matthearn.com

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I’ve been talking a while about my fitness and diet regimen (not that I used the word “regimen;” if you have been using the word “regiment” to describe anything but a military unit, you are a stupid-ass), and figured it was time to share a little results in the form of imagery:

The new hotness, right? And I’m still about 20 pounds away from my goal.

Quick update on what I’ve been up to vis-a-vis diet: I tried a “Protein Sparing Modified Fast,” which is basically eating nothing but pure protein and green vegetables, leading to a rather dramatic caloric deficit. I was taking in 1400-1500 calories a day, which is well over 1000 calories under what my body needs to just stay alive for 24 hours, and I lost something like 8 pounds in 10 days. Then my body said “Hey, enough of this crap,” and I spent most of this past weekend fighting what amounted to a 2 day migraine. Horrible headache, stomach issues, occasional diarrhea, and an odd sensitivity to heat on a weekend when the daily high was near 90F. Bad times. The only thing that made me feel better was, unsurprisingly, eating, so by Sunday I was having a sandwich or bowl of cereal every few hours just to keep me feeling hale. I gained every ounce of that weight back as my body soaked up water like a sponge. Now I’m back to the infinitely more reasonable LeanGains cut, and plan to stay on it solidly into the fall, at which point I hope to have rockin’ abs and a minor role in a CBS soap opera.

I’ve decided it’s time for me to create a “meme.” If you aren’t familiar with the concept, it’s basically an idea that floats around with a given culture, although in practice it often means “hilarious internet thing that gets modified and copied ad nauseum.” For example, check out the “Y U NO guy“:

I’ve decided, given the plague of horrible, horrible drivers throughout the world, to create “Bad Driver Deb,” to demonstrate the hypocrisy inherent in most drivers’ behavior. For example:

Another one:

Whaddaya think? I’m not sure if the idea really has legs, since bad drivers only seem to be worried about how fast others are driving or whether they’re being tailgated, so I’d end up reusing those over and over every time I wanted to moan about them holding up traffic, rolling through stop signs, talking on their phones, cutting me off, etc. There’s a strong chance I’ve created the most pointless meme in existence. Oh, well.

Speaking of automotive concerns: I finally got around to fixing the brakes on Sarah’s car last weekend. You may recall from my review last month that the car would shimmy and shake like Elvis’s hips during hard braking, and my amateur diagnosis was that the rotors needed to be replaced. So I swung by my local NAPA and picked up rotors, pads, grease, and a new jack, because my old one is too small to jack up taller cars.

I quickly discovered that the new jack wasn’t going to work either. At full height, it lifted the car about an inch, but the suspension just kept the tire on the ground. I ended up having to jack up the car with the horrible scissor jack from the trunk, and then using the new bottle jack to lift the suspension a bit and get the wheel off the ground. The lug nuts came off fairly easily, thank Jebus, and the wheel as well. I had to hammer at the ratchet handle a bit to get the caliper loose, but got that off as well.

The rotors were another matter. They were held in place by two small screws, which are entirely unnecessary since the wheel itself is more than capable of holding the rotor in place once the nuts are tightened down. The little screws were too tight (probably glued in place) to get with a regular screwdriver, so I dug out my impact screwdriver and got to work. After snapping the heads off of three impact bits and completely stripping the head of the screw, I cursed eloquently and drilled the feckers out (snapping off a good drill bit and blunting half a dozen others).

I was pleased to discover that the caliper actually has two pistons in it, but it did mean double the compressing. It also took some doing to get everything back in please, requiring even more fluent cursing, but I ended up getting everything replaced in about 2 hours.

Once that was done, I crawled under to change the oil, and discovered that finally engine designers have wised up. The oil sump screw came out easily (although I put my bucket in the wrong place and spilled a quart of oil on the driveway), and even better, the oil filter is right at the bottom of the engine and I was able to unscrew it with just my hand. I wish the oil hadn’t inexplicably been pressurized, though, because as the filter came off oil exploded out of it and got all over me, the car, the ground, just about everywhere but the oil bucket.

