Hot yoga

Why do we as humans have the need to entangle ourselves with the most uncomfortable and painful situations/environments on purpose is something that I vow to one day write a thesis on (these parenthesis serve no purpose other than to not end a sentence with a preposition). There is nothing that man wouldn’t do (by man I mean the humanoid species and not your neighbor from 5F). I count myself as one of the greats who dared to climb Mt. Everest or swim the Suez Canal or cross the Bermuda Triangle and reappear in the US-European rectangle. What gives me the right to belong to this special group? I take hot yoga. Let me present my argument before being booed (love this word) out of my blog. Any kind of exercise is brutal, on this we can all agree. The bodybuilders of the world who pretend to enjoy every minute of the excruciating pain they feel while lifting a ton can kiss my 15-lb lifting behind. I see your veins ready to burst and I see the sheer horror in your eyes and I always get the eerie feeling that you walk around with a little piece of your lower intestine sticking out of your ahole (pardon the visual but I had to go there) so what’s there to grin about? Getting back to my amazing abilities (which as we just saw do not lie in the weightlifting department). Yoga is a very tricky sport/religion/way of life. You can be a true yogi and devote yourself completely to this uncomfortable practice or you can be a pretend yogi and come to class just to lose some weight. I realize my previous statement makes it that much more difficult to equate myself with the likes of anyone who accomplished anything but bear with me. I come to class with every intention of sweating out the demons and freeing my mind. Unfortunately what ends up happening is me tapping my feet to the beat of the meditation music and staring out the window (in my defense the view is fantastic) while scrunched up in some hideous pose. My instructor tells me that I if I insist on looking out the window the least I can do is notice the reflections of other students and the pose they’re in so that I can assume the same one. OK, I may not be the best and most dedicated yogi out there but the mere fact that I drag my overweight self to a class 30 min away from my house almost daily says a lot. I also have days where I push myself so hard that I do feel like I’m about to float out of my body and teach the darn class myself to myself. At (never start with a preposition either I know) this point I’d like to mention that the yoga class I take is HOT yoga. As if getting into tree pose and breathing like you’re in a Lamaze class isn’t hard enough, lets turn the radiator on to 100 degrees and see how well you fare. Basically to get an understanding of what it feels like I urge all the naysayers to go to a banya (sauna/steam room in Russian) and do yoga. The word perspiration does not even begin to cover the amount of water dripping off of me. I happen to know that the quantity of liquid I take in is way less than the buckets I accumulate by the end of each class so I can possibly be liquefying from the inside. I am also proud to say that I have managed to get myself into somewhat of a head stand (my instructor holds my legs up of course). Everyone take note: this is what I call struggle, sacrifice and pushing yourself to the limit, even if that limit includes checking your red, sweaty face out in the window once in a while.

last year summed up

If someone told me a year ago that I’d be switching “professions” I would’ve laughed in their face and continued my slow and painful decline into single and unemployed middle age, but it just so happened. The story began a year ago when I up and decided that I no longer want to do what I am doing and that life has no meaning, yatta yatta. Can anyone guess what happens to an employee when they show up to work on a daily basis all disheveled and with a facial expression that screams louder than DMX to move and get out the way? I’ll tell ya. You get 3 months probation, no responsibilities, a nice severance package and a touching good-bye letter managing to somehow conceal the fact that you are fired. Breaking up is one thing but being informed that your services are no longer in the highest of demands and that the train you’ve been taking is about to have one less passenger on it, in an it’s not you it’s me way is certainly a feat to accomplish. Kudos to HR!
The most memorable day for me was the day after my last day of work. I woke up realizing there is nowhere that I need to be on this particular weekday and fell back asleep (which if you ask me is time well spent when it’s summer and you live by the beach). I woke up just in time to convince myself that this day I will remember forever because it marks the first day of the rest of my life (not to be confused with all the birthdays that my best friend and I decided to remember forever but only managed to remember one). Well my day was a special (July 1st? I think) day and even though I slept through most of it there will always be a special place in my heart for it (although I have plans to replace it with the day after I lose my next job). But enough sentimentality.
Fast forward a year and I am once again gainfully employed. I can’t say that my attitude about life has changed at all but I did realize that there is no way that someone with such an outlook can stay in the same place for longer than a year. The minute you want to build gallows in the lunch room that can hold up to 80 bodies (give or take a few), you need to start with the man in the mirror and make that change (to the next office/career/country/relationship, lucky enough to have you).

To all the Almond Joys

The crazies are called mentally unstable. That is the vaguest thing I ever heard. If you ask me a memory lapse qualifies as instability. One day you remember shit and the next you don’t, well if that’s not unstable I don’t know what is. Having balance and coordination problems might be physical instability symptoms but they stem from the cerebellum not functioning properly. So, if you fall during a yoga class you’re mentally unstable. Same goes for those with vision/hearing problems, failure to feel pain and pretty much anyone whose neurotransmitters fail to send signals to the brain. Sorry but they’re all swept under this category. Why? Because they certainly are not stable, and if you’re not stable then you’re unstable. Pure and simple. I personally try to keep my mentality in a stable mode at all times because one slip up and you never know. A few simple mental exercises a day can do the trick. Just keep telling yourself that you’re stable and viola you’ve at least got yourself convinced. Convincing everyone else is basic. Just keep using LOL. Don’t know why but it works. So do smiley faces.
The loonies should instead be referred to as having a mood instability. Sometimes you’re in the mood to murder someone and sometimes not. That makes more sense. But why explain what Almond Joy/Mounds already told us: “sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you are”.

