"I will not care what anyone else can do; it affects me not.
For a long time, I sat and looked at the computer screen at those words, and I thought about what to write. That I could write about all the years that I spent hating who I was, or better yet, who I wasn't. I could write about how I never felt like anything that I accomplished never meant anything or that I never measured up to anyone. I wanted to do something that defined me. That made people admire me, or at least, admire that thing that I did. "Fuck yeah, I need that. I want that more than anything. The admiration of my peers and my family. That will mean I'm worth something. Something I do that is remarkable, something worth bragging about." I could write about that. Or, I could write about how I hated other people who did things that I wanted to be able to do. That I hated sometimes when they received the adoration of their superiors and peers. Not all the time, mind you. Just when it was something I too wanted to be good at. "Fuck that asshole. I hope a dog-man runs out of the god damn woods, full of aids and hate, and bites him in his asshole and tears his kidney out through it! DIE DIE DIE!!!!" Ok so that's not really true. I know that dog-mans can't have AIDS. Maybe my hate wasn't really THAT venomous either. But I do remember feeling awfully shitty about myself, and feeling somewhat jealous towards said individuals for standing in shoes that I so wished to be wearing...
What I thought I'd write about instead, was how I learned how to grok not caring. Some people think that's a negative statement, or that it is stained in black, then lacquered in a coat of apathy. Hardly. Learning how to not care, eventually gave me all of the things I wanted. Because it allowed me to let my negative energy dissipate, and made me stop focusing on things that had I had zero control over, and no real meaning in my life. If some guy deadlifts 850 what does that really have to do with me? Nothing. If some other guy looks like a more jacked version of Conan, what did I lose or gain from it? Nothing. What? Motivation to get better? Motivation is fucking bullshit.
Getting better should be something you’re already about. Not something you need to be goaded into. I’m not saying some things don’t light a bigger fire under your ass than others, but if you have to seek out reasons to get better, you’re losing. Meaning, If it requires some outside force to resonate with something inside of you, you aren’t in possession of what it takes to get better all on your own. How will you CONSISTENTLY get better if it requires the dangling carrot to do make you do so? At some point you have to decide that getting better is just a part of what you are. What makes you, you. When that happens you won’t need “devices” in order to get better. It will just be something you do. If you were isolated in a room with your weights for 10 years, would you get better without the influence of external forces? I hope you can say yes to that. If not, figure out how to say yes to that."
LIFT-RUN-BANG: The things that are going to hold you back in training: "So why are you in search for something more complicated when the answer is right in front of you? Training? Lift three to four times a week. Base your training around the big lifts. Squat, press, deadlift, row, chin, dip, do some arm work. Sets of 3-5 work really well for strength development. Sets of 10+ seem to be more efficient for hypertrophy. Diet? Get 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. After that, manipulate your carbs and fat up or down depending on if you need to gain muscle, or lose fat. If you want to lose fat, bodyweight x 10 for total calories a day is a decent baseline to start at. So if you're 250 pounds, then 2500 calories a day is about where you need to be. This is a fairly aggressive model, but so what? If that scares you, start at bodyweight x 12 for total calories per day. If you want to gain mass, it's about 18-20 x bodyweight. So if you're 200 pounds, then it's about 3,600 to 4,000 calories a day. Yes, it's a rough guideline and someone will want to debate all the "in betweens" and that's part of the fucking problem. Debating every little nuance of training and nutrition does nothing but cause paralysis by analysis...
I had to embrace something I wasn't really comfortable doing in order to get to where I needed to be. And THAT is what lifting and life is going to be about sometimes. I could machine gun off a million cliche's about that right now but I will spare you. The point is, nothing that is worth attaining will come easy. If it does, good for you. However 99.99% of the time getting to a place you desire to be will mean spending a lot of time embracing discomfort. If you're not willing to do that, then it's likely you won't ever see the things you desire come to pass... If you want to find your own personal greatness, then get comfortable with being uncomfortable. The amount of discomfort you are willing to submit yourself to is generally in parallel with the amount of greatness you're trying to attain...
If you train long enough you're going to have a string of training sessions where everything sucks, and seemingly nothing goes your way. Finding confidence again during those times can feel like a monumental task. After all, when life is raining shit on you it's hard to smile about the sunshine. Remember that the lows in training are teaching you an awful lot. Also keep in mind that in training, just like in life, that the present is never permanent. The only constant is change. If you keep plugging away progress will eventually be forthcoming again, and you will find momentum again. You also need to remind yourself that confidence, like self esteem, is really a state of mind. It is up to you to make a choice to decide how you feel. I think sometimes it's hard for people to get their head around the fact that they can empower themselves that much. If you don't feel confident, it is likely because you are dwelling on the wrong things, and for the most part just need to change your state of mind."
