Posted by: Al | August 8, 2011

Hey look at me I’m cool oh wait never mind I’m not

motorcycle_stuntingWhenever I’m on a motorcycle, I never forget how cool I am. However, sometimes, I’m extra-reminded of how cool I am, and then I try to do something cool, and then I end up doing something to make myself look silly. Consider the following mini-stories:

Story #1: Lookin’ cool for the ladies

I was approaching an intersection on my motorcycle, feeling cool as usual, when I saw a girl that I recognized. I then thought to myself, “hey Al, there’s a cute girl. You should play it cool.” So, I relax my back and arms, and I readjust my hand position on the handlebars. However, in doing so, I end up rolling hard on the throttle. The motorcycle then starts going fast into the intersection, preventing me from properly leaning into the turn, and I just kinda look silly and off balance as I’m turning.

Story #2: Lookin’ cool for the other bikers

Unless you’re part of rival motorcycle gangs, motorcyclists are kinda insta-friends. That’s Al-speak for “instant friends.” No matter what type of bike you ride, if you are approaching another rider, you hold out the top secret motorcycle greeting (look it up on the interwebs), and they’ll probably greet you back (unless they’re doing something else like focusing on the road). When I was riding home one day, I saw riders approaching, so I held out my left hand to greet them. However, when I held out my hand, I quickly realized that I was going pretty slowly and needed my greeting hand to be on the clutch, so I quickly brought my hand back to the handle bar and then wobbled a bit (and when you wobble, you feel silly).

Story #3: Lookin’ cool for the kids

Imagine that you’re a kid in a minivan, and a cool guy on a motorcycle pulls up next to you. The guy’s fully armored and is wearing a tinted visor. This guy looks like a superhero! Well, that super hero was me one day. I looked over, and the kid was smiling and waving to me. Initially, I just looked ahead waiting for the cars in front of me to start moving, but then I decided that I needed to keep the kid’s dream alive, so I waved back at him and gave him a thumbs up. I then looked forward again, saw that the cars had all already started moving, and I rolled hard on my throttle to catch up with traffic again. I guess I didn’t look silly per se, but I bet the car behind me thought I was kinda weird.

So those are my thoughts on motorcycles for today. Keep the rubber side down!

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Posted by: Al | August 6, 2011

Not really cutting to the chase–Cowboys and Aliens

220px-Cowboys_&_AliensHave you ever woken up in a movie theater, looked up at the screen, and thought to yourself, “really? We’re still on this scene?” That’s what happened to me when I was seeing Cowboys and Aliens today.

I’d love to do a “cut to the chase” summary about this film but I really just don’t know what happened. There were a bunch of people and a bunch of aliens, and things happened, and I don’t know why, and there seemed to be a lot of people firing revolvers at bullet-proof aliens. Oh, but arrows and sticks seemed to hurt them.

What might be more interesting is that I got to test my motorcycle gear in a movie theater during a long, boring movie. The tests I conducted were:

  • Sitting in them in an air conditioned theater for about 2 hours
  • Sleeping in them for some periods

Results: It was pretty warm. Ventilated boots don’t really keep you cool when you’re not at speed, and any time you fidget, which you’ll do during a boring movie, you make a loud swishing noise.

So there you have it—that’s my review of my motorcycle pants.

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Posted by: Al | August 6, 2011

Me ripping on an innocent, well-intentioned person cowardly on the Internet

I found this adorable article while I was reading blogs about the season finale of Bachelorette 7. Well, okay, it’s not really an article. It’s just a list, and it’s titled “10 Things to say to a Friend Who Says “I’m So Fat!” In this post, I will be responding to a few highlights from the post.

  1. “Would you say that to me? Okay, so don’t say it to yourself.”
  2. “I think you’re hurting your feelings.”

So, you’re agreeing that they’re fat and just telling them not to admit it because it’s rude?

“Compared to what? Photoshopped magazine covers?”

Legitimately obese people are also “so fat” compared to Photoshopped magazine covers.

“You feel fat? I feel like it’s BS that we judge our bodies by how they look instead of what they can do.”

Bodies can generally do a lot more if they’re not overweight.

Okay, now that I sufficiently sound like a dick, I’ll try to add more clarity and perhaps even be constructive.

First off, if your friend is not actually fat, don’t come up with a line that may leave open the possibility that you agree with their assessment.

If they are fat… well… I realize that sometimes, people don’t want to hear the truth, and they just want to feel better about themselves. However, realistically, someone that is overweight isn’t being done much of a favor if all of their friends are reinforcing the message that it’s okay to be overweight. Aside from aesthetics, with obesity comes serious health risks, and if they want to reduce their risk of having to spend the rest of their lives measuring their blood glucose on a daily basis, they should probably consider changes in diet and exercise.

So what would I say? Well, if they’re male and have <15% body fat or female and <20%, I’d call them an asshole and tell them to F off. If they’re above that but not obese, sure, I’d probably use something in the article above (that doesn’t actually imply that I agree with their assessment of being “so fat.”) If they are actual risking their health, I’d probably ask them if they’d considered making some changes to reduce their health risks. Easier said than done, but that’s probably the right thing to do, right?

