loser! (I hope...)

Hi. My name is John. (“Hi, John.”) I eat too much.

That’s really it, in a nutshell (argh! A food reference!). I am 53, and no longer have the metabolism to deal with the calories I ingest. My appetite still thinks it’s about 23 years old, and it doesn’t care about metabolic rates and whatnot.

Eating is fun. Food is fun. I’m the sort of guy who will spend time researching what I should buy to replace my beloved, but on-its-last-legs Joyce Chen cleaver. I’m the sort of guy who knows who Joyce Chen is.

The details: I am 5 feet 9 inches, and weigh 232. With my gray hair (what’s left of it), and my gray beard, this belly ballast is ideal for the 12th month of the year. It is less than optimal for the other 11 months.

The thing is I am not that much in poor health. I see my doctor twice a year at least. Blood work comes back good, with a bit of high cholesterol managed with Lipitor, and controlling high blood pressure with atenolol. My resting pulse is 58, as of Sunday 09/03’s blood donation. This I attribute to my bicycling. Currently, I bike about 45 minutes a day, on average 3 days a week. This I do by commuting to work, a bit over 3 miles from my home.

Now, if you have ever, ever, been on any Tampa road, street, thoroughfare, or cow path, you know that even wrapped in an automotive suit of armor, you’re taking your life in your hands. Now picture yourself on two wheels, pedaling madly, with a vaguely head-shaped Styrofoam picnic cooler bobbling on your noggin as your only protection.

Yeah, that’s exactly what my family says.

I love bicycling though, automotive assassins aside. How else does one get excellent cardio while also exercising one’s vocabulary responding to mobile critics of my ancestry? And yes, I do take care to obey the law, which means that I do have the right to use the left turn lane, so stop cursing me out, Bubba.

It is also, for me, a great tonic for my osteoarthritis of the knees; the left is the bad guy, the right knee is weak, and gets talked into joining left knee in wild inflammation binges. It helps a lot to bike.

I have tried to diet, mostly to little or no effect.

So, to lose weight this time, and to keep it off, I am devising a reorganization of some aspects of my life. My main weapon against pudge will be to ramp up my physical activity, to boost the ol’ metabolism, and so to burn calories faster.

Re-enter: weightlifting.

Back when I biked 24 miles round trip most days for my commute, I used the little fitness center that my then-employer had. It was great, to add resistance workouts to my cardio.

There is a fitness center where I now work, but honestly, I’d rather spend as much time as possible at home. So, I’m reorganizing my home office (um, per my 4 year old grandson, it’s the Clubhouse; he “lets” me use it as my office) to accommodate a weight bench and weight set.

My goal is to lose two pounds a week. I’d love to be down below 200 pounds by Christmas.

After all, I have two grandchildren, and I gotta be able to keep with the pint-sized dynamos.

Politics, and my adult children

My daughter, of who I am inordinately proud of, thinks that I am scandalized by the fact that she and her husband both profess to be Republicans. I’m actually pleased that she's thinking for herself.

While I am usually not in agreement with the GOP, I am not a Democrat. I have donated to the Dems, because they’re the party out of power, and because there’s really no other valid political voice available in the US. But, I think that both parties are really just two sides of the same corrupt coin. (Bush & Co. are an exception; they are truly radical and extremist – the most so since FDR. They are wanting to create an unlimited power executive branch with no oversight or counterbalance from Congress, the courts, or the media.)

My son, of whom I am inordinately proud, is at college, has stood up to disapproving instructors when he expresses knowledgable criticism of Ann Coulter. This is not a popular position in one particular big Southern university. It displeases them that he's read his Ann Coulter, straight from the books.

The man's got guts.

Hurricanes

It is hurricane time again. Ernesto, going from a nothing to a contender to a nothing again; now just a blobby area of rain, with the potential to become a contender again, has been wavering drunkenly, targeting everything from the Atlantic Ocean to the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. When I got up this morning, the expectation was that Tampa would have a hurricane, on Wednesday. By the time I got home tonight, it was now looking as though the east coast of Florida would get the hurricane, after a trip through the Everglades. Now it's back to Tampa again or more precisely, Orlando and Gainesville.

