Archive for February, 2008
nutritional knowledge, yo. nooch! »
Thursday, February 21st, 2008
or, “I don’t think you’re ready, for this jelly”
note to European/foreign/scrawny readers: most of the information herein will be insulting to your superior nutritional knowledge. Don’t take it as the staff of UpTheDrain insulting you personally. Remember, we’re writing at a sixth grade level and are, quasi-regrettably, full-blood Americans.
I walk/drive/bike about a mile to the rail in the early morning as it’s cold enough to turn my corneas brittle, I prefer the second just now. I work in an office, in front of a computer, for roughly eight hours each day. I rail back and walk/drive/bike back to the house. I stare at the television for most of the night unless there’s a bar or show or movie sorted. I burn likely an overestimate thirty-seven calories each day. When an email invite came for a “why diets don’t work” seminar, I was on it like a fat kid on discount donuts. I believe my exact thought was, “bored, bored, email… it’ll get me away from my desk…,” so I was pretty stoked.
Americans don’t exactly impress when it comes to weight-related health. As I’ve adjusted to my sub-sedentary lifestyle, it’s tough to avoid gaining. Plus, in this business I’m not a part of “this business,” but I hear things you’re invited to lunches and handed sweets far too often to manage a healthy frame. Americans want more bang for their buck, which sparked a dramatic growth in portion size. Even fruit has been genetically mutated to pack more calories into fewer bites. Basically, because of our consumption choices, we can barely do the cabbage patch without wheezing or reaching for a snack cake.
In the interest of honesty, the staff here has pressured me to mention that I started yesterday with two cookies and three brownies, followed by a turkey sandwich with a bagel and cream cheese at about six. Health!
I wasn’t entirely surprised read: completely expected to find myself surrounded by overweight coworkers. The exception, a girl younger than I, is on her way to wedded bliss so she’s got wedding-dress paranoia congratulations and all that, but she doesn’t really count. The information was a review of sixth-grade health class. Nutritional dieting depends on lowering your caloric intake and watching your percentages of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. A pound of fat roughly equates to 3,500 calories that are not otherwise burned. Calories burned depends on metabolic rate and activity. Eating after seven doesn’t matter factoring out difficult digestion; mmm, heartburn if you’re below your caloric intake on the day. Blah, Blah, duh.
I don’t mean to insult these people, but it’s impossible to take them seriously. They knew all the answers. They knew when to, how often to and what to eat. They knew what to avoid, how to stick to a routine and why diets failed miserably. With all their know-how, they looked to be an average of sixty pounds overweight. Half the seminar, the large woman next to me spouted wisdom handed to her by Weight Watchers. One exclaimed, after finding out weight-loss takes almost as long as weight gain, “that’ll take forever!” If it weren’t so pathetic, I would have had to leave the room laughing.
I figure half these kids are in on the intra-office weight-loss challenge. Something tells me they won’t meet their goals or keep the weight off. These are the same women that carry around thirty-two ounce mugs filled with kool-aid and sodas. They come back from the skyway with pounds of disgusting in Styrofoam. I imagine they’ve joined the gym to assist in their dramatic transformation, but they don’t seem to have the mobility for anything that will actually burn calories. A couple were superficially judging celebrities, without irony, only a week ago.
Some people are predisposed to being overweight. Eating disorders, slow metabolism, genetic tendency and low income healthy food is cost prohibitive are things people can’t control easily. Some people. If you know all the rules of losing and keeping off weight, don’t follow them and complain about how you can’t lose weight, you sort of come off a little like an anti-gay Republican in the hypocritical sense, not because you’re a coward or ideologically retarded.
Before you flood my comments with appreciation, you’re welcome for dropping a nutrition bomb on your asses this fine frigid Thursday. Get out there, eat smart and shed those unwanted pounds this spring because Cosmo wants you to. I’ll be here, staring at my screen, chugging V8-fusion vegetables, to me, almost universally taste like they were baked in a feces-caked oven or sprayed with a delicate mist of ammonia until I piss blood. To reiterate: health!
tactics »
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
I woke up to the bleeping alarm after hitting the snooze button for the third time. I slathered on deodorant to mask not taking a shower. I dressed, snatched a package of Pop-Tarts and was out the door with my usual haste. Tuesday and Thursday morning lectures were hard to get to and I was already a bit late. It was only the second week of class, so my truancy was still at a minimum. The walk was only three blocks, but it always felt like more before ten. (more…)
i’m sick of… »
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
…that damn Sobe Life Water ad with all the dancing salamanders or whatever they are. As far as I’m concerned, any idea that’s already been done by inmates is sort of played out. They’re not really known for their pop culture savvy or trend setting as much as their lack of moral fiber. Add that to the C.G.I. shittiness and it’s really just terrible. Are imaginary dancing lizards the only ones able to work with Naomi Campbell nowadays? Any reports of her tossing a cell at the non-existent costars? If every commercial was as sweet as the extended Skittle’s “Midas” ad, I’d start watching more television something about his overwhelming depression is just hilarious. But, because media has saturated our every waking moment without twenty minutes of creativity, I’m stuck with dancing fucking lizards.
