30 August 2012

Terrible Idea I

Adaptive Spellcheck

Purpose


Spellchecking software that would start at zero, and adapt to your idosyncratic spelling as you use it. Eventually it would start correcting "a lot" to "alot" if you used it incorrectly enough. Autocorrect is innocuous enough that you probably wouldn't even notice these negative corrections as they happen

Why It's Awful


This is clearly awful, right? This is a thermostat that turns the heat up the hotter it gets in the house. A negative feedback loop.

Redeeming Value?


It would be nice to see how people's spelling evolves in a vaccuum. For example, I would eventually forget that the word "vaccuum" has two of every letter in it twice and start typing "vacuum". And no one would correct me! It's easier to live in a world where you're always right.

Easier still, is to live in a world where your always right.

28 August 2012

Wasp v. WASP

I received a series of texts from my wife the other day detailing the exquisit set of trials to which she had just subjected a wasp. It read like the boastings of a killer:

"I trapped a wasp. I've put him in the outside trash can.

If he's smart, he'll get out.

If not, then too bad for Mr. Wasp.

I broke one wing and told him that if he could fly out he would have freedom.

If not, he could end it all by figuring out how to sting himself."

I told her that if he lives, she had probably just created a wasp super-villain in the spirit of The Punisher.

In addition to the engorged sense of pride I felt at bearing witness to her cunning and theatric sense of punishment, I couldn't help but feel that there was a missed opportunity there.

Oh, to catch a wasp!

It's certainly not an easy task and not for the faint of heart or weak of spirit. But once caught - you've opened up a new world of possibilities. To carry around a wasp in a bell jar is to touch God.

So what could she have done besided subject him to a Saw-like survival puzzle?

In The Car


This is a bold move for the brave. You, the driver, reach into your cupholder and unscrew the top of your wasp jar. Panic grips the passengers! Who will be stung? Can the windows roll down or have the child locks already been engaged? Can the driver keep their cool and avoid putting the car in a ditch? No matter what, it will be a trip to brunch that will be remembered forever.

The Elevator


A wasp in an elevator! Who ever heard of such a thing? No one. And that's why their panic will be so tangible when you give that jar a shake and let the wasp out. Never will an elevator have moved so slowly as the elevator full of people and one increasingly confused wasp.

At the Office


You are, perhaps, a better person than any other who has had a wasp in a jar. You made it all the way to work without unleashing it! You'll taste the confusion in the air as a wasp menacingly patrols the 30th floor of a high-rise. How did it get there? Is there a nest? Are there more wasps waiting for the screams to begin?

Post-Graduate Wasp Play

The following are advanced-level wasp play. Do not attempt unless you've already mastered dancing on the razor's edge of wasp competition.

Duel in the Powder Room

Do you have access to a half-bath or powder room? Go there now and bring your wasp. Turn off the lights and release the wasp. You and the wasp are now engaged in a battle of wills. Who will break first? Will darkness engulf you both? The Olympic record was set in the first Modern Olympic Games by Tadeusz Henriczewski of the Liberated Palitnate of Wurzburg. It was 15 hours, 30 seconds. Tadeusz claimed he could have gone longer had he not been doing 2 oz. shots of mercury every two hours for increased vigor.

Wasp Goggles

Obviously this will require two wasps and two jars. Double check your vision plan, or purchase accidental death and dismemberment coverage before attempting.

Wasp Shakespeare

Will an infinite number of wasps buzzing angrily around an infinite number of typewriters eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare?

They will not.

Your task here is to attempt to describe the feeling of an infinite number of wasp stings for eternity. If you're writing it down, make sure to use college-ruled paper to get more bang for your buck.

Schrodinger's Wasp

Seal yourself inside a box with a wasp in a jar. Have an observer contemplate the quantum nature of your position. Until they open they box you have both been stung and not stung by the wasp. It is only until they open the box to observe you that they force you into one state. That state will be dead from starvation.

The Riddle of the Wasp

What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the noon and three legs at night?

This is a trick question. In your case it's three wasps in jars and they're all stinging you while you contemplate the solution.

Knights and Knaves (And Wasps)

You are on an island. All inhabitants are either Knights who always tell the truth; Knaves who always lie or Wasps in jars who will sting you. You come across three inhabitants and must determine, via yes or no questions, which is the Knight, the Knave and the Wasp.

Solution: The wasp will sting all three of you and the Knave will claim that it doesn't hurt.