We'll know this year, then. Phrases from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "...a group of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings demand to learn the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything from the supercomputer, Deep Thought, specially built for this purpose. It takes Deep Thought 7½ million years to compute and check the answer, which turns out to be 42."
Must see.
Stop Letting Politicians Scare You Into War in the Middle East - Reason.com: "ISIS has its hands full fighting Syrian, Iraqi, and Kurdish forces, so why the hysteria that some new and unprecedented threat faces the American people? Because irresponsible politicians know that public fear breeds public acquiescence. Yet the Obama administration must have thought that ISIS wasn't threatening enough, because during the first airstrikes in Syria, U.S. bombs also hit a hitherto unknown group said to be planning an imminent attack on America, the Khorasan Group. The first reason for skepticism is that the administration has redefined imminent also to mean not imminent. A second reason is that hardly anyone had heard of the Khorasan Group, and it seemed to disappear as quickly as it arose."
Seems Legit.
Why we need to fix St. Louis County - The Washington Post: "Occupancy permits are just one of the myriad ways in which these municipalities can sap funds from poor people. Basically, if you live in St. Louis County, you’re required to get one for your residents. It doesn’t matter if you rent or own. The police can then periodically make compliance checks (although generally they conduct these checks after they’ve been called to a residence for another reason, like a noise complaint or domestic dispute). If there are more people in your place than your permit allows, they can fine you and each person in your home. Attorneys I spoke to say the regulation can end up being a way to enforce antiquated local laws against unmarried cohabitation, and judging by comments you sometimes hear in courtrooms or from local officials, a way for police and prosecutors to essentially fine people for having premarital sex. You can probably guess which communities are most likely to be subjected to these occupancy inspections."
Why we need to fix St. Louis County - The Washington Post: "If you’ve read my report, you might remember that Bel-Ridge is the town of 2,700 people that in its budget said it planned to make about $450 this year for every resident. It’s also the town that fined residents for not subscribing to the only authorized municipal trash service, and that in the early 2000s was caught manually changing a green light to red in order to nab unsuspecting motorists. The town is 83 percent black."
Why we need to fix St. Louis County - The Washington Post: "Pundits and commentators have suggested that these concerns are all overblown. After all, who could object to car registration laws, insurance requirements or speed limits? (For a well-argued but I think ultimately flawed example, see Heather Mac Donald from the Manhattan Institute here.) This all misses the point. When a local government’s very existence depends on its citizens breaking the law — when fines from ordinance violations are written into city budgets for the upcoming year as a primary or even the main expected source of revenue — the relationship between the government and the governed is not one of public officials serving their constituents, but of preying off of them. When the primary mission of a police department isn’t to protect citizens but to extract money from them, and when the cops themselves don’t look like, live near or have much in common with the people from whom they’re extracting that money, you get cops who start to see the people they’re supposed to be serving not as citizens with rights, but as potential sources of revenue, as lawbreakers to be caught. The residents of these towns then see cops not as public servants drawn from their own community to enforce the laws and keep the peace, but as outsiders brought in to harass them, whose salaries are drawn from that harassment. The same goes for the judges and prosecutors, who also rarely live in the towns that employ them.
...a more common example frequently mentioned to me by attorneys in the area is the frequency with which someone will get pulled over and fined for driving without proof of insurance, driving without registration, driving with a suspended license, or all three, but with no citation for a moving violation. The question then becomes, why was this person pulled over in the first place? The unfortunate answer is that he or she looked like someone who might lack insurance, registration or a valid license. Which is to say he or she looked poor. Being poor in St. Louis County not only means that they’re less able to pay for and follow all of these rules and regulations, because the poor are less able to do all of that, but also that they’re more likely to be targeted and harassed even if they have followed all the rules. And as any honest cop will tell you, once an officer has pulled you over, he can always find some reason to fine you."
The United States already has combat troops in Iraq. A U.S. diplomat acknowledged to me that American spotters in the Kurdish region of Iraq provide coordinates for airstrikes. He said U.S. advisers are armed and would shoot if attacked. If insurgents down an American plane, armed U.S. helicopter teams would go into enemy territory to rescue pilots. By redefining “combat troops,” the U.S. not only wages war in the Middle East, but on the English language. Just one week into the bombing campaign, Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey said the U.S. might have to introduce ground combat troops into Iraq. The White House quickly disavowed the statement, but leading Democratic and Republican hawks are already pressuring Obama to formally introduce combat troops. As the air war proves incapable of destroying IS, the administration will likely introduce more ground troops, perhaps renaming them “limited, temporary, counterinsurgency advisers...
