Day By Day ROCKS!

If you’re not reading the killer stories with pictures above my posts daily, you’re missing out. I’m gonna write more when I get back this afternoon, but let’s just say that the adventures of Zed, Sam, Damon and Jan always start my day off right.

Daily Scripture 28 Feb 07

Jonah 3 (KJV)

1 And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying,

2 Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.

3 So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey.

4 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

5 So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.

6 For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

7 And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water:

8 But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.

9 Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?

10 And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.

Part Two of the 40 Days of Shedding the Gut

This is this week. Monday and Tuesday so far. I originally was going to go with 45lb-55lb-65lb on the dumbbell bench press, but came to my senses this morning and cut it down to 30lb-40lb-50lb. Damn things are large and unwieldy!

Morning at home
4 x 25 bicycle crunches
4 x 10 pushups
4 x 15 opposite knee crunches
4 x 15 pelvis lifts

At the gym
8-6-4 assisted dip @ 70lb-50lb-30lb
8-6-4 assisted pullups @ 70lb-50lb-30lb

5 min. warm up walk @ 2.5-4.5 mph ascending .5 mph/min
5 min jog @ 5mph
5 min jog @ 5.5 mph
5 min jog @ 5 mph
5 min cool down walk @ 4.5-2.5 mph descending .5mph/min

5 min stretching

8-6-4 assisted chin ups @ 70lb-50lb-30lb

M-W-F
8-6-4 curls @ 15lb-20lb-25lb (dumbbell)
8-6-4 upright row 30lb-40lb-50lb (barbell)

Tu
8-6-4 bench press 105lb-125lb-145lb (barbell)
8-6-4 bench press 30lb-40lb-50lb (dumbbell)

Th
8-6-4 shoulder press 25lb-30lb-35lb (dumbbell)
8-6-4 tricep extension 30lb-40lb-50lb (barbell)

Sat
8-6-4 front pulldown 80lb-90lb-100lb (cable)
8-6-4 shrug 40lb-50lb-60lb (dumbbell)

Sauna long enough to say one decade of the rosary

One trip up the stairs to the 7th floor at work

After work at home
4 x 25 bicycle crunches
4 x 10 pushups
4 x 15 opposite knee crunches
4 x 15 pelvis lifts

Part One of the 40 days of Shedding the Gut

This was last week. Wednesday through Saturday.

Morning at home
4 x 20 bicycle crunches
4 x 5 pushups
4 x 10 opposite knee crunches
4 x 10 pelvis lifts

At the gym
8-6-4 assisted dip @ 80lb-60lb-40lb
8-6-4 assisted pullups @ 80lb-60lb-40lb

5 min. warm up walk @ 2.5-4.5 mph ascending .5 mph/min
5 min jog @ 5mph
5 min jog @ 5.5 mph
5 min cool down walk @ 4.5-2.5 mph descending .5mph/min

5 min stretching

8-6-4 assisted chin ups @ 80lb-60lb-40lb
8-6-4 curls @ 10lb-15lb-20lb

Sauna long enough to say one decade of the rosary

One trip up the stairs to the 7th floor at work

After work at home
4 x 20 bicycle crunches
4 x 5 pushups
4 x 10 opposite knee crunches
4 x 10 pelvis lifts

Daily Scripture 27 Feb 07

Isaiah 55 (NIV)

10 As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

Al Gore Candidacy Announcement Quashed by GOP-Leaning Orchestra!!!!!!

Or so some of my more breathless brethren on the left would have you believe. If Al was thinking about running, I betcha he woke up this morning, took one look at headlines like this one and re-evaluated the whole, “Hey, maybe I ought to run.” Across the blogosphere there are pockets of people who truly believe that but for the orchestra, Al would have announced his candidacy last night. And don’t bother trying to tell me that Al doesn’t read Raw Story. You know damn well he does.

Daily Scripture 26 Feb 07

Leviticus 19 (DRA)

1 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying:

2 Speak to all the congregation of the children of Israel, and thou shalt say to them: Be ye holy, because I the Lord your God am holy.

