Evil Stick Blog

After two months of silence, I have progress to report - I’ve lost about 8 pounds! From 228 at the start to right around 220 now (217 on a good day). However I’m not certain this is something to be proud of - I haven’t done a pushup in over two months. The loss of my job back in January hit me pretty hard, and when I wasn’t applying to jobs or studying for interviews I just didn’t have the motivation to keep myself in shape. I think the 8 pounds above is some combination of eating less and digesting more due to stress, but I obviously can’t say anything for certain. I was also borderline ill for most of the period, and full-on ill for the last week, so that probably contributed to my lack of motivation.

On the plus side I walked 3.5 miles today. One of the benefits of losing my job is that my new position will require much more walking, which will mean much more exercise for a certain lazy ass I know. I’m not going to name names, but his initials are MYSELF. So hopefully what has resulted over the past two months continues into the future as I get more active. The 3.5 miles was round trip to and from the train station, which will be my primary means of commute going forward. I figure that at least during the warmer months I can walk it, then when it starts to get cold I can switch to a bike with cold weather gear. From tragedy arises opportunity.

Kilties 2009 Open house has come and gone. I’m not exactly sure how to feel about it. On the one hand, my physical preparation definitely paid off in spades - I was able to control the horn better, had better endurance, and didn’t have nearly as much arm pain this year as I have in years past. So if nothing else, I’m definitely more physically fit than I have been before.

The other side, though, is two new experiences that I went through this weekend. First, I moved up to 1st bari to give it a shot. It’s a bit outside my range now, but I’m hoping that if I work my ass off over the next couple months I’ll be able to manage the show range-wise come January. As it went yesterday, I did OK for about the first 15 minutes, but then repeated Ds above high C wore me out quickly. I’m kind of facing the same problem I had on trumpet - no problems at all with technical stuff or with rhythms, but lots of trouble with endurance and range. Of course I’m told by several people that the opener for this year is a lot tougher on the baritones than it was last year, so I suppose that should be taken into account. In any case I’ll definitely be busting my ass to improve my range and tone quality before January Camp.

The second experience was my first weekend as a staff member. After last season, Scott wanted to make some changes in how we handle staff. Mainly he felt that he wasn’t getting enough commitment from the staff he had at the time, and furthermore that some of the membership was doing a better job teaching things that he could see than the staff he had. So he’s trying something new this year - pulling most of the staff from within the corps itself. Horn and visual techs, percussion techs, and guard staff are all marching members (with one or two exceptions due to physical limitations). There are still non-marching staff members - coordination and big-picture tower stuff necessitates the person teaching that caption not be in  the line - but most of the winter program is being conducted by members themselves. I was fortunate enough to be chosen as a visual tech for the brass line. This basically means that I get to teach the entire visual program, and lead basics and visual sectionals.

So anyway, this weekend was my first camp as visual staff, really my first camp as any kind of staff member. We had spent several weeks discussing the finer points of the visual program among ourselves (things like “The arms shall form a 120 degree triangle, the weight shall be 60% forward, etc), which I then got the opportunity to present to the corps during basics blocks this weekend. The main problem we’ve had as a corps is that so far we’ve had a different visual program every year that I’ve marched. Unfortunately, that includes this year. As we had our staff meetings in October and November, we came to a consensus that there were some things in last year’s visual program that just weren’t working as well as they could. So we made a series of small changes that ended up amounting to some major-ish changes in how the hornline presents itself. The core philosophy presented last year by the visual staff is still essentially the same - movement initiates from the center of the body, emphasis is on moving the center about as opposed to reaching for positions - but some of the particulars are changed. In particular, what we’re emphasizing is almost an alternative way to think of marching in that instead of stepping with the left foot, we’re pushing off with the other foot. Some stuff we are changing - for example, we’re pulling the corps down off the platform some on the backwards march. This is to make the program more accessible, and to improve balance and maneuvering among those who may be having trouble in the first place. But the main concept of the movement is the same - the center of the body has always been the focus of the movement - it just may never have been adequately stated to the corps.

But I’ve digressed a bit, I think. As I mentioned, this was the first weekend, which means that I was essentially responsible for teaching the corps the new visual program. This also means that, from a certain perspective, the staff’s changes are MY changes. The new program is MY new program. Some of the stuff we’re doing with the upper body is quite different from what the corps has done in the past (but not that different from how most DCI corps do things today), and it showed as I tried to teach it. It was almost as if I could feel a “WTF is this?!” gravitating off everyone in the line.

