Resignation and Tofu

I left my last job the 24th of November - Friday. It has been quite a run for me in the company – in my year and a half stay, I’ve attended over a hundred meetings, composed over 400 status reports, took on more White Papers, help files, data sheets, and technical marketing collateral than I really care to think about, and heard the phrase “action items” approximately 1,657,342 times. I’ve picked up a host of useless brain clutter - blog administration, site traffic monitoring, search engine optimization, forum management, deodorant use, etc. - and they’re now residing in brain mass I typically reserve for weighty issues, like graphic novels, short stories, and counting to twelve.

Looking back almost a month after, it feels like I’ve been there longer. Feels like the past year and a half had been more protracted, at least where work was concerned. Not in the I’ve-learned-more-in-the-past-blah-blah-than-in-the-rest-of-the-history-of-time way; it feels protracted the same way eating tofu feels protracted, in the can’t-stand-eating-shipping-material way, except security work doesn’t kill testicular tissue. At least I think it doesn’t.

But the point is, very serious researchers are saying that – gymmers, surprise! – soy kills testicular tissue. Okay, sort of serious researchers. You know, the kind of people who would get up in the morning and, for no apparent reason, say stuff like this:

“Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the [something that rhymes with Tennis], sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products.”

Or this:

“This (soy) increases the probability of estrogen dominance in men with its(soy’s) hair loss, swollen and cancerous prostates. Male children fed soy formulas and soy products may not ever get to like girls.”

Yep, yep, yep. Ground-breaking research, including proof of nigh-guaranteed extinction due to soy and beans walking around with, for starters, swollen legume prostates. That is the conundrum that is tofu.

However, those guys are competing with another group of dudes who’re saying soy is healthy for men, preventing a bunch of hormone-related cancers. These dudes argue that soy is healthy for the prostates, and in no way kills testicular tissue of any variety, going so far as to say that Isoflavones (soy-based stuff), quote, “had no effect on [something that rhymes with Ramen] quality.”

So in sum, researchers generally tend to believe that soy is good for prostates, unless they don’t, in which case they generally tend to think your prostates are beyond saving. That is a lot to think about, especially for prostates.

So looking back, the point is that tofu tastes like rubberized mulch, and consuming it feels protracted in a way that work can feel protracted, in that both may or may not kill testicular tissue, and may seem longer than they actually take, hence the protracted bit, which may or may not be related to prostates. I don’t know anymore.

What I do know is that while it may be too early to tell, since I’ve left my last job, it feels like I’ve been consuming far less tofu, which, for all I know, could be a small step in preserving humans, depending on who among the testicular tissue guys you believe.

Can Ban Save Pinnacle?

Health experts are more or less convinced that exercise in varying forms including regular trips to the gym tends to be good for your brain, except when they tell you that regular trips to the gym is called bigorexia, in which case they're more or less convinced you have a severe mental disorder.

Now, I know, I know, it really doesn't matter one way or the other as far as gymmers are concerned. Work out regulars will hit the gym anyway, and the average amount of thought that a gymmer assigns to this kind of discussion, to the best of my knowledge, is this - “Eh?”

In fact, I'm increasingly led to believe that that's pretty much the average amount of thought gymmers assign to ANYTHING.

I should probably be careful here, because I personally think that the bicep-pinching crowds display varying levels of stupidity. On the one end, we've serious regular gymmers, those who visit their friendly neighborhood gym, who cannot under any circumstances count to twelve, and typically cannot process thought streams more complicated than “energy drink.”

You think I'm kidding. You think the anabolic steroids local gymmers openly inject don't mingle with the blood cells, climb up the cerebellum, and harden into a paste-like substance around the left frontal lobe, which handles language, until all the gymmers have left, vocabulary-wise, are 143 words, 11 of which are different spellings of the word “push,” and 24 of which aren't technically words, such as “aaaagh” and “hhhaaaaaa.”

And to that, let me assure you - it's true. Visit your local gym.

Mine plays music comprised almost solely of artists apparently under steroid-rage semi-rhythmically throwing metal plates at their bass guitars. The total hygiene involved in using the flat bench consists solely of spreading the sweat and rust across the bench by wiping it semi-thoroughly with your hands. The mortality rate for members is approaching critical, with members getting their ribs crushed for no apparent reason, except of course if you count lifters-with-the-IQ-of-soy-trying-to-lift-too-much-without-other-people-around as a plausible explanation. If it keeps up, we'll be extinct by 2007.

So yes, we're stupid. And yes, dammit, we're well aware we're stupid.

We recognize we're stupid as our hands shake, as if in an epileptic fit, as we lift weights that could kill us above our heads. We're pretty sure we're stupid when we scream helpful reminders at each other, primarily, “PUSH,” as if at any given point, the person actually doing the lifting will suddenly think he's in Tahiti and forget to push metal plates the size of manhole covers. We especially recognize we're stupid when we start listening to the tune of the steroid-rage guys beating their guitars with plates.

But stupid though we are, there are a few creatures dumber and less productive than even we can be, such as Dung Beetles, crocodile-eating Anacondas, Yacht-club members, presidents, vice presidents, and Pinnaclers.

Okay, not just Pinnaclers. The Fitness First crowd, the Gold's Gym crowd, any group of people who work out in gym hotels, and generally anyone who works out in clubby gyms that sport rocket-science treadmills.

