CPUnk I write right. Right? Aye.

Long blog entry and a fire drill

So — this is not a long blog entry. I’m work­ing on an inter­est­ing arti­cle relat­ing to the Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show, and its reflec­tion on sex­ual deviance in soci­ety and how soci­ety inter­acts with any sta­tis­ti­cal deviance. Since it’s a long arti­cle — I’m tak­ing a while to write it — but since I com­mit­ted to writ­ing reg­u­larly — I’m just blog­ging to say “watch this space.”

The ele­ments of the arti­cle are kind of inter­est­ing — it’s not “yet another dia­tribe” about a par­tic­u­lar point of view — in fact, I think, if I do say so myself, that I deftly jump from view­point to view­point with the skill and artistry of a Russ­ian acro­bat in Cirque du Soleil.

Mean­while — a brief note that we had a small car­bon monix­ide adven­ture last night — the detec­tor went off, and Kathy Nate and I were in the house. It was excit­ing, but more so because we had a fire drill pro­grammed into our fam­ily — so we knew what to do. We all just evac­u­ated the house, called 911, the fire­fight­ers came, and Nate got his pic­ture taken with them after they con­firmed the house was ok.

It unded up that a deflec­tor plate over one of the burn­ers in the house was tilted, and too much popane was get­ting out and burn­ing inef­fi­ciently — so we had CO.

Well, here’s to good train­ing, here’s to an excit­ing day — and here’s to not hav­ing to do THAT again!

Rocky Horror and the Cultural Wars

So, this may not please every­body who reads it — how sad is it that in a time of sup­posed dis­course and open com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the enjoin­der that not every­one will like this state­ment will actu­ally turn off cer­tain minds — drive them to stop read­ing and/or ignore the opin­ions and out­look from another point of view? Well, that’s The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show first entered the scene; as a sec­ondary point of view, out­ra­geous in its con­tent and camp, gen­er­at­ing an imme­di­ate shut­down of lis­ten­ing on the part of an entire seg­ment of soci­ety, the Reli­gious Right and con­ser­v­a­tive America.

Well, as with all things human, what goes around comes around. Now, the point of view I’m pre­sent­ing will seem to be com­ing from the “right”, and will surely shut down many peo­ple who oth­er­wise would con­sider them­selves open-minded. That, iron­i­cally, seems to be my lot in life as a social out­lier — I tend to say things that peo­ple don’t want to hear, and then watch as they shut down in order to pro­tect their own sense of open-mindedness. When I say that I’m a social out­lier, I’m a socially open-minded Con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian who pur­sues an aggres­sively Ortho­dox posi­tion on God and Christ — so that’s a bit unique (though less so every day, as proven by churches like Mars Hill, for example).

So what point of view will I stand upon that will shut down the silent dia­log between me and you, dear reader? It is this: soci­ety has a need to gen­er­ate a socially accept­able place for out­lier per­son­al­i­ties rather than shun them … BUT in so doing, that place should not be pre­sented as an attempt to allow those sta­tis­ti­cal deviants to become mem­bers of “the sta­tis­ti­cal norm”, and thereby mod­ify the norm from what it cur­rently is. I say this because the resul­tant math­e­mat­i­cal skew will change the norm, and as such, change the entire body of human­ity. There, I think I’ve suc­cess­fully excluded everyone.

So what do I mean? Let’s take a look at Dr. Franken­furter from Rocky Hor­ror. Here is a crea­ture who is will­ing, and desirous, to par­take in any form of sex­ual deviancy at all — to inter­act phys­i­cally with man, woman, child, ani­mal or alien — solely for the pur­poses of self-gratification and expres­sion … a search that leaves ruin in its wake in the lives of those around him, like Colum­bia, Eddie, and in many ways (though argu­ments surely would ensue) Brad and Janet.

But the point is not that such a car­toon­ishly deviant, puerile per­son­al­ity should not exist in soci­ety — they do already — but rather whether or not such a char­ac­ter should be given the rights, priv­i­leges and unlim­ited accep­tance that is bestowed upon those mem­bers of soci­ety who make up the cen­ter of the bell-curve — or “the norm.”