This is the way hurricane season works, you know; something big and bad is out there, and it's coming, but is it actually coming toward you or near enough to you to affect you or just generally somewhat waving in your direction and then go on to victimize somebody else.

Ramses II part 2

There are several levels of my awe and astonishment about the project of moving the statue of Ramses II to its new resting place.

There's obviously behind this project, a respect and reverence for the history of the country, in this case, Egypt. Sure, this may well be due to the fact that respect for history is codified in Egyptian law. Still, there is the impulse to treasure history and to keep it alive, even if it had to be given the weight of law.

There is also my awe and respect for the people themselves to actually get together to do this difficult project.

Big Engineering-Ramses II moves upon the earth again

Amazing, wonderful stuff. more later....

Saving an ancient pharaoh...

The pharaoh moves...

Of Frat Boys, Fart Jokes, and the Oval Office

I believe that the end is near for President Bush, at least in terms of his ability to govern, or command much respect. It's amazing. The media, formerly so awed by the faux cowboy, is now doing its best to make sure that we know exactly what kind of yahoo he is.

He tells fart jokes. Not only that, he will coupé le fromage in front of new presidential aides. (scroll down to "Animal House in the West Wing".)

I can't even begin to defend that. You got gas, you hold it, or you apologize for its unintended release. You don't deliberately try to engender a toxic waste release.

I fear for my country. Consider this quotation from H.L Mencken from 1920: "As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

Sweat, Heat, and Hope

Ah, the end of summer. Well, of course, we're talking about Tampa Florida. Here, summer lasts approximately 11 3/4 months out of the year. Here we are talking about one of the consistently top ranked sweatiest cities in America. The humidity is just overwhelming. I swear, there are days I wish I had scuba gear, just to go out to work. The heat, the humidity; it's oppressive.

But hope springs eternal. Here it is near the end of August, and you can tell that the season is about to change, as infintesimally as it does in Tampa. As overwhelming as summer is here, it also bears a certain sharpness. The combination of heat and humidity drives right through you.

But when the season starts to change, it's not quite so sharp. It starts moderating, even if only a little bit. And I first felt that last night, and again, in the middle of the day with it just wasn't quite as unbearable.

No matter how less unbearable it gets, it's never really not summer. The change of season is not in the gaudy fashion of the Midwest; it's fall when it's no longer consistently in the 90's.

And what was all this for?

Oh my. Where to begin?

Well, I suppose I could start with a blistering stream of profanity and obscenity, but I don't suppose that would do any good.

President Bush, today, in his press conference said that 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq. I'll repeat that. He said that 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq.

What the holy moley, sons of a so and so were these administration dorks saying for years to the run-up to the Iraq war?

We had to invade Iraq, because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and because there was definite linkage between him and the terrorists who committed the World Trade Center attack.

You'll see from the link the reference to Cheney, speaking on Meet the Press. Oh yes, he and Rice and Rumsfeld, among others, all put forth a drumbeat that we had to go to Iraq. We had to defuse the fangs of the weapons of mass destruction. We had to avenge 9/11.

I'm sorry. This would be funny if it weren't so tragic. Since the war began, 2605 American lives have been lost in Iraq. Since Bush's vain glorious proclamation of "Mission Accomplished" was uttered 2468 lives have been lost, American lives. Of course this does not even take into consideration the lives of Iraqis lost.

So now, of course, we're in Iraq forever, or at least not until Bush leaves office. How many more good lives thrown away after other good lives lost?

Texas gave us at George W. Bush. Texas also gave us Jane Russell and Cyd Charisse. There is balance in the universe.

It's hilarious to think that some of mankind's earliest art may actually be caveman gang bangers tagging walls. In the August 2006 edition of Scientific American, an article entitled Paleolithic Juvenilia puts forth exactly that theory (since the article is behind a paywall, thanks to World History Blog for the reference). It points out that most of the themes found on the walls of the caves of Lascaux are just those that would appeal to young punks, even dressed in animal skins. It's all killing this and killing that with gory loops of entrails coming out of mammoths, while a mammoth gores a male who appears to be somewhat stirred up by the entire affair. It's the earliest form of snuff comics.