10/30 - press [PR 185, repPR 145x11, both w/belt], push presses, chins
Friday, October 30, 2015
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
"On his best piece of advice for guys: 'Show up on time. Try not to be an asshole.'"
Anthony Bourdain: “Just Try to Be Awesome.”: "On what he tries to pass along to his daughter: Don’t be mediocre. Don’t aspire to mediocrity. Even if you fail, try to be awesome. At something. Anything. It doesn’t matter. Just try to be awesome. Try to do something as best you possibly can. Or better than anybody else."
"Freedom of speech is not just one of many important freedoms, but a precondition for being able to recognize and articulate all others."
New Poll: Most Students Favor Mandatory Trigger Warnings, Speech Codes - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "A depressing new poll demonstrates the extent to which open contempt for free expression has become the default position of college students: a slim majority of surveyed students support regulating permissible speech on campus, and 63 percent believe trigger warnings should be mandatory...
Freedom of speech is not just one of many important freedoms, but a precondition for being able to recognize and articulate all others. Put another way, it’s the First Amendment for a reason. The fact that college students don’t think they need the sort of protection it offers—and in fact view it as a hindrance—is reason for great dismay."
"The biggest threat is not an idiot with an opininon on Twitter, it's a police force with the power to silence free speech."
"The 'fat acceptance movement' wants society to accept and celebrate obesity, with some fat pride activists even calling for critics of obesity to be arrested for hate speech. This bizarre new branch of third wave feminism only encourages women to live terribly unhealthy lives, but it is being legitimized by social justice warriors and the media to further their real agenda of social engineering."
"You're just an organism who is trying to find normalcy by repeating patterns."
How Joe Rogan Went From UFC Announcer to 21st-Century Timothy Leary | Rolling Stone: ""...you're not supposed to be a psychedelic proponent and a cage-fighting commentator at the same time. Those two things joined are just too fucking weird, you know? I mean, I don't get it. And I'm me. I just—" He stops talking, cuts that one thought short, finds another. "You know what you figure out in the middle of a trip? That all these assumptions and preconceived notions of who you are, they're all bullshit. You're just an organism who is trying to find normalcy by repeating patterns." Unless, of course, you're him, in which case patterns are made to be broken. He doesn't say this about himself, though. But it is understood. A pattern-driven mind doesn't often stumble onto a goat's vagina. But his does...
...his podcast is one of the greatest things going. It's like a journey around the known universe, as well as the unknown, the suspected and the highly suspect. So far, there've been 705 episodes. He started it five years ago, with friend and fellow comic Brian Redban, 41, just the two of them smoking weed and chewing the fat, nothing much going on, no grand ambitions. Early guests were largely confined to friends from MMA and comedy. But then Rogan started to haul in the more far-flung: marijuana activists, former porn stars, believers in the sanctity of shrooms, four-hour-work-week proselytizers, rappers, former LAPD cops, outdoorsmen, futurists, neuroscientists, Egyptologists, Tommy Chong, triathlete vegans, whistle-blowers, mind coaches, insomniacs, experts on toxoplasmosis, comics with nicknames like the Machine, Neil deGrasse Tyson, former CIA operatives, a woman who lives in Kavik (197 miles north of the Arctic Circle), former UFC great Georges St-Pierre half admitting to alien abduction, and conspiracy theorists of all kinds (Bigfoot, UFOs, chemtrails, JFK, 9/11, the Apollo moon landing). Not a lot of rhyme or reason there, but that's just how Rogan likes it, and he does have his logic. "Everything we do or try to do, we try to do a better version of it all the time. We're constantly looking to improve. It's a big part of being a human being. And I think the podcast improves people, not only the people who listen to it, but me as well..."
"This is a moose heart," he says, happily. "I like moose. I like moose steaks, moose stew, and moose burgers are delicious." He closes that freezer, opens another. "This is from a wild pig. This is a sausage from something. This is more moose. This is deer. This is bear. And all this I killed myself." Stepping back, he says, "Yes, I get some grief for it. But you know what's unexpected to me? How little rational thought comes from vegans who own pets and feed them murdered animals...
It's time to wrap up the podcast and move on to other matters. Caitlyn Jenner, for instance, which don't get Rogan started, because he won't stop. He's fine with her being transgender and all. He goes on, "I'll call her a woman if she wants to be a woman. I'll call you whatever you want. I don't care. But you can't tell me she's beautiful and that because I disagree I'm a piece of shit....I mean, I don't understand the mindset of an ultramarathon runner, or an asexual person, or a person who wants to have sex with animals — by the way, I'm not connecting zoophilia to transgender people. What I'm saying is, I don't give a fuck. And I think it's kinda ridiculous that everybody is forcing the fact that she's beautiful down everybody's throat. And that heroic thing is just outrageous. These are vampires of attention. The patriarch of this family becomes a woman and there's virtually no conversation about the fact that she killed someone while driving. There's no talk of that. That's been dissolved."