Rights are, by def­i­n­i­tion, inalien­able and a given — they are not bestowed by any mor­tal force, nor are they pre­sented or rec­og­nized by oth­ers — I have the right to live … and if some­one seeks to chal­lenge that right, I have the right to defend my right to live with deadly force. Nobody, no mat­ter how self-deluded can state that they have the power to remove that right — they may have the power to dis­re­gard that right, but even in dis­re­gard­ing it and vio­lat­ing it — the right remains intact as some­thing that is part of who I am as a human being. The pur­pose of the Civil Rights move­ment was not so much to “bestow” rights upon an under­rep­re­sented minor­ity, for exam­ple, but rather to rec­og­nize rights that were already present. Such is the nature of rights — they exist apart from the fiat of any human endeavor.

As a result — all of these “deviant” groups, already have the rights that the “norm” has — but likely feel that those rights aren’t rec­og­nized by the norm satisfactorily.

But what of priv­i­leges? Well, priv­i­leges are con­trary to the idea of rights. Priv­i­leges are bestowed by human beings upon each other for the sole pur­pose of enabling greater impact in the world, or by ref­er­ence, lim­it­ing it. For exam­ple, the license to drive is a priv­i­lege, not a right. The state bestows that priv­i­lege, and if a per­son fails to com­ply with the require­ments that the state presents, that priv­i­lege can be revoked.

Of course, there is an entire dia­log and philo­soph­i­cal con­ti­nent of ideas around the jux­ta­po­si­tion of rights and priv­i­leges — but that’s not for this arti­cle. What is impor­tant to note here is sim­ply that we each have rights that can not be with­drawn right­eously, and priv­i­leges that are bestowed and with­drawn accord­ing to the empow­er­ment of soci­ety and the indi­vid­u­als or groups that have greater power over us. In fact, power, in its own sense, is defined by the abil­ity to bestow or remove priv­i­leges – at it’s core.

Then finally, the third thing I’m regard­ing in terms of sta­tis­ti­cal deviants is unlim­ited accep­tance. Herein lies the rub — the goal is to cre­ate a method­ol­ogy by which sta­tis­ti­cal deviance can exist and con­tinue to be accepted by soci­ety — but allow­ing the norm to remain intact; that’s my chal­lenge to everyone.

Well — look­ing at this math­e­mat­i­cally — we can see that out­liers belong on the edges of the curve — that’s their proper place on the curve. How­ever, as any mem­ber of the out­lier com­mu­ni­ties can tell you — it does not feel as if we exist on the sta­tis­ti­cal tail — we con­sider our­selves to be pretty close to “nor­mal” and can prove it by the com­pany we keep. We rec­og­nize in our hearts that “most peo­ple” have at least a ten­dency towards what we hold dear — and in fact, all of our friends are at the very least accept­ing of our point of view, and at the most, mem­bers of that same out­look. So, in our lives at the edge of the curve, we actu­ally exist in a smaller curve, of which, we are the norm.

Thus begins the con­cept of cul­ture war. As the Dr. Franken­furters of the world seek to receive the priv­i­leges of soci­ety that they feel are their rights, they present it as a mea­sure of accep­tance. On the other side of the equa­tion, the “nor­mal” com­mu­nity (the Brads and Janets) seek to be accept­ing, and work to rec­og­nize and assim­i­late the Rocky Hor­ror mind­set … in order to rec­og­nize the rights of the Franken­furter crowd. What results, how­ever, is not an assim­i­lated Franken­furter — but rather, a mod­i­fied Brad and Janet — in essence, a destruc­tion of the norm. But the point of the rest of this arti­cle is that it is not Franken­furter that drove the destruc­tion of the norm — but rather, the desires of Brad and Janet. Franken­furter wanted accep­tance — a noble pur­suit, Brad and Janet are the most deviant destroy­ers of all — it is the norm itself that is moti­vated most darkly — and I would posit that the cur­rent cul­ture wars are not a threat because of the needs of the deviant com­mu­ni­ties — but because of the self­ish desires of the nor­ma­tive pop­u­la­tion, self­ish desires that are given license by the deviant groups.

Gen­er­ally speak­ing, the “norms” of soci­ety reflect the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the largest rep­re­sen­ta­tive group; for exam­ple, I believe, to date, there are more Chi­nese peo­ple than any other single-raced peo­ple group now — so the “norm” for world soci­ety is intrin­si­cally Chi­nese in eth­nic­ity. This is not nec­es­sar­ily man­dat­ing Chi­nese cul­ture is the norm, or that Chi­nese Com­mu­nism is the norm — but rather sim­ply that the genetic lay­out of human­ity trends towards Chi­nese at the cen­ter of the curve.

