Sorry Bastages

Why, stupid companies, do you allow people to upload their damn resumes and then make them enter the same damn information in stupid little form fields?

Baby Steps

Baby steps is the easiest way to change and to create habits. When I started smoking, it wasn't from nothing to 2 packs a day overnight, it was in baby steps. Easy-peasy. When I quit, it was overnight, and even with the help of the patch and Wellbutrin, that was a bit of a bitch. So, the mantra for change is baby steps. A little less what I want to stop doing, and a little more of what I want to start doing. For me, now, that's a little less screwing off on the computer, and a little more housework. Just a little more though..

For those helping to keep me accountable, I just out of the post-treadmill cooldown shower. Sadly, I haven't been noticing the rapid drop in pounds I was hoping for at this point. This point is a couple of weeks in, maybe the third I think. I guess I should have been paying more attention. However, I haven't gained any more weight. The Wii Fit says I'm hovering around 220 with today at 219. So, maybe I'm at least preventing further weight gain. I'm also looking forward to my treadmill time these days....though I can't be sure if that's because my body is making those little endorphins a bit at the end, or I'm just really digging Battlestar Galactica again. Either way, I'm glad it's usually not a challenge to fire up the treadmill.

Own Your Diet

First off, I'm mainly making this post to maintain my public accountability as previously discussed...keeping myself honest so to speak. I've maintained my BSG+ treadmill MWF and Wii Fit stuff Tues+Thurs since the last post. Huzzah. I'm down to 220 for those keeping score.

Since we're here though, I thought I'd share a pet peeve of mine - the use of the word diet. The grapefruit diet, the peach schnapps diet, etc. Here's the secret why they don't work: They're not your diet. Everyone is on a diet. Everyone. It's YOUR diet. Your diet might be potato chips and cheesecake...but it's your diet. What you eat, at least what you eat routinely is your diet. Bats have a diet of insects, you have a diet of ...whatever.

Point being, you can't change to Mr. Grapefruit's diet for 3 weeks, lose a few pounds, then go back to YOUR diet and expect to keep the weight off. When they say diet and exercise, they mean you need to change your diet, not go on a diet for awhile.

Until next time -

Public Accountability

So...I started exercising. I'm telling you this because there's a little RSS feed that I added to my google homepage and my my.yahoo homepage called zen habits that is generally a good source for articles about how to get your shit together. In one such article, it was made mention that holding yourself publicly accountable to a change you've committed yourself to helps you keep the commitment. That part, at least, apparently stuck with me.

100 days ago tomorrow (the Wii Fit keeps track), I started using the Wii Fit my girlfriend bought me for Valentine's day. I haven't used it consistently...at least not until now. About 11 days ago I hopped on the thing and it told me something new. It said I was overweight, which it has been saying for awhile. It's been saying that for so long that I've lovingly referred to it as the Wii Fat - everytime I had jumped on it my weight had gone up. The new thing was the number of pounds. I had hit 227.

I'm not sure why 227 was such an alarming number for me, but it was enough for me to take the exercise notions I've been toying with and start giving it a shot. So, since Monday I've been doing the treadmill while watching an episode of BattleStar Galactica (I own several seasons on DVD) every other morning. My girlfriend wakes me up everyday at 6:00, and I found a good time for me to exercise is while she's getting ready for work between 6:30 and 7:30.

I've been alternating between the treadmill thing and playing with the Wii Fit for the hour she's getting ready...which is a good thing. I'm not positive I could do the treadmill thing every single day. So far so good with the every other day thing though. Hopefully I'll be making some more of these posts, continuing to hold myself publicly accountable, and continuing to work my way back down from the dreaded 227.

Crazy Enough - Storm Large

So, I went to the armory to see a play last night. To be fair, I'm not a frequent flyer to stage productions. This is my second play in my adult life actually, with the same female lead.

Crazy Enough is basically a one-woman show with a band in the back starring Storm Large, about Storm Large. Biographical monologue leads you through a series of 11 songs (CD available).

I have to admit, I was mesmerized. I guess I'm not so frequently in the presence of someone so charismatic, and the woman is a great story teller. I was drawn in to her introspection, and predictably enough lead to do some introspection of my own. For that alone, the play is well worth attending. People tend to benefit from looking at their lives from a new perspective, and the performance provides a great mirror for doing just that.

My favorite songs from the album are currently:
Call Me Crazy
Inside Outside
8 Miles Wide
Lullaby Song
and her performance of Where Is My Mind? (by the pixies I believe) was particularly meaningful for me.

You can apparently pick it up here: http://cdbaby.com/cd/stormlarge2

Darwin versus Hippocrates

It seems to me that if a species evolves by members with mutations more favorable to the their enviroment being more successful in reproduction than other members of the species, that our own medical industry is counterproductive to the advancement of our species. People that should die live because of medical intervention, and often live to reproduce. People who cannot reproduce are reproducing through medical intervention.

Even for Athiests, birth control is a sin.

When an intelligent human being prevents their own reproduction and mentally lesser beings are allowed to reproduce unchecked, it would seem that the aggregate intelligence of the species would continually decline. Therefore, it stands to reason that the correct course of action would have to be sterilization of the ignorant. My personal experience is that ignorance goes hand in hand with selfishness, and I can't imagine the ignorant voluntarily denying themselves the "joy" of raising little ignorant childrens.

The Answer:

The scientific discovery of human sterilization that can be administered in conjunction with a flu vaccine, and a secret society of intellectuals that position themselves to oversee the administration of the reproduction vaccine. I think they should call themselves the "Evolutionaries" too, just because I like the sound of it.

