If You’re Not Close To Death, How Do You Know You’re Alive?

I chose pain. I’m training in the sun this summer, and I started today. I went to the Y this morning to lift weights and when I was done I was planning to do my normal hour on the elliptical machine. But then I thought why not run outside? So I did. I headed out to my car, checked the thermometer, strapped on my iPod and took off towards the river. It was 87 degrees and I was wearing a black shirt. The only downside is that I didn’t have my Garmin 305. It took me less than five minutes to finish blasting my shoulders and to start running. The plan was to run to the Jacksonville Landing and back. I was less than ten steps in before I was out of breath. My body was still trying to deal with the fatigue from the weights when I was asking it to carry me up a bridge. I hated every moment of it, but this is how Kenyans and Ethiopians grow up, it’s their basic mode of travel, so running up hill in the heat is the way to go. On the way down the bridge over the railroad tracks, it wasn’t so much running as it was not quite falling down. Man was I happy about being in the shade, which didn’t last very long. I got to the bottom and found my stride. I cruised the half mile to the Landing, and then realized I had to run back. I started to lose it on the way back. I was wondering what the homeless people thought about runners. I was wondering if I would feel it when my heart exploded in my chest. I know heart attacks hurt, but this wouldn’t really be a heart attack. Heart attacks come from a lack of blood. My heart was just being pushed past its limits, especially going back up the bridge. I never felt as bad as I did during the River Run, so I never stopped. These were the thoughts that were running through my head. I finished with a lap around the track, and I ran flat out the last hundred yards. I drove home and sat in my car for five minutes while my heart slowed down. It wasn’t until I was sitting in front of my house that I got a little scared about not being able to catch my breath. Oh well, that which doesn’t kill us. This is gonna be a fun summer.

I Need To Be Active Every Single Day

I’m sitting here with writer’s block. I think it’s because I surfed the internet all day. I didn’t do anything productive or even interesting, nothing but Facebook to Sherdog to ESPN to the television. I watched a great basketball team outlast a great basketball player in the NCAA tournament – Blake Griffin is a beast – and LMJ rocked her first ponytail. These were the exciting portions of my day. We’ve put LMJ’s hair in a ponytail before but she’s never left it alone before this afternoon. I didn’t think it was possible, but she’s prettier with her hair pulled back. I think it also suits her down to business personality better. She doesn’t have time to be putting her hair behind her ear. She’s got stuff to do. I think my brain hurts because I spent too much time on the bulletin boards. I shouldn’t expose myself to that much stupidity all at once, no matter how funny it is. North Carolina beat Oklahoma in basketball today and less than an hour later keyboard warriors were threatening each other’s lives. It’s not like there’s even a rivalry between the schools, and the game wasn’t close or ever in doubt. Basically, North Carolina shot well and Oklahoma didn’t. These discussions always – ALWAYS – play exactly along stereotypical lines. The Tar Heels fans started making fun of the Sooners fans about being rednecks and the Sooners fans responded by calling the Tar Heels fans homosexuals, which lead to the Tar Heels saying the Sooners were poor and one Sooner came back with “I’LL F**KING KILL YOUR FAMILY!!!” I thought that was a bit of a leap, especially since OU is a football school and they barely care about basketball. I also thought it was funny that people from North Carolina were calling other people rednecks. Hey kettle, you’re black! Sincerely, pot. Maybe there’s a distinction between a redneck and a hillbilly that’s too subtle for me to discern. It’s not a good day when the most intelligent discourse I engage in is with a stoner explaining the real reason for the success of the UFC. Oh well, there’s always tomorrow.

