Aitch-Bar

Writing About (Mostly) Not Astrophysics


Leave a comment

On Druuuuuugs

True to my Irish heritage, I’ve picked up some goddamned malady just days before I have to wedge myself into a metal bird tailor-made to destroy eustachian tubes. When you are, as one occasionally is, faced with the choice between flying with cold congestion and having a horse make love to your ear, you pause to consider the two options. Neither is ideal, but there is some computing required to determine exactly which is less mal. On the prevention front, I’ve done everything that the doctors recommended as a deterrent, including sleep deprivation, excessive alcohol consumption, and surrounding myself with hordes of incoming freshmen. I’ve started my typical regimen of buying every medicine that might potentially apply to my ailments, finding the maximum allowable human dosage, and taking double that. Because I am twice the man. And because the FDA is a frivolous liberal construct. I can fly now, but I am also covered in ants.

Thanks to that class I took in high school this only took like four hours to Photoshop. I look up and it’s dark out. Day well spent

I’ve been checking with Brown facilities management if I am allowed to spray Raid in the gym to get rid of the undergraduates swarming on the equipment. They said that I should not do that. They would prefer that I do something else. I counter with the point that the building is about six months old and they already have a brofestation. There’s at least one on almost every machine. The air smells of Axe and Natty Ice. It rings with the crack of high-fives and disparaging comments toward women. Am I using this bench? Yes. I am laying on it. Using it.

I guess swimming is an option.

A poor option.

For sad people.


1 Comment

Swimming Tips!

The Dear Leader before heading off to the giant Swimming Pool in the Sky

More like Swim Jong Il!

I recently took up the sport of swimming. It is a great way to get in some heart-pounding cardio while constantly feeling like you’re about to drown. I want to share some tips I’ve learned in the past few months to help other new swimmers succeed in this asphyxiation-inducing form of exercise:

  • Make sure to wear a brightly colored bathing suit. This will make it easier for the lifeguard/police divers to spot you/your corpse at the bottom of the pool/abandoned quarry basin.
    Sexy

    Perfect form!

  • Chlorine in pools can bleach or discolor hair, and some people wear swimming caps to avoid this. If you choose not to, don’t be surprised that 30-40 years of swimming regularly may turn much of your hair a white or greyish color.
  • Breathing enough air to perform the physically demanding act of swimming can be challenging. Yet, the theory that the human body requires oxygen for survival is just that: a theory. Scientific opinion differs on the exact mechanism of respiration, and though some in the mainstream scientific community have come to the conclusion that it is necessary, the winds of discovery often blow in unexpected directions. After all, it was once “mainstream scientific opinion” that the sun revolved around the Earth, how is this any different? Not to mention the suspicious fact that so-called “legitimate” biologists refuse to debate us. What are they afraid of? That their theory of aerobic respiration won’t stand up to scrutiny? An honest debate is all we ask. Just because we find the idea of life-sustaining yet invisible oxygen particles hard to “inhale,” doesn’t mean we should be pariahs to an orthodoxy-enforcing community unwilling to withstand challenges for fear of losing their lucrative grant money. Until we have a real discussion on the merits of Respirationism, you should consider the necessity of breathing air to be just one of many theories about how to sustain life. Teach the controversy!
  • Amphibian-American Michael Phelps is known to consume  upwards of 12,000 calories a day while training, and he is the greatest Olympic swimmer of all time. Try quintupling your usual diet.

    Dolphins respect Putin’s diabolical consolidation of power.

