I'm comic-sans asshole

Timothy McSweeney wrote the an awesome "short imagined monologue" about the font Comic Sans today. It's been an immediate web hit, because it's an outstanding piece of work. For some reason it occured to me that at a certain section, the tone of the writing was somewhat incongruent with the visual style of comic sans... I've reproduced it here in the spirit of fun, note the use of web safe colours - papayawhip always made me smile.

While Gotham is at the science fair, I'm banging the prom queen behind the woodshop. While Avenir is practicing the clarinet, I'm shredding Reign In Blood on my double-necked Stratocaster. While Univers is refilling his allergy prescriptions, I'm racing my tricked-out, nitrous-laden Honda Civic against Tokyo gangsters who'll kill me if I don't cross the finish line first.

Alex Jones

Have been listening to Alex Jones a fair bit recently. He is a proper old fashioned fire and brimstone preacher, but for conspiracy theories. He was ranting about how the "global powers" want to cull the human race, which is clearly an act of almost unthinkable evil. It made me recall a poster at work. It was complaining about how 1,000,000 people die in Africa every year of Malaria and asking me to donate a small amount of money to stop this happening. I recall pointing out to a colleague that it would be irresponsible of me to cure Malaria without paying for those additional people to eat.

As I was walking home from the gym (through Glasgow town to the less salubrious quarter of Partick) I pondered this and thought that at some point, there is likely going to be a time where there are too many people for the Earth's limited resources to support (at our current level of consumption). Ok, so, I still can't imagine culling 70% of the Earth's population to save my own bacon. But, lets look at it from another perspective - imagine the earth is failing, perhaps it's falling into the sun or something. A rocket ship has landed and can take 30% of the people on earth to safety. Would you want to be on the ship? Would it be ok to leave 70% of the population behind?

Thought experiment

As I was pondering all of this, I came out of my reverie as I was accosted by a very drunk young man (at 11am on a Saturday - gooooooo Glasgow) looking for his bus fare home. I looked at the horror show of life shuffling by me: old men in suits sat in doorways too drunk to stand; fat mums screaming at their kids, cigarette in hand and I wondered if it would be such a terrible thing if these people didn't make it onto the rocket ship?

As a thought experiment, I tried to snapshot a group of people in my mind and figure out the 70% who would be left and the 30 who would come with me to start a new life on another planted. During the 20 minute remainder of the walk, I found 1 other person I would want to share a planet with and I think that was only because she wasn't wearing a bra...

More Training

Shoulder

So, my trips to the physio have resulted in her relenting on the "no training" issue. Apparently, the muscle mass in my shoulder is all that's keeping it in place, so any reduction in it is allowing the joing to plummet earthwards and cause additional pain.

The physio session itself was pretty cool. I was asked to lie down on my back and push my should downwards. Apparently, my body has no concept of how to go about this. Once I got the hang of it, I could actually reduce the pain when doing things simply by holding my shoulder in the right position - win!!

Tuesday

I was shattered, so I just cycled for 30mins while watching Breaking Bad - which is awesome

Wednesday

I was shattered, so I just cycled for 50mins and did some stretching. I also used the dyna-band to give resistance to my "holding the shoulder in it's correct position" excercises, which I think is working.

Thursday

Shoulders
10 sets of 22kg dumbell press for 10 reps each. Sundry rotator cuff excercises.

Friday

10k run along the back roads near the house - felt slow, legs were bust after it.

Saturday

A somewhat lackluster chest workout. Tried benching, was fine up to 100kg, then my shoulder played up a bit. But it was my wrist that was sore - from when I fell over in the Morrisons carpark - sober

Cormac McCarthy

After reading "The Road" Cormac pretty much went straight into my top 5 favourite authors. As well as being an awesome story, the prose are outstanding - not that I am claiming to be a literary critic, but I know the difference between a writing style that adds to the story and, say, Dan Brown: "Five months ago, the kaleidoscope of power had been shaken, and Aringarosa was still reeling from the blow".

I wanted to quote some of McCarthy's work for quick reference:

So what is the way of raising a child?

At a young age, said the judge, they should be put in a pit with wild dogs. They should be set to puzzle out from their proper clues the one of three doors that does not harbor wild lions. They should be made to run naked in the desert until...

Hold now, said Tobin. The question was put in all earnestness.

And the answer, said the judge. If God had meant to intervene in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creature could?

He also has quite an awesome turn of phrase - I am currently overusing "besotted bedlamites" to describe the denizens of Glasgow.

By dark the streets were filled with besotted bedlamites lurching and cursing and ringing the curchbells with pistol balls in a godless charivari, until the priest emerged bearing before him the crucified Christ and exhorting them with fragments of Latin...

Right, I am off to read some more...

Red Dead Redemption

The single player aspect of this game is breath-taking, the open world is genuinely fun to explore, the scenery is spectacular (in the true sense of the word), and the quests are varied and interesting. The game also has some truly special moments, I happened upon a wounded law man, whose charges were escaping. He asked me to "get after them". I'd just been given a lasso, so I thought I would try it out; I managed to lasso the convict, tie him up, put him on my horse and return him to the lawman. The lawman thanked me and paid a finders fee, he then pulled out his pistol and shot the convict dead!

The multiplayer aspect of the game feels epic when you first enter the "free roam" section. It is almost like entering a western MMO, where you envision teaming up with your friends for gang shoot-outs against other players. Unfortunately, the game doesn't really work like that. "Free roam" is simply a foyer, where you can do a few quests while you wait for one of the standard capture the flag or death match style games to begin. These work for other games, but the single player mode sets the expectation of open play and going from that to a small arena with 5-6 other players is a let down.

Definitely worth the purchase for the single player mode.

Training Back

Back is pretty much all I can train at the moment due to a shoulder injury.
Today:

1. 1 set 10 reps pullups
2. 3 sets 5 reps 10kg pullups
3. 2 sets 5 reps 15kg pullups
4. 5 sets 8 reps 50kg dumbell row
5. 4 sets 6-8 reps 90kg close grip pulldowns

Felt pretty strong, I was wary of the shoulder doing the pullups, but it seemed to go ok and it's no sorer after the training. Pretty tired overall though, after much more aerobic work - training for triathlons atm.