You can use technology for anything.

Therefore, your argument is invalid.

Training.

10/25

20m HIIT treadmill 

10/24

[AM] - bench, pushups, press, laterals, chins, bw rows, overheadx, bench dips, hammer curls, curls 

[PM] - x2 rounds - bw circuit - squats, pushups, jumping jacks, mountain climbers, tricep pushups, squats, strap rows  + sprints [4] 

"This is who I make myself."

This actually makes a great deal of sense.

Understanding a key difference between #OWS and the Tea Party.

Cooking/Food Log.

The concept of a regimented eating plan didn't hold up nearly as well this past week as training did.  A mid-week dinner with friends with excellent food and wine, another dinner out w/my lovely wife, a Sunday brunch - complete with Bloody Marys and chocolate beer... and, well, there wasn't a great deal of distinction between time on-point and off.  So one pic of food this week...

The 'not pictured' list this week is extensive - including curry rice, sauerkraut, eggplant, wine, beer, pancakes, eggs, bacon...

Additionally, as the Mrs joined me on all of the above occasions, plus she had dinner meetings and business related luncheons throughout the week, no "cooked for the wife" pic, as the only thing I did was heat up some leftovers early in the week.

Next week with added discipline...

Training.

10/23 - rest/free/recovery/off
10/22 - 20m HIIT heavy bag
Prufit - tire flips/jog, sandbag turkish getups/jumping jacks, sandbag toss/box jumps, resistance sprints/broad jump
10/21 - goblet squats, rdl, hip thrusts, calf raises, crunches, roman chair situps
10/20 - [afternoon] - 20m HIIT shadowboxing
[evening] - PruFit circuit for reps - pushups/squats/abs/squat thrust - 1/4m jog - 3 sets  pullups/chins
10/19 - db bench, dips, pushups, db press, laterals, chins, bw rows, ovrheadx, bench dips, hammer curls, curls

"Have you forgotten that we invented time?"

This.

Hurry up, get more done, and die | Full Page: "Your terrifying word of the day is "microtasking" and it comes by way of a relatively humble, ostensibly helpful article I read...

The advice was horrifyingly simple: When you find yourself pausing in between normal projects and work tasks for anything more than, say, 30 seconds, why not take those tiny moments and, well, do more things?  ...what else are you gonna do, breathe? Feel? Merely... exist? What are you, a hippie?
...Do not misunderstand. I'm all for a nice bit of work efficiency, for avoiding procrastination and getting down to the business of cranking out your own brand of special juicy goodness; I'm all for feeling a fine and gratifying sense of accomplishment at the end of it all, even though it's fleeting and transitory and the very next morning, hey look, a nice new pile of stuff waiting for you...
How easily we forget. Time expands, time contracts. Work will swell or diminish to fill a given space. You can do 10 things in an hour or one thing in 10...
Have you forgotten that we invented time? That clocks did not exist in any real way until the 14th century? That hours and minutes and seconds, to the ancients, were measured in breaths and blinks, sunlight and moonlight, soil fecundity and menstrual cycles, the howls of the coyotes and the migrations of the birds? Of course you have. This is the magic of time. It swallows collective memory..."

"I loved this book until I get to page 224 and this guy's in a dress summoning Voodoo gods! Who is this man?"

'This man' is Grant Morrison.  And he is awesome.  Much more at the link.  Well worth clicking over and reading in full.

