What You Can Do To Stem The Tide of Suck

Want to know the state of the world in which we now live?

"A recent report by the National Endowment for the Arts found that 53 percent of Americans surveyed hadn't read a book in the previous year." (Source: McManus, John. "The New American. 5/26/08)

1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years. (Source: Jerold Jenkins, www.JenkinsGroupInc.com)

Each day in the U.S., people spend 4 hours watching TV, 3 hours listening to the radio and 14 minutes reading magazines. (Source: Veronis, Suhler & Associates investment banker)

Only about half of Americans exercise regularly (at least three sessions a week for 30 minutes at a time), and the percentage of exercisers declined last year compared to 2008. (Source: WebMD Jan 21, 2010 http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20100121/are-americans-backing-off-exercise)

Percent of noninstitutionalized adults age 20 years and over who are overweight or obese: 67% (2005-2006)

Percent of noninstitutionalized adults age 20 years and over who are obese: 34% (2005-2006) (Source: ttp://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/overwt.htm) 

What does this tell us? It seems to indicate that Americans there are very few intelligent people remaining in the United States of America in 2010. Instead of the robust, crafty motherfuckers who populated this nation centuries ago, we've reduced ourselves to a nation of fat slobs who can barely read, and who are educated entirely by the television. Additionally, the last two statistics show that prison is essentially celebrity fit club for criminals, as criminals are by and large indigents, and it is perennially impecunious who boast the highest incidence of obesity.

I realize that a significant proportion of my readership resents every single call to arms that I post on this blog, finding them for whatever reason distasteful. Luckily, I don't give a flying fuck, because I work for free. To this point, I've posted 130 blogs, which I estimate average of 3 hours in terms of direct prep work in the form of research and writing. This excludes the countless hours of reading spent outside the direct result you find in this blog, but for the sake of relative accuracy, I'll go with 3 hours per blog. That means that you have benefited from the result of nearly 400 hours of work on my part, free of cost, and as such, I'll post whatever the fuck I want, as I don't owe you a motherfucking thing.

The most amusing part of the negative reaction I find with this blog is the fact that people seem to think I'm wasting their time with my rants. This is humorous for two reasons: one, it's a scathing indictment of our society that everything has been commoditized to the point where people actually believe that their free time has a significant, if ephemeral, monetary value. This just in- it has no value, real or perceived. How do I know this? The answer to that question lies in the second reason I find the negative reactions to be humorous in the first place- I know that the free time of the overwhelming majority of Americans is valueless because "people spend 4 hours watching TV, 3 hours listening to the radio and 14 minutes reading magazines" every day. If that time would not be otherwise occupied by something important, and no, 24 is not fucking important, then that time is completely without value.

Conceited, but not that conceited.

I don't have the conceit to think that one lunatic could buck the will and ideas of millions. I do think, however, that I might shed some light on the situation in which we find ourselves. Once we do so, we might become a new race of Titans, bent on the destruction of the sea of decrepit, slothful, idiotic teeming hordes in which we find ourself constantly mired. Rather than being the dying breath of a bygone era, we could become the new face of humanity, standing as bulwarks against the obesity and ignorance that pervade the modern world. I also believe that a complete rejection of the world as it stands is essential to forging the strength of body that I espouse, due to the fact that a society as lazy and useless as our own is incapable of the painful, protracted battle against suck that are our daily trips to the mecca of metal.

It is partially for this reason that I refuse to adhere to any strict program in the gym- modern society has developed a frighting obsession with reducing each day to a mechanical void wherein billions of people relive the same miserable, desolate day in a neverending virtual film loop, like a horribly dull, unfunny, politically correct mashup of Equilibrium and Groundhog Day. As such, there's little sense in making every visit to the gym just as robotic and rote as the rest of one's day- Why pile on more repetition in a life that's defined by a series of barely altered iterations of the same 24 hour period?

"I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad."

-Network, which is an awesome fucking movie that I highly recommend.

I will fucking tell you, however, what it is that you can personally do to stem this tide of suck.  This is your homework for the week:

• Read a book, in full. The topic is immaterial. I'm personally going to read Natural Hormone Enhancement by Rob Fagin, in addition to my usual spate of fiction.
• Pick an exercise on which you want to get better. Do that exercise, at a different point in your workout, and for an array of sets and reps, every day this week- this means, however, that you'll have to drop your volume on the lift for each workout. By the end of the week, you will likely not see dramatic improvements, but you will prove to yourself that you can do the lift as much as you fucking want, and you will definitely determine the form on that exercise that will facilitate gains, due to the fact that by the end of the week you will have to figure out how to make it hurt the least, haha. If you're still worried about the evil, mythical, overtraining monster, consider this: English railway navvies in the 1850s were expected to shovel, by hand, 20 tons of earth daily. Nepalese porters weighing an average of 49.7 kilos routinely transport loads of 90 kilos over 95 kilometers of steep mountain trails per day. (Manthropology, pp. 30-31) I think you'll be able to handle a week of doing the same exercise every day.

• Attempt a PR on something at least once. 

If you don't want to be an average American, it's time to start fucking acting like a Titan.  Let's do it without the half shirts, though.