More Human Than Human

elvis7 Comments

Can I erase my whiny, I’m-so-sick-and-sorry-for-myself entries from earlier this week? Of course I can. It’s my blog. I’m god here. Same reason I can delete comments I don’t like. Freedom of speech? This ain’t your fuckin’ america, folks, there ain’t no constitution. No fuckin’ rules. And yet, I won’t delete ’em. I’m finally starting […]

Can I erase my whiny, I’m-so-sick-and-sorry-for-myself entries from earlier this week?

Of course I can. It’s my blog. I’m god here. Same reason I can delete comments I don’t like. Freedom of speech? This ain’t your fuckin’ america, folks, there ain’t no constitution.

No fuckin’ rules.

And yet, I won’t delete ’em.

I’m finally starting to feel human again (or subhuman, or inhuman, or super-human, or whatever normal would be), finally getting some work done. Now, my challenge is to resist the urge to act like I’m completely well and resume full-speed-ahead. That’s the mistake I usually make and the result tends to be a relapse, and a really bad respiratory infection that means ten days of horse pills.

So I have to ignore the voice that says back to the gym tomorrow unless I wake up no longer feeling like there’s a porcupine living in my sinuses.

Now, I’m not gonna link to it because that just seems too fucking egotistical. But Buck, you literally made me cry, three times, while I was reading that birthday message. I kept trying to reply and it took me this long to be able to do it. Thank you. It takes a lot to get me to well up that way.

And thanks to the various people who sent me birthday gifts or thoughts or greetings or images. You people rule, every one. I’m not worthy.

Grumble

elvis5 Comments

It’s been about a year and a half, maybe even two years, since I’ve been really really sick. That’s kind of a record, as people with kids will know. From the time your kid goes to pre-school until they get second grade or so, cold season starts with school and lets up somewhere late in […]

It’s been about a year and a half, maybe even two years, since I’ve been really really sick. That’s kind of a record, as people with kids will know.

From the time your kid goes to pre-school until they get second grade or so, cold season starts with school and lets up somewhere late in spring, and you’re sick more than you’re well all that time.

If you’ve got two kids like I do, well spaced, about the time the first gets to the ‘not bringing home so many colds’ phase, the second one hits pre-school and it all starts up again. Not so bad if your kids are close together because you’ve still got your cold immunities built up, but with kids four years apart, they lapse.

But my youngest is in second grade, and I’m past the baby-cold phase by several years. And my no-major-cold record shows this. No flu, no major cold, no sinus infections. Even with my stress level up as high as it’s been the last year.

So I’m particularly cranky this week, with the cold that just won’t let up. I’m getting to the point where anger is replacing misery as I get just enough better to 1) have no excuse to stay outta work 2) start to see all the shit I need to get done and 3) still just feel like getting in bed for the day.

Plus, I hate fucking blogging about feeling bad. I hate self-pity. I’d far rather blog about Dean Gray Tuesday or favorite holiday music or about how much The Amazing Race sucks this season. I’d rather blog about how fucking brilliant GRRM is and how great his new book is (The one good thing about being sick – I can read all day).

But all I can think is, christ my sinuses hurt, I need to take a fistful of pills and go to sleep.

Thus – grumble, grumble, grumble. It’s about all I have to say for myself today.

BoingBoinged over the death of mashuptown

elvis1 Comment

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/11/28/riaa_targets_mashups.html

Hey, I got a mention in BoingBoing. Sweet.

Alas, it’s because I hipped Cory to the demise of one of my favorite places in the internet, Mashuptown.

My brutha-man Art has been hosting some of the freshest, tastiest mashups around, but the RIAA nazis are on his track. It’s a sad day, but I’m still off to buy Mashuptown swag to show the man some support.

Thanks for the mashups, Art.

The c’thulu family circus

elvis1 Comment

Not as brilliant as dysfunctional family circus, sure, but still, pretty fuckin’ brilliant. The Nameless Dread – C’thulu Family Circus. (Props to BoingBoing of course)

Not as brilliant as dysfunctional family circus, sure, but still, pretty fuckin’ brilliant.

The Cthulhu Circus

The Nameless Dread – C’thulu Family Circus.

(Props to BoingBoing of course)

Another Day Older and Deeper in Debt

elvis

I’m fourty-four years old today. And I’m trying to write something meaningful and staring at a mocking blank screen with nothing to say about my life to date. I turned comments off on this. If I can actually finish something it’ll get replaced later.

