It’s been about a month since I’ve posted anything the AHT, and since I bragged about it over the weekend, I thought I’d better get to writing so I don’t look like a bigger idiot than normal.
So, what to write about? It isn’t like there has been a shortage of stupidity to comment on lately. Just because Obama was reelected doesn’t mean that that everyone came to their senses. The problem seems to be that when I see something stupid, my source is usually online, and frankly, writing about it is just reinventing the wheel. I mean, why bother writing up some snarky essay when something is already online?
This morning though, I had an idea. How about instead of writing an article on just one story I post several links with associated brief comments from me? It’s a new approach for me, so if you’re one of the people that reads this, let me know what you think.
Here’s the first article. The ranking member on the State of Washington’s House Transportation Committee, Mr. Ed Orcutt (R – Go figure) sent an email (where he screwed up the possessive form of “cyclist’s” by the way) to a constituent where he actually argued that because humans breathe out CO2, we are more polluting than automobiles (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/03/washington-republican-riding-bicycles-causes-more-pollution-than-cars/ ). I think Mr. Orcutt took the Disney movie Cars too literally.
I’m somewhat disheartened at how little we (by which I mean both my circles of friends and the country in general) are talking about the sequester and the massive funding cuts that took affect on March 1. This isn’t something that happened by accident or snuck up on us. Both Democrats and Republicans INTENTIONALY BUILT THE SEQUESTER INTO THE SYSTEM IN 2011!!!! Maybe we aren’t talking about it, or raising arms up to fight it, because it’s just so big that it’s difficult to get your head around. Here’s a handy explanation (http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/03/the-sequester-explained ). Again, even though 100 Senators and 435 House members, as well as 1 President, knew damn well that these funding cuts, $109 billion per YEAR, were going to happen for almost two years, they came and went. Fuck you all, Washington.
I have only recently discovered Right Wing Watch (http://www.rightwingwatch.org/). Take a look at it. It’s sort of an online clearing house of mental deficiency and I could write a book of snarky comments just on what’s on their home page, but I’ll restrain myself here and only note that Pat Robertson thinks that demons can be brought into your home via new clothing (http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/robertson-worth-praying-over-clothes-rebuke-demons ). Now, seriously, Dear Reader, how can you expect me to comment any further? What can I possibly say about Pat Robertson to make him seem MORE crazy? Obvious crazy is obvious.
One piece of happy news though. The U.S. House of Representatives flipped their position and reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act, including provisions for the LGBT community, nonprotected immigrants, and Native Americans (http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/02/gop-violence-against-women-act-passes )! Of course, the majority of the bigots from the Republican party voted against it, but it wasn’t enough as some of their own members broke ranks and joined the Democrats. Credit where it’s due, it’s great that it passed, but should it have taken a year and a half? Probably not, but it’s there now. Of course, Obama still needs to sign it . . .
That’s good for now. Again, let me know what you think. Frankly, I wish there was more feedback from people. I wouldn’t mind getting into a dialogue over some of the stuff I put out. Also, early on, I wrote that there would be an associated podcast. Is there any interest in that? I’m thinking of something were the topic changes from week to week and I talk to different people from different communities. Let me know.
If you have any questions, comments, criticisms, things you’d like to see me comment on, or something you would like to discuss, you can contact me at angryhappytruth@gmail.com.
If you’re like me, you are an office bound middle management type who remembers that mythical time when you were in the “best shape of your life”. You’re pushing middle age and now the “shape” you most resemble isn’t so much the “best” as it is the “roundest”. You’ve tried to do different things in the past to return to your former glory. You’ve spent money, but not necessarily time, on diet books, gym memberships, and maybe even personal trainers. In the end though, your job, your family, and your middle management type lifestyle just sort of gets in the way, to the point that you tell yourself, “What the hell do I need to be in shape for anyway? All I do is push a mouse around a desk all day.”
The thing is, if you’re like me, you’re lying to yourself and you know it. Fair or not, people judge each other on appearances, and you assume that you’re being judged harshly.
I have been in and out of gyms for almost twenty years. I have read or listened to countless books and podcasts about working out, nutrition, health, and fun stuff like that. At the beginning of the year, I decided to put everything I’ve learned together and see if I can’t return to some measure of my past glory, that being about three years ago when I was training for my ill-fated experiment with the National Guard (that’s another story). I joined yet another gym and started to monitor my progress.