It’s kind of weird, because from one perspective I know that I’m perpetuating a problem that the corps has had in the past - a visual program that changes from year to year - but from another perspective I’m really just doing what I can to push the program that pretty much the entire staff agreed upon. Yeah, it sucks to have to change every year, and for this to be just another year in the sequence, but we’ve got to be honest with ourselves - every visual person has a different idea of what’s “modern,” of what “looks good,” of what is “old school” much as most brass staff have differing ideas of a hornline’s characteristic sound. By virtue of having changed visual staff every year I was there (Chad Quamme in 2007, Andy Brady in 2008, Myself, Terry and Scooter in 2009) you’re going to see changes in the program. The trick then becomes one of staff retention. If the staff doesn’t change from year to year, the visual program won’t change from year to year either. It really isn’t change for change’s sake in that case, it’s more along the lines of “Look, you hired me to teach to the best of my ability, and this is what I know how to teach.” The best case for a group like the Kilties is to have a consistent staff year in and year out. If the staff doesn’t change, then the main program itself doesn’t change. My view is that staff retention leads to program stability, and I think that a lot of people can agree with that.

In any case, as a staff member this year, I feel two impulses. One, I have to overcome the frustration/reticence/irritation at yet another visual program change as I teach, and two, we as a staff need to settle on something that will change as little as possible. As a person who is new to teaching anything, I feel a little bit out of my depth taking this on. I know that what I’m presenting is well thought-out and well-reasoned (even if some people disagree with it), but because I’m inexperienced I have no way of knowing if I’m doing an effective job of getting this across. One of my biggest concerns is that the hornline comes away from visual sections thinging that I’m throwing this stuff at them completely at random. I think most of this is in my head, though. All I can really do is offer open communication on any issues the members have, and be confident in my own abilities in the end. Some people won’t like the things I’m presenting, and if I can change their mind that’s great. Some people don’t think the staff model is the right way to go, and they’re entitled to their opinion. I can only hope people keep an open mind and discuss their concerns before using them as a reason for leaving the organization.

My work is cut out for me. From what I’ve been told, we’re doing a lot more communication as a staff this year than has been done in years past. Being new to this I don’t have any basis for comparison, so all I can do is make sure I know everything I can ahead of time. Time to buckle down.

I’ve fallen behind on my working out again, for two reasons:

1 - I spent three days last week at home with an illness that’s been traversing the office

2 - My knees have been piping up again

The first one was kind of unavoidable - to be honest I did try to keep up my regimen while ill, but it only resulted in me feeling worse. The second one I’m not sure to handle. My own research (and the experiences of a couple friends) has told me that the knee pain is likely due to the treadmill, so I should prolly be running outside. Problem, of course, is the oh-so-lovely Chicago weather. We’re getting into snow season, and let’s just say I don’t have the right gear for running in winter temperatures. I’m not sure what to do about this. On the one side, I can keep up with indoor stuff without much issue, but on the other side if I need to remove the treadmill from my routine I’m going to be short my biggest calorie-burner. Since I need to back off the running anyway to give my knees a chance to be all they can be, I’m going to switch to walking outside three times a week instead of running. Then, once the weather starts to warm up (or when things sort themselves out and I can get some decent cold-weather running gear) I’ll start the c25k program again, but only outside. It’s very frustrating to have to accomodate a weak body, but what matters is that I’m still working towards a goal - still trying to improve myself.

I did pushups and situps yesterday. Due to the illness I started week 2 again - managed 20 pushups and 18 situps, which strangely enough is the exact number I managed while ill. So it looks like illness didn’t affect the muscles, probably just the energy delivery/recovery. I’ve also been keeping up with my horn-holding - I jumped ahead on this to week 3, since the earlier weeks were getting a little too easy for me and I figured the pushups are giving me enough of a decent foundation to push the envelope a bit. At this rate I’ll be finishing up week 4 in time for open house.

Did my pushups and crunches this morning. Hit a max of 19 and 18, respectively. This workout seems to be a lot harder on my core than the pushups alone (I know, duh, right?), meaning I feel more soreness the next day, but I do definitely get a bit of an endorphin lift after I finish a set. This is the kind of thing that I was looking for with running, but never received. After running I’d feel exhausted and I’d hurt all over. After doing the pushups and crunches I feel exhausted, but I also get a nice rush that helps to mellow out my morning commute.