Rogan pauses. Finally, he says, "I mean, there's a lot of nutty shit with this, but ultimately, you know, for the human race, I think this is all for the good.""
"We’ve all heard the saying that you're the sum of the five people you spend the most time with..."
Managing the Social Aspect of Change / Elite FTS: "Everyone knew that I was getting ready for a competition, and they let me do my thing. I couldn’t help but compare that to the last time I did a bodybuilding show about six years ago when I worked at a commercial gym. Every social experience sucked because people were constantly trying to get me to “break” my contest prep. At one point, my manager called me into her office to offer me a cupcake at about two weeks out (and yes, she knew what she was doing).
There are several important strategies that must be used whenever you’re looking to implement some type of change, especially one that revolves around health and fitness. Mental toughness is vital. Goal setting and a good plan are necessary as well, but I think far too many people fail to properly develop a social strategy for change.
We’ve all heard the saying that you're the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. So if we want to change the sum, we must address the particulars upon which that sum is determined. With regards to changing your training, nutrition and lifestyle habits, you'll probably have to address five social networks: family, friends, work, gym and online...
Everyone’s family has a different dynamic. This could refer to your household, your blood relatives or your non-blood relatives who are like family. In the end, family is your foundation. It’s who you look to for help in times of need and comfort in times of sorrow. They’re your rock. On that same token, family can also bring lots of stress. They’re the most likely to express their opinions, especially if that opinion is dissatisfaction in something you’re doing. You need to be prepared to address any type of change when dealing with family...
Hopefully, you have a supportive wife at home (God help you if you don’t) and/or a supportive family structure that is willing to grow with you during your progress. In the end, they care about you and want to see that you care about them...
Priorities can shift at different times. Just make sure that they come back in balance. If your family isn’t supportive, that sucks, but there isn't a whole lot that you can do other than explain why you want to make whatever changes you're making and make sure that you aren't fighting fire with fire..."
"...over the past 60 or so years, conventional masculinity has become a point of ridicule."
Neofemininity |: "For the greater part of men’s upbringing and socialization they are taught that a conventional masculine identity is in fact a fundamentally male weakness that only women have a unique ‘cure’ for.
...over the past 60 or so years, conventional masculinity has become a point of ridicule, an anachronism, and every media form from then to now has made a concerted effort to parody and disqualify that masculinity. Men are portrayed as buffoons for attempting to accomplish female-specific roles, but also as “ridiculous men” for playing the conventional ‘macho’ role of masculinity. In both instances, the problems their inadequate maleness creates are only solved by the application of uniquely female talents and intuition...
That feminine defined masculinity (tough-guy ridiculousness) feeds the need for defining vulnerability as a strength – roll over, show your belly and capitulate to that feminine definition of masculinity – and the cycle perpetuates itself.
[…]Men are ridiculous posers. Men are socialized to wear masks to hide what the Feminine Imperative has decided is their true natures (they’re really girls wearing boy masks). Men’s problems extend from their inability to properly emote like women, and once they are raised better (by women and men who comply with the Feminine Imperative) they can cease being “tough” and get along better with women. That’s the real strength that comes from men’s feminized concept of vulnerability – compliance with the Feminine Imperative. […]
...If men define masculinity for themselves, and that definition serves men’s exclusive interests it is equated with posing or a front men falsely wear to mask the real masculinity that feminine primacy has ordained as legitimate. So even when men collectively compare notes and prioritize their needs and their sexual strategy in the context of a legitimate definition of masculinity, the social narrative of feminism and feminine primacy readily disqualifies it as a being a macho bravado worn by men to cover their real vulnerable sensitive feminine-corrected egos provided for them by the imperative...
Emotional expression and an overemphasis on understanding emotion (in favor of reason) in men is the hallmark of a social narrative that prioritizes the feminine as the correct social context. The story continues as expected. The kid who had no positive model of masculinity presented to him has an epiphany, renounces his unhealthy masculinity and adopts a non-toxic feminine-defined ‘healthy masculinity’ that prioritizes women under the auspices of “equality”. Most of his corrupted upbringing of course being the fallout from not having his superfluous father around to instruct him. My guess is Mom wasn’t quite the ‘equal’ of being the man he hoped to equate her with earlier...
It’s ironic that he should describe his single mother ‘as a man’ and then go on to tell the story of his misspent masculine youth – he makes the case for necessary complentarianism without even realizing it. While I do agree about the necessity of understanding individuals other than ourselves, Powell never makes the connection that it is men upon whom the onus of understanding women always falls. You will never read deep soul searching testimonials like this from women who look to redefine femininity in ways that better accommodate the emotional health of men."
