11.03.2004
pain
Most animals learn to avoid behavior that leads to pain. In fact, that's the entire point of shocking hamsters that press the wrong colored button in a little cage. The point of *that* remains to be seen, actually. But we human beings have risen above our baser instincts of "food good" and "procreation good" to find and construct reasons behind why we like food and such. So the interesting problem is that we have now also risen above the base instinct of "pain bad." I applaud culinary pioneers and artisans like Julia Child and Joel Robuchon who lead us to expand our mental powers beyond "food good" to examine why food is good and what magical and wonderful things can be done with edible foodstuffs. These people put our human consciousness to good use. But as for those who use human consciousness to rationalize putting people in pain, or even worse, putting yourself in pain, that's just nuts.
And yet, that's what I've been doing. We went to the boathouse for circuit training yesterday. Evidently, this is something that athletes enjoy doing. I, being not an athlete, and posessing the athletic abilities of, say, lichhen, have never done circuits before. Circuits are awful. For those of you who don't know, it's sixteen different stations at which you punish your body for 50 seconds. Then you move in a sequence from one station to the next in the 10 seconds between doses of pain. These start out fine: I mean, they cause some fatigue for the first four exercises, and then all hell breaks loose. This is the Keble Boat Club Men's Circuit:
lunges - explosive barbell lift (floor to shoulders) - leg lifts - bench press - deep-knee squats - push-ups - dorsal raises (lie on your stomach and keep your knees, head, and arms off of the floor) - ergometer - sit-ups - burpees - jumping jacks - squat and jump with a 5-lb weight - reclining weight pull - plank (straight, stiff body being supported solely by forearms and toes) - standing leg press with weights -standing row - repeat. repeat three times. This was hard enough while I was there, but today at about noon, I started to feel my joints getting stiff. By 5:30 pm, my knees stopped working. I am in a LOT of pain. Oh, and I've got a rowing session at 5:45 am tomorrow morning. And more circuits tomorrow night.
Well, Mr. D.K. of P. school, you and I seem to have split: my team beat the Yankees and won the world series. Your candidate just finished his victory speech for another four years. Well played. I still think that the Red Sox are in a better position than President Bush. I mean look, no one hates the Red Sox right now, but just under half of the country, and most of the rest of the world dislikes the President.
OK... I admit it: I've taken to reading Wonkette. It's so fun and so awful. I was amused by one of the reviews of Wonkette that I found on her website. It makes me feel worse about my blogging:
"treat both blogs as you would a loaded staple gun. Instruments of fun, but best used with caution."
Quotation from Jack Shafer of Slate.com. That's essentially what this website has become anyway... But yeah, Wonkette's just bad reading. It's all of the cynicism about politics that I hate to hear about, yet that I partake of in my own outlook. A psychologist might say that I'm projecting my own biases onto a third party and then choosing to dislike that third party as a surrogate for disliking myself. Meh.
And yet, that's what I've been doing. We went to the boathouse for circuit training yesterday. Evidently, this is something that athletes enjoy doing. I, being not an athlete, and posessing the athletic abilities of, say, lichhen, have never done circuits before. Circuits are awful. For those of you who don't know, it's sixteen different stations at which you punish your body for 50 seconds. Then you move in a sequence from one station to the next in the 10 seconds between doses of pain. These start out fine: I mean, they cause some fatigue for the first four exercises, and then all hell breaks loose. This is the Keble Boat Club Men's Circuit:
lunges - explosive barbell lift (floor to shoulders) - leg lifts - bench press - deep-knee squats - push-ups - dorsal raises (lie on your stomach and keep your knees, head, and arms off of the floor) - ergometer - sit-ups - burpees - jumping jacks - squat and jump with a 5-lb weight - reclining weight pull - plank (straight, stiff body being supported solely by forearms and toes) - standing leg press with weights -standing row - repeat. repeat three times. This was hard enough while I was there, but today at about noon, I started to feel my joints getting stiff. By 5:30 pm, my knees stopped working. I am in a LOT of pain. Oh, and I've got a rowing session at 5:45 am tomorrow morning. And more circuits tomorrow night.
Well, Mr. D.K. of P. school, you and I seem to have split: my team beat the Yankees and won the world series. Your candidate just finished his victory speech for another four years. Well played. I still think that the Red Sox are in a better position than President Bush. I mean look, no one hates the Red Sox right now, but just under half of the country, and most of the rest of the world dislikes the President.
OK... I admit it: I've taken to reading Wonkette. It's so fun and so awful. I was amused by one of the reviews of Wonkette that I found on her website. It makes me feel worse about my blogging:
"treat both blogs as you would a loaded staple gun. Instruments of fun, but best used with caution."
Quotation from Jack Shafer of Slate.com. That's essentially what this website has become anyway... But yeah, Wonkette's just bad reading. It's all of the cynicism about politics that I hate to hear about, yet that I partake of in my own outlook. A psychologist might say that I'm projecting my own biases onto a third party and then choosing to dislike that third party as a surrogate for disliking myself. Meh.
