Time flies when you're....me.

Holy crap am I good at wasting time. I wish there was a competition or something that I could enter. I set out today at 11 o clock, with an honest idea to "get some junk done" today, now its 11 hours later, and I have done NOTHING. I read the football news, sure...and I stopped over at the cincy bengals message board for a moment, and yeah, I watched sports center, and yeah, I revamped my online dating profile, and I took a few new pictures of myself, and I read a little bit more about riptoe's 5x5 bodybuilding routine, but what the hell? That's not 11 hours worth of stuff....that's not even 3 hours worth of stuff.

I need less hobbies.

Its good to be home.

Vacation is over. Seems like I've been gone forever. Nothing to report, I think everyone who reads my blog was on my vacation, so no real need to go into detail.

First thing I did when I got home was buy a book on cartooning, some pencils, a marker, and some sketch paper. Since I'm self-admittedly good at everything, excluding yard-work and shopping at wegmans, I've decided that I can in fact draw, and all I need is a little practice. So, I'm going to dedicate 1 hour a day to practicing my artistic craft, and hopefully I'll be able to draw cute little animations so I can create my software that will help educate stupid children everywhere...oh yeah, and make me some money.

Some of you may think that 1 hour a day is a lot of time to waste on learning to draw stupid little cartoon animals, but compared to how much time I spend looking in the mirror each day, that's nothing.

Later.

Down with the wegmans!

Turn you're damn curse word filters on for this one. Why? WHY? Because I was just FORCED to go to stupid ass wegmans. What is wegmans? Its the devil of all supermarkets...but also the only one open at 10 o'clock. Its huge, and its organized by shit-faced blind gypsies who think its funny to put ketchup by styrofoam coolers, and paper plates by pickles.

I hate the damn place. They organize everything so you have to walk around the store aimlessly to try and find what you want. The rice is in the "world food" section, syrup has its own section, and the damn BBQ sauce is in the "vinegar" section. Eff wegmans. Screw them.

I'm sure that they're "hoping" that I see something else that I want while I'm there so I spend more money, but WTF? I'm a GUY. I know what I want BEFORE I even enter the store.

Here's me: "OK, I need chicken, and low sugar BBQ sauce."

Here's wegmans: "Mwahahahaha, I'm sure that we can get this guy to buy paper plates and saur kraut, if we just position them within his field of view!" HAAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Screw you wegmans, I'm going home! OH NO, I'M MISSING THE SCIENTOLOGY SOUTH PARK! LATER!

I got 99 dollars and I need a lawnmower....

POW its off to the walmart! WTF? I don't get it, you can buy ANYTHING(and I mean, anything walmart sells) for 99 dollars. Generally, if I want something, and I don't want to pay more than 100 bones, walmart hasn't let me down. Now, I didn't buy the 99 dollar lawnmower today, but I swear there was one sitting there, and I would have bought it, but fortunately I had already sold myself on spending up to 200$ on a lawnmower, which coincidentally is still ass-cheaper than just about everywhere else in the known universe. Go ahead, I challenge you to find a lawnmower for 214$ at some place not owned by the walmart conglomerate. It has to be gas powered, mulching and self propelled.

"But wait!", you say? "Matt! You hate walmart, you say they are the great satan and they are ruining america from within! You can't shop at walmart, it goes against everything you stand for!"

To quote the dead milkmen "This is only a half truth". It is true that I hate walmart. Its also true that shopping at walmart goes against everything I stand for, except one ideal "Don't spend more than 100 dollars on anything, if you don't have to", and quite frankly, that's about all I stand for these days, well, that and solid nutrition/exercise programs. Everything else is unimportant.

The last benefit to shopping at walmart is that they don't sell ANYTHING that is too big to fit in my car. Nothing, not a tv stand, couch, table, weed whacker, wheelbarrel, or lawnmower. Its all packaged quite well by those little chinese kids. They're masters of packing things, that they are.

So anyway, soon my neighbors won't hate me anymore because I have a lawnmore that works, and I'll cut my grass regularly. I might even weed whack.