Grant Morrison at the Edinburgh Book Festival - Full and Uncut | comicbookGRRRL: "...So it seemed that, to write that story was to say what the power of comics actually was, it was the Shazam, if you take this stuff so seriously that you end up doing it as a job, that you allow it to seep into your life, and you allow yourself to become semi-fictional in order to write fiction, then you find yourself in some very interesting territory...
So I thought the book really needed that element of personal experience and I figured that since I'm someone who still works in the business at a fairly high level that it was almost justified to include the level of autobiography that I did. A lot of reviewers were so freaked out, you know they got to... they say "I loved this book until I get to page 224 and this guy's in a dress summoning Voodoo gods! Who is this man? How dare he enter my history of superheroes!"
But I kind of thought that a lot of the audience who weren't into the history of superheroes might be able to find something in a human life and how a human life can be bent and twisted and honestly, ennobled as far as I'm concerned, and made more magical by actually adhering to some of the principals in these comic books.
...what we were seeing here is some kind of return of the best unconscious response to the fact that we've been sold a narrative of absolute destruction and extinction. You know in the West, and today even in the West when people are better off and healthier and safer than they've been at any time in the past, we're still telling ourselves the story that the environment is doomed and we can't fix it, we're telling ourselves the story that our children are insane and cannot be fixed and cannot be redeemed. There is no hope, our politicians are idiots, our comedians are depressive, they're suicidal, our models are bulimics. Everything has got this dark side...
I picked up New Scientist in February and there was an article in there talking about how the US military were now developing what they call counter-narrative strategies. And it's basically the weaponisation of stories. Right? And I thought, this is really fascinating, because basically what they've admitted is that stories have an effect. You know, I mean this is no surprise to anyone who's thought about this for five minutes but they've kinda admitted that yes, stories have an effect. Self hypnosis works, placebos work, nocebos work, if an authority figure tells you they're giving you a pill to make you feel better, the chances are you'll feel better. If the same authority figure tells you the world is doomed, the chances are you will begin to believe that. Your children will start to act as if the world is doomed, so they'll cut themselves, they'll dress in black, they'll throw bins through windows and steal stuff. Because there's no future, you've given them nothing to believe in. I honestly think this is self hypnosis right now, and our culture could do a lot more. We could be building starships, we could do a lot more than we're actually doing, and we're fucking around.
And it seemed very strange that we're telling this very dark story, and I thought the idea of the superhero has arisen as a response to that. Whether it's an unconscious response, whether there were some people deliberately saying well this is all we've got, we don't have Star Trek any more, we don't have a space programme, there is no image of the future that is not dystopian, except for the idea of the superhero. The notion that maybe one day we can pull off these shirts and reveal some kind of inner self that's our highest, our best, our kindest, our toughest, our wisest, our smartest, and actually use that to get out of our problems. Because we created these ideas to solve problems. There is no enemy that Superman can't defeat, there is no enemy Batman can't defeat, these are ideas that cannot be destroyed...
So I thought there's something in that idea that maybe we should be latching on to, maybe we should be using this as a counter-narrative strategy, against the one that we're selling people right now, and there's something in this. You know, I think there's a power in it, however crude and however small and... what would you call it... culturally unacceptable an area that it comes from, it's actually, those are the places we sometimes find the real truths. Where people have been allowed to say things that the rest of the culture isn't allowing us to say, which is maybe that maybe we're okay. You know, the scariest thing you can say to anyone, and try it tomorrow with all your friends, is to say maybe the world isn't going to end! Maybe it's all meant to be like this, and it's all working out just fine! And all those riots and everything, that's just part of the process, that's just something heating up and moving and changing, and that's just how it looks to us, because we're so small and so short-lived that we don't see the longer processes that are involved.
If you say that to anyone they'll go "No! No, no, we're all doomed! Don't you get it? We are doomed!" [laughs]. So I kind of, I wanted to bring that out and to use, yeah there's a manifesto in it to the sense that we have ideas here that were created to solve any problem – let's set them loose on our problems..."

Training.

PT for the last couple days plus link to a good article/write up on intermittent fasting.  

