Those of you who know me, know of my deep and abiding love for all things stairmaster. For those of you who don’t know me particularly well, that first sentence is called sarcasm. I hate them with a passion that borders on religious furor.

So why in the name of all things muffiny did I just spend twenty minutes climbing 85 flights of stairs on our company “poor mans” stairclimber?

Army. Mountain. Warfare. School.

While at the Army Basic Instructor course a few weeks ago, I took some time and called the AMWS and asked some questions about the course. In response to my question about what kind of shape I should be in, I was told “on the record” that I will need to have passed an Army PT test with in 30 days of the start of school, including height and weight. No problem, the standards for my age group are almost comically easy.

Its recommended that I be able to pass it with a score of 70 in each event in the 17-21 age group. Alright, that’ll be a bit tougher, two miles in 15:54 is going to be a bitch to achieve…but I can likely manage that. I’ve got six months to get ready for it.

But then the instructor went off on a bit of tangent. His personal opinion is that the best way to get ready for the school is to do the school, on your own, before you ever arrive. I told him I was doing the knots (which I had heard was the biggest standard people failed out on at the school) and hiking on a treadmill (4 MPH at 10 to 12% incline) and honest to God he just snorted when I told him that. The knots are fine, he encourages that (and emailed me a pdf I already had that talked about the knots in question), but he says the closest substitute to the type of rucking we’ll be doing (short of actually doing it) is to the calf killing butt defining stairmaster.

He pointed out that the first ruck (the-break-you-the-fuck-off-march as he called it) is two miles with a 2000 foot elevation gain, done in under 30 minutes, with full battle rattle (20# vest and 45# ruck) plus rope at 0530 in the morning.

Since I don’t have anything near that, I opted for Satan’s own pleasure device and after a six minute warm-up of push-ups, incline sit-ups, and body weight squats, I stretched, climbed up and started going.

Not being insane enough (or even having the capabilities to do, work only provides a cheap stairmaster knock off called the stairstepper which consists of two pedals and a computer that has less computer power than an illiterate simian with an abacus) to try two miles and 2500 foot gain, I picked a 20 minute generic endurance program and set off. The first five minutes weren’t too bad. Kind of boring actually, the rate of climb was 20 feet per minute, and to keep myself entertained I celebrated each 20 foot milestone by raising the roof. Co-workers eyed me carefully as I danced. Well my as my hands danced, my feet were otherwise occupied.

Then it got harder. And harder. And harder still. By the ten minute mark, there was no more roof raising as I was having to grip the handles for balance.

My calves were screaming as I accelerated past 50 feet a minute. By the fifteen minute mark, the world was burry and the numbers blurred into incomprehensibility as the sweat began running down my face. With three minutes to go, the program begin to taper back down from the 65 feet a minute it had been at for the last several eternities back down to the 20 and then to a stop.

Vigorously wiping the sweat off my face, I checked to make sure I still had a pulse, and downed a bottle of water. Final results:

Time: 20 min

AHR: 154

MHR: 186

Distance: 846 (what I have no idea, this is what the display listed)

Elevation gain: 903 feet

It's like this designer knows me! The sarcasm shirt is among a few more Kalback quality designs out at The Man Cave event now. Even has a definition on the back for those of you unfamiliar:)

maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Match/128/128/46

Metroid: Complete a Half-Finished Mission !!

"Now wait a minute... who put this truck here?"

FTR, he comes down decidedly on the sarcasm side.

get scared

Day 249/365: The rather fantastic (and very fitting lol) mug of a friend at work.

Gee, this sign is kind of hard to read. Maybe it should be bigger.

Greatest Mayor of this Fine City of Toronto.

Juxtaposed with maps of bike routes in Scarborough (Bike Thru Thesis from OCAD University)

- sarcasm

Sarcasm: putting a mound of dirt right next to the only entrance really makes a lot of sense when the rain bounces off the dirt mound and straight into the work area. Idiots.

bucket, construction, flooding, leaking, water, wood.

during the addition.

Clint and Carolyn's house, Alexandria, Virginia.

... Read my blog at ClintJCL.wordpress.com.

... Read Carolyn's blog at CarolynCASL.wordpress.com.