After a little over a month, I’m seeing real results for the first time since 2010. As a matter of public service, I decided to pass on to you, Dear Reader, what I’ve learned. Note here, if you are one of those people who is an actual athlete, I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to Mr. and Mrs. Middle Management here. If you want something more advanced or technical, go read a blog by someone who knows what they’re talking about. Besides, this isn’t so much advice on what exercises to do or what food to eat. It’s more advice about how to approach this new hobby of yours.
Before I begin though, I want to explain a couple terms. A “rep”, short for repetition, is one single execution of an exercise. A “set” is a number of reps that you do the exercise for before stopping for a break. To illustrate, on a bench press, you begin with your arms fully extended and holding a barbell above your chest. When you bring it down, touch your chest, and return your arms to their extended position, that’s one rep. If you do that ten times and then quit, you’ve done one set of ten reps.
Anyway, here we go. Good luck, and remember, I’m just sharing what I’ve learned myself. I’m not a professional trainer, so mileage may vary.
Find a plan and stick to it
There’s a tendency for new gym members to just wonder in and do whatever looks fun or easy. It’s great that you’re in the gym in the first place, because that shows initiative, but you really won’t see any progress if you don’t go in with a plan. If you don’t see progress in the gym, you likely won’t keep giving them money and going, and then you’re just back where you started.
That’s why it’s important to have a plan. It doesn’t matter what plan you choose and I’m not going to speak about specific merits about different workout plans, except to say that you should be in the gym three days a week, lifting weights for about half an hour, and then doing cardio for about half an hour. Oh yeah, if you can do that cardio one extra time a week, that would be great.
Being new, you probably don’t have any idea about how to put a workout plan together. Don’t run out and buy a new book for this or pay for an expensive trainer! If you’re reading this, you’re on the internet, so go to YouTube and watch some videos or find some personal trainers’ websites or blogs. Lots of personal trainers have videos or other forms of free advice up, and lots of those trainers have suggested beginner workout plans. Pick one and stick to it for at least a month. Just make sure that your plan includes half an hour of weight lifting and half an hour of cardio.
You should know what your goal is for your weight training at the beginning. If you are looking for muscle stamina and endurance, your lifting will be different than if you are looking for strength, which will be different yet again from body building. You likely won’t spend much time on YouTube or the internet before running into arguments over what the “best” workout is. Screw all that noise. Pick something and do it.
I’ve lifted weights for years looking for strength. Lifts of these kinds were usually heavy weights with five reps in five sets. Sometimes I’d mix it up and do not-quite-so-heavy weights with eight reps in three sets. If you spend any time researching this, you’ll recognize this as the “3×8 vs. 5×5” debate. Lately, because my goals have changed, I’ve decided to ignore all that and do four sets of ten reps (4×10) with low weights. Whatever you pick, just stay with it.
Do your own time
Having found a plan that works for you, and having stuck to it for a week or two, it’s only natural to look around and see what other people in the gym are doing. Wow, look at how much that guy is benching! Oooh, look at that clean and jerk! How cool it would be if you could do that too, huh? So you start to look at your own plan like it’s so much used toilet paper.
Don’t fall into that trap. The guy on the bench press who impresses you so much might be training for a competitive powerlifting event, something you aren’t likely doing. The guy on the clean and jerk (not as dirty as it sounds, go look it up) might be getting ready for his senior year of football, which, if you’ve read this far, you definitely aren’t doing. Those guys are in the gym for their reasons and you are there for yours, and their reasons aren’t the same as yours.
That’s what I mean when I say to do your own time. That was advice I first saw in The Shawshank Redemption and it got driven home during my failed National Guard experiment. Essentially, I mean that you’re walking your path, which is likely different from everyone else in that gym. Mind your own business for now. Later, if you start to feel like you’re getting the hang of this workout stuff, by all means ask for advice, but until then, trust me, Butterball, stay on your path.
While on the subject of advice, you’ll occasionally get that Friendly Dude who wants to give you a few tips from his storehouse of knowledge. If you’re a guy, Friendly Dude will most likely accost you in the locker room. If you’re a gal, Friendly Dude will approach you right on the floor, likely when you’re in the middle of a workout. Strangely, Friendly Dude will talk to gals longer than guys. In either case, smile, nod, and thank him for his advice. Then just get back to what you’re doing.
