From Mom's Basement

Since you left this physical plane.

I found your old diaries today. Reading things through your perspective was a blessing — I wish I had been able to do it sooner. There was so much longing in you. Such a desire to transcend the awkwardly concentrated existence you chose and find true love. It was heartbreaking to read as they neglected you, as the can opener met something it couldn’t crack. I have had a couple of relationships, one healthy, one not — and for that, I thank you. Because you were able to channel all that negligence and heartbreak into nothing but love for me. Because I was able to learn quickly what it took you a lifetime to do. Because I could hear it all in every syllable you spoke.

You battled so hard in this world. You had so much to overcome. The traps of the past, the independence you had to declare, and the soul of you that shone through poverty and the unrequited desire.

I need to let you know a few things.

That I am, as always, appreciative that we picked each other. We both know the inner curses and torments, and together we will continue to work to overcome them. To self-actualize ourselves.
That your knack for serendipity cannot be questioned. You know just the right time to introduce me to things — am I starting to find my spiritual compass now? I am so happy that you continue to lurk in my mind. So happy that you are my guardian angel as you lay in wait.
That I will do all I can to watch for her as well. Both the one that I know, and the one that I don’t.

And most of all…

 That I always felt this.
And I can’t wait for you to come back so I can teach you all I’ve learned. We’ll repeat this dance until peace is earned.

Posted in memoir
Tags: mom

TIME SEEN: Practically every NFL Sunday
PREMISE: A feuding married couple passive-aggressively bicker through a TV screen, which has so many options to help them!
TIME: 30 seconds
VIDEO: 

I suppose that the reason this married couple bickers as if they are children is some sort of play on the idea of “child-like wonderment” that is supposed to go along with this product. After all, TV’s have been pushing these new enhanced TV sets to us for awhile. I’m not an extremely social person, I admit, but I’ve yet to meet someone who has praised or desperately wanted one of these TV’s. It just seems like a set of extra features that my phone has already been able to do for three years, and most of us are more comfortable using that then a TV remote at this point.

The reason it irks me? Because it continues this push towards the inhumanity of everything. Every day the world is getting bigger, but your personal world is getting smaller. People stay in contact more with people who are a distance from them, and this seems like some sort of nightmare endgame for the scenario: we can’t even fucking talk to each other like normal human beings when we’re in the same room.

Finally, what kind of self-respecting man lets his wife push him around like this? You apologize and attempt to move on, not apologize and then apologize eight more times, and then play a song that says “it’s hard for me to say I’m sorry” when apparently it is really easy since you can’t stop doing it. Advertisers love to play on helplessness. I don’t want to psychoanalyze two people that I, frankly, hate already based on their passive-aggressive antics, but nobody should have a hold on you like this woman does to this man.

I’ve had quite a few girlfriends in my time — if any of them had changed their Facebook status to single (and I’m taking the leap that this matters as much as it apparently does to this man in the time period I was in), it would end with them apologizing to me, not the other way around. Honestly, it would probably be the end of the whole relationship. Yet this man just takes it like a complete and utter chump. Actually, an unironic status update that talked about how spicy those tacos last night were would probably be enough to drive me away. I’m picky like that.

I guess my problem with the product comes down to the fact that TV’s aren’t portable. You offer me no new utilization of anything by putting all the things “I love” in a product that I can’t move. I already have that: it’s called a desktop computer. I can even play TV on it if I want to wire it that way. Claiming that this is some sort of breakthrough (“The Wonder of Samsung!”) strikes me as spurious — all you’ve done is invented a commercial that sells unneeded TV services to people who would probably be better investing their money on therapy than smart TV’s.

Maybe then they’d actually be able to talk to each other.

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: badvertising

Jeez, one more week and we’ll be at a month.

Another week of decent measurements and no weight loss. I’m going to attempt to turn the tables this week.

I’m not going to work out at all. No kettlebells or walks. This is also partially because I hurt my knee a bit with poor technique last Friday though, and I’d like to give it some rest. I’m also going to quit the recommended PAGG stack for a week, just to experiment, because it seems like I (anecdotally, again) lost more weight without it the first time I tried this back in February.

Still feeling good about the whole thing, still think it’s producing noticeable results on my belly, but would like the validation of pure weight loss.

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: die! (ah!), diet(!) (AHHHH!)

I have to say: I am impressed with the University of Houston. I have not attended a class there since 2008, and in just three years, the amount of bullshit one has to cut through to get anywhere has grown exponentially.

For those of you who are new to the blog: I attended UH from 2006- December 2008, leaving two foreign language credit hours short of a Creative Writing degree solely because my mother had a heart attack at the beginning of 2009 and I wanted to be able to be around for her while she adjusted to that life. She had three more hospital visits that year for various maladies, and I did what I could to hold the household together and help take care of my sister for her.

I had finally deemed myself ready to finish in 2010 — I scheduled an appointment with an academic advisor to talk about finishing up in the summer. They told me that because of the year I’d been off, I would be back up to four semesters of foreign language as I had apparently lost all knowledge of anything I had learned in a year. Of course, this doesn’t apply to any of my other courses, because the rule was ill-conceived, but whatever: this post will be whiny enough without turning every injustice into a rallying point. I would simply attempt to test up on the requirements.

