C.A. Lang's Blog, page 7

Book signing nuances

Today I did a book signing at Chapters. Until now, it’s been independent bookstores with little traffic. This time it was in a mall. A sunday,  but still a buttload more traffic than all previous signings put together.

On the plus side, I had zero instances of this:

“Did you write this book?”

“Yes.”

“Good for you.” (Walk away)

I  mean, any opportunity to talk is good, but after ten of those it can feel a bit futile.

Being that I’m a bit of an attention whore, still the above exchange is infinitely more preferable to an empty store. Kind of like what happens when you show up a week early in high summer, on a day when they’ve shut down the street for a car show. True story. Zero sales. Yup.

Even slow signings are fun though. Looking back, I have fond memories of being stationed in front of the magazine rack. Why? Because i got to people watch. In that case, specifically people watch the creepers who rifle through the top shelves. Think  of any pervert cliche. It’s actually true. Pervs are fascinating and revolting to witness.

Another activity I enjoyed was Couple Judging. In this activity, one watches couples in a retail environment and decides arbitrarily how suited they are to one another, and how long they may last. One awkard situation for the neurotic overanalytic author is the couple copy. When you sign a book to a couple, and you’re a neurotic overanalytic writer, you might worry about how long that couple will endure, and if its viability crumbles, what will become of that signed copy?

That sounds like a line, but I actually worried about that. But on the other hand, a joint-novel-signing could be an adorable minor symptom of  commitment.

Book signings are also good for drinking too much coffee.

Anyway. Yes, I’ve started a sequel. It’s going to be awesome. If, that is, I ever finish it. I’ve got a potential gigantic levy due for building repairs and need to save for an engineering technology program next year. I mean, unless I suddenly sell a million books. Barring that, I need to get real and find a career. Part of that is going to mean working a second shit job. So.

Yep. Writing is so glamourous.

Spin Class Asskicking; Adrenal Fatigue; Sequel-Starting

 

Working 12:30 to 9:00pm is a bit more draining somehow than a normal day of work. Throw in a spin class for the YMCA Spin for Strong Kids event beforehand and it’s even moreso.

Working out before a day of work is nothing new. Frequently I’ll get up at 5 and run or lift weights before work. But I also tend to get into fitness ruts. Long ago I used to do plyometrics and interval training every week. Not so much these days. I have too many opposing fitness goals, mainly to both get a little bigger AND get faster and go farther. Somewhere between those two, intervals and plyo fell out of the routine. Basically anything high-intensity. Which is the opposite of what most people are doing. I always end up doing the opposite. I don’t try. It’s not like a hipster thing. But fuck. It does get annoying.

I mention this because that spin class just killed me, and I didn’t even do terribly well. Endurance training has nothing to do with that kind of stuff. It’s dumb because high intensity workouts DO help endurance and speed, yet I’ve axed it from my program so I can get in more futile bench presses. That’s also why my PARE time sucked. I keep going back to that, right? Eh, it’s because it was a big let-down. I’ll never get over it. Suppose I could just train properly for it and pay to do it just for shits and giggles . . . hmmmmmm . . .

Needless to say, I’ve had so. much. coffee. Yet I can barely keep my eyes open. Bye bye adrenals.

On another note, since I can’t do anything else right now, and my guitar amp is dead, and I’ve been obsessed with the opening scene for the Blightcross sequel, I’m going to do it right now. With a new moon in Virgo it’s especially auspicious to start this thing. Provided I can stay awake.

Just to be a shithead I’ll say that if a person were to envision the opener of this sequel, they’d imagine Capra messing around on an oil rig in the desert, with

this song

 

playing.

I mean it’s not Debussy or something properly Dieselpunk, but the way Burton C. Bell changes an 80s L.A. Hepatitis Rock song into something with a grown-up vibe really fits this scene/story bang-on.

Then stuff happens, then things happen, and 300 pages later the book ends.

Huh. Yes, I’m actually planning it out by predetermined page count. I always do. Sounds draconian and artificial, but damnit I don’t want it to drag on too long.

Here she comes again . . .

 

Plumbing stops me from writing, eating, exercising, washing, and being generally sane.

 

I’m not one for complaining online. Most of the time when I complain, I inflict it upon coworkers to spare my family or girlfriend. But this plumbing/writing saga seems kind of funny.