10/18 - 20m HIIT shadowboxing
10/17 - [afternoon PT] - goblet squats, sissy squats, rdl, lying hipx, calf raises, angled calf raises, mason twists, crunches
[evening PT] - 3 PruFit metcon circuits - 4m/4m/2m
circuit 1 - weighted crunches, squat to cable high pull, incline treadmill, bw row
circuit 2 - dips, hyperx, balance ball mountains climbers, jump switch lunges
circuit 3 - pushups, abs

IF article link - Experiments with Intermittent Fasting by Dr. John Berardi

100 Year Old Marathoner laughs at your "I'm too old for that" excuse bullshit.

Centenarian smashes world record for the oldest marathon runner as he completes Toronto race in 8 hours 25 minutes | Mail Online: "100-year-old smashes world record for the oldest marathon runner as he completes Toronto race in a sprightly 8 hours and 25 minutes
*He started running aged 89 and runs 10 miles a day 

A 100-year-old British runner has become the oldest person to complete a marathon.
Fauja Singh finished the 26-mile Toronto Waterfront Marathon in Canada on Sunday – ahead of five other runners – in eight hours, 25 minutes and 16 seconds..."

The False Dualism of Left/Right/Big Government/Big Business/#OccupyWallStreet/The Tea Party Movement...

So here's what I fail to understand, how people still buy into this stuff now that's it's just so blatant.  In the last, let's say, call it a year, in the U.S. there have been two grassroots protest movements getting all sorts of support, criticism and media attention - the latest batch of #OccupyWallStreet folks who are, ostensibly, against the corporate banking overlords and money exchangers who've totally gang raped the economy.  And, of course, the Tea Party Movement who protested Obama's secret plan to turn us all into  Socialist Europe.

The thing is, neither group, is wrong, in the sense of they've totally missed the point.  Wall Street and the corporatocracy have indeed swindled the economy over and over again.  And the Obama administration has, of course, pushed for more government regulation, central planning and control over the lives of its citizens.  [Like, I would argue, every administration has for at least the last 70 years...]  But...

...how do people not see that the real problem is that Big Government and Big Business are the SAME THING?  An intertwined, incestuous, symbiotic complex.  Inseparable from one another.  And by falling into the right/left 'rah-rah' my team, your team bullshit, false duality dialectic - you fall prey into exactly the role required to keep you powerless and them in control.  

The two sides in this debate aren't right/left/business/government - because those who 'defend' business from the intrusions of government in the early 21st century in America are actually defending a crony corporatism wherein corporations buy influence, power and cartel monopolies from the government under the guise of preferential legislation they call "regulation."  Big Government makes Big Business with Big Regulations.

Big Business simply cannot endure without Big Government "regulating" it - to its own advantage.  Big Government cannot endure without the piles and piles of cash, influence and jobs [in the never ending D.C. to lobbyist to corporate board cycle] provided by Big Business.

Both the Tea Party folks and the #OccupyWallStreet crowd have finally woken up to the fact that they're being fucked, but can't quite figure out how and by whom.  Too many still suffer from the delusion that if they can only get the right people - from their team and side of the argument, of course - then everything will be okay.  And by playing into the same tired bullshit argument, nothing will ever change.  

That's by design.

"The table is tilted folks, the game is rigged. Nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. Good honest hard working people, white collar, blue collar, it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard working people continue, these are people of modest means, continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about…give a fuck about you! They don’t care about you at all, at all, at all.

And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on, the fact that Americans are and will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white, and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes everyday. Because the owners of this country know the truth, it’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it." - George Carlin

"My approach to the injustices is to do something active to help. I personally think protesting without any clear request or outcome is far from the most efficient approach to changing the quality of life for those in need. That's just my opinion and approach I am not telling anyone else how to live their life in this regard. Finally, while it's true investment banks and others took full advantage of all Americans in the crisis, I think we need to remember they were only able to do this because our political leaders (of both parties) gave them our money! ...but the focus is not only on what "they" did and the problems "they" created but also on things we can do to take back control our own destiny..." - Tony Robbins

"Don't look for media-approved ideologically sound Right Causes where there are none. Look out of the window instead, and do something about what you see there." - Warren Ellis

So Very Awesome - Keiko Fukuda, 98 year old female judoka, founder of judo's last living disciple.