Beer Pong But With Wasps Instead of Beer

Do like... play beer pong, right? But with wasps instead of beer? And then if you lose dude you have to drink.

Wasps.

You have to drink wasps if you lose.

Conclusiary

"Twas a brave woman who trapt the first wasp" is a quote I'm falsely attributing to Jonathon Swift. I think Nietzsche said "Wasps is dead, except for when your wife traps them and releases them in the trash can where they can die by their own stinger or live to discover the inherent glory found in the beauty of every new sunrise."

I think something they can both agree on is that wasps will sting you if caught inexpertly.

Something I can both agree on is that any further capturing of wasps around the house will fall to my wife, who will then subject that wasp to a fresh new Hell before they escape.

I will also continue capturing WASPs and putting them through the selfsame barrage of obstacles before they are permitted to taste freedom.

23 August 2012

The Simple Joys

I usually run at the local velodrome. The sloped walls and smooth floor are more conducive to my average mile time: 1 minute.

But they had to take the velodrome to the shop and so I found myself running at the covered track at the rec center, where I post much more realistic and underwhelming times.

I immediately noticed to small girls running what could only be characterized as amok. "Fine," I told myself. "They are of no concern to you" I further told myself in my best Emperor Palpatine voice.

I flew around the track at sub-world record pace when I suddenly turned I blind corner and saw those same two girls. Playing. Hiding out of sight. Volleyball in hand. Precocious. If I had run into them at speed, they would've had to build a memorial statue for all three of us. "Look out!" I shouted [told them]. Bits of plaster shook down from the ceiling and cracks appeared in the half inch thick storm glass lining the track. Even though, like the mighty Thu'um of the Nords my shout had knocked the little girls back several yards, they landed on their feet, undeterred. Their eyes narrowed to slits and they continued playing with their volleyball as I thundered past them. Each footfall cracked the surface of the track like arid desert soil.

Laps being what they are, I knew I'd run into them again and by God I hoped I would because I was ready this time. I knew they would be hiding around a blind corner with their legs all out in the track and being all, childish and unattended. I also knew that if this happened, the printing presses at all major dictionaries would be thrown to a stop as they frantically attempted to redefine the words "browbeating" and "pointless lecturing". I wasn't disappointed.

They were there! Covering five yards with every stride I closed on them quickly and, deftly manuevering between the traps they had laid out I bellowed "You guys gotta move." Only in my head there were exclamation marks at the end!

Knocked flat on their asses! Is what would have happened if I had done anything to effect that happening. Instead, they sulked off the floor and sulked over to the door, which they then sulked through.

Triumph!

I continued running, buoyed by the joy you can only feel by being a buzzkill grownup. To be able to bend the wills of others so effortlessly... it's like a drug.

Only thank God they weren't teenage boys 'cause otherwise I would have had to ask the lady at the desk to ask them to stop fucking around.

21 August 2012

On Rap and Graduation

The Self-Hating Analyst

Pulling apart hip-hop (rap?) and analyzing the lyrics is beyond cliche. I know that. I do!

And I've stayed out of it for so long in spite of there being so much content. But I can't do it anymore. 

That said, I'd like to highlight some selections from Birthday Song by 2 Chainz (feat. Kanye West) because they are absurd and incredible.

The Hook


"...All I want for my birthday is a big booty girl
All I want for my birthday is a big booty girl
When I die, bury me inside the Gucci store
When I die, bury me inside the Louie store
All I want for my birthday is a big booty girl 
All I want for my birthday is a big booty girl..."
There's something kind of naive about wanting to be buried inside of a Gucci store. What exactly is 2 Chainz picturing? Is he going to be inside a glass coffin like Lenin? Or is this one of those Pharaonic burials where 2 Chainz is entombed inside of a Louis Vuitton store, surrounded by all of the luxury leather goods and screaming salespeople (and terrified customers?) he'll need in the afterlife? I'm not sure that he's attained "buried with servants" status but as far as I know, his career has not yet peaked. Fingers crossed!

Selected Verses

"...You the realest nigga breathin’ if I hold my breath..."
That's pretty good. See 'cause he's the realest but if he holds his breath then you're the realest. It's a throwaway line but it's pretty good.

Enter the Kanye


Kanye's here too. And every word written about what a pompous ass he is seems to be true. And while I don't agree on exchange rate for a menage a trois (discussed below) I can't help but nod my head when he says:

"...Ya’ll been together ten years, you deserve a menage 
‘Specially if you put that BMW in the garage 
‘Specially if you paid a couple payments on her mamma crib 
Weren’t you at her niece’s graduation? Man, I hate those kids..."

