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Al 1, All the Kings Men 0

Dear Mice,

Thank you for leaving a small plate of cracked egg shells on the kitchen counter for me before you left for work. Obviously, as you knew, I have been working unsuccessfully on what I have called “Project Humpty Dumpty” for the past few years, but now with your generous contribution, I have finally been able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Al 1, All The King’s Men 0

However, what I did not count on was the true story behind Humpty Dumpty. You see, Humpty Dumpty was not just an egg that enjoyed sitting on walls (as we all do). Humpty Dumpty was actually an egg-warlord, and now that I have reconstructed him, he has raised a small army and is now commanding them using egg puns.

He is currently in your room with his fellow eggs-patriots, and they will spare no eggs-pense to eggs-punge you and Tootsie from the room. He’s looking through your belongings for embarrassing things to use for eggs-tortion, and he has no plan to stop until you agree to an eggs-ile far, far away (as he also plans to eggs-tend his domain over to Jeet’s room as well).

Fortunately for both of you, Tootsie and I don’t take shit from eggs, so we dealt with the problem. That’s why there are now broken eggs splattered all over your room.

You’re welcome.

The best roommate,

Al

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Woz, chill. aight?

windowsphoneI feel like every week I’m seeing articles about how much Steve Wozniak loves Microsoft products. For example:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403714,00.asp

And I just want to be like:

Woz, chill, aight? I get it. You love Windows, and you want to marry it and have babies. Now maybe you need to step back and give Windows some time to figure out if it likes you back. You don’t want to smother it and end up ruining your chances altogether.

Just an opinion imo!

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Stop it with all the gimmicks!

Ever notice that everywhere you look, someone’s peddling some gimmicky weigh loss program? There’s lots of programs that’ll say stuff like:

  • Here are 15 easy exercises that will absolutely TORCH fat and don’t really require much work!
  • Don’t diet. Just detox by drinking a bunch of diuretics!
  • It’s not what you eat – it’s when you eat: any time you hear Al Roker’s voice!

Actually, I guess unless you live with Al Roker, the last bullet point probably will help you lose weight, but my point is: I’m here to tell you to stop it with all the gimmicks! What you really need is:

Mike’s Gimmick Free Workout Plan

Mike’s Gimmick-Free Workout Plan guarantees weight loss with:

  • Minimal effort (most of our workouts are performed sitting down)
  • No calorie/carb counting (we don’t even know math!)
  • Unlimited cheat days (consecutively!)

And all of this WITHOUT ANY GIMMICKS

Why should you trust Mike’s Gimmick-Free Workout Plan? Because Mike is his own customer!

mikefat mikekilomanjaro
BEFORE
Mike always looked displeased when he was climbing mountains.
AFTER
Mike summits both a literal and metaphorical mountain… of gimmick-free weight loss!

How does Mike’s Gimmick Free Workout Plan Work? It’s simple. We take advantage of Muscle confusion – your muscles are going to be like, “hey wait… why aren’t you making me exercise? I r confused”

So sign up today for Mike’s Gimmick Free Workout Plan!

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A Life Lesson About Flexibility

I received an email today from my gym saying, “hey everyone, great news! We’ll be doing some construction so the weight room is going to be closed for a week.” That’s minus 5 points to my gym for inconveniencing me, but it’s plus 4 points for making it sound like good news that I’m being inconvenienced.

Anywho, I was annoyed about my missed workouts for that week when I realized that it was ridiculous that I would get so upset just because someone threw a wrench (literally???) into my plans (okay not literally). What I really needed to exercise was a little flexibility.

So while the weight room is under construction, I’ll be in the group fitness room stretching to work on my flexibility. Then I’ll make a triumphant return to the weight room when it’s re-opened to move some heavy objects and the return them to their original positions.

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Re: your newegg package

Dear Mike,

As you may have noticed, you received a package in the mail today from Newegg, and since you are currently in Miami, I took it upon myself to pick it up for you. Upon opening it (to check for security threats), I noticed that it was a piece of computer hardware, and in an act of altruism, I promptly installed it into my computer (to prevent it from oxidizing).

Unfortunately, after installing the hardware into my computer, the hardware, in the tradition of almost every episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” where someone installs a piece of hardware into something, became sentient and fused into my computer. Looking more closely at the fused parts, I, as an aspiring doctor of both computers and people, have decided that the computer part cannot be removed without “killing” a sentient life form, and therefore the only ethical way forward would be for you to purchase a new part from Newegg. To prevent this from occurring again, please schedule the shipment for a time where you will be in New York to receive the package.

The Best Roommate,

Al

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It’s nice that speech is free

Otherwise we’d have a financial incentive to put thought into the things we say, and that just sounds taxing.

So what’s the right amount of thought to put into your speech? The answer: just enough so that you think you’re clever. As long as it passes your own “oh, yeah, this can’t possibly be wrong” gut-check (which can’t possibly be wrong), you’re good to go.

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In defense of the attack on red meat

IMG_9815Earlier this week, results from a study looking at the correlation of red meat consumption and mortality was released, and then we saw a bunch of articles being like “omg red meat kills you”:

All red meat is risky, a study finds

Study: Too much red meat may shorten lifespan

The Silent Killer: New Study Suggests Eating Red Meat Poses Serious Health Risks

and then of course, whenever anyone attacks red meat, butt-hole Cross Fitters feel the need to defend it with snarky articles like Will Eating Red Meat Kill You? where the main argument is “u guys r so stupid this is a correlation study that doesn’t prove causation and the study’s not perfect.”

