To Be a Gym Bunny! Level 2

The Scott Pilgrim comics represent an idea so intricately tied to my existence that I am amazed I never thought of it first: life is like a giant, slightly retarded video game.

"Give me most of your money, Tamaki style!"

Actually it’s probably just as well Bryan Lee O’Malley thought of it before I did, because I suck as an artist and I would never have been able to make it cool like he has. Seriously, they’re wicked good comics. But I digress.

The gym is a perfect place to test what passes for a sensible belief system in my world. Today I did a fitness test. (If you want to know how diabolically I performed on my last fitness test, you have only to look at my last Gym Bunny post.) It’s a simple test: ride a stationary bike for 10 minutes at between 60-65rpm. The bike monitors your heart rate, among other things, and prints this information at 30-second intervals.
The gym instructor takes this little printout, slaughters a goat, puts the printout and the goat’s entrails into this big cauldron and from the resulting mixture scries your fitness level.
The score can range from 1-5.
5 means you are fit. You are like the Jesus Christ of fitness if you are a 5; like a Chinese acrobat, sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber and taking for sustenance only the honourably nourishing wishes of your nation.
1 means you are me. Or an amoeba. It’s important you recognise that 1 is the lowest possible value. If it were not, my first score would probably be 0.8, but the machine is programmed to show you a little more love than that, so I am 1.
Today’s test I scored... wait for it... another goddam 1.
But before you slit your wrists in sympathy, wait for the good news. Apparently, I am on the verge of 2. Do you know what this means?

Level Up!!

I want you.

I can’t wait.

Make me a Playlist Competition!

Science shows: working out to music is a good idea. Working out in jeans is a not as good idea.

To my mind, two things are essential for a smoothly run gym experience: the first is a pair of

Adidas three-stripe pants (more on that later).
The second is a kick-ass iPod playlist of songs to get you going.

So your job is to suggest a song that I can add to my playlist to keep me motivated and going hard. It needs to have a driving beat and a fairly consistent tempo – the soft verse, strong chorus thing doesn’t work. I will accept any suggestions so long as they aren’t completely ridiculous like ‘I like willies’.
The person who suggests the song that works best for me will be declared the winner and showered with prizes! (of an as-yet undetermined nature)

To give you some idea: at the moment the songs that are working best for me are ‘Low’ by Foo Fighters, ‘Sweetness’ by Jimmy Eat World, ‘Rules and Games’ by Funeral for a Friend, ‘Jars’ by CheVelle, ‘Hysteria’ by Muse and ‘Individual’ by The Salads.
Because most people don’t have a Blogger account I will accept suggestions on here and on Facebook. Go bananas!

Rules
- You are competing for some random crap of my choosing. It could come from Smiggle, or the dairy, or the drawer of my bedside table. Who knows!
- Like Highlander, there can be only one winner!
- If, by slim chance, you suggest a song I already have on my workout playlist, that is a foul and you will be asked to select again. (There are only 50 songs on there at the moment)
- If you suggest the same song as somebody else, that song goes to the person who posted it first.
- You have until Sunday 18th October to make suggestions. Then I’m gonna need a couple of gym sessions to try them out, so I’ll announce the winner the following Sunday (25th Oct).
- Judge’s decision is final. Don’t start with him.

To Be a Gym Bunny! Part 1

Charles Atlas, my hypothetical man-fitness idol. Anyone else remember these wicked ads from comic books?

I have never been in a gym with the purpose of doing any kind of constructive exercise for my physical betterment. To me, a gym is a mythical place where people go to perform arcane rituals which somehow make them happy and healthy. There always seemed a palpable air of mystery about such places.
Unfortunately, at 27 years of age I find that I can no longer do whatever the hell I want and expect my body to maintain the slightly underweight but generally acceptable shape that I have had for the last decade. Hence, knowing that my previous exercise regime of incessant fiddling and walking from the couch to my bed was no longer doing the trick, I took the first tentative step into... the gym.
I joined up for 6 weeks, because I am a wuss. I have no idea how I’ll go with this.
The first step is to measure my fitness with numbers and stuff. I respect that.
Fun Fitness Fact: I have 18.5% body fat. I assume this means I am almost 1/5 made of fat. I remember hearing once that your body is 80% water. Therefore I am a wicked water/fat combination. That's straight science. This leaves 1.5% for other stuff, which I’m going to assume is, like, hair and fingernails. Yeah.
Another, more terrifying number: on a scale of 1-50 of fitness I am a 16. As a teacher I have to say that that, my friends, is goddamn unacceptable.
My blood pressure is 135/80. I don’t know what that means but, be honest, you don’t either. That act of taking my blood pressure made me feel quite faint though, which lead to a painfully embarrassing forced bonding session with my trainer while I tried to will my skin to regain its usual pigmentation without puking.
After a rocky start though, I got it sorted.

Stay tuned for what happens when I get unleashed on the gym by myself!

The End of an (Annoying) Era?

"Hold on, this doesn't taste like souls at all! I'm not eating this!"