Speaking of running, I’ve been taking the week off and, so far, I think my legs have been getting better. It could be the placebo effect, but it definitely feels like the hurt less each day. My left knee isn’t doing that random “here’s pain!” thing anymore, and my shins are definitely better than they were. Hopefully I’l lbe ready to take the torch up again on Monday, ’cause my fat ass needs to go.

I’ve been trying to think about how I got into this situation in the first place, and to me it’s very simple - I became less active. I weighed between 175 and 185 through most of college, and only really started to gain weight once I moved back to the Chicago area. I didn’t get the freshman fifteen - it was more like the new grad thirty. The basic gist is that while I was in school I was at least moderately active. I’d walk to class (sometimes covering as much as three miles a day), I’d take martial arts classes two or three times a week, I’d have marching band in the fall - scoff all you like, but it’s a great way to lose weight; and I was just generally up and about. I’d eat whatever I wanted, and never really see the effects. Especially when drum corps came around - junior corps is the best weight loss program on the planet.

Then I moved to Park Ridge. I still did a lot of walking as I was going for my master’s at the time, walking from apartment to train to class to train to apartment, but pretty much everything else was cut out. On top of that, my eating habits didn’t change. Thus, weight gain. From a fairly fit 185 I made my way up to 228 over the next couple years. Sure, I did things to try and get myself in shape - I created my own kind of morning workout that combined martial arts drills that I could remember with general fitness activities, or used the cheap elliptical we got from Wal-Mart that broke after four months - but I never really stuck to it. I didn’t let that stop me from eating, though.

Basically, the answer to weight loss for me is two-fold. First, I need to be more active. Second, I probably need to consider cutting back on what I eat. I have a sweet tooth (and the cavities to prove it) - I rarely meet a candy I don’t like (except for anything with coconut, and those lame-ass banana runts) - and my favorite foods are spaghetti and deep-dish pizza. Not exactly a low-carb diet.

When I started this thing, I told myself I wasn’t going to change how I eat in a substantive manner. In addition to the above, I find most vegetables disgusting (or, at the least, unpalatable), so a diet is doomed to fail from the start. I still hold to that somewhat, as I think - scratch that, I know - that any diet I try to follow will be an exercise in futility. Instead, I’m opting for a bit of portion control. Basically, I’m not actually changing what I eat, just trying to make a conscious effort to eat less of it. I know this isn’t the best way to go about it, but hopefully I’ll see some gain (or loss, depending on how you look at it ) just from eating less overall. I haven’t really been diligent about this so far, because the main goal of all this exercising stuff has always been to get in shape, following the “weight loss is a symptom of a healthy lifestyle” approach. I recognize, though, that in the end I’ll probably need to be more serious in my approach to food. I’ll tackle that bridge when I come to it, though.

I started the second week of “take it easy ’cause my knee is a bitch” this week, and after 25 minutes of walking at 3 MPH my knee started hurting again. So I’m gonna take the rest of the week off (no treadmill for me of any kind), then give it a shot next week. If my knee keeps complaining I’ll just need to find time to see a doctor about it. This is really freakin’ annoying. I don’t like running much to begin with, but just as I finally start making progress my body decides to rebel for no good reason whatsoever.

Started doing both pushups (with brand new kung-fu grip action! Actually, just slower and with better form) and crunches. Managed 20 and 15 respectively in my first exhaustion test. Hopefully I continue to see improvement with the pushups - really every week but week 6 was better than the last. And if this works for crunches I’ll be able to expand the program to other exercises. We’ll see, though - don’t want to get too into it before I have any results.

I start week 2 of baritone-holding this evening. i think I’ll start doing that in the morning while I’m taking a break from running/walking, since otherwise I have no real reason to wake up early on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday.

3 more weeks until open house. I feel like I’m in cram mode for an upcoming exam. I’ve been neglecting actually practicing my horn in favor of exercising and writing an ensemble piece, so I need to buckle down for the next couple weeks and get my chops back in shape. I started last week, but I’ve got a distance to go.