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Posted by: Al | August 5, 2011

Oh and I don’t want your unsolicited stock advice at all

enronOn occasion, I’ll have an interesting conversation with someone about stocks and finance. The person I’m talking to will bring up some numbers, but it’ll mostly be about durable competitive advantage, specific plans for growth, and I’ll learn something.

Most of the time, however, I just find people sharing their uninformed opinions about things, and it’s really depressing. It’s like they used the following steps to make their stock pick:

  1. Hear something from a dubious source. For example, a friend that has no business giving any stock advice.
  2. Notice that the stock prices have been going up.
  3. Rationalize why the stock would be doing so well with a bunch of buzz words. “Monetize,” “China,” and “growth potential” seem to be good ones.
  4. Proceed to not actually buy the stock – just be satisfied with knowing that you are a stock expert.

So, in order to avoid being that guy, here are my following rules for sharing opinions on investing:

  • I don’t do it.

If you ask a specific question, I can talk about relevant things I’ve read, and I’ll try to cite my sources, but I am no diviner of good stocks, and I will not pretend to be one.

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Posted by: Al | August 3, 2011

I want your unsolicited gym advice about as much as I want your unsolicited stock tips

ultimate-gym-fail-in-3-2-1Let me start this post out by saying that if Mark Rippetoe ever ran into me at the gym and started giving me unsolicited advice on lifting, I would absolutely take it seriously and thank him. If Warren Buffett ever ran into me anywhere and gave me unsolicited advice on stocks or economics, I’d probably take that pretty seriously.

However, that never happens, and instead, I see that the vast majority of people at the gym are doing dumb stuff (ever see someone on the Smith machine?). Why are they doing such dumb stuff? Because their friend that “knows a lot about lifting” told them to do it. That person probably heard it from someone else that “knows a lot about lifting.” From there, it’s turtles all the way down… until you get to some illiterate gym rat who originated the technique.

But is there something about the gym that makes people more inclined to want to give you advice? I’d guess it’s some machismo thing, but I’ve got no evidence to back that up, so I’ll just say “I don’t know.” I do know that I don’t want to be “that guy,” so I created a few rules about helping people at the gym. I won’t do it unless:

  1. The person asks for it. Verbally.
  2. The person is going to hurt themselves.

And for #2, I don’t mean “I think long term, he’ll find better results if he follows my advice.” I mean “this guy is about to drop a 500lb barbell on his neck.” This has never happened before, but I imagine that one day, I’m going to see someone benching too much without a spot with a suicide grip, and I’m going to stand by until he starts failing, and then I’m going to help guide the bar up and tell him he’s an idiot.

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Posted by: Al | August 3, 2011

Doot doot I’m awesome doot doot

I appreciate the humble athlete that keeps his mouth shut and focuses on his trade. That’s why I have a lot of respect for MMA fighter Georges St Pierre.

…but then again, I can definitely appreciate musical videos of athletes talking about how great they are.

This Randy Moss “One Clap” mashup is an example of a great video that makes you think “wow this guy is awesome… oh and this beat is catchy.”

If the video doesn’t work, here’s a link.

But in really, it doesn’t beat the following Roy Jones Jr video in which RJJ is actually rapping:

If the embedded video doesn’t work, here’s a link.

(That’s Roy Jones Jr rapping.)

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Posted by: Al | August 1, 2011

Dieting–What happens when you stop caring

In March, I started following a diet and workout routine based on Lyle McDonald’s “Ultimate Diet 2.0.” (Yes, it sounds gimmicky, and McDonald explains the origin of the name in the book). To me, that was meant to be an experiment to see if I could gain muscle mass while losing or maintaining weight (and specifically, took better for my trip to Hawaii). Along the way, I posted a bunch of blog entries about my observations around dieting, and then I just kinda stopped. I thought I’d use this entry to talk about the results of that experiment and where I am now.

First, the numbers:

  Weight Bench Press Squat Deadlift
Effect of Diet 172lbs +10lbs +60lbs +20lbs
Results since diet 178lbs 0 +30lbs +20lbs

 

It’s kinda hard to tell from just looking at the numbers, but with UD2.0, I was able to roughly maintain my weight, break through a plateau I had been hitting for weeks on the bench press, and add some weight to squats/deadlift (you can probably ignore the +60lbs on the squats – there’s a long, boring explanation as to why that was so impressive).

However, the cost of this was that I was hungry a bunch, spent a lot of time on Sundays prepping food for the week, and I was mostly brain-dead on Wednesdays toward the end of my depletion phase.

After a few weeks of dieting and a trip to Hawaii, I just stopped caring. In my world, this means:

  • If I’m hungry, I eat.
  • Aim for ~2000 calories/day.
  • Lift weights 3x/wk
  • Try to get lots of protein (~1g/lb of bodyweight).

Even though I gained ~6lbs since I stopped UD2.0, I’ve continued to improve on the bench, squat, and deadlift without brain-dead-on-Wednesdays tax and without having to feel hungry all the time.