5.5 quarts of new oil went in easily, followed by gently firing up the engine and taking the car for a spin. The brakes worked fantastically, and I discovered that even the minor shimmy that had been happening at 80+ mph had gone away as well. For scientific purposes, I took that big beast up to, um, a rather high rate of speed on 495 and it just purred.

In short, it turns out that if you spend the bucks on the premium parts, the car works better, even if you do the actual labor yourself. Who knew?

I hope everybody had an enjoyable long weekend. Mine could not possibly have been less restful, and for once my children aren’t entirely to blame. Only, you know, mostly.

The elder 66% of my children have birthdays this month, so Sunday we had a large birthday party for them. I’ll get to more on that later, but wanted to establish that fact to explain why I took Friday off from work: preparation.

The day actually started with an early morning workout, during which I established why perhaps it’s time to pick a new workout routine: I wrenched my upper-middle back doing squats, and it’s still a little jacked up. It’s a spot that I routinely injured in college, but hadn’t bothered me in a while. I think the issue was the dieting; even on my kickass Lean Gains protocol, was keeping me from recovering properly, and squatting heavy twice a week (with deadlifts on the other training day) isn’t going to work until I start eating surplus again. Last Monday’s workout felt pretty bad, and Friday’s was just a crapsaster. I’m taking this week off, and I’ll get back to it next week, with a new routine that only has me squatting once a week.

After that, I got to go to Charles’s school for “Donuts for Dads,” which was awfully cute. Everybody’s dad got a donut and some juice, and then Charles read me a story and showed me some of his schoolwork, and then the class sang a song about the importance of composting. (Side note: I don’t know how recently you may have graduated kindergarten, but when I was there we spent a fair amount of time working on letters and phonics with an eye towards learning to read in 1st grade. All the kids in Charles’s class can just flat-out read. I would have assumed it’s because it’s a “gifted” class, but parents of kids in other classes say their kids read pretty well too. I guess we’re playing catch-up with Japan, where all the kids can speak 3 languages by age 2.)

Once “Donuts” was done, I got to go home and spend pretty much the rest of the day in the yard: mowing, raking, cleaning, weed-whacking, doing everything I could to make the property somewhat safe and pleasant for small children. Of course, this meant that I awoke Saturday morning with my injured back tighter than Rick Santorum’s anus. I could barely walk. This did not, of course, keep us from loading everybody into the car and heading out to Lancaster for my cousin Carolyn’s wedding, at which my children utterly destroyed the dance floor.

Weddings, I have to say, are surprisingly fun with children around. Sure, you have to keep them from sticking their hands into the wedding cake, but once the dancing starts they can be pretty much left to their own devices.

Sunday was the big party day. The theme was “Knights and Princesses,” so we rented a big castle moon bounce, decorated with medieval-y tapestries and a replica suit of armor provided by Sarah’s mom, and the kids made posterboard princess hats and knightly shields. We managed to get through the whole day without anyone being injured, even after I made the beer-induced decision to get into the bounce and do backflips. (You may not believe it, but my back did not approve, and reminded me of my folly the next morning.)

On Memorial Day, we celebrated by “sleeping in;” everyone in the house was up by 7am, except for Josephine, who slept solidly until almost 10:30. After doing some clean-up, we piled back into the car to go to my sister’s housewarming, where we ate faaaaaaaaar too much, as one is wont to do on Memorial Day.

Additional bullet points:

• Our friend Mary devised some kind of butterscotch-flavored Rice Krispy Treats, which made an appearance at the party on Sunday, and which are now required fare for all future parties. I think she had to email the recipe to like 75 people.


• If you like moon bounces, get one that inexplicably has a 7-foot high soft basketball hoop on the outside. You’d think it would result in a really stellar slam dunk contest, but what ended up being FAR more fun was 3 adult men taking turns trying to fling a soccer ball through it from 50-60 feet away while drinking a lot. Only one of us managed to do it (get the ball through the hoop, that is, not the drinking; we were all very successful at that), although I did at least hit the rim once.