Now, I clearly spend too much time at the local quiznos. When the sandwich girl looks at you and says "What, no bundt cake tonight?", its obvious that you have a problem. Of course, with my "new outlook on life"(tm), I choose to believe that she remembers me because of my overall sexiness in relation to the rest of the valley, and not because I eat an excessive amount of prime rib sandwiches.

Nah man, I had dust in my eyes.

A few things are becomming abundantly clear. 1, there is now a third movie that is "guaranteed to make me cry". The first 2, for those who don't know, are armageddon, and tears of the sun. The part in Armageddon where Col Sharp walks up to "big lip ugly girl" and says "I'd just like to shake the had of the daughter of the bravest man I've ever met"...sheesh, I'm tearing up just thinking about it. Now, if you haven't seen tears of the sun, its an awesome movie about a platoon of men who are getting the royal cosmic bitch-slap for like 2 days of their lives. Its really an emotionally draining experience for the first 90% of the movie, its like "how can they take any more?"....and then the US military rains napalm death down on the bad guys and everything gets better. I always cry when the jets come streaking in with the napalm. That's a great scene.

The third movie is 50-first dates, and that's all I'll say about that cause there's nothing manly or heroic about it, its just sweet.

Secondly, I've failed to properly realize the emotional effects of switching from cutting to bulking. My current goal is to gain weight up until 210lbs, and then loose weight back to 195, and continue this process until I'm happy with myself. Today I weighed more than friday(no crap, that's the plan), and I was dissappointed. This whole gaining weight thing is going to be a tough adjustment. I've been living in a loose weight world for about 6 months straight now. The good side of this is that i get to eat more quiznos, and I don't have to feel bad about eating terrible food more often.

Thirdly, while gaining weight, you have to eat a bunch of calories...but not bad calories, they have to be good calories. To get a lot of good calories, you need to eat MASSIVE amounts of healthy food. I just ate a full pound of extra lean beef and some vegetables. Its getting expensive, and I don't know how much more I can eat. I still don't think I hit a calorie surplus for the day yet. I need some meal replacements or something.

Fresh Start

It was a pretty bad week as far as the diet goes. Starting with last friday, and all the way up until yesterday. Its not so much that I ate poorly, even though I ate chinese 2ce, quiznos 2ce, and "may" have ordered a pizza at one point...oh yeah, and then there was hibachi, no, its not that I ate poorly, because even with the excess of bad food, I've still managed to loose 2 lbs last week, mainly because I kept my calories-in lower than my calories-out.

Calories-in < Calories-out is a time proven method of loosing weight; however, its also a piss poor method of loosing weight. Sometime in the middle of last week, I said to myself "All of this counting macro-nutrient ratios, and garbage is a pain in the ass. I'm sick of it!", and I did just that, I quit drinking protein shakes, and began eating whatever I wanted...as long as i didn't exceed my calorie-out.

What's the result? Well, today I weighed in at 195, 2lbs lighter than last week's 197. I lost 3 lbs the week prior, while counting macro nutrients, and keeping my diet solid. 2 pounds, 3 pounds, what's the difference? Well the difference is that today, when I hit the gym, my lifts sucked ass. I had to drop 10 pounds on my bench, and just about 5 pounds everywhere else.

I hear a voice in my head saying "Congradulations you dumb ass, you've just lost muscle."

Now it may not be as bad as it seems. I'm off work today, so I hit the gym pretty soon after waking up, and I didn't take any pre-workout suppliments prior to lifting. Hell, just getting to the gym today was a minor miracle. I'm hoping that my lifts sucked because I didn't take protein, and vitrex an hour before lifting.

DC comics has to get with the program.

Wilkes-Barre movies 14 opened this weekend. Its a movie theater about 3 minutes from my house in downtown wilkes-barre. The idea is to breath new life into the downtown and to get people excited about the city. Previously, I would have had to drive 30 minutes to montage mountain to see a movie. The montage expirience has many faults other than the distance from my house...but I won't go there.

Coincidentally, Superman also opened this week. I've been waiting for the superman movie for what seems like ever. I remember when they were talking about casting Nicholas cage for the role....boy, I'm glad that didn't happen. In some respects, I was a little afraid of the new superman. Hell, they casted some no-name to replace my childhood hero Christopher reeves, and they casted Kate Bosworth to play lois lane. I'm not a Kate Bosworth fan. Yeah, she's hot and all, but she was anything but tough in that surfer girl movie.