Once you’ve been to the gym a few times, you’ll start to figure out who knows what they’re doing and who’s just there for Amateur Hour at the Improv. It’s perfectly acceptable to approach someone and ask for advice, but if you’re offered unsolicited advice in the gym (and most of the rest of the arena of your life, come to think about it), just file the information in your memory banks and move on.
Worry about the sets, not the reps
When I changed my workout a few weeks ago, I went from five sets of five reps to four sets of ten reps on the bench press. I’d been bench pressing 185 pounds for five reps for some of my sets. However, I knew that I couldn’t do that for the new workout, so I lowered the weight to 135 pounds. Guess what? Even though I was working with fifty pounds less weight, I couldn’t do two complete sets. So, instead of finishing with two sets of fewer reps, I lowered the weight (and felt the ping to my ego while I did so) and finished the twenty more reps I wanted to at the lower weight.
Whatever your routine is, finish the sets with all the reps. Maintain the correct form for each exercise all the way through all the reps. If your weights are too heavy for you to finish the set, you’ll start to lose form and cheat to finish. This is when you see things like when guys arch their backs to lift the benchpress they’re straining against or something like that. Once you start doing that, you aren’t doing the exercise anymore. You’ve morphed it into something else. Besides, working out with a poor form is a great way to hurt yourself.
Admittedly, this can be a little hard to judge. I mean, you are supposed to be pushing yourself, right? I’m not talking about when that next-to-last rep is forcing you to push hard, I’m talking about when your body contorts to make that rep happen. If you start to lose form, stop, lower the weight your working with, and get back to it. Once you finish the set, honestly evaluate yourself and decide on whether to lower the weight further for your next set.
This applies to your cardio as well. If you decide that you’re going to jog on a treadmill for your cardio, don’t be afraid to back the speed of the treadmill down if you’re uncomfortable. Again, complete the thirty minutes. The time is the key, not the speed of the treadmill. Thirty minutes that push you a little bit are way better than fifteen minutes that push you over the edge.
The only caution I’d say here is that you shouldn’t lower the weights or slow yourself down so much that you aren’t challenged. When I lowered my bench press that time, I didn’t slap five pound weights on the barbell and lift 55 pounds. I took it down 10 pounds and tried again. A good way to think about your weight training is that, however many sets and reps you’re doing, the last rep should challenge you. Cardio is a little bit more subjective to judge, but because I’m running on a treadmill, I like to see how many simulated miles I run in thirty minutes. If that keeps going up, then I’m happy.
If you’re curious, my bench press, which is still at four sets of ten reps, has now reached the point where I’m finishing with 145 pounds. Trust me, you’ll make gains.
Have fun
If you aren’t training for a specific event, then there isn’t any specific exercise in the gym that you have to do. Yes, you are there to work out and push yourself, but if your chosen workout routine has you doing squats three days a week and you find you hate doing squats, switch it out with something else! Yes, squats are awesome, full body exercises, but you know what? They suck! They are so awesome because they are tough to perform with good form, especially when you start stacking on the weights. Furthermore, if you have a lower back issue, they can be somewhat painful to perform.
You should look forward to coming to the gym, and if your workout plan has you squatting three days a week and you hate them and make your back sore the next morning, you won’t look forward to coming to the gym. Instead, you’ll dread it, and that will just take away your initiative. Do that long enough and pretty soon you’ll just go find something else to do with your time.
I chose squats for my example because that happened to me. My workout plan alternates between two different routines, but at the beginning, both started off with squats. Bench presses, which I like doing, only got hit every other workout, meaning that some weeks, I was only benching once a week. But those damn squats were always there, staring me right in the face. After a couple weeks, I simply swapped out the bench press and the squats on my plan. Suddenly, I was squatting every other time and benching every workout. That was awesome for me, and even when I changed to my “high rep/low weight” workout, I kept the bench press and squats where they were.
This rule especially applies to cardio though. I jog on a treadmill. Fine for me, but you might think of that as cruel torture. Okay then, don’t jog on a treadmill! Choose something else. Maybe your gym has a pool and you can swim. Maybe you can ride a stationary bike. Maybe you can play racquetball or basketball or something like that. Or maybe you just walk a quick pace and start to sneak one or two minute jogs in when you are able. It doesn’t matter what you do for cardio, as long as you like it and it makes your heart beat a little faster.