The day started off with a sponge bath, since my tub was still a billion litres of shampoo, soap, and drano. Freezing. Freezing because now that I’m the one paying for power–not a landlord or . . . derrrrr. . . my parents–I’m going to put off turning on the heat for as long as possible. So in the morning the place is freezing. Normally this is fine because I just put on a sweater. You can’t fucking have a spongebath in a sweater though. Or if you can, I haven’t figured it out.

Then work. Everyone’s job is a shitshow, so no need to get into that.

But let me say that the shitshow had started way back on Monday . . .

See that’s been my favourite word all week. Shitshow. Every so often I latch onto a word because I find it aesthetically pleasing or ridiculously relevant to everything that’s going on. Shitshow is in both categories. Yes, I think it has a certain aesthetic appeal. Anyway.

I got home. Tried a plumbing thingermajigger to no avail. Now I have welts on my arms from being elbow-deep into this crap for an hour. Whatever.

“But why didn’t you buy rubber gloves? You were apparently wandering around Superstore yet again for an hour trying to decide what to eat and even thought about buying such items?” you might ask. To that I would just say, shut the hell up and let’s move on . . . I mean it’s entirely understandable that I’d:

A) Think that the drain was going to magically run again as soon as I put dumb flimsy drainclog tool into its stupid putrid gaping maw, thus rendering rubber gloves unnecessary;

B) Waste half an hour in the store googling Steak Diane and debating whether or not I wanted to fall off the wagon for a day for the sake of learning how to do one of the most impressive dishes imagineable, due to the brandy requirement;

C) Take a moment to meditate in order to prevent the inevitable bodychecking of people meandering around the store without due sense of urgency;

D) Not want to spend two dollars on rubber gloves that I could be spending on a KitKat or bottle of Perrier.

So the thing didn’t work. Fine. Got a courier thing in the mail to go pick up my passport. Just go pick that up and buy one of those hardcore compressed air dealies to blow through the clog once and for all. Only when I got to the parking garage what do I see but a pile of water. Right beneath my apartment. So . . . not going to play with any more amateur plumbing ideas given that.

Whatever. Passport time–excited. But the guy wouldn’t give it to me because the address on my ID is, of course, not this one, since I just moved here. This is where I veer into a gas station and buy cigarettes before returning home to get some kind of proof that I actually live in the place to which I have legal ownership.

Strata person is on the phone and looking at said pipe. In the end it’s not a gigantic deal–not the “exploding toilet” someone had phoned and ranted about. Got a little pump to drain my tub. Got home, set it up, went to do something for a minute, and I came back to find the hose had jumped off the sink and filled my floor with this bullshit toxic water. Nice!

I did, hours later, get my passport. I also drained the tub and a plumber is coming to fix some not-to-code goings on with the plumbing. Eventually. I also slipped and wrecked my knee. I actually laughed when that happened. I’ve actually been laughing at most of this, in between phrases that would get you executed in some countries. See it’s a neat reminder for someone like myself who can easily dwell on dumb things people say or dumb things I imagine people say/think/do but never actually do that real stuff that goes wrong isn’t even half as bad as the stuff you imagine is going wrong every day.

The main point here is that . . . I still don’t get to write.

This dumb post is about all the writing I can muster after such a shitshow.

Another fun thing: my usually leisurely Saturday morning before starting work at noon will be preempted by me doing the YMCA Spin For Strong Kids. I did it last year and it’s fun, and the YMCA is the only gym I’ll ever use so it’s always good to support them. But this year there’s talk about everyone wearing Hawaiian shirts or something.

I don’t even own one. I was planning on maintaining that status throughout my entire life. In fact I’ve never even worn one.

Ah well.

We’re all stars now. In the shit-show.

 

Plumbing stops me from writing.

 

I’m writing this because I’m actually waiting to see if the second litre of drano I had to go out and buy is going to chew out whatever the hell ended up in my tub drain. Quick recap–today I got up at 5, got to the gym, did barbell squats, deadlifts, and pullups, did work stuff for 8 hours, wandered around Superstore for an hour wondering what to make for dinner, decided that it was logical to make pork loin in a French sauce with homemade pasta, actually did that, cleaned up the huge mess, then opened my word processor because I thought I’d be able to write tonight.

Then I remembered the tub that had filled up this morning. I figured the stupid shitter would have drained after sitting for 8 hours. I don’t see how today could be any different shower-wise to yesterday. Like what was the ONE particle that made it finally unable to pass any water through? It’s absurd. It doesn’t make sense

So I went to the worst store in the world because it’s the closest, bought a plunger, and tried to unclog the motherfucker. Nothing. Back to the worst store in the world for a 2 litre jug of drano. This after already dumping 500ml into the problem. At this point I doubt continuing to fill my tub with caustic substances is a great idea, but I don’t want to call a plumber, and I don’t quite feel like doing nothing either.

