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I had an interesting (well, to me) thought the other day while driving through a somewhat poor neighborhood not far from my home. It seems to me that a lot of problems in this country are related to how widely separated the wealth classes are, and not just in monetary terms, but in geographical as well. If you live in a gated community, all your neighbors are wealthy, and your only knowledge of folks in poverty is reading the police reports in the local paper or seeing the shady characters who hang out on street corners on your way home from the opera, you are not going to think highly of the poor. You may come to think they’re all just lazy, that they could easily get themselves out of the ghetto if they really just put their minds to it, that they’re all just criminals who deserve to be mistreated by the police and imprisoned for long terms for petty offenses because they were probably guilty of something.

And if you grew up in a poor neighborhood, watched your mother kill herself with work to feed you and your brother because your dad left years ago, saw friends go to jail (or get murdered) for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and your only interaction with wealthy people is seeing them go on TV and call you a lazy bum or come into the Burger King where you work and treat you like crap, you might think them entitled pricks who deserve to pay outrageous taxes or even get robbed on the streets.

Obviously these are extreme positions. Rich people aren’t all entitled pricks, although a few of them are. Poor people aren’t lazy criminals, even though a few of them are. But they simply don’t interact enough in real life to see past the extremes that they read and see every day. I think we need to get these folks together, living side by side. This isn’t just theory, it really does work in practice, even on a small scale: I’ve known relatively well-off people who have purchased homes in awfully dangerous inner city communities, and they make friends with their poorer neighbors and everybody gets along quite nicely. I think we just need to see more of this.

How to do it? Well, there are a lot of ways. We could simply pass a law that says every McMansion has to have a rent-controlled apartment building next to it, and pass strict laws making sure that those apartments are taken up by truly low-income people instead of just rich folks looking to save a buck, although obviously having rich folks and poor folks living in the same building would be a pretty grand idea as well. Unfortunately we can’t really knock down the existing mansions and apartment buildings and rebuild them to align with our ideals.

The better option, I think, is to tie property taxes to the average value of homes in the community. A guy who buys a million-dollar house out in the country surrounded by other million-dollar houses, well, he pays a property tax rate based on that average million-dollar value. The guy who buys (or builds) a million-dollar house downtown surrounded by $150,000 row-homes, he pays a much lower amount of taxes. It’d have to be an awfully strong tax, of course; plenty of people would be willing to pay an increased tax rate to not live in an area they believe is dangerous. Also, property taxes are currently so low (I think in my area they should be at least doubled, with that extra money going straight to schools, libraries, and community centers) that it wouldn’t put much of a dent in any really wealthy person’s pocketbook. It might also be worth offering extra tax rebates based on a community’s average income, or the number of people in it who use government assistance. We’d also have to make sure that the large amounts of money collected on property taxes in wealthy areas got spent in the areas that had very little tax collected, which might be a challenge. It might also be worth offering special mortgage rates on homes purchased in poorer areas.

I think if we could just get people living near each other and participating in each other’s success, there really would be a rising tide to lift all boats. So tell me: why wouldn’t this work?

I kinda wanna talk politics, since we’ve reached the “Silly Season” part of the Presidential campaign where everything gets over-analyzed and beaten into the ground. Did Governor Romney give away the election by hitting the current Administration on the Libyan embassy attack? Did President Obama screw himself by allowing Vice-President Biden to talk at the convention? Did Gary Johnson blow up his campaign by…wait, who the hell is Gary Johnson? Didn’t he play for the Chargers? (Fun fact: Yes. Non-fun coincidence: he died on President Obama’s 49th birthday. If it’s not clear at this point that we’re talking about a different Gary Johnson than the current Libertarian Presidential candidate, then I don’t know what to tell you other than you might be an idiot and I can only assume you’re a big Mitt Romney supporter.)

Politics is depressing, though. We have a nearly unbridgeable gap between left and right in which each side is completely flabbergasted that the other side could say and believe the things they do. I’m not immune from this: I routinely read about people who honestly believe Mitt Romney will fix the economy (he won’t), and also believe that President Obama wants to take their guns away (he won’t) or is a Muslim (he’s not; I hew pretty closely to the theory that says he’s actually a closet atheist, and can’t admit it until his political career is over), or believe that “ObamaCare” should be called “ObamaTax” despite the fact that they don’t even know anyone who makes enough money that their taxes will be going up as a result of the ACA, aside from the penalty paid by those who don’t get health insurance as part of the individual mandate, something only put in place so that health insurance company lobbyists would allow their representatives in Congress to vote for the law.

That was a long sentence. Just like a potential Romney Administration. (Rim shot.)

I may come back to politics as we get closer to the election. Instead, I’ll give you an update on my current workout/diet regimen, which is going reasonably well.

While in Texas I ate relatively healthily, by which I mean I think I only had chicken fried steak one time, although I should admit the steak itself was most of a single cow. I only gained 3-4 pounds while we were gone, most of which was water weight that I lost in a few days after getting back to the program, and so I continued with my Leangains cut, and continued my RPT workouts. By mid-August, though, I was getting very frustrated with the strength loss I was seeing, and wanted to get back to eating a bit more, so I decided to switch to a “recomp”, and also add a bit more volume to my program.