Still maintaining my diligence as best I can. My knee is definitely getting better, but slowly - at the least it’s not sore nearly as often as it was before. Hopefully by the end of the weekend it’ll be ready to go, but I think I’ll keep walking all next week just to be absolutely sure. Don’t want to damage myself, and I figure a little caution now is better than a lot of pain later. It’s prolly gonna make coming back into week 5 a complete pain in my ass - I may have to do week 4 yet again if I can’t handle week 5 day 1 after the break. We’ll see, though - I don’t think I should have that many problems with week 5 (other than the fairly daunting run at the end of the week), and if my knee would just shut the F up we’d be good to go.

I’ll be starting pushups again next week - exhaustion test on Sunday, then doing the program proper starting Tuesday. I’ll be doing crunches at the same time - the plan is to hit 100 consecutive pushups and 100 consecutive crunches on the same day. In the meantime I’ve been checking out sparkpeople.com. It’s a website devoted to both nutrition and fitness, offering trackers for both. It will give you goals to meet each week, and will suggest workouts for you (it gives me 6 different strength exercises to do on T,Th, and Sat, and says I should do 30 minutes of cardio M,W,F). It also features a meal tracker, which really helps if you’re trying to count calories. You can select a product from a large database, and it automatically enters the calories, carbs, protein, and fat into a chart for you once you’ve specified the servings. The website also offers sample recipes for the health-conscious designed to meet a daily calorie goal. I don’t count my calories (seems tedious and boring to me), but I can see how useful this would be if I was. I entered a couple days just for fun, and was kind of surprised at the size of the numbers.

Anyway, now that I’ve given them a bunch of free advertising, I thought I’d mention that I’d only brought it up because I was giving their strength exercises a shot in the interim between pushup sessions. They’re pretty diverse, and definitely exhausting, but some of them are a bit hard to interpret. I may continue with some of them going onward, and I may not - I haven’t decided yet.

I’ve also started working on my horn-holding endurance. I’m trying to adapt the c25k program for holding my horn, and so far…. I have nothing to report. The effort isn’t too challenging, but then again if I can’t hold the horn for a single minute I shudder to think what will happen come december. I can’t tell if I’m getting any benefit from it, but then again it’s only been two days. I suppose this kind of thing will take time. In any case, any effort put forth in this area has to be beneficial. The horn will not kick my ass this year. I’ve been taking the opportunity to run some clark studies while I hold the horn. I could play some music, but while I already know some of next season’s tunes I figured I’d benefit more from working on fundamentals. Right now it’s just chromatic fingering and until I get my Arban book back I can’t work on my solo for next year’s I&E., but I’ll probably expand my exercise repertoire as I spend time holding that beast up - add some articulation exercises, some long tones, and definitely lip slurs as those are prolly my weakest area. All I want is to be able to do a lip trill - is that too much to ask?
About one month left until open house. I still look like the same flabby fool I was before, and I can’t really tell if I’ve gained strength or fitness. I definitely feel more fit, and I’ve actually come to enjoy the soreness I get in my shoulders after a pushup session (I know, it’s weird, but I think I finally get the “good pain”), but I’ve barely lost any weight, and I certainly don’t look very different than I did before. I suppose that’s just the way it’s gonna work. I’ll just stick to it and take what I can. So far I’ve stuck to regular exercise for almost 7 weeks - that is certainly a new record for me, and something to be proud of in and of itself I think.

So I was hoping that I could post this a week ago. I recently finished the 100 pushups program, having completed week 6. I was all psyched - I’d actually stuck with this program for six weeks! My arms feel stronger, and look larger, and I feel more fit as a result. Then I tried to take my final exhaustion test - I tried to do 100 pushups. I got to 58 before I had to drop my knees and rest. Then I did 12 more, then rest, then 17, then rest, then 7, then rest, then 6. Total = 100, but not consecutive by any stretch of the imagination. So I figured hey, mebbe my arms are just tired, I’ll try it again on Thursday. Thursday I crapped out at 60, then finished out the hundred in a couple sets. So I said to myself “Listen, self - you’re prolly just tired. I mean you ran yesterday before your test, and you ran on Monday before your first test, so give it a couple days. You run tomorrow, so take Saturday off and try again on Sunday.” Thinking the logic was sound, I did just that - did my running on Friday, and did pretty much nothing stressful on Saturday. I woke up Sunday morning and said “Ok, today’s the day.” Stretched a bit, started, then faltered at 70. Rested for 20 seconds, then pounded out 20 more. Rested for 30 seconds, then did the final 10. So yeah, I did 100 pushups each time, but I have yet to do 100 consecutively, which is a problem.

