Oh my.  It’s NOT a fat suit.

I first saw a picture of bloated Leto on the back of the DVD rental, Chapter 27, (a drama by the way.  NOT a comedy.  No, I’m serious, it’s not supposed to be funny) at Blockbuster the other night and of course it made me laugh.  For one, I assumed he was sporting one of those retarded fat suits like the one anorexic Monica once resided in on Friends.  Or Gwenyth Paltrow in Shallow Hal.  Or you know the one Eddie donned as the unfunny professor. Or (yes your getting my point…it’s played so the fuck out) Ryan Reynolds in Just Friends.

But seeing pretty boy Leto in one (or so I thought) in a serious movie just seemed absurd for a multitude of reasons.  For one, why would they go to such lengths to cast him?  The dude isn’t some amazing actor.  It’s not like he’s Deniro or something and the movie company just had to have his talent in any shape of form.  No.  He’s ok, at best.  I mean I did like the movie Prefontaine, but this dude is bankable only because of his dreamy bedroom eyes, and his lean, muscular…  Oh crap…  Fat picture!  Look at fat picture!

Whew…that was a close one.

But again as I found out today, it is in fact not a fat suit.  The guy reportedly threw 70 pounds onto his frame for this once in a lifetime roll with co-star….. yep, Lindsey Lohan.

Oh Leto.  This whole thing is making less and less sense as we go here.  It’s one thing if he was in an epic Tom Hank’s war movie and felt the urge to destroy his body for the part, ala Matt Damon.  But Lindsey freakin’ Lohan?

He must not have known who his co-star was.  That’s got to be it.  He must have been told that this would be a career changing movie about the assasinatio…murder…whoa why did I go to assassination?  Is that what people call the killing of John Lennon? (Oh yeah, by the way, Chapter 27 is about the guy who killed Lennon.) So yeah.  Assassination?  I mean Mark Paul Gosslear (ha ha) or whatever the killer’s name was, has been known by all three names like assassins are. Interesting.  I’m sticking with killer though.

But I digressed, as I always do.

He must not have known.  Poor Leto is all I have to say.

Now this gets me thinking.  You know what the producers of  epic Lindsey Lohan flicks ought to do from here on out?  They should  do something akin to the fat suit route.  In order to sell movies they should miscast some big name celebrities to headline the films.  Like Shia Lebeauf.  Right?  He’s sort of one of the big deal young guys in Hollywood right now.  But since Shia would never, nor ever need to do a Lohan flick, they could just pay him for his silence and meanwhile hire a fat fuck who sort of resembles Shia to play the part.  Because who would be the wiser?  No one.  His replacement would be easy to find and more than happy to be given the minimum wage for a movie actor’s salary.  What $750 per day?  Everyone truly would win.

Man, what an interesting idea if I don’t say so myself.  Undercover fat doubles.  The idea is enticing…

BN

You know so self-less.  Such a man bound by duty and service.

And so today I read this quote from our shining philanthropist regarding his current fitness and motivation:

“I’m much better physically now,” he said at his home in Austin, Texas. “And mentally there is no comparison. I’m far stronger and more motivated….”

Damn cancer.  Look the fuck out, right?

“The motivation of 2008 feels like the motivation of 1999.  I was back from cancer then. I had the motivation of vengeance because nobody wanted me or believed in me.”

Hmmm…Interesting.  Fighting for cancer makes him foam and seethe at the mouth just like people not believing in him and doubting him used to.

….All I can say is, ‘Wow’.  What a guy.  This 37 year old, out of retirement…FORMER champion no longer needs a silly thing like vengeance to get him revving on all cylinders. Oh, no.   It’s to further spread the awareness of cancer that does it.

How far this man has evolved.

BN

Do you want to know what true solitude is?  Eating a Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger at 9pm in a Jack in the Box all by your lonesome.  That, my friends, is such a picture of pure pathetic-ness and out of the flow of life that it instantly cheered me up because of how funny I found it.

At the very least, tonight at 9pm made me appreciate that my life has never really been empty before.  Not a single week up until this point in my life have I ever been surrounded by so little.

So I guess I need to appreciate the simple fact that my life thus far, has been pretty damn entertaining….  Contrast certainly makes its point sometimes, doesn’t it?