In April of that year, my father passed away. I needed to go AWOL for a few months and take care of all his dealings, paperwork, and so forth. I didn’t get a chance to really take a crack at studying for anything, so I just put it off until I thought I had a chance to do that. A couple of real jobs and another parent death later, here I am in October trying to get back to school and get the piece of paper that I have (mostly) earned.

-I called the counselor’s office to ask for an appointment to talk to them in September, this time they said that because of recent changes, they needed me to re-apply. To go back to a school I already had been at and had done fairly well at. (I can’t remember exactly what I had, but off the top of my head, I believe I carried a ~ 3.5 GPA.)
-I finally finagled the free time to apply last Saturday, and I called over on Tuesday to try to set up an appointment. They said to call back on Friday, because with the new rules in place they have apparently lost the ability to schedule things more than a week in advance.
-Finally, when I called Friday, I was informed that not only do I have to apply to see an advisor, I would also need to be accepted and go to orientation before I could see one. Even though, you know, I’ve been to orientation before.

I don’t really see what this is accomplishing for them. I’m going to do my best to get myself caught up on Spanish in the next two months (I might even try my hand at it in a few entries here or there), but it sure would be helpful to go in and find out exactly what I need to try to take and what I need to be thinking about with some advance notice.

Or we could just keep moving the goalposts until it’s a week before I start. Next time I call in, I’ll probably be classified as an illegal alien. Or told that I can’t get an appointment unless I am one. Whatever it takes to make this process more irritating.

(#whitewhine)

Posted in this isn't livejournal anymore

TIME SEEN: While watching the ALCS Saturday Night.
PREMISE: Two college students successfully convince another one that natural gas is, like totally, the best thing ever after their class is over.
TIME: 30 seconds
VIDEO:

This ad was conceived when a ConocoPhillips executive shouted forcefully at a director that had already delivered two not-good-enough ads: “Why can’t you make cute college girls understand that gas is good?” To which the director complained that this just wasn’t possible in a 30-second ad. The resulting commercial takes place after that director was fired, along with any spare plausibility that might have been hanging around in the corners of the ConocoPhillips office.

We can tell that this executive hasn’t been in college for the past thirty years, because if he had he would know that most college students don’t have their ideals morphed by a ten-second conversation with their peers. Where is the class? Why is this teacher still standing around awkwardly instead of telling them to get the hell out of his classroom?

Then we get to the actual message of the ad itself, which seems to boil down to the phrases “100 years,” “actually it’s cleaner,” and “it provides jobs.” 100 years really isn’t much in the long run, but I’m guessing it was used since it sounds big. I almost definitely won’t survive 100 more years. Environmentalists like the young lady in this commercial tend to take a longer-term look on things though, so 100 years probably shouldn’t mean much to her. The claim that it’s cleaner just reeks of dubiousness. I don’t know if it is true or false, mainly because they don’t pay me to research how clean gas is, but given that it was a big enough deal that they needed to make an advertisement claiming that it is, I would tend to lean towards false. Where’s the proof on that statement?

More importantly, the jobs statement is just hilarious. If an environmentalist isn’t going to be swayed by an appeal to length, she almost certainly isn’t going to be swayed by the fact that there will be more people employed by said corporation that is doing evil. Try to imagine the mental breakthrough that the commercial creator wants her to have. “Oh man, jobs! That means me and my friends can actually eat tonight! If only I get lucky enough to have one!” Jobs are apparently now just as much of a scare tactic as terrorism. The ending phrase of “I might get a job once we graduate!” only furthers that sentiment. ConocoPhillips: Let us keep digging up natural gas or you’ll have no jobs!

Speaking of: what is the deal with these floating words? “CENTURY,” “ENERGY,” “ECONOMY,” and “ENVIRON” — I assume that is supposed to say environment, but it is (likely) as off-screen as the actual environment is to a for-profit corporation. Are these name tags? Can I create my own? Because if I had one while watching this commercial, it would say “BULLSHIT.”

Finally, this:

“I know, I know, you were just being brainwashed by your fellow hippies. Let me deliver the smuggest knowing nod I can for you.”

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: badvertising

OH MY GOD THIS HAS GONE HORRIBLY WRONG!!!

Well, actually, what happened was I bought a new (more accurate) tape measure. The fact that I still lost inches on my thighs and gained them on my biceps gives me some hope, and the two pounds helps a bit as well. So, for a host of reasons, I’m still pretty happy with the diet. It sure would be nice to see those numbers continue to go down next week though.

Meals

7x Turkey Bacon, 3 Organic Eggs, Broccoli, Beans (Breakfast)
14x Pork or Steak Lettuce Wrap with Jalapenos,  Broccoli, Beans (Dinner/Lunch)
4x Chicken, Broccoli, Beans (Lunch x2)
2x Meals out while adhering to the diet (Salmon for one, Grilled Catfish for the other)
3x Cheat meals (Starbucks Java Chip Frappuccino, Subway, BBQ Ribs/French Fries/Fried Okra, and a pint of Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream)

Exercises

3x Kettlebell lifts. I got up to 55. I’ll do 60 today, and probably keep it there for a week so I can get more used to the reps.
3x Walks

Posted in this isn't livejournal anymore
Tags: die! (ah!), diet(!) (AHHHH!)