Gympiphanies

There comes a time in every young man's life, when - against all odds - willpower, tenacity and unfulfilled perseverance come together to help him achieve the impossible. Today was that day for me.

I made it to the gym.

A little background: About 4 years ago, I prepaid $600 for three years, thinking that it was a steal of a deal. Interestingly enough, I ended up paying an average of $30 per trip over those three years. {Curse Boston Public, 24, GG (if you know what this stands for, don't clue in anyone who in that may still think I'm cool), DC (please see previous plea), and Curb Your Enthusiasm for holding me hostage during prime workout time!} Anyway, I've decided to commit myself to making my membership renewal actually work in my favor this time around. Let's see if I can get it down to $15 per trip. Heh heh, that'll teach them to try to hook me.

Like the majority of my trips, my workout was a "breaking-in" workout. BI workouts are usually less intense since my muscles (or skin-bone-fat equivalent) have atrophied and any stimulus will be sufficiently rigorous.

I will spare you the boring details of the actual workout (consisting of light stairs, light benches, light machines, and light sit ups ). What I do want to share with you is the education I gleaned from tonight's trip.

• Always be ready for naked old people in the locker rooms. I strode into the locker room and POW! This grandpa-ish guy is standing in the middle of the room watching the TV...with no clothes on! I hastily tossed my stuff in the nearest locker and started my cardio by running out of that locker room as fast as possible.
• A radio at the gym is the 8th wonder of the world. I finally had the foresight to bring my mp3 player and I tuned into 107.3, which played the audio for TV #1. That I could actually listen to the TVs in front of the treadmills was news to me (until my friend e.dub recently told me about that...he knows all things useful like that!). Up until then, I just tried reading the tiny closed captioning as I bounced up and down during my run. I think my nearsightedness increased a diopter to a 9.25 on account of all that in-motion squinting.
• Don't count your reps. I dunno about you, but counting suddenly makes the goal that much more unreachable. I was doing great on the sit up machine until I had the bright idea to count my reps. Suddenly, each one became impossible to do and I could only eke out a handful more before collapsing. I think there's something about countdowns that builds up unnecessary stress. It's like paying attention to your breathing. Once you do that, you suddenly fear that you'll stop if you don't pay attention. It sucks a lot when I do that. Fortunately for people like me, I have some pseudo-ADD and will soon forget what I was supposed to concentrate so hard on.

After the gym, I felt very proud of myself and treated myself to a trip to Safeway. I picked up canned soups, rice-o-roni type stuff, and two giant bags of chips. Reasoning that I burned off some calories, I promptly ate half a bag of spiral cheetos (synthetic nature's miracle snack). It's a zero sum game, my friends, zero sum.

Hurray for Tots

Y'know how it's kind of nice to just let people know that they're appreciated? Well I want to just say that my gf Totters is one fantabulous gal. Not only does she put up with my so-called antics (some call them sad sad feats of asking-for-it) but she continues to have faith in my ability to do some good. Tonight, she rounded up three new writers for Recess http://www.recesstime.net (Ha! take that Yangstar). You rock! K, now it's my turn to churn out a new issue.

Anybody have some submissions they wanna get published?

Everyone Is Talking To Themselves

So let me be the first to say that this isn't a blanket statement about all of mankind. Or about my generation (anyone see Time, recently? Twixters! Yikes!). Or, perhaps most importantly, about you. That said, let me hold court on a little something I like to call EITTT.

{sidebar: anyone ever notice that the little phrase "That Said" can clear the way to say anything you want, particularly something that is in complete contradiction to the former statement? It's complete nonsense (or poppycock, if you'd rather)! "Your honor, OJ is guilty!...That said, the glove does not fit so you must acquit." Silliness!}

So EITTT, the Everyone Is Talking To Themselves Theory, says that our means of communication is geared towards collecting information to help us each make sense of our own lives. When we converse with others, our primary goal is to assemble the various puzzle pieces of our jumbled sense of who we are and how we fit into the world. I think it goes without saying that most of us are better at blabbing than we are at listening and processing what we hear. Have you ever heard of active listening? It's an actual learned (pronounced learn-Ed, natch) approach to listening -- showing that you are paying attention, providing visual and verbal cues that the speaker isn't wasting his or her breath. So, I ask, why do we need to practice listening? Well, I answer myself (and appropriately so, you shall soon discover), it's because we'd rather talk about ourselves as we try to solve the greatest whodunit of all - our lives.

Do it yourself experiment! (try this at home kids)
1. Strike up a conversation with someone you know. (if you choose a stranger, he or she will feel pressured to engage in polite conversation, which is not "real" conversation)
2. Count the times the person discusses something about themselves.
3. Count the times the person inquires about your life.
4. Count the times the person will actually ask follow up questions about what you say about your life.

Hypothesis (and no doubt fact): The person is bound to cover far more topics/info about him or herself than he will inquire about yours. For even more stark numbers, compare qty of topics covered from his/her life to qty of follow-up topics from your life. See? Your role in the conversation was the catalyst. After that, the conversation is good to go, with or without you. See... Psychology 2 did teach me how to conduct scientifically meaningful experiments. See, I knew those classes weren't a waste of sleep.