Just don’t get carried away with this rule though. Yes, have fun, but remember that you’re in the gym to get healthier and fitter. The only way to do that is to push yourself physically. You are therefore going to have to learn to live with discomfort and sweat, at least until you hit the shower afterward. But within that context, enjoy what you’re doing. Don’t do something just because someone else says it’s good or because your workout plan says it’s time to do it in black and white. Do something because it’s effective and you, at least, don’t mind doing it, but hopefully think it’s fun.
Recent discussions that I’ve had with hospital executives and experiences with my horrible insurance company (I don’t want to name names, but their initials are MedBen) have driven home my belief that more and more, we need to take responsibility for our own health. That doesn’t mean that we should all be Spartan warriors, but it does mean that anything we can do to keep our money out of the hands of the corporate health care system is a good thing. Trust me when I say that hospitals speak well of all-you-can-eat buffets because they cultivate new customers! Truest me when I say that more and more, insurance companies will try to screw you! So, let’s stop relying on hospitals and insurance companies and start taking responsibility for our own health.
If you have any questions, comments, criticisms, things you’d like to see me comment on, or something you would like to discuss, you can contact me at angryhappytruth@gmail.com.
Hey everyone. Things are pretty weird around the world right now. North Korea says that they want to test fire missiles and are daring the USA to stop them. In Russia, legislation has been introduced into their legislature that would outlaw public display of homosexuality. In New Mexico, a Republican woman has introduced legislation that would make in criminal to have an abortion in cases of rape because you’d be destroying evidence, which is an obvious end run around abortion laws. On top that that, there’s the usual partisan bullshit that seems to stifle any and all progress toward solving real problems in the country.
This has to stop. We have to start working together to solve the real issues facing the world today. I’ve written about some of those issues before. Basically, we need a plan for saving the world.
Lucky for you, I’m here to help.
Here’s my steps for “saving the world”. Even if they don’t make the Earth a utopia, I promise that if we can take these steps, we’ll have a funner world to live in.
Stop caring what other people are doing.
Seriously, mind your own business. Do your own time. Whatever cliché you want to use, it comes down to worrying about yourself and not other people. This applies to individuals and nations. If someone is doing something that you personally don’t want to do or don’t agree with, it likely doesn’t concern you anyway. Every ounce of energy that you spend worrying about what someone else is doing is an ounce of energy that you can’t spend on yourself. This applies to abortion clinics, bars, churches, and whatever you can think of. If you are an evangelical, I don’t agree with your evangelical gathering, so I don’t go. You don’t agree with my bar, so you decide that the proper course of action is to show up and picket. Fuck off! If you don’t want to drink beer with me, just go home and pray and leave me alone. To paraphrase your own book, don’t throw fucking stones while your house looks like shit.
This applies to nations as well. How much shit in the Middle East would clear up if Muslims stopped thinking of other religious practitioners as infidels that need to be killed to appease their particular brand of Sky Father? You want to pray to Allah under the direction of your theocracy, that’s fine, but stop worrying about my Xbox or my bar. Or our women for that matter.
As I sit here writing this, I’m listening to Pandora and the station is playing Lady Gaga. What a great example she is. So many people complain and bitch about how she dresses, but you know what? She’s not hurting you. She’s creating and she’s expressive. People that complain about her are spending energy complaining and not creating anything themselves.
That’s the first step toward saving the world then. Look into the mirror and worry about who you see there. Everyone and everything else is beyond your concern unless you’re being paid to worry, like a doctor or something.
Do what makes you happy.
Most people have one or two things in their lives that they are passionate about. I might too, Dear Reader. Go do them! For some people, their passion might be bowling. For others it’s fishing. Still others love crossdressing and hanging around in bars, just like Monty Python sang about. Whatever, as long as it makes you happy and it’s legal (more on this in step three), then go for it. As I’ve written before, live your intent!
Now, I’m not stupid. What makes you happy often isn’t what you do to make money. If that’s the case (and I can relate, believe me), think of your job as the ends to the means. Watching hockey might be your passion, and unfortunately, no one will pay you to be a professional hockey game watcher, but someone might pay you to be an auto mechanic. So, be an auto mechanic to the best of your ability, make your money, pay your bills, and use the money left over for your hockey tickets or a bitchin’ big television and the cable hockey package!