I basically have two choices at this point. One, I can repeat week 6 and hope for the best. This is the most appealing option, but it doesn’t help to assuage some of my nagging doubts. The other option (option two for those playing along with our home game) is to recognize the cause of my failure and start over again at week 1. Basically I’m pretty sure that the reason I’m failing now is because I let my form slip. Instead of going all the way down (arms perpendicular, chest an inch off the ground, etc) I’ve been going only halfway, maybe 3/4ths of the way down. This is definitely a taxing exercise, and I went from being able to do 23 of these in a sitting to managing 70, but it is not the proper form. I’m sure somewhere along the line I’m neglecting needed improvement in my arms, pecs, back, shoulders, somewhere, and that lack of improvement in that area is prolly what’s impacting my ability to “do the hundred”. I’m not an exercise guy (regardless of what my blog has been saying for the past several weeks :-P), but I do recognize when I’ve been doing something half-assed and need to start over.

So basically, here’s the plan for the pushups. I’ll take the rest of the week off, then start again on Sunday with my initial exhaustion test. This time I’ll be focusing on proper form (going all the way down, coming all the way up), and doing them slowly so that I don’t rely upon momentum or anything to do the work for me. I’d also been putting off modifications to this regimen, as I also want to adapt this program to manage 100 situps consecutively, and I’ve got some upper-body work I’d been planning on starting with an end goal of being able to hold my horn up for half an hour. I basically put these off because I didn’t want to overstress my arms or anything, but from now on I’m going to add those workouts in. It’ll prolly mean getting up earlier, but it’s something I’m gonna have to do if next year’s Kiltie season is going to be my best yet.

Now, the dreaded running. I finished repeating week 4 last week, after having repeated week 3 as well. I felt pretty good after Friday’s run, so I moved on to week 5 today. To get a feel for what I’ve been up to, here’s a comparison:

Week 4:

• Walk 5 minutes
• Run 3 minutes
• Walk 1.5 minutes
• Run 5 minutes
• Walk 2.5 minutes
• Run 3 minutes
• Walk 1.5 minutes
• Run 5 minutes

Week 5, day 1:

• Walk 5 minutes
• Run 5 minutes
• Walk 3 minutes
• Run 5 minutes
• Walk 3 minutes
• Run 5 minutes

So I did day 1 of week 5 today. Everything was going pretty good. The first set of 5 went ok, and the second set of 5 took a bit of a toll on me. The third set of 5 was pretty challenging, up until about the 3 minute mark. I’d been running with some intense complaints from my shin muscles, my side, and being short of breath, when all of a sudden for just about half a minute everything resolved itself. My shin muscles unknotted just a bit, my breathing slowed down, and my side stopped bothering me so much. I was able to finish out the final 5 minutes feeling pretty good (but still tired and sore). As I started a warmdown walk, my shin cramp (which had gone down but hadn’t necessarily disappeared) reasserted itself, and then a new pain appeared - out of nowhere my knee started to hurt. It’s only one knee, much as it’s only one shin that bothers me (my left knee and left shin, in case you’re wondering). The knee was actually somewhat painful until I got into the shower, where it seemed to get better. As it sits now, at my desk at work, it’s ok other than the slight twinge which I usually get after running.

Basically I’m concerned. I seem to hit a milestone today in encountering what I can only assume is some kind of second wind, and was looking forward to the rest of the week. On the other hand, this is the first time throughout these past 6 weeks that my knees have complained. My shins have always been kind of sore, but not so much that they concern me, but my knees are usually pretty quiet. I’m basically wondering if I’m overdoing it, and if I need to back it down a bit. Maybe I need to take the rest of the week off, or spend it walking instead of running - I’m not sure how to progress. I think I’ll need to see how it feels on Wednesday, then determine if I want to give running on it another shot. In the meantime, I’m definitely making progress along the running track. It’s just kind of frustrating that at every turn my body seems to want to find any way it possibly can to weasel out of all this effort.