5. The U.S. can fight IS and other extremists without simultaneously helping Bashar Assad, Iran and Hezbollah.
One year ago, the Obama administration was beating the war drums against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons. Now the U.S. is bombing insurgents opposed to Assad. At the moment the Syrian civil war is a zero sum game. Weakening Assad’s enemies strengthens Assad’s regime. Assad, and his allies Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah, are pleased with U.S. attacks on IS. But if ultra-right-wing rebels are weakened, pro-U.S. rebels won’t fill the gap. How long will it take for the U.S. to start bombing Syrian army targets?
6. The U.S. supports only moderate rebels.
Contrary to conservative criticism, the Obama administration has tried to create pro-U.S. civilian and armed groups. Obama has failed, not because of “lack of leadership” but because Syrians won’t accept U.S. policy. In my interviews inside Syria and neighboring countries, Syrian rebels and opposition activists made clear they opposed the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Washington’s total support for Israel. Every Syrian I ever met wants Israel to return the Golan Heights seized in 1967, for example, but the U.S. isn’t interested in having that discussion. Meanwhile, American allies such as Saudi Arabia have armed extremists such as the al-Nusra Front, a group affiliated with al-Qaida. Saudi Arabia’s ultra-right-wing interpretation of Islam shares many ideological similarities with al-Nusra and IS. Yet the U.S. plans to have Saudi Arabia train “moderate” Syrian rebels, which is like asking Al Capone to train Chicago police cadets...
7. The U.S. fights to defend human rights and the rule of law, not oil.
Syria and Iraq have faced massive humanitarian crises for the past three years. Yet the U.S. directly intervened militarily only when the oil-rich Kurdish region of Iraq was threatened. Kurdistan contains the world’s ninth-largest reserves of oil and could eventually replace Russia as a major supplier of oil and gas to Europe. Over 50 foreign oil companies now have offices in Kurdistan, many cutting highly profitable oil production deals with Kurdish officials."
10/16 - squats, db squats, walking lunges, calf press, leg raise, curls, bench dips, conc curls, tri pushups
Robb Wolf - The Sitting Solution: "So something I’ve learned is to use this “shotgun approach” to treat the musculoskeletal system. In other words when I’m working with someone I ask myself what’s the “ONE THING” I can focus on that can make the most difference in terms of preventing and often times treating pain. It’s like the 80/20 rule on steroids. Generally speaking, that “ONE THING” is the spine. When the spine is aligned, has adequate mobility, and is stable, everything else in the body begins to move back where it’s designed to be. Even more specifically, there is one region of the spine that when properly cared for/addressed gives you the most “bang for our buck” in terms of restoring alignment and functional mobility to the rest of the body. I am referring to the THORACIC SPINE. It’s what I call the missing link…and I believe that if you address this area of the body, specifically when you are sitting for long periods, you will drastically reduce your chances of experiencing pain AND and you’ll improve your chances of standing up straight as long as you live."
Warner's goes all in. I live in hope. WB Announces A Ton Of New DC Movies, Including Who's Playing The Flash: "According to Ben Fritz of the Wall Street Journal, Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara announced in a major investors meeting this morning that The Flash movie is definitely happening.
Here's how it's all going to fit into their schedule: Suicide Squad will be the next DC movie released after Batman V. Superman in 2016. In 2017 there will be a standalone Wonder Woman along with a Justice League picture. Then in 2018 they will release the aforementioned Flash movie along with an Aquaman flick (with Jason Momoa starring). Next in 2019 is Shazam (Dwayne Johnson plays Black Adam) also in 2019 is a sequel to the Justice League. Then in 2020 there will be a Cyborg movie and a new Green Lantern movie, too. Other DC movies "in the works" (according to Fritz) include a stand-alone Batman movie, and another solo Superman movies as well."
American Forces Found 5,000 Chemical Weapons In Iraq—Just Not the Ones the Bush Administration Claimed Were There - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "In five of six incidents in which troops were wounded by chemical agents, the munitions appeared to have been designed in the United States, manufactured in Europe and filled in chemical agent production lines built in Iraq by Western companies. All in all, it looks like the revelation of another colossal failure in what is already widely recognized as a colossal failure of a war. (But hey, if at first you don't succeed, try and try again.)"
