Procrastinet

Like a Canary

filed under: Dadditudes

Ladies and gentlemen, the singing voice of Charlie Tolan.

(Sorry it's sideways - Procrastiwife forgets that you can't auto-rotate the video on her cameral...)

Cuteblogging Clearinghouse

filed under: Dadditudes

#1:

I don't know - do you think Max is excited about our trip in August?

#2:

A few moments ago we declared that it was time for Max to get into the bath. He announced that he was not going to take a bath, but was instead going right to bed. Lisa said "No way, buddy, have you seen your legs?" His legs are smurf-blue with chalk from kneeling on his chalkwork (above).

He looks down, laughs, and says happily "God damnit. Look how stupid I am."

[UPDATE/DISCLAIMER: To put this in context, he's currently fascinated by "bad words" which he knows he's not supposed to say and so, naturally, tries to use all the time. Some are mild curse words, but some are just mean or teasing words that we've cracked down on in the past. Current favorites are God Damnit, Jesus Christ, Hate and Stupid. Hopefully in that context the above story reads as cute quirky rather than heart-rendingly depressing...]

#3:

This is out of date, but I never remembered to blog it at the time. About a month ago, Max was making me recite all the pets I've ever owned (a near-daily ritual for a couple weeks). I came to the sad story of our dog Dick (so named as a pair with his sister Jane - though the "Dick & Jane" reference was lost on the rednecks who goggled at me in disbelief when I was ten years old and had to tell them my dog was named "Dick").

Dick, you see, was epileptic, and eventually died of it after he had too many seizures - about a dozen in one day. It fried his brain. He was walking into walls and turning little circles.

"He had seizures?!" asked Max, with a good deal of wonder.

"That's right," I said.

"Like TED KENNEDY?!"

100 Pushups - Week 1

filed under: Stuff you never, ever needed to know

Apparently a sudden online trend has sprung up around the site hundredpushups.com, which claims to have a regime by which you can train yourself to do 100 consecutive pushups in a 6 week program.

I'm ON THAT.

I did the "initial test" tonight, and discovered that I could do 23 and a half pushups before my arms stopped moving. I used to be able to do 25-30, so that's not a terrible dropoff. I'll start the program (a series of reps with varied intervals) tomorrow, and keep tabs here so that I can be shamed if, come August, I can not tear off a century at will.

I'm going to be SO BUFF.

That is all.

MAJOR UPDATE:

Oh, it's on. Mr. Peanuthead has signed on for the 100 pushups challenge, with a little wager to make it more interesting. In eight weeks (allowing two weeks of slide) we'll be in Tahoe for a wedding - at which point we'll go head to head to see who can do 100 pushups... FASTEST. There's $50 riding on it.

Of course, Mr. Peanuthead is, at 7 years my junior and 12 pushups fitter in the initial test, well ahead of me. Even so, fitty bucks is fitty bucks. So mid-August will find me WAY MORE BUFF than him.

UPDATE (ongoing):

Week 1/Day 1 - complete. 10 pushups, then 10 pushups, then 8, then 6, then as many as you can do (at least 7), with 60 seconds in between each.

The set of 8 started to get shaky. On the fifth of six I, um, may not have gotten all the way down. And on the sixth of the "at least 7" I definitely dipped my ankles to help sort of throw myself back up. But I got 7 - and then my arms dropped me on my face on the floor. They quit like somebody threw a switch.

It felt like somebody snuck up on me during that last set and replaced my biceps with baked potatoes. But I got through it - 41 pushups total. SO BUFF.

Week 1/Day 2 - complete(ish). 12/12/10/10/10+, 90 seconds between. On the fourth set my form went to poo on the last two, and on the fifth set I definitely started to lead with my butt on numbers 8, 9 and 10. Still, I got from nose-to-the-carpet up into the air, so I'm counting it. Sorta. 54 total pushups (49 if you leave out the bad form ones).

Woke up yesterday with knitting needles in my pecs. Seriously. Sore. Better today, just in time to get all wrecked up again.

Week 1/Day 3 - complete(ish). 15/13/10/10/15+, 2 minutes between. Kept the form more or less together through first four sets, then bonked after 9 on the last which was supposed to be 15+. So I totalled out 6 short of where I was supposed to be.

Still, 57 pushups total. Considering that 41 kicked my ass just five days ago, that's not bad.

Week 2/Day 1 (6/27) 12/12/9/7/10+, 1 minute between. Felt *way* stronger on the first set, just as cashed by the end. Did 11 in the last set, for a total of 51. Made the number required, but 6 fewer than two days ago. Hmm.

Week 2/Day 2 (6/29) 16/13/11/11/15+, 90 secs. between. I've started to suspect this program isn't all it's cracked up to be, as the number I was supposed to do today was totally impossible, and I'm only on Week 2. Rather than fall short on total, I stopped when I totally bonked but then when back to complete the set after a short rest.