'Be Strong, Be Gentle, Be Beautiful' - Flying Carp Productions - Documentary Films: "In a world dominated by men, a tiny 98-year-old named Keiko Fukuda is the highest ranking woman in judo history and a true living legend. In July 2011, Fukuda made world history when she was awarded the 10th degree black belt - judo’s highest honor. She now has the distinguished title of “Shihan” (grand master) and is the only woman in the world to hold this honor. Fukuda is also the last living disciple of Jigoro Kano, judo’s founder."

Cooking/Food Log.

The week's food.  Not pictured - a mixed grill plate I had over at a friend's place on Saturday night.

Free/Cheat meals - sake, beer, pizza and Japanese cream stew.  Not pictured -  whatever side dishes I scarfed down with my mixed grill plate Saturday night.

Made for my other half.

End of an Era - "Report: K-1 Grand Prix 2011 Cancelled."

Report: K-1 Grand Prix 2011 Cancelled - Bloody Elbow: "It looks like the dreams of a 2011 K-1 World Grand Prix may finally be dead. Reports are beginning to surface that the Final 16 of the Grand Prix, scheduled for October 29 in Nanjing, China, has been cancelled, though there is still no official word from K-1."
'via Blog this'

Training.

PT for the last few days and links to a couple great articles on training, fitness & psychology.  Both worth clicking over/reading in full.

10/16 - chins, pushups, db swings, hand conditioning

10/15 - 20m HIIT shadowboxing, dips, pullups/chins, hyperx, stretching

10/14 - db bench, dips, lateral raise, rear delt laterals, 1a db row, bw rows, overheadx, tri pushup, 1a db curl, hammer curls, hyperx

Let Fitness Change Your Life « Tony Hortons World: "...When you decide to eat right and exercise regularly, the person you become has it much easier. Life isn’t as complicated, and more opportunities come your way. This simple philosophy changed my life. I used to have so many problems when I was younger. Everything was difficult. So much drama and conflict. I was lazy, tired and overwhelmed much of the time. Life was a struggle because I couldn’t deal with reality. Not in a million years would I have equated a poor diet and lack of physical activity as the bane of my existence.
In my late twenties and early thirties, I began to eat better and workout more regularly. Suddenly, new opportunities came my way, my confidence improved and the drama began to fade...
The more consistent I was with workouts and diet, the more opportunities came my way...
Joy, happiness, opportunities, success and the life you want comes from making “the change” to a lifestyle that involves taking care of yourself. What seems hard as hell at first will turn your life into a wonderful world of endless experiences, purpose, plenty of opportunities and the vim and vigor to enjoy life for the rest of your life. The issues and drama of the past will fade because you had the courage to make consistent fitness and healthy food a priority."

Fuckarounditis | Intermittent fasting diet for fat loss, muscle gain and health: "...The statistics all point towards the same conclusion: we have a global outbreak of fuckarounditis.
Fuckarounditis is a behavioral disorder characterized by a mediocre physique and complete lack of progress, despite significant amounts of time spent in the gym.
Fuckarounditis most commonly manifests itself as an intense preoccupation with crunches, curls, cable movements, belts, gloves, balance boards, Swiss Balls and Tyler Durden. Fear of squats and deadlifts is another distinguishing trait. Physical exertion is either completely lacking or misapplied (towards questionable or unproductive training practices)...
The onset of symptoms typically occurs in young adulthood and may go undiagnosed for a lifetime. Diagnosis is set by a professional and based on observed behaviors and physique progress.
Symptoms, preventative measures and intervention strategies are reviewed and discussed..."

Funny Because True.

So very, very true.

"Right now, you are making a choice..."

"Right now, you are making a choice.  It may not seem like a large and terrible choice, but in the long term, it may well be.  You are choosing whether you will be the master of your own fate, with the power to create what you will from the world - or whether you will simply... get by.  Unremarkable.  Complacent.  Mediocre.

Mediocrity is a terrible fate."

From the latest Harry Dresden novel - Ghost Story.  Good read, btw.

"Please Don't Die."