T2 - 40/42.

40 - 6 meals/lower body PT/2.5-3L water
41 - 4 meals/20m cardio-shadowboxing/2.5L water
42 - today/free day

Crappy workouts, but not half bad considering I've been fighting a cold since Thursday night or so. The requisite runny nose, watery eyes, sneezing, headaches, etc, etc. And the weirdest part, whenever I get sick, all my old injuries [neck, hip, knee] tighten up and hurt like hell. Wonder why that is, exactly, but they do...

But the only time I've actually felt decent during the last couple days is during my workout, as lethargic and half-assed as those sessions might have been. Thank the invisible sky gods for endorphins and adrenaline, I guess.

Day off today, with some hiking/active recovery over with the Adachi clan. Pics to follow, as per usual.

Inspiration: Bodybuilding.com - Female Transformation Of The Week - Female Transformation Of The Week - Lisa Romero!:

Before:
Age: 26
Weight: 120.5 lbs
Body Fat: 23.3%
Waist: 31'


After:
Age: 26
Weight: 105.2 lbs
Body Fat: 16.15%
Waist: 26.5'

Love him or hate him, Dana White is hilarious.

On "StandupGate" - Slice-Petruzelli fight under investigation | The Fabulous Forum | Los Angeles Times:

"A Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation official has told ESPN.com the government body that oversees the state's boxing commission has opened a preliminary investigation into Kimbo Slice's knockout loss to little-known Seth Petruzelli on Saturday."

Via Fightlinker - Your Fight Community - fightlinker.com

"Beware the leader..."

'Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war, in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch, and the blood boils with hate, and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need of seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.'

~ Julius Caesar

Twain's way with words.

"There is more real pleasure to be gotten out of a malicious act, where your heart is in it, than out of thirty acts of a nobler sort."

- Mark Twain in Eruption

That's hilarious.

Via Warren Ellis » T-Shirt Of The Day

Nintendo Wii Fitness Takedown.

Much funnier than I anticipated...



Via Is the Nintendo Wii Fitness Savvy? | Real World Strength Training

Sounds about right.

Kinda heartwarming - “My Dogs greeting me after returning from 14 months in Iraq.”

Via Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » Awesome

Oops.

Bush in a skirt.

Alaska Inquiry Concludes Palin Abused Powers - NYTimes.com:

"Gov. Sarah Palin abused the powers of her office by pressuring subordinates to try to get her former brother-in-law, a state trooper, fired, an investigation by the Alaska Legislature has concluded. The inquiry found, however, that she was within her right to dismiss her public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, who was the trooper’s boss.

A 263-page report released by lawmakers in Alaska on Friday, found that Ms. Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, had herself exerted pressure to get Trooper Michael Wooten dismissed, as well as allowed her husband and subordinates to press for his firing, as a result of a divorce proceeding between him and Ms. Palin’s sister in 2005."

I'll say this for Obama, he knows how the game is played.

If this President thing doesn't work out, he can go to work as a fortune teller.



Via Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » He Knew

"Nailing Your Wife" - James Gunn's PG Porn from SPIKETV.

Anything with Nathan Fillion = Win.

"This construction worker is ready to nail your wife.
Starring Nathan Fillion and Aria Giovanni and directed by James Gunn."

Nailing Your Wife | Girls | SPIKE.com

Not to be trusted.

NSA enjoys eavesdropping on US soldiers' phone sex calls - Boing Boing:

"ABC News reports that, 'despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary,' the NSA listens in on ordinary phone calls of US citizens overseas, and military intercept operators who work at the National Security Agency (NSA) enjoy sharing and saving recordings of US officers' pillow-talk and phone sex calls with their spouses back home.

[Intercept operator, former Navy Arab linguist, David Murfee Faulk] says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of 'cuts' that were available on each operator's computer.

'Hey, check this out,' Faulk says he would be told, 'there's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, 'Wow, this was crazy',' Faulk told ABC News.

Faulk said he joined in to listen, and talk about it during breaks in Back Hall's 'smoke pit,' but ended up feeling badly about his actions."

Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » Another Win For the DFH’ers:

"These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones,” said Adrienne Kinne, a 31-year old US Army Reserves Arab linguist assigned to a special military program at the NSA’s Back Hall at Fort Gordon from November 2001 to 2003.

Kinne described the contents of the calls as “personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism.”

The current administration and the Republicans in congress, with partial assists from the Democrats, have, over the past eight years, embraced a doctrine of torture, advocated and acted on a doctrine of pre-emptive war, put in place a surveillance state, looted the treasury, attempted to suspend habaes corpus, and are now attempting to nationalize the banking industry.

