Geronto-Flex V??? (whatever) & Hyaluronic Acid

     

So the Sky said to the Leaves, "It's time for you to die," and thus it's been raining and blustering and shaking the leaves to the ground.   Nicki will never turn his nose up at a chance to romp, but even he was just as content to get back to warm home and full bowl.

But not before chow provider did his elliptical soak routine, apropos which..., yes i had to give up earth running; the joint jarring was too much.  Nails in the knees is your body telling you something.  So it was back to the boring elliptical machine.

The machine is boring because i absolutely refuse to watch the overhead teevee, or to read a kindle, or to tune into 75 gigs of my All Time Classical Rancheras, or to twit to the Pope and other famous celebrities.  No... since i was 21, the rule has been, when you run, you run. Punto y final. 

Apart from boredom, there are two ways to run on the elliptical machine: gasping and hanging on the side-bars or grunting and not hanging on the side-bars.  Needless to say, not leaning on the bars is harder because you have to bear your full weight as well as use lateral muscles to balance yourself and not break your neck.  I decided to go the leaning route.

About a month into leaning and gasping, this young guy (30?) was using the machine next to me, hands free.

Jerk.

Why are 30 year olds always showing off?  But, of course, i couldn't resist humiliating myself. I looked over and asked "About how fast are you going per lap?"  (The lap being the little LED progress bar on the screen that blinks ever so slowly.) "I donno," he said, "I just try to go faster each time." 

Oh... one of those "the sky's the limit" jerks.

But then he added, "It took me about a year to get up to my current speed." I looked down at his legs, and they weren't going that fast.

If it took this 30 year old one year to get up to his present speed, then there was hope for me!!

I had tried hands free, but it just seemed too impossible. "Learn your limits, old man," I said to myself.

Limits Schlimitz.

So... i started adding 1, then 2, then 3 hands-free laps after i had finished my 8 hanging laps.  Now I am doing 8 hands free laps, "trying to go a little faster each time"

:)))))  So long as you keep at it, there's hope.


Now the thing is that holding laps are faster and give your lungs a breathing work out.  The focus is on gasping and intensity.  The hands free laps are more for strength and balance.  So both kinds of ellipting are good. And the routine i've worked out is

1)    2mi  holding + 1mi  hands free
2)    1mi  hands free + 1mi  holding + 1mi  hands free
3)    2mi  hands free + 1mi  holding

For each, i go through two shirts and 4 lbs of body fluids.

Now, in case anyone is wondering how fast i am "actually" going, the best i can say is maybe eight minute earth miles.

The read outs on these running machines are basically useless.  They vary from machine to machine and have nothing to do with real life capacities.  The only thing they are good for is to give you a relative comparison of your progress as measured on one particular machine.

However, when i was driving nails into my knees i did time my laps and on each of the occasions, it worked out to two minutes a 440.  I was actually rather surprised.   But that was a single 440 and that is not the same as four 440's without stopping... much less 12.  On the other hand, one does improve over time.

After running those real miles, i compared my time on the machine and noticed that it was about double the real time; i.e. one machine LED lap was 4 to 3.75 minutes.   So who knows for sure.  I'd be happy with even 10 minute earth miles.  We shall see next spring once i've pumped myself full of....

HYALURONIC ACID

Now about the time i was driving nails into my knees one of the attendants at the gym popped his knee sliding into third base.  He limped around forever, and finally had knee surgery.  When he came back to the gym, I asked how he was doing, and he mentioned that his knee was fixed and that he was taking hyaluronic acid for it.

Wazzat?

Hyaluronic acid is a major component of synovial fluid and cartilage, which is why the kid's doctor and prescribed it.  It's cheap and i started popping a tablet a day along with 1 tab of glucosamine. 

You know that creaky feeling that makes you wonder if you can make it down those rocks or up those stairs?  Gone.  Gone, Gone, Gone.  For how long, I don't know, but this leaf isn't falling to ground yet.

(At least if it doesn't croak on the damn machine.)

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PLOPzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Murka's Mudia - Seymour Hersch on the "Pathetic" US Media

Hersch on Prostrate Journalism, the Lying Times and Obama's Surveillance State.

Actually you might have read it FIRST on WOODCHIP.

Sluice of Lies

A friend of mine thinks that Obamba is a true DSM-IV qualified "pyschopath," a term he has not applied to Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Nixon or even LBJ, although they were all certainly murderous.   I'm really not sure i trust or understand any category on the DSM scale; but i can say that Obama is a shameless liar.  Now, all politicians have occasion to lie.   The key word here is "occasion."  The best of them, like Bismarck, Elizabeth I and the Divine Augustus, put some effort into cultivating ambiguity and evasion.   Obama doesn't bother.  His mouth is an open sluice of lies one after the other.

READ:  TOP 45 LIES OF OBAMA'S UN SPEECH

http://warisacrime.org/content/top-45-lies-obamas-speech-un

Feinstein Protects Our Freedom from Filth Again

Senawhore Sweinstein has been on my shit-list from time immemorial.  Behind her artfully cultivated soft, feminine asexuality lurks a brittle-boned, sharp biting bitch.  Just shake her hand if you wanna get a feel.   I could go on, but i won't.   Suffice to say her concept of risqué is The Sound of Music in Cinemascope.   Her concept of a sanitized First Amendment would nauseate even Torquemada.

