heard	Ratt			Invasion of Your Privacy
			Tony MacAlpine			Edge of Insanity
			Michael Brecker			Now You See it, Now you Don't
			Deftones			White Pony
			Miles Davis			Tutu
			Saigon Kick			The Lizard
			John Scofield			Electric Outlet

 

Mouri Mbonikai Pretty hot and tempting.. (10-09) It's such a slow day. Too much time to think, not enough focus to decide the most clever way to express how out of focus I feel. There's a lot of work hanging over my head that will soon be swamping me, but at the moment I am in a lull, not sure whether it's a blessing or a curse. I wish for the life of me that I actually had more to do at this very moment, but as I look around and see the hailstones falling on my coworkers, I also sense the need to thank my lucky "new-guy" stars….   For a variety of reasons I have been really really tense lately.. and (surprise surprise) I have found a horrible way to deal with it.   Food.   The other day after a "bad self-karma" type of incident I came home furious and wolfed down basically whatever I could find around the house in what should probably be described as a fit of "fat guy rage." The only thing that was going to cool off how angry I felt was chips, hotdogs, soup, and a couple of those breakfast bar things that I found in the cupboard. About halfway through the meal I realized what I was doing and the idea just disgusted me. When did I bow to such self-loathing? When did I decide that the answer to my pent-up frustrations was an entire bag of potato chips and leftover lasagna?   Actually, I have been doing this sort of thing for a while, but there was always some form of exertion that allowed for a balance. The difference in my life now is that for a long while I have just skipped the physical exertion portion of the competition, and moved straight on to the bowl of cereal during the fourth quarter of the late football game. I am heavier than I want to be. Not fat (unless I wear the wrong shirt), but definitely not slender. I definitely take the elevator instead of the stairs. It's disappointing, and unfortunately it plays into the whole "bad self-karma" thing I've got going on lately. The end result is that I get all bent out of shape about being fat, which leads to more tension, more anger, and eventually to more and more twizzlers.   Not good.   In the eternal struggle to make sure the baby is always being watched over, I haven't made much of an effort to go outside in months. Cute Curren may be, but even more certain is how much of a handful he can be, especially when he wants to stay awake through naptimes. As he grows into his voice and his personality he has become a very loud and willful child. Sometimes it can be a huge stress to just try and keep him happy when he's off on one of his moods. Thus, going out surfing for several hours would be unbelievably selfish and unfair, because it would leave Kim holding the infant. After all she does with him all day/every day, I find it hard to even suggest that I disappear for a few hours to go have some fun when clearly I have the opportunity to give her a break from changing diapers and quieting his cries. Kim is with him all day - all week - every week, so to help keep her sane, be a good husband, and keep the waters calm on the homefront I make a concerted effort to try and take care of him every night and every weekend. It's the only fair thing to do, right? Somehow, Kim finds time for a workout during the day, and even though there is time for me to do the same at night, the desire to exercise has not yet found a way to defeat the desire to potato out in front of the television after a long day of work. Excuses, I know - but the simple truth is right there in front of me - No matter what benefits a workout program would give me, at this moment in my life any sort of exercise makes my chest pound and reduces me to a sweaty blob on the floor wishing for Metallica's Fade to Black to start playing. A fat guy doing a serious workout is suddenly faced with one thing -- the stark and harsh reality of his own fatness, and that is not a pleasant place to be.   I guess it should motivate me to work harder, but it doesn't. It simply validates my "bad self-karma" feeling, makes me feel disgusting, and motivates me to find ways to avoid that self-induced after school special whenever I can. What's worse, I never feel like I am at the edge of my mortality when I am taking down a supreme pizza.   I guess it's odd to hear a guy bitch about his weight. It seems odd to write about it, but it's really starting to bug me. Maybe it's the same for everyone else, I don't know. I mean, I used to EAT, and it used to be glorious… If my little brother didn't eat all of his food, I finished it for him. (I think my parents actually patted me on the back for that sort of behavior). Every time we got stuck in a family reunion or whatever at my grandmother's house, I used to get in contests with my cousins over who could eat the most free food. In college when we all lived together at Prince Manor, we would sometimes go down to Godfather's pizza for their all you could eat buffet night, and we would get into contests where we would see who could stack the most pizza crusts into the tallest towers… In previous lives, gluttony with food was just as impressive to those around me as gluttony with alcohol could be.   I used to gorge and get praised.   And it never really mattered, because no matter how much I crammed into my gullet, I remained a fairly in-shape guy, because I was working physical labor jobs and surfing every afternoon. But, time passes…   Photographs, videotape footage, just being outside and feeling beads of water on your forehead when you're walking to the car.. this wasn't who I was. And maybe it's all magnified by the fact that there is a baby, a new job that looks long term, and the slow elimination of the debt hole. I actually find myself at a point where I could say to myself "OK, old boy, you've made it. Beautiful wife, healthy child, good job… Time to start looking forward to mowing the lawn and watching the discovery channel." But it doesn't take long to remember also saying "Lets get this novel done, let's get back into music, lets go surfing while the water's still warm and the storm swell is still going… Lets live this life!"   Let me spell it out for you. With my gradual acceptance of the changes that the kid has brought to our lives, I have felt a tangible, physical pull to slow myself down and just be the guy who brings in the paycheck every two weeks and then occasionally goes out and plays catch in the yard. I mean, why should I bother doing things that cause huffing and puffing? I've got a good job that only requires me to use my intellect and work ethic while sitting in a cube drinking gallons of coffee and all you can eat slices of cake brought in by the girl in the cubicle across the hall. Things are good. There's a time for getting fat on life, and maybe this is it… Rest on the laurels, bask in the glow. The door sits ajar, and there is a damn comfortable chair visible through the opening. But there is also a heavy pull to get back on the horse that I tied to the tree when I realized that I was going to become a dad. That horse still wants to run. It just doesn't go quite as fast as it used to now that my ass fills up a lot more of the saddle, but it still wants to gallop. I've become lazy. I've become comfortable writing poetic, impassioned stories about how I wish I weren't so lazy.. and those stories are so much easier to write when you are lazy..   I want to be the guy I was before.   But that guy didn't have all of the good things that this fat guy does.   And somewhere underneath it all, I fear that going back to being that other guy brings with it the risk of losing all of these spoils.     Either way, I don't think that any of this can be fixed by a Soloflex.