So, what of sex­u­al­ity? What is the norm there? Well, the norm tends to be man with woman, though that may annoy peo­ple to read — it’s the fact that most rela­tion­ships sta­tis­ti­cally are het­ero­sex­ual — so sta­tis­ti­cally, that’s the norm. But the norm is just a mea­sure of vol­umes, not a moral assess­ment — so read on.

Here’s the issue — what hap­pens to the sta­tis­ti­cal dataset when you seek to move an out­lier to the posi­tion of norm? What hap­pens when you try to “assim­i­late other lifestyles” into every day life? Well, there are only two ways to do that — you either decrease the data set so that the deviant groups are more promi­nent (and get your smaller bell curve as described above that exists on the tail) — or you mod­ify the norm.

So, let’s look at sex­ual sta­tis­ti­cal deviance in a gen­eral sense in rela­tion to this. Deviance, in this sense is any activ­ity that is per­formed by a seg­ment of the total group that is one or more stan­dard devi­a­tions from the norm. That’s “deviant behavior.”

Sta­tis­ti­cally — as sad as this is going to be to say out loud — same sex rela­tion­ships remain sta­tis­ti­cally deviant. Not nec­es­sar­ily morally so (insert entire side­bar about reli­gious ortho­doxy here, of course), but sta­tis­ti­cally off the world­wide norm (side­bar num­ber two — just because it hap­pens a cer­tain way in the US doesn’t actu­ally mean “every­body.” Mar­riage turn­ing into divorce 50% of the time is a US phe­nom­e­non, e.g.).

So, should those rela­tion­ships that are “deviant” be ostra­cized? Likely not — though again, the reli­gious estab­lish­ment would argue against it in terms of actual phys­i­cal behav­ior — but that’s out­side the scope of this article.

But, if we seek to “nor­mal­ize” deviant rela­tion­ships — we either cre­ate an arti­fi­cial sit­u­a­tion that is sta­tis­ti­cally inac­cu­rate (by giv­ing homo­sex­ual head­count a greater weight, for exam­ple, so that it trends towards the cen­ter of the bell curve) — or we mod­ify the norm. Mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the norm results in a broader accep­tance of deviant behav­ior, deviant lifestyles, etc. Basi­cally, we would need to pur­sue a def­i­n­i­tion of “every­body do it.”

Now — here’s the rub. Put down your torch and pitch­fork for a sec­ond (that means you peo­ple on the other side, too) — the point is that if you seek to mod­ify the norm in order to “nor­mal­ize the deviant”; and we see that in order to do that, the norm must be changed … when we get to human behav­ior, we need to begin to inves­ti­gate the moti­va­tions that would bring that change about.

The moti­va­tions for the deviant pop­u­la­tion to want to change are straight­for­ward — things like peace­ful coex­is­tence, more finan­cial ful­fill­ment and self-empowerment. But what are the moti­va­tions for the “empow­ered norm?” Their moti­va­tions likely aren’t to become more like the dis­em­pow­ered com­mu­ni­ties directly — but rather to pur­sue sec­ondary causes like a sense of pos­i­tive self-righteousness (“I’m a fair per­son, I treat every­one equally”), or to pur­sue a higher ideal of self­less equa­nim­ity in pur­suit of a greater over­all population.

So, back to Rocky Hor­ror, homo­sex­u­al­ity, and gen­eral sex­ual “devi­a­tions” from the norm. The call to arms in the “lib­eral” point of view is to “nor­mal­ize” the homo­sex­ual lifestyle, to allow that this out­lier is actu­ally just a part of the norm. The real­ity, sta­tis­ti­cally, is that this group — how­ever good or bad — is not a sub­sec­tion of the norm, but an out­lier. In order to be incor­po­rated into the norm, the norm must change — for the norm to change, it must be moti­vated to change.

