Greetings Coffee Drinkers. Welcome to the year 2010. I'm sure you are all looking forward to seeing just what this year has in store for you. I know I am, though I'm relatively certain that it will be "more of the same."
Hopefully everyone was safe and with luck, you can even remember what they did last night. With luck, you did nothing foolish, like elope, for example. I was very safe, as I had a few drinks with the proprietors of the restaurant situated below my hotel. I also remember my evening quite well. I departed the restaurant at about 2330 and walked up to my room. By this time, it was beginning to sound like a warzone outside. So I opened my windows and, half in and half out of my room, I beheld a cacophony of completely random fireworks. It seemed as though every house in the village held their own fireworks display, and each house was competing with the houses adjacent to it. It was madness. (Nay, it was SPARTA!) Soon, the streets filled with smoke and it smelled like a battle had was taking place. I happened to enjoy this immensely and took many, many
pictures. You can see more here, here, right – here, here – also, and, here. Another here.
All in all, it wasn't a terrible evening. I am sure there are some out there who had a marvelous evening, likely spent with good, old friends who were deeply missed and who finally returned to be a part of each others' lives. Perhaps they'll move in together again, or lend each other money and buy each other expensive gifts. Maybe they'll just "be there" for one another and provide emotional and/or logistical support in these, the most difficult of times. Wouldn't a story like that warm your heart? It most certainly would mine.
"I want to paamp, you uap!" – Arnold Schwarzenegger:
Today on my way back from the free uber-breakfast offered by my hoteliers, I saw a magazine called "Planet Muscle" on a small desk in the hallway. Since I take perverse pleasure out of annoying myself, I picked this magazine up and took it to my room to "read." I must confess that I get a real kick out of these things. Actually, the whole "muscle culture" provides me with great amusement. This magazine is really just a huge, cleverly designed advertising campaign for various supplements.
In fact, the first third of this particular issue are real ads showing numerous "before and after" photos of "regular guys" who achieved miraculous gains of rock-hard, striated, slab-like layers of mass in just weeks, all this while cutting down their body fat percentages from the 20%-range to single digits. Some ads even have cleverly placed newspapers that have been Photoshopped into the hands of these "regular guys" so as to give the real impression of just weeks passing. I will confess to being unable to make out the publication date in either picture. Despite this minor issue, all they had to do, apparently, was consume the supplement in question. These supplements have delightful names that range from the hard-core-sounding "Hemo-Rage Black," "Melt-Down Fat Assault," and "Dark Matter/Dark Rage" to the very scientific and medicinal sounding "Halodrol MT," "Quadracarn," and "Kre-Alkalyn." I can only assume that there are distinct markets within this market; one for the jock-like and another for the more discerning wanna-be.
The prowess of each and every one of these items in providing "explosive gains" is shown by one hulking behemoth or another, with glistening, hairless bodies, ridiculous fake tans, and gelled hair who state emphatically in giant, cartoonish fonts about how this is the best product they have ever used. See, all of these products are the best product ever. No real science is provided, other than improbably large numbers about the massive amounts of growth hormone or some other substance provide. That being the case, you must try them all if you want an utterly impractical, farcical physique like these men.
The rest of this magazine features cleverly written articles, which are really just advertisements for other supplements. They might be interviews with various iron-pumping idols or just features about the lifting prowess of this guy or that guy. Sometimes, Big Name Muscle Guy will show you what he does in order to get "horse-shoes," or as regular humans call them, triceps.
This is a huge industry, preying on the inadequacies and, quite frankly, the gullibility and complacence of men everywhere. See, a lot of these guys really want to look like the tools in these magazines, but they haven't the will to really train. What they do have is disposable income, so they will run right down to GNC and buy the newest, berry-flavored supplement which is sure to put them over the wall that they've encountered in their training regimen (i.e. fantasizing about the things in these magazines and not going to the gym).
The magazine also has plenty of "fitness babes." Some of these girls aren't bad looking, having not yet achieved the freakishly abnormal muscle mass and associated "dude-look" of some of the female competitors you might have seen. And since this industry is geared primarily towards men, these women provide nothing of value other than posing in very little clothing. (As an aside, the owner of the magazine before me dog eared literally every page that featured a scantily clad, suggestively posing woman, whether she was featured in an advertisement or not. I found this to be hilarious.) Most of the women you see in this magazine are mere props to advertise some sexual supplement or another. The gullibility of the audience has already been firmly established, so why not attempt to dip further into their pockets by suggesting to them, obliquely, that they can bag themselves a couple of these hot fitness hunnies, and perform some miraculous, if ill-defined, feats in bed, so long as they use Vigor Lab's "Chainsaw," which I think just makes your penis hard. I cannot tell for sure. But it goes right along with the miraculous feats enabled by "Hemo-Rage Black." And if she is turned off by your "bacne" and won't give it up willingly, you'll now be able to simply take it right after ripping the door off her Prius.
Needless to say, the magazine in question gave me an easy twenty minutes of enjoyment, while I laughed at the absurdity of it all, and contemplated the gullibility of the target audience and admired the slick production of these half-hidden ads. And it led to a decent, lighthearted Brew, I think.
Word of the Day: Panacea (noun): A remedy for all diseases, problems, or evils; a universal medicine; a cure-all.
On This Day in History: The Julian calendar comes into use (45 BCE). Russia begins to use AD (Anno Domini) (1700). Ellis Island opens (1892). The Ball drops in NYC for the first time (1908). The Navy SEALs were established (1962). A fool took some apparently meaningless vows and was married (2001). Random other things (Various).
"These Shameful Metaphors. I fought it through the teeth. Shameful Metaphors; biting at your heels. Shameful Metaphors; I fought it cheek to cheek. So why then has my life made no sound? And are your eyes closing even now? My life made no sound. I fear your eyes closing."
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