It would be overly risky to pursue a virus that can accomplish the sterilization. After all, virii have a nasty habit of mutating and becoming and airborn and such. Without caution we could find ourselves in a Children of Men situation.

However, when the crackhead mother who's child becomes a ward of the state goes to a clinic, hospital, emergency room, etc. she should probably get the reproduction vaccine. In fact, I'd go as far as to say anyone judged unlikely to be able to successfully raise a child without abuse or neglect should be vaccinated.

the hotel cafe tour - Wonder Ballroom

The Place: The Wonder Ballroom & Wonder Cafe
(128 NE Russell)
The Wonder Ballroom does not jump out at you. I might have not been able to find it at all, but luckily we arrived before the doors opened at 7:00 p.m. and there was a fairly decent sized line showing us where there just might be a concert. The double doors open immediately to a staircase, and a ticket-taker was at the bottom and a wrist stamper at the top. At the top of the stairs is a hallway leading to the restrooms (boys on the left, girls on the right), and across the hallway from the staircase is the entrance to the ballroom itself.

Once inside the ballroom, on the right I found a well bar with well drinks with glorious easy to see signage, unmistakable even for the partially inebriated. On the left was the souvenir table. There was an ID-checker/hand stamper between me and the bar, and they used that fancy blacklight stamp. Snaking up through the crowd toward the stage was the barrier-created hallway that separates the drinkers from the people who get drunk before the show.

In the right corner nearest the entrance is the staircase to the top shelf bar and balcony seating. The bar rests behind the balcony, and once the the concert starts the area between the balcony and the bar apparently turns into the "yappy bitch section." So, if you find yourself in another part of the ballroom and you happen to be a yappy bitch, once the show starts please have the common decency to go upstairs and let everyone else enjoy the show. The balcony appears to be the only real place to rest your ass, and seemed to be what all the people were standing in line for when we found the place. There's 2 rows of maybe 30 seats that are pretty comfortable (particularly during a 4-hour show) but the yappy bitch section is right behind you.

My stomach led me to investigate the Wonder Cafe, which, while in the same building technically, seems pretty inaccessible from inside the ballroom. Down the grand staircase, out the doors, and 2 rights later I was seating myself at the bar of the Wonder Cafe. When I glanced at the menu I had to do a double take. Mac & cheese as a main course! I couldn't believe it! Nine dollars! I couldn't believe it even more! So, I had to try it, and I ordered a root beer to wash it down with so as to complete the meal properly. To be honest, the mac & cheese was damn good. I think it was probably only seven dollars good, but they charge nine dollars and that's what you pay.

The Show: The Hotel Cafe Tour
The show was basically one artist after another doing a set of 3 or 4 songs and then fading back behind the curtain. They also did fancy special guest appearances by other people on the tour, and sometimes called the whole tour out on stage to shake their asses or sing along. It was a long breakless show, and had I loved all of the artists equally I don't know when I would have found the time to potty and such. Luckily/sadly, that was not a problem.

Willie Fitzsimmons
Yes, I am completely aware that he goes by William Fitzsimmons. I don't know, perhaps it's some strange connection I'm sensing between him and Willie Nelson...probably the beard, but I think of him as Willie and thus I shall refer to him as such. He opened the show with 4 songs and then was only seen again in guest appearances, which I thought was a relative shame as I preferred his work to the work of others that got to play two sets. I've heard his songs referred to as suicide music, and he introduced himself as writing the saddest songs in the world. Neither of those were inaccurate, but I thought it was good stuff. Plus, once we removed the slit-wrist bodies from the crowd there was a lot more maneuvering room.

Meiko
I think Meiko came up second. The order got lost in the second round of sets, especially since there was drinking and whatnot. She had an adorable stage presence and I thought her songs were pretty great too. I've not actually listened to a lot of Bjork, so this may be way off base, but she reminded me of the Bjork I had heard, with not-so-much of an accent. Hers was the only album I walked out of the place with if that's any measure of how much I liked her stuff. Sadly the hotdog song apparently isn't on the album.

Jim Bianco
Best in showmanship. The guy put on a great show. He made the concert feel more like a party, and that's always a good thing. I didn't pick up his CD after the show, but I'll probably find it on iTunes or get ahold of it somehow. Definitely good stuff. It made me feel like I was in a strange strange movie, and I love being in strange strange movies.

Jesca Hoop
I had a really hard time understanding this artist, when she was talking and when she was singing. That's in no small part due to my proximity to the yappy bitch section I'm sure, but as I couldn't enjoy them, her sets were when I found the time to stretch my legs and such. For that, if nothing else, I thank her.

Cary Brothers
I had a little bit of the same problem with this guy as I did with Jesca Hoop...most of the time I couldn't make out what the words he was singing were. Most everyone else seemed to like them though, and that Blue Eyes song of his is pretty damn catchy. He's apparently also the guy who thought of the tour or something, so kudos for that.

Ingrid Michaelson
I highly suspect it was Ingrid that brought people through the door of this little shindig. I know that's why I was there, since I had fallen into complete adoration of her when I saw her at the Doug Fir in January. I can't say for certain, but she led me to believe that she did her first crowd surfing in the middle of her first set. I don't think she was even permanently injured. It might show up on youtube or on the tour's myspace or something, it seemed like there was a lady running around with a camera. When Ingrid came on stage, she said she had been looking forward to the Portland show like a warm blanket (or something). You could feel it in the Wonder Ballroom that night too, just a boatload of positive energy flowing toward the stage (at least when she was on it). I'm not even attuned to that hocus pocus and I could feel it. It was fairly awesome.

When she covered 'Creep' by Radiohead with her ukulele, and was singing that she was a weirdo and didn't belong here, I couldn't help but change the words in my head.
I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo, this is Portland, I think I belong here