On a side note, does anyone who run also drive a manual transmission vehicle? If so, do you notice a tendency in your clutch foot to experience more pain when running? When I was doing drum corps I noticed that if I drove myself to camp in stop-and-go traffic my clutch foot would cramp more easily after backwards marching for a while, whereas if I didn’t have to drive or if the drive was easy I wouldn’t have that problem. Anyone have an idea on how to resolve it?

5 weeks of running, and I finally managed to make it through week 4 of the program. So far, I’ve essentially stuck to this exercise thing for over a month. I’m feelin’ pretty good about myself, even if that demon fucking scale has yet to show any improvement whatsoever. I haven’t changed my eating habits much, just added the working out on top of what I already do. I wasn’t gaining weight before, so logic says that my increased calorie demands should result in at least some reduction of weight. Ah well, fuck it. I feel stronger, more fit. I guess that’s something.

Week 4 of the running program just kicked my ass, plain and simple. Even today, after a week of the same regimen, I just barely made it through - fighting cramps in my calves and a stitch in my side. I’m debating whether I should move on - while today was hard as hell I still managed to finish, and even today’s exhaustion was better than wednesday’s and monday’s near death. So I am improving, but am I improving fast enough? I think I might benefit from repeating this week again, as I don’t want to end in failure because I tried to move to fast. On the other hand, I don’t want to keep repeating weeks because if I keep giving in whenever I hit a challenging spot I’ll never improve. Conundrum. I’m leaning towards repeating the week, but I’ll make the final decision on Monday when I run again. This week was hard as hell, and given that I barely made it through today it’s prolly a signal that I’m not as fit as I was hoping I was. I dunno - I’m torn here.

Pushups got suddenly harder, as well. I’m making my way through week 6, barely meeting the minimums. I’ve got my last day tomorrow, then all that’s left is the final exhaustion test. I’ve been seeing real progress with this program (including an increase in the size of my arms that I wasn’t expecting ), so if nothing else i can wholeheartedly recommend this program to everyone. Next week I’ll start the move to the baritone, and keep the pushups in maintenance mode (doing 100 pushups 3 times a week should be sufficient - I mean, if I can do them why shouldn’t I?). Everything upper-body should be on track for open house on December 6th and 7th.

We picked up Wii Fit the other day. So far it’s an interesting product, but definitely worth the money for the tracking software alone. It’s not a substitute for a true exercise program, I think, but it’s definitely a way to get people off the couch and up and moving.

Now, on a different subject, I want to vent a bit. I just want to express my extreme hatred of all things advertising and advertising-related. One of the most annoying things in the world to me is people who make arguments that are incorrect, and this is the entire point of advertising. The goal of an advertising campaign is to take a product that most people have done just fine without, and convince them that the product, which they may or may not have heard of before, is worth their time and money. The problem is that, with few exceptions, there is ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING REASON to change your patterns to obtain this product. We’re inundated by idiotic ads that lampoon traditional gender roles in a pathetic and worthless attempt to appeal to some sort of sense of common fucking perception that perpetuates damaging and pointless stereotypes. We have the most minor of awards trotted out in front of us as if it’s the nobel fucking prize, and what should be a minor achievement (such as getting ADA approval, which is a fucking REQUIREMENT for marketing your product) is held up as the paragon of achievement. Illogical, bullshit statistics are presented as fact, and then skewed all over tarnation to demonstrate an invalid point. Let’s take a look at one of these statements:

• 9 out of 10 dentists prefer Asscream toothpaste over other leading brands

Seems innocuous, right? It’s got the veneer of credibility - they tested it among dentists! And it’s got statistical data, so it must be true! Well here’s a short list of how this result could have been manipulated to make you think these incorrect thoughts:

• How many dentists did they ask? Asking ten dentists to judge a product is a pretty fucking small sample size
• What if they asked 100 dentists, then just picked ten out of the group? If 91 said the toothpaste sucked, and 9 said it was “preferred,” you can very easily get a subset of 10 dentists where 9 of them prefer the product being hawked like a cheap taco
• What were their options? Did they have a choice between Asscream’s toothpaste and Dongmonster mouthwash? Was it a battle of Asscream Tartar Control (now with sprinkles) against the cheapest fucking version of the competitor’s brand they could find?
• How was the test conducted? Was it a true double-blind study, or did some one just walk in and say “Dude, check this toothpaste out, it’s awesome. Stop using that other crap! They kill babies to make it, you know”
• Who conducted this test? Was there a truly random sampling involved, or did they just browse store receipts?

