notesfromendtimes - Tumblr blog

[notesfromendtimes]

He really lives who makes use of himself. Those men, however, who creep into a hole and grow torpid are no better off in their homes than if they were in their tombs. Right there on the marble lintel of the house of such a man you may inscribe his name, for he has died before he is dead.

Seneca, Letter LX. On Harmful Prayers, 4

[notesfromendtimes]

Man laughs and plays and gallops and dances without thinking at all of death. Nonetheless, when it comes to them by surprise, or to their wives, children, or friends, what torment and outcries, what madness and despair! Have you ever seen anyone so changed, confused, and subdued? Therefore, man must prepare in advance for it…Let us disarm death of all novelty and strangeness. Let us converse and be familiar with him, and have nothing so frequent in our thoughts.

Montaigne

[notesfromendtimes]

Ladies and gentlemen! You’ve read about it in the newspapers! Now, shudder as you observe, before your very eyes, that most rare and tragic of nature’s mistakes! I give you…the average man! Physically unremarkable, it has instead a deformed set of values. Notice the hideously bloated sense of humanity’s importance. The club-footed social conscience and the withered optimism. Most repulsive of all, are its frail and useless notions of order and sanity. If too much weight is placed upon them…they snap.

How does it live, I hear you ask? How does this poor, pathetic specimen survive in today’s harsh and irrational world? The sad answer is “not very well”. Faced with the inescapable fact that human existence is mad, random and pointless, one in eight of them crack up and go stark, slavering buggo! 

And who can blame them? In a world as psychotic as this…

[notesfromendtimes]

The heart of another is a dark wood.

Natasha Tretheway

[notesfromendtimes]

The race for the Republican presidential nomination ... is epic, monumental, heinous and disgusting. It's like watching 17 platypuses try to mount the Queen of England.

Matt Taibbi for Rolling Stone

[notesfromendtimes]

Longed for him. Got him. Shit.

Margaret Atwood

[notesfromendtimes]

The sinister, the terrible, never deceive; the state in which they leave us is always one of enlightenment. And only this condition of vicious insight allows us a full grasp of the world.

Thomas Ligotti, The Noctuary

[notesfromendtimes]

You think ‘Okay, I get it, I’m prepared for the worst’, but you hold out that small hope, see, and that’s what fucks you up. That’s what kills you.

Stephen King, “Joyland”  (via frostbiiite)

[notesfromendtimes]

Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.

Lao Tzu (via uberhotbitch)

[notesfromendtimes]

The military press/bench press combo has created a minor symphony of snaps and pops in my right shoulder.   Major suspect, rotator cuff.   Gonna take two weeks off both those lifts in the hopes that my healing factor kicks in.   This gives me plenty of extra time for cardio and back work in preparation for my shirtless Mexico adventures this December.   (Playa Del Carmen, rented beach house, what?)  Chances of squandering this opportunity are currently hovering near 100%.

[notesfromendtimes]

So I honored my ancestors with a workout.   Upper body, cardio.   Did not die.

Started with bench press.   Some reprobate bastard hogged the regular bench, so I resorted to hammer strength.   Pyramid:  270 x 10, 330 x 8, 360 x 8.   Then machine flyes:  150 x 8, 160 x 8. 

Shoulders:   Standing military press.   135 x 10, 155 x 8.   Snappage, retreated to seated machine press:  full stack (270?) x 8.  

Biceps;  Alternating dumbbell curl, 45 x 8, 40 x 10, 35 x 12.

Triceps:  Didn't wanna. 

Back:   Seated machine row, 180 x 8, 190 x 8, 200 x 8, 210 x 6.   Finished with rear delt flyes, 90lbs? x 8.

Then everyone's favorite:  Yogging.   3 miles on treadmill.   Almost reversed time with my epic slowness.   Did not quit, did not cry = success.  

The right shoulder is becoming a problem - mildly sore at all times, especially when I wake up.   Gonna ice it like Jay Z ices his lady and see what happens.  

Still not a fitness model.   Joe Weider lied to me.

[notesfromendtimes]

I like the man who as a citizen feels, when a wrong is done to the community by any one . . . not that he is shocked and horrified and would like to go home; but [wants] to put the wrong-doer down, to make the man who does wrong aware that the decent man is not only his superior in decency, but his superior in strength.

Theodore Roosevelt

[notesfromendtimes]

I am sneaking off from work to jog 2 miles in the middle of the day who am I and when does my parade begin?

[notesfromendtimes]

[notesfromendtimes]

And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely. “Everything must have a purpose?” asked God. “Certainly,” said man. “Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God. And He went away.”

 Kurt Vonnegut

[notesfromendtimes]

He did it so we don't have to.

[notesfromendtimes]

In Praise of Strong Women

I was a soldier once.   Near the end of my enlistment, I was still in good shape - 7 minute miles, billions of push-ups - but not in my prime, you know?  Short timer's syndrome.  Anyway, I was deployed to some training post deep within the Black Forest for two weeks of "expert field medic badge" training - basically camping in the woods for two weeks and bandaging, "resuscitating" mannequins with fake explosions all around.

The last part of the training was a 20-mile forced march.   (It could've been twelve, but I prefer to remember it as 20.  Very hilly).  Loaded rucksack, boots, time limit, yada yada.    'Bout halfway through I was really feeling it - the hills made the course seem like the world's shittiest roller coaster.   Right around then a female lieutenant blows past me, walking faster than I could jog.   I don't know if she started late or wanted to give the mortals a head start or what.   But she was amazing.   I tried to catch her, and would get close only to have her pull away as soon as I stopped running long enough to calm my heart arrhythmias.   Never even saw her face, but I've never forgotten her.  

At the time, my 21 year-old brain thought "how can a woman blow past me like this?  I AM MAN. "  Twenty years later, I know this happens every day in gyms and on tracks and during competitions everywhere.  Because fit women work their asses off.   On average, they're at an immediate disadvantage - 2/3rds the starting upper body strength, 40% less V02 max - but they don't care.   They work and don't make excuses and push past the reflexive prejudices of the Cro-Magnon set and make it happen.  

It's always been like this.   The huge lie that women are frail and soft is an aristocratic fabrication that has never reflected how ordinary women have traditionally lived their lives - women who survived for months or years completely on their own while men fought wars or hunted wabbit or explored profitable parts of the world.   Women are born to be strong.   The ones who have reclaimed that birthright from the distortions of history are my heroes.   I am completely inspired by them.  I wish I could tell that anonymous lieutenant from all those years ago how she influenced me that day, but it really doesn't matter.   She's a strong woman, and probably too busy dominating shit somewhere to slow down for my fanboy cheers.