Obama's Mentor, Harvard Law Profs Blast New Sex Harassment Policies - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "On a related note, The New Republic recently asked "feminist and public defender" Robin Steinberg to evaluate Columbia University's similarly strident anti-harassment policy. After reviewing the policy, Steinbeg and her colleagues decided that they would never send their sons to college: A few hours later, Steinberg wrote back in alarm. She had read the document with colleagues at the Bronx legal-aid center she runs. They were horrified, she said—not because Columbia still hadn’t sufficiently protected survivors of assault, as some critics charge, but because its procedures revealed a cavalier disregard for the civil rights of people accused of rape, assault, and other gender-based crimes. “We are never sending our boys to college,” she wrote."
Dalton's so Hydra.
Back to Basics |: "Any time I suggest the ‘nature’ of how human beings’ evolved psyches influence our personal and social interaction in the now, I’m always going to get resistance from the “rise above our natures” faction of humanistic (and moralistic) hopefuls that insist the instinctual natures which made us such a successful species can (or should) be sublimated by our higher rational (or spiritual) selves... As loathe as I am to give the HuffPo any link love, I read with interest Why Great Husbands Are Being Abandoned. I’m going to quote some of it here, but I do so because it seems to me that even the bastions of equalist thought are finally, begrudgingly, coming to terms with the inherent failings of reconciling equalism with evolved, conventional, complementarity among the sexes."
Why Great Husbands Are Being Abandoned | Randi Gunther: "As women have become legitimate wage earners with more powerful voices, they have challenged their chosen partners to participate in a whole new kind of connection that does not accept automatic hierarchy. In the last few decades women have slowly driven their point home. The millennial men, who are their current counterparts, are freer thinkers and they have responded in kind in their relationships as well. These men like their women strong and feisty, and have willingly accepted the responsibility to connect in a more vulnerable way. They get it that it's sexy to help make a meal or take the kids away on a Sunday morning so their wives can sleep in. They are the androgynous guys that their women have asked them to become. You would think that the women in these new relationships would be ecstatic. They've got a guy who wants to work out together, share parenting, support their parallel dreams, and make their family collective central to both of their lives. They've established an equal relationship of coordinated teamwork, and the guys don't seem to miss their old need to posture for power over intimate connections.
Well, guess again. Fifty percent of marriages are still ending in divorce, and women continue to be the gender that initiates those endings. In the past, their reasons for leaving most often had to do with infidelity, neglect, or abuse. Now they're dumping men who are faithful, attentive, and respectful, the very men they said they have always wanted. Why would women who have accomplished the female dream suddenly not be satisfied with it? Why are they leaving these ideal guys, and for what reasons? I am currently dealing with several of these great husbands. They are, across the board, respectful, quality, caring, devoted, cherishing, authentic, and supportive guys whose wives have left them for a different kind of man. These once-beloved men make a living, love their kids, help with chores, support aging parents, and support their mate's desires and interests. They believe they've done everything right. They are devastated, confused, disoriented, and heartsick. In a tragic way, they startlingly resemble the disheartened women of the past who were left behind by men who "just wanted something new." You may think that these women are ruthless and inconsiderate. Those I know are far from that. More often, they still love their husbands as much as they ever did, but in a different way. They tell me how wonderful their men are and how much they respect them. They just don't want to be married to them anymore."
Back to Basics |: "What Randi doesn’t consider is the natural complementary states men and women’s psychological firmware descended from since our hunter-gatherer tribal beginnings. He can’t consider it because it disagrees with the ‘higher-selves overcoming our natural state’ aspect of egalitarian humanism. But the observable truth is right there in front of him...
As I’ve stated in prior posts, androgyny is homogeny, and nature stagnates (and often dies out) in conditions of homogeny. Androgynous men, by definition aren’t men – they are neither masculine or feminine – so is it any surprise that women’s innate, heteronormative, subliminal and tingle inducing need for a traditionally masculine man is frustrated by the same egalitarian mindset they’ve fostered in compliant men for so long? Primal femininity is confused and frustrated by blank-slate equalism...
Before I end here, I feel I have to address that I do in fact believe that men and women can, and regularly do, rise above our innate instinctual natures. Obviously civilization didn’t reach the point we have by not controlling our base natures. The problem I see now is the social order established to effect that control is failing to account for the conflict between equalism and complementarity."
P90X - Timeline Photos: "#TransformationTuesday - Jamie lost 81 pounds (yes, 81!!) 36 total inches and 41% of her body fat with P90!! Want results like this? Now #ItsYourTurn! #P90"