Counterargument: Well if the "mark" (or victim of this experiment) is so entranced with discussing things through the lens of his/her life, then from the experimenter's perspective, the experimenter is learning a lot about the other person!

Counter-Hypothesis (aka Booyah Take That Explanation): In this controlled environment, yes, the sides are unequal. But that is because one side is intentionally feeding the other side self-indulgent questions. In the real world, both sides would be "trying to get theirs" (theirs = their piece of psychoanalysis through the vehicle of casual communication).

Such scenarios typically play out like this:

Me: Hello, how are you?
Friendcentricfriend: Pretty good. I did X, Y, Z ...and A, B, C .. + 1,2,3.
Me: Cool. (do I get a volley?)
FcF: Oh did I tell you I did A1, B1, and C1 too?
Me: No way, tell me about etc.!
FcF: etc, etc, and etc.
Me: Niiice. (that's it...if I get a volley, I am running with it)
FcF: ...and that's about it about etc... So, how are you?
Me: I am pretty good. (brain races, tries to queue up interesting tidbit worth discussing/evaluating during the public psychoanalysis). I ate at the new In N Out. That was good. (racing racing!) Do I look fat? Eating those burgers always make me feel fat.
FcF: Oh, sorry, what did you say? I was thinking about my life again.

That, my friends, is EITTT in full effect. If you strip out the two sides of the conversations and either side can stand on its own as a conversation, then you know EITTT is in da house.

Not everyone suffers from me-syndrome. These are the askers in the world. They help keep conversations going and unearth nuggets of info about people that enrich our mutual education. It is typical that askers don't say much about their own lives -- unless confronted with another asker. When that happens, a fierce ping pong match of you first - no, you first - no, i insist, you first politeness ensues where each tries to get the other to talk first. It's like being at a four-way stop with people who forgot who's turn it is to go.

But anyway, that said, EITTT doesn't always apply to all of mankind, my generation, or, most importantly, you. Just ask yourself how much you know about others... and how much they know about you.

Blog Falling In the Forest

So I unveiled my preciousss at work today. To my mild surprise (dismay? subconscious expectation?), the public reaction was less Hollywood premiere and more suitable for Al Bundy's Alante.

Me: Hey hey. I am making a blog!
(pause in IMing. I better provide a better lead-in)
Me: Do you have one?
Vivvles: No.
(even longer pause. Abort! Abort!)
Me: Isn't IMing in italics so classy?
Vivvles: Classy isn't the first thing that comes to mind.

Hmm. Perhaps interest was best generated in person.

Me (i'm floatin' on sunshine, whoa-oh, gonna feel good!): Hey check out my new project!
DarDarBinx (...bait him): What is that?
Me (beaming): It's my blog.
DarDarBinx (...go in for the kill): Why do you have it?
Me (overcast): Um, to write in it.
DarDarBinx (...finish him!): Who's gonna leave you comments?
Me (dark and stormy night): Um, I write for myself.

I wonder if the Bay Bridge guy is still filming jumpers...

But you see, this fine enthusiastically delighted, open-arm reception of FA (Fun Alley, to the uninitiated) oh-so-gingerly scooted me to the realization that this blog may never make it to another person's computer screen. Does the new age equivalent of a tree falling in a forest when no one's around make a noise? What impact do I, my 999 monkeys, and 1000 keyboards have in churning out supposedly "public" journals for all the world to see? In fact, is it even public if no one knows about it?

I pondered this all day and realized that this is further supporting evidence of my Everyone Is Talking To Themselves theory. This Eureka moment freed up my brain resources and I was able to reallocate focus to ancillary activities such as breathing, eating, and occasional thinking.

What is this EITTT theory you ask? (you = imaginary reader). Tune in next time cuz I got me a BART to catch.

Return of the Alley

I used to sit in a row of cubes fondly dubbed Fun Alley.

We would play digital golf on my pda, IM pithy witticisms to the world, and putt golf balls into a trash can. The sun shone brightly, the birds sang, and we of Fun Alley revelled in a weird combination of summer vacation, detention, and work.

Granted, this delight was tempered by a cruel little torture called web development. Don't get me wrong, I love a good kick in the head as much of the next guy, but making me code was clearly fate's preferred way of making me pay for the sins caused in my previous life (most likely as a papercut on the tongue or something similarly evil). But you know why the fun in the alley never ceased? Because we were riding the dotcom wave to the sky! Whooo-eeee! We were blinking Marios all the way, baby.

$18 - 55 - 80 ... um, 1 dollar?

Faster than you can say adios mamastinker ("hello, i'd like to apply for the FCC posterboy internship...), things got Donner Party pretty fast. Staff thinned, cube raidings were commonplace, and soon the denizens of the Alley packed up and moved out as the office closed its doors. Goodbye, garbage can golf, we'll miss you dearly.

~~~

Almost five years to the day, I now resurrect Fun Alley in the form of this blog. While I'm not really sure what I'm going to do here, I figure it's only right that I dedicate a place in cyberspace to that sliver of the paradise I once knew.