So my actual set went 16/13/11/10/7/4/5. 66 total. I know in future weeks you're encouraged to repeat weeks if you can't hit your numbers, but that's looking totally inevitable and I'm left wondering who, if anybody, can actually go from 23 pushups to 100 in 6 weeks. Even the author of the site admits that, the first time he did it, he had to repeat a week.

In other news, ProcrastiWife has joined the challenge! She knocked out 9 pushups (not girl style, either) in her test, putting her in the second column. Way to go!

Week 2/Day 3 (7/2) 15/15/12/12/15+, 2 mins between. Actual was pretty close - 15/15/12/12/13/2 - w00t! Didn't feel wobbly until the last couple of the third set, and the last several of the fourth set. After second set, Lisa (who had already done hers) said "you make that look so easy." After the fourth, she said "yeah you're not making that look easy anymore..." Total: 69.

She banged out 7/7/5/4/5+ as 7/7/5/4/3, which is damn good.

Up next: I "re-test" to see how many I can do in one go.

Week Two - Re-Test - On the malodorous floor of the Rt. 9 Budget Inn, Warrensburg, NY, I banged out... 32 pushups in a row. Which is nine more than I did two weeks ago. And still 3 shy of where Mr. Peanuthead started, which makes me a little nervous about my part of this wager. Lisa is projecting "exponential" improvement in the coming weeks, which was probably just to make me feel better.

In the meantime, she cranked out 9/8/6/5/7, which is pretty damn impressive.

Introducing: DreadWhimsy!

filed under: Stuff to laugh at

Crackerjack playwright, walking good hair day and long time friend of Procrastinet Ross Maxwell has started a blog called DreadWhimsy. He captions pictures with his characteristic fractured, funny, often deeply depressing narratives. To wit:

From the introduction, entitled "What is DreadWhimsy, pray tell?":

DreadWhimsy is the deadpan comedy of the absurdly foreboding. It's the street clown caught in a terrorist attack screaming "Jesus Christ! Somebody DO something!" It's walking in on your cat chopping vegetables with a sharp knife in your kitchen in the middle of the night. It's the unwholesome stare from a red-headed child in a passing station wagon. It's whatever fills you with apprehension while involuntarily making you laugh.

It shouldn't be funny. But it is funny. And you're wrong for laughing. But I forgive you. But not really.

Enjoy.

Obama's First Nat'l TV Spot

filed under: Idle Chatter

Title: "Country I Love."

Boy, is this a good political ad.

While we're genuflecting to the Obamessiah, I just got this from the papa of Charlie's BFF, Nate Dawg:

There are many things people do not know about BARACK OBAMA. It is every American's duty to read this message and pass it along to all of their friends and loved ones.

Barack Obama's skin is the color of AMERICAN SOIL.

Barack Obama wears a FLAG PIN at all times. Even in the shower.

Barack Obama says the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE every time he sees an American flag. He also ends every sentence by saying, 'WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL.' Click here for video of Obama quietly mouthing the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE in his sleep.

A tape exists of Michelle Obama saying the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE at a conference on PATRIOTISM.

Every weekend, Barack and Michelle take their daughters HUNTING.

Barack Obama is a PATRIOTIC AMERICAN. He has one HAND over his HEART at all times. He occasionally switches when one arm gets tired, which is almost never because he is STRONG.

Barack Obama has the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE tattooed on his stomach. It's upside-down, so he can read it while doing sit-ups.

There's only one artist on Barack Obama's iPod: FRANCIS SCOTT KEY.

Barack Obama is a DEVOUT CHRISTIAN. His favorite book is the BIBLE, which he has memorized. His name means HE WHO LOVES JESUS in the ancient language of Aramaic. He is PROUD that Jesus was an American.

Barack Obama goes to church every morning. He goes to church every afternoon. He goes to church every evening. He is IN CHURCH RIGHT NOW.

Barack Obama's new airplane includes a conference room, a kitchen, and a MEGACHURCH.

Barack Obama buys AMERICAN STUFF. He owns a FORD, a BASEBALL TEAM, and a COMPUTER HE BUILT HIMSELF FROM AMERICAN PARTS. He travels mostly by FORKLIFT.

Barack Obama says that Americans cling to GUNS and RELIGION because they are AWESOME.

Heh heh.

An Exercise in Positive Visualization

filed under: Idle Chatter

This could be called an exercise in positive visualization, or, less crunchily, wishful thinking. Either way, I whiled away an idle 15 minutes at the excellent poll-aggregating site 538 and thought about November's potential electoral map.

538 collects all state level polls and weights them against their own past accuracy and against some voodoo historical derivation, to assemble a proprietary "average" electoral probability for each candidate in each state.

Based on the speeches last Tuesday by the respective candidates (the John McCain Rictus-Against-Lime-Green travesty versus the Obamessiah treatment), I'm going to assume that John McCain is already doing as well as he's going to do. He has, for years, been ensconced in the lizard brain of collective America as "a decent, steady, independent guy" and no profane flipouts at his colleagues or 95% party line voting record are going to change that.

