messiestobjects

I've Stolen This Post From Attytood Because It's Awesome

"Worse than Watergate: Bush scores lowest presidential approval rating EVER!

Worse than Richard Nixon in the days before he resigned in disgrace during Watergate, worse than Jimmy Carter during the Iran hostage crisis, much worse than Bill Clinton when he was impeached. Just as Roger Bannister raced through what once seemed the unreachable 4-minute mile, Bush has burst through a barrier once also thought impossible, below the 20-percent mark.

Check this out:

George W. Bush's overall job approval rating has dropped to a new low in American Research Group polling as 78% of Americans say that the national economy is getting worse according to the latest survey from the American Research Group.

Among all Americans, 19% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 77% disapprove. When it comes to Bush's handling of the economy, 14% approve and 79% disapprove.

Among Americans registered to vote, 18% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 78% disapprove."

Read the rest of this article here.

Am I Alone In My Visceral Reaction To Bush's Monkeyface?

"Eating everything you want is not that much fun. When you live a life with no boundaries, there’s less joy. If you can eat anything you want to, what’s the fun in eating anything you want to?"
-Tom Hanks

I've recently lost about ten pounds. I've been going to the gym since September, not exactly regularly due to work travel, but whenever I'm home at least every other day if not every day. The first three months or so were kind of slow going... my stamina on the treadmill got incrementally better, but I maybe lost a pound or three during that time. Then, in the last month and a half or so, it began to drop rapidly. One time I weighed myself, right before I went to Fort Lauderdale, and I was at 204 lbs. When I got back from being down there for a week and not getting any real exercise, after my first workout I weighed myself again, and I was at 198. Then, once more due to work and other unforeseen drama in my life, it was two weeks before I was able to hit the gym again. So this past Monday I weighed myself and I was still at 198, and yesterday at 197 & ¾! It seems as though I've hit a certain mark in my exercise where my body has finally started to believe that I'm really serious about the whole thing, and has decided to pay attention. Sweet!

My diet probably also has something to do with it. I've been %90 faithful to my 2007 New Year's resolution to give up fast food, and I buy lots of whole wheat products and vegetables at the grocery nowadays. I still indulge in the occasional pizza of course, but I never buy chips or other junk food any more except for Tostitos (which they now have a whole wheat variety of!) and salsa. I use Olivio instead of butter, and buy organic milk. I've cut waaay back on my cheese intake also, mostly because I was paranoid about my cholesterol levels. I haven't eaten more than a pint or two of ice cream in the last six months. I take a bevy of vitamins in the morning and I drink Metamucil with dinner every night. And then I take some more vitamins.

This probably sounds annoying to you. I sincerely apologize. Before I got all health conscious, I hated people that exhibited this sort of behavior and then that's all they would talk about. But what I want to say about it is that I've learned some extremely valuable things by doing the gym thing, and they're not even all fitness related. But this first one is: Exercise and diet are mutually reinforcing.

When I first started going to the gym, I didn't really care too much to change my eating habits. I just wanted to get on the treadmill and work off those extra calories I'd eat the night before. I mean, I cared a little, because I'd just been told that my cholesterol was too high, but overall I still ate what I wanted. But once I'd been doing it for a few weeks, I found that when I went to the store, I'd pay more attention to those food content labels. I found that I actually wanted, for the most part, to avoid junk and high fat foods that I loved, because I'd been so good about working out that I wanted to control my calorie count in order not to undervalue all that hard work. The diet thing actually came very naturally... at no time did I ever feel that I was giving up food that I couldn't bear to give up. I never had to plan to diet... it just happened rather organically. Except for my Fast Food resolution. But even that made sense at the time because I'd just come back to the States and was indulging in all the bad stuff I'd missed while I'd been away, and I knew that if I didn't put the kibosh on it quick I'd be looking like the inbred lovechild of Mayor McCheese and the Grimace in no time.

I've learned loads of other things at the gym, but I'm sure they're all clichéd... More energy, better moods, blah blah blah. I mean, it's all true, but everybody's heard all that before. The only surprises in the whole enterprise for me have been that whole unforced desire to diet thing I just said and also the fact that losing weight happens quicker and more abruptly than one might have thought. Granted, it took me five months to get to that point, but once I finally did, cool. But there's one more thing, fairly unrelated to health but very interesting.