  • Many swimmers find they can reduce drag by shaving their body hair. To gain an advantage you really have to shave everywhere. And I mean everywhere. You know where I’m talking about. Downtown. The basement. The sausage cellar. The Batcave. Pee-wee’s Playhouse.
  • If you’re a novice, stay out of the Shark Lane. The shark cannot tell the difference between different skill levels.
  • Humans are roughly 70% water. Try to use that to your advantage somehow.
  • Good form can be the difference between sinking, and being the next, even douchier, Ryan Lochte. Here is the formula for a perfect front crawl:
    1. Extend your main arm frontwise. Palm down with inosculated digits. The appendage containing your brain, mouth, and sense organs should be oriented orthogonally to your direction of motion. Pivot starboard (or anti-starboard, respectively) as you drag your main arm crosswise through the water.
    2. Repeat this action (mirror-reversed, of course) with your auxiliary arm.
    3. While performing Steps #1 & #2, pump your non-anterior appendages ventrally in a reiterant fashion. A good form mimics the elegant flap of a Sharp-tailed Grouse’s wing. To maximize efficiency, attempt to get the ratio somewhere around 5.67:1 kicks to arm cycles.
    4. Pull the dangling end to the left and then fold it back over itself to the right. Hold this fold, which will be the front loop of the completed tie, between your shirt’s collar points. Tighten by pulling on opposite sides and halves simultaneously. Repeat until the bow is the desired shape and tightness.
    5. When you complete your arm cycle, swivel your facial region in the direction of your auxiliary arm. Expand your diaphragm with your intercostal muscles to effect the intake of air.
    6. As you approach the far end of the pool, and prepare to flip-turn off the wall, think about all the mistakes you’ve made in your life. The friends you should have been kinder to, the elderly relatives you should have visited more often, the times you didn’t work as hard as you should have. If you’ve ever gotten embarrassingly drunk and thrown up on yourself, concentrate on that memory. It will ease the extreme discomfort of water rushing into your sinuses as you forget to strongly exhale during your underwater somersault. With your main and auxiliary arms at your side, tip forward around your proximal axis and use the memory of your romantic failures in high school to ignore the blinding pain of bashing your ankles into the edge of the pool during the flip. After pushing off, extend your distal appendages axially in both directions and rotate 180 degrees as you think about when you spilled red wine on your favorite shirt. Man, you really loved that shirt.


1 Comment

Midwestern Exposure

I’ve presented myself stark naked in front of hotel windows several times, because, you know, YOLO, and few people have ever made a thing out of it. Which is a shame. I can think of no greater lot in life than being at the epicenter of a quake that tears the news media apart, debating over whether one man’s junk is another broadcasting corporation’s treasure. I side with Prince Harry on this one, though it’s not even clear which side that might be, although certainly front side. Thus opens and closes my riffling through CNN for the month of August. Also, add breaking-and-entering to the list of things not to do around LL Cool J, right after fronting in your ride and declaring the unsexiness of fisher’s hats.

There are multiple correct ways to go about painting a classic car, and then there is the way shown at right. Unless Ford is rebooting the franchise and this is a 2013, someone dropped wads of cash on parts and took a long time on painstaking construction. The closest analogy I have is bodybuilding for a year straight and then joining Blue Man Group. Who gives a shit about what’s underneath. You’re blue. This car looks like it has liver spots. It’s the perfect vehicle for hunting senior citizens.

If there is a central theme of Kool Deadwood Nights, it is “old.” It seems as though it was supposed to be “cars;” a swing and a miss. This sounds heavy-handed, and indeed I judge them in their own house. I hypothesize that the age distribution in the area is a rising exponential. But the Jumbotron was like 30 feet from the stage, and the entire two block stretch was filled with orderly rows of lawn chairs. The concert ended by 9. Come on. Block parties themed in the 1900s have been done, and then, they’ve been done again. You’ve got real roots; try an 1800s weekend.

Tangentially related, something about music where all the words have a “yyrrah” sound at the end makes me want/need to windmill. Not because I’ve been seized by some idiot mosher’s version of the Spirit and now, oh, watch out other concert attendees, the Lord has called on me to testify. I assure you that it is strictly a murder response. I would never publicly admit to being inspired by things that annoy me, though I do syphon massive amounts of creative power from my rage font, which, like the rest of my body, runs dry in this environment. I attempt to fill it when I can, squeezing little out of littler still. Even so my mind has been a blank slate lately, with serenity and majesty or whatever everywhere I look. There are mountains fucking everywhere. There’s one right there. And deer and rabbits and giraffe. I forever face the dilemma of taking in the scene with repose or slamming a Dew and tearing up on some motorchair with wheels. I usually do neither and try to run; within a mile I begin to wonder if I have lungs constructed entirely out of asbestos, and then I remember that there is no oxygen at this altitude. I better be Superman when I get back to sea level, or I will be pissed and creative.