Meanwhile, the leading lights of the conservative movement are debating whether Obama is a Maoist and calling him a radical.

My only hope is that the Republicans, after getting it handed to them in the general election, will decide that they do not want Barack Hussein Obama listening in to their bulk orders to wetsuit manufacturers, rediscover their devotion to civil liberties and their fear of governtment, and work to roll back some of the crap that has taken place. And remember, many Democrats have been complicit in this."

Clearer and clearer...

Self reinforcing perceptions.

Sean Hannity, Robert Gibbs and anti-Semitism: How to go on Fox News - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com:

"For the third debate in a row, actual polling data last night (as well as uncommitted focus groups) revealed that most Americans believe that the Democratic candidate (Obama/Biden) won decisively. In stark contrast, this is what the poll of Fox News viewers found:

In the real world among Americans, Obama won the debate by 15-30 points, but in Fox News World, McCain won the debate by 86-12%. That’s what Fox News is and who their viewers are: a right-wing propaganda outlet with an almost entirely unpersuadable viewership."

Perfectionism.

An inability to get their shit together.

Hit & Run > Another Gitmo Prosecutor Quits - Reason Magazine:

"Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld is at least the sixth JAG officer prosecuting cases in Guantanamo Bay to resign or request a transfer in protest of how the Pentagon is administering the tribunals. His letter of resignation was revealed late last month during proceedings in the case against accused enemy combatant Mohammed Jawad.

Vandeveld quit because he was alarmed at what he says were gross due process violations...

Vandeveld goes on to say that past prosecutors in Gitmo cases who have expressed similar concerns about due process experienced retaliation from higher-ups at the Pentagon...

In addition to the six prosecutors, Col. Stephen Abraham—tapped by the Bush administration to run the Guantanamo hearings—also resigned last summer, citing what he said was a deeply flawed system designed more to give the veneer of justice to predetermined convictions than to administer a fair hearing of the evidence."

Shun Fujimoto - Phenomenal Story.

We're all worthless and weak compared to a man who wins a gold medal on a broken leg.

SI Flashback:

"As Japanese gymnast Shun Fujimoto completed his floor exercises in the men's team competition with one final tumbling run at the Forum in Montreal, he experienced an odd sensation in his right knee. "It felt hollow," he recalled later, "as if there were air in it." In fact, his kneecap was broken, a calamity that under ordinary circumstances would have ended his participation in the Olympic Games on the spot. But Fujimoto, 26, was no ordinary competitor. His teammates, he reasoned, needed whatever points he might accumulate to upset the favored Soviets, and they certainly could be hindered by the emotional trauma of learning that one of their number had suffered such a serious injury. Fujimoto decided he would tell no one, not even his coach, Yakuji Hayata, that he was badly hurt.

The next event was the pommel horse, and though Fujimoto was in pain throughout, his concentration was so intense that he scored a 9.5 out of a maximum 10 points. "I was completely occupied by the thought that I could not afford to make any mistakes," he said. But the following event, the rings, presented a more daunting challenge because it required a high-flying dismount. How could he possibly concentrate on his routine knowing that at its conclusion he would be exposing himself to unimaginable pain?

But Fujimoto gave the performance of his life on the rings and then, ignoring the consequences, hurled his 136 pounds into a twisting triple-somersault dismount. The pain when his feet hit the floor sliced through him "like a knife," he said, but he kept his balance, his right leg buckling only slightly. Gritting his teeth and with tears in his eyes, he raised his arms in the traditional finish. The judges awarded him a 9.7‹the highest score he had ever recorded on the rings.

It was immediately apparent, however, that something was seriously wrong as Fujimoto staggered away, collapsing in agony into the arms of Hayata. The spectacular dismount had done additional damage to his injured knee‹dislocating the broken kneecap‹and had torn ligaments in his right leg. Still, Fujimoto was determined to carry on, limping off to the infirmary for painkilling shots. There, horrified doctors ordered him to withdraw from the competition or risk being permanently disabled. "How he managed to do somersaults and twists and land without collapsing in screams," said one physician, "is beyond my comprehension."

..Oddly enough, Fujimoto has never been comfortable in the martyr's role. Asked years later if he, given the same choice, would do again what he did in Montreal, he wasted little time in answering with an emphatic, "No. I would not.""

Via RossTraining.com Blog » The Story of Shun Fujimoto

T2 - 39.

