Pardon the Interruption

Gerald Shinn of Chicago Illinois is FUCKING INSANE

To your continued, no update, blog (I’m feeding web spiders–mind your feet):

Gerald Shinn, of Chicago, Illinois gives Ron Paul fans and future history teachers a bad name:

“Ok Bitch, I’m dropping you, I hope someone breaks into your house and kills you, Rob, and that little runt of yours and says that they thought you’d (sic) be a threat to you someday.”

This is the level of discourse that is comfortable for Gerald Shinn of Chicago Illinois and future history teacher, when disagreeing with someone over politics.

(Just so we’re entirely clear; this man is wishing *death* upon a man, a woman, and their *5-year-old* daughter.)

Feel free to share this along so others don’t make the grave error of friending Gerald Shinn of Chicago Illinois, future history teacher. Also feel free to reprint this at your leisure all around the web so those friendly spiders from Google, Bing, etc., get the message, too.

Leptin Resistance and Me (and probably you)

This is your diet on too few calories.

For those keeping score (read: your life is even more drab than mine), I’ve been trying to get extra-lean (under ~10% bodyfat) for a couple of months now and was making slow (but steady!) progress.

However! It appears that, over the last 2 weeks, I’m in a dead stall and not losing anymore weight according to the scale **AND** the calipers, so I’m going to have to take some drastic, gastronomic, measures.

My potential options are:

A. Introduce enough cardio to kill a Kenyan marathoner.

B. Binge eat like Jack Black prepping for a Marlon Brando bio.

C. Skillful application of Jack Daniels and a scalpel.

D. All of the above, which should get me a one-way ticket to 6 months of AA, a lifetime sub to Insulin-A-Day-Keeps-the-Pancreatic-Failure-At-Bay and years of intense psychological treatment…after barely surviving multiple surgeries and escaping the ICU w/ three out of four limbs still in working order. And a new nickname: Lefty.

The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is B, because of fun little thing known as leptin resistance.

I’m not going to bore you w/ the gory details, but the basic idea is that your body thinks you’re trying to starve it to death (and since I have body dysmorphic disorder, it’s right!), so in order to get everything back to an even-keel (and so I can get my anorexia-like descent to sub-7% bodyfat back on track) I’ll partake of all those things you’re *Never Supposed to Eat While Dieting!(TM)*:

1. Fistfuls of el hombre de Mexico’s favorite (now impossible to get) treat, Pop-Tarts.

2. Sacrificing half-a-dozen cows to drain enough cream from them to create a few dozen gallons of that sweet elixir of life, cookies ‘n’ cream ice cream.

3. A wide assortment of candy that, under normal circumstances, would get me a lifetime sub to Insulin-A-Day-Keeps-the-Pancreatic-Failure-At-Bay.

In all, I’ll consume about double a typical day’s-worth of calories (a bit over 4k), almost all in delicious, simple, pancreas-pummeling sugar! (Oh, and some protein because I’m all about fat kid/skinny kid on a teeter-totter-like ‘balance’.)

The net result, if I live, is that I should see an almost immediate drop in bodyfat come day three, and a resumption of normal bodyfat eradication on a roughly 2k cals/day diet that features none of the things you’re Never Supposed to Eat While Dieting!(TM). (Thank God.)

The downside is, of course, when you’ve conditioned yourself to the point where sweet stuff just isn’t remotely appealing is that it’s going to be a hellish chore trying to shovel that much garbage down my throat for 2 days. (Yes, I know: nobody reading this is feeling any sympathy for a ‘plight’ that includes all-you-can-gorge buffets and fields of Skittles, but I will persevere, if not for myself, but for science (but mainly myself).)

The moral of this (long-winded and grating) story is that if you find yourself stalled out on a diet for any more than 2 weeks you, too, probably need to implement this sort of regimen to get the plumbing back into normal tolerances, i.e. boost leptin levels back to baselines so that your body is tricked into thinking you’re not trying to starve it to death (stupid body, you’ll never learn! Mwahahahaha!).