I could go on, but I think I’ve made my meandering point. One radio advertisement claims that their product must work because it was HANDED OUT IN GIFT BAGS at international film festivals. In other words, they’re giving it away for free, and then using the fact that they can’t sell their own fucking garbage to claim that it is somehow more effective. Oh, but wait, they mentioned INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVALS! Stars! Hollywood! Glamour! I wanna be rich too! Bullshit. I bet they held a party at the fucking owner’s house and showed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon while masturbating to the thought of the money they’d make off of idiots that don’t know any better.

Seriously, does anyone fall for this shit? Can anyone reading this name a single time since they turned 17 that advertising has affected their purchase? I mean, are there actually people walking the aisles at Jewel and saying “Well, this Skippy peanut butter looks pretty good but Choosy Moms choose Jiff, and I’m pretty choosy”? I mean, what kind of logic is that? People who take forever to make a fucking decision settle on a product that’s marginally different from those occupying the same shelf? Give me a fucking break. Everything you’re going to find in a store will be the same overpriced shit, and will taste/look/work just as well as the bullshit next to it. Don’t forget that the reason these fuckers advertise is because they make a product so shitty that people are choosing competing products - they’re spending this money to overcome their own inability to make a decent product in the hopes that some poor sap will change their purchasing patterns and move away from the tried and true to sample the new and neglected.

Advertisers spend their entire lives lying to people in the hope of convincing them to part with money that would be better spent elsewhere, and people the world over are being subtly corrupted by their fucking bullshit tactics. Kids these days can recognize individual brands or ad campaigns more readily than they can list off states of the union, or identify presidents, or name a single fucking supreme court case. A generation of people with short attention spans has been spawned by television advertising that forcibly divests someone’s interest every 7 minutes so that more loud noises can be played in support of more worthless products. And advertisers torture you, too - how many times can you recall that you had a pointless fucking jingle for some stupid-ass product stuck in your head? When that happens I don’t want to purchase a damn thing, I want to castrate the motherfucker involved in ruining my day by making my brain wildly whistle a stupid corporate mantra.

Every commercial is worse than the last, every “argument” presented is so riddled with logical fallacy that I want to smack people with a basic philosophy textbook, every name is dumber than the previous, and so on, and so on. Celebrities trying to make a quick buck pop up out of nowhere to sell some worthless trinket that has “changed their life”. Wilford-fucking-Brimley continually mispronounces Diabetes - THERE’S NO FUCKING U IN THAT WORD, ASSHOLE! Sports stars croon about soup as if it’s the panacea for all ills. When does it stop?!

People wonder why I can’t stand television, or why I’ve mostly stopped listening to the radio. This is it. I’m tired of being sold, I’m tired of being marketed to, I’m tired of feeling like an ass because everyone else around me has bought hook, line, and sinker into the latest bullshit holiday and is surprised that I don’t love them enough to spend some green on trinkets they don’t need. I’m tired of watching entertainment that I enjoy only to have the volume change automatically to “pay the bills”.

Which brings me to another point. WHY IS THERE ADVERTISING ON CABLE TELEVISION?! I’m paying for this service, so they have no excuse. Broadcast television, sure, they don’t sell a product so they need a revenue stream to remain on-the air. I hate the method, but I can agree with the argument behind it. But if I’m paying a hundred fucking dollars a month to watch cable television, why should I then have to sit through more advertisements? Where does my monthly bill go? What the fuck is the point of charging for it if the amount they charge isn’t enough?!

I should stop myself before I go on much longer.

Finished Week 4, day 1. It was hard. I mean trying-to-pass-a-physics-exam-using-a-retarded-monkey-as-a-calculator hard. I assume it’s a combination of things that makes moving my bulk for those last 5 minutes more of a challenge, but hopefully I improve more quickly after this. Spending last week repeating week 3 might have helped some. I’m starting to wonder if I’m using the right speed settings. Right now I run at 5.5 MPH and jog/brisk walk at 2.5 MPH. Is that an appropriate speed? If I had run at 6.5, or even 8, would this whole thing be easier? Hell if I know. All I can really use to judge is that regardles of it being too fast or too slow, it’s definitely kicking my ass. Exhaustion = progress, and exhaustion I have in spades. Doing some research online, it looks like most people quit the couch-to-5k program at this point (either week 4 or week 5), so hopefully I’ll be able to push through it and not be a failure. Only time, and my own lackluster morning dedication, will tell.