That's awesome. I hate graduation ceremonies. I know you're there for the graduator and you're showing support but... damn. They're so bad. 

Having participated in them pre and post iPhone I can say conclusively that my elaborate daydreams involving ripping stadium chairs out of the floor and throwing them around via telekinesis have fallen in proportion to the amount of shit I can do on my iPhone. I really hate graduations. Kanye and I seem to agree on that point - and probably on no other points.

"...When I die, bury me inside the booty club..."
This is even more ridiculous than being buried inside of a retail store. Is the club operational when he's buried there? I'd like to think that he'll be encased in acrylic and integrated into the main stage somehow because otherwise it would just be a coffin sitting in the middle of a strip club. And that's a real downer. There is of course the "seal it up with everyone inside" Egyptian dynastic tactic but again, that's even more of a downer on account of so many other people would be dying with him.

In Closing

A big part of rap is braggadocio. Who can use the most superlatives? Who can prove, lyrically, that they are indeed the realest, richest, and baddest there ever was or will be? 

Usually you can just pick a category and say "I am the most". 

That's not quite right 'cause otherwise my song "I Am The Most Boats and Cars" would be topping the charts but I think the general sentiment is accurate.

We're at a point where 2 Chainz and Kanye are comparing themselves, in death, to the Pharoahs. That's a pretty big claim. I feel like extra points should be awarded for creativity and so I include it here. The obvious comparisons drawn from the Judeo-Christian religions are just that - obvious. You can say you're bigger than God but that's cheating (looking at you, Jay-Z). You can make yourself a Christ figure but that's played out and again, cheating (Na$). That's just saying you're so awesome that you're infinity awesome. 

It takes a little more creativity to say that you're bigger than ancient Egypt. 

Also though, it's refreshingly real to hear someone say that they hate graduation. Hate it! There's a moment of Louis C.K. honesty in that one line and it's enough to make me stop hating Kanye enough to listen to this one thing he has to say before I go back to wondering why he's such a complete dick at all times.

Full lyrics at: http://www.killerhiphop.com/2-chainz-birthday-song-lyrics-kanye-west/#ixzz23oKF9SnF

16 August 2012

No One Should Live Here

People have probably thought that about most places they live.

I'll focus on America, because that's the only country I'm aware of existing.

"No one should live" in New Orleans because it's basically in a giant bowl that collects water. That's probably true of most low-lying coastal land.

"No one should live" in the places that hurricanes hit year after year, except for the years that they don't. So that takes the eastern sea board right out of the picture.

I'm getting tired of typic quotes for emphasis so pretend they're still there. This was starting to look like a chain letter.

If it gets so fucking hot that people die every summer, don't live there either. That nixes anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line that hasn't already been exempted by hurricanes and flooding.

But don't forget about the Dust Bowl - even though tornadoes can hit most places there's a pretty big concentration of them in that part of the country. It basically runs from Texas up through North Dakota. So you can fuck right off if you want to live there. 'Cause of the tornadoes.

West Coast: You're out. Earthquakes. You understand. Probably Washington can stay.

The stupid, empty desert states are already out because it regularly climbs up to a hundred and hell but I feel like I really need to emphasize that point.

Wildfires are generally tied to drought and high temperatures so that's like a bunch of extra strikes against California. And Texas. Also they happen in Colorado but not with the alarming regularity of other states. Colorado stays.

Do blizzards count? According to a page I just skimmed, blizzards have killed upwards of 100 people a year, depending on how bad they are. I kind of feel like a blizzard carries the same "will kill you" factor as a heat wave if you're not prepared... so that takes off the entire American northeast.

Maybe Washington and Idaho? Just not the Washington coast.

So everyone should go ahead and pack up for beautiful Idaho. Except, then the dysentary starts.

I guess the solution is to acknowledge the bad shit that's statistically likely to happen where you live and do what you can to mitigate the risk.

How is it that all of these posts start out with a glib observation and then if I type enough shit I come up with a really reasonable, level-headed conclusion? That sucks.

14 August 2012

Post-Labor World

Schools do a stupid job of preparing us for life.

I mean, clearly they do a good job of preparing us for standardized testing - which is super important when you're an accountant or middle manager or whatever - but they don't do much for anything else.
When you hit college you might be lucky enough to receive training specific to your field (hi, pre-Pharm!) but as countless others have doubtless observed before me, college teaches you to learn. It increases your capacity to figure stuff out and type things into Wikipedia and Google. That's a good skill to have when you're trying to figure out how to put together a mail merge in Word. You have to google that shit.

