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Losin’ it

October 14th, 2010 1 comment

Newsflash: I am a HUGE nerd. Like, staggering. Wait, let’s back up.


A few weeks ago, Brian revealed to me that he had ordered a new diet book, the TNT Diet, off of eBay for like $4. I found it on Amazon for like $6 (the price appears to have gone up), and since I have free Prime 2-day shipping, I had it in, well, two days; Brian’s took longer, eBay being what it is.


The book is basically a low-carb diet (specifically high fat, and we all love fat, right?), along with a detailed program of weight-lifting to build muscle. I’ve had good luck with low-carb diets in the past, so I figured this would be a fantastic way to get back under 18 stone and maybe develop those wicked arms and shoulders that drive the ladies crazy.


This is where the nerdiness comes in. While reading up on TNT, I discovered that Men’s Health (the publisher of the diet book) maintains a kickass forum for asking questions and chatting with other dieters, sharing your knowledge and goals and successes. From this, I learned all kinds of completely awesome things, like how ideally when trying to build muscle you should take in 1 gram of protein for each pound of “lean muscle mass” (which technically includes bone and water, anything in your body that’s not fat), and on the diet you want to try and stick to a 60/30/10 ratio of fat to protein to carbohydrates.


So during the roughly 30 minutes a day when I’m not at work or being bossed around by my family, I’ve been making nifty little spreadsheets to show me how many calories I need to take in, how much protein powder I should eat every day, fantastic stuff. I’ve even ordered a set of calipers and tape measure to reasonably-accurately calculate my actual fat percentage, which led me to some interesting data.


I currently weigh 254 pounds, and am roughly 6’3″, depending on time of day. My best guess, based on a number of online fat percentage calculators, is that I’m probably about 30% fat, and no more than 32%. (I’ll know more Friday night after my kit arrives.) If I’m 32% fat, that means I’m 68% muscle/bone/water, or about 172 pounds. Now, according to Wikipedia, if I get myself down to 14% fat, I would be very, very fit, almost “professional athlete” fit. Assuming that I gain no muscle (and I intend to, if possible), 14% fat on top of 172 pounds of muscle is 200 pounds. Someone who is 6’3″ and 200 pounds has a Body Mass Index of exactly 25, which is still technically in the “overweight” category. How crazy is that? Even if I was as fit as I had ever been in my entire life, a doctor might look at my BMI and tell me to lose a few pounds.


Sorry, are you asleep? My bad. I enjoy this stuff. See also: Nerd, Matt Hearn is a.


I started the diet at 257, so in about 10 days I’ve lost 3 pounds. Here’s hoping I can keep it up. I haven’t seen my wang in months.

Categories: rolling with the fatness, wtf Tags:

Peace and concord

October 5th, 2010 No comments

I find this hilarious. This is the current picture that’s up on the website for Concord Mall:



As someone who works roughly 1/4 mile from the Concord Mall, I’d like to ask: where in the hell was that picture taken? It certainly wasn’t at the mall. It wasn’t anywhere NEAR the mall. Believe me when I say this: this is the nicest bench in the mall. (Click to embiggen.)


Categories: wtf Tags:

Get it? No?

September 28th, 2010 No comments

I can’t decide if this is funny or not. Thoughts?


Categories: politickin', wtf Tags:

#&$*

August 31st, 2010 5 comments

Here’s a fun little secret you probably would have been able to guess on your own: I like to curse. I am a curser. There is nothing quite as cathartic as stringing together a remarkable series of expletives and animal sounds, and I have to tell you, some of my improvisations are truly memorable. Like the time I called my computer a “cockserpent,” which is kinda redundant, but somehow not. Or the time I dropped my sunglasses in Wawa bathroom and yelled “Son of a f***-wh*** s***-c***!!!”


Obviously around my kids, grandparents, in-laws, etc., I go into what radio professionals call “FCC” mode, in which I cut out anything stronger than “dang” and “heck” and avoid telling jokes like the one about why the hooker had a runny nose. But if I’m alone, or just hanging out with friends my own age, it gets all Andrew Dice Clay up in this piece, but without all the class that the Diceman brings to his act.


What made me think of this was the random recollection of the time in college when I was advised by an older female student that I might have better luck meeting ladies if I cursed less. At the time this seemed like pretty good advice, and so for a period of time I tried curtailing my profanity. Looking back, however, it was completely ridiculous. It’s like telling someone, “You know, you might have better luck meeting ladies if you weren’t so heterosexual.” Changing a core value (specifically, “Bad words are awesome”) to try and attract mates leads to poor communication, failed marriages, and colon cancer. Look it up.


In the end my future wife (who curses like a pirate) and I ended our ill-advised “break-up,” married, and have produced two children, the elder of which chastises me if I say the word “stupid” in his presence. In fact, he’ll object to any word that sounds roughly similar to “stupid,” such as the other day when he protested my use of the word “stupendous” and later in the week when Sarah said “striped” and got called out for it.


When he turns 16 I’ll teach him real curse words. I’m sure he won’t have picked up any on his own.