Again, consider Lady Gaga. She’s presumably doing what makes her happy, and the result is the creative output that I listen to on Pandora. That’s her way. Your way might be flannel shirts, work boots, and a hunting blind at dawn. Awesome for you. Lady Gaga does her thing to be happy and you do yours. She produces new material that entertains me in the office and you put food on your table. In the end then, because you are each doing what makes you happy, everything’s fine.
At least until your passions conflict.
Don’t be a dick.
While you’re not worrying about what I’m doing and doing what makes you happy, I won’t worry about what you’re doing either, unless what you’re doing infringes on my ability to do what I’m doing. What? Here’s an analogy. I have the undisputed right to play my ipod at work. If the volume gets too loud and disrupts people outside my office, they have the right to ask me to turn it down. Not off, just down. That’s fine, cooperative behavior that’s part of a successful civilization.
This third rule is why, in the end, we need some laws. Now, don’t get me wrong. Every law that legislates morality or that is based on Sky Daddy-ism needs to be stricken from our books. Every county in the country that won’t let me buy beer with my money because of some outdated dry law based needs to get rid of that law because it’s enforced morality. However, if your passion is drinking a bottle of Jack and driving really fast on the freeway, you are interfering with my passion, which at that moment might be getting my son safely to a pizza place. You are being a dick, and I 100% support Officer Friendly when he pulls you over and you lose your license.
If you are following your hunting passion in step two in the middle of the woods, I don’t have any issue with you, and in fact, I might be doing the same thing. If you set your blind up in my backyard, then we have an issue.
Conclusion
So, in a nutshell, live your passion, don’t get your panties in a bunch about what other people do when living their passions, and if their passion gets in the way of your passion, do something about it legally and sanely.
I’ve got an eight year old son, and it’s amazing to watch how kids follow my suggestions automatically. Kids run up to each other and say, “Want to play?” The answer might be yes and they run off and play. If the answer is no, no harm or foul and the kids play their separate games. If they play together for a while and one kid gets bored, they either agree to change the game as a group or the bored kid will just break off and do something else. The end result is that my kid might play Star Wars and pretend to be a Clone Trooper by himself while another group of boys are playing tag. None of the kids get after anyone else. If kids can cooperate and coexist on a playground instinctively then there is only one reason that adults can’t, and that’s the intentional abandonment of reason.
We are all on this planet together, and it would be such a much more fun ride if we could play nice together.
If you have any questions, comments, criticisms, things you’d like to see me comment on, or something you would like to discuss, you can contact me at angryhappytruth@gmail.com.
It a truth of my existence that I’ve been depressed. I’ve said many times to many people that I remember when life was fun.
It’s time to reinvent my life. I’m tired of being told to see the glass as “Half Full” when the damn glass is smaller than it used to be in the first place. I’m tired of working a thankless job for a boss I don’t philosophically agree with. I’m tired of hiding who and what I really am. I want to help people get healthy and stronger.
I’ve had major mental issues over the last four and a half years over what’s happened with my life. I have experienced a lost job, a lost home, broken relationships, lost friends, deepening debt, and a move to a new state away from my home. I’ve never given up or quit, and almost everything that has happened to me has been beyond my control. I was lied to about my job security in 2007. I interviewed with several companies but couldn’t force them to hire me for nine months. When I did get a new job, I couldn’t force Bank of America (Fucking Bastards) to work with me on my mortgage. As for the friends and family, well, I still don’t know what I did except move out of state for the job I eventually got.
This feeling got me to evaluate my resume. Here’s an interesting thing that I found.
My career began in February 2000, meaning that I’ve done my career for thirteen years. In that time, based on my resume, I’ve developed nine major skills. Those are:
- Personnel Management
- Project Management
- Group Facilitator
- Professional Writing
- Public Speaking
- Enforcement Officer
- GIS (Computer maps)
- Data Analysis
- Site Evaluation
Seven of those skills originated in the first five years of my career. Personnel Management and Enforcement Officer are skills that I picked up five and three years ago, respectively. When I moved to my present state in September 2008, I left behind GIS. Of those nine skills, I only actively practice four of them (and Data Analysis is barely registering to tell the truth), and the two that I thought of as the cornerstones of my career, GIS and Public Speaking, I don’t do anymore. In addition, I haven’t taken on a new professional skill in almost three years.
