Sliding Down
Feb. 18th, 2003 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fj-- Baardje afgeschoren. Jeezus Christus, wat een bolle Andre-Hazes kop in de spiegel, crisis. Net zoals bij de rest van mijn familie hangt mijn huid slap onder mijn kin, en zonder baard dus nu duidelijk zichtbaar. Mijn wangen lijken boller nu dat gezichsthaar mijn gezicht niet langer doet lijken. Crisis. Snel weer aangroeien.
- What's worse than a snowblizzard for automotive travel? Having it melt the next day. I wanted 4WD today, but the stupid thing was, I wanted it in the parking garage. It was so slick that at some point I was spiunning my wheels on the concrete hill going absolutly nowhere, until I turned off my lane. It was creepy, going nowehere, I had to contemplate doing what, pushing the truck myself?
- Every time I see him I want to grab him by the lapels and yell at him, the, as Michael Moore put it, possibly-alcoholic, possibly-illiterate, possibly-felon president. This time when he was talking about standing up for security and Saddam being a security risk. "To whom?" I want to yell, "To whom?" Forget him, but obviously Mr. Powell and Ms. Rice, smart educated people, believe that Saddam is a security risk -- but they aren't saying how. Suppose Saddam makes chemical, atomic, whatever weapons, how does threaten the US? The EU? Whom does it threaten if he can't deliver them? Is the idea he will use covert terrorists to deliver them? Al Qaida has proven they don't need weapons besides our own infrastructure, and Usama considers Saddam a heretic socialist he doesn't wanna deal with. So who will do the delivery then, Hamas? Los terroristas Shiitas in Barcelona? (That's an Almodovar reference for you.) Unlikely, since Saddam now knows that the Bush doctrine stands: he and Iraq will be anihilated, and he actually doesn't want that, it is not Saddam's game, or hasn't been. Ms. Rice is convinced he is a threat, but the media is not telling us why, what her whole story is. Why? Why the incompletion? Why am I not being told anything beyond "He is a threat?" To Israel then? Can't anyome just state that then?
Note how North Korea is being handled: kid gloves. Total crisis there compared to Iraq, but kid gloves. Because NK has or may have the real deal: weapon and delivery. There is something to be said to not letting Iraq get to that level, it would make the region safer, but there's still the fact that the current plan for prevention involves the US or worse, the UN, going into an unprovoked aggressive invasion war. This is not a precedent to set, people. It's a tough call, but then again, as a citizen of a small country I have to say, gawd, if we had to invade every country globally because we couldn't keep nukes outside of our border, or a country is making oil too expensive.. no, we've been there, we've done that, and Indonesia and Surinam are still none too happy. The thought of doing it again is ludicrous, we'd have to check our borders, appease the country that has the new weapons, and learn to do without oil. So the US course is not a given to me, colonization, even only for ten years, is not the only option.
- Meanwhile, it must be Four Horsemen time: a major men's health/fitness mag actually published an honest article about steroid use by many gymrats left and right without invoking instant death and destruction for everyone whom so even looks at a vial. They actually reported the pros and cons, the illicitude and seedyness of it, the lack of medical information, the drive, and the fact that it indeed will make men bigger in the right circumstances.
But if that is not enought, in that same issue of Men's Health (this month) there was also an article in which squatting all the way down to the heels is not described in terms of how it will make your knee-caps pop off right into the mirror accross from the squat rack, and crack it into smithereens. In fact, they actually gave hints and tips on how to do them properly, and not a moment too soon for me. You see, the moment I manage to do good sets of squats with my own bodyweight on my shoulders, my weak sway back always gets in trouble. My legs can take it, and could take more, but my back cannot keep my body upright, leading to injury.
So the magazine suggested Pause Squats. Get the weight on your back, go down, and stay there. Four seconds. Eternity. Then go up. That's one rep. I used what used to be my warm-up weight to try this. I wanted to bad; I stopped squatting because I was hitting my limit again, so I was doing leg presses, and now those fuck up my knees. Ugh, I could feel the pain start creeping into my normal day, and leg-presses really don't do much for me, they isolate too much, and the machine doesn't suit me.
So there I was, worried, wondering if I could do these squats without pain. No problem. No problem. I stayed perfectly upright, the weight was so low my back could easly take it. The 4-second crouch seemed do-able. No prob. Yeah right. After two sets of eight my legs seemed 'empty' during the thrid set (6 reps), the fourth there was nothing in my legs left (3 reps). With such low weight. Beautiful. Safe. Finished the rest of my leg work-out, and staggered into the showers like I haven't staggered for a while. I won't be able to walk right Thursday, and I love it.
