Monday, February 26, 2007

The Number Four

Apparently I missed some kind of memo that went out to everyone that rides the Number Four, Downtown/Centre-Ville. Every other guy on the bus knew that it was Ugly Aviator Sunglasses Day except for me. How do they co-ordinate this? Is this some kind of club?

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Courting both blasphemy and inhumanity

How the heck did Christianity ever get started? Sure, it's the big kid on the block right now, and it's really easy to be part of the team when it's winning, but what about back in the day? Back when you could count the year with two digits the Christians were getting fed to the lions on a daily basis in Rome. That's got to be a bit of a hinderance to the recruiting process. Plus, it was a religion that got it's founding base from the poor and destitute, and at the time they figured the second coming would be a whole heck of a lot sooner that it has turned out to be.

Think about it. You're walking around in Rome, and a smelly, bearded man comes up to you and says:
Hi! My name is Roger, and I'm with the Christians - a religion of love and peace. You may have heard of us from our frequent appearances in the coloseum versus the lions. Today we're offering you a membership into our religion for the one-time-only fee of your worldly posessions. Included in this package is an eternity in paradise after you die, the excellent chance of crucifixion or death in the jaws of an angry beast, and if you're very lucky you will survive long enough to see the return of our Lord who will destroy the world with fire!

Well shit... sign me right up!

The Jews had an even better pitch. Forced labour on the pyramids, slavery and percecution wherever you go, and you get your foreskin cut off. This is an offer you just can't refuse. I guess signing up for Christianity wasn't so bad if this is what you were coming from. It would be more of a lateral transition.

I'm only speculating on this because the Falun Gong are protesting downtown again. Apparently the Chinese government is still killing and torturing them. To all my readers in the Falun Gong, chin up! Things sure might look bad right now, but if history is any judge things should really be turning around for you in the next couple hundred years.

Friday, February 16, 2007

The path to physical nirvana lies through homicidal rage

If the quality of a personal trainer can be gauged by how much you hate them, then I have the best personal trainer in the world.

The quality of a personal trainer can be gauged by how much you hate them. I have the best personal trainer in the world.

Meet Anthony. Anthony works at Goodlife fitness at the Rideau Centre. He is the personal trainer that Goodlife suckered me into getting for six weeks. He is me, but with an extra fifty pounds of muscle, biceps that look like he's hiding grapefruit under his skin, and a faux-hawk with frosted tips. Anthony has been wearing tear-away track pants every day for the last three years. Anthony is exactly what I envisioned a personal trainer to be like. In this regard, I am totally satisfied.

So why do I hate him? The nature of personal training hinges on the fact that the human body is capable of much more than the human mind understands. If you can lift eighty pounds, you can lift a hundred and fifteen. You can lift a hundred and fifteen, but you sure won't like lifting a hundred and fifteen. That's where Anthony comes in. His job is to make me do things that I would normally never inflict upon myself. He is there to cause me pain that, in theory, is for my ultimate betterment. He is there to say, "you are going to lift this fifteen times. You will feel like your muscle is about to tear off the bone and smack you in the face but you are going to keep doing it because I said so. If your muscle does rip off the bone and hit you in the face I will make you do three more reps and then I might take you to the hospital if you've been doing your reps right."

Let's use an example. Say for instance I am sitting on the chest press, and pushing ninety - no, wait, you can do one oh five - thanks Anthony, pushing one hundred and five pounds. Now I've pushed off about seven of these things, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I am having serious doubts about how number eight is going to go. I want to do eight, but the muscles are not having any of that. Unfortunately, good intentions mean nothing in the gym, so Anthony initiates a complex process wherein he utilizes guilt, shame, intimidation, and in a number of instances blunt objects applied liberally to the kidneys in order to make me abandon all sense of self preservation and push out whatever it is that I have left to do.

Of course, I have no idea how many I have left to do at any given time. I long ago stopped counting my reps because I know that if I am so impetuous as to stop before Anthony tells me to he will most likely crush my skull with his triceps. So I let Anthony count, and he has a very interesting system of counting. Works like this:

Anthony: Three more!
Me: *groan of pain indicating one rep*
Anthony: Slower! Really slow.
Me: *another groan of pain indicating another rep*
Anthony: Two more!
Me: This goes against everything I know about numbers!

Of course, this is just what I wish I could say. When I'm in the gym it is Anthony's job to be right and my job to trust him. If he tells me that, for the betterment of my body and health, I am supposed to do bicep curls until my spleen ruptures, then I will grab my phone and dial 9, 1, and when I hear something go pop, I will dial 1 again.

So for the next few weeks you'll be able to find me and Anthony in the gym. He'll be hurting me, and I'll be thinking of new and creative ways to kill him. The most recent one involved a gun that shoots angry badgers. I think it will have to use compressed air of some kind. This is an indication of a healthy trainer-trainee relationship.