Now why would I say such a thing? What could possibly drive me to believe that clubby gym members have the lowest possible IQ that could sustain life, lower even than starfish, and we're talking a creature that technically, doesn't sport a brain.

If you've ever been to these gyms, you'd understand. You'd see other gymmers stretch, plop onto a treadmill and press Quick Start, after which they'd fill out relevant information about their work out capabilities, including their weight, age, mental state, number of work outs performed, favorite RNB artist, and cell phone numbers, and then, after the treadmill makes sure it can contact them days later to report findings of arterial bleeding, the treadmill chugs to life, and the gymmers start the tedious process of... staying still.

Okay, not still. They move enough to watch CNN. And their feet kind of shake, jelly-like, until you're pretty sure at some point that they're almost – walking. That's right. They somehow managed to find the energy to locate a gym, covered an incredible amount of ground getting there, managed to stretch, and the most physical reminder they're going to experience for that trouble is the neck strain from watching global events unfold.

To be fair, there are other forms of physical activity in these gyms, the bulk of which include

> Speed texting

> Badly copying aerobics instructors, who are badly teaching you new ways to get tired without ever breaking a sweat

> Discussing philosophy, by which I mean TV

> Flirting with co-gymmers with the collective communicative skills of tofu

> Pressing the Quick Start button, which was apparently made by a person who did not understand the concept

Every now and then, there'd be gymmers who actually work out, but they have to deal with the facts; getting the treadmill to work, and then not actually using it, is the predominant concept of a session in those places.

Enter Ban. He's enrolled in Pinnacle. He's a dead-serious lifter, benching over 150 percent his weight, and used to roughing it out in gyms with the rust-concentration of three sunken Titanics.

Is he going to catch the speed texting flu? Will he use plates to fulfill their actual purpose, thereby defying all conventions set up in clubby gyms? Will he get the treadmills to work?

Let's all stand-by and send our best wishes Pinnacle's way, as Ban takes the on the rocket-science treadmills, all without question asking him for his favorite RNB artist.

A Year Pumping Iron

About a year ago today, I started lifting weights.

Now it’s okay to react. I know what you’re gonna say. You’re gonna go all “So pumping iron huh? You wanna look all svelte and wear shirts in children’s sizes, eh? You’re gonna eat high protein mulch that’d shame Czechoslovakian prison food to get rock hard abs that really don’t do anything regular abs can’t do, except they’re harder huh? Aren’t you? Aren’t you?”

To that, let me say, in my sweetest tone:

Listen, cretin, and listen good. Getting in shape has nothing to do with gym. If you have a functioning brain any size larger than a pea, you’d know that getting in shape has very little to do with what you lift or how fast you jog. Thanks to dedicated research and heavy doses of pot, leading experts today are closing in on the reason our collective pant sizes have gone up an average of 19 inches.

Mucus.

Well, okay, not just mucus, other people’s mucus. In National Geographic’s fat plague, avante-garde obesity experts (yes, apparently, there actually are obesity experts) study the human adenovirus, a disease that, among other things, “turns pre-fat cells into full-fledged fat cells.” To demonstrate this, they show an MTV of dancers posing as pre-fat cells, and more dancers posing as the adenovirus. After the adenovirus uses cha-cha to charm the helpless pre-fat cell, people get fat.

Now, let me just say, that was the best scientific venture ever. I think all studies should have MTVs incorporating scientific thought seamlessly. If the next study on Alzheimer’s doesn’t feature helical protein filaments in our nerve cells doing the tango, we all lose out.

But the point is, the adenovirus, transferred through snot, makes people fat. No amount of gym or protein food that tastes like paper towel goo can help you.

So now people use gym to relax. Hell, they use it to meditate. Just ask people over at the rocket-science treadmill nearest you. In case you haven’t heard of this rocket-science treadmill, these are amazing inventions that, as you exercise, track your heart rate, pulse, internal hemorrhaging, etc. They have TVs connected to them, and have configurable inclines that go from flat to Mayon to Everest.

Fans of the relaxation school of thought are societal marvels. They stretch, get ready for action, plop onto these machines, then, without warning, BAM! They jog at the pace of earthworms racing. If you’ve seen sprouts grow faster, they must be pretty well-bred sprouts.

But the point is, the TV and the walking action whoops garden-walking ass, because one, simulated walking is always more productive than actual walking, and two, you can laugh at gymmers who want to warm up before lifting weights.

Sadly, though, I tried enlisting for a relaxing school but the simulated waiting list killed my chances. Instead, I do gym for entirely different reasons.

I’m crazy.

That’s not an expression. I have an actual mental illness, called muscle dysmorphia, otherwise known as bigorexia. Harrison Pope, a psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical Institute, wanted to remind gymmers that they’re a bunch of loons, so he wrote a 10,234 page document read by two people about this strangely unalarming mental disease.

So as I get nostalgic about the full year I’ve been lifting weights, and the many, many technological and scientific breakthroughs in the field of medicine and human kinetics, like rocket-science treadmills, insane-gymmer syndrome and snot-based fat growth, I can’t help but smile, get all teary-eyed, and wonder what our scientists must be smoking.

Whatever it is, I want some.