Stay thistly, my friends.

Let’s blast through a number of interesting topics on this Freaky Friday:

• I’m always amazed at people who think that stuff happens to them in some kind of vacuum. Folks who associate with douchebags, and then are surprised when those douchebags treat them like crap. Folks who have 4 kids with 3 different partners and wonder why their children act crazy. Folks who do everything in their power to hold up traffic and complain about tailgaters.

  
  I know sometimes cause and effect can be difficult to see, but c’mon, y’all. Please, just stop being dumb. I know it’s a lot to ask, but please try.



• This is a detailed article about Junior Seau, and why the middle linebacker position is the most dangerous in football, and probably in all sports that don’t involve being gored by a bull:
  

  A middle linebacker is taught from his first organized game to use his head and helmet as the first contact point when tackling and when shedding drive blocks of linemen and fullbacks who have the advantage of a running head start.

  
  Terrifying. Then I read this’n:
  

  The N.F.L. is making some of its former players aware of a study that found that they are likely to live longer than men in the general population…The government study found a lower death rate among former N.F.L. players than among men in the general population — the institute had expected to find that 625 members of the group it studied would be dead based on estimates from the general population, but instead found that 334 of the retired players had died. Former players also had a lower rate of cancer-related deaths — 85 players died from the disease, compared with the 146 cancer-related deaths researchers at the institute expected. And the rate of deaths from heart disease was lower, too — 126 players died from heart disease; Niosh had expected 186 deaths.

  
  I guess it shouldn’t be terribly surprising, given the extreme fitness of the skill positions; having a bunch of ex-wide receivers and defensive backs in there is going to make the overall results look pretty good. On the other hand,
  

  The study did not address the cognitive and mental health issues that have recently been linked to repeated blows to the head and that currently dominate the conversation about player safety.

  
  They may live longer, but if their brains are leaking slowly out of their ears, I suspect it’s not a particularly pleasant life.

  
  Note to self: my boys will play tackle football over my cold, stiff corpse.



• While we’re on the subject of sports:
  
  • Sshhh…the Phils have won 5 straight, are a game over .500, and while they’re still in last place in the division they’re only 4 games back. Chase Utley has been taking BP and fielding practice in Clearwater. We got high hopes, y’all.
  
  
  • The Flyers got knocked out, so I haven’t been paying even a lick of attention to hockey. Are the Whalers still in it? How about the North Stars?
  
  
  • I think the Sixers, sadly, have met their match. The Celtics are pretty elderly, but they know exactly how to win. As long as they keep it close, experience will take care of the rest; the best the Sixers can hope for is a 12 point lead with 3 minutes to go. Which can happen if they get hot, but…can they get hot for 3 out of 4 remaining games? At least the Heat seem to be getting manhandled by the Pacers; if LeWade and the Dominos get knocked out in the second round my heart will grow three sizes that day.
  
  
  • The Eagles signed Shady McCoy to a big contract…good for him. I’m sure I’ll watch the Eagles, but football tastes pretty sour since the players seem to average about 3 good post-retirement years before developing Alzheimer’s.
  
  
  • In Soccer news, Liverpool played crap ball since Christmas. Aside from the League Cup win, that is. On our side of the pond, Philadelphia Union is horrible, but the US Men’s squad has won its last three international matches and has a good chance in the Olympics this summer. They have to play France (awfully tough), Colombia (less tough), and North Korea (which has a team consisting entirely of Oompa Loompas). Are you asleep yet? Let’s move on.
  
  
  • In weightlifting news, I squatted 365 and benched 235 today, with which my 410lb deadlift from Wednesday puts me in the “Thousand Pound” club. I may try and bump those numbers next week, because I feel like I can do more, and I’m in an online powerlifting meet, and also the ladies love big squat numbers. Really. Ask any lady.
  
  
  
  
• President Obama came out in favor of gay marriage last week, following the vote by a bunch of rednecks to keep homosexuals second class citizens. This is great and all, but forgive my skepticism for not thinking that white trash voters aren’t likely to be swayed by the black guy in the white house.