…journalistic integrity. Ha, I’m totally kidding. We haven’t had anything resembling integrity in the news since the seventies. Don’t believe me? Watch the next round of primary coverage and then flip to your local news. Ask yourself if you’ve learned anything. Chances are you’ll just end up hating yourself or thinking black people are either voting for Obama or in a perpetual firefight; no gray area. Thanks for giving the current events historical context, simplifying them for a mass audience, and keeping the public informed, douchebags. Wait, shit, Lindsey Lohan just ran into the back-end of a paparazzi’s car. Be right back…
…waking up with single digit temperatures. It’s been above 33° five times since the tenth of January. It’s currently -8° and feels like -25°. I’d be happy just to walk outside without my whatnots cowering behind my rib cage for protection from the obscene temperatures. I get it. I moved north. It’s cold here. I live in a barely insulated basement room because it’s cheap; basically. I’m not doing myself any favors. Still, I think the higher-ups are laying it on a little thick. There’s snow, filled with dirt, piss, and litter, on the sides of the roads that has been there for a month. Ridiculous.
Most of all, I’m sick of being sick. That cough that had me on my ass the fifth and sixth is still coming by every half-hour like a friendly neighbor with short-term memory loss. I went, again, to the clinic yesterday. I’m now sporting an inhaler and antibiotics. I’m walking around like Eddie Kaspbrak from It in an episode of House, just waiting for the fifty-minute mark when all the dots are connected and I can wrap up the episode in cough-less bliss.
Despite the cough, I’m back at work. It’s about seven degrees from room temperature and I’m burning about thirteen calories an hour. I’m not comfortable. I also have this weird craving for vitamin water…
don’t tase me bro’* »
Monday, February 18th, 2008
In honor of this fine patriotic holiday, where we celebrate the lives of all the powerful, productive, and legendary Presidents all currently deceased, I thought it’d be fun to throw out some currently patriotic information. I don’t mean to make any real commentary about the state of things. Even if I was, there would have to be a control-hungry, imperialistic regime and some form of surveillance society in place before anything untoward could happen…
Have you ever really, really, really wanted to shoot someone be it an unruly college student or dark person, but couldn’t manufacture enough justification? Thanks to Dr. Milton Taserson, now you can send your victim err… subject? to the carpet, brimming with involuntary spasm. All the money saved on non-lethal submission training can go directly into buying more stun guns. In this day and age, they’re far more eco-friendly than wasteful fire hoses. Bring your camera, because the videos are, like, way popular on the tube.
St. Paul police want a taser for every officer. In a place as cultured and diverse as Minnesota, it’s hard to believe these stunners will be misused. They did assure us that this call for more guns wasn’t related to the thousands of protesters predicted to congregate here in the fall. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s always best to take things at face value and leave the questioning up to the pundits, reporters, and other journalistic professionals. Okay, I kid. The only time the journalists give two shits about the over-tased population is when they’re zapping their low-level correspondents for the superficial entertainment value of a grown man flailing like a fish out of water. Also, true journalism has been dead fifteen years, so fuck those guys.
More tasers isn’t a bad thing. I’m sure they’re necessary in today’s society. I think the videos of folks locking up, as 250kv overrun their phsyio-circuitry, are hilarious. I think they are an effective tool in keeping order and maintaining the peace as far as suburban, local news viewers are concerned, at least. I also think it’s becoming far too easy to knock an alleged assailant out of commission. A few people have died after being shot by one, a measly 150, or so. In Houston, only a third of those tased committed a crime. Those friendly Texans also shot just as many people after getting the tasers as they did before. Seems like Houston is the new hot spot. Some people may see that as a bad sign.
Here in M.S.P. where weather.com says it feels like a balmy -21°, I’m excited for the new toys. I’ll be watching the local news religiously during the R.N.C. I wonder if anyone will start up a bet pool regarding how soon into the convention the first dread-locked protester, disturbing the peace with his acoustic guitar, hits the pavement shaking like a Parkinson’s patient too poor for regular medications. Like Michael J. Fox, that over-dramatic sonuvabitch; right mr. limbaugh? I’m thinking a solid over-under would be thirty-six hours. I’d bet under.
