The military press/bench press combo has created a minor symphony of snaps and pops in my right shoulder. Major suspect, rotator cuff. Gonna take two weeks off both those lifts in the hopes that my healing factor kicks in. This gives me plenty of extra time for cardio and back work in preparation for my shirtless Mexico adventures this December. (Playa Del Carmen, rented beach house, what?) Chances of squandering this opportunity are currently hovering near 100%.
He really lives who makes use of himself. Those men, however, who creep into a hole and grow torpid are no better off in their homes than if they were in their tombs. Right there on the marble lintel of the house of such a man you may inscribe his name, for he has died before he is dead.
— Seneca, Letter LX. On Harmful Prayers, 4
Man laughs and plays and gallops and dances without thinking at all of death. Nonetheless, when it comes to them by surprise, or to their wives, children, or friends, what torment and outcries, what madness and despair! Have you ever seen anyone so changed, confused, and subdued? Therefore, man must prepare in advance for it…Let us disarm death of all novelty and strangeness. Let us converse and be familiar with him, and have nothing so frequent in our thoughts.
— Montaigne
Ladies and gentlemen! You’ve read about it in the newspapers! Now, shudder as you observe, before your very eyes, that most rare and tragic of nature’s mistakes! I give you…the average man! Physically unremarkable, it has instead a deformed set of values. Notice the hideously bloated sense of humanity’s importance. The club-footed social conscience and the withered optimism. Most repulsive of all, are its frail and useless notions of order and sanity. If too much weight is placed upon them…they snap.
How does it live, I hear you ask? How does this poor, pathetic specimen survive in today’s harsh and irrational world? The sad answer is “not very well”. Faced with the inescapable fact that human existence is mad, random and pointless, one in eight of them crack up and go stark, slavering buggo!
And who can blame them? In a world as psychotic as this…
The heart of another is a dark wood.
— Natasha Tretheway
The race for the Republican presidential nomination … is epic, monumental, heinous and disgusting. It’s like watching 17 platypuses try to mount the Queen of England.
— Matt Taibbi for Rolling Stone
Longed for him. Got him. Shit.
— Margaret Atwood
The sinister, the terrible, never deceive; the state in which they leave us is always one of enlightenment. And only this condition of vicious insight allows us a full grasp of the world.
— Thomas Ligotti, The Noctuary
You think ‘Okay, I get it, I’m prepared for the worst’, but you hold out that small hope, see, and that’s what fucks you up. That’s what kills you.
— Stephen King, “Joyland” (via frostbiiite)
Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.
— Lao Tzu (via uberhotbitch)
So I honored my ancestors with a workout. Upper body, cardio. Did not die.
Started with bench press. Some reprobate bastard hogged the regular bench, so I resorted to hammer strength. Pyramid: 270 x 10, 330 x 8, 360 x 8. Then machine flyes: 150 x 8, 160 x 8.
Shoulders: Standing military press. 135 x 10, 155 x 8. Snappage, retreated to seated machine press: full stack (270?) x 8.
Biceps; Alternating dumbbell curl, 45 x 8, 40 x 10, 35 x 12.
Triceps: Didn’t wanna.
Back: Seated machine row, 180 x 8, 190 x 8, 200 x 8, 210 x 6. Finished with rear delt flyes, 90lbs? x 8.
Then everyone’s favorite: Yogging. 3 miles on treadmill. Almost reversed time with my epic slowness. Did not quit, did not cry = success.
The right shoulder is becoming a problem - mildly sore at all times, especially when I wake up. Gonna ice it like Jay Z ices his lady and see what happens.
Still not a fitness model. Joe Weider lied to me.
I like the man who as a citizen feels, when a wrong is done to the community by any one … not that he is shocked and horrified and would like to go home; but [wants] to put the wrong-doer down, to make the man who does wrong aware that the decent man is not only his superior in decency, but his superior in strength.
— Theodore Roosevelt
I am sneaking off from work to jog 2 miles in the middle of the day who am I and when does my parade begin?
These people have no concept of even the most basic physics.
And God created every living creature
that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak.
God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke.
Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.
“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.
“Certainly,” said man.
“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God. And He
went away.
— Kurt Vonnegut