20m cardio/shadowboxing, 6 meals, 3.5L water

Inspiration:

MMA Fight Girls Wallpaper » Blog Archive » Gina Carano vs Kelly Kobold EliteXC Heat


Bodybuilding.com - Male Transformation Of The Week - Male Transformation Of The Week - Joey Gorena!

Stewart & Colbert - the best satirists of my generation. Easily.

Hard figuring out what to excerpt, cause it's all so damn good. Click over to read the whole thing.

Stewart & Colbert: Exclusive Q&A | 2008 Presidential Elections | Cover Story: Q&A | News + Notes | Entertainment Weekly | 1:

"ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Forget the two presidential candidates: The most prominent person in this election right now is Sarah Palin. With the attention she's getting, you'd think she was running for president.
JON STEWART: Everyone likes new and shiny. We're bored. What's great about that is [Democratic VP candidate Joe] Biden is an absolutely eccentric character. That's how powerful Palin's story is — it has cast the first African-American presidential nominee, the oldest [non-incumbent] presidential nominee, and a really wild cork vice presidential candidate completely out of the picture. The press is 6-year-olds playing soccer; nobody has a position, it's just ''Where's the ball? Where's the ball? Sarah Palin has the ball!'' [Mimes a mob running after her.] Because they can only cover one thing.

...If there is something quintessentially or authentically American about her, I sort of feel like, you know what? You ''good values people'' have had the country for eight years, and done an unbelievably s---ty job. Let's find some bad values people and give them a shot, maybe they'll have a better take on it.


Many people saw the conventions as little more than a series of talking points.
STEWART: We're all sort of complicit in forcing them to make those narratives in the first place.
COLBERT: You mean us, or the real press?
STEWART: Everything. The whole mechanism of dissecting their every waking moment has created somewhat of a paralysis. We have drained them of their ability to remain human. Because any human moment will be so fiercely dissected and digested and metastasized by the media.
COLBERT: People can be hung by anything they say. We've done it.
STEWART: We've done it too. You can kill people all the time for things that are absolutely human frailties.
COLBERT: You can even manufacture the frailty, and then hang them with it.
STEWART: That's why I don't excuse what I guess you'd call the satiro-industrial complex from culpability.
COLBERT: That's funny: I absolve me. I could absolve you if you want.
STEWART: That's the beauty of having a demagogue on right after your show — he can actually absolve our show, which is incredibly convenient...

[On 24 hour news]
STEWART: We've got three financial networks on all day. The bottom falls out of the credit market, and they were all running around. On CNBC I saw a guy talking to eight people in [eight different onscreen] boxes, and they were all like, ''I don't know!'' It'd be like if Hurricane Ike hit, and you put on the Weather Channel, and they were yelling, ''I don't know what the f--- is going on! I'm getting wet and it's windy and I don't know why and it's making me sad! Maybe the president could come down and put up some sort of windscreen?'' By being on 24 hours a day, you begin to not be able to tell what's salient anymore.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Is this election any different from the last two you covered?
JON STEWART: I was convinced an Obama/McCain campaign would be measurably different on almost all standards. And to watch it become Bush/Kerry, Bush/Gore, has been one of the most dissatisfying experiences...

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Do you think anything will change if the Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress?
JON STEWART: Look at what they promised when they took over Congress. I've never heard such hardcore rhetoric. ''The era of the blank check is over! And we will send a sternly worded memorandum — nonbinding — to somebody at the White House. Not necessarily the inner executive circle, we certainly don't want to offend, but...'' And then they got in and were like, ''Really, you want to eavesdrop? Okay, we'll let this one go. But this is the last blank check! Unless you want another. But let me say this: The next one will not be blank, because we'll just write in the memo line. Can we write in memo? Would you be bothered by that?''
STEPHEN COLBERT: One of the things I love about my character is I can make vast declarations and it doesn't matter if I'm wrong. I love being wrong. So my character can tell you exactly what's going to happen: The Democrats are going to change everything. We're going to have gay parents marrying their own gay babies. Obama's gonna be sworn in on a gay baby. The oath is gonna end ''So help me, gay baby.''
STEWART: Then they'll head right over to the abortion mixer. There'll be a dance, and then there'll be a little tent set up outside, just in case anybody wants an RU-486..."

I love this happens on the same street I live on.

Zoning? Pfft. We don't need no stinking zoning. Houses, shops and rice fields. Love it.

Rice, heavy and ready to be threshed.

From 2008-10-08

From 2008-10-08

Mini thresher going to work.

From 2008-10-08

Rice holocaust.

From 2008-10-08

Spiders will one day rule us all.

That's at least three interconnected series of webs, there.

From 2008-10-08