That’s about all I’ve got for the day, so have a nice weekend, and stay loose, killers.

It’s been a few months since the last time we looked at the search engine queries that lead people to matthearn.com, but let me tell you: I continue to apparently be America’s main source of information about Dwyane Wade. Some of the searches that led folks here:

dwyane wade muscle 30 (searches)
dwyane wade muscles 18
dwyane wade men’s health 9
dwyane wade shirtless 7
dwayne wade muscle 3
dwyane wade body fat 3

In order to knock out these questions in order: yes, I believe D-Wade has muscles, I am fairly certain he is concerned about men’s health in general and prostate health in particular, his body fat is somewhere around 10%, and he actually looks better IN a shirt because of his skin tone and sad eyes. I’m not sure how to answer this one:

d’wade you mad 2

because I find it difficult to believe that a professional athlete, particularly one in the top 10 players in his sport, could ever really be mad about anything. Then again:

I got a lot of these:

thatching rake 18
thatching race 3

I think we should clear this up; a thatching rake is this:

A thatching race, however, is this:

Know the difference. Since I’ve been posting a lot about diet and training, I of course get a lot of hits from folks who are trying to get in shape.

how to gain 15 pounds of fat 16
before and after running weight loss 9
before and after running 8
running weight loss before and after 8
ideal protein diet before and after pictures 8
running before and after 7
running before and after weight loss 6
weight loss running before and after 5
before and after weight running 5
skinny to muscular before and after 4

Just a gentle reminder to everyone: if you’re running to lose weight, and aren’t being careful about your diet, you will look like this:

If you diet right, you don’t even need to run, which is good, because running hurts, and it sucks. I write one little post like eleventy-bajillion years ago about my car, and the hits just keep on comin’:

protege 98 10
98 mazda protege 9
mazda protege 1998 9
mazda protege 98 8

It’s worth noting that I donated that car roughly 5 years ago. All I can tell you about it was that it was very reliable and utterly boring.

dunkin donuts chocolate glazed donut 3

They are FRICKING DELICIOUS. Please don’t ask about them again, you may have heard I’m on a diet.

maria bamford husband 2

I had forgotten who Maria Bamford is, so I checked Wikipedia, and it turns out she’s a stand-up comedian. The article makes no mention of a husband, just a couple of dogs, so I think just contact her agent and try and get them digitz, playa.

a tired rugby player after 30 minutes 2

is a rugby player who’s not scoring a lot of trys or, uh, what’s the other way you can score in rugby? Wickets? Chukkers? I can’t remember. Speaking of scoring in rugby:

rugby players f***ing 3
chubby rugby player 2
big rugby player testicles 2
naked rugby players 2
hot rugby ass 2
gay pacific rugby 1

Most of these are the result of a post I wrote a few months ago in which I mentioned that rugby players are tough, and American football players are (usually) not. Apparently there’s a demographic for rugby nookie, and at least one person out there interested in getting a little Ring of Fire Homo Rugby Love, which would be an excellent name for a Hindi-Pop band.

rae dawn chong 4
rae dawn chong naked 4
rae dong chong naked 3
rae dawn chong hot 2
rae dawn chong ass 2

I can’t really help y’all with the “nude” part, because this is family website and all, but here’s a nice portrait I stole from afro-style.com, which I visit almost daily:

I really, really don’t know what’s going on here:

freddy mercury the only acceptable duckface 3
freddie mercury balancing on a ball 3
freddie mercury on a bench 2

I don’t think the duckface is ever really acceptable, perse, but we do give the late Freddie some allowances, since he was fricking awesome, and everything. I mean, this actually happened:

And this:

And oh god my eyes this:

So you know what? If Freddie Mercury wants to make a duckface…you let him.

freddie mercury teeth 2

Not his finest feature.

woman lifts wieghts with ass 2

That seems…ill-advised, and misguided.

matt hearn gay sports massage 1

Where do I sign up?

plumber’s cleavage photo 1

Yeah, not going there. Unless the plumber in question is Hayley Atwell.

rascal flatts stand on the piano 2

I feel like that would be awfully damaging to the piano. I mean, that lead singer is awfully husky.