#DeportSuperman #illegalalien #illegalimmigrant #illegalmenace #rapist #drugdealer #sexoffender #socialist #communist #authoritarian #MAGA #MakeAmericaGreatAgain #NoForeignSuperheroes #drugsmuggler #TookTheJobOfAmericanSuperheroes #AmericaFirst #AmericanSuperheroesFirst #FakePapers #fakeidentity #illegal #America #USA #AmericanHero #popicon #superhero #DCcomics #SARCASM #IAMJOKING

"...next to the

SHOWER BLOCK"

In the Loch Ossian Youth Hostel

photos from the antiwar protest at end of September, 2005

39_365

Sorry, this is all I got tonight. Too late and time for bed. Sheesh, where does my day go. I really hate getting off work at 5:30. It really cuts into my day (sense my sarcasm?)

Sarcastic comments about a framed picture I had kept for 28 years but then had to give up. But then my spouse said that she really didn't mind the thing!

Me and @jenbshaw from Sarcasm in a Skirt.

Paradox, like sarcasm, doesn’t constantly mean a mass audience.

Means to go, TV market! Magnum opus! Can not think of a much better means to show how progressive television is than to showcase Sofia Vergara like a brand-new Buick at the automobile show!

“Our academy is more diverse...

www.moraldefinition.com/sofia-vergaras-emmy-turn-spins-me...

We don't need no education

We dont need no thought control

No dark sarcasm in the classroom

Teachers leave them kids alone

Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!

All in all it's just another brick in the wall.

All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

We don't need no education

We dont need no thought control

No dark sarcasm in the classroom

Teachers leave them kids alone

Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!

All in all it's just another brick in the wall.

All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

"Wrong, Do it again!"

"If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding. How can you

have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?"

"You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds, stand still laddy!"

Roger Waters

Thanks mojo for pictures of the mask.....

Had to be careful with this shot; there were knives in that drawer.

Merry xmas.Sarcasm.

Visit this location at The Fluffy Beach in Second Life

Usei:

1 camada de endurecedora Casco de Cavalo

2 camadas do Capadócia Colorama

1 camada do Sarcasm PL

(*sarcasm) No...that's not somebody's leg behind his head....

Oh wow. Thanks flickr sharpening. You're totally awesome. (If there was a sarcasm font, that would be in it.)

--------

I went to see The Merchant of Venice at the RSC last night. It was quite a good production, with very few issues for me to complain about. I mean, honestly, it wouldn't go into my "Top 5 Productions of All Time", but it was good. And it had Patrick Stewart in it at Shylock. And he had hair! (I was talking to my Dad last night about how I wished I'd seen him in Waiting for Godot with Ian McKellan, and then my Dad wryly observed that they'd both been in X-Men, and somehow that gave Waiting for Godot greater meaning. =p) The ending was interesting. I mean, usually, the play ends with them all going in to talk about the shenanigans and explain everything, but in this case, the dialogue was the same, but they had Portia kind of have a breakdown, and Bassanio reject her. Oh, and I really liked how they characterised Gratiano. He was a lot tougher than I'd seen in previous versions, and when Nerissa explained that she'd been with the clerk I remember thinking "I would expect Gratiano to get violent at this point, otherwise this interpretation will fall a little" and then he did. The Gratiano character was probably my favourite. & I've always felt so sorry for the Shylock character, and it doesn't matter how I look at this play I just can't help feeling really awkward when Antonio forces Shylock to become a Christian. But yeah, it was good.

--------------------------------

Seriously, before anyone gets upset, this is just my view, and you'll most likely disagree. I tend to take down posts that could cause a reaction about 24 hours later, because by then my feelings about what I was writing about have calmed, and I no longer feel I need it in my diary. It also prevents unnecessary hassle when someone comes across the post and gets upset about eleven months after I'd written it, and I no longer feel like arguing it.

So, my Mom called me just as I was reading an article in The Times online (seriously, I check it every few hours and am ridiculously up to date with the news), and it was about how the government are now having Life advise them on the Sexual Health Forum. You mean the group that is opposed to abortion, contraception, and sex education? Oh yeah, that sounds like a swell idea. Apparently it's because all views should be represented, but I think views that appear to actively be trying to send women back into the sexual dark ages is a bit counter-productive (and that's putting it lightly).