the self-sufficient buttocks

I can't stop wondering why people always tell you to "get your ass" somewhere. Is the rest of you not presentable enough to go along? Your mother might say "get your ass to the doctor" which is fine if you're going to a gastroenterologist, otherwise shouldn't my dentist also check my teeth? What I'm getting at is the fact that an ass cannot just be traveling on its own. It needs a chaperone. I've never once seen an ass get up and walk out and leave the rest of someone "sitting". Imagine waking up one morning to find your ass missing and a post-it "gone shopping honey, make yourself some coffee". I can see the usefulness of having such a responsible and well-trained butt to be able to run errands and do shit (pun intended) you don't wanna do. Even sending it to the bathroom by itself can be liberating. Unfortunately we have not reached that level of sophistication yet at this stage of evolution so we're just gonna have to wait before that happens (and when it does there will also be a Malcolm in the forefront among them pushing for ass liberation from all the slave labor they'll be doing). Now an ass is like an underage kid and must present some form of ID in the shape of your face.

el shipo no sinko

Why is it that even though planes are the safest way to travel there are all these rules and instructions that accompany every commute from the moment you enter one airport to the moment you arrive at another one? How come the safety instructions are a bit more lax on boats? You get on a cruise ship and there's no detailed instructional video with survival techniques. You are simply pointed in the general direction of the lifeboats (not enough for everyone so first jump first serve) and possibly given a life vest. Why? Because everyone knows that if something goes awry (which it probably will) the sinking vessel will generate a powerful enough whirlpool to take down you and your flotation device with it. If disaster does strike some lucky bastard will end up sitting in his lifeboat with his life vest on while someone else will look on in admiration. The designer of the Titanic tried to fool everyone with "this ship is unsinkable" bullshit but after everyone watched Dicaprio's face disappear into the clear blue water during nighttime the lies have ceased. We all know by now that if it floats, it's sinkable. Also if you're a man more bad news for you. While the women and children get all the vests and boats your ass is wondering if you can still climb on that iceberg.
Potential doom is the reason why Tom? Cruise ships have everything you can ever imagine on board. In case it's your last trip you can go down a happy camper. There is an overabundance and excess of everything. Alcoholics can drink nonstop, the obese can eat, the gamblers can gamble, the sunbathers can tan, etc. Think of any possible vice that's bad for you in small quantities and multiply that amount by some huge number and you'll get an idea of your total exposure while on vacation. The attacks on your health stop short of unlimited radiation dosage due to immediate expiration instead of give or take a few years. Be aware folks! Boats are not safe. There are tsunamis, icebergs, potential sinking, and who knows what else involved. If the Titanic taught us anything it's the fact that there can be a dancing polar bear on a melting ice cap flailing his soon-to-be extinct paws for your ship to get out the way and your ship will still ram into him. At least you can occupy yourself at the all-you-can-eat buffet during the hour-long submersion into the water.

If those potential calamities are not enough there's a new thing to worry about that I recently came across. If you should fall ill during the journey (I mean there's really no reason why you should after a week long gorge and drink fest but lets say you do for the sake of argument), the emergency team may "accidentally" drop you into the icy waters of the Atlantic in the attempt to transfer you onto another boat. This actually happened and to a senior citizen no less. Basically you start off under the weather and end up under the water. Well if that's the case then I suggest taking your chances on the mother ship until you dock on some island with a stellar healthcare system. Malaria beats out hypothermia any day in my opinion.

The FU train (U keeping mum like the K in knife)

The F train is on my shit list. It's a 2 second walk from my building and I'm convinced that the conductors hide their trains around the bend and stake out my back entrance in order to quickly pull up to and away from the station just as my foot crosses the threshold. My orange sneaker acts as a green light, or better yet, a shot before the sprint, to them. Needless to say this gives me insufficient time to make it but more than enough time before the next train arrives 10-15 min later. Upon the next train's arrival I almost feel the conductor's disappointment for having just missed this precious chance to F with me. Every day, no matter what time I leave the house this happens so that's how I know it's on purpose. If it was an occasional occurrence I'd attribute it to my schmuck luck but a daily basis type of deal is evidence enough for a trial. This kind of situation makes me want to call the ThreeJasons (secret society the real name of which I'm afraid to mention) and ask to be taken off "the list" (if you're on "the list" you're shit out of luck and guaranteed to just miss the train for the rest of your life.) Maybe I'm not the only one. Chances are there is one designated asshole per station that must be made to miss the train he wanted to take no matter what. In fact, I'm pretty sure there are a bunch of us (a sufficient enough number to qualify for a support group) each of whom misses the train by a different interval of time. The folks who have it the worst constantly miss it by a hair just as the door slams in their disbelieving faces.
Maybe someone is trying to drive the point home that you're just too slow. Maybe it's a metaphor for yet another missed opportunity. "Here you want this train right here? With these new shiny polished carts? With the guarantee of no delays? Too late it's gone". Better luck next time.

Why is there an "I'm a Mormon video ad" on my blog?

I keep waiting for that check from Google for letting them post their ads in my personal space and it's like waiting for the tooth fairy. If ye shall perchance stumble upon this trusty forsaken blog kindly do the following: click on the ads before you read my posts. In fact, I forbid ANYONE to read my highly entertaining posts unless they have clicked on whatever Google deemed suitable to place on the right and bottom of the screen.
P.S. I did not make up the title. There really is an "I'm a Mormon" ad on my blog. Who can I inform that "I'm a Jew?"