Unfortunately, this "teaching to learn" thing leaves people (me) totally floundering in other areas. I'm sure eliminating Shop from high school was an awesome thing that cut the number of severed fingers received on campus in half (joke![?]). But now there's a big knowledge-void in my life.

Sometimes, you find that you aren't at work. This might be on a weekend, or a weekday evening. Sometimes it's even a week day but that's such a rare event as to hardly bear mention.

Anyway you're there, not at work, and not needing to use Excel or Powerpoint for anything. Not even electively.

Surprise! There's a list of other things that you're supposed to do and suddenly you're adrift. I have to broom the floor? With what? Why does this sweeping thing look so much like a mop? Now your kitchen (or wherever you keep your non-porous floors) is sitting under a quarter inch of soapy standing water and your mop is jammed in the toilet. There's probably also blood everywhere. No one survives.

Where's the mopping class? Or the "keep your house clean enough that the bugs don't take over" class? How about "don't cook that chicken, stupid, because it's three inches thick and will take four hours to become edible." By the way, if you have an 8 oz. chicken breast you should butterfly that shit 'cause it'll cook up in like six minutes flat.

Don't vaccuum up that string of pearls! It'll wreck your shit. If you hold the hammer that way, you're gonna end up like that guy in Casino who gets his hand smashed with a hammer! Just wear some fucking safety goggles because one of those rabbits you hit with the mower is going to come out fast and in bits!

No one teaches us these things. So you spend half of your time learning trial-by-fire style. Did you almost just now lose an eye because you made a rookie error with a drill press? Lesson learned! Or perhaps you're momentarily gifted with foresight. You think, "I don't actually know what all of these cleaners under the sink do..." And then you have to go online! You are using this blessed knowledge of learning to Google (or Bing, if you're a dick) "how to clean a sink". And it turns out you were doing it wrong and at no point does it involve one of those gimp masks with the toilet brush attachment.

Pause.

I fully understand the concept of subserviance and the like, dom/sub thing that's implicit with those masks... But I think it takes a very, very specific set of people to

  1. enjoy wearing the mask and using it
  2. enjoy watching someone wear the mask and use it.

The day I pick up a toilet brush and think "this is hot" is the day that I need to check into some kind of asylum, Final Destination 2 style.

Resume.

I guess when I say that school has done a shitty job of preparing us (me) for life I may have been overstating my point a bit. They don't teach you how to chop a mortise and tenon with a chisel because they know you can "pick up a book" (internet) and learn how. And they don't teach you how to bake a cake (Protip: remove eggs from their shells first for best results) because they figure you'll either fuck it up once and learn from it or read up on it beforehand.

But it still seems a little dismal. If the point was just to be able to research stuff then we'd get a business card with "Google" on the front and "Fuckin', Google" on the back when we turn five and that would be that. We're tought physics and grammar n' shit so we can kind of get a head start on useful skills that may take a long time to perfect. Or even do passably.

So maybe something like a head start on "living life outside of academia and work" or "feeding yourself and others" might still be worth it.

A final thought:

Recess is gone. Now if someone wants to get good at throwing handfuls of gravel at little children they're going to have to look it up online. Or learn by doing (throw straight, not up in the air! bigger handfuls! learn the pattern of the teacher's gaze!) I grew up in the 15 minute recess era and posters around my neighborhood all speak to how well I am able to throw gravel at little children to this very day.
I think I just wish I had a class that would have tought me how to hammer a nail without constantly bending that shit.

09 August 2012

Know Your Wood

Good furniture is not hard to find, but it is expensive.

Actually I don't know if it's easy to find or expensive; I don't have any good furniture (half true).

I do have shitty furniture in various grades (but also a few good pieces gifted to me by a now dead aquaintance). Here's a handy list to help you pick out your shitty furniture. They're listed roughly in order of how quickly they will fail and fall apart.

If you have furniture already and you don't know if it sucks or not, pick a joint and just wail on it with a hammer. Go to town. If it's a table you might try WWE-style falls from a ladder onto the table top. What you're looking for is smashing it really good so you can get a look at what's inside.

Particle Board

This is a two part entry, because there's this one thing that's particle board and another thing that isn't, but people kind of use them interchangeably.