Now, my Dad is all about being fair and playing the Devil's advocate to my views (even if he actually agrees with me), and he was saying to me that some people genuinely believe that the moment of conception is the moment life begins. Now, life. Technically I would say a plant is living, but if you pull it out of the ground, even if I think you're being a yob, I'm not going to feel like you killed something. It's the sentience that I care about. I agree that at a certain point the foetus will have sentience, and that at a certain point I think the idea of killing it is wrong, but I am pro-choice and don't believe that one day after conception the seed/egg combo can feel pain. I just don't. & I think it's saying something that people who are overtly religious are more likely to.

I'm not into bashing religious beliefs online, though I will quite happily say in person that some views are freaking crazy. However, I'm not really into sitting back and not saying something because I don't want to offend someone. So, excuse me, but I'm probably going to offend certain branches of Christianity.

Frankly, I'm going to largely ignore the point about conception being life/sentience, because, for those who believe, that's not going to change. I will talk about the attitudes that piss me off though.

So, I was innocently browsing the comments of this article and was really pissed when I saw this comment from a Mr Gareth Barnes:

"The solution to the ever increasing number of abortions is surely better contraception, perhaps all young women should be consulted at say 15 as to the long term options available to them."

Thankfully, someone replied asking if it was just the woman's responsibility then. Why not all teenagers have these options made known to them at 15? Because the woman is saddled with the child? That's practically preaching to boys that they don't need to take responsibility. It's like the female MP who recently proposed in parliament that young girls should be taught abstinence. TLW and other such American groups preach abstinence, and has shown that it doesn't work. These groups refuse to teach sexual education and instead preach abstinence, which means that when teenagers then end up in a position where they're going to have sex, (and believe me, lots of them do - religion has very little to do with it) they don't know how the hell to have safe sex. It's ridiculous.

I was even more pissed off when I saw a woman had posted that women with unwanted pregnancies should give the child up for adoption. WTF? What right do you have to force a woman to go through the trauma of an unwanted pregnancy, force her to give birth, just so the child can go into adoption. And it's a lie that they will find a better home if put up for adoption - there are many, many babies given up for adoption who remain in care, especially non-white babies. Are you saying that only white mothers should be forced to do this? And, what if the woman with the unwanted pregnancy is a teenager at school? Most girls who get pregnant at school have to drop out and do not return to education. So, you're asking for this teenager's life to be screwed up so that the child can be put up for adoption, with no actual guarantee that the child will be adopted? Plus, a foetus must be older than three months before it can survive outside the womb with all the hospital apparatus. Just something to think about.

People with those views make me so freaking angry. I just don't understand how they can believe they have the right to force a woman to give birth. I mean, honestly, if I'd wanted to, I could have had sex when I was thirteen. I didn't, and I wouldn't give in to pressure because I was fortunate enough to have had sex education and come from a supportive background. I didn't want to have sex when I was 13 and wouldn't be pressured into it. Not everyone has that. What would have happened to 13 year old me if I hadn't had that, and had given into pressure and become pregnant. That would have been horrific. Again, in my later teenage years, if I hadn't had proper sex education then, again, I would have been at risk at pregnancy. That would have screwed up everything.

I met a group of girls a few years ago when we were applying to Oxford, and I kept in touch with them afterwards. One girl didn't go to Oxford and took a gap year before going elsewhere. Within her first term she had to drop out because she was pregnant. She didn't want to keep the baby at first, but just gave birth this weekend. The whole time she wasn't sure if she wanted the baby, at least she knew she had the option of having an abortion. Imagine if that option had been taken away from her? She would never have been able to come to terms with the baby as something she wanted, and there would always be the idea that the baby had been forced upon her.

I just don't think you can justify saying a woman can't have an abortion early on. Saying that, I am the product of a non-abortion. No, I wasn't going to be aborted, but family members have been adopted. Without that adoption, I wouldn't exist. BUT, would it bother me if I didn't exist? Now that I exist, yes, but if I had never existed I wouldn't be bothered about not existing. So I still feel I can argue this.