The Gate River Run and The Evil Hart Bridge

The Gate River Run was brutal. It was the first time I’ve ever considered not finishing a race. I felt great for the first six and a half miles and then my legs said, “We’re done.” I have no idea what happened, maybe it was the lack of sleep over the past week. Maybe I lost too much weight this week. I dropped seven pounds. I don’t know what it was. I just know that I gassed. I struggled along fine, just in pain, which I can deal with. I slowed my pace down to eleven and a half minutes a mile and stopped at every water station. Then I started up that green summbitch, which I swear goes up a lot more than it comes down. This is where I thought about quitting. I started to feel funny, and I stopped running and started walking. My mind kept telling me to go go go, and if I didn’t have my heart monitor on I probably would have pushed it. Fortunately, I did have it on and knew that my heart rate should be under 175 since I was walking. My hamstrings were killing me going up that damned bridge. I just wanted it to be over so I would run for 100 steps. It had to have taken me ten minutes to get to the top of that thing. Coming down was easy. I basically fell down the bridge. This was one of my least favorite races. I felt like crap. It’s too long for me to run alone. I was bored. I should have worn my iPod or stayed with EG and JG. If this had been a 10k instead of a 15k it would have been one of my favorites. The last three miles were just awful. One positive was the massive amount of Seminole love coming from the spectators. I saw a couple of people I didn’t expect to see, which was cool in the first couple of miles, but I got passed on the Hart Bridge by someone who tapped me on the shoulder and waved at me. I waved back but I have no idea who she was. I finished almost exactly at my goal time, but I wasn’t really able to finish strong. As bad as this race was for me, it was still a positive experience, and I’m looking forward to next years. I ran eighteen minutes faster this year than I did two years ago, so that’s the bench mark for next year – 1:25 – and no I didn’t learn anything.

The Good Ole Boy Network At Work

Holy mother of fracking Christ. We’re moving. I cannot in good conscience raise a child in a place where the local newspaper’s website is a troll board and nothing else. There’s an article in today’s Times-Union about a music teacher in Clay county whose job was saved by a populist uprising. Read the comments, read them. I happen to know this music teacher and the sewage in the comment section is mind boggling. Why would people take the time to write this crap? I guess the problem is that I’m closer to this situation than I am to most other situations in the paper. For example, the same level of douchery and retardation is present in the comments on the article about the cop who killed a guy while racing down the road at 98 miles an hour with his bubblegum lights off to, allegedly, catch another guy whose window tint was too dark at 1 o’clock in the morning, while ignoring a non-injury hit and run he had been assigned to. There’s not a single well thought comment on that story but I’m insulated because of an emotional detachment. But with the music teacher I’m stuck in the port-o-potty and it’s noon during August in Jacksonville. I can’t ignore the stench. My favorite comment is about the good ole boy network at work again. Metro Jax has just over a million people. I doubt there are five people who are less a part of the good ole boy network than the music teacher. Hank Azaria’s character in The Bird Cage would have more pull with the good ole boy network than the music teacher (everybody have fun with the puns. I left that meatball spinning out over home plate on purpose). My second favorite comment is about not letting the NAACP know about it. What does that mean? What is the goal of writing that? I know for a certainty and a truth that all of these people, with the exception of the former student, are talking out of their asses. And they’re doing it badly. My personal connection to this story has ruined my amusement of the Old Testament, wrath of God level stupidity of the comments on my local newspaper’s website. It got too real.

Congratulations Music Teacher, even though the only reason you get to keep your job is because you’re probably a member of First Baptist.

