Something is Wrong With My Dog

Or maybe this is a normal way to poop?

Or maybe this is a normal way to poop?


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The woman with the fake tan stepped into my office, sat across from my desk and lit a cigarette.
At least, she would, sometime in the next 20 minutes. Smelling the future has advantages, but precision isn’t one of them.


Bottle Episode

It's a challenge to write a new journal entry lately. Not because I have nothing to write about, but because of what I can't write about, or don't want to write about. So as is tradition in times of no new material during a long running series, here's a clip show:

There are pros and cons of the gym I've been going to so far in 2019. Pros: price, location, low number of other gym members at the times I visit. Con: No soap dispenser in the showers. When I'm paying almost $15 a week for gym access I am most definitely factoring in a couple cents worth of all you can pump generic, industrial strength soap into the cost.

The bradism.com Body Wash

The bradism.com Body Wash

So I'm now responsible for bringing my own soap to the gym. For this I created my own bradism.com body wash, and I think the recipe represents me quite accurately as a person. It started as regular body wash, but I worried that there might not be enough hospital-grade antibacterial ethanol in that, so I mixed some through too. And I store it in this body lotion bottle I took from a hotel in New Zealand.

Markus

More money, more problems, is what Grammy nominated mathematician Kelly Price once sang on a Biggie hook.
If her theorem is accurate, and behaves according to accepted algebraic principles, that means problems minus money equals less problems.
And that is why I will spend all my money on chairs until I find one I can sit on, or I go bankrupt (also known as tendinopathy of the savings account).


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Kept My Chin Up

image 1883 from bradism.com
A month ago my physio told me that I should remove pressing, pushing and lifting exercises from my gym routine, in addition to his previous ban on riding the stationary bike. This was on top of the bans on running and leg exercises that my hamstring doctor had already enforced.

During most of my previous gym comeback tours this probably would have been enough for me to suspend my direct-debit indefinitely and never return, but in 2019 I decided to stay strong and continue exercising anyway. I divided my workouts into pulling/upper-back exercises, core, and rehab. Instead of giving up, I decided I was going to focus on pulling up.

The last time I performed a pull up was in 2008, when I was 23 and had never had surgery. Since then I believed I would never pull up again. But in the last six months I have watched Vanessa's progress from someone who watches fitness documentaries on the couch, to someone who competes in novice CrossFit competitions. While parts of my body have betrayed me, that's nothing compared to the rigour and violence Vanessa has suffered through chronic endometriosis, a shattered shoulder, and countless other undeserved afflictions.

Vanessa was the one who inspired me on my own journey the last few months, and when I pulled my chin up over the bar on Saturday for the second time it was her I immediately messaged to share the news. (Because you haven't done something until you've done it twice.)

It takes strength to pull yourself over a bar from a dead hang, or snatch an olympic bar over your head, or get out of bed and go to work when your insides are in chaos and your head and body ache. Vanessa has that kind of strength, I see it everyday, and she gives it to me, and I try to give it to her. We give each-other power. Together, we are strong.

Election Thoughts

Let's start with some facts.

Fact one: The human race is going to die out at some point. That could be from climate change in a century, or an undetected asteroid next week, or - best potential end game - in a million years a single, wise and mysterious old human sits alone in a bar on an alien planet in a distant galaxy, drinking purple rum and listening to amazing tunes, knowing they are the last of their kind, and passing away peacefully in a puddle of rum and alien-kebab vomit.

Fact two: Australia’s contribution to halting climate change and cutting emissions is about as relevant to the fate of the world as Seth Curry’s contribution towards winning an NBA Championship. We’re minor players, our only relevance comes from our relationship with the big names. Sure, with the wrong policies we might emit a few extra thousand tonnes of greenhouse gases, ship out a whole bunch of dirty coal without much in the way of nationalised royalties, and dredge through a bleached UNESCO World Heritage reef to make some offshore bank accounts a little taller. But in the scheme of things, i.e. surviving a million years for the last human to die in an exotic bar, we’re not that important compared to other major countries on the Earth. To truly halt climate change we really need the entire human race to take a long term view, forget about investments and profit margins, and sacrifice.
It’s not going to happen. Humans are animals. There’s 7.5 billion of us. The United States doesn't use the metric system. Australian states can’t even reach a consensus on daylight savings. Millions of people base their lifestyles on varying imaginary friends. Sure, a lot of people might say they’re for global equality, but wait until they find out equality means living on $1000 a month, and everything at KMart is suddenly five times more expensive. So...