I think if you don't want an abortion, then fine, but it's outrageous that you would try and inflict your (often religiously-influenced) views on others who don't share your beliefs.

All moral views are socially constructed. There is no definitive moral standpoint you can take (I often say I subscribe to Christian morality, but I pick and choose really, as their misogyny and homophobia etc. doesn't gel with me). So, I feel it gets a bit tricky. Now, I'd say there are very few individuals who would argue that the purposeful killing of a 'born', sentient being is not murder. However, there is clearly a disagreement over whether the abortion a week-old foetus is murder, and I don't really want to try and change someone's opinion if they truly believe that abortion is murder, because that would be like someone trying to convince me that the purposeful killing of a sentient born being is not murder. It would be insane. So no, I would say I respect their view to that extent, but I think it's wrong (clearly, or I'd share it). I just think they have no right to try and illegalise it and prevent others from carrying out their wishes because it is not a majority consensus (unlike not murdering sentient born beings is).

Ugh. Oh, and, you all know The Onion, right? Satirical website? Spoofs things all the time while acting as if a real news organisation? Well, you should, because they're hilarious. However, some American Christians clearly didn't understand and thought that this was a real article. One of them quotes something by Mother Theresa which clearly isn't real. Another says they hope it ends like the Titanic - swiftly and absolutely (someone really needs to tell her that the Titanic took hours to sink and that since there were survivors then I would call it 'absolutely'). Oh, and someone else says that buying contraception is a 'silent abortion'. Goodness gracious. These people astound me. And they could at least freaking read the article and realise it's satire before they get all shocked and outraged.

Oh, but don't think I presume all American Christians are like this. I'm being lazy and speaking in generalisations. But I don't think just because you're religious you hold moronic views and are crazy. Just some people who clearly don't recognise a joke when they see it.

Fine. Rant over. Back to revision. But seriously, don't presume you can tell anyone - man or woman - what to do with their bodies.

You know, I bet this will piss off a lot of people. But I also bet that a lot of people would agree with me. I kind of think maybe I'm being a bit audacious in posting this, but I'm not a politician and I'm not in the public eye so . . . It's just a view. & it's just my view at this time. Maybe in a year's time I'll look back and disagree, but that's kind of why I'm writing it down. So I can record and look back. Just reminding anyone who wants to make assumptions.

Later on at this party, this girl got upset when someone said she looked like a cheerleader.

You just can't help but love sarcasm, right? Not only does this bundle have loads of fun mom-sarcastic word art, but the ellies and papers make it wonderful for any layouts.

PrelP has done it again. Her templates have wonderful depth and element locations, great sight lines and flow.

Title: 2011-09-13 Beaufort1

Kit/Link: fayette_all day every day, www.pickleberrypop.com/shop/product.php?productid=51285&a...

Kit/Link: prelp_multiphoto templates vol.28, www.pickleberrypop.com/shop/product.php?productid=51252&a...

keywords: fayette designs, prelestnayaP design, vacation, beaufort, south carolina, homes, flags, congratulations, wood, green, pink, purple, tan

font: {skinny} jeans solid, 1st Cav II

program: GIMP

Some kind of metaphor for today.

Ameii essa unha! Fiz inspirada em uma mani que vi aqui no Flickr!

Cones know only the lowest form of wit

sarcasm face. :)

thanks, jack (slight sarcasm)

These parasites on one of the group of four fin whales Fin Whales Balaenoptera physalusare on last Sunday’s whale watching trip appear to be Xenobalanus globicipitis - a type of barnacle that has also been observed on whales off Scotland. Again this shot was taken with the Canon 100-400mm, at 220 mm and with exposure settings of f5.6, 1/800 of a second and ISO 400. It's cropped fairly severely to focus in on the details of these hangers on.

The title is derived from If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants, which is commonly attributed to Issac Newton but was first recorded by Bernard of Chartres in the 12th century - and of course you knew that :-). Nowadays, it is usually used in a self-depreacating manner by a great thinker or scientist on receipt of honours but Newton may have directed it in sarcasm to his somewhat vertically challenged colleague, Robert Hooke, leading to a lifelong falling out. The latter sense seems applicable here also!