I should explain what “recomp” is; it’s short for “recomposition,” and usually means eating approximately the same amount of calories as you burn. So if your body uses 2500 calories a day, you eat 2500 calories a day. The idea behind it is that you do that and lift heavy weights and get plenty of protein, and your body should theoretically shed a bit of fat, and your muscles should grow. The problem is that it’s very, very slow. The human body doesn’t just turn fat into muscle, despite what you may have read; it either loses bodyweight (because of caloric deficit, eating less than you use) or adds bodyweight (because of caloric surplus, eating more than you use). So eating the same amount of calories every day means your body uses those calories…and then has nothing to grow muscle with. On Leangains, however, you eat more on training day than on rest days, so after lifting weights your body uses extra calories to build muscle, and on the rest days your body is in a deficit and sheds fat. It’s still not as fast as the classic “bulk/cut” cycle, but it doesn’t require you to spend a few months getting fat while adding muscle, and then spend a few months cutting that fat back off. Also, folks with very low bodyfat tend to lose fat slowly anyway, and folks with a lot of barbell training under their belt add muscle slowly as well. So for folks who are already in good shape, it’s good enough. I’m not sure if I qualify for “in good shape” yet, but I did buy a pair of 34×34 jeans at Old Navy that fit nicely. I’m averaging about 228 pounds, which is the least I’ve weighed since freshman year of college, and I didn’t have near as much muscle at the time. I estimate my bodyfat at around 15% right now.

So I switched to the Leangains recomp protocol, and since I would be eating more and therefore theoretically be able to recover faster, I thought it might be a good idea to go back to a full-body workout. After poking around a bit I settled on “The Texas Method,” which is an intermediate lifting program involving a high volume workout on Monday, a light workout on Wednesday, and then a low-volume but heavy day on Friday. So for example, you might work with 80% of your max on Monday, but do 5 sets of 5 reps; on Wednesday, you work at 50-60% and do 2-3 sets of 5; on Friday, you try to set a 5-rep personal record. It works best when eating a big surplus, but by cutting the volume back to 3×5 on Monday and hoping for less frequent Friday maxes, I thought it might work on a recomp.

I lasted 4 workouts.

Part of the problem was that on the 2nd week, I decided to replace rows with power cleans, which would probably be a great idea if I was any good at power cleans or decided to start low. Instead I really wore myself out with 3×3 at 175lbs and the next day I strained my back bending over to fill my water bottle. Also, my ever-annoying right hip had started to flare up a bit, and I thought maybe the volume was going to be too much and trying to add 5 pounds to my maxes every week was wishful thinking without eating 4000 calories a day. It was time to try something else, so I looked into 5/3/1, a program by Jim Wendler. Now, for anyone who’s read my posts on Fitocracy over the past year or so, the fact that I’m doing 5/3/1 might come as a surprise given how many times I’ve told people not to do 5/3/1. In fact, I’ve never had anything against 5/3/1; I’d never done it, but from everything I’d read it seemed like a fantastic program if you are of a sufficient training level that periodization and slow monthly progression are necessary. The reason I was telling people not to do the program was because they were new lifters, and adding 5-10 pounds a month to their lifts was silly when they could do Starting Strength and add 5 pounds every workout.

However, knowing that RPT (which meant hitting the same weights every week and never being able to progress, even if I was pyramiding down from the max) wasn’t working, so periodization (working at different percentages each week) seemed like a great idea; and realizing that unless I was willing to eat like a pig I probably couldn’t add weight every week like the true intermediate lifter I am, 5/3/1 seemed like a nice option. It also features frequent “deload” weeks to give my poor old man muscles a chance to recover.

(WARNING: things are about to get lifter-nerdy up in this.)
The gist of 5/3/1 is that you do a 4-week cycle: first week, you warm up and do 3 ramped sets of 5, topping out at about 85% of your “training max” (more on this in a moment); second week, you warm up and then do 3 ramped sets of three, getting to 90%; and then in week three you warmup and do a set of 5@85%, 3@90%, and then 1@95% of your training max. The fun part is that the 3rd set each week, the prescribed reps is only a minimum: you actually do as many as you possibly can. So on week one you might actually do 11 reps at 85% of your max, and in week three you might be able to do 5 or 6. I’m in the middle of week 1, and I hit 11 reps of my top squat set on Monday, and 9 each on deadlift and overhead press yesterday.

In week 4, you deload, just basically doing warmups and allowing your body to recover from the 3 week pounding you just gave it. Then you repeat the cycle, pretty much forever if you want.

The real genius of the program is the use of the “training max,” which is not the same thing as your true max. In fact, if you know your true one-rep-max (1RM) Wendler prescribes setting your training max to 90% of it. If you don’t know your one-rep-max, he has you estimate it from your 5RM or whatever rep max you happen to know. The reasons that you set your weekly percentages from this hypothetical training max instead of your true max are, in no particular order:

1. Most guys don’t know their true current max.
   

   “I do a seminar basically every week,” Wendler says, his voice rising. “Every time, without fail, when I ask someone what their one-rep max is, I get this: ‘Wellll, about three years ago I hit 365 for a triple, but that was when I was training heavier …’ Most guys just don’t have a f***ing clue.
   “By using the 90%, I account for this bulls***. By using weights they can actually handle, guys are building muscle, avoiding burnout, and most importantly, making progress every workout.”



2. If you step backwards a bit, you allow yourself to build momentum forward such that after a few months your training max actually exceeds your previous max, and a few months after that, you’re doing multiple reps in week 3 of a cycle with what had once been a theoretical 1RM.


3. As Jim says, “You don’t need to operate at your max to increase your max.” Since the top set has only a minimum prescribed number of reps, you can achieve muscle exhaustion with high reps that will trigger muscle growth, and follow up in the heavier weeks with lower reps that continue to stimulate growth.

Every cycle, you add 10 pounds to the training max of your deadlift and squat, and 5 pounds to the presses. You could even increment even more slowly, something I might explore if I find I have to reset too frequently. A reset is triggered by not being able to get all the prescribed minimum reps for an exercise, and so in the next cycle you knock 10% off the training max and work your way back up.