In this con­text, the dan­ger that the Christian/Conservative/Orthodox right fears is pri­mar­ily the effect this nor­mal­iza­tion would have on the exist­ing mem­bers of the nor­ma­tive pop­u­la­tion. Because one of the sec­ondary moti­va­tions that the norm expe­ri­ences and pur­sues, as evi­denced in the loos­en­ing of the moral fab­ric towards sex­ual inter­ac­tion over the last 40 years, is one of licen­tious­ness. The norm wants to play, the deviants want to belong. Well — if we let you belong, we get to exist in a deviant state our­selves. But we exist in that deviant state for self­ish desires, not because of pre-existing con­di­tions (genet­ics, early child­hood, etc.) like “true” mem­bers of the deviant com­mu­nity. Brad and Janet don’t actu­ally want to help Franken­furter “get nor­mal” — they want to USE Franken­furter to give them­selves the room to get wild.

You see — gay peo­ple, trans­gen­der peo­ple, polyg­a­mists, celi­bates, fur­ries — any group that is not a part of the norm — have a gen­eral moti­va­tion (loosely speak­ing) of pur­suit of accep­tance. All peo­ple wish to be free of being ostra­cized, being pushed out, being per­se­cuted. The moti­va­tions of these groups are all valid and rea­son­able — there is not rea­son any­body should be asked to accept his or her own exclu­sion from the sta­tus quo, it’s unfair — no mat­ter the sit­u­a­tion (espe­cially when such exclu­sion involves priv­i­leges like spousal rights, etc.).

What’s the threat though is not that such peo­ple, who are not “deviant by choice”, are seek­ing inclu­sion — but what moti­va­tions the “nor­ma­tive” pop­u­la­tion would poten­tially have for seek­ing to devi­ate from the norm in order to assim­i­late these groups more read­ily, and thus rede­fine the norm. The dan­ger is that the pri­mary moti­va­tion is for a more per­son­ally self-indulgent pur­suit of sex­ual deviance by exist­ing mem­bers of the norm — a self-indulgent pur­suit that is not moti­vated by genet­ics, or pre­dis­po­si­tions, or even nur­ture — but by self-desire … by a desire to pur­sue more alter­na­tives by oth­er­wise “nor­ma­tive” persons.

Well — if that is the case — so what?

Y’see, if that is the case, then as the major­ity of the pop­u­la­tion pur­sues change based on self-indulgent desires masked as accep­tance — then gen­eral sex­ual expres­sion becomes one of self-indulgence rather than one of lov­ing com­mit­ment. In this nation, soci­etal inti­macy is becom­ing more and more about “hook­ing up”, and much less about falling in love WITHOUT SEX in order to pur­sue deeper, bind­ing com­mit­ments first in the form of marriage.

No, I’m not imply­ing that sex­u­ally dif­fer­ent peo­ple aren’t com­mit­ted — I’m indi­cat­ing that those who move from the norm inten­tion­ally, based upon a desire for more sex­ual free­dom, tend to do so for self­ish rea­sons — and those self­ish rea­sons tend to degrade the fab­ric of sex­ual inter­ac­tion between peo­ple uni­ver­sally — since a pop­u­la­tion that is made up of self-indulgent peo­ple tends to breed self-indulgent behavior.

So, what’s the point? The point is — per­haps instead of seek­ing to “become one” with the devi­a­tions in behav­ior in order to show an open-mindedness — we need to rec­og­nize these extended pop­u­la­tions for who they are, give them room to live their lives — ask them to rec­og­nize the pro­tec­tions we place on our­selves in order to keep our­selves in check — and co-exist.

Rocky Hor­ror is about tak­ing “nor­mals” and turn­ing them into “deviants” — and cel­e­brat­ing the expe­ri­ence. Why did they change? Not because, like Franken­furter, they found them­selves trapped on an alien world that didn’t under­stand them — but because they chose to “swim the warm waters of sins of the flesh.”

Instead of destroy­ing Fanken­furter or leav­ing him trapped in the Franken­stein place for his life­time — per­haps we can allow him to exist as he is — as a dif­fer­ent mem­ber of soci­ety. But he must also respect what we are — which is not always the case with deviants. Either from pain, or gen­eral frus­tra­tion, many deviants stride upon a point of view that the nor­mal out­look is some­how dam­aged. The use of lan­guage to describe the most “nor­mal” point of view tends to lean towards neg­a­tives (patri­ar­chal, lin­ear, stag­nant, cramped, lim­ited). The deviants need to be will­ing to be deviant — not seek to change the norm.

