So, as all of you SHOULD know, gay pride is this weekend. On top of being a hot over-the-top tranny mess, it also presents the opportunity to parade around shirtless and count the number of looks you get (well, that's what I'm planning on doing, anyway.) To that end, I have declared this week Lose-Three-Pounds-And-Define-My-Abs week. I've increased my warm-up cardio before every workout to ten minutes and ditched the 750-calorie mass building shake in favor of a 220-calorie Go Lean shake, and have been trying really hard to downsize my dinner and snacking tendencies.
The result? I am SO not cut out to be anorexic. I haven't quite gotten to the point where I'm tired and cranky all the time, although I think that'll happen if I try to keep this going for another couple of weeks. Also, I REALLY don't like being hungry. I lose my focus and just think about food ALL the time. This struggle is symbolized by the Snickers bar that I got for doing a survey last week and has been sitting on my desk, LOOKING at me. Every 5 minutes I look at it and imagine how amazing it would taste, then force myself to wait until my appointed snack time, where I will forgo the delicious Snickers bar for dry cereal. When this weekend is over, I am SO going to eat that Snickers bar, and I'm going to love it god damnit.
The other problem that I never foresaw is that I put a lot of strain on my body when I work out, and I actually need the full carbs and protein intake of my previous diet to keep going. My arms are still sore from a workout three days ago, and I think that I'm on the verge of accumulating joint strain, which usually only happens to me when I lift weights more than 3 days in a row.
However, I am going to look fabulous. And I'm just thanking my metabolism, because if I had to do this all the time I think I'd go crazy.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Damn you iTunes!
I'm annoyed, iTunes. You make it entirely too easy to buy music. No longer do I spend half an hour in Borders, listening to sound samples and deciding which CDs I want to buy. On the other hand, I can't download everything in sight anymore and delete whatever I don't want. Stupid firewalled internet.
My current frustration is based on the fact that every CD I've bought from iTunes in the past month has been disappointing. I listen to the sound samples and they sound good, and then when I listen to the whole album I'm usually either underwhelmed or I get bored within a few days. At the moment, I'm annoyed with the Katy Perry album. She's supposed to be the new alternative pop voice or whatever, and that "I Kissed a Girl" song is really catchy. However, the entire rest of the album is completely filler, as far as I'm concerned. It's completely generic.
Also, one of her song titles is in AIMspeak. I HATE song titles in AIMspeak
I think the moral of the story is that I need to stop and think carefully before I waste my money on music, especially since it's so easy on iTunes and it doesn't feel like I'm spending real money because all I do is click the 'buy' button.
ABORT! DANGER! MAYDAY!
Yeah, maybe this post wasn't the best idea, so it's gone now. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
GAME OVER
For reals. My life as I knew it is over. I made the mistake a week ago of buying World of Warcraft. It is the single most addictive game I've ever played, with Final Fantasy XII coming close behind.
First of all, it's HUGE. It's actually a simulated world, where you can play from any of quite a few points of view, so there's a whole immersive realism thing that's really effective. Also, it's really cool to be in the game with a whole bunch of other people who are playing it completely differently. There's so much room for variety in your gameplay that it's actually a little overwhelming. I don't even want to think about how long it would take somebody to play through all the different potential plot lines.
So basically, my life is over. I haven't cleaned or done laundry in far too long, so that I have to jump over a pile of clothes to get to my desk, then shove a whole bunch of stuff over to clear space for my laptop. My version of cooking lately has also been running to a safe location in the game and then dashing off to throw a frozen pizza in the oven so that I can keep playing.
I'm such a geek.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Books!
Okay, I really need a break from reading papers. It turns out that my lab's grant application needs to be submitted with a clearer hypothetical model and future plan, so I've been going crazy trying to read up on the literature and come up with a cohesive idea of what might be going on. It's really frustrating because I'm trying to connect three very complex pathways, which may or may not interact, and of course we don't have any preliminary data yet to confirm any of this, so it's all speculation and AAAARRRGH!!!
Anyway, I'm writing this to get away from all that, so that's all that I shall speak of the desperate search for funding. So let's talk about books. In particular, I've read three lately that I want to talk about
Jose Saramago - Blindness
Ever since Stin wrote a post about this book, I've had a strange fascination with it. There's a part of me that's intrigued by the macabre, the same part that loves horror movies for their aesthetic appeal. For one thing, I love anything post-apocalyptic. If society falls apart, I'm all over it.
Anyway, for those of you not familiar with this book, it's about an epidemic of blindness that infects everybody except for one woman. The story focuses on her and a few of the first victims of the epidemic, who are all quarantined in an abandoned mental hospital. Of course, since nobody can see anything, all public order falls apart and soon there are feces in the street and blind people raping each other. It's an incredibly pessimistic view of the fragility of public order.