Leave a comment

We Pick Things Up…

Taking a month-long trip to a location 6,000 feet above sea level may lead to thorough desiccation of the body, but fortunately it doesn’t have to mean loss of muscle tone. Twenty eight years ago an egg was fertilized; this egg eventually produced Carlos, who would end up tracking down cheap second-hand free weights and a bench, and arranging them on a mat in our cellar. I try to attend religiously. Atrophy and mountain lions are the largest persistent threats in this area. The former, leading to a condition colloquially known as “physics body” or “the N-body problem,” is preventable in principle. The latter is not. After dark we huddle in the cellar, admist our weights, and pray that they only take our livestock this night.

If I could pass one wisdom nugget to the world, it would be to always read the label on protein mix before laying down monies. I ended up with a tub of a pink something, flavored with antibiotics and a hint of strawberry, which seems to be a mix of equal parts anabolic steroids and cocaine. The instructions recommend that body builders actually go eat other sources of protein, suggesting to me that their product foregoes this ingredient altogether. Normal humans: Add 0 scoops to milk and consume with eggs. Bane: Add 1-2 scoops to five tablespoons water and force down. Then consume eggs.

Friday night was the night for The Expendables 2: The Expendening. If you haven’t seen, The Expendables is based on the true story of a group of friends dealing with the realities of middle age, during which the world around them reflects on itself as they attempt to define what it is to have lived a “good life.” A masterfully constructed metanarrative draws themes from a rich body of works in psychology and classical literature. The first movie won two Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor in a Leading Role.

We showed up 30 minutes early for the movie–an unprecedented show of force for a town of 10,000–and proceeded to stand at the head of a non-existent line for another 20 while the previous showing finished. Upon entering the theater I consumed a king-size bag of Whoppers and the world started to move much too slowly. My review of the movie is somewhat colored by this experience. There was not nearly enough action, and when there was, the guns did not spew bullets fast enough. Stallone enunciates too much. Chuck Norris told too few Chuck Norris jokes. Schwarzenegger isn’t old enough. More. More, damn you. This is escapism; I need a movie that doesn’t resemble my everyday life.


Leave a comment

Portation

Ryan and I are coalescing into this new, joint blog. We could have used the blog I originally created, but for some reason “davidm.wordpress.com” wasn’t seen to be properly capturing the spirit of community. All 2 of my old posts have been copied over to this site.

We searched high and low for an easy way to cross-post between multiple blogs, but failed entirely. Surprising and disheartening. Time was when we didn’t used to bother with this 3rd party hosting shit; we could code a site up by hand on our home computer, in a day, with all the features we needed, and it’d be bulletproof. That was 2000. Now you install some professional-grade software on a secure machine and within five minutes of going live you have a bug infestation of third world proportions. Or some acne-laden kid in the Netherlands steals your entire computer and repurposes it to spreading propaganda for kitten-eating Nazis, before going out and not getting laid. The Internet seems to have evolved into some sci-fi dystopia where, upon leaving the Google arcology, one quickly perishes from a combination of nuclear fallout and giant ants.

Launch time is always the roughest time for a new venture. Momentum has to keep up or you fizzle. Particularly difficult when you have “things to do” because you’re a “real person.” There is something about long stretches of left-brained work that drains inspiration, and words become the Enemy. I try to keep up because it’s good exercise, and my creative homunculus no longer fits into its going-out jeans. One can always fall back on actually writing about a topic, I suppose. I’ll try to avoid that to the end.