Busy Old Bugger

Google Fit tells me I burned 2198 calories today, ~500 of them walking 6.54 miles in 17,547 steps, not counting the steps I took not carrying the cell phone around, such as ~240 calories pedaling determinedly to nowhere and whatever calories "strength training" burns. I don't think today's caloric intake will exceed 2500 calories, so going by the numbers I might have lost a few grams. Indeed the scale in the men's locker room says my weight's decreased two pounds in the past couple weeks, surely largely because of the dogs' increased need to march me around (Nina in particular seems to have goal of 1.5 miles a day); I'm trying to eat a little less but in that respect my self-discipline will probably always be remiss. ('I have to walk a lot: you've seen me eat.') I might yet make my goal of getting down to 155# by Xmas. (It's ony 3 more lbs., why not be optimistic?)

As to my other physical goals, it seems I'm doomed by inexorable heredity and by age-diminished androgens to never quite "turning into the Hulk," as my baby sister puts it. For one thing my biceps just don't want to get much bigger: I do get stronger but it doesn't look like it, and it's taken 2 years to go from 40# barbell curls to 60# without much pain. (One reason I don't get BDSM: pain is for people I don't like, which naturally rules out me and anybody I put up with more than strictly necessary for my survival.) And I'm still frustrated that my bust ain't increasing enough, though some progress is visible there; yet posted photographs show my upper back develops okay and my shoulders seem a little broader. I should have started this shit like 40 years earlier. But still, for a guy my age in my neighborhood I'm in half-decent shape, like they haven't told me I'm diabetic yet. I'm considering doing a month or so of more intensive body building before too long if my budget allows for buying creatine -- it's usually more fun to buy better liquor -- and, assuming I keep my visceral fat in check, I plan on wiling away part of the depth of winter working on "details" like my abdomen, calves, and gluteals. (Every middle-aged pervert should have a nice firm booty.) I'd rather increasing senescence not involve excessive debilitation, at least. At least not physically.

As for everything else, what is there to say? I hesitate to publicly post my senile sexual fantasies (though those who are interested know how to reach me), and I doubt anybody will really care that this week's reading concerns how the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 played out. (Till Hitler made his worst miscalculation, if Hitler can ever be said to have calculated anything.) There just ain't much about my life that strikes me as anything anybody should give a damn about. Let's face it, I'm boring. Very few people have it in them to care whether I live or die, let alone what's passing through my damaged little brain at any given time. Those few things that happen during my day that aren't (AFAIK) illegal get posted to Facebook, along with whatever my view of whatever current events have been happening happen to be, and the only people I really fear rejection by are those who keep dogs for me to befriend and exercise with. What more can there be? I've got no money for anybody to scheme over, I can't imagine anybody woud ever want to see my senile self naked let alone take advantage of it, and my mindset is still so far beyond the pale that whether I can be a person like other people will always be an open question. (I think of myself as a freak from outer space, and I'm naturally charitable even to myself.)

As for me in general, well, at least I'm no longer old, ugly, crazy, boring, poor, *and fat*. So bite me.

Keep 'Em Marching

[Click photo for larger version.]

By that more complex graphic I'd say the ideal for a society on the scale of "the West" would be #16, libertarian socialism, after a slow (i.e. not Great Leap, maybe 2 generations) progression through social democracy. In general my idea would be closer to the lower left corner, but I don't see any way for the USA to get there from here without a major worldwide population reduction: if our body politic gets proportionally much smaller and if our society gets any nicer to our "broad masses" than say Israel is to its Jewish citizens we'd risk being conquered by a nastier regime with a bigger military, the way the USSR beat the Nazis.

In fact one of my proposals involves a larger standing army & navy, instead of letting so many un- or under-employed Americans become mentally & physically lazy "couch potatoes" who do little every day but overeat, watch TV and consume intoxicants. For one thing, historically it's been the Army Corps of Engineers that led the way in building the infrastructure we have that now needs repair or replacement, and it would probably take something very much like military discipline to get enough people to actually help do it.

In general don't see any better way then gentle compulsion, i.e. giving poor people a much more secure & purposeful life in uniform than out, to keep our people productively occupied now that we have no need for a large industrial or agricultural base. And part of that would be that to advance in grade you'd have to be physically fit and attend academic courses as well as those training & refresher courses directly related to your MOS. I'd also require some kind of national service after high school, for the same reasons those countries that do that do it.

I credit my brother-in-law for this insight: his & my sister's strategy to keep my youngest niece on track was to see that she was too academically and athletically busy to get into the kind of shit I did as a teenager. I thought it was a bit much then, I am an anti-authoritarian at heart, but I must admit now that the kid's almost 21 that their strategy seems to have worked well enough. So, broadening my perspective, I've become convinced that that kind of "benevolent despotism" is necessary to keep America from eating itself.

If nothing else we've at least got to keep the morons marching. Because, as that niece said when she was 17, "people are too stupid for anarchy." Hell, for the past 8 Presidencies we've been too stupid to manage representative democracy.

(Oh hell. This was not originally intended to be more than a quick paragraph. I sure do go on.)