Or you’ll just get a Facebook post from Martin Berkhan that looks like this:

Go look up the meaning of “correlation does not imply causation” before asking me to debunk the latest red meat scaremongering BS.

But can we all take a step back for a second and look at what we’re talking about? The study was led by guys like Dr. Frank Hu. I never personally met the guy, but from his picture, he looks halfway nice, and he does things like try to help people with diseases like heart disease and obesity… disease. They got a giant sample of people and noticed that there was a link between mortality and eating red meat. This is probably pretty important for people that look like this (probably also their main audience):

cartman-thumbnail

Then, a bunch of people that look like this were all like, “what? I eat red meat all the time, I never got mortality! You’re a charlatan!”

dallas

Look at them! They’re laughing when they deadlift! Do you have any idea how much weight that is??? One does not laugh when one lifts that much weight!

Yes, if you look like that and have that much weight on a barbell, you can probably eat red meat. Sorry if the honor of your meat choice was somehow sullied.

In defense of the study though – they weren’t trying to trick you. They did even say:

Men and women with higher intake of red meat were less likely to be physically active and were more likely to be current smokers, to drink alcohol, and to have a higher body mass index. In addition, a higher red meat intake was associated with a higher intake of total energy but lower intakes of whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.

They explain that other variables are in play here, and they are not implying that red meat alone is killing people. They’re just saying that if you look like this, then you may want to reconsider some things:

mikefat

A few last notes: I like Mark’s Daily Apple and Martin Berkhan, and I am a big fan of red meat, which I’ve been eating almost on a daily basis since my last asshole doctor told me it was bad for me. I also am a big fan of writing snarky responses to things, but since people beat me to the punch to write an article about how the news seems to be overreacting to it (which is way better than a blog post that I would’ve written), I had to write a snarky blog post about how people are overreacting to the news overreacting about it.

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The air squat challenge

I saw this photo on pinterest and loved it so much that I thought I should share it:

214554369717635436_O0qJVkhx_f

What a great photo! It’s another great image from site “Lose Weight Safe” which has nothing to do with the article it’s posted for (the article was actually on building arm strength). I especially like the squat form. Let’s talk about it:

What’s good about her form

  • Keeps her knees back behind her toes (and thus extends her posterior back to engage glutes/hamstrings)
  • Maintains a slight arch in the lower back
  • Good head position keeping the cervical spine in a neutral-ish position

What can be improved

  • She can probably go a bit lower to further engage the hams/glutes and take some load off the knees.
  • She should keep her center of gravity over her heels and not half a foot behind them so as to not require the hand of God to hold her up

But other than it being physically impossible to maintain, lookin’ good! Keep it up!

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Why would anyone ever eat Good Friends?

51QKZ0Y0ZVL__SL500_AA300_ special buddies

Kashi Good Friends Cereal

Rob & Big’s Special Buddies Cereal

In 2007, I bought a box of Kashi Good Friends cereal thinking that it would be “healthy,” and it was one of the most awful experiences of my life. It didn’t taste like anything, and it was really crunchy and weird. I felt like I was being punished for something. The question I’d like to investigate in this blog post is: why would anyone subject themselves to that? And is there something better they can do? Let’s take a look at the nutrition facts!

nutritionfacts_goodfriends

I pulled the nutrition facts from Kashi’s website. A serving has ~160 calories, 5g of protein, and 42g of carbs (12 of which are from fiber). This means that if you’re eating Kashi, you’re probably doing it for one (or a combination of) the following reasons:

  1. You’re looking for a good source of fiber.
  2. You’re looking for a source of carbs (and you didn’t know that you could get this practically anywhere).
  3. You’re looking for a source of protein (and you just happened to choose a pretty crappy one).
  4. You don’t know anything about nutrition and you just kinda thought that anything Kashi makes is healthy.
  5. You’re a masochist.

If you fall in groups 4 or 5, then it sounds like your execution plan aligns well with your goals, so keep fighting the good fight.

If you fall under groups 1 or 3, I feel like there are things you can do that are less unpleasant than eating Good Friends. For example:

Quest Protein Bars

I’ve personally never tried them, but my roommate has, and he describes them as probably having crack in them because they’re so addicting. They also apparently have ridiculous macros.

nutrition_questbar

If you fall under group 2 and are just looking for carbs, everything’s got carbs and is less disgusting than Good Friends. For example:

  • Bread
  • Rice
  • Cake
  • Other cereal that isn’t as awful as Good Friends
  • Twinlab Ultrafuel – I used this when I was carb loading. It tastes like a chalky fruit punch, which I eventually learned to like, but even before that, it was significantly less foul than Good Friends.

So there you have it. No one has any reasons for eating Good Friends anymore.

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5 more Reasons to drink lemon water

Here’s another wonderful tumblr post that made its way onto pinterest:

5 Reasons to Drink Lemon Water

161355599119382876_6b1vcjYl_c

Quoth the raven:

Balance pH, keep skin clear and glowing, kick start the digestive system, lose weight, control the coffee habit

The following are the sources cited:

[Section intentionally left blank]

The following are 5 equally valid, equally scientifically supported reasons to drink lemon water:

  1. Keeps bears away. They smell the citrus in your pheromones from miles away.
  2. Provides electrolytes to your distilled water!
  3. Reduces flatulence. Lemon mixes with methane to produce sunshine and daisy smells.
  4. Detoxes your body by secreting enzymes that absorb impurities in your blood!
  5. Tones your muscles without bulking you up!

What I really mean: Drink all the lemon water you want as it’s probably fine, but don’t be under the illusion that it any way balances any pH, keeps your skin clear, affects your digestive system, helps you lose weight, or controls your coffee habit.

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