All that being said, I think this Brandon Routh guy is believable in both the roles of Clark Kent, and of Superman. Actually, by the end of the movie, I didn't find myself longing for Christofer Reeves. Brandon Routh is to Superman what Pierce Bronson was to James Bond...in a word, remarkable.

The movie is good, its real good. I have one complaint. My brother-in-law recently blogged about the subject of apologies and women. If women accepted apologies as well as men did, they could have cut 30 minutes off of Superman Returns.

So what's with the title of my blog? What do I mean by DC has to get with the program?

Over the last 5 years, I've seen 2 spidermen, 3 xmen, a punisher, a hulk, 2 daredevils, and an electra. Over the same period of time, DC has hit me with only 1 superman, 1 batman, and a catwoman(yeah whatever, it may have sucked, but its still a DC movie). DC needs to start pumping out more batman and superman movies. They rock.

I hear that they're making a wonder woman movie. Just stop production on that now. Aside from aquaman, wonderwoman is the stupidest super hero ever made. Seriously, WTF is the point of having an invisible jet if you're NOT INVISIBLE? Who wrote that crap? Who decided that that was a good idea? She's an amazon from the island of amazons, she's decent with a whip, and she has an invisible jet. I hope that guy lost his job.

One more flood pic.

This is from the 5th floor of our main building. I think its interesting to see the dike structure that they've built. The large metal wall is put up when there is some danger of flooding. Now the water here is already at 32 feet which is well over flood stage and into "serious flood stage" ooooh scary. Normally, that bridge is about 30 feet over the ground, maybe I'll post a pic of the bridge at normal water levels if I can find one. As you can see, the water would have to raise another 15 feet before it went over that large metal wall. This pic was also taken by Tony Thornton.

Money for floods or Water is Nature's ugly stick.

Photo taken by Tony Thornton. Its about 15 feet from the building I work in.
No, I am not living in a refuge hovel just south of israel. My house was not washed away by the raging susquehanna river. Guard Insurance Group lives on, despite going into disaster recovery/business continuity plans. All in all, the latest disaster was a bit of a flop in the way of disasters. The people of the surrounding communities may disagree, but apparently wilkes-barre has defeated mother nature on this matter.

Lets get a few things straight.
1) Yes, the river was higher than it has ever been, including 1972. The river crested at 34.5 feet or something like that, in contrast, it normally runs at about 4-5 feet deep.

2) Yes, they evacuated wilkes-barre. Only the parts that were affected by the great flood of 72. I live on a hill, and was not evacuated.

3) The national media will say anything to get people to watch the news. Based on the national media's representation of the situation, you would have thought that our city was worse off than new orleans.

4) For everyone who thought "building the dike" was a bad idea, and a waste of money, hahahahaha to you. Both hurricane ivan in 04, and the most recent storm would have caused millions of dollars of damage without the dike. Maybe not to the level of 1972, but probably pretty close.

Chapter 78 of the tao talks about water. How water is the softest and most yielding substance, yet the best substance. It overcomes the hard and rigid because nothing can compete with it. Thus we are to be like water, we are to overcome that which stands in our way. Absorb that which confronts us. We are to be flexible and flow like water.

But what of the rock? When the water recedes, the rock remains. The rock is unyielding. It looks at the water and states, most enthusiastically "Come then, and I'll remain, go then, and yet, I remain."

Does the rock empower the water, or does the water empower the rock?

Without the rock, the water has nothing to absorb, and without the water, the rock has nothing to stand against.

Chapter 78 of the tao ends with "True sayings seem contradictory". Boy is that the truth. In the end, I believe that the answer is to be both hard and rigid, and soft and yielding. But how?

The tao is not a book of answers, its a book of questions. Questions with no answers, it is meant to provoke thought. To question itself. It proves itself by disproving itself. It proves its worth, by showing that it has none. The more I think about it, the more sense it makes, but the more sense it makes, the more senseless it becomes.