couldn't find time to flesh characters out to at least 1-1/2 dimensions. Many comic books do a better job.

Some people build straw-men in an attempt to bolster their arguments. Rand is building a straw-world. Easy to tear down.

I will finish this book, I will read the long-winded speeches, laugh at non-normal human behavior, tolerate long descriptions of emotions that characters cannot name, enjoy the absurdity and try not to draw too many analogies between the events in the real world and the events in Atlas Shrugged.

If a John Galt managed to organize a strike in our world, we would become deprived of achievements like Sham-Wow.

Data Collection

Mary begins the data collection phase of her meddle.

No, don't go there. Not much of a challenge - a bit of paint and clone. Who is this Moy & Giella and why do they tag Mary's apartment walls?

IE can find my site but Chrome has been having trouble. What gives?

Exercise Log: June 7 - 13

Walked, rode and ran 43.01 miles, burned 3266.7 calories and weigh 140 pounds. Loki walked 4.75 miles.

Monday ran 3.60 miles in 35:00
Tuesday rode 4.83 miles in 20:00
Wednesday ran 5.18 miles in 50:00
Thursday rode 6.12 miles in 25:00
Friday ran 6.77 miles in 1:05:00

Have moved 911.77 miles so far this year.

Killer patio furniture

Another cut off head challenge. Gangs infiltrate Charterstone with their red bandanas and sky blue Sansabelt slacks. The young man on the left pouring the liquid is a member of a rival gang thus the scowl.

Both guys may be scowling because they are the bread to a Toby and Mary "oh for the love of god, please shut up" sandwich.

The roving patio furniture is more troubling.

Yes, Toby, we get it, marriage takes work. How many days will you blather on about it? Even the umbrella has become tired of your droning and is sneaking up on you to kill you. Go umbrella!

Ride the waves

Included the original below. Is someone rearranging Toby, Mary and the pool furniture during this conversation? Yesterday, they were in the middle of nowhere. Today, they are poolside. The pool has also grown in their absence. Maybe the earthquakes are very intense in Santa Royale and the residents are used to it.

Santa Royale is built on a giant electric football field build by ancient alien astronauts.

Reading the dialogue as if sitting in a massage chair makes it funny. With today's soap opera comic strips you have to make your own fun.

The perfect couple

The pool party has moved on.

Dialogue removal was easy for this strip. No foliage or background people to reconstruct. The plants and the people have become bored with Mary and Toby's conversation. Only the sniper hiding behind the rocks remains.

Pool Party sponsored by Sansabelt Slacks

The only pool party where no one wears a swimsuit. The pool has shrunk since the last party. In the original second panel, a dialogue balloon covered 2/3 of the man in the powder blue slacks' face. I decided someone at this party needed to do something that looked remotely fun, so I used a bit of artistic license. Nothing perks up a party like a man in slacks standing around wearing a clown nose. Plus, I had trouble with drawing a regular nose.

Delilah is coming.

These are not the droids you are looking for

After Delilah refuses to participate in a trust exercise, Lawrence tries the Jedi Mind Trick.

Exercise Log: May 31 - June 6

This week I ran, walked, biked and swam 37.63 miles, burned 3355.3 calories and 141.1 pounds.

Sunday: canoed about 30 minutes
Monday: ran 3.51 miles in 35:00
Tuesday: biked 4.27 miles in 20:00
Wednesday: ran 5.06 miles in 50:00
Thursday: biked 5.82 miles in 25:00
Friday: ran 6.67 miles in 1:05:00
Saturday: swam .28 miles

Thinking about doing a triathalon in April of 2010. Need to work on my swimming and road biking.