In the fucking meantime though….  Ughh…  It’s like being grounded for way, way too long.  And yes, I’m ready to get back fully in the real flow.  It can’t come quickly enough.

BN

So, I’m here to more or less feed you guys something that made me laugh.   This is from Loveline from several years back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsnaNu7sJiQ

BN

Ok, I’ve finally had enough with the confusion.  What in the hell is the difference between water resistant and water proof?  The latter of course seems better.  If it’s ‘proof‘, like ‘fool-proof’ or something, then seemingly nothing’s getting past it, including fools.  And ‘resistant‘, well it sounds good too, it resists, but you know, there’s no proof.  So what gives?

Currently I am wearing a pretty decent watch by my standards (one in photo).  In the $120 plus range and its face states that it is water resistant up to 100m.  Ok, the 100m sounds pretty solid.  It certainly seems to imply that if I were to go surfing with it on that it would hold up just fine, since I never do seem to get pounded anywhere close to 300 feet down, even on a big day.

But again, there’s that resistant word.  What is that?  Shouldn’t it say water proof to 100m?  Are the two the same, or does resistant mean that it will just do its best to hold back the water pressure up to 100m and then past that point it simply won’t try?

It’s confusing to say the least so…when all else fails, Google, right?

Right.  Well I Googled up the subject and came across an official site.  It started with this:

If asked is your watch water proof or water resistant you might get confused…

That’s right, I am. Sweet.

…Most of the watches are marked as water resistant up to a certain capacity and can also be said as water proof. So what is this comparison all about? This is to clarify the meaning of water resistant vs. water proof.

Perfect!  It goes on…

With the new ISO standards…

‘ISO standards’.  Gorgeous, this person seems to know what their talking about…

…The “Water Resistant” mark has come to replace the “Water Proof”. Now if your watch is water resistant it is water proof to a certain extent. Actually both the marks mean the same thing to some extent. A water resistant watch is equivalent to water proof to a certain extent. This can be summarized with some figures

• 30 Meters/100 Feet
• 50 Meters/160 Feet
• 100 Meters/300 Feet
• 150 Meters/500 Feet
• 200 Meters/660 Feet
• 1000 Meters/3300 Feet

Alright.  It’s pretty clear, I guess, though the overly repetitive “to a certain extent” seems a bit gray.  But, no bother.  The person does appear to be roughly equating the two (to ISO standards?  -See now I’m throwing it around.  Which really is nice cause some other dumbshit is going to Google ‘ISO standards’ and end up on this site.  Round and round we go.)

Anyways, my watch, as I stated before, is water resistant up to 100 Meters or 300 Feet, so basically its implying that my watch is water proof up to (to some extent?) that depth.  Ok, I’m cool with that.

But then it goes on to say this…

These however, do not generally indicate the point at which a watch’s resistance to pressure is expected to fail. For example, a watch rated 30 Meters would not be expected to survive Scuba Diving to 30 Meters, but would be expected to survive light splashing, for example wearing in the shower.

?????  What the fuck???  What happened to this equitable ‘proof’???  This “to some extent”, should be rewritten to “some very fucking small extent”, right?

And then this person is more or less adding that the meters depth doesn’t mean a damn thing.  (I.E. the 30 Meters watch would only be expected to survive a misting or some shit.)  So what the hell is 30 Meters even referring to?  How far one could  be expected to throw the piece of shit after the hands freeze at ten after two after stepping out of the shower?

I don’t know.  TW I vaguely remember you purchasing a diver’s watch years back that was twice the worth of my first car (God bless that bronze Toyota Corolla.  Remember that beauty?  How it courageously handled the off roads with my tape player wedged between the seats?).  Anyways, since you have experience with deep sea diving, hopefully you or someone else can clear this one up for me because the ‘official’ definition I just read is utterly ridiculous…to some extent.

BN

JH

For those of you who may not follow professional boxing, Roy Jones Jr. arguably is, or rather was a handful of years ago,  the best pound for pound fighter in boxing.  He retired from the circuit not too, too long ago but comes out for the random fight every now and then.  He certainly isn’t what he used to be but he still is pretty damn frightening.  Anyways, it turns out that he simply was demolished by this white guy.  Yeah…white guy.