What do I do now? I’m a Personnel Manager, a Project Manager, and a Professional Writer every day, and a Data Analyst every once in a while. I haven’t done GIS, which I went to school to do and which got me into my career, for almost six years. I haven’t spoken to a crowd of more than five people in more than a year. I haven’t learned anything new in almost three.
In Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Self Actualization is at the top. For years, I got that through my career. At some point, which based on my resume happened about the time I moved to Kentucky, my career no longer supplied that. That shutting off of Self Actualization means that within the Maslow-ian structure, I have slipped down the pyramid. That has made me less satisfied with life and depressed.
Now that I’ve identified the issue, and for the first time in three years I think I have, then I need to decide what to do about it. Any ideas?
If you have any questions, comments, criticisms, things you’d like to see me comment on, or something you would like to discuss, you can contact me at angryhappytruth@gmail.com.
Sorry it’s been so long. I’m working on a post that should be up in a week or so.
Well, here it is, December 21, 2012, and the world hasn’t ended yet. Looks like those New Age sewage believers who can’t predict their way to their own wealth but claim the ability to read ancient Mayan glyphs were wrong. Who would have thought, huh?
Still, it’s 10:42 AM Eastern Standard Time as I write this, so there are a few hours left in the day for the end of the world to come. So, I guess I’d better write something for the Angry Happy Truth blog, just in case.
I thought it might be interesting to look at the year 2012. I can’t promise this will be the last blog post of the year, but I can’t promise it won’t either. So, in no particular order, including chronologically, here are things that happened in 2012 and some brief thoughts from the Angry Happy Truther (that’s me, if you are too slow to figure that out). Be forewarned, this list is subjective, somewhat opinionated, and poorly researched.
- The New York Giants won the Super Bowl. That sucked, because they beat the New England Patriots and I’m a huge Tom Brady fan.
- The San Francisco Giants swept the Detroit Tigers in the World Series. That uber-sucked. I’m originally from Michigan and a Tiger fan. I could say a lot, but I’ll just say this. If you are the Triple Crown winner in the American League and you strike out LOOKING AT FUCKING STRIKE THREE to end the World Series, you don’t deserve the MVP. Yeah, I know the MVP voting is done prior to the post season, but still . . .
- Some nut job walked into a midnight premiere of Bat Man: The Dark Knight Rises in Colorado dressed as the Joker (who didn’t appear in this movie, by the way) and killed a bunch of people. The general opinion was that this was a horrible tragedy but it isn’t time to talk about gun control.
- Some nut job last week walked into Sandy Hook elementary in Connecticut and killed 26 people, including 20 children. The general opinion is that this was a horrible tragedy and maybe talking about gun control isn’t a bad idea.
- The National Hockey League owners locked out the players and kept the season from opening. It still isn’t open, and the NHL has gone ahead and canceled all games through January 14th, over half of the season. The worst thing to me personally is that I don’t get to go to Michigan Stadium on New Year’s Eve and see the Red Wings and the Maple Leafs play.
- President Obama won re-election, easily winning the electoral vote but narrowly winning the popular vote. This shows two things. First, our nation’s election system is stupid (right Al Gore?). Second, it really is scary just how close that robotic Mormon reptilian alien named Romney came to running this country. Really people? Come on.
- In the same election, in Missouri, Rep. Todd “legitimate rape” Akin lost his Senate bit to a woman, Claire McCaskill. That ruled.
- Since I had to actually look that Akin bit up (because I wanted to make sure I got Ms. McCaskill’s name right), it worth mentioning that, in Indiana, Rep. Joe Donnelly beat Richard “God intends rape” Mourdock. Well done, people!
- The Avengers came out. It ruled.
- Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast, flooding New York City and destroying homes in the north Atlantic states. Two of the cast members from Comic Book Men, Mike Zapcic and Walter Flanagan, lost their homes, but Jay & Silent Bob’s Secret Stash was all right. Comic Book Men, in its second season, will resume on AMC in February.
- The Summer Olympics were held in London. Michael Phelps won a bunch of medals, most of them gold, and became the most decorated Olympian in history.
- The Miami Heat beat the Oklahoma City Thunder for the NBA Title. Now everyone can quit bitching about LeBron James. Except you Cleveland fans. You can bitch about him all you want.