HER LATEST ASSAULT ON FREE SPEECH

or

 http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19023-sen-feinstein-wants-to-strip-independent-journalists-rights

Class Act

      

“I didn’t think there was a class system in the United States,” the professor said. “Nobody does,” the student replies. “That’s how it survives.”

 Sometimes Counterpunch annoys the hell out of me, as when it goes into MORONIC ENLIGHTENMENT MODE  and refers to "the usual menu of medieval atrocities" employed by the French inquisitorial courts of the 16th and 17th centuries.  (In the Chambers of the Secret Courts)

Uh.... 1535 and 1675 are not the Middel Ages, dumb fuck.  The Voltaire Brigade instead of burning with hatred of the Church would be better advised that the barbaric tortures referred to were the darlings the Nation State and the Age of Reason.   But I guess it would upset a certain fantasy world view to speak of "the usual menu of Rennaissance tortures."

That said, Counterpunch is one of the few places where legitimately left commentary can be found.

In a lighter vein It's Still Class Warfare describes what kind of letter you will receive from Obama should you write him.

Rabble Rousing at "The Times" - When Toney Yellow gives way to Just Plain Yellow

There was a time when the New York Times was a paper of record and affected a quasi-magisterial air of impartiality.  After all, what was one to make of a rag that published the full text of Mr. Bouteflika's (huh?)  address the General Assembly....  Of course, it was all show.  The Times always had an agenda -- a so-called "establishment" agenda -- as the Vietnam years made obnoxiously clear.  But as Naiman's Truthout article illustrates, when it comes to Israeli regional hegemony toney yellow gives way to just plain yellow rabble rousing.  

Go to > Truthout

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19004-nyts-david-sanger-scaremongering-iran-nukes-worse-than-netanyahu

Tall Grass by the River

   

After working most of the day on my stupid pimping plus auto-chase plus car-wreck case i didn't feel much like working out, so only did a partial combo routine.  It was late in the afternoon and i figured it would do just as well to take Mr. Dog for a romp.

 
I didn't feel like take him to the park because on the weekend all the fat people with their darling savages would probably be out ... So i drove up to the lower Nooksack instead.

We hadn't been there in quite some time and the trail was so overgrown as to be unrecognisable.  We ended up making our way through a mile of six foot high tall grass.  Nicki of course loved it and when he wasn't poking into the thickets he was barrelling down the path like a fuzzy rocket.

He still stops, though, and waits while i take a picture. I never taught him to do this. He just does it.  I wonder what he thinks.  He surely must think i'm sniffing (i.e. investigating) something but it's a mystery to me how else he unravels what must be a mystery to him.

 

It certainly is a mystery to me what he smells in a truly rancid piece of rotting fish skin.  He was quite adamant about not giving it up; but fortunately i had a mini milk bone in my pocket and we bartered a trade.

We drove home along the bay as the sun set amidst gathering rain clouds.   

Nature's Mirror

POPE HAPPY-CLAPPY DROPS A BOMBSHELL

     

.http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/world/europe/pope-bluntly-faults-churchs-focus-on-gays-and-abortion.html

CLICK HERE FOR TEXT OF THE INTERVIEW 

 (http://www.americamagazine.org/pope-interview)

Miscellaneous Excerpts

I always felt my motto, Miserando atque Eligendo  [Doing Mercy and Choosing], was very true for me.

I was always struck by a saying that describes the vision of Ignatius: non coerceri a maximo, sed contineri a minimo divinum est (“not to be limited by the greatest and yet to be contained in the tiniest—this is the divine”)

I his own way, John XXIII adopted this attitude with regard to the government of the church, when he repeated the motto, ‘See everything; turn a blind eye to much; correct a little."

A Jesuit is a person who is not centered in himself. The Society itself also looks to a center outside itself; its center is Christ and his church.“The Society of Jesus is an institution in tension,

It irritates me when I hear that the Spiritual Exercises are ‘Ignatian’ only because they are done in silence. In fact, the Exercises can be perfectly Ignatian also in daily life and without the silence. An interpretation of the Spiritual Exercises that emphasizes asceticism, silence and penance is a distorted one

 I often associate sanctity with patience: not only patience as hypomoné [the New Testament Greek word], taking charge of the events and circumstances of life, but also as a constancy in going forward, day by day.

I see the church as a field hospital after battle.“I see clearly,” the pope continues, “that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts o .... It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else.

The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules. The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you. ...

How are we treating the people of God? I dream of a church that is a mother and shepherdess.


The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.

“Finding God in all things is not an ‘empirical eureka.’ When we desire to encounter God, we would like to verify him immediately by an empirical method. But you cannot meet God this way.   But you cannot meet God this way. God is found in the gentle breeze perceived by Elijah

Yes, in this quest to seek and find God in all things there is still an area of uncertainty. There must be. If a person says that he met God with total certainty and is not touched by a margin of uncertainty, then this is not good. For me, this is an important key. If one has the answers to all the questions—that is the proof that God is not with him. It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself.