So I looked him up.  Joe Calzaghe.  Apparently he’s some Welshman, and believe it or not, he recently beat up another legend, Bernard Hopkins.  Bernard is also a bit past his prime, but unlike Roy he is still very active, and very lethal.

How did I miss this guy?  And his record…  48-0.  What???

Very strange.  Here is a highlight film of him I found on youtube.  His style is that of a cat.  I know that’s a pretty common description, “cat-like reflexes”, but in this case he really fights like a cat.  Arms at weird angles as he bats at the other fighters.

I’m still a bit dumbfounded.  How have I not heard of this guy?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbHWBEcJZsk

BN

Picked up the latest issue of Runner’s World and came upon this tough son of a bitch.  Here is the one page article and a link to his bio.

http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-243-408–12944-0,00.html

http://the100mileman.com/davidgoggins/

BN

This is a section out of my journal entry today.  Earlier this week I literally and unintentionally induced ‘flashback’ episodes in and out of therapy that really got me back in touch with the horror of that whole experience.  It was frightening to re-experience sections of it to say the least.

JH when we were up in Tahoe you mentioned something about wondering what else had gone on with me.  I know you knew about the Anti-D episode, but this might make it a little clearer as to how severe it was.  This is just a snapshot…

I was up in Montana and I started wigging out.  I was driving and felt distressed and so out of it.  I stopped for beef jerky because I felt so impaired.  I was not in my right mind.  I almost flagged down a cop because I was so impaired.  Everything was so off.  I couldn’t see right.  I was almost in another state of mind.  I was distressed to levels I can’t even describe. 

After a disastrous weekend I got to the airport to fly home and I felt like I couldn’t regulate my body temperature.  I would sit there feeling like I needed to get home and deal with myself there in this condition.  I was dead on my feet.  I felt like I was going to die.  Every fifteen or so minutes I would weakly walk to the water fountain and take a sip.  It was so unbelievably bad.  I must have looked like a person withdrawing from heroin.  It was insane.

At Athenian and prostrate on the floor.  On my back.  Falling through the floor feeling like I was truly at risk of death.  I couldn’t focus my eyes to see myself in the mirror.  I called the advice nurse.  They said they sometimes see this.  But this?…

I look back on everything and its so overwhelming to think about.  To think about how brutal the Anti-D thing was.  How incredibly long and arduous it all was. 

Montana.  Athenian going to hell.  In classroom with my head on the desk and kids confused.  Being in the back bedroom and trying to ride on the exercise bike for fifteen minutes and sweat even though I am destroyed in a way I can’t even describe.  I look around and my vision is all distorted.  I remember viewing as if the dimensions weren’t correct.  Months go by…

In  utter physical distress, weakness, and disorientation.  Steve flying out.  Us going to his woman friend’s place.  I can’t even take it but I’m going along with it all.  I am in my car.  Barely able to get out to go inside to her place that she left unlocked for us for whatever reason.  I am grabbing kitchen counters, tables, back of couches to stable myself while trying not to make it look visible.  We stop off at McDonald’s because low blood sugar will make it even worse.  Worse as if my eyes will flutter into the back of my head.  That’s how it feels.

We do drive-through of course because there is no way I could go inside.  We drive off.  I have a quarter pounder and chocolate shake.  We begin going over the San Rafael bridge.  I find that I’m getting sick and can’t react quick enough.  I throw up all inside the car.  This brings on a torrent of laughter from Steve and myself because its so horrific and so pathetic.  We are crying we are laughing so hard and my car is just covered.  We head to a gas station to wash it out and of course Steve somehow breaks the water pressure device which has water shooting in the air like an overturned fire hydrant.  Which of course has us doubled over and me continuing to gag through tears.

And driving down to San Diego.  Feel like I might lose consciousness as we are caught in traffic around San Luis Obispo on the highway due to a fire or accident or something.  It’s near 100 degrees and I can’t take much more.   We eventually make it out of there.

Being down in San Diego.  Steve stepping up and taking care of me.  Cooking salmon and sweet potatoes.  I shave my head bald prepping up/stepping up the battle that is taking place.  He is all positive trying to get me going.  It’s been two and a half months. 

We go down to the beach.  I can only take fifteen minutes or so.  I walk back the half mile home, fully prepared to lay out on someone’s lawn to rest.  It’s all too brutal.  Try once to play tennis.  Predictably lasts only a few minutes.  Steve and I laugh about it later about how balls were whizzing past me as I was teeter-tottering on my feet.  He assures me that I will be fine.