Normally, 5/3/1 is a 4-day training program, with overhead press, deadlift, bench press, and squat all done on separate days with various assistance exercises that are left pretty much up to the trainee. I’m doing Wendler’s “beginner” modification, which is a 3 day “full-body” variation in which on Monday I squat heavy, then bench press very light, and do some assistance (rows or leg raises); Wednesday I deadlift heavy and overhead press heavy, followed by some chins; and Friday I’ll squat light, bench heavy, and then probably do some inverted bodyweight rows. I have a good amount of muscle soreness from the workouts, but no joint pain so far, and my back’s holding up fine. I’ve considered doing the regular 4-day program but honestly can’t rely on being able to get 4 lunch hours a week devoted to training. My hope is that over the fall/winter/spring I knock out 9-10 cycles of 5/3/1, add 7-8 pounds of muscle, and cut off enough fat so that my super-fly abs start popping like a toaster strudel. I’ll keep y’all updated since I’m sure you’re on pins and needles about the whole thing.

I’ve got a massive, multiple-day update planned detailing our trip to Texas and back, with pictures and all. (I’m sure you noticed I wasn’t posting on here for like 3 weeks? No? Okay cool then, it’s fine.) But before we get to that I’ve got to say a few words about the latest controversy on gun control, in response to the Aurora shootings last week, organized as a serious of barely connected thoughts:

• When people talk to me about gun rights, the Second Amendment always gets mentioned, but honestly I don’t even use old Bill O’ Rights #2 when defending gun ownership. Why? Because it can be construed a million ways. Folks insisting that only the militia (which they read as the National Guard, despite the fact that the Militia Act of 1903 is pretty clear that the “Militia” is anyone eligible to be drafted, which means any male between the ages of 17 and 45) should have guns, or insisting that “well-regulated” means that the government should have the right to decree what guns are legal and what aren’t, and the folks on the other side that say “well-regulated militia” is just the rationale behind the amendment, and the real meat of it is the “shall not be infringed” part. Each side defines the text however it best fits their agenda. So frankly I just ignore it. Even if there was no Second Amendment, I still think most everybody should be allowed and encouraged to own guns.


• When someone is in favor of gun control, I think it’s fair to ask exactly what they intend to accomplish with it. Getting rid of guns is a pointless thing to do unless it serves some greater goal. It’s like banning trans fats. The reason for banning trans fats, of course, is to make food healthier, which leads to healthy people. Healthy people is the real goal, trans fats is just the step that gets you there. So when you want to enact gun control, what you REALLY want are safer people.

  
  Assuming they want a safer populace, what gun control advocates really have to demonstrate is two-fold: first, does a full or partial ban on guns actually make us safer, and second, is it the MOST EFFICIENT way of making us safer. The second is a little difficult to explain, but let’s say that banning all guns would make Americans safer, as indicated by a drop in violent crime of, say, 2%. (That’s a made up number, just used for this example.) But say that increasing welfare benefits to the under- and un-employed would cost about the same as a gun ban, and would produce a drop in violent crime of, say, 25%, just because a well-fed, healthy population tends to shoot each other less frequently. (Again: made up number.) Wouldn’t the second option be the better idea, just from a cost perspective?

  
  The first issue is a little more cut-and-dried: John Lott’s studies in the 1990s seem to indicate that communities that enact gun bans see pretty much no drop in crime as a result. In some communities the amount of crime went up, the speculation being that criminals are no longer afraid of encountering armed homeowners during burglaries. So at the very best, gun control SEEMS to be an ineffective way to reduce crime.



• Another issue is that gun control always seems to come up after a big shooting tragedy, and if you think gun control is ineffective in reducing overall crime, it’s absolutely hopeless in preventing tragedies like we had last week. For example, Germany has fairly strict gun control: a firearms license is required, and to get one you must prove “trustworthiness,” “personal adequacy,” “expert knowledge,” and “necessity.” (“Self-defense is not a recognized ground for necessity, outside the narrow requirements of a carry permit.”) None of this kept the Winnenden School shooting from occurring. The fact of the matter is that unless you can GUARANTEE that no guns are available to anyone anywhere for any reason whatsoever, you can’t guarantee that tragedies won’t happen. And if they aren’t guaranteed to be prevented, it’s just a matter of time before they happen. It sucks that they do, but it’s one of the sad side effects of living in a free society.

  
  An example: man joins the Marines, goes into a combat zone, sees some horrible things and develops PTSD. However, like most mental issues of that type, he’s able to control and hide it fairly well. He leaves the service, and because of his military experience is able to get a job as a police officer. One day, he snaps. He walks into the police armory, walks out with a variety of semi-automatic weapons, and goes berserk. I don’t say this to disparage the military (although they could probably be doing a better job working on the mental issues of veterans), but to demonstrate that there is no gun control legislation that will absolutely guarantee we don’t see the occasional spree shooting. Make it less frequent, maybe, but honestly they’re so infrequent now that it’s like trying to do something about people dying from lightning strikes.



• Unfortunately, none of these facts seem to make any difference to gun control advocates, who seem to want to eliminate guns just because they find them scary. Which I find a little terrifying, because that’s exactly the same kind of logic that leads to anti-sodomy laws and the drug war. I mean, if we can outlaw certain types of firearms just because they make folks FEEL safer, it’s hard to argue against initiatives to eliminate gay marriage. In both cases, logic and science are being ignored in favor of feelings and beliefs. Pretty scary thought, for a country that’s supposed to be the freest in the world. It made me think of a fun internet trope I’d seen, which I’m modifying here a bit to reflect what I think is liberal hypocrisy on this subject. (I think my liberal bona fides are fairly well established, so forgive me a little zinger.)