And now I’m too distracted to be able to write. Also I need to be in bed ASAP because I need to get to the gym at 6 again tomorrow.

AAAAAAAAAGh. In goes the entire 2 litres.

I really don’t understand the mechanics of this shit. It defies reason. There are enough chemicals in that drain to dissolve a family of squirrels.

One thing I realized on trip #2 to awful mega-store is that I love the smell of other people’s wood stoves. It gives me that awesome autumn  vibe. The one that takes a summer of tourists, stressful “fun” times that are just loud shitshows and heat exhaustion and boozy grossness, and obnoxious brightness to finally enjoy. See I know what having a wood stove is like, and it actually sucks. You always end up cold in the middle of the night. Now those are awful childhood autumn memories, in case it sounds like I’m overly biased. Go to bed all nice and warm and end up in a cold sweat and watching your breath curl in a gust when you breathe out.

Another thing–the idea of “candid” photos. This came to me while hearing some celebrity gossip tv show talk about the day’s roundup of celebrity instagram photos. To this I say, fuck off–as if instagram photos are ever “candid.”

The candid photo is impossible in today’s scopophilic culture. Every moment is haunted by the spectre of people itching for the next dumb photo to post. Everyone knows everyone else around them is looking for more of these. Everyone acts accordingly. The photos reflect this. They don’t seem candid at all; they have no ironic distance whatsoever despite that that’s their big claim. Kind of like hipsters–they claim to be the embodiment of ironic distance but in the end have none.

These things have become a commodity. When photos weren’t digital, people thought slideshows were boring, and you had to grit your teeth when people made you look at their paper photo albums. Now that people can use crap photos however they want to portray and manipulate a certain image, camera-shy people like me might almost feel criminal.

You know why my author pic in my book is so dumb? Because I don’t even have any photos of myself that are any better. Why would I? Anyone I would want to look at me can just see me in person. And my memory is pretty good. Looking at photos of an event doesn’t help me remember it any better. Vacation photos are a different story–you’re in a different place doing something different. But when half the people on the facial book continually post random mirror photos and bar pics that actually aren’t anything remotely close to interesting, you have to wonder. And by wonder I mean severely chastize and judge.

Speaking of vacation photos, I wonder why my passport isn’t here yet. I’m excited. I’m going to have so many dumb photos, but it’ll be okay because as I said, those are allowed.

Agh. Back to my drain.

 

 

Personality VS Character.

 

 

This is kind of one of those things that drives me nuts to think about. It’s especially confusing in the current situation. I think the postmodern answer to the question is “Meh, who cares? I’m happy and that’s all that matters.” Unfortunately it’s not that simple.

This has to do with writing but moreso with the day-to-day battle of reading others.

I was watching some Stephen Covey videos just now. I haven’t read The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People. Indeed I kind of . . . made fun of it any time it popped up in conversation. Which really isn’t all that much, let’s be honest. Anyway, he was talking about how character was the basis for most self-improvement advice up until the 20s or 30s. Or, to make this highly irrelevant post relevant, the dieselpunk era.

Actually maybe it’s not so irrelevant. It’s an interesting societal facet I hadn’t really thought of that much in my writing. Most of the time I was too busy plugging the modernist ideals of advancement, individuality, and so on that I kind of neglected to look at it critically. I still think most of that era was a lot more admirable than right now, but Covey has a point. Before then, the thing you had to do to succeed was just deep down be an awesome person, which means having things like “values” and “integrity.” Then he said that in the 20s, the focus shifted purely to technique. Dress this way, think this way, talk this way, etc. Everything superficial. It no longer mattered if your techniques had developed out of a need to utilize that solid foundation more effectively. A cynic might just say it’s more efficient to not bother worrying about morals and just learn how to get what you want. But in this video, Stephen Covey said that the result of developing superficial things in such a way affects your trustworthiness.

Hold on–let’s actually look at the difference between character and personality. I’m sure the word “personality” comes from a Greek or Latin word that means “mask,” or something along that line. This sounds pretty obvious when you read it, but it’s something we forget, I think. Look at the classic personality cult dictatorship. Clearly by any objective measure the men at the centre of the regimes were morally bankrupt, yet were able to pull off superficial tricks of personality to get people to do stuff. What is society right now but a meta-personality cult? But you see celebrities with a heart, you say?