His favorites are La Strada,  Gerard Manley Hopkins, Caravaggio & Chagal,  Mozarts Et Incarnatus Est, Beethoven AND.... RICARD WAGNER!!!!!!!!! 

Grumpies & Rompies

Even though i'm under the gun on three tiresome  lexcrecenses, i've been well determined not to let that adversely implicate my Campaign for Youth!  So, in plain English, i dragged my butt to the gym in mid-afternoon before the rain might start.

As i slapped my gym bag on the counter with a snort, Linda, the manager, asked how i was doing.  "Grumpy."  Eric, the 22 year old gatekeeper from Texas, said: "Is that old man grumpy or Kieran grumpy?"

Kieran Grumpy? I've been here far too long....

"It's Kieran Grumpy," i said, "i'm turning 18 by the end of this month."

Now it was time for Eric to snort.

But it will be so.  At least if le moi has a say in it; and in fact Linda made comments in the "...really good ..."  vein.

After my hour's "run," i took Nicki for his at the off leash Nooksack River trail. I've been wanting to use up a roll of black and white film and so i took that camera with me.  But by the time we got to Ferndale, the sun decided to put in a setting appearance. Fortunately, i took the digital with me.

I don't have time to fiddle with the RAW file so as to bring out the better colours, but the uploaded foto gives an idea of the rural loveliness of this area.

It was lovely for Nicki too in his pan-sensory way. For him romping is nothing like the stupid elliptical machine but a species of gesamptlaufwerk  made up of running, sniffing, loping, muddying, chasing, splashing, poking and (more than once) trying to get me to go down to the river.  

 

First Rain

Grey clouds swirled around most of the day until about 6:30 when there was a clap followed by a downpour which is still coming down.   Doggie seems to blame me for this.  

http://woodchipgazette.blogspot.com/2013/09/humble-exceptionalism-other-stupidities.html

Paleo Eats Sur

https://www.facebook.com/Gastronomia.Prehispanica

Gastronomia.Prehispanica

Participation

      

"The Germans" from Canada made it past the Homeland Security Perimeter and arrived at our place around 8:00 p.m.  As usual, upon hearing the bell ring, Nicki began prancing excitedly in the hallway and eagerly ran to and sniffed our guests when they arrived.

Hans und Helga have been dropping by ever since i got Nicki  going on two years ago.  The first time they met him, Nicki did his fight and flight routine scaring poor Hans up the wall.  Over time and with each visit, Nicki got calmer until last time, rather than stare suspiciously from a corner, he plopped himself down near the table with his head on his paws listening in his alert but impassive doggie way to our incomprehensible human babble.

Tonight, however, he wanted to participate. First he plopped a ball by the foot of my chair.  When i ignored that, he went to my office and retrieved a manila envelope from the trash can.  Then he retrieved a platic zip lock. Finally he got another ball which he again dropped at the foot of my chair.

This time I threw it down the hallway and he happily scampered after it. He brought it back to Helga who threw it again and then back to me before leaving us to resume our babble while he sat nearby earnestly gnawing his ball.

"He's come a long way," Helga said, "Ja?"

Ja.

Bringing the Live Back to Death

A really delightful and provocative interview with Russian writer Victor Erofeyev who talks about his privileged childhood in Stalinist Russia, the West as "agnostic bog," how Putin is more liberal than 80% of the country,  why the poor remain poor, why Moscow is the lesbian capital of Europe and how the dead control our lives. 

The odd thing about this is that it all makes very Mexican sense.  Since boyhood, when the Russian Folkloric Ballet inspired the founding of the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico, i have noticed a strange metaphysical connection between the two countries.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/novelist-victor-erofeyev-says-stalin-in-genes-of-russia-a-921597.html

[ CLICK  HERE ]

Mondiablo Pest Spray

     

Monsanto needs to be eradicated with a strong dose of  Politicide  (tm) pest spray

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A Warm Day in the Rain Belt

Summer Evening

We've been having unseasonably warm weather.   I  don't mind.   I get to do things like paint my Jeep's bumper and take Mr. Nicki for interminable chuck-fetch sessions in the "Oshin." 

Mr. Wasser Doggie After the Paddling

The Meaning of Exhuberance

There is no question but that Nicki loves balls.  He loves them on the trail.  He loves them on the green.  He loves them in the sea.   And he loves them in soccer practice.

After gym today, i took Nicki for his pad-about at Cornwall Park.  We followed our usual route along the wooded trails before turning out onto the vast center green area.   Actually i chucked the ball from behind the trees onto the green and Nicki chased after it.  

But at the far end of the grassy oval a group of three were kicking a soccer ball in the round by way of practice.  Nicki saw the BIG BALL and ran.  When he got there he ran back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, chasing after the ball as it was kicked from left to right to left to right to left to righ to left to right.  

He was inexhaustible.  I stood there and admired his sleek hound-like form and exhuberant energy