11 You shall not steal. You shall not lie, neither shall any man deceive his neighbour.

12 Thou shalt not swear falsely by my name, nor profane the name of thy God. I am the Lord.

13 Thou shalt not calumniate thy neighbour, nor oppress him by violence. The wages of him that hath been hired by thee shall not abide with thee until the morning.

14 Thou shalt not speak evil of the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind: but thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, because I am the Lord.

15 Thou shalt not do that which is unjust, nor judge unjustly. Respect not the person of the poor, nor honour the countenance of the mighty. But judge thy neighbour according to justice.

16 Thou shalt not be a detractor nor a whisperer among the people. Thou shalt not stand against the blood of thy neighbour. I am the Lord.

17 Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart, but reprove him openly, lest thou incur sin through him.

18 Seek not revenge, nor be mindful of the injury of thy citizens. Thou shalt love thy friend as thyself. I am the Lord.

Daily Scripture 25 Feb 07

Deuteronomy (nab)
Chapter 26

4 The priest shall then receive the basket from you and shall set it in front of the altar of the LORD, your God.

5 Then you shall declare before the LORD, your God, ‘My father was a wandering Aramean who went down to Egypt with a small household and lived there as an alien. But there he became a nation great, strong and numerous.

6 When the Egyptians maltreated and oppressed us, imposing hard labor upon us,

7 we cried to the LORD, the God of our fathers, and he heard our cry and saw our affliction, our toil and our oppression.

8 He brought us out of Egypt with his strong hand and outstretched arm, with terrifying power, with signs and wonders;

9 and bringing us into this country, he gave us this land flowing with milk and honey.

10 Therefore, I have now brought you the first fruits of the products of the soil which you, O LORD, have given me.’ And having set them before the LORD, your God, you shall bow down in his presence.

The Tuesday Follies: A Dispatch From the Alternate Side of the Street Parking Woes

(I had a shitload of stuff to do this week around the office preparing for the Queen’s departure so my article for class was a re-working of a blog post from last month. Lazy, I know.)

I left the apartment Tuesday morning around 8:25 to move my car since I was parked on the Tuesday side of the street. For those of you who are not familiar with NYC, we have what are known as alternate side of the street parking rules. With so many New Yorkers living in apartments and space being at a premium, many people park their cars on the street. In order to maintain some semblance of cleanliness (or at least provide work for city employees when there’s no snow to plow) the city has decreed that each street must be cleaned once a week.

To make it less onerous, each street is split into sides, which are cleaned on alternate days. The street on which I live is a Monday/Tuesday. That means that on Monday from 11am-12:30pm the side of the street designated the Monday side by the conveniently posted sign must be free of cars to allow passage to the squat, noisy street-cleaning vehicle. Any car parked on that side of the street during this time gets a $45 ticket. The same goes for the other side on Tuesday and so on throughout the city with different days and times assigned to streets. Barring holidays or wildly inclement weather, when the rules are sometimes suspended, if you park on the street you must move your car at least once a week.

These rules have taunted New Yorker drivers since their inception in 1950 at the suggestion of then New York Automobile Club president, William K. Gottlieb. Eager to do my part to keep New York clean, I left my apartment that morning feeling reasonably chipper and looking forward to the day. I strode through the crisp Queens morning air and hopped in my Honda prepared to seek out a new spot. After letting the car warm up the prescribed 2 minutes, I said goodbye to my spot and began my search.