- Neil Armstrong died in August. He was the first man to walk on the moon, unless you believe those “moon hoaxer” nut jobs.
- “Innocence of Muslims”, a poorly made movie privately funded by a rich guy who was later arrested for tax evasion, gains sudden attention despite being out on Youtube for over a year. The Islamic world response is measured, controlled, and dignified. Hah! Just kidding! I posted a blog post in September where I detail the “highlights of the Islamic world’s response.”
- The one year anniversary of the Occupy movement came and went without incident, except that some people got together at the same place in Wall Street and then went home.
Well, that’s about it for the list. Like I warned you, this list is subjective and poorly researched, although everything listed is truthful, at least to the best of me knowledge. As to my personal life, I never did manage to launch the Angry Happy Truth podcast I promised in earlier posts. I’ve had some miner medical issues that have ended up costing me almost $3,000 because MedBen is a fucking evil company that lies about what they will and will not cover and can die in a fire.
Overall, 2012 was a strange year that leaves me wondering if it wouldn’t have been better if the New Age sewage nut jobs hadn’t been right about the Mayan prophecies after all. Oops, I had better be careful, my cynicism is showing!
One last thing, good reader you! Whatever or whoever you are doing this holiday season, remember to do it (or him or her) with intent and passion! Drink enough to be happy while staying safe, and don’t drink so much that you become ‘that guy’ at the party. Stay happy, stay alive, and I’ll see you on the other side of midnight on New Year’s day.
If you have any questions, comments, criticisms, things you’d like to see me comment on, or something you would like to discuss, you can contact me at angryhappytruth@gmail.com.
I had a rough day yesterday. It was difficult to explain though. I was furiously angry and found it difficult to control. Why? I was asked that several times by Mrs. Me and friends, but the tough part was that there wasn’t anything I could do anything about.
That led me to think about the nature of anger and it hit me. There are two different flavors of anger, and it somehow seems appropriate that I would write about it today on Pearl Harbor Day.
The first kind of anger, and in my humble (not so much) opinion the easiest kind of anger to deal with, is actionable anger. That’s when the thing that makes you angry comes from a source that you can do something about. Actionable anger gives you something to point at when someone asks what’s wrong. What made the United States so angry on December 7, 1941? That Japanese attack. The collective population of the United States could point at that attack and rally to action around it.
That rallying around the attack, that’s what makes actionable anger so potentially useful. If there is a source of your anger that you can point at, then you might be able to do something about that thing, thus motivating you to action, which is successful will lead to feelings of happiness and a sense of accomplishment and a boost of your ego. This is the turning of anger into action, and that’s a positive outcome.
Involuntary anger is a much harder issue to deal with. This is the type of anger that comes from worry and anxiety, usually resulting from having to deal with something that is beyond your control. To this day, I’m still angry about the circumstances around losing my job, losing my house, and leaving my home state. I can be as angry as I want to be and I can state my desire to see my former boss suffering from stomach cancer in a part of the world where they have never heard of morphine, but there isn’t a damn thing I can do about the situation. I didn’t get a vote on whether or not I could keep my job. Bank of America didn’t ask my opinion on my house (fuck them). The best you can hope for in a situation like this is to take your medicine, live on, and do the best you can, sort of like rebuilding after a house fire.
Why am I angry now? I don’t want to get into specifics here, but the basic issue is that I know what I want this holiday season to look like and I know what this holiday season is shaping up to look like, and those aren’t the same thing and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it. The lack of money, the having to be places, the having to put with people and put on a smile I don’t believe in, it’s all grating to me when all I want for Christmas is a cabin in the woods . . . alone.
If you have any questions, comments, criticisms, things you’d like to see me comment on, or something you would like to discuss, you can contact me at angryhappytruth@gmail.com.
Hello everyone. I apologize for taking so long between posts. I have begun hearing from a few people, and I’m glad to have a few fans out there.
This post isn’t going to be angry or philosophical or anything like that. It’s something I thought of today regarding the “rewards” we get from corporations and their true costs.
I have a pretty large commute for my job, and as a regular traveler, I’ve come to appreciate Speedways. There are a lot of them on my route, including three within one mile of each other as I approach my office. They hooked me with their Speedy Rewards a few years back.