  
  Don’t like gay marriage? Don’t get one.
  
  Don’t like abortions? Don’t get one.
  
  Don’t like drugs? Don’t do them.
  
  Don’t like sex? Don’t have it.
  
  Don’t like guns? OMG BAN THEM THEY ARE SO SCARY



• Another frequently comment I see is along the lines of “Well, guns in general are fine I guess, but we need to get rid of military style assault weapons, nobody needs to have those.” (Nobody needs to have swimming pools either, and a few thousand people a year drown in those, but you never hear of anyone wanting to ban them.) Here’s the big issue: what consistutes a “military-style assault weapon?” The military has access to all kinds of weapons that aren’t available to the general public for purchase, usually because of the fully automatic features. Buying a legal, fully automatic weapon requires a federal license that’s almost impossible to get. It seems as if folks think that anyone can waltz into a gun store and buy exactly the same rifle that soldiers are using in Afghanistan, but that’s just not true.

  
  So what a currently legal “assault rifle” is, is a semi-automatic rifle. It might have a pistol grip that makes it a little easier to hold and aim, but that’s just about the only thing that differentiates it from a regular semi-auto hunting rifle. So-called “assault weapons” often have larger magazines, but guess what: you can buy a hunting rifle with a big magazine too. You can also buy semi-automatic handguns with large magazines, and honestly if you want to perpetrate a mass shooting, one of those is even better to have because it’s concealable. And as I mentioned above, there’s some evidence that getting rid of defensive handguns actually makes a community less safe. So what you’re doing with a ban is reducing the number of shooting sprees (which are already so rare as to be discounted, statistically) and increasing the number of “everyday” shooting deaths.

  
  My feeling on the matter is that so-called “assault weapons” just look scary, and so some folks think they should be banned. Which goes to the issue above: just because you’re scared of it, doesn’t mean getting rid of it would actually make anyone safer.



• Here’s a little thought experiment: take two groups, conservatives and liberals, and show them the movie “Boys n the Hood.” If you haven’t seen it, a quick explanation is that it’s about gangs and violence and what the African American youth experience was like in the 80s and 90s. It’s got a fair amount of shooting in it. After you’re done, ask the two groups about what was responsible for the violence. Now I haven’t done this experiment, but my best guess is that the liberals, who usually haven’t grown up around guns and tend to be leery of them, are going to say that the problem is the guns. I think the conservatives, many of whom grew up around guns and are pretty comfortable with them, are going to say “black people.” Obviously I’ve set up a room full of straw people and I’m laying a lot of racism on them, but I think it demonstrates the kind of irrational fears that I believe are driving most political debates today. And let’s face it, as Jon Stewart once said, not all Republicans are racists. But if you’re a racist, you probably vote Republican.


• Just as a final note, I’d like to comment that in Switzerland, every male citizen between the ages of 20 and 30 has a fully automatic assault rifle in his home, although admittedly he is no longer required to keep ammunition for it, which seems kinda silly. Still, estimates of the number of military or privately-owned guns in Swiss homes ranges from 1.2 to 3 million, according to Wikipedia, in a country with a population of 8 million. The number of murders in Switzerland in 2010? 53. Also, here’s an interesting tidbit: “Although Brazil has 100 million fewer citizens than the United States, and more restrictive gun laws, there are 25 percent more gun deaths; other sources indicate that homicide rates due to guns are approximately four times higher than the rate in the United States.” Also: “All firearms in Brazil are required to be registered with the state…The total number of firearms in Brazil is thought to be around 17 million with 9 million of those being unregistered.” But restricting gun availability for everyone keeps them out of the hands of criminals! Not so much, it seems.


• This is probably a little bit “Chicken Little,” but if things continue along their current path, the likelihood of armed confrontation between groups of Americans goes up. Tea Party folks are already showing up at political rallies carrying their guns, to show how “free” they are, and also to make sure we’re all nice and intimidated. I admit a civil war isn’t terribly likely, but it’s hard to rule out. Do we really want the Tea Party “Patriots” to be the only folks who have guns, and know how to use them? Seems like an anti-gun liberal is a guy that’s not paying enough attention to the crazy SOBs running the Republican Party at the moment.
• 
  
• In the end, this country is facing a lot of issues at the moment, and I think that gun control is just about the last thing we need to be worried about. The fact is, Americans like guns, and no politician facing a difficult battle this November is going to touch the issue with a ten foot pole. The Supreme Court legalized unlimited, anonymous contributions to political campaigns, and I’d say we’re pretty much screwed unless we can put a stop to that. Right now the political process is bought and paid for, and I’d kinda like to get it back in the hands of Americans instead of corporations. That ain’t happening if we elect a GOP President who’ll pack the Court with conservative appointees, and if President Obama utters even one peep about maybe banning a few assault weapons, we’re almost guaranteed a terrifying Romney administration. As progressives, let’s just drop this gun control nonsense and focus on the important issues, okay?

Next time, I’ll get to chit-chattin’ about our Texas trip, which will be much more fun, less argumentative, and probably picture-heavy. Have a solid week, y’all.

I hope everybody had an enjoyable long weekend. Mine could not possibly have been less restful, and for once my children aren’t entirely to blame. Only, you know, mostly.

The elder 66% of my children have birthdays this month, so Sunday we had a large birthday party for them. I’ll get to more on that later, but wanted to establish that fact to explain why I took Friday off from work: preparation.

