giovedì, marzo 03, 2011

Running away from the shit hitting the fan

I ran five kilometres again today. It was lovely and now I'm asking myself where I go from here. The obvious answer is six, etc., get up to ten, and make sure I'm getting six or so hours a week for Optimum Heart Health as they say. Based on all the running tips I've seen, I should start thinking about trying to run faster, or running in a race, or something like that. But while the shine hasn't come off running, or jogging, or whatever it is I'm doing, I'm starting to get a little weary of all the running tip sites I've been looking at. They all seem to be pushing races and expensive accessories and I'm really wary of that sort of thing - making something I started doing because it was cheap, which is really conceptually nice, monetized. And the forums, don't get me started. Half pissing competition, half cheerleading.

Anyhoo. I like it.

Had a chat with my old boss before setting out this morning and it looks like half of our company just imploded. It's pretty fucked - not bad news for me personally, but really fucked as far as the structure of things go. The problem was, as it so often is, that a subgroup of highly paid individuals got God complexes, and decided they knew what a different, larger, less-paid, and far more necessary group was thinking, and that they could tell them what to do, and now the larger and far more necessary group has quit. This sort of brutal, egotistical inefficiency makes me so mad. Not atypically the bully-boy group is almost 100% male, and the what-the-fuck-are-you-thinking-I'm-quitting-and-suing group is almost 100% female. I can't wait to tell the pack of fucking overpaid Wonderboys to shove it up their asses when we get asked to clean their shit off the wall.

martedì, marzo 01, 2011

Cirumspect running

I ran for five kilometres this morning for the first time, which I'm proud of, even though it took around 35 minutes, which apparently is a long time, and I think actually counts as jogging. Oh well. It didn't feel long though, probably because - lovely as that cricket field is it gets boring if that's all I do - I ran around some pretty country roads instead. It is really fucking beautiful here - just rotten with flowers and bamboo and palm trees and really graceful eucaplypts. And I am really not into pushing myself. I get the faintest twinge in my bad knee sometime and I don't intend to push any envelopes with that.

Regretted last night not having started running before, because in retrospect there were some really lovely places to run in Yorkshire, London, Paris and Brussels, and in Toronto too. It would have added a whole new dimension of enjoyment to those places. Oh well. I don't regret not running in Italy. There are park-ish geographical locations that would have been good for running there in theory, but Italy being rife with whoremongers a woman can't actually go in them without getting propositioned; it's a bit better in the south, but then you're stumbling over people consuming heroin in one form or another unless you get out of the cities, and that's melancholy. Paestum would have been a lovely place for a run, actually. Oh well. I was busy doing other things then, and the odds are good that I'll get a chance to run in most of those places in the future.

In other news, finally figured out how to turn off the safe search on Google Images and saw the Playgirl photos of Flash Gordon star Sam Jones. If you ever consider circumcision as a reasonable life choice to make on behalf of your male progeny, just have a look at them. It is brutal. Here's this perfectly nice - frankly, basically lovely cock hanging off this man, and because the foreskin's been taken away, the big bell-end looks ridiculous and disproportionate instead of great. Sam Jones's cock should be on public service posters all over the world, warning people against the aesthetic pitfalls of fuckin' cutting off a peice of their child's penis - god, what a gross idea, even if it looked good. In Sam Jones's case, it's like slicing off the Statue of Liberty's face or stripping all the marble facing off of Florence's duomo. God, circumcision makes me mad.

lunedì, febbraio 28, 2011

Here comes the great big fuck-off sun, little darling

I fucking hate sunscreen. If there's anything that so many people tell you to put on your skin that I don't fucking want to put on my skin - well, actually, perfume probably comes first. You can't switch on the damn television without seeing some shit about how your body smells fucking repellent and your personal Stygian stenches need to be masked with sperm whale turd and other expensive and disgusting chemical brews, so certainly more people are telling me to perfume myself than sunscreen myself, and I'm so viciously morally opposed to people smelling like anything except clean, and possibly like patchouli, which is horny, or other nice things like that, that I can safely say I fucking hate perfume more than I hate sunscreen.

That notwithstanding, I fucking hate sunscreen, which is a problematic thing to hate in Australia. And unlike perfume, which I can ignore except when called upon to be in an enclosed space with another human being who has some sort of complex about smelling like a human being (much less frequent now that I work at home), I can't ignore sunscreen, because I'm not a fucking idiot. Sunscreen needs to be worn here. The sun is, I think, alone in its ability to burn the shit out of you while feeling really good, and I got one fucking doozy of a burn a few weeks after arriving here on a clear, cool day in Victoria when I was enjoying wearing a wife-beater and wandering around bare-armed so much I didn't even notice I was lobstering up.

Anyhoo, the threat of having to wear sunscreen when I run is basically the only thing that has a chance of succeeding at making me move my ass out of the door and getting in my run before 8 am, since magically the Australian sun is not supposed to be harmful before 8 am. Running in sunscreen is icky. I really think it stops me from sweating properly. Also if I run too late - like I did today - I have to wear a hat, and then my head gets hot. I hate having a hot head. I have a visor somewhere, but it's gone missing, and it's one of those situations . . . basically I'm the annoying person in my relationship with the F-word when it comes to losing things, and I can't bring myself to ask him if he's seen it, because he hates all visors with a fucking passion, and when I bought mine tried to make me promise I'd never wear it in front of him, which I did, just to be a bitch, so I can't help but wonder if he's hidden it on purpose, though that would be an absurdity, right?

We've been watching too much Curb Your Enthusiasm, in case you couldn't tell.

domenica, febbraio 27, 2011

Side effects: part 2

Running has lots of gross side effects that people who don't run aren't usually told about, I think so that they'll try running someday. There are three that I think would have pretty high ick factors for the general public: chafing, black toenails, and flatulence.

The chafing has only happened to me in a minor way because I don't run that much compared to people who really, really run, who will actually draw blood from all the chafing that happens wherever one of their bits rubs against another bit while they are running. They use Vaseline and Body Glide and all sorts of bizarre personal lubricants to keep it in check. All I and my thunderthighs have needed for protection so far is the compression shorts under my running skirt but if I keep trying to run more and further I'm going to get some of the self-warming KY Jelly and see how it works. Because, you know, then we just happen to have a thing of self-warming KY Jelly in the house.

The black toenails are also something I think are more restrained to people who really, really run, and are actually the best argument I can think of for not pushing the envelope horribly hard.

The flatulence is pretty funny. I guess running jostles your tummy and intestines in such a way that digestion turns into more of a challenge, because I don't have a farty diet and I'm not usually a farty person, but the day after a run is usually quite a farty day. The thing is, farts are funny. Black toenails aren't funny, chafing isn't funny, but farting is fucking hilarious. Especially since I work at home and I'm not embarassing or digusting any colleagues.

In other news, watched Flash Gordon last night. I think maybe that's the best movie ever, mildly improved by imagining Dr. Zarkov bursting into "If I Was a Rich Man" every time he appears on screen.