Vibram Ban

The Knapp Center weight room has banned the Vibram Five Finger. This matter is so freakin' ridiculous that I couldn't even find another article relating to the subject or any kind of picture to go along with it. You know why? Because the Vibram glove is FREAKIN' AWESOME!!!

The arguement is that, 'yes, we understand that if you drop a 45 lbs. weight on your foot your going to break it no matter what you wearing, but our concern is in the event you drop a 10 lbs. weight on your foot you won't have any kind of protection.'

First off how much of a jackass do you think I am or anyone else in that weight room is for that matter is to drop a 10lbs. on their foot or at least move out of the way in the event that it happens?

Second the Vibram glove provides just as much protection up top as any other commonly worn shoe. Most people come into the weight room wearing tennis shoes. Now put some thought into this. A tennis shoe was not designed with the intention of protecting your toes from falling weighty objects. The whole toe area is covered by fishnet. Fishnet! and a weak one at that. This is not a material design to absorb shock. This is a material design to be light and air out the stinky feet of active tennis players and runners.

So, will I stop wearing the shoe. Hell no. I don't have anything else to wear, and I'll be damned if money is being spent on a new pair of shoes before these have had their use. I'm just going in the back and avoiding the attendant.

Final Are Approaching

You know when there are those days leading up to a school break, you tell yourself 'Oh that big project' or 'Oh that big paper that's do here in a few weeks, I do all of it over the holiday break.' Yeah that never happens. It's impossible! Teachers never seem to understand that a break is meant to be... a break! You completely check out. How can you compell yourself to sit at your desk (or the desk you had when you where a little kid, because your big kid desk moved with you to school) and actually work when there is just something celebrating and welcoming back going on all around you?

Today each of my professors made sure to sneak in a reminder that finals are only TWO WEEKS AWAY. Two weeks! Really?!? Two weeks to catch up on all those chapters and finishes those projects and keep up with regular homework. Oh my goodness. I'm going to have a heart attack here.

Thanksgiving - Much Needed - Break

Ah it was a good break. It's just good have that brief little bit of time to take you out of the grind, where you just get to sit back and enjoy loved ones. There's just tons and tons of good food. No one has seen each other for so long and so there are bunch of stories to tell and new ones to hear. Thanksgiving just has the overwhelming ease and relaxing feel to it.

Now I say that with the understanding that I sit from the position of a person who would no reason to feel otherwise. The whole production is done from the home I grew up in and I, I must confess, do very little to nothing to prepare for the grand event. The whole thing is so expertly cooridinate and masterfully orchestrated by my mother that from my seat as the lazy audience member that the whole elaborate festivities seem to go off without a hitch as if by some divine natural occurance.

No I rest of the men in my family seek out that day to go hunting, which is to say we traipse through miles and miles of alfalfa fields marching with guns in hand having only the rare occasion to fire them. Although! Although, this year we actually got to stur up some pretty good covies. We only came home with 2 quail and 1 pheasant, but part of that is do to the dogs losing a few. In the end, it's just kind of fun to be outdoors there getting to catch up with cousins and uncles and trade stories.

Sarah Palin - National Embarassment

There are those who will say that I am being cruel; who will that say I am being elitist harassing such a small town mother and America's (some of America's) newest sweetheart. But when this little lady and political pundits start having serious discussion about her being the next GOP presidential canidate, then we need to sit down and take a serious look at this the credibility of lady Palin.

The reason I'm bringing this up now is her recent comments on the Glenn Beck show gave me a brain aneurysm. You remember the scene in Billy Madison when Adam Sandler gives his answer for the contest about the poky little puppy and Principal responds: "Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it." Yeah same thing here.

Okay, so,Palin was on the show and Beck asked how she might handle the situation in North Korea. Palin responds, "This is stemming from, I think, a greater problem when we're all sitting around asking, 'Oh no, what are we going to do,' and we're not having a lot of faith that the White House is going to come out with a strong enough policy to sanction what it is that North Korea is going to do." Lady Palin goes on to add, "Obviously, we gotta stand with our North Korean allies."

That's not a slip of the tongue, all right. Don't defend that. Call it for what it is: the lady knows shit about foreign policy. Mrs. Palin I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

This is who folks think will be the next GOP presidential candidate? Really? REALLY? Let's serious look at this lady, and, again, I'm not doing this to be mean, but it's kind of coming to the point, unfortunately, that we are going to have to do this. This isn't American Idol folks. It actually does matter who becomes President. Like for real. It is actually kind of a big deal.

Because Tea Party die-hards would through a tissy fit and violating her private life or whatever even though she has made herself a public figure and that doesn't exist anymore, we're going to keep it classy and not even metnion how terribly, terribly dysfunctional her family home life is. So, let's just stick with how moronically she has displayed herself in her political life.

The GOP picks up this lady from Alaska in order to manipulate the female factor and steal hard-core Hilary backers away from the Democrat's tent. That's it. She's a female, kind of hot, and has political experience; nothing more. The Grand Old white guy's Party doesn't have to much to pick from to fit that criterial, so they had to take what they could get regardless of her level of intelligence or lack thereof.