“dog flavored cigarettes” 2

I thought Google was blocked in China?

quantum energy slim line carp 2,75 lb 1

Wh…what?

bacon dinosaur 1

That’s about it. I suspect next time we do this there will be nothing but searches for Freddie Mercury’s nipples. I’m okay with that.

So as I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve been doing the Lean Gains diet, along with an RPT routine. Methinks it’s time for an update on progress, and a general review of the programs.

Short version: everything is awesome. Well, pretty much. I’ve been on Lean Gains for about 8 weeks, I’m down 11 pounds, and the bodyfat percentage number is down about 3.5 points. In case you missed the post about it, here’s a bit of detail on how the diet works.

LG was developed by the remarkably shredded Martin Berkhan. It’s based on Intermittent Fasting, the gist of which is that you go for significant periods without eating, usually from 16-40 hours, although some folks go nuts and shoot for 72 hours or more; at that point you’re losing as much muscle as fat so it’s usually not recommended. The Lean Gains protocol calls for 16 hours of fasting and an 8 hour feeding window every day, with macronutrient cycling, which is just a fancy way of saying you eat more on training day (usually lots of extra carbs) and less on rest days.

The original design specified that on training days, you eat 20% more than your “maintenance level” (the amount of calories you would eat to remain at exactly the same weight), with about 3 times as many calories coming from carbs as fat, and on rest days you eat 20% less than your maintenance, with fat and carb calories being fairly equal. The idea is that on training day, you build muscle with plenty of protein and carbs, and then on rest days you’re cutting fat by eating fewer calories overall, and reducing insulin response by keeping carbs low. It was designed to help guys and gals who are already at low bodyfats get into shape for bodybuilding competitions without having to crash diet, and while building muscle at the same time. It basically turns the “cut and bulk” process, wherein you spend months building muscle and then months cutting fat, into a daily system that keeps you relatively lean all the time (instead of developing the major chubbiness that pro bodybuilders usually have in the offseason when bulking up).

While it was designed for those already in pretty good shape, an enterprising young man named Andy realized that there really was no reason that an out-of-shape person couldn’t do the program and lose a bunch of fat while maintaining, or even gaining, muscle. So instead of the -20/+20, he devised the -35/+10, which is what I’m doing. My maintenance level is approximately 3000 calories (based on weight, height, age, gender, and general level of activity), so on my rest days I eat 35% less (about 1950), with half of the calories coming from protein and the rest coming roughly equally from carbs and fat. On workout days, I eat 10% more, with about a third of of the calories from protein, and at least 50% from carbs.

My feeding window is usually about 1pm to 9pm, which means of course that I don’t eat breakfast. This has been less difficult than I thought, to be honest. Coffee helps a lot, but even without it, it’s not really THAT hard to just not eat. In fact, to compensate for going away to the beach a few weeks ago (where I ate and drank like a Walmart shopper for 3 days), I did two 40-hour fasts (one before the trip, and one after), where I took in nothing but water and coffee. 40 hours. I won’t say it was easy, but it sure was interesting, particularly after the hallucinations started (just kidding, I’m sure that talking pink moose was totally real).

As to the workout, I honestly can’t say I’m enjoying it, but I don’t think I’d really enjoy any routine while losing fat. If your lift numbers aren’t going up, it’s not fun. It’s almost like practicing the piano for weeks and never getting any better at the song. I do see the results at the scale and tape measure, but it’s awfully slow, and adding weight to the bar at every workout is nice and fast. Also, I’ve been fighting a weird hip pain that doesn’t want to go away; I injured it squatting over a month ago, stopped all the lower body stuff for a few weeks until it felt better, and it basically came back as soon as I lifted again. Right now I’m working around it (a narrower squatting stance results in almost no pain at all during the actual workout), but it’s a nuisance.