Like Bono bleeding over this or that cause, while in reality evading taxes?

Like the dedicated vegan yoga practitioner who actually only lives as such because they feel bad about getting shitcanned every weekend?

In a dialectic move, “caring” can become just another tool in the personality arsenal these days. Lots of celebrities do this, and the popularity of the philanthropic fetish mirrors that trend in the masses. To me this goes on a slight Kantian tack, but I digress, since nobody wants to discuss Kant . . .

Character is a lot less fluid. I think it can be changed or learned, even though the standard definitions place it as a permanent, objective part of a person. Why is it unpopular now? I read one post somewhere that linked this shift to how my generation has been fed factory-farmed self-esteem in order to make up for a lack of character, and that real self esteem springs naturally from good character. The problem with character is that it takes work and discipline, and when you’re a kid that discipline can’t be all self-discipline, and of course there is a generation or two of parents who went out of their way to deprive their kids of this. So I like that theory, it makes sense.

Because of this I can understand now the criticism levelled at some high-modernist works I love, like Ulysses. Until now, I’ve dismissed most criticism of modernist writing and art as backwoods paranoia, like when communists labelled it as evil “formalism.” I mean technique is the point of that writing, but is it covering up a lack of character? Is the work void of any integrity or point? Is it just cynical technical manipulation of the reader?

Is someone with a great personality but with no morals a great person?

I don’t know. Is a cranky person who is actually deep down dedicated to human dignity and doing the right thing still repulsive?

I think the shift made sense when it originallly happened. We had to shuck ourselves of ridiculous Victorian attitudes, and suspending our preoccupation with character opened space needed to advance technique. But someone forgot to put it back together again, and character was never heard from, besides in the writings of a few self-help gurus.

Despite that I write in what might be termed a “retro” genre, I’m a big fan of the line from Aenima that says, “Fuck retro anything, fuck your tattoos  . . .” Clearly looking back in itself is no good. But it’s really good for moments like this, when it’s like, “Oh, we missed something back then. Then we forgot about it. Maybe there’s something to learn there.”

As for me personally, I’ve always been known for being overly concerned with character, and at the expense of being cool or happy or popular. That doesn’t mean I haven’t made mistakes, but I doubt good character means a free ride without mistakes. It especially sucks when the world makes you wonder if being overly concerned with character is actually harmful or mean or a personality flaw.

But the question of modernist art being all technique and no character makes me wonder. To me, Joyce’s techniques so profoundly destroy herd-influenced maps of reality. That’s hardly an empty gesture, or at the most, according to critics, pointless psychotic playfulness.

The analogy I’ve created here confuses me, since I have a good intuition about people’s character and often am not at all swayed by personality tricks. I simply don’t care what personalities are like, and if someone is unwilling to show anything deeper, I have no time for them because there are a million more important things I could be doing than patting someone else on the back for their personal mechanisms for reacting to people in order to get what they want. But trade people for art and writing and it’s not so easy for me to be that judgmental.

Does it even work as an analogy? Well, Stephen Covey linked the shift from character to personality to the exact time when art shifted from showing virtues and ideals to destroying those concepts with radical techniques. Seems logical to me. It doesn’t really help much, but writing this killed a lot of time that I was too tired to figure out how to spend.

So. Yay.

Chapters Book Signing – Sept. 23

 

 

Just in case both of you are into book signings at a mall–I’m doing one at the Kelowna Chapters on September 23.

I’m looking forward to this one even more than usual, because most fantasy readers here buy their stuff from there. I’ll have to come up with some kind of POS material to display to snag people just in case my glib “how’s it going today?” shot in the dark isn’t enough. It’s not that I’m trying to be glib, but unless you’re a celebrity whose book has been written by someone else, most writers aren’t spectacular pitchmen.

Also I’m hoping to get to Nelson soon, but things are getting complicated again. Just slightly. I’m going to Cuba.

I’ve never been anywhere, so it’s pretty exciting. I know one of you two might recall that I actually hate the beach and summer in general and are wondering why I’d do this. Well, because I can. Just because I’m a cranky bastard doesn’t mean I’m unwilling to try new things. To be honest, I’ll like a real beach and maybe the angle of the sun there won’t be the same as it is here in the summer. Seems like it’s all about the angle with my weird reverse-S.A.D. It’s bright out now but it doesn’t feel nearly as bad as in high summer. Who knows.