Fact three: Climate Change is already here.

Facts established, we can now see that for a lot of people the problem of Climate Change is not “How do we stop it?”, but, “How do we survive it?”
If you believe in capitalism, and you’re rich or think you’re getting rich, you’ll probably believe the market will provide solutions. Heat? Drought? Rising Sea Levels? Technology will save us. There’ll be profits in it. It might be expensive, but it can be bought.
Yes, Climate Change will cause mass extinctions, dehospitablise major parts of the globe, and generate millions of refugees, but that’s easy fixed with a strong border force.
From this we can derive the values of the self-centred, the scared, the ignorant. Jobs are needed to make food and smartphones affordable. Fighter jets and submarines are a crucial part of protecting the Great Australian Moat, the money we can make today we can save for a rainy (that is, really, really sunny) day.

And, I mean, there’s some problematic media issues driving these values as well, but all the most successful news outlets prosper when they tell the majority what they already want to hear.

And that’s why I think people vote for nationalistic, populist parties and outcomes from the privacy of their voting booths. Partly fear, partly ignorance, mostly the delusion of self-preservation.

You might think, Brad, surely you’d want to vote for the Liberal-National Coalition too? I am well paid, in a white-collar job. I own property. I’m more likely at the moment to receive franking credits than welfare. I won’t have children that need child-care payments, or fresh food and clean water for their own children.

Maybe I’m an idiot.

Maybe I want to believe that humans can, with the right amount of social support, in a country and world where education standards are higher, health outcomes are better, and where incomes allow for people to be smarter, less overworked, less exhausted, less hopeless, ascend beyond basic human instincts.

Maybe I'm a tight arse who doesn't want to pay a premium for second-rate Weet Bix and yogurt fifty years from now.

Maybe I’m too invested in the idea of humans eventually cracking faster than light travel, and cellular regeneration, and clean energy, and being able to digest alien rum and process alien rock and roll.

That’s why I voted Green, and why I started drinking last night before the vote count even started.

image 1886 from bradism.com

My Mind

Three major projects, on top of normal work, and family, and a dog, and eating healthy and keeping fit, and injury rehab, holiday planning and home maintenance, and I decided to write a trilogy.

Bare Branches

It crossed my mind, this morning as I crossed a bridge, and a southerly wind whipped at my face, that Autumn is the most dramatic of seasons. Less than three months ago it was forty degrees, I could literally walk outside in shorts at any point of the day, and now I'm contemplating driving the long way home just to keep the heater pointing at my feet. I'll have to remember this for next Autumn's video...

image 1887 from bradism.com

Yesterday I had a craving for pasta, and all I really had to cook was a whole butternut pumpkin and a whole bunch of leftover pulled-pork. Well, it turned out pretty well after I turned it into a soup and dished it up on wholemeal spaghetti.

This morning marked the one week mark of having my new mouth-guard. It did turn out I opened my mouth too soon when I journal-jinxed my first major dental and not long after the temperatures dropped below the high-thirties the pain in my tooth returned. My endodontist's current theory is that nocturnal grinding is stopping the inflammation in the nerve from settling. Honestly, I don't believe that, but so strong is my desire to eat Weet Bix and berries with tiny seeds again that I was willing to pay $200 for a night-guard made custom for my mouth.
My dentist warned me that the first week would be challenging and that I might wake up to find the mouth-guard out of my mouth, under a pillow, or have trouble sleeping. I've had none of these problems, from the first night onward I've put it in, fallen asleep, and woken up with it in my mouth six and bit hours later. This is only reinforcing my theory that I am not a restless sleeper. I think it's also character revealing. I'm well trained at ignoring people and things that interfere with my personal space even if I don't want them there. One morning on the train a woman had the point of her high heel stuck into the toe of my shoe and I went twenty minutes without even clearing my throat.

In the USA they don't call it Autumn, they call it Fall. As in, I wonder how much further the Australian Dollar will fall before I start buying cereal and yogurt over there. At least it won't actually be Autumn in a couple of weeks, in both hemispheres, and at least I don't have to pay for major dental in US Dollars.