The top image is particle board. It's that fucking garbage that IKEA makes all of their furniture out of unless it's a plastic chair or a metal desk lamp. I don't know the particulars of how it's assembled although I'm guessing it's kind of self evident. It probably involves a lot of particles and some glue. Particle board is cherished for its ability to swell up and fall apart like rotting fruit when it gets wet, and for the ease with which fasteners will just straight tear out of it.

The bottom image is Oriented Strand Board - OSB. People call it particle board because it's made out of particles of wood. But it's not particle board. It's larger pieces of wood that are layered with the grain running all whichaways (which resists warping) and it's all laminated and shit. OSB is handy for nailing over broken windows and possibly other things. The major drawback to OSB is that you will never get a very smooth surface without $50 of wood filler and hours and hours of sanding. It's strong, but very utilitarian (read: ugly). Good for building shit in your garage.

MDF

I don't know what the deal is with this. It's "Medium Density Fiberboard". I'm guessing it's Particle Board but it uses even finer particles, which is probably desirable in some way. Here it is:


It's heavier than an equivalent thickness of not-MDF. It's also got a ton of binder (glue?) in it which makes it harder on saw blades and makes the sawdust that much worse to suck down into your lungs. What's nice is that it's engineered to within an inch of its life and is basically ready for painting (or not) right out of the box. On account of there's no grain or any distinguishing features.

I think MDF sucks because it's all they ever build anything out of on Trading Spaces. Or that other show... with the surprise room makeover while the spouse is out of town? TLC? Nothing?

Anyway you were pretty much guaranteed a "new couch" made out of an MDF box with a piece of foam on top. That sucks. MDF sucks. I'm going to let my blind ignorance get in the way of professional carpenters making choices on a tight schedule for a TV show.

MDF also really drinks up paint if you do decide to finish it. It's available in pretty much any length and most thickness because, again, it's a completely engineered product. It's also quite strong. And heavy. I already said heavy but it bears mentioning again.

Plywood

Apparently plywood is kind of a big deal. Here's a picture of some now:


Plywood is actually not cheap. Good plywood - depending on thickness and quality - can cost close to $100 or more for a 4'x8' sheet. But here's the thing. Wood apparently has a bunch of annoying quirks that people have spent like thousands of years trying to combat. It has a grain, and it will split along that grain. It will expand and contract with temperature and humidity and that can do all kinds of awful shit to things that you built out of wood, like break them.

Also while you could conceivably get a piece of wood that ran the length of an entire tree, you're kind of limited on how wide it is by the width of the tree. And then of course the thickness and width of the board you've cut is going to have all kinds of other implications like more splitting and warping and all of the things you don't want it to do.

Enter plywood. Each layer alternates the grain of the wood. It comes in great big sheets and can be manufactured to a variety of consistent thicknesses. Thin sheets can be bent and thick sheets can be made into industrial strength countertops for movie theaters. Plywood can be used for big expanses of wood with little fear of warping or buckling. And it's usually got a finished side that's ready for paint or stain. That's handy too, since it would take a while to sand 32 square feet of wood.

If your furniture is made out of or contains plywood, don't hate it. It's okay. Leave it alone.

Conclusion

If you don't like engineered lumber then here's your alternative, you fucking vultures:



You get a loaf of wood that's roughly log shaped. Wonderful for you to have the time to get out your planes and jointers and build a solid oak conference table for $7,000. Also: Balls to IKEA for making me think at one point that it was well designed, well-made furniture sold cheaply. It's just well-designed furniture made and sold cheaply.

Remember - that crazy looking wood-sheet stuff you see at construction sites is OSB. The guts of your IKEA bookshelf when the screw tears out and you get little bits of wooden confetti everywhere; that's particle board and it sucks.

Plywood is good.

07 August 2012

Dude, You Gotta Drink

If I went to college (I did) I would have been the guy in the teen comedy who is a nerd and wears glasses. And that nerd never got to play Beer Pong.

Do teen comedies take place in college? That feels inaccurate.

Let's just say in college, I wore glasses.

That means that in addition to the star quarterback dumping my lunch tray on my head and getting stuffed into lockers, I also had run-ins with the cool stoners who just didn't give a fuck but all the girls loved them anyway. And then when I got together with my friends (the fat one, the skinny one, and the one who hangs out with us for no discernible reason) we played video games and talked about Dungeons and Dragons and never got to play Flip Cup.

I'm getting side-tracked, that's still high school movies.