I’m fourty-four years old today. And I’m trying to write something meaningful and staring at a mocking blank screen with nothing to say about my life to date.

I turned comments off on this. If I can actually finish something it’ll get replaced later.

Cold for the holiday

elvis22 Comments

Ignore me, ok? I hate bitching about being sick. And yet, I feel compelled to. Nothing quite like using a nice holiday weekend to sleep off an annoying fucking cold. Just what I was wanting. Instead of having some sort of night out on the town with friends, or some sort of nekkid holiday revel […]

Ignore me, ok? I hate bitching about being sick. And yet, I feel compelled to.

Nothing quite like using a nice holiday weekend to sleep off an annoying fucking cold. Just what I was wanting. Instead of having some sort of night out on the town with friends, or some sort of nekkid holiday revel to celebrate by birthday, I’ve been alternately sleeping, watching my football team get royally smacked, and trying to complete some basic domestic tasks like laundry before I have to go back to work.

I was gonna take tomorrow off for my birthday. I dunno what I was gonna do, maybe just take my motorcycle up a hill or maybe go sit in a cafe and write. But I was gonna do something just for me. Only now I don’t fucking feel like it. If I’m gonna be sick, I might as well be working.

Too late though, I already put in for an extra day off.

Honestly the thing that pisses me off most about being sick is that I wanna go work out. Which means I’m getting back to gym-rat mentality. I wanna get in there and work ’til I sweat, work ’til it burns. And I can’t, not when I’m dizzy and coughing and sneezing.

Grumble. Grumble. Grumble.

GRRM makes my brain hurt

elvis9 Comments

GRRM (George R. R. Martin) make my brain hurt. I swear, the man must sit around all day thinking, how can I make these books more dense and confusing? I’m maybe a hundred pages into A Feast for Crows, GRRM’s latest brick in the Song of Ice and Fire googology. And my eyes are crossed […]

GRRM (George R. R. Martin) make my brain hurt.

I swear, the man must sit around all day thinking, how can I make these books more dense and confusing?

I’m maybe a hundred pages into A Feast for Crows, GRRM’s latest brick in the Song of Ice and Fire googology. And my eyes are crossed with confusion at every chapter.

Who the fuck is Aryn? Wait, who was Dontos again? Why is Myrcella important? Wait, I thought Stannis was dead…

Dammit Martin, you need to put some synopsis pages in these volumes if you’re gonna make us wait five years between. I cannot fucking keep track of all your characters and connections.

Honestly, though, I’m remembering again why I used to say GRRM is the most intense, compelling fantasy writer working today. The man’s amazing. Most of these giant multi-brick series are nothing but rehash Tolkien; the best of them still trapped in a genre that is getting thicker and thicker with cliche, and the worst going on and on and on without ever seeing an end. Clearly editing is a thing of the past for most of these series.

Martin, even while writing a series that is growing and growing, seems to have some laser-tight focus on where his story’s going. For all his hundreds of characters, this series feels like a history, not like an aimless jaunt through someone’s daydreams of heroics and magic.

I don’t know how he keeps track of it all. But I know it’s brilliant.

Yet, I hope he’s close to done. There’s another book due out next year, and after that, knowing Martin, another half-decade wait; that’s ok if he’s getting close to the end, but I’d really like to see how it all ends sometime before my kids go away to college.

Ok. Now it’s time for another dose of cold medicine, and I’ll crawl back into the book.

Thankless Thanks

elvis10 Comments

I recall last year trying to write an entry about giving thanks. I thought I’d posted it, and I find I had the same issue then as I have now – I can’t seem to quite find what I want to say. Like the silly cultural tradition of the new year’s resolution, we in america, […]

I recall last year trying to write an entry about giving thanks. I thought I’d posted it, and I find I had the same issue then as I have now – I can’t seem to quite find what I want to say.

Like the silly cultural tradition of the new year’s resolution, we in america, at least (does anyone outside the US practice something like this? I don’t know) take one day of the year to ‘give thanks’.

This, like christmas, is ostensibly a religious celebration. The act of giving thanks is in fact, thanking your chosen deity for whatever you have.