 

Still working on new material, but given the zero traffic on this site, I’m rethinking the idea of tossing it up here for free. If I mess around with magazines trying to get it published and nobody reads it, it’s not a lot different to rushing through it and putting up here, where nobody is going to read it. Might as well give it a shot at a legitimate outlet.

I don’t know, all I can think of is unlimited watery beer, mainlining saccharomyces boulardii and activated charcoal with fingers crossed and ass clenched, and being in Cuba with the best girl in the world. Making a bestseller list doesn’t seem nearly as important as having that, come to think of it.

Although if I had maybe ten people be all like, “but cranky unknown author, we just can’t wait for your serial project that will be like the creepy dieselpunk offspring of Top Gun and epic fantasy–please give it to us for free!” I’d probably rethink the idea. Just sayin’.

TANSTAAFL.

Heinlein came up with that acronym. It stands for “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.”

The HCG “diet” is the fitness equivalent to the free lunch. Up until now, I’ve stayed neutral on it. Now I think it’s time to ditch the neutrality and just give the same opinion that anyone in the health and fitness industry will give. Anyone. Except the companies who sell this crap. But they’re not in the health and fitness industry–they’re in the quackery industry. There is a difference.

There are so many ways to pick this apart, and I’m actually going to go through all of them.

First, the premise of the fad: A homeopathic dose of human chorionic gonadotropin can turn a starvation diet into a healthy weightloss/lifestyle change regimen–they even go so far as to say there is no lean muscle loss or affect on metabolism. The miracle of pregnancy hormones magically protects the body from an otherwise traumatic abuse.

The premise doesn’t even work according to how homeopathy [allegedly] works.

You can’t sell human hormones in a healthfood store or in a bogus “network marketing” scheme, at least in Canada. But you can sell water with a label on it that says it’s a homeopathic dose of anything you damn well want, because despite what it says on the label, no chemical assay is going to show a single molecule of the substance that is on the label.

So, to start with, chances are you’re not taking the preganancy hormones. You’re taking a homeopathic remedy. Back up a bit to what homeopathy is–it’s the idea that certain substances, when potentized (diluted and succussed into water until no trace of the original material remains) will cause the body to remedy itself if that substance matches (and it’s very picky how it must match) the symptoms you exhibit. So not all headaches will be cured by Nux Vomica–only the type of headache that presents when people ingest that substance enough to get sick from it. The idea is to give the body messages to tell it how to achieve homeostasis when it’s in a state of distress. That means that it helps the body get back to how it normally is. It doesn’t mean that homeopathics act like drugs and can throw the body OUT of homeostasis, unless you deliberately “prove” the remedy, which is a complicated procedure that has more to do with frequency of dosing than it does potency. The originator of homeopathic medicine, Samuel Hahnemann, experimented on himself by taking the remedies until he showed the symptoms he was trying to cure. It’s quite the big deal to do–not something a quack or a salesman can properly do.

What does all that mean? It means that even IF homeopathy worked, which there is strong evidence against, it doesn’t easily throw your body into an unnatural state. That’s not how real homeopathic doctors work. They are not drugs that spike hormones like a pharmaceutical. Homeopathy, regardless of its scientific legitimacy, is still an extremely complicated modality and practitioners undergo years of training to understand it properly.

When you take HCG drops you buy from salesmen, they are not actually raising your hcg levels in anything close to a measurable way.

Messing with hormones is a dumb idea, especially for cosmetic reasons.

HCG is also secreted by cancerous tumours. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but there’s a reason you can’t just put out a drug or treatment without years of human trials and clinical research by real scientists. Assuming that diet products actually affected hormone levels, which we know they do not, there are risks with taking these hormones. HCG is used by real doctors for totally unrelated conditions. No scientific evidence exists that supports it for weight loss. In fact, one of the adverse reactions of real prescription HCG is . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . weight gain. Another well-known (by real doctors, anyway) side-effect of actual HCG is reduced penis size.

Fortunately the only likely effect these products have is the placebo effect.

But wait! The placebo effect even works when you tell people it’s a placebo!