MJ Wanted Me to Write About Obama's Speech, But I Was Watching These Instead

The Ultimate Warrior

The Ultimate Mechanic

The Ultimate Equine

The Ultimate Onion

I’m thinking about the profundity of yesterday’s post, and the stagnation of the male mind. One of the things I do that really irritates my wife is watching videos on YouTube and laughing hysterically. She asks what’s so funny. I answer you don’t want to know – and she doesn’t. Most likely, neither do you. None of this stuff is “you don’t want to know” in a Tony Soprano or Chris Hansen kind of way. That’s “I don’t want you to know” stuff. This stuff causes soul searching and raises questions like: How am I married to this idiot? How do I leave my daughter with this idiot? Is he ever going to outgrow this? If you haven’t clicked on any of the links above, they are videos of a professional wrestler raving about Hulk Hogan, a guy in a garage using an air compressor to make fart jokes, and a guy getting kicked in the head by a horse (he was beating the horse so he deserved it). There is also a link to an article from The Onion about Japanese porn. What these all have in common is that they have me in stitches every single time I watch or read them. I thought the law of diminishing returns was universal. Apparently it isn’t. At least not when it comes to “THE OATIMATE WOHYAHH” telling everyone why “HOAK HOGAN AND ALL HIS HOAKAMANIACS” will be disappointed at Wrestlemania 6. I can’t defend the videos other than to say it’s a guy thing, and women wouldn’t understand. The Onion article is well written, and I think may have some crossover appeal. The names of the distribution companies are my favorite. A big reason MJ gets upset is because when I find gems like these it’s usually late at night or first thing in the morning and my cackling might wake up the baby. I watch her run through a quick cost/benefit analysis of me in her head, and decide whether or not to put me out of her misery. It’s a good thing I can lift heavy stuff, and I change diapers.

Update: I Should Eat More Fiber Because This Is Painful

Expectant mothers with big busy body families? I’m trying to figure out exactly who would need Twitter because I want to convince myself that it’s not a sign of the Apocalypse. For those that don’t know, Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?. That’s from their web page. What a total, complete, absolute, all encompassing waste of time. I’m wasting time right now. My ramblings do not meet the minimum requirements to qualify as a constructive use of time. At best my blogging is mental exercise. I usually think when I do these things. At worst it’s a psychological profile that will be used at trial. However, it is not in the same realm of the putrid narcissism of Twitter. Why would anyone want a play-by-play account of the boring lives of 99.9999999% of us? Most of the status updates on Facebook are annoying me now, “It’s Monday and I’m at work!!!” is not an update anyone is interested in, except from my one friend who just got a new job after a long search. How is an entire website dedicated to that and nothing else? People that go on Jerry Springer should have Twitter accounts. I would love to know how they get to that point in their lives. The mom that just had eight babies even though she’s living on student loans should have Twitter. Basically, Twitter is good for the functionally retarded, so society at large will have a chance to stop some stupid decisions.

Plaxico’s Twitter: I’m looking for my gun so I can stick it in my pants and go have some fun.

Plaxico’s Wife's Twitter: Sweetie, I got rid of all the guns because we’re millionaires and have adequate police protection in our neighborhood. Not to mention that you’re stupid, and stupid people should never be armed. ILY.

I Shouldn't Have Written This and You Shouldn't Read It

I was going to post about my trip to Disneyworld, but I saw a thread on my MMA forum titled: Do You Think You Can Take a Chimp? As of this writing there were 285 responses. There are two basic arguments. The first is that humans are smarter and bigger than chimps, and with the posters’ martial arts training the chimp has no chance. The other argument, and my school of thought, is that chimps are made of equal parts evil and hatred, and they are proportionally much stronger than humans, not to mention that the very existence of this thread negates the premise that humans are smarter than chimps. As a note of clarification, I am talking about the chimpanzee and not the smaller more docile bonobo. In my own defense I didn’t read past the first page of the thread, and I didn’t respond – I didn’t need to. However, while this topic is funny it’s also something every guy everywhere thinks about every time he goes to the zoo or sees a chimp on television. Unless, and until, he sees a chimp special on the Discovery channel. Any special will do because they’re all the same. The females take care of the babies and interact with each other in a way that is disturbingly close to a sewing circle. The males spend their time grooming each other, and stalking, chasing, and butchering monkeys when they’re hungry. They also tear other chimps who wander into their territory to pieces. Chimp life is basically Braveheart without the kilts and brogues. Even if someone could match a chimp’s brutality, which he couldn’t, his martial arts training would be useless. Martial arts are designed to work against the human body and how it moves. Chimps are shaped differently. Their center of gravity is different, and the nature of their agility is different. And even if none of this was a factor I HAVEN’T EVEN MENTIONED THEIR HUGE SHARP TEETH! There was a story about a chimp trainer in England who didn’t lock a cage, and his chimps that he raised from birth ate his face and genitals. He died. Don’t f**k with a chimp. They’re Hannibal Lecter minus the Chianti.