On the flip side, as we get to know him better in the unforgiving glare of a national presidential campaign, I doubt we're going to like him better.

Obama is less well known nationally and, in general, cuts a far better figure and makes a far better impression. So I'm assuming that, as this grinds on, more people are going to shift from McCain to Obama than the other direction.

So I did a prospective electoral map based on the assumption that Obama's numbers against McCain will improve 5% across the board between now and November. Meaning he would win any state where McCain currently enjoys a lead less than 5%. If that bore out, here's what the electoral map would look like:

Oh. Oh so pretty.

Then again, if the tide really and truly turns in O's direction and garnered him a country-wide 10% bounce (I think this is more farfetched though I won't rule it out), it would look like this:

Go Blue.

Why I Dig Obama - An Allegory

filed under: Hey, What's The Big Idea

Okay, so imagine you're a freshman in high school. And there's a new required class in poetry, and some kids dig it and some are grumbling about it, but it's basically okay.

And then the popular, charming football coach gets up at a school assembly and says something hilarious and scathing about poetry, and how pointless it is, and how sissified you'd have to be to like it.

It would go something like: "When I played in high school we didn't even wear pads, and I got two concussions and broke my ribs. But it could have been worse. I could have been in poetry class." But, you know, funnier and more scathing.

In any event, it's well said, and everybody laughs.

And just like that, the knife has been put into the poetry class. It is now impossible to take it seriously, at least in public. And every time you hear a new poem, you think about that football coach making fun of it, and you take it less seriously. A couple bookish types try to point out that poetry is actually kind of nice, and they're hooted down.

Okay. So for the purposes of this discussion, that football coach is Ronald Reagan, and the quip in question is "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.'"

Back at Allegory High: the years pass. Sophomore year, there's a new teacher for the poetry class, who's pretty cool and some kids say they once saw him smoking pot, and he tries to deal with everybody thinking poetry is dumb by teaching "the collected works of Eminem," doing translations of poems into plain English, whatever.

And some people dig it. It doesn't challenge the basic premise that poetry is lame. It just points out that some of it is less lame than others, and that anyway it can still be kind of enjoyable in spite of being lame.

Let's not even talk about Junior year. Assistant Coach Jockstrap teaches poetry that year. It's a bad year for poetry.

Then, Senior Year at Allegory High, there's a new poetry teacher. He's young. He's black. He's cool. He's laid back and intense at the same time.

And here's the thing: this motherfather just LOVES poetry. Loves how it uses the language, loves how it demands an active interaction from the reader, loves the way it can express stuff with a specificity that prose can never touch.

And everybody is sitting in his class, and they get all stirred up listening to him - let's call him Mr. O - listening to Mr. O talk about poetry and what it can do.

And Mr. O is so damn cool that all the boys want his approval and all the girls have crushes on him and everybody's talking about poetry class while they're in the lunchroom.

And by jiminy, Allegory High has itself a little poetry renaissance.

So.

If Mr. Leatherhead the football coach stands for Ronald Reagan, then "poetry" stands for the idea that the government can and should actually help people.

The Reagan era caused a shift. Suddenly, believing in the government's ability to help meant you were a rube and a ninny. It took the New Deal/Ask Not paradigm of civic governance and left it bleeding in some busboy's lap.

Bill Clinton is the first President that I cast a vote for, and the first politician that I took personally. But in hindsight, looking at the difference between Clintonian politics and Obamian politics, I see that for all the good he did and even more he tried to do, he didn't shift that paradigm back.

He didn't even try. He made a point of doing exactly what was possible and nothing more. And, in some critical cases, he sold out the principles of a liberal/progressive society entirely (Don't Ask/Don't Tell, welfare "reform," the Defense of Marriage Act, etc.).

"You'll never get these kids to like poetry," say the Clintons (allegorically). "Just give 'em what they want and maybe slip a little poetry in around the edges. If you think you can change their minds, you're a damn fool."

Maybe they were right, at the time.

Barack Obama wants to restore the idea that the purpose of government is not to get out of the way, but to do good. To help. That's the big-C "CHANGE" he wants everybody to believe in. From the Obama website:

Amid the partisanship and bickering of today's public debate, he still believes in the ability to unite people around a politics of purpose - a politics that puts solving the challenges of everyday Americans ahead of partisan calculation and political gain. (emphasis mine)

Mr. O of Allegory High got the kids back into poetry both by what he said and who he was. In Barack Obama, with his incredible reserves of personal charisma, there's a match between the message and the messenger.

Paradigms don't shift easy. Obama's got a big hill to climb, but he's the first guy I've seen who looks like he actually has a chance to climb it.

Ronald Reagan wasn't a demigod, he wasn't the Messiah, he was just the right guy with the right thing to say at the right time. He was the delivery vector for a thought virus, and we're fighting the cognitive infection to this day.

Obama wants to be the cure.

History

filed under: Hey, What's The Big Idea