The glasses: real. Also though I never really had occasion to play drinking games. I mean, none of the standards. I played like "Make a giant gin and tonic and drink it" or "split a quarter of a fifth (1/20 of a gallon for those keeping track at home) of Jack with a friend for $10" or later, "drink a bottle of Thunderbird".

All of those games lack the strong social aspect (peer pressure) that a good drinking games possesses. Drinking games - good ones - have rules. They're complicated enough to require "learning" but not so complicated that you can't remember them if you're drunk.

Drinking games also have consequences. Drinking is both the reward and the punishment, which is some kind of alco-sado-masochistic trip that I don't feel like digging any deeper into. Other than the obvious thing is that people just want to drink, whether they follow the rules (are good) or break the rules (are bad).

And it works!

A good drinking game will end up with everyone drunk whether they've flipped the thing into the party cup or balanced the thing on their nose for a full thirty seconds or whether all three throwing hatchets found their target.

Drinking to get plastered (alone) can be kind of boring so it helps to feel like you have a purpose and there's a framework in place to get you to you goal. Your goal is "too fuckin' drunk" and the framework is "do something with this red party cup" and the purpose is "don't be such a pussy, dude!"

That's the one though. It's the purpose that gets people into trouble. Drinking games must have a social component. If no one else is around then you're not taking a shot every time Marv gets technically killed in Home Alone. You're just getting drunk by yourself and thinking about how much Goddamn Christmas is on TV.

When there are people around, there are "rules". And to play the game and have the fun and get the drunk you have to adhere to the rules, otherwise you lose the game! And everyone will remember the one Friday (Tuesday) where you were totally supposed to take a shot because Harry had a toolbox fall on his balls and you totally didn't take a shot. And that's when you kind of cross a threshold.

You realize you're drinking far too much to really appreciate the labyrinthine twists and turns of Kevin's deadly machinations. Micro Machines on the floor! He'll be crippled from the waist down! You close your eyes and the room is spinning - but the situation dictates that you continue to follow the rules because otherwise, like, party foul.

Then, darkness.

It's a system, man. It all exists to get two or more people really fucking drunk. Drunk enough to do something and not even worry about it until oh my God what did I do last night and I think I pissed in the trash can and where are my pants? Better still, a lot of games have a smart-munition component, wherein someone [the girl] can be prejudicially targeted to drink so they'll [she'll] be more pliable. So in addition to the literal darkness you may experience as consciousness slips away there may be a deeper, figurative darkness lurking in your boning-decision making center that's waiting to make some terrible choices for you. Depressing!

The entire fabric of the drinking game tapestry is held together by the complex weft and warp of peer pressure. And I'm like some kind of word poet with metaphors.

All it takes is someone to say "I'm drunk enough I think - I acknowledge that Marv and Harry just drank a fatal amount of shellac (and I should technically drink twice because it's two kills) but I'm not drinking any more fucking Keystone because if I do it's all coming back up."

But then what happens? Everyone else is also too drunk and will not remember you not drinking and you can save all of your regrets for the results pages of your increasingly abstract conceptual porn searches.

But also if you're just lining up drinking games to score with the honeys (asleep, high five!) your soul may have actually died at some point and you might want to get an MRI or PET scan or whatever they use to check for the presence of humanity. Also you might be a date rapist.

06 August 2012

The Majesty of Space

So I looked up this morning at the moon and I thought, "Wow. There's dudes walking around up there right now."

And then I realized that I was confusing the moon with Mars, and astronauts with a robot.

It was very early in the morning.

03 August 2012

Bane's Workout Guide

I think any high-calorie, low-rep lifting plan would give you the "World's Strongest Man" look that Christopher Nolan's Bane has achieved.

Almost certainly no shrugs. Just squats and deadlifts.

And if you restrict your calories too much you'll end up looking really cut like Tom Hardy in The Warrior instead of looking like an all-around asskicker like Tom Hardy in The Dark Knight Rises.

Full disclosure: Even thought I know this I still spent the three days after seeing TDKR looking desperately for the magic thing Tom Hardy did to put on 30 pounds.

Then my senses got the better of me and I remembered it was probably a secret combination of diet and exercise. Kind of like when any actor puts on muscle for any role ever.

Or when anyone gets in shape over a period of time anywhere. Diet and exercise.

I'm not really sure what I was expecting to find.

The End of the Internet

I haven't updated in... a while.

I think it's because I've already made all of the humorous observations that exist to be made.

If something funny happens, look for it here first - as this will always be the fertile crescent of funny things that happen.