Yes, of course, this applies to mar­riage in my opin­ion. There is not rea­son that a sep­a­rate bond should be made avail­able for those of the same sex who seek to com­mit and receive priv­i­leges equiv­a­lent to those of het­ero­sex­ual spouses. But to mod­ify “mar­riage” is to change the norm, and thus under­mine the sta­bil­ity of the norm as a whole.

While fail­ing to rec­og­nize rights is a flaw — destruc­tion of the exist­ing tra­di­tions for the sake of assim­i­la­tion will not suc­ceed — and over time the fail­ings of the com­mu­nity to assim­i­late will con­tinue to pre­vail and a back­lash will ensue — one that might man­i­fest in greater polar­iza­tion between the com­mu­ni­ties — once the nor­mal pop­u­la­tion real­izes that it is los­ing its own identity.

We already see this man­i­fest­ing in a world view as most nations look at the US and other indus­tri­al­ized nations as deca­dent, self-indulgent and ready for collapse.

It would be sad to find that in the hopes of become one great melt­ing pot of sex­ual expres­sion, we find our­selves destroy­ing the very thing that made that melt­ing pot pos­si­ble. An unchang­ing nor­ma­tive center.

Herein lies the threat — but who can do any­thing about it? Are we to await the arrival of Riffraff and his sis­ter before we real­ize that sex­ual deviance must have its lim­its? Are we to throw away the orig­i­nal Brad and Janet in exchange for the more self­ish (and less inter­est­ing) final ver­sions? Sure hope not.

Workout Music

I’ve dis­cov­ered some­thing in my trav­els as an ath­letic per­son. Peo­ple in gyms like bad music. I find, for some instane rea­son, I do too. I haven’t fig­ured it out yet, but I find that not only am I ok with the fact that the Ban­gles, Prince, Michael Jack­son and even Madonna sim­ply rule the sound sys­tem at the gym reg­u­larly — they’re also creep­ing into my own iPod repertoire.

Is it bad that I’m actu­ally pay­ing for down­loads of Earth, Wind, & Fire? Should I be con­cerned that 1999 by Prince actu­ally some­how made it into the judge’s cham­ber for review?

I think I noticed that some­thing wasn’t right when a “sug­ges­tion” by the iTunes genie lead me to some­thing like “Work­out Clas­sics 2” — and the first thing I clicked was Foot­loose by Kenny Log­gins; how­ever, as if that alone wasn’t fright­en­ing enough … I clicked the choice before I knew what song it was … I was inter­ested in what Kenny had to offer. Some­thing very wrong is hap­pen­ing some­where in my brain… so I acti­vated my inter­nal review sys­tems and have come to a few con­clu­sions, and one cor­rel­a­tive obser­va­tion as well.

Con­sid­er­ing the fact that my work­outs involve more brain­stem than higher func­tions — the fol­low­ing the­o­ries hold to be true:

1. When you work out, you cease most higher brain functions
2. When you cease all higher brain func­tions, your brain stem also takes over things like taste and selection
3. When your brain stem takes over music selec­tion, it has the taste, breed­ing, and musi­cal ear of a rot­ten turnip in bangles

Now — hav­ing deter­mined that my lower rep­til­ian func­tions like really crappy music — I’ve also come up with one other obser­va­tion — and that is:

• The 1970s and much of the 1980s were pop­u­lated by musi­cians and lis­ten­ers who had their brains scooped out like so much Baskin Rob­bins ice-cream, most likely as a result of the group brain-damage caused by disco; they were left walk­ing around like big insects with only sim­ple neural path­ways to dis­cern good from bad, right from wrong, and the Bee Gees from Sinatra

I promise you, these obser­va­tions, and their sub­se­quent rev­e­la­tions have only come hours after leav­ing the gym — and only by the strange coin­ci­dence that my com­puter thinks I’ve lost all san­ity when it comes to music — an unex­pected byprod­uct of pri­or­i­tiz­ing my mus­cu­lar development.

Stoned out of my mind (at the gym)

Ok — so it all started when I decided (unin­ten­tion­ally) not to eat all the calo­ries I should yes­ter­day. I ended up about 1000 calo­ries short, and went to bed — so what, right?