It’s the funny dichotomy of american culture; we were founded in many ways by religious pariahs, zealots who fled home country rarther than assimilate into a less-devoute population. So much of the very core of american culture is, still, puritan and deeply god-fearing. The notion of the first thanksgiving is one of a feast held to honor god for providing.

Yet, we are also the nation that has Separation of Church and State written into the most basic foundation of our culture, the constitution.

Thus we have Thanksgiving and Christmas days as national holidays, yet we’re not able to call it christmas in school anymore, we have to refer to ‘winter holidays’.

I’m not a christian. In any way. I’ve talked about it before – my atheist upbringing, my lack of any faith or spirituality. I celebrate these holidays as cultural tradition, not as spiritual or religious festival. Yet they’re important to me in a deep and fundamental way. I love the holiday traditions. I love christmas music, lights, tinsel. I love the fall colors, the traditions of ballgames and parades. These are my culture as an american. Dress up and decoration, songs and games, friends and family. Tribe.

But I also know what lies under it all. Deeper than western cultural traditions, deeper than christian gods.

Read more “Thankless Thanks”

Gym Manners

elvis17 Comments

It’s been a while since I was working out regularly. And you know other than in highschool, I’ve only ever worked out in one gym, the 24 hour joint near my house. I’ve tried a few other places, the Y, a work gym, other fitness chains. But my local 24 is very close to me, […]

It’s been a while since I was working out regularly. And you know other than in highschool, I’ve only ever worked out in one gym, the 24 hour joint near my house. I’ve tried a few other places, the Y, a work gym, other fitness chains. But my local 24 is very close to me, never crowded, and has what I really care about, a decent free weight room, with a smith press, a power rack, a real plate/sled style leg press, and enough press benches that you can always find one free. I’ve had a membership there off and on for about twelve years. The place just works for me. But it’s been a year since I was last in a serious training phase.

Today, I was staring around the gym and thinking, what the fuck has happened to people’s gym manners since I was last here?

You know, there aren’t many rules. Wipe your sweat off, don’t leave trash around. Don’t hog a machine if you’re not really using it(Toning? get away from the free weights. Calf exercises? Go use the calf machine, get off the fucking leg press). Don’t ask to ‘work in’ when I’m in the middle of a set (in fact, don’t ever fucking talk to me, I’m in the zone and you don’t exist).

But that’s all trivial.

There is one thing that makes me absolutely bugfuck at the gym, and that’s not putting the plates away. Fuck, you put them on, take them off. Don’t walk away from a machine and leaves plates on it. Ever. Don’t walk away from a barbell and leave plates on it. Ever. Put the fuckin’ 45s with teh 45s and the 10s with teh 10s. Don’t fucking mix them. Have trouble lifting the 45s? Ask for help.

How hard is this?

Today, every machine in the room had plates on it, and every plate rack had 25s or 35s sandwiched between 45s. I stood behind some joker on the iso-lat pulldown, who’s loaded a double fistfull of 25s on the thing. I watched him use the machine wrong (working his torso back and forth instead of driving with the elbows), and then he fucking walks away, right past me. No attempt to re-rack his fucking weights. I kept eye contact with him the entire time I was putting his plates away and putting my 45s on the machine, and not one fucking hint of contrition.

Is this just me? Am I being unreasonable to expect people to do a little fuckin’ housekeeping? Sure, gym staff need to take care of this, but a once-a-day tidy should be enough. They shouldn’t have to babysit.

Ok. Fine. Luggin’ plates is good for my forearms. I’ll just get that for you. No, no, it’s ok. Go take a sauna, it’s what I’m here for.

You smell like Cumming

elvis10 Comments

Alan Cumming, star of Spy Kids, the brilliant Anniversary Party, X2, and about a zillion other movies, has a fragrance out. And it’s called – wait for it… Cumming. Suddenly, guess what you’re all getting in your xmas stockings? Ah, it gets better. I just updated the above link to point to the official cumming […]

Alan Cumming, star of Spy Kids, the brilliant Anniversary Party, X2, and about a zillion other movies, has a fragrance out.

And it’s called – wait for it…

Cumming.

Suddenly, guess what you’re all getting in your xmas stockings?

Ah, it gets better. I just updated the above link to point to the official cumming web site, and by all means go watch the video. He’s so sweetly girlish, I’d date him!

And the price? $69.

(Props to Amie Sue for hippin’ me to this)