It is upsetting on quite a few levels. First of all, it plays on the base fear of disease and blindness. Secondly, the writing induces a visceral response to the conditions that these people are forced to live in. The violence, lack of sanitation, and general hopelessness conveyed really make it hard to read, because it is almost constant and one finds oneself cringing every few pages because of some of the descriptions. Lastly, it's a really negative view on human nature itself. These people regress to a semi-animal state so easily. While some post-apocalyptic books focus on the rebuilding that goes on after, all that you get is the total hopelessness of the situation. Nobody tries to do anything positive except for the protagonist, who also happens to be the only person who can see everything that's going on. It's like NOBODY has the strength to continue through all of the trials
Other than that, some of the literary techniques seemed a little heavy-handed to me. The conspicuous lack of names for any of the characters was clearly intentional, so that the reader could imagine the story happening to anyone. Also, the last bit of the book seemed to include too much pseudo-philosophical rambling about death, blindness, and the nature of god
My final thoughts: It's a good book, though you should avoid it if you have a weak stomach or want to maintain a positive outlook on human nature.
Lois Lowry - The Giver
Yeah, I just finall read this book. It's one of those books that every pseudo-intellectual nerd loves in junior high, along with Ender's Game and A Wrinkle in Time. All in all, I enjoyed the couple of hours I spent reading it, but I'm definitely too old for it. First of all, anti-utopia books have been done before. It leaves one wondering exactly how many of the ideas came straight from A Brave New World (I never actually finished that one, so I can't answer it.) Secondly, it just rushes through everything too quickly. It's an incredibly simplistic view on the situation, relegating the power of human emotion (or lack thereof) to a 120-page book. I do wish that I'd read it when I could have appreciated it, but I didn't really gain anything significant by reading it now
I also wanted to talk about the Chronicles of Narnia, since I also just reread those, but I'll either skip that or save it for later, because I should probably get more work done now.
Anyway, I'm writing this to get away from all that, so that's all that I shall speak of the desperate search for funding. So let's talk about books. In particular, I've read three lately that I want to talk about
Jose Saramago - Blindness
Ever since Stin wrote a post about this book, I've had a strange fascination with it. There's a part of me that's intrigued by the macabre, the same part that loves horror movies for their aesthetic appeal. For one thing, I love anything post-apocalyptic. If society falls apart, I'm all over it.
Anyway, for those of you not familiar with this book, it's about an epidemic of blindness that infects everybody except for one woman. The story focuses on her and a few of the first victims of the epidemic, who are all quarantined in an abandoned mental hospital. Of course, since nobody can see anything, all public order falls apart and soon there are feces in the street and blind people raping each other. It's an incredibly pessimistic view of the fragility of public order.
It is upsetting on quite a few levels. First of all, it plays on the base fear of disease and blindness. Secondly, the writing induces a visceral response to the conditions that these people are forced to live in. The violence, lack of sanitation, and general hopelessness conveyed really make it hard to read, because it is almost constant and one finds oneself cringing every few pages because of some of the descriptions. Lastly, it's a really negative view on human nature itself. These people regress to a semi-animal state so easily. While some post-apocalyptic books focus on the rebuilding that goes on after, all that you get is the total hopelessness of the situation. Nobody tries to do anything positive except for the protagonist, who also happens to be the only person who can see everything that's going on. It's like NOBODY has the strength to continue through all of the trials
Other than that, some of the literary techniques seemed a little heavy-handed to me. The conspicuous lack of names for any of the characters was clearly intentional, so that the reader could imagine the story happening to anyone. Also, the last bit of the book seemed to include too much pseudo-philosophical rambling about death, blindness, and the nature of god
My final thoughts: It's a good book, though you should avoid it if you have a weak stomach or want to maintain a positive outlook on human nature.
Lois Lowry - The Giver
Yeah, I just finall read this book. It's one of those books that every pseudo-intellectual nerd loves in junior high, along with Ender's Game and A Wrinkle in Time. All in all, I enjoyed the couple of hours I spent reading it, but I'm definitely too old for it. First of all, anti-utopia books have been done before. It leaves one wondering exactly how many of the ideas came straight from A Brave New World (I never actually finished that one, so I can't answer it.) Secondly, it just rushes through everything too quickly. It's an incredibly simplistic view on the situation, relegating the power of human emotion (or lack thereof) to a 120-page book. I do wish that I'd read it when I could have appreciated it, but I didn't really gain anything significant by reading it now
I also wanted to talk about the Chronicles of Narnia, since I also just reread those, but I'll either skip that or save it for later, because I should probably get more work done now.
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