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Cross-posted to Facebook and A Board With No Name.

Just Keep Telling Yourself: Eur OK, Eur OK…

Don’t worry, Eurozens: We’re waiting for Greece California to get hammered, too.

In light of Portugal becoming stage two of Europe’s reverse rocket (in)to space Earth, I present to you this rather apt number by the immortal Queen, with some incisive analysis after the requisite block quote:

The following drivers prompted Moody’s decision to downgrade and assign a negative outlook:

1. The growing risk that Portugal will require a second round of official financing before it can return to the private market, and the increasing possibility that private sector creditor participation will be required as a pre-condition.

2. Heightened concerns that Portugal will not be able to fully achieve the deficit reduction and debt stabilisation targets set out in its loan agreement with the European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) due to the formidable challenges the country is facing in reducing spending, increasing tax compliance, achieving economic growth and supporting the banking system.

Incisive analysis: Eur f***ed.

Enjoy the song!

To All You Scale Slaves…

Little Known Fact: This Song Is Actually About Your Bathroom Scale

That’d be dieters, not those that appreciate fine, alligator, belts and footwear: today, one week ago to the hour, my weight has *dropped* 7 pounds. 7. In one week*, with NO change to my diet/routine from the preceding several weeks except for a bit more daily water intake. The week before the 7 pound loss, I was up 4 pounds from the preceding week. The week before that? Down 3. The point is, the scale, without any other tools (read: bodyfat measurements) is *not* a reliable way to track weight loss.

You are much, much better off using the way your clothes fit, the mirror or even other people** than the scale. If you must use the scale you also must do a bodyfat check or you’re going to get readings that are probably going to be off by quite a bit. (I do understand the temptation to rely on the scale due to ease/self-flagellation, but it’s only measuring absolute weight, not fat gain/loss, water gain/loss, muscle gain/loss, cat stepping on scale gain/loss, etc.)

So be free! Kick that mocking measuring stick to the curb! Or recruit its brother-in-fat, a pair of calipers, and make sure what you’re losing is fat…and not your mind.

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*It’s mostly all water, probably due to the fact that I’m drinking more and because you just can’t control things like stress, etc., so your weight is always going to fluctuate within a range of 5-7 lbs. over the course of a week, naturally.

**You should also not be doing any of this/expecting change on a week-on-week basis, unless you’re me and you’re inured to the lies! That’s because (again) the scale will lead you down the primrose path and the only thing waiting (deliciously) there is a (ferocious) carton of cookies ‘n’ cream ice cream that will demand you sacrifice your weight-loss goals in service to its rich, creamy, velvety, choclatey, vanillaey…*runs to freezer*.

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This post brought to you by Mary Decker, on Facebook, who reminded me, for a few seconds anyway, that I have a blog. Or is it blag? Well, whatever the past-tense of the word might be…

Cross-posted to A Board With No Name and

If Anyone Still Tumbleweeds By Here…

…we’re over there.

Dead of Night Comedy

Rule 5 Sunday

It’s Rule 5 Sunday, our regular, schizophrenic (in a good way), respite from the ordinary.

Around here, we have a split-personality and start with some cute before cutting over to the really cute:

Late Night ’80s

A Link to the Present: OOT Gets an Update

URA HAPPY ZELDA FAN

This is a ray of sunshine on this dreary, overcast, Saturday:

The Toki no Okarina URA Project aims to restore BETA elements to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, as well as adding elements of the original URA Zelda to the game, in addition to a little bit of retexturing. Music changes are also a part of the project, and there have even been map ports. Now, there are select locations from Termina which can be found in Hyrule.

Hopefully this works out better than that Mario 64 ‘new’ version from a while back.

h/t: Unseen64

Weekend Wake-Up Post

Somewhat apt on the first weekend of Summer, methinks:

Have a great, hopefully sunny, day!