I’ve discovered that earlier is better for finding spots in my neighborhood. Many people who drive to work have already left and the sleepyheads haven’t left their pillows. That usually works to my advantage since I like to go to the gym around 5:00am. When I return around 7:00 I can usually find a spot within two blocks of my apartment. Street parkers learn early that if you work normal business hours, finding a spot on your own block on an alternate side day is rare. Accepting that took a few weeks while I overcame my Mid-western fear of leaving my car more than fifty feet from my door. Lately I’ve been remiss about working out as evidence by this day’s start time. So I was seeking a Monday spot that would afford me almost a full week before having to move the car again

There are two basic kinds of the street parkers: the vultures and the crocodiles. The vultures prowl constantly looking for an open spot. They zip around corners then glide slowly down the street to avoid passing an open spot. The crocodiles find a likely street, double-park and calmly wait for someone to go to their car. As soon as they see lights, they barrel straight for the soon to be vacated spot. Many of my experienced New York friends opt for the crocodile method. Some even plan ahead, bringing along a book and a snack to pass the time. They see it as an opportunity to take a time out from the frenzied pace of the city. Not me. I’m a vulture riding the street’s updrafts and thermals with one eye looking ahead and one constantly scanning the curbs.

A left turn at the end of my street put me on Skillman Avenue where I took my usual right onto 51st Street hoping to catch a spot a block and a half away. It’s a Monday/Wednesday street. On a Tuesday it offers double the parking possibilities of a Monday/Tuesday street like mine. Just as a Ford F-150 darted in behind me, I noticed a garbage truck ahead, one-third of the way down the block.

Garbage trucks are the natural enemy of the street parking vulture because they deny vultures the movement necessary to their technique. They sit in the middle of the road too large to go around unless they happen to be piloted by a particularly conscientious sanitation engineer. Every few minutes they roll ahead a few feet, then stop and everyone exits to find and retrieve that day’s refuse. With the pick-up truck behind me, I was unable to execute the patented “slam it into reverse and plow backwards blindly into oncoming traffic” move that has so endeared me to my neighbors. Barely three minutes into my morning quest, my wings had been clipped.

But it was worse than I initially realized. Not only was there a garbage truck ahead, behind the garbage truck was a minivan. Smaller than the garbage truck, the minivan is still a foe for the parking vulture since they can easily clog a street. This particular minivan’s position in the center of the road eliminated any hope that I could try a “go between the garbage truck and the parked cars and maybe knock a off a few mirrors, but get past the green clad bastards” move. Damn the minivan.

Looking further down the road, things got even uglier: ahead of the garbage truck was a heating oil truck. The heating oil guys are even less likely than the garbage men to make room for anyone to get past. Triple foiled. I was doomed to sit there, inching forward a few feet every three or four minutes for nearly half an hour. Meanwhile all of the good spots were snatched up taken by the vultures and crocodiles who had managed to avoid the dreaded 8:30am 51st Street Imbroglio. I was resigned to accepting a spot several blocks away.

Around 9:00, we finally made it to the end of the street. Still the vulture, I was now consigned to seek out scraps. It was another 20 minutes before I caught a bit of luck and saw a car pulling out two blocks ahead. I gunned it managing to cut off three people then narrowly avoid a young mother with a baby carriage. Two terrified Asian women leapt for the curb when I crashed a just-changed red light in order to slip into a spot only three blocks away from my own little home.

I had devoted almost an hour to the alternate side of the street parking wars. The spot was too far away to justify the time spent. I chalked this one up to laziness. Alternate side parking is not for the meek.

Daily Scripture 24 Feb 07

Isaiah 58 (nkjv)

“If you take away the yoke from your midst,
The pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,

10 If you extend your soul to the hungry
And satisfy the afflicted soul,
Then your light shall dawn in the darkness,
And your darkness shall be as the noonday.

11 The LORD will guide you continually,
And satisfy your soul in drought,
And strengthen your bones;
You shall be like a watered garden,
And like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.

12 Those from among you
Shall build the old waste places;
You shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
And you shall be called the Repairer of the Breach,
The Restorer of Streets to Dwell In.