Well, I woke up this morn­ing, a lit­tle tired — but oth­er­wise feel­ing fine. I headed to the ferry — all was well. Then I walked from the ferry to the office, like I always do (about a mile) and hit the wall — hard. I just stopped hav­ing energy — at all. I was a bas­ket case.

Hillary (woot) was con­cerned and wanted me to eat some­thing nutri­tious like a Snicker’s fake-o power­bar … I wasn’t inclined to do that — and kept feel­ing a lit­tle weak. Jeff (woot) offered up the con­cept of a Clif bar — I read the ingre­di­ents in that — real­ized it was just about as bad as a Snicker’s bar — and waved off there too. Slowly, I went into a tailspin.

Hillary and I walked to the mall to get a salad — and it was like car­ry­ing a bag of meat across the uni­verse — I was tired. We got to the mall and all I kept think­ing (even though Hilly offered numer­ous times to go for me) was — why did I travel all this way, just to have to travel back before I eat?

We even­tu­ally got back to the office — a jour­ney of a thou­sand foot­steps — and I started eat­ing my salad — but I only ate half, because it seemed pretty big and sloppy. That helped some — but I was still pretty hurting.

I decided I wanted to go home — maybe even con­sider work­ing out — yes — that’s insane … but well … I’d lost my mind already — so I was con­sid­er­ing it.

Mean­while, ear­lier this morn­ing, I’d real­ized that on my reg­u­lar sched­ule of work­outs — I had to work­out today or end up throw­ing my entire sched­ule off in that way that hap­pens when you miss a crit­i­cal day — the week gets off-schedule — then the next week– and so on .. and every­thing sucks. I was wor­ried about all of it because tomor­row is my first sched­uled train­ing ses­sion with Jose Lugo, my trainer. In the AM I called him and asked if I should skip today (hope hope) and then do the work­out with him tomor­row — but he didn’t call back.

Ok, fast for­ward, we’re back in the office — I’m all dopey and weak — and I’m headed to the ferry early (on foot, a mile) because I want to head home — and con­sider work­ing out — but prob­a­bly just get home and col­lapse. Then Jose calls. He says that I should work­out fine today — no prob­lem — tomor­row is intended to be an “off” day any­way — more brain than pain … so I can just do my reg­u­lar work­out. This is lit­er­ally 5 min­utes before I’m about to leave. Woot?

So — I walk to the ferry — chat­ting up a storm with my bro­ker about other things — and real­ize that (yay?) I can do my work­out. But in the process of chat­ting with the bro­ker, I almost miss the ferry — so I have to run to catch it at the last minute (minor car­dio, I guess — light-headed vec­tor increases).

I had intended to get a Sub­way sand­wich, but had no time — so I floated onto the ferry and col­lapsed in a chair… com­mit­ted to ride this puppy to the bit­ter end and actu­ally go to the gym.

For those who do not do such crazy things — what remains of this blog is a play-by-play on what it’s like to walk into a gym com­pletely exhausted and then do a full workout.

Kathy picked me up at the ferry — had a gym bag with clothes — and drove me to the gym (I didn’t have the energy to ride the bike she’d brought — so I gave in a lit­tle and cut that from the reg­i­men). She also had a pro­tein shake and my cre­a­tine shake ready for me, which I downed with vigor, hop­ing it would boost me up (it didn’t).

I arrived and looked at gym desk dude cross-eyed and explained that I don’t have my check in card — he checks me in man­u­ally — I get a towel, head to lock­ers. Stare at all the lock­ers, remem­ber that num­bers go up — find my num­ber — open locker — fig­ure out how to stuff twice as much stuff into the locker, change clothes, stand there in dis­be­lief (brief jok­ing chat with the guy next to me about arriv­ing exhausted — because I’m so cool — inside, I’ve got that feel­ing you get right before get­ting on a roller­coaster in a rural car­ni­val — the thought is “is this going to kill me acci­den­tally?”). Ok — I’m ready to go.

Head­phones in — hey — what’s that? Oh, hello split­ting headache, so nice of you to join us. What’s that? You want to be a part of this entire expe­ri­ence? That’s just great — here, why don’t you make your­self com­fort­able over my left eye — that’s nice — yeah, stretch your legs — try to reach the entire way back to the base of my ear and skull — sure … you’re wel­come — no prob­lem. Let’s go lift weights.

