Oral/anal

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"You don't get it. I am one runaway son of a bitch! I am an animal! I want to eat everything! I want to get drunk every single night! I want to screw every woman there is! We are all wild animals. But we must learn to use our minds. We must learn to control the bestial and sensual sides of ourselves!"

Jack LaLanne Is Still an Animal

Repetition and meditating on simple numbers

Photo of a coneflower by Tim Stone [website down] and a short article on the math it expresses

I've taken up swimming in an attempt to halt the cascading failures in my body after 6.5 months of partying too much.

Three weeks of changes - a lot less drinking and back on low carb / primal exercise - and I can already feel things starting to turn around and churn beneath the surface. Stochastic systems and emergence mean a certain amount of surrender is required when it comes to doing the right things for your body. If you can quiet yourself for long enough and listen to what your body is saying, then the answer will often be clear. And, like Haruki Murakami writes in another post: Being active every day makes it easier to hear that inner voice.

There are a lot of pools in this part of town, and the one two streets over is probably the worst, so after 7pm there's usually only one or two people there. I do 60 x 25m, and to not lose count / keep my head relatively quiet I focus only on the numbers, manipulating them in various ways. This is kind of dull for one and two, but picks up with three and beyond.

I don't want to give the wrong impression. My conscious thoughts are very simple, and I'm barely numerate, so these are basic exercises, but they please me and they get the job done. I don't lose count or think too much, and the swimming is done in a trance.

Anyway, this link leads to a list maintained by Erich Friedman that explains what's special about a lot of numbers, which is similar to this list of the properties of the first 5,000 integers. Lots of things to thing about when you're counting to 100.

Air-conditioned nightmare

Alien circadian, thermal, kinetic, sensory, nutritional and social environments. A presentation by Frank Forencich to go with the occasional paleo theme of this page.

The point about light / darkness as cues for body chemistry was something I'd forgotten since I stopped working night shifts, 13 yrs ago. The current regime isn't as jarring, but still unnatural. After watching this talk I've been keeping to lower lux mood lights and making use of dimmer switches, with the idea being that as much as possible the general evening on environment is kept as well lit as a tribal camp site on a moonlit night. I have a very tolerant wife.

Related posts:
The process not the outcome
Big fat lie
Stochastic jerks
Paleoconservatism

A long-range view of things

But when I think about it, having the kind of body that puts on weight easily was perhaps a blessing in disguise. In other words, if I don't want to gain weight I have to work out hard every day, watch what I eat, and cut down on indulgences. Life can be tough, but as long as you don't stint on the effort, your metabolism will greatly improve with these habits, and you'll end up much healthier, not to mention stronger. To a certain extent, you can even slow down the effects of aging. But people who naturally keep the weight off no matter what don't need to exercise or watch their diet in order to stay trim. There can't be many of them who would go out of their way to take these troublesome measures when they don't need to. Which is why, in many cases, their physical strength deteriorates as they age. If you don't exercise, your muscles will naturally weaken, as will your bones. Some of my readers may be the kind of people who easily gain weight, but the only way to understand what's really fair is to take the long-range view of things. For the reasons I give above, I think this kind of physical nuisance should be viewed in a positive way, as a blessing. We should consider ourselves lucky that the red light is so clearly visible. Of course, it's not always easy to see things this way.

Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, p42

As healthy as possible

To deal with something unhealthy, a person needs to be as healthy as possible. That's my motto. In other words, an unhealthy soul requires a healthy body. This might sound paradoxical, but it's something I've felt very keenly ever since becoming a professional writer. The healthy and the unhealthy are not necessarily at opposite ends of the spectrum. They don't stand in opposition to each other, but rather complement each other, and in some cases even band together. Sure, many people who are on a healthy track in life think only of good health, while those who are getting unhealthy think only of that. But if you follow this sort of one-sided view, your life won't be fruitful.

Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, p98

Recently I've met a number of people who say they want to die at 60 or 70. Myself, I want to be 90-something and in good health. It probably won't happen, but I want to be as healthy as possible for as long as possible.

Still, dying is not very difficult, it's not something you need to plan 20 or 30 years before the event. It's as easy as getting a haircut. You can open an artery, take an overdose, drive into a wall, jump off a tall building, inhale gas, hang yourself. There are enough ways to die that everyone is sure to find one that they can accept.

Of course, I got into this discussion with between five and eight beers in me, and then rode my bicycle home at 04:30, but at least if I'd been hit by a truck my body would have been working well right up until the moment of impact.