13 “If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath,
From doing your pleasure on My holy day,
And call the Sabbath a delight,
The holy day of the LORD honorable,
And shall honor Him, not doing your own ways,
Nor finding your own pleasure,
Nor speaking your own words,

14 Then you shall delight yourself in the LORD;
And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth,
And feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father.
The mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

I Think I’ve Got My iPod Trained

Riding home tonight after a 12 1/2 hour day I finished my Rosary a few stops into Queens thanks to the hurry up and wait style of the 7 Train. I thought, “What a smashing opportunity to enjoy my iPod!”

Switching the little beast to shuffle via a few dextrous thumb slides and clicks, I popped in my headphones and let the iPod pick the tunes. Now a bad mix I was thinking as I got closer to home. Two stops away, the swelling orchestra announce the arrival of Billy Bragg’s version of The Internationale. Now I like Billy Bragg a lot. I even like his version of this anthem better than most versions. But at some point I decided, “This is going on a verse too long.”

Skipping ahead a tune I was greeted to Pink Floyd’s Not Now John.

Now, if you know the songs in question, you understand the title of this post. For those of you who are unfamiliar with one or both tunes, TheInternationale is generally accepted as the anthem of international socialism. I zoned out about the end of the second stanza to the words, “…unites the human race.”

The first words of Not Now John came quickly, “Fuck all that we gotta get on with these!” Followed the black girl chorus of “Fuck. All. That. Fuck. All. That.”

Like I said, I think I’ve got that little fucker trained.

Daily Scripture 23 Feb 07

Isaiah 58 (NIV)

1 “Shout it aloud, do not hold back.
Raise your voice like a trumpet.
Declare to my people their rebellion
and to the house of Jacob their sins.

2 For day after day they seek me out;
they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
and has not forsaken the commands of its God.
They ask me for just decisions
and seem eager for God to come near them.

3 ‘Why have we fasted,’ they say,
‘and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
and you have not noticed?’
“Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
and exploit all your workers.

4 Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
and expect your voice to be heard on high.

5 Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for a man to humble himself?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
and for lying on sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD ?

6 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?

7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.

9 Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,

So, O-bama-lama-ding-dong’s Spokesman is the Guy That Sunk Howlin’ Howie

Jerome Armstrong at MyDD.com takes Senator Never Went to a Madrassa to task for his choice of spokesman. Robert Gibbs, as the post states (and links to), was the guy who came up with the best hit piece on Howlin’ Howie. Watching it, I coulda sworn is was a GOP piece. Yeah, I kinda love it. Read the piece. Democrats attacking one another is a beautiful thing to watch. Hey, cut me some slack, I get to enjoy this. I’m a Republican. Think about the foot in mouth disease I have to slog through on a daily basis. Yeah, I’ll be enjoying this primary season.

daily scripture 22 feb 07

1 Peter 5 (KJV)

1 Peter 5

1 The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed:

2 Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind;

3 Neither as being lords over God’s heritage, but being examples to the flock.

4 And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away.

Kos Jumps MoDo’s Bones

From atop the parapet of her Times Select wall, Maureen Dowd has incensed the Mighty Kos arbiter of all that is good and right (no, not that right, the other one) about the Democratic Party and it’s activist support arm, the NetRoots. Her crime? She has stepped out of lockstep on the anointed one, O-bama-lama-ding-dong. Feel his wrath, Red, feel his wrath! First up, a link to Eric Boehlert’s “takedown” of the Modo, the Red Rover, at Media Matters. Then the Kossacks begin to rally to the Kos Kause but get bogged down in an argument over whether the use of the word “catty” is indeed sexist or not. Good times, good times.

Update – 12:46pm

Now it seems that the article in question also featured a report of David Geffen “viciously and personally” attacking Bill and Hill at the O-bama-lama-ding-dong Fest, so the Clinton Camp is demanding that the Husseinster freeze out Mr. Hollywood and return his money.

According to TPM Election Central Senator Never Went to a Madrassa has blasted back attacking the Clinton Camp for associating with racists!

Since I started writing this update the Clinton Camp has answered the O-bama-lama-ding-dong response with a salvo highlighting their refusal to denounce Geffen.

Fuck me running, this is GREAT!