Weight loss success is mostly psychological, barring any serious medical condition that may be responsible for the weight. For otherwise healthy people who are overweight, it’s all in your head because the rest is just eating less and exercising more, and ideally giving up substances that increases fat storage. Family members of mine have had success with HCG products. It’s not because they are being miraculously spared the danger of a starvation diet. It’s because symptoms like hunger and fatigue can be extremely subjective. “Mind over matter” has its limits though, and nobody is immune to the dangers of starvation. However, humans are tough as long as they have water–we’re built to survive starvation quite well, which could also be why we put on weight so easily. So it is highly likely that the sense of wellbeing people report while starving on HCG is just mind over matter, and the psychological effects of ketosis. People with other extreme restrictive diets report similar feelings that they interpret to be “good” feelings. I won’t mention the names of those extreme restrictive diets to avoid unneeded controversy. At any rate, given that there is no scientific evidence that these products are actually doing anything (unless you’re getting real hormones, but you probably aren’t, tough guy. Lucky for your penis you), people are losing weight because of what’s going on in their heads.

But it’s still working, so why attack it?

. . . . Because a starvation diet is a starvation diet. It’s been around forever. This is not some new idea. Ask any anorexic. Rapid weight loss is a bad idea because most people haven’t changed a thing about their lives, or about themselves, when they buy into this stuff. The reality is that those who are attracted to the idea of getting thin fast, as opposed to getting fit and healthy, is that they want to still be bad but look really good while doing it. I’ve written about my own frustration in dealing with clients who don’t want to achieve fitness goals but just want to look better at the bar. It’s part of why I can’t seriously devote my life to a career in personal training in this town. On a more practical level, depending on how obese someone is, dropping the weight too fast can not only be unhealthy but may result in more of that unsightly skin sagging. I don’t know for sure, but logically to me women would have a harder time with this because their connective tissues are built differently–this is why women get cellulite and men do not.

Don’t be fooled by dramatic initial results. Some even try to get around this reality by choosing another fad diet in order to maintain after they’ve finished this. Fad diets are never the answer. A South Beach type diet might be okay, but most who seek quick fixes haven’t fixed the reason for the weight in the first place. How you look on the outside reflects how you treat yourself. NOT–as some like to think–how you “feel inside.” There’s a difference. It’s easy in this society to see yourself inside as some celebrity when you go to the bar, but the way you continue to abuse yourself is what is actually going to be visible. Like it or not, you are just the same as the rest of us. And every human is bound by the laws of thermodynamics.

Calories in, Calories Out, and substances that help you stay fat.

The laws of thermodynamics are not negotiable. If you consume less energy than you burn, you will lose weight guaranteed. This is a remarkably easy thing to quantify and track. The dumbest thing about HCG and other fads is that losing weight the real way is way easier than starving yourself. Think about it. These things turn your daily life into a psychotic 24-hour ritual obsession. That’s not fun. It’s not healthy either. What it does take is some work on yourself, and even your social situation.

Two things are often responsible for the weight HCGers try to lose: sugar and alcohol. They give up these things for the diet, but most aren’t willing to give it up for life. Because if they were in that frame of mind, they wouldn’t have bothered with this bizarre ritual and would just have cut out (or even cut down) the things in their diet that contribute the most to weight gain. Part of why real weight loss is easier than fad weight loss is that you don’t even have to exercise if you don’t want to–most people can get near the ideal target of 1kg per week by eliminating sugar (mostly pop) and booze alone. That’s it. Do nothing else and watch the weight go away.

When you get out of the fad diet, you’re still surrounded by the same situation. Again, if you were surrounded by people who supported healthy living, chances are you wouldn’t have been so drawn by extreme outrageous methods, or wouldn’t be in bad shape. Statistically those who hang out with other healthy people have better results. Duh. Reverse that for an idea about where difficulties can come from. My grandfather used to say “If you stand in it long enough, you start to smell like it.”

So what many of us have had to do is decide what makes more sense–standing in a pile of shit and try to mask it with febreeze, or stepping out of it and taking a shower.

Alcohol increases bad estrogens that increase belly fat. Belly fat itself secretes bad estrogens, which then add more belly fat. If that sounds like an exaggerated disaster situation, I assure you, that is just the way the human body works. It might sound like I’m being dogmatic because I myself have gone on the wagon, but the facts speak for themselves. I don’t need to distort them–they’re damning enough as they are.

Sleep deprivation is the next culprit to weight gain. If you don’t sleep properly, the weight is going to pack on even easier. Alcohol’s social situations usually involve flipping the bird to this idea. It also destroys the quality of sleep you do get. So even if you made it to bed at 11, if you’ve had a bottle of wine, your body won’t see it that way.

HCG diets do not address these issues, yet they are the biggest factors! None of these are a problem if they only occur occasionally, but the tendency to do these things regularly is the reason for obesity.

The HCG diet has been espoused by charlatan Kevin Trudeau, who wrote a book about it and was then taken to court over his false claims. This man is no stranger to legal action, and I can’t see why anyone would put their health on the line for quackery.