The day actually started with an early morning workout, during which I established why perhaps it’s time to pick a new workout routine: I wrenched my upper-middle back doing squats, and it’s still a little jacked up. It’s a spot that I routinely injured in college, but hadn’t bothered me in a while. I think the issue was the dieting; even on my kickass Lean Gains protocol, was keeping me from recovering properly, and squatting heavy twice a week (with deadlifts on the other training day) isn’t going to work until I start eating surplus again. Last Monday’s workout felt pretty bad, and Friday’s was just a crapsaster. I’m taking this week off, and I’ll get back to it next week, with a new routine that only has me squatting once a week.

After that, I got to go to Charles’s school for “Donuts for Dads,” which was awfully cute. Everybody’s dad got a donut and some juice, and then Charles read me a story and showed me some of his schoolwork, and then the class sang a song about the importance of composting. (Side note: I don’t know how recently you may have graduated kindergarten, but when I was there we spent a fair amount of time working on letters and phonics with an eye towards learning to read in 1st grade. All the kids in Charles’s class can just flat-out read. I would have assumed it’s because it’s a “gifted” class, but parents of kids in other classes say their kids read pretty well too. I guess we’re playing catch-up with Japan, where all the kids can speak 3 languages by age 2.)

Once “Donuts” was done, I got to go home and spend pretty much the rest of the day in the yard: mowing, raking, cleaning, weed-whacking, doing everything I could to make the property somewhat safe and pleasant for small children. Of course, this meant that I awoke Saturday morning with my injured back tighter than Rick Santorum’s anus. I could barely walk. This did not, of course, keep us from loading everybody into the car and heading out to Lancaster for my cousin Carolyn’s wedding, at which my children utterly destroyed the dance floor.

Weddings, I have to say, are surprisingly fun with children around. Sure, you have to keep them from sticking their hands into the wedding cake, but once the dancing starts they can be pretty much left to their own devices.

Sunday was the big party day. The theme was “Knights and Princesses,” so we rented a big castle moon bounce, decorated with medieval-y tapestries and a replica suit of armor provided by Sarah’s mom, and the kids made posterboard princess hats and knightly shields. We managed to get through the whole day without anyone being injured, even after I made the beer-induced decision to get into the bounce and do backflips. (You may not believe it, but my back did not approve, and reminded me of my folly the next morning.)

On Memorial Day, we celebrated by “sleeping in;” everyone in the house was up by 7am, except for Josephine, who slept solidly until almost 10:30. After doing some clean-up, we piled back into the car to go to my sister’s housewarming, where we ate faaaaaaaaar too much, as one is wont to do on Memorial Day.

Additional bullet points:

• Our friend Mary devised some kind of butterscotch-flavored Rice Krispy Treats, which made an appearance at the party on Sunday, and which are now required fare for all future parties. I think she had to email the recipe to like 75 people.


• If you like moon bounces, get one that inexplicably has a 7-foot high soft basketball hoop on the outside. You’d think it would result in a really stellar slam dunk contest, but what ended up being FAR more fun was 3 adult men taking turns trying to fling a soccer ball through it from 50-60 feet away while drinking a lot. Only one of us managed to do it (get the ball through the hoop, that is, not the drinking; we were all very successful at that), although I did at least hit the rim once.

Stay thistly, my friends.

Had us a nice little vacation last week. Went down to Ocean View with the folks, ate like pigs, swam in the indoor pool in the clubhouse, chased the kids around the yard, drank entirely too much. After 3 days of this my body simply rebelled. I felt like six asses all last week. (Punctuation is important: “I felt, like, six asses all last week” would be a different matter possibly resulting in divorce proceedings, criminal charges, and PETA protests.)

Last Saturday was spent mostly at Little League, because we had the opening ceremonies, picture-taking, and the opening game, all spaced out perfectly to maximize our inconvenience. Opening ceremonies were from 8:30-9:30am, and then pictures didn’t start until 12:30, and of course the game itself was at 3pm, meaning we basically had time to go home and then drive back. I managed to at least get a little yard work done after the game, which I had to frantically finish on Sunday before friends came over, at which point my diet went out the window and I drank beer and ate barbecued flesh like I was being placed in stasis for a trip to Mars.</NERD>

But I need your help with a little bit of dream analysis, because I’m worried that I’ve edged a little closer to the deep end and treading the dark waters of sanity is becoming somewhat harrowing. (Apparently I’ve turned into H.P. Lovecraft again.)

I dreamt the other night that I had gone to see organist Peter Richard Conte perform on some kind of theatre organ, but which turned out to be very oddly operated in that he spent most of his time running around banging on drums and actually blowing on pipes with his mouth to make the sounds. Suddenly, I found myself actually in the pipe chamber with him, as he conducted some kind of interview of me, broadcast to the audience outside, in which I did some of celebrity impressions and a host of funny voices.

Apparently the audience loved this, because as I left the interview the crowd outside went nuts. I then found myself at some kind of outdoor high school bonfire being congratulated by everyone I met, assured that I would soon find great success in television, and to escape the throng I ran off towards some large field with a massive climbing net or web, a football field wide and hundreds of feet high.

I’d like to say I then dreamt Mr. Conte appeared as a big spider in the web and ate my feet, but that would not be true as actually I simply woke up.

Important note: I had gone to bed stone sober. What, in the name of all that is holy, does all of this mean? Am I, in the words of noted psychologist Kanye West, “cray?”

I’ve been thinking lately about the old trope, “I don’t care what anybody thinks.” You see it usually when somebody’s making a series of poor decisions, like “I may be fat, but I like wearing skintight leopard prints, I don’t care what you think,” or “I don’t care what people say, I’m definitely getting a tattoo of a leprechaun on my face.” Sometimes you’ll hear it as a compliment. “Oh, you know Grandma’s a little racist, but she’s just being real, she doesn’t care what anybody thinks.”