Her and grand old white guy McCain lose, so instead of returning to fulfill her public service and duties as govenor to the state of Alaska she ditches everyone up there for big money working FOX, making book deals, and doing speaking tours. Don't give me that crap that it was the system and it was just too screwed up and inherently backed up for her to handle. It's Alaska, and no office but just based on how rarely Alaskan current events appear on the national circuit I can't believe it takes too much Machiavellian masterminding navigating the politics of the Last Frontier. This is not a woman who cares about this country or serving its citizens. This is a small town girl caught up in the momentum of her artificially inflated celebrity only interested in how big she can get and how much money she can make along the way.

Bernie Madoff Auction

Photo by Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters

This guy screwed over the wrong people. They are liquidating everything and anything of the guy's in order to get their money back.

Over the weekend, the government held the 2nd Bernie Madoff auction and you have to check out some of the stuff on the list. They were offering up nail clippers, a collection of Rod Stewart CDs, a collection of board games, a bunch of Kosher cook books, even the wive's belly-button jewlery. They're selling off the man's underwear for Christ sakes.

Yes, the man was a (put your expletive), but this is just bizarre. With the first auction they sold off his set of Rolex and signature monogrammed Mets jacket. They were big ticket items that would obviously draw a crowd. This though. These are just little trinkets with the only really value being that they were once possessed by the immortally infamous Bernie Madoff. I mean it reminds of the bizarre relic collecting of early Christendom where kings and nobles clung to the ear of St. Peter or a tooth of Mary Magdalene.

It's a pair of boxer shorts and some weirdo is going to pay several hundred dollars for it.

Google Prompts Invasion

This is why I love NPR. You get bizarre little news stories like this that would totally go under the radar for any other news group.

So I was listening to All Things Considered the other day and they had this for a story. Here's what happen. Now we have all had a moment where Google maps totally screwed us with directions, and you're not sure why you got off at that exit, or why you've been told head south for the past 20 minutes when you need to be north, or WHAT THE HELL! it say's it's right there!

To Google Map's credit, it is understandable. These are computer geek, search enginee folks who have respectively mapped (and continually update as best can be) the entire earth. It's quite a remarkable feat when you consider the arduous, painstaking work geography used to be. And, in truth, despite the occasional screwup, I never leave for a trip without my Google directions.

However, a recent Google hiccup lead to an international iccedent, when the website accidently mislaid the Nicaraguan/Costa Rica border offering Nicaragua more than it initially thought it had. Operating on the belief that anything on the internet MUST be true, the Nicaraguan government proceeded to invaded the disputed area. This issue is currently being brought before the UN Security Council to handle the disput. This is why they call military intelligence an oxymoron.

Crossfit

There is this workout and diet program I just found out called CrossFit, and I've been looking into it more and the whole thing looks really cool. The whole thing is about building natural, applicable strength, as opposed to traditional body building where you just isolate a muscle group for the day. Like normally you have a day where you just wail on you biceps, but with CrossFit the lifts and exercises require the movement be carried out through your body thus synergistically strengthening your muscles. This allows for a more natural development and a strength that can more applied to real word use, because, honestly, how often in life do you run into a situation that you have to start curling something.

For this reason CrossFit is widely used by special unit police, the marines and other military outfits, and mixed martial artist. It's design is best suited for combat conditioning and developing that elite physical condition. It operates on gymnastics, olympic lifting, sprinting, and advanced calisthenics.

I've posted a video of the Fight Gone Bad workout. It was designed for a MMA fighter to stimulate the experience in the ring. At the end of it he went off and pukes and said that was like a "fight gone bad."



It's a whole lifestyle change. CrossFit advises the Paleolithic Model for Nutrition which operate under the assumption that human evolution has not caught up with modern food processing and consists primarily of green vegetables and lean meats. There are gyms that are CrossFit certified and have all that stuff you see to do the exercises, but it is also possible to tailor the workouts of the day down to fit your means.

It's kind of funny, a guy in one of my classes actually brought up in conversation that he owns his own CrossFit gym a month or so ago. I walked away not thinking much of it except how cool it was that a guy my age owned his own gym, but then like a week or two ago I go to Chicago, see my uncle, and he tells me all about CrossFit and how he's been getting into it.

CrossFit Website

Trader Joes in Des Moines

We got a Trader Joes in Des Moines! It opened up Friday. I was out of town for much of the weekend and didn't get back until late Saturday afternoon, but when I got there it was still just overwhelmingly packed. I could barely move a cart through the aisles. You had to know what you wanted, where it was, and couldn't second guess your choice. There is a good and bad to that. Yes the popularity is overwhelming, but it does demonstrate that the Des Moines market can sustain a Trader Joe's and makes sure it and all of it's gourmet goods at competitively low prices remain available to us.

Trader Joe's is a grocery store with gourmet and organic food at prices that in some cases would give Walmart a run for its money. The whole thing is just dazzling to see it all there before you. I went to get a gallon of organic milk and they had expiration dates there not until November 23rd! That may be an odd thing to remark about to some of you all, but I mean usually you're lucky if you can get an expiration a 6 days a head of when you buy it. I got two.

Above is the Youtube famous Trader Joe's song, highlighting all the things we love of these unique shop.