So what’s the moral of the story? UD2.0 was pretty cool, and I thought it really helped me break through a plateau I was hitting. However, it’s probably not a terribly practical long-term solution, and for normal people, you probably just want to be able to have your definition of “not caring” somewhat resemble mine (or better!).

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Posted by: Al | July 31, 2011

Your doll looks eerily like a doll

pennywiseWhen you’re a kid, everything’s scary. The dark is scary. Clowns are scary. Big whoop – people understand it, you get over it as you get older, and life goes on.

When you enter adulthood, things that scared you as a kid aren’t supposed to scare you anymore. I used to be so afraid of the Pennywise the clown from the film It that I would be afraid of being alone for weeks after seeing the film, but I got over it… mostly. (Note: I did consciously decide not to add the picture of the clown to my post until right before I submitted it so I wouldn’t have to stare at it while I wrote this). Really, adults are supposed to be afraid of different things like muggers, communism, venereal disease, etc.

But I maintain that there’s one thing that’s scary for children and way creepy for adults: DOLLS.

Now, before I go any further, not all dolls are scary. The following are fine:

Hand_made_dolls okdolls

They’re clearly happy and harmless. And even the following are fine:

intentionallycreepydoll scarydoll

I mean, sure, they’re scary, but they’re intentionally made to be scary, and you just acknowledge that the person who designed them was sick, and life goes on. However, there’s this next category of doll which is just creepy:

creepydoll Shirley-Temple

WTF??? It’s like someone designed these dolls to be life-like enough to make them seem like they have the potential to be sentient beings but doll-like enough so that if they were sentient, they’d clearly not share human values and resent humans from bringing them into this cruel world.

I was inspired to write this post because in the elevator in my apartment, this woman was carrying this creepy looking doll. At first, I thought it was odd that it was the woman who was carrying it and not her daughter, but then I noticed that the doll was piercing into my soul with her stare, expressing that her ability to communicate was stifled by her creator’s inability to give her a working set of vocal cords, and then I kinda thought “ah, yeah, if I were that kid, I wouldn’t want to hold that doll either.”

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Posted by: Al | July 30, 2011

When it’s okay to like Harry Potter

hermioneEarlier, I shared an article about why it’s okay to like Harry Potter. In this post, I look at the timing aspect of this and describe when it’s okay to like Harry Potter.

One cannot like Harry Potter all the time. Quoth Plato’s Republic, “the sound of the flute played in the Phrygian mode, like Harry Potter, is recommended to improve the disposition of children and adults in certain circumstances.”

So when is it okay to like Harry Potter? Simply, it’s when you’re in any one of the following situations:

  • You are dressed up as a character from Harry Potter.
    At this point, you might as well embrace it.
  • You are watching Harry Potter
    Once again, you’re already there, you might as well sit back and enjoy Alan Rickman take over the scene as Severus Snape.
  • There is at least one girl around you that likes Harry Potter.
    You don’t just start talking about Harry Potter if it’s just a bunch of dudes. However, this does not apply to Hermione Granger. You are always allowed to like Hermione Granger.
  • You are a girl and you’ve read the books.
    This one is just based on observation. I don’t know of any girls that like Harry Potter but haven’t read the books. I postulate that it’s because it’s not socially acceptable.
  • You wrote the books
    JK Rowling and Truman Capote are both allowed to like Harry Potter.
  • Someone is being obnoxious about how much they like Lord of the Rings and the only thing that would bring them down a notch is a well-structured argument about why Harry Potter is better than Lord of the Rings.
    Lord of the Rings is about elves and orcs. Harry Potter is about love and aspiring to meet one’s full potentials. And little banker goblins.

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Posted in Al Observes Things, Movies | Tags: , , ,

Posted by: Al | July 30, 2011

Lion-eating and flag-burning

lion-king-34A friend of mine Joe is from South Africa, and some time ago, we were talking about African safaris. Specifically, I asked him if we could go on a safari if I visit South Africa, and he enthusiastically said yes. I then asked him if we could hunt and eat lions, and he said, “what? No, you can’t kill lions. If you shoot a lion, I’ll shoot you.” (Irony forthcoming?)

I didn’t realize that lions were endangered, but I get that if they are, you don’t want to hunt them for food. After all, you can get plenty of micronutrients from non-endangered things like apples and kale.

But just last night, I was watching The Ghost and the Darkness (or was it Wall Street… I always get those two mixed up), and there were these two giant lions attacking people, and I figured that if they’re attacking people, it has to be okay to shoot them, right?

So today I bring this question to Joe, and his response is, “ah yes, if they’re attacking you, then it’s okay to shoot them, and in that case, you should probably eat them.”

Interesting! At that point, I concluded that eating lions seems to be like burning flags. You don’t want to do it, but sometimes (like when you don’t want to waste dead lion meat or you don’t want to let the flag get desecrated) it’s the right thing to do.

And on one final note: did anyone detect irony? It appears that it’s encouraged to kill humans in defense of lions unless you’re killing lions in defense of humans. Okay I guess that’s not irony, but it’s probably passable as irony to the untrained, non ivy-league ear.

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