Still, I think the Reverse Pyramid Training workout is generally easier on the body than SS and Madcow, while achieving similar volume. It makes more sense to do the heaviest set when the body is freshest, and then tack on longer/lighter sets afterwards to achieve the necessary volume. I’ve got my squat numbers back to maybe 25 pounds under my January maxes, my bench press is down only about 10 pounds, my overhead press is about the same, and my deadlift is almost back to the 405 max I pulled in February before the lack of carbs hit me. I’ll probably be on the “Lean Gains cut” for another 5-6 months (gotta get that 6-pack, son), and if I can keep my bench press over 200 pounds until then I’ll be pretty happy. Plus, I can do chins again (4 in a row!).

The gist of my program is that it’s a bit of Madcow plus Starting Strength plus RPT:

• Monday:
  
  
  • Back squats – Warmups, then a top set of 5, then 6 at 90% of that weight, and 7 at 80%.
  
  
  • Bench press – Warmups, then a top set of 5, then 7 at 85% of that weight, and 9 at 70%.
  
  
  • Chins – I do at least 15 total reps, divided into however many sets that takes. When I can get 5 reps a set, I’ll start just doing 3 sets of however many reps I get. When I reach 8 rep sets, I plan to start adding weight, but that’s months away.


• Wednesday:
  
  
  • Front squats – Warmups, then a top set of 5, and 6 at 90% of that weight. Really just resting my legs from Monday’s heavy routine, and preparing for deadlifts
  
  
  • Overhead presses – Warmups, then a top set of 5, 7@85%, 9@70%.
  
  
  • Deadlifts – Warmups, top set of 5, then 6@90%.


• Friday:
  
  
  • Back squats – Warmups, then a set of 6 at about 94% of Monday’s max, 7 at 90% of the 6 rep set, and 8@80%.
  
  
  • Bench press – Warmups, then a set of 6 at about 94% of Monday’s max, 8 at 85% of the 6 rep set, and 10@70%.
  
  
  • Chins – Same drill as Monday.

I’m very happy with the routine. Fairly quick (under an hour), and only three workouts a week.

If you’re having trouble losing fat and getting/staying strong, I’d give LG and RPT a look. It’s working like gangbusters on my big ol’ gutty gut.

Wow, I meant to post this earlier in the week and completely forgot. Who’s smart and has two thumbs? Not Matt Hearn. Ihavenowcutoffmythumbsaspunishment.Itmakesusingthespacebarsomewhat…challenging.

Okay, I figured out a way I can use my forehead to hit the space bar as necessary. So, where were we? After we had our 3,483rd child (possibly an exaggeration) last fall, we ran into a slight problem: Sarah’s 2005 Honda Accord could not fit three carseats in the back seat. This meant that either one of the kids was going to have to ride in the trunk, or we were going to have to buy a new car. We managed to get through the first three months of William’s life by simply having Sarah drive the van around, while I got to enjoy the Honda, but since I routinely drop off the kids one place and have Sarah pick them up, this was eventually going to be a problem. Plus, it meant that come summer summer summertime (summertime), our only means of vacationing was in a 13-year-old Grand Caravan with non-functioning air conditioning. Clearly we needed an upgrade.

Our original plan was to look into a Brand-A-New Honda Pilot, but I did a little research on Consumer Reports and discovered a lot of complaints about road noise. This doesn’t surprise me; our only complaint about the Accord was the road noise, which was pretty substantial at highway speeds. My guess is that Honda doesn’t bother to insulate their cars much, since insulation adds weight, which degrades fuel mileage. In my CR digging, however, I discovered the Mazda CX-9, a “crossover” SUV (Mazda no longer makes a normal minivan) that was rated well for power and road noise, and even had an “autostick” transmission (allowing you to treat it kinda like a manual, but without a clutch).