My gym has about 12 big TVs up on the wall in front of the cardio machines so that you can walk, run, bike, or do your elliptics while watching whatever mind-numbing crap is on whichever TV station. Each of the machines has a little channel box which you can plug your headphones into so that you can listen to whichever one you choose. Anyway, I always listen to my mp3 player, but I'll watch the TVs without sound anyway as it helps to distract from the pain of jogging. But yesterday they had CNN, FOX, and MSNBC news on at the same time, and I noticed that all three of them were running the same story at the same time; the one about Bush's latest bribe to us. You remember; he bribed us with a tax rebate when he first got into office, in the hopes we'd like him and not make too much noise when he later unveiled his diabolical plans to destroy the world, and now he's doing it again in the hopes that we'll all go "Oh see? He's not so bad." Jerk-off.

Anyway, that's not my point. My point was that I was watching these three major news networks broadcasting this story simultaneously, and not only the same story, but the same news blurbs under the talking heads, the same exact camera angles, and the same commercial breaks. Different commercials, though. At first I was kind of not too freaked out by it, because it's a big enough story that sure, they're all going to be there at the same time. But I'm on the treadmill for 35 minutes, and the stories continued to triplet each other, even the less important ones. Some news from Iraq, the Roger Clemens on steroids thing. For my entire 35 minutes on the treadmill, all three of those news networks parroted each other exactly, I swear to God. It was very upsetting. It's like they are so confident in their ability to slop feed us whatever nonsense someone is telling them to without anybody noticing or caring that they weren't even attempting to keep up the appearance of being different news sources anymore. They were all using the same camera guy, for God's sake! The guy typing up the word blurbs at the bottom of the screen is working for all three major news networks! I wonder how long before they convince everybody that they may as well conglomerate into one big news agency since their news is identical in importance, content, and spin, anyway. And how long before it's just el Presidente giving us his daily benediction, because if he doesn't say it, it's not worth knowing.

I do have to say though that seeing Bush's monkey face on the TV while jogging is really good for the heart rate. I instantly get angry and that adrenaline rush of hate really gets me going.

Oh, Happy Valentines day! I love you.

The Attack Of The [inso]Maniac Brain

I have this problem with not being able to fall asleep the night before I travel. It never fails. It's actually extremely inconvenient. I think it's somewhat related to being excited about going somewhere, however it doesn't really even matter where I'm traveling to, or what for. For instance, I wound up getting about three, maybe four hours of sleep last night even though technically I went to bed at a somewhat reasonable hour.

I've been in Virginia for the last week for work, in a town right outside of Washington D.C., and today I'm driving home. That's right, I couldn't sleep because I was too excited about getting in my car and making the five hour drive back home. Granted, Virginia has been rather dull; no cool pictures or stories at all, and most of my free time this turn around has been spent playing Dragon Warrior IV on a Nintendo emulator on my work laptop, and also I really like my apartment. It has my coffee maker and my nice big TV. But still.

The worst part is that I'm not even hitting the road until later this afternoon... I have about 6 hours of work to do first. That's right, I couldn't sleep because I was very excited about waking up at 6:30 am, packing up and checking out of my hotel room, then coming to work for 6 hours before sitting behind the wheel of my boaty car for 5 hours, all to get to a place I've been to many times.

The night before I went to Thailand last year, I had trouble sleeping. That I understand. Thailand is exciting. The night before I flew to Iraq for the first time in '03... well, I arrived in that country pretty damn exhausted from severe lack of sleep. Understandable for many reasons. But every work trip I've gone on or come back from... seriously. It's twisted, because I think it's important to be well rested before traveling, especially if I'm going to be driving, but for some reason my body insists on having this inappropriate reaction to impending activity.

I think that part of the answer lies in the fact that I'm, not worried exactly, but perhaps you can call it being in "Mental Planning Overdrive" mode. I'm mapping out the next day's schedule over and over so that I don't forget anything or do anything wrong, and it's not like it's even on purpose, my brain just does it automatically, and seems to care little if the process exhausts me, leaving my body in less than prime condition to carry out it's Machiavellian little travel schemes.

I think that one conclusion that can be drawn from this is that our brains do not solely act under our control, even during the waking hours; they can and do act as computers which carry out previously input programs. For instance, I almost never need an alarm. If I want to get up at a specific time the next day, I just think about it before retiring, and I'll generally wake up on or up to an hour before that time, depending. I think that comes from a fear of being late for things, ingrained into me through many embarrassing experiences. On travel days, I set an alarm anyway, because my brain is notoriously treacherous when it's tired.

I can hear you asking by now, "So what? This is a stupid post." All I have to say to that is, Yes, yes it is. But I'm rather tired, I've got a long day ahead of me, and I found myself with a small window of time this morning and nothing to fill it with until I noticed that it's been like 2 weeks since I last posted. So this is yet another result of feeling obligated to post when you've got nothing much to say.