There's nothing as soul-wrenching as watching a group of 11 year-olds worship talentless 'celebrity socialites'.
Me: "What is there to admire about this person?"
Impressionable child: "Well... she's really pretty and popular."
Ugh. Thankfully the spotlight has been shining elsewhere for the last 12 months or so. It seems like Papa Roach have the final word on the matter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duuUnO6kxGg&feature=channel
Well said, boys.

I saw these guys in concert in 2004 and loved every minute of it, even though I wasn't a big follower of their music at the time. But I am loving what they're doing with the new sleaze rock direction.

I hope I don't get sued for this!

The Real American Hero

Why does nobody understand me? I'm so lonely.

G.I. Joe was not a bad movie, when you consider that the source material was a line of action figures. I liked watching it through the lens of someone who has gone from playing with the action figures during bath time (I had Storm Shadow. I was completely unaware that he was a) a baddie and b) Japanese. Sweet!) to an adult with a working knowledge of the ‘widescreen comics’ format, blending fantastical elements with realistic consequences, that obviously informed the film.
One thing that I couldn’t figure out though, was how the world’s most top-secret military organisation managed to enlist the mute Snake Eyes.

Here is how I would like to imagine it happened.

Recruiter: Hello, excuse me? Yes, you, in the complete body condom. Hi. I, um, have a business offer for you. We actually saw you on Youtube and apparently you’re quite good at stabbing people.
Snake Eyes: …
Recruiter: Right. Well. How would you like to join the world’s foremost secret military organisation? You will get to blow all kinds of stuff up.
Snake Eyes: …
Recruiter: All you would have to do is choose a codename, tell us a little bit about yourself and sign this form that says you are legally dead. That’s all. Easy!
Snake Eyes: …
Recruiter: We, uh, have some ideas for codenames if you’re having trouble deciding. Pulls out a list. So far no one has taken Daisy chain. Or Spastic Pup is still free.
Snake Eyes grabs pen and writes ‘my name is Snake Eyes’.
Recruiter: That’s your name? Convenient. Okay, so before you sign we just need to know you’re not, like, Hermann Goering’s lovechild or anything like that.
Snake Eyes: …
Recruiter: You know, full disclosure. Just anything you want to get off your chest. Like, is your adopted brother a psycho or anything?
Snake Eyes: …
Recruiter: Are you actually unable to talk, or just being a pain in my butt?
Snake Eyes: …
Recruiter: Man, you drive a hard bargain. I suppose we can get by with you gesticulating wildly whenever you need to communicate with the rest of the team, who will be relying on you to get them not killed. That should be fine. Okay, so you are in charge of combat training all our guys. And cooking.
Snake Eyes writes 'I cannot cook'.
Recruiter: Sighs. Great, now I’ll have to recruit someone to do that too! God.

The Case against Photography

On the spectrum of photographers I would place myself somewhere in the middle. I have seen some pretty rubbish photography in my time, and I guess with the advent of digital cameras now everyone’s a photographer.

On my recent holiday to Fiji the thing that I was most taken with (with the notable exception of my radiant fiancée) was the snorkelling. The sense of peace I felt out on the coral reef, a thousand submarine lives playing out around me, was incredible.
As I floated above schools of beautifully coloured and patterned fish, intricate coral and clear white sand I did think to myself, ‘I would love to get a photo of this.’ But because the camera that we had brought with us was not designed for use underwater I was unable to do so.
But let’s say I had been equipped with such a camera, would I be any happier now? The memories remain vivid in my memory as a result of the experience, as much as the sights I witnessed. You can’t take a photograph of spontaneous laughter filtered through a snorkel. Any photos that I had taken simply would not have done that experience justice.

My limited experience of photography is that, in many ways, it is a waiting game. Light conditions need to be right, the sun at the correct height to deliver that perfect shot or blast away pesky obscuring shadow. Maybe the wind is too high, the temperature too low, the baby blinked, that look on a face is gone. All of these factors need to be accounted for, managed, in order to get that perfect shot. It’s kind of like being a hunter, but without the messy result one would hope.
In a way, I would rather live life and have those experiences.
I don’t hate photos. I love going back through photos I have taken and reliving the memories. But the important part of that is the reliving of the memories, the experience. I have never looked at a photo and thought ‘that is a really well-taken photograph.’

I have a similar sentiment about music. There are some songs, ones that I really love, that I would never like to see the music for. The act of going through and deliberately learning the chords or the melody, breaking the song down into its component parts, would be doing it a disservice.

What do you think, Sarah?

Change is good. Except when it clinks in your pocket.

You know the old adage: a change is better than a rest.

I disagree.

Change is exhausting.
Change your flat, change your flatmate, change your girlfriend, change your job, change the town where you live, change your diet, change your underwear, change your priorities, change the channel, change your toothbrush head. Phew!

At least it is self-directed for the most part. Still, I should probably just ease up on all the change for a while. In school we call that consolidating. Or is that fallacious thinking? Maybe I should just keep rolling on and see where I end up. Who knows the right way to lie a life. I don't. But I should definitely look into it...

At least I can always count on one thing staying the same: Selphie will always be a big whingebag.