I looked into a new one, but in order to get all the options I wanted, we’d basically have to buy the top-of-the-line “Grand Touring” trim, which was running well into the $40,000 range, giving us a monthly payment of “a metric shitload.” Sarah test drove one at a dealer near where she works, but we decided we’d better start looking at used ones. I checked around a bit, and the best deals seemed to be at CarMax. The problem, of course, is that the nearest Carmax is in White Marsh, Maryland, roughly an hour from us. The bigger problem is that the Mazda we really wanted to buy (Grand Touring with nav system but no DVD, because I think DVD players built into cars are worse than terrorism) was located in Laurel, roughly another 40 minutes south. But the car had everything we wanted, so we dropped the kids off with my folks, cleaned out the Accord, and headed south.

The Carmax experience was great, and I doubt I’ll buy from them again. We’ll get to why in a moment. We met a very nice salesperson, the CX-9 drove great, they offered us a decent trade-in on the Honda and a great finance rate, so we bit the bullet and added a bit more debt to the pile.

I have to say, the car is fantastic. Easily fits all three kids; it doesn’t hold a huge amount of extraneous cargo, but that’s not really a problem except on road trips, and we have a big roof cargo tub to put on for that. The stereo is spectacular, and has an auxiliary input to connect my iPhone and listen to podcasts and weird experimental pop music (just to annoy Sarah). The acceleration is fantastic, the handling is superb, and the braking is good although I think the rotors are a bit warped (more on that in a moment as well). I still think the road noise is a bit high, but I think that’s just the way cars are built at this price level; a BMW X5 probably is better insulated, but of course costs 50% more.

Issues? Well, the nav system is a little weird. It doesn’t let you make modifications to your route while you’re moving, to keep the driver looking at the road instead of the console, but doesn’t take into account that you might have a passenger who can do it safely. Also, it gives you 2-3 options when you enter a destination: “shortest,” “fastest,” and sometimes “alternate;” the car’s definition of “fastest” leaves something to be desired. For example, we went to Ocean View for a short beach vacay a few weeks back, and the car reported that the fastest way down was this:

View Larger Map
You may notice at the bottom where you drive down through Rehoboth, Dewey Beach, and Bethany, aka the home of 35mph speed limits and countless lights. That is not the fastest way, by a long shot.

I also can’t say that I’m a fan of the autostick, because unfortunately, it’s not just a manual transmission without the clutch; it likes to think for you. If you floor it, it downshifts. For me, half the point of the manual transmission is that I can open the throttle and accelerate WITHOUT downshifting. So when it does it on my behalf, I get angry. It also will downshift when you slow down a bunch, which is fairly handy because I’ll occasionally forget to do so. Also annoyingly, the torque converter doesn’t lock up, so even when you’re staying in a single gear, the tachometer moves around a bunch depending on load and fuel delivery, which isn’t really all that bad, just disconcerting if you’re a car nerd like me.

The other issue is the brake rotors, which I think just need to be replaced, and since the car brakes fine even with the shimmying it’s not really urgent, but it leads me to why I won’t buy from Carmax again: there’s not a local franchise. They give you a 30 day warranty, but in order to get it repaired you have to go to the Carmax shop, the nearest of which is, as I mentioned, White Marsh, MD. We wanted to get the brakes taken care of, but just couldn’t find time to get down there before the warranty expired. I really enjoyed the no-haggle Carmax experience, but if we’d needed more serious repairs, getting them fixed would have been a HUGE inconvenience. If you happen to live near a Carmax, I highly recommend it. I know they recently opened a new location in Lancaster, but that’s still a solid 75 minutes away; hopefully they eventually open one near Wilmington, since my van ain’t gonna last forever and I’m gonna want a new ghettomobile at some point.

To sum up: Mazda makes nice cars, Carmax needs to open a location in northern Delaware, and if your car has a built-in DVD system because Madyszin has to be able to watch her Wizards of Waverly Place DVDs or she whines all the way to school, you might be a terrorist.

Had us a nice little vacation last week. Went down to Ocean View with the folks, ate like pigs, swam in the indoor pool in the clubhouse, chased the kids around the yard, drank entirely too much. After 3 days of this my body simply rebelled. I felt like six asses all last week. (Punctuation is important: “I felt, like, six asses all last week” would be a different matter possibly resulting in divorce proceedings, criminal charges, and PETA protests.)