As I enter the room (waved at “bully twin” who smiled in a friendly way and said “back for more?” — to which I responded some­thing like “hell yeah” — luck­ily he was leav­ing), I check the iPhone exer­cise app … I believe it’s called iHateYou.app … and it tells me that we’re gonna start with a leg exer­cise but don’t worry, it’s got some back in it too. Joy. The two places I sting the most are legs and back. Yes — I’ve lost my mind at this point… I could wave off — but then I’d just be a quit­ter — and some sick twist in my head knows that this is going to be a jour­ney of a thou­sand cuts — so let’s party.

Look­ing around, I real­ize I’m alone in the room with bully 2.0. This guy is everybody’s bully — he’s shaved his head, so his curved dome can match his shoul­ders and arms (which have the same cir­cum­fer­ence as his shiny head), and he’s just grab­bing fist­fuls of enriched star mate­r­ial and lift­ing them over his head for sport. Mean­while, my work­out is basi­cally a girly lunge hold­ing a dumb­bell and twist­ing — and since I’m using ALL my pain mus­cles at once — I’m mak­ing cool sounds while I gri­mace hys­ter­i­cally, pri­mar­ily because our good friend headache has decided to really set­tle in. So — that’s the pic­ture: bully sling­ing plan­ets — Mal­colm cring­ing in pain doing the Macarena hold­ing a paperweight.

I started out light — easy weight — and then increased — partly for psy­chol­ogy — partly because the exer­cise was too easy — and well … my legs stopped hurt­ing so much — so there’s that. Les­son num­ber one — if you’re sore and work through it, you end up with less pain for a while … good to know. Unfor­tu­nately, there’s just no way to really strut around and say to your­self “good Macarena, man — way to lunge dude” — so I remain silent in my headachy pain.

So, I fin­ish that swirly lit­tle move, can’t even begin to pre­tend I feel buff — when bully 2.0 Jr. comes in and starts work­ing out in the back — mind you, these are all nice peo­ple — but my brain­stem cat­e­go­rizes them ALL as bul­lies… the big­ger the mus­cles — the meaner the bully… even if they’re nice peo­ple in real life (mind you, I’m build­ing up mus­cle myself, so there’s some sort of denoue­ment com­ing in the future where I come to grips with the “bully within” — but that’s for another blog entry).

So, I kid you not — I’m there doing some other work­out, can’t remem­ber which — using a weight that’s rel­a­tively cool … and these two (bully 2.0 and bully 2.0 Jr.) start work­ing out TOGETHER. They’re both doing con­cen­trated french curls for their biceps using a weight that I believe I might even be able to han­dle on a good day (for a few reps) … but then they’re pass­ing the bar back and forth to each other like it’s a bong or some­thing. I’m just dumb­founded … it’s like “pump pump pump — here you go, dude — you take a hit … cool, pump pump pump — back to you, dude” … they were smil­ing like it was a lit­tle silly (I think it was just that they were both using the same bar, at the same weight so why not?) … it was out of hand … and I’m there with what­ever weight, pranc­ing around with a split­ting headache feel­ing like a freak… life has become sur­real… but wait, there’s more!

THEN — a good friend of mine from church appears out of nowhere — never seen him at the gym before — he comes up and says hello .. older guy named Tom — nice guy. We chat for a sec­ond — he makes a point of remind­ing me that even though I’m doing this for me — I’m ONLY doing it for Kathy if any­body else — thanks, dude — yeah, so I have a headache, I’m sur­rounded by bul­lies — and now I’m a moral fail­ure too?

Onward … push through it all … have you noticed how these things are really much more about psy­chol­ogy than any­thing else? I think that’s a big part of it — your body gen­er­ally doesn’t care as long as you don’t REALLY hurt your­self (which you learn to avoid after about a week, or maybe two) — and then the rest is all this noise that hap­pens in your brain while you work out — and I believe it’s really all about over­com­ing your monsters.

So now, in my work­out it’s some­thing like this:

pump — sear­ing headache, pump — sear­ing headache, pump sear­ing headache … repeat. The pain was vir­tu­ally unbear­able… but frankly, I’m into self-discipline — so I just keep motor­ing through … because I’m dig­ging being tough, even though I look like a nancy-boy while I’m suf­fer­ing all this.