I have a credit card sized Speedy Rewards card in my wallet. I swipe it at the gas pump before swiping my debit or credit card and then my Speedy Reward account gets points. The amount of points earned depends on how much I spend. The Speedy Rewards card works the same way inside the store when I buy snacks and drinks and stuff.
There are electronic kiosks inside Speedways that allow me to redeem my points for “free” shit. You swipe the Speedy Rewards card, log into the system, and using a touch screen, select your reward.
My favorite reward, at least until this morning, was the “Any size drink” reward. I can go to the kiosk, go through the process, and get a printed receipt for any size fountain drink or coffee that I like. This includes the 44 ounce soft drink (I call it ‘pop’ because I’m originally from Michigan).
Pretty awesome, right? You buy shit, and you get rewarded with free shit! Yay! Everybody wins!
Actually, the 44 ounce pop is the most expensive drink you can get.
The “Any size drink” reward is 900 points. To give you an idea of what it takes to collect that number of points, I bought a 32 ounce pop today, along with some gas.
I bought $20.01 in gas, and that gave me 59 points. I then bought the 32 ounce Diet Coke for $1.25 and earned 24 more points. Evidentially, you earn more points buying food and drinks than gas, and in fact there are usually “Points specials” in the store that lets you earn bonus points for buying certain merchandise, but the gross total for me this morning was $21.26 spent for 83 points.
At that rate, I would need to spend $230.53 for the 900 points I need for the “free” 44 ounce pop. To compare, I bought a similar sized pop at a baseball game this summer for $8, and people bitch about the price of concessions at sporting events!
If you have any questions, comments, criticisms, things you’d like to see me comment on, or something you would like to discuss, you can contact me at angryhappytruth@gmail.com.
I heard a speech this morning that Chuck Pagano gave to the Indianapolis Colts yesterday after they beat the Miami Dolphins 23-20. Pagano is the head coach of the Colts, but earlier this year, he was forced to take a leave to get treatment for leukemia. He had to make a special trip to visit his team in the locker room after the game and his speech struck a chord with me.
Pagano praised the Colts for “living in a vision, not circumstances.”
You know what? I remember when I lived my life like that. Life was fun. Living in a vision means that you’re living your life and following your heart’s truth. Living in circumstances will bog you down and force you to focus on the negative circumstances in your life.
If you have any questions, comments, criticisms, things you’d like to see me comment on, or something you would like to discuss, you can contact me at angryhappytruth@gmail.com.
I’m a professional government wonk. I might have said that before. What that means is that, aside from feeling like a hypocrite (or undercover spy!) on some of my political views, I work in an office environment. Like, I can’t watch Office Space because too much of it comes off as a documentary and it depresses the shit out of me.
Anyway, one of the things about office environments are the non-work related bullshit that you occasionally have to put up with. I’m talking about the congratulatory stuff that you get together and ‘celebrate’, like the people you work with would be anything close to friends if you weren’t forced to work together in a professional environment.
We have a woman in our office who is celebrating her 60th birthday. That stuff I just wrote about being forced to be nice to the douches you work because of the environment, I don’t apply that to her. She’s been nothing but nice to me since I started her. Beyond that, she gets my sympathy vote too, because she’s turning out to be a breeding ground for cancer.
She’s been in and out of chemo twice since I started here. She often can’t come in or has to leave early because of the frequent doctor appointments or nauseousness that comes with her particular flavor of cancer treatment. Once, she was put in the emergency room during a routine (as ‘routine’ as it can be with fucking cancer anyway) because the medical people discovered a hole in her skin that gave open access to her insides! Holy Fuck, right? Through it all, she’s been a very nice person and strikingly upbeat and positive.
So it pisses my shit off to see how this fucking office is celebrating. The admin staff decorated her desk and office area with shit that calls her ‘Over the Hill’. Not, ‘Congratulations for Making It’, but ragging on her for being old.
I’m taking it too personally, I know, but it’s tacky and stupid. Don’t call the cancer fighter ‘Over the Hill’, like she’s about to be sent out to pasture. Call her a fucking awesome person that has not yet begun to fight and ask her who she’ll celebrate her fucking 70th birthday!
I’m taking this too personally because cancer has been a theme in my family history. The latest close encounter is my mother, who recently passed the one year mark as free and clear from breast cancer.
If you have any questions, comments, criticisms, things you’d like to see me comment on, or something you would like to discuss, you can contact me at angryhappytruth@gmail.com.
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