Evil Stick Blog

Still in “back-off” mode to ensure I don’t damage myself. I had wanted to start working out again this week, but due to some chaos in evil stick land I’m going to have to continue to take it slow. As it is, though, I’ll still be staying very active as we make improvements on the house this week and hit the still-packed stuff with a vengeance.

Starting next week, I’m going to start everything over. I’ll kick off the pushups from week 1 again, doing those on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I’ll then do the situps on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Part of the problem I think I ran in to is that I was doing the pushups and situps concurrently on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, possibly overtaxing my system. I’ll give this approach a couple weeks, and see how it goes. If it all goes well, then full steam ahead.

I’m also still on my enforced absence from the treadmill. I figure once the weather starts to warm up in March I’ll begin actually walking outside. in the meantime I don’t feel comfortable using the treadmill as it’s the beast that caused my problems in the first place. I may use it to do some walking, but I definitely won’t be running indoors for a while (if at all).

On a side note, as I was eating breakfast this morning (corn flakes, woo!) I remembered a snack I used to enjoy back in high school - put corn flakes in a cup, add whipped cream, then mix and enjoy! Ahh the halcyon days of youth, when I could eat whatever I wanted without fear of reprisal. Back then I had a theory that I wouldn’t start to get fat until I started working out heavily, as if I didn’t have a lot of muscle I wouldn’t have any muscle to convert to fat due to inactivity. Naive, but it has a certain ring to it, I think.

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.