March 2007

game show idea

I get all these ideas. I am an idea fountain but I haven't the various skills to make these ideas happen nor the ambition or greed to try. I'd love to see my ideas taken up and created. Sure it'd be nice if someone kicked back a little gratitude, but even just to take these children of my brain out into the world and make them real would do.

That being said, since it's a pain in the ass finding anywhere to submit it (and they make you take out a paid registration to do so) I'll just put this idea here. I've had this idea awhile now. I would name the game show "what's on your ipod?" This would allow solicitation of ipod sponsorship. Or just "what's on your player" would do if you wanted to stay generic.

The contestants have to guess popular songs in a certain time frame. As the time ticks down their winnings decrease. The faster they guess the song, the more they win. Just like that old game show "name that tune" which in fact was quite popular. The twist here, however, is that they can't HEAR the song! No, in fact, they have to "see" it. A series of videos (and now you can inject a lot of humour) of people wearing headsets attached to personal music players and grooving on the tunes is used. The dancers are selected for maximum musical involvement. They dance big, sing along a bit, and generally act oblivious about the camera. Any time they sing a key phrase, it would be blanked out so as to not give away the song. By watching these people grooving to popular tunes, the contestants have to guess the song to which the dancer moves.

I don't know if it would be a long-running hit, as it's quite cheesy, but I am sure it would be good for a couple of years run.

update on weight loss program

I'm still losing weight. I'm nearly at the 20# lost mark. I had been up as high as 187 and I'm as low as 167 so I *could* claim 20# lost although it's more like 15 or somewhere in between. Last week I got a bit desperate. I was hungry but it was a day off and crappy as hell outside. Ground covered in rumpled messy ice and wind ripping around the cold air. Not nice. Certainly not going to be able to earn myself the pizza and icecream I wanted! What to do? Check the list of exercises and the calories they burn... Hmm, most require gym space and equipment. Stairs. Walking upstairs. 10.43 calories a minute. I've got a flight of stairs...

I loaded up mtv's Pimp My Ride webcast on my laptop and set it on the landing and away I went. I set an egg timer to keep track and I walked. And I walked. And walked some more. Oh how I did walk. It started hurting after five minutes. I started sweating. I paused to stretch my sore muscles. I reset the timer after short rests. I kept going. I did about 15 mins and it was time to eat pizza. I could afford just two slices. I wasn't satisfied. I went back after pizza and did another 15 mins. Now I could have icecream!!! Yaaayyyy!!!

Cheese is an expensive food ya know. Next day I bought some more tasty food with another 15mins on the stairs. Its boring, painful and sweaty, but it's easy to do, if you overlook the hard work part.

If you get time, look up hak.5 on youtube. Fan bloody tastic tech videos. It's so well done you are surprised to learn how low tech they are with the production and that they're basically amatuers. They could well get picked up by tv except that they don't pull their punches. They swear, they admit to naughty hacking, etc. Go check 'em out next time you're climbing stairs.

coca vs cocaine and the battle against addiction

For generations now the USA has bitterly battled drugs. Cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and all their various derivatives have been put on a level of the worst evil. Powerful medicines so easily abused and so quick to addict. They go out into the countries where the parent herbs are native, and they try to eradicate all traces of these plants. Attempting to bring to extinction powerful medicines to try and solve their problems with gluttony. We North Americans are such a spoiled lot. We lack self control and moderation. We don't know how to say no to ourselves or our children and our rulers, those extremely wealthy industrialists who make their money selling us luxury, don't want us to develop that ability. If we learn to say no, we'll say it to them, and then they can't use us so effectively! We are the Consumers. We must not develop a spine or self control. However, like children, we therefor need to be protected by control. Since we cannot play safely, remove the dangerous things. This means restricting access to anything that can harm us if we overindulge. Curiously it doesn't include two very dangerous things, alcohol and tobacco. Perhaps because they're indigenous to our lands and/or cultures? Apparently it is just too hard to control these. That means that drug law abolishenists have to make it too hard to eradicate these other medicines. It appears to be failing... What did the bootleggers of the 20th century do right during prohibition?