I’m also still struggling to find the ultimate running distraction. I set aside the drum corps today for Rocky, and while it’s better at letting me establish my own pattern it can also be kind of slow going/not very motivational. I suppose I could just run Madison’s ‘95 show on a loop and be done with that problem, but eventually even that awesomeness would get old. I think I’ll stick with the movie for this week, though, if for no other reason than its metaphorical value.

Pushups - completed week 5 yesterday. Exhaustion test this evening, then starting week 6 tomorrow. This program I can get behind, and whole-heartedly recommend. I’ve come a long way in 5 short weeks, and the results are impressive. I worry a bit about whether or not I’m using proper form (I’m not, at least I don’t think I am), but then I realize I don’t care because even if I wasn’t using proper form, whatever it was I was doing was both exhausting and something that I couldn’t do very well 5 weeks ago. Onward and upward!

finished pushups week 4 on Saturday. Still getting harder, but I’m managing to complete the tasks set to me. I’m due for another exhaustion test - I didn’t do it yesterday because I wanted to give my arms time to recover I’ll most likely get to it this evening, which should be interesting seeing as I ran myself especially hard this morning.

Speaking of which, I started week 4 of running this morning, and kind of hit a wall. The program is segments of running interspersed with segments of walking. I run at 5.5 MPH, and walk at 2.5 (it’s supposed to be a brisk walk). The program today was supposed to resemble the following:

• Walk for 5 minutes
• Run for 3 minutes
• Walk for 1.5 minutes
• Run for 5 minutes
• Walk for 2.5 minutes
• Run for 3 minutes
• Walk for 1.5 minutes
• Run for 5 minutes

But my program ended up resembling the following:

• Walk for 5 minutes
• Run for 3 minutes
• Walk for 1.5 minutes
• Run for 5 minutes
• Walk for 2.5 minutes
• Run for 3 minutes, barely making it through
• Walk for 1.5 minutes
• Run for 4 minutes at a slower (5.0) pace
• Give up and shamble along like a zombie for 4 minutes, trying to catch my breath and deal with the stitch in my side

Not exactly what I call a successful effort. So I’m gonna knock myself back a level and finish the rest of the week as if it was week 3. Hopefully I’ll then be able to come out stronger next Monday, and not have 5 minutes of running kick my ass as much. This adjustment will have me running the full 30 minutes by the end of November, which should be pretty acceptable (though I shudder to think of running the day after Thanksgiving with all that digesting food in my stomach).

I’m also going to start level 1 of adapting programs for uses not originally intended. Specifically, I intend to use the running program to train my arms to hold a baritone properly. For those of you who play, you know the hell that can be brought on by a vindictive tech under the guise of “strengthening the arms,” and for those of you who don’t, just take a gallon of milk and hold it about a foot in front of your face with both arms (gallon of milk = about 8 pounds, baritone = about 8 pounds (actually closer to 7)). If you’re anything like me, your arms will prolly start shaking within 5 minutes or so. Ideally the pushups alone will combat this (it’s essentially why I started the program), but I want to make sure all my bases are covered. Looking at the program I use for running, a thought occurred to me - I could probably adapt that program for holding my baritone. If I could hold my horn at 10 degrees above parallel for half an hour, that’d be a Good Thing ™, if for no other reason than I could then simply smile at the aforementioned vindictive brass techs.

My scale still sucks, but it did go down. I think it’s ’cause I had a small dinner, though. Now sitting at 223.6. 38.6 pounds remaining until I’m no longer a fat ass. It’s a motivating factor, to be certain, but the downward march of the scale is too undependable to use as a true measurement of fitness (at least from my perspective).

In case anyone’s wondering why I’m pushing hard on all this stuff now, I thought I’d present one facet of my motivation:

I’m the guy in the blue shorts and shirt, next to the smallest and most hardcore bari player on the planet. I’m standing on a slight rise, here, so the conditions are not necessarily ideal, but one look at my horribly arched back (pushing out my pudge for the entire world to see) and my horn angle that’s actually dipping below level is frustrating. Frustrating because this wasn’t an early-season rehearsal - this was DCA weekend, meaning that I’d been holding that damn horn all summer and this was all I could manage. Unforgivable. This will not happen next year.