My question is: isn’t “not caring what other people think” the primary description of a sociopath? I wikipedia’d up “sociopath” and found information on what the World Health Organization describes as “dissocial personality disorder“, the first indicator of which is:

Callous unconcern for the feelings of others

If six-year-old children acted this way, they’d be given a mental health evaluation. But in healthy adults, it’s something to be admired? Why?

I’ve also heard the saying, “What people say about me when I’m not there is none of my business.” It’s true you don’t have a whole lot of control over what others say. But you do have some control, by which I mean you can control the behavior that may lead to people talking about you positively or negatively. If you routinely lie to your friends, fail to meet expectations at work, and are just generally a douchenozzle, of course people are going to say bad things about you. And when the things that one person says about you affect the way you are treated by the listener, it has suddenly become your problem. If a prospective employer calls your former boss for a reference, their conversation about you is very much your business whether you’re there or not. If a former friend of yours pulls your new girlfriend aside and says, “Look, you should be aware that Roger’s a nice guy, but he’s cheated on every girl he’s ever dated,” that is your business as well. If your boss and your friend are telling the truth, it’s pretty stupid to blame them for talking about you.

Obviously you can’t please everybody. There are going to be people out there who poop on everybody and everything, and listening to them is silly. But it seems to me that when people say “I don’t care what people think,” they mean “If you disagree with me, you’re wrong.” If you say “I’m thinking about dropping out of medical school to become a professional rugby player,” and most of the people you know respond “That’s stupid, you’re only 5-foot-2 and have the athletic ability of a tree sloth,” it’s not because they’re all haters. It’s because you said something dumb.

How about we all agree to start listening to each other’s reasoned arguments, and stop saying “What you say doesn’t matter” just because it doesn’t conform to our narrow beliefs? Or not. I mean, I don’t really care what you think.

I promised this last week, but I’ve been working on it fairly constantly, whenever time allowed, for like 9 days and still I’m not terribly happy with it. I suspect this is because I’m not a particularly astute political observer, and certainly not an effective journalist/commenter. Read on with the fair warning that I really don’t know what I’m talking about, and can’t organize my thoughts into coherence.

I realized something interesting about the current state of the Republican Party. The current batch of Presidential candidates like to call themselves conservative, even though they’re really just Fascism Lite. Their supposed concern for the outrageous size of government is betrayed by their wish for a massive defense establishment (controlled, behind-the-scenes, by defense contractor lobbyists) and for careful monitoring of uteruses and bedrooms (which would obviously require more government employees to do). It’s hard to see how a true small-government, free-market conservative can get behind them. What I would describe as a “true conservative” is really just a libertarian, folks who don’t believe in government interference in much of anything, because usually (though obviously not always) they are relatively well-to-do and stand to lose a lot by being overtaxed and usually don’t much care what other people are up to. They often have religious objections to abortion, and usually have the facts wrong about the effects of drug use on the country as a whole, but otherwise if people keep to themselves they don’t see a reason to interfere.

The average Santorum or Gingrich supporter is a more complicated animal; usually not as well-versed in their Keynes and Adam Smith, they understand only a few basic “facts:” lower taxes means more money in their pockets, deficit spending will lead to national insolvency, and the truly needy just need to work harder. I’ve found that young white males, without regard to location of origin or economic background, hew closely to these beliefs. As they age, however, these men split into two groups: those who come to realize that a balanced budget is largely useless without a progressive tax system and some safety net to keep our poorest citizens fed and clothed, and those whose youthful beliefs go unchallenged for the remainder of their lives. This divergence is based largely on upbringing.

A young man who is working hard and achieving success will frequently assume that the only barrier to wealth is the ability to do that hard work. The Libertarian idea of “Every man for himself!” will be very enticing for him. Why should he be prevented from gathering as much money and toys as he can, just because others won’t work as hard? Why should he have to pay more in taxes just because poor people can’t be bothered to get a job? And so, he reads his WorldNetDaily emails, and nods his head knowingly when Presidential candidates talk about how they’ll cut entitlements and get rid of ObamaCare.

The problem is, eventually one of those politicians will argue against gay marriage, or call women “sluts” because they would like their healthcare to pay for contraception, and this is where the divergence starts. If that young man was raised in a household where homosexuality is not tolerated, or one where the only acceptable form of safe sex was complete abstinence, he will continue nodding. If he or several of his relatives are veterans, he will hear about defense cuts and become enraged. If his parents routinely complained about lazy Mexicans and freeloading blacks, he will hear an African American man described as a “food stamp President” and then he’s hooked: anything that MSNBC says is a lie, and anything Fox News says must be truth.

But if the young man raised to believe that what people in the bedroom is their own business, he will stop nodding and say, “Wait…what did you say? That’s crazy.” And he’s wondering what other things might’ve been lies. This is roughly the path I took; I am still a registered Libertarian, in fact, and retain certainly very non-Democratic Party beliefs about gun rights, among other things. But when GOP mouthpieces rail about President Obama’s deficit spending without mentioning the previous administration’s unfunded wars, tax cuts, and entitlement programs, how can one take them seriously? When a Republican candidate for President complains that allowing two women to marry one another is an infringement on his religious rights, how does one not conclude that he’s had a serious break with reality? How often can one hear so-called conservatives insist that the only route out of a bad economy is to give money back to rich people (so they can then give it to poor people, without any evidence that they actually do so), before wondering “Wait…wouldn’t it be more effective to cut out the middle man and just give the cash directly to the poor people?”