Categories: tmi, wtf Tags:

Spinderfurry

July 14th, 2010 1 comment

I have a cat named Pete. You may have met him. He has had many, many nicknames (like all my cats, wives, and children):


  • Furdis

  • Festus

  • Petey Petey Punkin Eatey

  • Chubbs

  • Tubbs (thereby occasionally making his sister Poly “Crockett”)

  • Kreplach

  • Kreppis

  • Kreps


It is this last that has led, oddly, to me calling him “DJ Kreps-a-lot,” in the vein of Sir Mix-a-Lot. Stranger yet, I have found myself lately singing “He’s DJ Kreps-a-lot” to the tune of “On The Good Ship Lollipop“:

He’s DJ Kreps-a-lot

Brings the hot phat beats, makes your undies drop

His fuzzy face

Won’t permit the dance floor go to waste

That is all.

Categories: wtf Tags:

Dying Heron

May 27th, 2010 No comments

The Big Picture has a rage-inducing set of photographs of the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The most depressing:



A young heron sits dying amidst oil splattering underneath mangrove on an island impacted by oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in Barataria Bay, along the the coast of Louisiana on Sunday, May 23, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Sure would have been nice to have that $500,000 remote turn-off device that BP didn’t bother with, huh? I hard that so far, this has cost BP $760,000,000. That’s about 1% of the fine that should be levied on them.

Categories: sad, wtf Tags:

Kinda hot, though

April 6th, 2010 1 comment

A bigger update later. Meanwhile:


Categories: wtf Tags:

Stop ruining things

February 18th, 2010 1 comment

I love the Olympics. I really do. I’ll watch just about all of it, from figure-skating to snowboarding to luge to curling. Women’s curling, even, although in my defense, American skip Debbie McCormick is strangely intoxicating.


I even watched, and thoroughly enjoyed, biathlon. Of course, what beginning skiier, when waiting in a 45-minute line for a bunny-slope lift, hasn’t thought “I wish I had a gun?”


So far, however, the XXI Olympic Winter Games brings to mind 4 specific memories that’ll stick with us:


  1. The authorities built a luge track that’s so fast it killed a man.

  2. The Opening Ceremonies, already saddened by death, were screwed up by a malfunction of the torch cauldron. To add to the classiness (a word I just made up), to light the big outdoor torch, they drove Wayne Gretzky there in the back of a big pickup while he held on to a rollbar in the back and held the torch with one hand. He looked like he should have been wearing a tuque and drinking from a can of Elsinore.

  3. The Olympia ice-preparation machines they bought for the speed-skating track (a cheaper product than the standard Zambonis) apparently produce an ice with all the smoothness and sheen of driveway gravel.

  4. Finally, NBC’s coverage of the various sporting events has been…disappointing. They’ve tape-delayed a lot of important events, something that was done in the past (particularly when Olympic Games were held on the other side of the world, like, say, China, and it’s difficult to get a lot of viewership for swimming at 2am Eastern time), but unfortunately in this modern connected world it’s nearly impossible to avoid finding out results before the taped airing. It takes away from a viewing of the women’s downhill when it doesn’t get shown until 7pm despite everyone in the world knowing Lindsey Vonn won gold earlier in the day. On the other hand, maybe a little tape delay is a good idea.

Hey organizers and NBC! I am your key demographic! I’m young, have disposable income, and purchasing impulses that I can’t control! It would be nice if you’d stop screwing up your product so I didn’t lose interest.

Categories: sporty spice, wtf Tags:

Ice cold

February 7th, 2010 9 comments

UPDATE, 2/9/10: I was on NBC 10 News! I looked fat.


I was supposed to do the Lewes Polar Bear Plunge today, but unfortunately it snowed 2 feet all over the state so they had to postpone it. Sadly, I can’t make the new date. Obviously I can’t refund the donations (and wouldn’t if I could, since they go to the Special Olympics), but I felt I owed something to the donors. (If you’d like to add to the donation list, you can do so here). So instead, I did this. (I apologize for the horrible video quality; we’re the last family in America without a video camera, so HW’s holding my Blackberry. It’s hard to even see my face, but trust me: it’s me.)



It was chilly.

Categories: a beautiful thing, wtf Tags:

Rhymin’ and stealin’

February 5th, 2010 No comments

I’ve been reading up on the whole missionaries to Haiti drama. If you’ve missed it, here’s the short version: a group of “well-meaning” missionaries went to to Haiti after the earthquake and collected up a bunch of orphans with the intent of bringing them back to America for a better life. They just didn’t bother with any of the actual paperwork. So the Haitian government accused them of kidnapping and conspiracy, and has jailed them pending trial. Supporters say the missionaries were doing a good thing, rescuing these poor kids from hunger and deprivation.

the leader of New Life Children’s rescue, Laura Silsby, has had serious legal problems in the past, most recently losing the house she bought for the ministry to foreclosure at the end of 2009. The fact that neither of the churches involved with the missions group vetted her thoroughly before leading a missions trip will open them to lawsuits, above and beyond the legal fees and costs incurred from the current incarceration.

Oops.
Silby’s motives are also suspect in part because she seemed to realize what she was doing, stating in an interview on Monday that the group did not intend to offer the children for adoption. “We intended to raise those children and be with them their entire lives, if necessary,” she said.

Eeek…that’s kinda culty.
It also seems that a plan was in place for an orphanage long before the earthquake occurred.

Eeeeeenteresting. My feelings on the subject are remarkably simple: I wonder how Americans would have responded had a gaggle of, say, well-meaning Swedes showed up and “rescued” a few dozen white orphans from New Orleans in September 2005. I suspect phrases like “doing God’s work” and “This is how you thank us for helping you?” wouldn’t be thrown around.

Categories: musings, wtf Tags: