Saturday Workout

2010.07.26 - Monday

Toby and I did a workout at the Pantheon Gym downtown. There hasn't been a session with Darrell at New Wave for a few weeks so it was good to get something done. After reading about it, we decided to try the infamous "300" routine, developed by one of the trainers responsible for getting the actors into shape for that film. It's meant as a sort of benchmark. Normally one is supposed to complete all of the reps for each exercise at once with no stopping, but for a couple of normal guys like us, we had to break it up into 5 sets of either 5 or 10 reps at a time. The top time by one of the actors on the film was 18:11. It took us just under 45 minutes, including a warm up. Yikes!

Warm-up:
30x Jumping Jack
30x Squat
10x Squat Jump
Stretching

"300":
25x Pull Up
50x 135lb Barbell Deadlift
50x Push Up
50x 37lb Dumbell Clean & Press (25 each side)
50x 135lb Barbell Floor Wiper
50x 24" Box Jump
25x Pull Up

Concerts...ish

2010.07.12 - Monday

Two Saturdays ago was Armin van Buuren and Benny Benassi at the Vancouver Convention Centre. Fantastic show. Buuren is widely recognized as the number one DJ in the world these days, and he played some absolutely kick ass tracks. Both he and Benassi had the crowd eating out of their hands and going totally crazy. Everyone there was in a good mood and having fun, and it was a fantastic four hours! Sorry for the horrible video quality, but iPhones aren't good cameras. You can blame Steve Jobs.

This past Saturday I saw Deadmau5 at the Pacific Coliseum. I'm not crazy about a lot of his music, but he's legendary live and it was well worth it. The only downside was the all-ages crowd which was full of way too many teenagers for my taste. Not as well behaved, and seemingly not having as good of a time. Still, it was a great show. If everyone else could catch up to Deadmau5's stage production it would be amazing!

Lame Liberals

2010.07.11 - Sunday

Liberals analyze their Obama 'despair'

"Tomasky sees this shift as an inevitable one that will eventually bring liberals around to the realization that the great periods of change — Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society — took place after years of effort and many setbacks."

The New Deal and the Great Society were both massive failures which plunged America into what was, at the time, unimaginable debt and decay. The war saved America after the New Deal failed, and it took Reagan, arguably one of the greatest Presidents, to just start to pull them back after the Great Society. In many ways, America has already had their Trudeaus. They just don't seem to learn from the inevitable collapse those grand plans always bring about, and it's not going to be any different this time around.

Even after all of the arguments, all of the stimulus, and all of the government projects, economists are now faced with the possibility that the recovery, if one can call it that, is already over. Well of course it is. There's no such thing as a government subsidized economy. It's just not possible. It can't work, ever. America, and most of the Western world, to be fair, isn't just addicted to oil. It's addicted to debt, and credit, and social programs, and government spending. All the stimulus did was give us another hit. Now it's wearing off, except we've already sold nearly everything we own to pay for it. Some countries have taken it to a whole different level and sold everything their citizens will own for three or four generations. America is one of them.

Now that I think about it, I really need to move some money around.

Armin van Buuren!

2010.07.03 - Saturday

I'm going to his show tonight! Freakin' pumped!

Media Language

2010.07.03 - Saturday

"Approximately 30 to 40 full grown men dressed in black and wearing masks began destroying store fronts and torching police cars along Younge St..."

Doesn't sound as cool that way, does it? To paraphrase something my friend Chris said, why is it when you're a thirty year old G20 "protester" displaying nothing but petty hooliganism you're a "youth", but a nineteen year old victim of a Skytrain swarming is a "man"?