How it really works.

Each person is unique in their fitness situation, but a very broad rule is this: decrease calorie intake to 400 calories below your BMR, and increase activity by 400 calories on most days. That deficit of 800 calories per day, which is not hard at all and involves nothing close to starvation, is enough for steady but effective and safe weight loss. This is nothing new. Simple arithmetic. And it works. Thousands of people in worse situations than you have done it this way and kept it off and remained healthy and happy. The calorie reduction could be as painless as cutting out a bottle of pop and a before-bed snack every day. The exercise could be as painless as a 30-minute run. That’s not a lot to ask and the health benefits are ten billion times greater than risky diets.

Desperation rarely results in good decisions. Relying on fads and extremism is just more desperation. Track down what the source of that desperation is. Most of the time it has nothing to do with health, but the need to be seen. Before you lose sight of your actual fitness, ask yourself if the people whom you desperately need to see you in such a way really matter. When you consider that they’d just as easily look at someone else, it’s probably quite easy to bring the focus back on your life, instead of the mirror. If not, I have some magic beans to sell you . . . and hey, if you buy my novel and go through it, there’s a secret password that if you say in the dark three times while standing on your head you’ll instantly lose 30 pounds! I’ll even give you a hint! It has to do with sheep. Try it out!

Links:

HCG Worthless as Weight Loss Aid

The hCG Diet Scam Exposed

Fraudulent HCG Products For Weight Loss

It’s not a race? Rejection thoughts

 

People say that all the time. I’m thinking of this because it just hit me that I’ve done one race this year. I was supposed to hit an assload of  Interior Running Association events but only did one. Grr. Stuff gets in the way. Book stuff is worth it. Other stuff not so much. Usually I’m pretty good with time management but everyone has limits.

Why is everyone so down on competition now? It’s tough and most of the time it hurts. To be honest competition just drives me nuts and on one level I hate it, but if it weren’t for competition I can’t see how anyone would know what they’re capable of.

If I weren’t competitive, I probably wouldn’t have written the one novel that anyone had remote interest in. Sure it’s obscure at the moment, but I’d rather have some success with something leading-edge than just repeat what’s been done.

Race day runs feel completely different to any other run. Now, I’ve gone to what I thought was max effort during training (which you shouldn’t do), but even then, it was nothing like race day. There’s a slight difference between doing something for pleasure and trying to win something, even if that’s just winning against your own best.

It makes people feel bad. But you get used to it. Writers collect rejection letters, and 99.999346463446333333366634 percent of runners like myself end up racing for personal bests most of the time. I can’t speak for anyone else, but there’s a difference between getting used to rejection and magically not being bothered by it.

Just to be clear, rejection bothers me. A lot. I’m hypersensitive to it.

There’s a line in the In Flames song Clayman that says, “I tried confidence – had it for breakfast today . . ” and it’s kind of like that. Confidence is something I’ve never quite understood in some areas. People just tell you to “be confident” but what does that even mean? I was sure confident when I ran the P.A.R.E. for the RCMP. Cocky, even. AND MY TIME SUCKED. It was still well within their requirement, but sure as hell was nowhere close to the sub-3-minute realistic goal I had set for myself.

I was so confident my dumb “experimental” novel would blow away the first editor who laid eyes upon it. It ended up being some of the worst writing I’d ever done.

Being confident didn’t help performance. It just made it all the more shocking when I didn’t measure up to the way I’d built up my own concept of how well I was doing.

So what’s more valuable–confidence or toughness and persistence?

Who isn’t crushed and devastated by rejection? Maybe most people aren’t. I’m not wired that way. It’s better to process such devastation and somehow improve than it is to develop some state where failure and rejection seem acceptable.

On another note, posts about fitness are more popular than posts about my writing. *shrug.* I assure you I’m a better writer than I am personal trainer. So I don’t know. The point is . . . read my book already.

I’ll likely be doing a signing in Chapters next month. That’ll be exciting. Independent book stores are great, but there will be a lot more people to engage in a mall.

Not sure when the new Katatonia album Dead End Kings actually came out, but I just got it and love it. Impressed by the solo on Lethean. And who wouldn’t love a song titled, The One You Are Looking For Is Not Here.

Anyway. Not sure how Katatonia fits into this post. Eh. Great band though.

 

Mrrh.

 

So I got this free Samsung Galaxy tablet because I signed up with a different telco. Does anyone still use the term telco? Does anyone phreak anymore? Agh. Suddenly I miss the early 90s. Well, I always do, but pondering that question makes me even more.