Last Saturday was spent mostly at Little League, because we had the opening ceremonies, picture-taking, and the opening game, all spaced out perfectly to maximize our inconvenience. Opening ceremonies were from 8:30-9:30am, and then pictures didn’t start until 12:30, and of course the game itself was at 3pm, meaning we basically had time to go home and then drive back. I managed to at least get a little yard work done after the game, which I had to frantically finish on Sunday before friends came over, at which point my diet went out the window and I drank beer and ate barbecued flesh like I was being placed in stasis for a trip to Mars.</NERD>

But I need your help with a little bit of dream analysis, because I’m worried that I’ve edged a little closer to the deep end and treading the dark waters of sanity is becoming somewhat harrowing. (Apparently I’ve turned into H.P. Lovecraft again.)

I dreamt the other night that I had gone to see organist Peter Richard Conte perform on some kind of theatre organ, but which turned out to be very oddly operated in that he spent most of his time running around banging on drums and actually blowing on pipes with his mouth to make the sounds. Suddenly, I found myself actually in the pipe chamber with him, as he conducted some kind of interview of me, broadcast to the audience outside, in which I did some of celebrity impressions and a host of funny voices.

Apparently the audience loved this, because as I left the interview the crowd outside went nuts. I then found myself at some kind of outdoor high school bonfire being congratulated by everyone I met, assured that I would soon find great success in television, and to escape the throng I ran off towards some large field with a massive climbing net or web, a football field wide and hundreds of feet high.

I’d like to say I then dreamt Mr. Conte appeared as a big spider in the web and ate my feet, but that would not be true as actually I simply woke up.

Important note: I had gone to bed stone sober. What, in the name of all that is holy, does all of this mean? Am I, in the words of noted psychologist Kanye West, “cray?”

I’ve been thinking lately about the old trope, “I don’t care what anybody thinks.” You see it usually when somebody’s making a series of poor decisions, like “I may be fat, but I like wearing skintight leopard prints, I don’t care what you think,” or “I don’t care what people say, I’m definitely getting a tattoo of a leprechaun on my face.” Sometimes you’ll hear it as a compliment. “Oh, you know Grandma’s a little racist, but she’s just being real, she doesn’t care what anybody thinks.”

My question is: isn’t “not caring what other people think” the primary description of a sociopath? I wikipedia’d up “sociopath” and found information on what the World Health Organization describes as “dissocial personality disorder“, the first indicator of which is:

Callous unconcern for the feelings of others

If six-year-old children acted this way, they’d be given a mental health evaluation. But in healthy adults, it’s something to be admired? Why?

I’ve also heard the saying, “What people say about me when I’m not there is none of my business.” It’s true you don’t have a whole lot of control over what others say. But you do have some control, by which I mean you can control the behavior that may lead to people talking about you positively or negatively. If you routinely lie to your friends, fail to meet expectations at work, and are just generally a douchenozzle, of course people are going to say bad things about you. And when the things that one person says about you affect the way you are treated by the listener, it has suddenly become your problem. If a prospective employer calls your former boss for a reference, their conversation about you is very much your business whether you’re there or not. If a former friend of yours pulls your new girlfriend aside and says, “Look, you should be aware that Roger’s a nice guy, but he’s cheated on every girl he’s ever dated,” that is your business as well. If your boss and your friend are telling the truth, it’s pretty stupid to blame them for talking about you.

Obviously you can’t please everybody. There are going to be people out there who poop on everybody and everything, and listening to them is silly. But it seems to me that when people say “I don’t care what people think,” they mean “If you disagree with me, you’re wrong.” If you say “I’m thinking about dropping out of medical school to become a professional rugby player,” and most of the people you know respond “That’s stupid, you’re only 5-foot-2 and have the athletic ability of a tree sloth,” it’s not because they’re all haters. It’s because you said something dumb.

How about we all agree to start listening to each other’s reasoned arguments, and stop saying “What you say doesn’t matter” just because it doesn’t conform to our narrow beliefs? Or not. I mean, I don’t really care what you think.