The Script |: "There is a certain formula most romantic comedies rely on to convey how relations between men and women ought to go. It’s an old formula, as in Shakespeare and Greek antiquity old. It goes something like this: An avowed Alpha bachelor for life questions the existence and nature of love, the sincerity of women, the illogic of not living just for his own self-importance, certainly the institution of marriage and lives, according to his rules, a satisfying life. He rationally observes the “madness” of his friends and fellow men when they fall in love, and out of it. He either mocks their foolishness or is analytical to the core in understanding their madnesses. He is an elemental force of one – a captain controlling the course of his own ship. He’s not wrong in his estimations; they all add up, they all make deductive, provable sense. That is until he meets her. The ONE special woman who miraculously, alone amongst billions, has the unique power to bring the facade of all that he thinks he is into stark, insightful self-realization. He’s bit by the bug, smitten by the only woman who could fatefully tame the arrogance of his otherwise cruel rationalism. It’s akin to a religious conversion; he’s seen the light, he’s in love and all of his former concerns are proven to be falsehoods – it’s the triumph of true love! The one thing he was missing (the one thing only a woman can possess of course), the last piece to a puzzle he didn’t know he was putting together, has been added and now he is complete. And they live happily ever after,…
The reason this formula is so successful and timeless is because it is essentially the fantasy of love and emotionalism trumping logic and reason. Women naturally love this because it puts them into the position of being the ‘cure’ to a man’s illness while making him look like a brooding, sulking, bitter child for clinging so tenaciously to his rationalism, when all he was really pouting about was feeling unloved. All his intense powers of rationality, all of his implicitly provable facts, all of his monuments and achievements of deduction mean nothing without the only irrational thing a woman can uniquely supply – unknowable, fantastical love. It’s part and parcel of the Myth of the Feminine Mystique which makes women the gatekeepers of the knowledge of love; don’t try to understand it with your silly boy-logic, just leave well enough alone and be eternally grateful to whichever god you worship that a woman has favored you with the love you need to be perfected."
Appreciation |: "Men making the personal sacrifices necessary to honor, respect and love her are commonplace. You’re supposed to do those things. You sacrificed your ambitions and potential to provide her with a better life? You were supposed to. You resisted temptation and didn’t cheat on your wife with the hot secretary who was DTF and ready to go? You were supposed to. Your responsibilities to maintaining a marriage, a home, your family, etc. are common – they’re expected. They are only appreciated in their absence. This is the totality of the feminine-centric reality. Men only exist to facilitate the feminine reality, and any man who disputes this (or even analyzes its aspects) is therefore not a ‘man’. It just IS. Even the most self-serving, maverick among men is still beholden to the feminine imperative in that he’s only defined as a rebel because he doesn’t comply with the common practices of ‘men’ in a female defined reality. And ironically it’s just this maverick who is appreciated by the feminine above those men who would comply with it (or even promote it) as a matter of course...
Relationships aren’t work.
Familiarity does in fact breed contempt,..and mediocrity, and routine, and banality, and commonness,.. which is why so many marriages end up in the shit can. Men and women give up on themselves. The “Relationships are work” meme is a Social Convention. How often do you hear men say these words? This has filtered into popular consciousness even with men now. For the LTR men who subscribe to this I’d also speculate that many of them are in relationships where THEY are “doing the work” for the women who are giving them the ‘grade’ so to speak...
Women love the ‘fixer upper’. “He’d be such a great guy if only he would, _____” or she’ll say “I’m working on him.” It’s when the conditioning goes from “I’m working on him” to “We’re working on our relationship” that he has now internalized her frame control. This is where the mythology of Relationships-as-Work is derived from. How often is it the woman who needs the ‘work’ in the relationship? And if it is her, the terminology of the relationship and the associations change. ‘Work’ implies a man better conforming his identity to her ideal relationship..."
Just Get It |: "This is why the “communication is everything” meme has been responsible for the demise of more relationships than anyone will ever admit. It’s not that you communicate, it’s what you’re communicating and how you communicate it. I’ve counseled more men than I care to recount who’ve sobbed from the depths of their souls, “IF SHE’D JUST TELL ME WHAT I HAVE TO DO TO MAKE HER LOVE ME I’D DO IT!” not realizing that their very verbalization of that and a belief in open, rational communication is the very thing that’s killing (or killed) their woman’s desire for him. As I’ve written a thousand times, a cardinal truth of the universe is that genuine desire cannot be negotiated. The moment you tell your wife, your girlfriend, that you will exchange a behavior or attitude or belief or any other compromise for her desire you fundamentally change her organic desire into obligation."