- What's worse than a snowblizzard for automotive travel? Having it melt the next day. I wanted 4WD today, but the stupid thing was, I wanted it in the parking garage. It was so slick that at some point I was spiunning my wheels on the concrete hill going absolutly nowhere, until I turned off my lane. It was creepy, going nowehere, I had to contemplate doing what, pushing the truck myself?
- Every time I see him I want to grab him by the lapels and yell at him, the, as Michael Moore put it, possibly-alcoholic, possibly-illiterate, possibly-felon president. This time when he was talking about standing up for security and Saddam being a security risk. "To whom?" I want to yell, "To whom?" Forget him, but obviously Mr. Powell and Ms. Rice, smart educated people, believe that Saddam is a security risk -- but they aren't saying how. Suppose Saddam makes chemical, atomic, whatever weapons, how does threaten the US? The EU? Whom does it threaten if he can't deliver them? Is the idea he will use covert terrorists to deliver them? Al Qaida has proven they don't need weapons besides our own infrastructure, and Usama considers Saddam a heretic socialist he doesn't wanna deal with. So who will do the delivery then, Hamas? Los terroristas Shiitas in Barcelona? (That's an Almodovar reference for you.) Unlikely, since Saddam now knows that the Bush doctrine stands: he and Iraq will be anihilated, and he actually doesn't want that, it is not Saddam's game, or hasn't been. Ms. Rice is convinced he is a threat, but the media is not telling us why, what her whole story is. Why? Why the incompletion? Why am I not being told anything beyond "He is a threat?" To Israel then? Can't anyome just state that then?
Note how North Korea is being handled: kid gloves. Total crisis there compared to Iraq, but kid gloves. Because NK has or may have the real deal: weapon and delivery. There is something to be said to not letting Iraq get to that level, it would make the region safer, but there's still the fact that the current plan for prevention involves the US or worse, the UN, going into an unprovoked aggressive invasion war. This is not a precedent to set, people. It's a tough call, but then again, as a citizen of a small country I have to say, gawd, if we had to invade every country globally because we couldn't keep nukes outside of our border, or a country is making oil too expensive.. no, we've been there, we've done that, and Indonesia and Surinam are still none too happy. The thought of doing it again is ludicrous, we'd have to check our borders, appease the country that has the new weapons, and learn to do without oil. So the US course is not a given to me, colonization, even only for ten years, is not the only option.
- Meanwhile, it must be Four Horsemen time: a major men's health/fitness mag actually published an honest article about steroid use by many gymrats left and right without invoking instant death and destruction for everyone whom so even looks at a vial. They actually reported the pros and cons, the illicitude and seedyness of it, the lack of medical information, the drive, and the fact that it indeed will make men bigger in the right circumstances.
But if that is not enought, in that same issue of Men's Health (this month) there was also an article in which squatting all the way down to the heels is not described in terms of how it will make your knee-caps pop off right into the mirror accross from the squat rack, and crack it into smithereens. In fact, they actually gave hints and tips on how to do them properly, and not a moment too soon for me. You see, the moment I manage to do good sets of squats with my own bodyweight on my shoulders, my weak sway back always gets in trouble. My legs can take it, and could take more, but my back cannot keep my body upright, leading to injury.
So the magazine suggested Pause Squats. Get the weight on your back, go down, and stay there. Four seconds. Eternity. Then go up. That's one rep. I used what used to be my warm-up weight to try this. I wanted to bad; I stopped squatting because I was hitting my limit again, so I was doing leg presses, and now those fuck up my knees. Ugh, I could feel the pain start creeping into my normal day, and leg-presses really don't do much for me, they isolate too much, and the machine doesn't suit me.
So there I was, worried, wondering if I could do these squats without pain. No problem. No problem. I stayed perfectly upright, the weight was so low my back could easly take it. The 4-second crouch seemed do-able. No prob. Yeah right. After two sets of eight my legs seemed 'empty' during the thrid set (6 reps), the fourth there was nothing in my legs left (3 reps). With such low weight. Beautiful. Safe. Finished the rest of my leg work-out, and staggered into the showers like I haven't staggered for a while. I won't be able to walk right Thursday, and I love it.