The best that we can hope for is, frankly, that the sort of child-rearing that leads to racism and homophobia is dying out, but I don’t believe it’ll happen in my lifetime. The fact that there exist intelligent and rational people, my age and younger, who believe that gay people should not be allowed to marry each other, is a little frightening. It’s also disheartening to realize that the GOP wouldn’t be sprinting to the right if they didn’t believe that enough of a fundamentalist base exists to be a significant voting bloc. What I hope is happening is that the average American is moving to the left as the extreme right-wing slowly but surely dies out, and the extreme right-wing is simply growing louder as they shrink. The moans of a dying demographic. Hopefully, eventually all that will remain are the Duggars and the Phelpses, screaming about biblical literalism, while the rest of us shake our heads and wonder “Remember when we had actual national debates about contraception and gay marriage? What the hell was wrong with us?”

A more distressing possibility is, since right-wing families tend to have far more children than left-wing, the demographic is actually growing, or, more likely, we’ve reached a balance wherein the number of extra children produced by Christian fundamentalists is roughly equal to the number of children who realize their parents are nuts and break the cycle (usually by moving to New York and becoming baristas and/or sculptors). Which means we could be having these kind of debates for centuries. And what a pleasant thought THAT is.

I’m a day late (and, per usual, a dollar short) again, without the excuse of extreme illness, but this is a topic so important that it took an extra day. Pray forgive.

I was texting some of the folks in my fantasy league yesterday, making fun of some of the other folks in my fantasy league for bad draft strategies (Jesus Montero? Really?), when one of us dropped the strange phrase, “A was man said…if they wanna live in a donut, let ’em live in a donut!” I replied “Dammit, now I want a donut,” and was immediately asked, “What kind of donut would you live in?”

I was struck dumb. A more important question had never been posed to me, and I include “Matthew, do you take this woman to be your wife?” in that statement. What kind of donut would live in? I couldn’t answer right away, because it’s all complicated, and whatnot. I knew I had to blog a post about it. (I considered, in fact, starting an entirely new blog just to discuss the question and its attendant theories and research, but I simply haven’t the time.)

It’s not as simple as just “What is your favorite donut?” which of course is a question that could spawn thousands of graduate dissertations and a massive 3-day conference at a major university (either Harvard, or anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon that’s reasonably near a Krispy Kreme franchise). But that’s a good place to start. What is my favorite donut? A standard chocolate frosted from Dunkin Donuts has always been my go-to, but so much depends on mood. In the autumn months, the strong cinnamon notes of an are really the only way to go. I certainly won’t turn down a regular chocolate cake, nor what is invariably termed the “Manager’s Special,” which is essentially a Boston Creme (chocolate frosted, custard filled) except that the filling is standard white sugar frosting.

(We no longer have a Krispy Kreme nearby, so we shall not speak of their luscious hot glazed treats. We shall also ignore the bakery that makes the finest donuts in the world, the Fractured Prune, for two reasons: 1. they also have no franchise in northern Delaware, and 2. no human could survive living in one because the aroma and flavor of the walls would drive him mad.)

“Favorites” aside, there are many things to consider. Let’s be clear: we are intending to make this donut our home! Does this mean that we are better served with a standard donut, defined as “a donut with a big-A hole in the middle,” since otherwise, where would we stand, and put our fine antiques? Or are we better served with a filled donut, operating under the assumption that the contents would simply be consumed before, or even during, the move-in process? I lean towards the latter, for the simple reason that a filled donut, carefully emptied of its interior, would have a roof, and a regular donut has a big hole in the center and you’d get wet when it rained.

My choices for filled donuts are the “Manager’s Special,” the “Apple Crumb,” and I’ll even throw in a nice powdered chocolate-filled. I believe we are forced to eliminate the latter two out of hand, because both crumbs and powder would respond poorly to rain, whereas a well-sealed chocolate glaze should be able to keep moisture at bay for at least a few days.

My choice, in the end, is the “Manager’s Special.” I would simply eat the cream filling, slightly enlarge the hole so that my piano could fit through it, and move in. Of course, if you are averse to white cream and prefer custard, the Boston Creme is another viable option.

You might think a jelly-filled donut might be best. You might be an idiot.

I know that 1) it’s not Monday, so what the H am I doing updating on here, and 2) I’m one of maybe three Americans who care a whit about the English Premier League, but I’ve been hearing a lot of people poop all over Luis Suarez this week, and I wanted to get my tuppence in.

Since you (probably) don’t follow the EPL, here’s the lowdown. Uraguayan Luis Suarez, striker for the Liverpool Football (soccer, you dolt) Club, got into a bit of a heated argument with Patrice Evra of Manchester United a few months back wherein apparently Suarez addressed Evra as “Negrito” or “Negro,” depending on the account you read. He says he only did it once, and, oddly enough, meant it in a non-racial way, as in Uruguay apparently saying something like “Hey, negro” is roughly equivalent to you or me saying “C’mon, bro” or “Hey, man.” I read one account where “someone in the know” said it wouldn’t be particularly surprising to hear a Uruguayan say something like it to his own mother, with no disrespect intended. However, Evra took offense, the powers-that-be got involved, and Suarez was widely accused of being a racist, which Suarez and the Liverpool club protested loudly. Suarez later apologized for causing offense, but was handed an 8 game suspension by the Football Association, which he duly served over the last few months, returning to the lineup last week. Evra, to his credit, said that he was willing to shake Suarez’s hand and put the whole thing behind him.

Over the weekend, Liverpool played ManU again, and during the pre-match introductions, Suarez refused to shake Evra’s hand, and predictably the football (sorry, SOCCER) world lost its collective poop. Eventually Suarez and Liverpool had to issue apologies, and sports reporters the world over are saying that Suarez is an embarrassment and should never be allowed to play soccer for Liverpool ever again.