For fun, want to know a few more things I won’t be doing the first week of September? as usual, I ask as if I care what your answer is. Tapping my feet in public restrooms or using them at all. Using online chat forums or touching anything related, even indirectly, to Craigslist. Pausing to tie my shoes near any major hotel, government building, or group of protesters. This will be easy enough. I don’t hang out around the first two and a protesting crowd can be sniffed from six blocks (the left by their b.o. and the cloud of smug that they produce; the right by the overwhelming stench of ignorance and freshly minted twenty dollar bills). Methinks I should just avoid wandering south of 7th street all-together…
* Just in case that douchebag has that bullshit phrase copyrighted, we know he’s been selling the shirt and trying to get ass from the notoriety it granted him, I might as well give him credit. That phrase, in that form, was said just before some idiot was deservedly tased shitless. He’s pretty much a complete tool, but I can’t so much remember his name. Now the shitstain can’t sue me.
always wanted a brother »
Friday, February 15th, 2008
When a friend of mine commented on the high schoolers busted by way of the facebook, I started monitoring my social media intake. I figure it’s the least I can do to avoid being suspended for drinking an unknown substance out of plastic cups. Granted, the fear is diminished by my not being in high school or underage. Slightly.
The fact that the photos in question were handed to the administration on a disc anonymously is so… subversive. (Anonymous, you backstabbing cloud of skin-crease-stink, you should be flogged; call the guy a dick, don’t turn him into the higher-ups, you pussy; kids these days, I tell ya.) If I weren’t cold almost to the point of shivering, my skin would be crawling.
Conclusions:
1. Facebook is evil, but like taxes are evil.
2. Myspace is a complete waste outside of easily accessed band profiles.
3. We embrace a surveillance society while opposing it.
Facebook caught some blowback when it tried to publish recent site activity from external sites without telling anyone. Their policy is apparently based on a flawed “opt-out” philosophy. (We’ll be adding stuff that compromises your security, but you can, like, totally restrict that if you have an extra half-hour to dig through our settings; no worries, dude.) That, combined with conversations like this one prove how ridiculous Facebook can get.
I made some adjustments to compensate. I’ve restricted almost everything I can restrict (I’m being generous by allowing myself to appear in searches of the M.S.P. network; even if they can’t then see my profile). If you’re not already one of my friends, try to search for me. (If you can find me, send a message and I’ll give you a prize.*) I’m also seriously thinking about removing my tags from photos.
I can’t bring myself to delete it. (Of course, I couldn’t even if I wanted to.) Scrabulous is too fantastic a time-wasting distraction to sacrifice. It’s also the easiest way to contact people when you’re as lazy as I. There are a few other reasons to keep the thing around. Now that they’ve created a way to ignore all those shitty applications, it’s only the removal of a few targeted ads away from being a solid platform.
Myspace, on the other hand, has gone a different direction. If you aren’t looking for bands and their corresponding information, you’re swimming through a puddle of triceratops’ diarrhea. The interface is terrible and the gains are profoundly negative. During the time I was paying attention, I received one message, so I don’t feel bad about deleting duplicated friends between it and facebook. It’s now a tour date resource. (oddly, I still get hits on another blog from a myspace profile, but it’s not linked on mine. I find myself confused about who’s promoting that blog on theirs.) That profile has been private since almost day one.
The real issue isn’t which networking site I’m on or how many photos are up or who can access my information. Facebook and the ilk are redefining privacy. We (not just the threes of you, but America en masse) have started to trade privacy for exclusion. It’s no longer about whether or not information is personal, it’s about who’s accessing it.
The outcry after Facebook started broadcasting everything you did over a shared feed was impressive. No one wanted all their friends to know who’s friend requests they were denying or that their relationship ended. Why they thought to put this information on the interweb in the first place never came up. There was only a muffled, exasperated sigh when Facebook started announcing which movies you put on your blockbuster queue.
Everyone can scream until their face is red about how invasive, superficial, and unsettling the social networking sites are. Most of these people are forgetting the point. Facebook, Myspace, social networking sites, photo sharing accounts, any other form of media sharing over the interweb, and the interweb itself is voluntary. Those that complain how these sites facilitate prying are the ones putting up drunk photos of their friends or leaving their profiles public. Parents complain about sexual predators jerking off in dark corners of the internets while letting their children carelessly prance from page to page.
As the definition of privacy erodes, so does our access to it. We freely tweet about every mundane non-thing we do through the day, thinking that someone gives a shit. The government, office superiors, or high school principals are starting to do just that. They’re monitoring in the name of safety, regulation, and our children’s futures. We politely refer to it as spying (and impolitely refer to it as authoritarianism), but can we blame them? Are they doing anything that the surly friend of your friend’s girlfriend’s brother isn’t already?
Maybe, when you’re on the street talking loudly on your cell about the latest venereal disease you’ve finally recovered from, you should think twice before bitching out the passerby that turned to his buddy and muttered, “that’s disgusting.” (fun game: replace “passerby” with “low-level A.T.&T. drone behind a desk within room 641a.”)
* there is no prize.