In the psy­chol­ogy depart­ment, my brain starts sug­gest­ing that maybe it’s not a good idea to work­out with a headache, and didn’t I once hear some peo­ple talk­ing about that and how it rep­re­sents a stroke or some­thing? (no, not really) I tell my brain to shut up and allow myself to hold my head in the pierc­ing agony between reps.

I go to drink some water — feel whooped and weak — but keep push­ing through. I get to the preacher’s curls (a work­out I like) and Tom comes over to give me a back­rub — which was nice — I did pretty heavy weights on the preacher’s curl (ironic?) … felt the pain — and kept going … now my body is catch­ing up to my pain — and maybe in between I’m feel­ing bet­ter. The headache only fires when I lift — so when I stop — no pain … just … a lit­tle buzz?

I put my head between my legs and there’s a lit­tle blood flow to my brain, which sort of helps. Keep going.

Finally — I’m almost to the end of my work­out — Tom has gone home — the bul­lies are all drifted away, and my head only hits me at a four out of ten at this point. So I get down to busi­ness on a bal­ance exer­cise, on my lower back — the king of all pain centers.

Well — I’ve come this far — so I motor through — and then I start feel­ing my BODY go endor­phin CRAZY, feel­ing my headache just give up .. and almost feel­ing a pass­able ver­sion of decent — but still whooped, dizzy, and a lit­tle whacked generally.

Then I hit my last rep of my last exer­cise, hit it strong — and my body kind of took the cue and just flooded me with endor­phins… I mean flooded. I stood up and my legs were all “sailor drunk”, my head was all calm, and I must have had this goofy smile on my face … because it was a big wave.

I headed to the steam room, almost passed out in there — and just let it all wash over me — it was bliss, absolutely bliss.

By the time I’m in the shower, rins­ing off — I kid you not — I was just gone … I’ve had “runner’s high” before — the kind where you’re feel­ing a lit­tle giddy … but this was insane … it was like there was noth­ing left but me, the cen­ter of my skull, and joy. It was like main­lin­ing some sort of hor­mone that was just never gonna stop … and I had all the time in the world to enjoy it … no issues, no prob­lems — and the end of the day before me. I felt (and still do) like a hero or some­thing … I’d crushed through ALL the pain .. and my body was just giv­ing me all the love it could … and I’m happy for it.

I was still pretty stoned by the time I got to the desk to check out.

That’s when I noticed that they sell Clif bars behind the desk (shout-out to Jeff) … but these are the “Builder” ver­sion — which are high pro­tein, lower carb — and the right blend of mate­ri­als to give you that low glycemic jolt … with­out know­ing what was hap­pen­ing, my brain­stem had a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion with my hands and mouth, and bought one for me and shoved it into my face while some mas­sage chick behind the desk tried to con­vince me to buy a pack­age of mas­sages at a dis­count (I didn’t).

The Clif bar was like a lit­tle army of anti-headache marines — they raced in, kick­ing in doors, and cap­tured that bas­tard in about 5 min­utes, and took him away in shack­les — the headache was mainly gone because of the high, but it was really only masked. Sadly, the byprod­uct of the Clif bar was also that they high decreased some­what — so every lin­ing has a sil­ver cloud I guess.

I’d called Kathy to come and get me (no bicy­cle for me, Jack) — and some­where in my head, my sys­tem was inform­ing me, in very clear lan­guage, that I should have pasta. Before I could tell her, she’d made pasta (because she’s awe­some) and it was wait­ing for me when I got home. I checked my calo­rie counter and I was 2500 calo­ries short for the day (because of the work­out — not because I’m crazy) … so I got to eat two bowls of pasta — and mmmm.… it was much goodness.

So here I am — on sched­ule with my work­outs, on the far side of the pain, feel­ing the win, lov­ing the high (still a lit­tle buzzed, frankly) feel­ing no pain, with about 1700 calo­ries to play with … that’s a good, good thing.

So the moral, for all of us nor­mal civil­ians is — yes, go to the gym when you’re beat … you’ll suf­fer … you may even get nasty bits like headaches — but at the end of it — you’ll real­ize why your body does this — and you’ll love life. I, for one am going to sleep very well … and am look­ing for­ward to my train­ing tomor­row with Jose. Kathy’s get­ting me another bowl of pasta — life is gooood.