Okay. Let’s construct a straw man, and call him Don. Let’s say Don is a sportswriter for a major sports magazine. And he’s writing a nice little feature about, say, Matthew Jordin (also a straw person), who is notorious for not passing the basketball. And let’s say Don uses the following sentence in his article:

Jordin is notoriously niggardly with his distribution of the ball.

Now, you and I know that the word “niggardly” has nothing to do with “The N-word.” They are etymologically unrelated. But let’s say Jordin doesn’t know that. And he reads the article and accuses Don of being racist. Don knows he’s not racist, but the sports magazine wants to save face, so they tell him he has to apologize. Wanting to keep his job, he posts something to Jordin’s twitter account about how he’s sorry he used the term, it wasn’t intended to be racist, and he won’t use it in future. But Jordin’s not happy, and continues to rile up the rest of the media, who say that Don should have known better, and maybe he actually IS racist, and he should resign. Eventually Don is called into his editor’s office and told he’s suspended for 3 months. After the news is disseminated, Jordin posts something on Twitter about how justice was done, and he forgives Don, and wants to put the whole thing behind him.

3 months later, Don’s covering a local pro-am tournament because it was the only thing he could convince the editors to let him do after coming back to work. He comes across Matthew Jordin, who’s playing a round that day. Jordin sticks out his hand. Now, because Jordin misunderstood the true meaning of the word that Don used, Don has suffered professionally and his reputation is sullied. If you were Don, would you shake the man’s hand? Don’t you think he has a little bit of a right to be angry and unforgiving?

I’m not saying that Suarez shouldn’t have shaken Evra’s hand. In fact, I think he was being rather stupid not to do so, particularly since before the game he told the team manager Kenny Dalglish that he would. If he couldn’t predict the controversy that would result, he’s an idiot, and sometimes you just have to suck up your feelings for the benefit of your team and your career. What I am saying, however, is that perhaps the media and the fans could be a touch more understanding of a man who honestly feels he was wronged by a player and the Football Association, doesn’t believe he did anything racist, and was severely punished anyway. Let’s let this one go, Planet Earth.

I was never what you could describe as a Whitney Houston “fan,” for whatever reason. I’ll stipulate that she had what is probably the most prodigious talent of any pop singer ever, but none of her songs struck a chord with me (get it? lulz). I don’t say this to demean her accomplishments; we all know my taste is ridiculous and absurd. I mean, I have an “Evan and Jaron” mp3 on my phone.

You know what? Let’s come back to this.

Last fall, after William (our latest and last offspring) was born, and HW and I spent much of the day sitting in front of the TV either feeding him or trying to get as much rest as we could while he slept, we watched a fair amount of TV. This is how, for example, we plowed through 4 entire seasons of DVR’d “The Big Bang Theory.” We also spent a lot of time watching “Hoarders” and “Toddlers and Tiaras,” and I’d like to compare and contrast those shows a bit.

We watch them, like everyone else, because they make us feel better about ourselves, as homemakers and parents, respectively. If you’re ever feeling depressed because you don’t have time to keep the house spic and span, spend 15 minutes watching Matt Paxton and his crew bag up dead cats and rotting adult diapers, and you will feel much better about your cleaning skills. If your kids are misbehaving and driving you up the wall and you’re thinking “What the hell am I doing wrong with these maniacs?” then you should spend some time with the crazy-ass moms (and, occasionally, dads) who drag their daughters to pageant “lessons” and makeup artists and dress fittings and you will realize that whatever you may be doing wrong, at least your daughter is about 1/10 as likely to become a streetwalker as the girls on your TV.

America loves both shows (along with similar ones like “Hoarding: Buried Alive” and “Dance Moms”) because Americans love a good train wreck. The feeling you get when the door opens on a bedroom filled to the ceiling with old clothes and rat feces is pretty much the same one you get when you watch a 5-year-old girl stubbornly refuse to try on her new pearly false teeth while her white trash, coffee-can-shaped, and faintly maple-syrup-scented mother says “Now c’mon Pixeelu honey, we need to try these on, and then we’ll go get some sugar donuts.” There is, however, a key difference: enabling.

On Hoarders, you watch people who are clearly at a low point in their lives try to resolve their issues with the help of psychologists, organizers, and professional cleaners provided by the show. It doesn’t always work, but at least there are stabilizing elements there to try and improve the lives of the subjects. “Toddlers and Tiaras” has none of this. Every person that appears on the show is there to add to the insanity, from the “dance instructors” to the pageant officials to the make-up artists to the mothers themselves. Every one of them is either telling the child how perfect she is, or how she’s screwing up royally and has no chance of winning or ever becoming anything and it’s no wonder Daddy left. No one disciplines, no one models good behavior, every activity is carefully (and poorly) designed to get the child to perform on the stage and fulfill her parents’ dreams. Occasionally you’ll see some poor henpecked father, clearly not thrilled about what’s going on and certainly unhappy about his failings as a parent and husband being put on television for the world to mock. For the child, it’s a life of work, expectations, bribery, and the life-or-death world of “pageanting.” What she learns from this is, as long as she’s pretty and performs well, no one will ever tell her “no.”

Which brings us back to Whitney. Once she had established herself as a superstar, how many people do you think ever told her “No?” She was a meal ticket to everyone around her. Who would risk losing that? If Whitney wanted to go party, Whitney got driven to the party. If Whitney wanted to try cocaine, the mirrors and straws were instantly out. Adding Bobby Brown to the mix was like tossing a hand grenade under a propane tank.

Whitney was hardly the first talented person too achieve rapid fame and then burn out, and she won’t be the last. What’s the solution? Hell if I know. As long as there are people who profit from meteoric rise of talent, we’ll watch as talented people slowly kill themselves. Sometimes brilliant folks just need to be told, “No.” Ya know?