Well anyway, on to the Bolivian news story. Bolivia has elected a powerful leader who stands for the common man. The sort of fellow who, although freely elected, will be in the gunsights of the USA as soon as the USA can come up with a good enough excuse to invade or blockade. This man wants to replace the European olive and laurel leaf symbols on the Bolivian coat of arms with coca leaves. He wants to protect and enrich the coca industry in his country. He wants to find ways to use the plant other than distilling it into powerful cocaine. I say yes. I say go for it, People! It's your plant and your heritage and our foolish gluttonous culture isn't your problem. Don't let the bullies make it your problem.

If we have problems with drug addiction, we need to address the causes, not the symptoms. Removing the drug will not cure an addict. It only makes him sober. He'll find another way to get high even if he has to sniff solvents or drink hair spray. We cannot cure our addiction woes by making whole species of plant life go extinct.Until we as a culture throw off the real monkeys on our backs, those wealthy men who seek to keep us weak and obedient, we will never learn strength enough to face the many pleasures and perils that our world has to offer. The Bolivians, tempered in a fire of poverty, know this truth. I pray that someday we'll learn it also, although we will have to suffer a great deal to do so. It always hurts to build strength. Ask any strong person.

weight loss

Since January I've been losing weight. I'd wanted to for some time but hadn't a clue how. I knew about the equations of less input against outgo equals weight loss, but you see, it's not that easy. Too little input actually means increase! Yes, that's right. The body has a famine mode it goes into where it robs you of energy disproportionate to caloric intake in order to ensure survival later, and packs on fat inexplicably. Starving oneself enough to defeat this mechanism is nearly impossible and unbearably unpleasant. It's also unacceptably hazardous to health.
Hence my frustration. I'd gained forty or fifty pounds worth of fat over the previous seven years. Precipitated by a thyroid malfunction and frequent lapses of courage coupled with periods of insufficient food, I'd binged and purged my way to a hundred and eighty-five pounds. On my slight frame it should have looked far worse but because I was in fact quite muscular before this began it only looked fat enough to stop arguing that I'm fat. My BMI said obese. My mirror said "gross" and my heart said "oh dear."
So I found Calorie Connect. Like anyone thrown a lifeline I have an unreasonable level of joy and ownership of this resource. It's got it's problems, most notably the lack of exercise variety in the input window. Many of the things I eat aren't in there and have to be hand inputted if they can be done at all. I once spent two hours calculating the values of a home-made fruit salad, for example. The calories of a home-made fruit salad, and the sugars, are considerably less than anything you buy commercially. Nevertheless I've stuck at it.
I had some trouble around 171 with an easter rabbit. He came, he saw, he conquered. I threw out his sweet chocolate tail but the damage was done. Back up to 175 and the weight loss halted for a couple of weeks. Further, I was working so damn hard at house painting that I wasn't eating enough during the day. Didn't bring enough food and wound up unable to eat enough at night. What I did eat went straight to the warehouse and I still didn't lose weight. I corrected that by bringing chips and fruit alongside my sandwich. Granola is a great way to swiftly make up a calorie deficit while improving other targets like carbs and fiber which are usually too low.
Today, and this is the reason for the blog, the scale read 168.7 pounds. Yeah, no kidding! I broke the six barrier! I've lost a couple inches off my size too and some of my fat girl panties are getting loose. Soon things will start being too loose to wear. Already the fat orange flannel hunting pants which were all I had left last december are getting too loose for comfort. I tell you, this feels encouraging. I'm also learning gradually how to eat so that I could go without the calorie connect but I"ll keep using it for a while after the weight loss is complete, just to ensure I really do know what I'm doing. I'm also investigating calorie counting software so I won't have to be connected to the net to do my calculations. Also I might find something with a bit more variety. Calorie Connect is a site created by an american health institute expressly for the purpose of helping folks like me to get healthy. No ads, no fees, it's pretty nifty. You have to create a profile to take proper advantage of it.