I don’t get this thing. I’ve never even touched a tablet until now. It took me an hour to turn off the damned autocorrect. I can’t figure out why it was ever invented. It takes longer to fight with the thing for the word you really meant than it does to pay attention in school and learn how to type and spell properly. It seems like one of those dumb shortcuts that lead to a dead end.

My dad always said this would happen. When I was younger, of course it was hilarious when an older person didn’t get how to use a remore or a stereo or something. But it’s happened to me now. I don’t get technology. All I really want this thing for is to be able to write when I’m not home, which is like 99.99999999999971556329 percent of the time, but laptops are annoying.

The reason for this is that there is new stuff coming. Like I mentioned to both of you (that third reader seems to have lost interest, sadly), before the next novel I’m going to try cranking out a flanker product. I’ll write one episode and probably just post it on here, since no magazine is exactly interested in this obscure genre yet. Maybe I should switch to writing vampire porno.

I really have to give my publisher credit for not buying into the herd mentality.

Anyway. Technology. Man oh manischewitz. Apparently I can control my tv from this thing. Scary.

 

 

 

Neil Peart gets the introvert thing.

 

 

I just read this interview with Neil Peart and loved what he had to say about this:

“ It is true, but I’m less comfortable in a gregarious social situation, and you can be introverted and still share everything. It just means that you’re guarded. Certainly there is a line that seems perfectly clear to me about what’s to be shared and what isn’t, but it’s not always so clear to others. Extroverts never understand introverts, and it was like that in school days. I read recently that all of us can be defined in adult life by the way others perceived us in high school. I know [people] who had the popular, good-looking path in high school; they tend not to do so well. It was a little bit too easy for them, where for those of us who struggled in every sense, perhaps our determination and self-reliance and discipline were reinforced by that.”

Read the interview on Maclean’s.

 

I mean, I’m not bitter about high school or anything. But it wasn’t a party. I admit I never had to put up with bullying or anything with angst-appeal. It was just kind of a slog through nothing in particular while mostly being ignored because I wasn’t on a sports team or nerdy enough to fit in with the bullied outcasts, or enough of a skid to be lumped in with that crowd. It’s not like I have any bad feelings towards the popular people, but it did seem like they had it a lot easier. But Peart’s quote seems to ring true–some of them aren’t doing any better than I am, and in some cases worse . . . despite that they were the centre of attention as teenagers.

I didn’t really know that Neil Peart identifies himself as an introvert. I just assumed that because he’s the best drummer in the world that he’d be an extravert, since touring and doing live shows is more tailored to those types. That’s probably because personally, I have trouble with the social aspect of being in a band. I just want to play music. That should be enough for an audience. It’s probably easier for a drummer to be like that, but guitar unfortunately comes with stupid expectations that have nothing to do with music. This is illustrated by the fact that people find it noteworthy that Robert Fripp sits while playing, like any [real] musician in an orchestra, instead of trying to “engage the crowd.”

Maybe that’s why some guitarists do the costume thing. Fellow May 13ther Buckethead might even be an introvert? I don’t know anything about him besides that he’s an incredible player. Maybe it’s just a Taurus thing. Or an Earth sign thing. Peart’s a Virgo, Fripp is a Taurus as well . . .

This reminds me of a great quote from Mark Vonnegut. “Introverts almost never cause me trouble and are usually much better at what they do than extroverts. Extroverts are too busy slapping one another on the back, team building, and making fun of introverts to get much done. Extroverts are amazed and baffled by how much some introverts get done and assume that they, the extroverts, are somehow responsible.”

You have to allow for the Vonnegut sarcastic edge and not be too offended if you’re an extravert reading this. It’s not like most of us want to trash the extraverts, who aren’t even a majority, by the way. But you can’t deny the societal bias. Even I perpetuated it by assuming that just because one of my greatest heroes/role models was so successful meant he couldn’t have been introverted.

The problem with this dichotomy is that nobody seems willing to admit that being on either side of the spectrum leaves you just a little fucked up in some ways. So instead of thinking that the introverts are dumb people with no sense of humour, maybe look at yourself. Or if you’re an introvert, stop being bitter and learn the reason why extraverts aren’t understanding you. It’s just a little ridiculous to segregate and judge based on that.

In other news: what should have been a 10 minute job screwing a pot rack/light fixture into a joist has ended up taking 5 hours. I don’t even want to talk about it. Carry on.