Frank and Mark come back.  Didn’t realize the extent of what was wrong.  I don’t remember their reactions. 

School starts up soon.  It’s been two or three months.  I ask for an extension because of the illness.  I am set to work at the VA hospital working for the homeless.  My supervisor is really nice.  He allows the delay of a week or two on my word that I should be ready to go after.

I start orientation.  I force myself to look normal.  I walk with the group. I am so disoriented and dead on my feet.  Amazing looking back that I willed myself through that.  Even got a physical.  Was throwing up into the nurse’s trash can.  Told her what was happening (and a doctor).  They both shook their head at their own disgust with SSRIs.  They both tell me how sorry they are.

I try to go to school.  My sister flew down to stay with me a week and to see her friends and old professor.  She drives me to school.  We have to stop a few times while I throw up in bushes.  I am so weak.  So distressed.  So disoriented.

Walking on campus.  Alienated from my body.  Just walking to class is too much.  I get inside.  See familiar faces.  I plaster on my smile and force past it all.  The lights are brutal.  The hum from the lights is brutal.  I am talkative and animated to a degree because I am pushing so hard and it is a sheer battle.

It’s a joke.  This condition isn’t receding quickly enough, if at all.  Am I permanently damaged?  No one has the answer.  

I have to drop out…or go part time at least.  I quit my internship.  I am disgusted by that action.  I drop all but two classes.  I tell both my teachers what is going on.   I see a former teacher in a coffee shop.  I was one of his top students.  He sees that something is wrong.  “My God”, as I tell him what I’m dealing with.

I miss a ton of class but I still pull off good grades.  I even make a speech in one of my classes regarding SSRIs even though it was an enormous deviation from the assignment.  The deviation fortunately gets overlooked grade wise.

It was all too much.  At the end of winter term I head down to the dean of our program and tell her what is going on.  I inform her that I’m too sick to continue on.  I sign the appropriate forms and am assured that I can comeback when I am ready. I walk out slightly relieved and largely defeated.  I’m sure I was choked up to some degree…to whatever degree I could feel emotions in such a numbed out body.

Living on school loans and watching the months painfully being pulled off the calendar.  Pushing and forcing for my own survival.  Roommates forget that I am dealing with it 24/7 as I am reminded by them when I have my moments of needing help.  Help as Frank and Mark and I would get in Frank’s car and head to Mission Trails to get me out of the house.  Me with my head out of the window in total silence.  Just staring at new scenery.

We would get to Mission Trails where a year ago I was here bouncing off rocks, running up an almost vertical incline with a body that literally almost never tired.

I walk up fifteen feet and just crash on a rock in the sun.  So appreciative to have my friends saving my ass in this moment.

Still surfing.  I would go out every few days.  Horrifically weak, but would wade out after throwing up for fifteen minutes, catch a wave or two and head in.  That was it.  Would head home and sit in the bathtub with five inches of water in it in case I passed out.  Didn’t want to expire in such patheticness. 

Emotions weren’t allowed.  I had to survive.  I had to assume one day I would be fine.  Or not.  If not, then my life was over.  I was dead and was killed by something so seemingly harmless.  Something I was assured over and over by the doctor when I asked that this was indeed harmless. 

BN

-Man.  Oh man, oh man, oh man.  You couple all that JH with the underlying undealt with stuff from my early years and you have a man down for a very extended count.  It freaks me out to re-feel the extent of what happened.

And you my boy…  Even though I was worlds better physically by the time I met you, I was a man ready to emotionally crash, but through all our absurdity and laughter you enabled me to make me drag my sorry ass through the rest of that school year and with a smile on my face.  Grateful for that.

This company has ravaged the US. They have explored everyone that bought a GM car, selling them gas guzzling pieces of shit. Their business model is based on pure profit and look where it got them… Look where Toyota is.

The continuing disregard for the environment, the outrageous salaries for their workers, bonuses to their leadership, unions, poor technology, the list goes on and on.

Of course there are good parts and I am sure they will survive. Maybe with e new GM, but this one needs to go.

I know there will be a lot of job losses. Kinda hard if you work in GM and never saw this coming… like a 40 year old striper counting on her job for retirement… never going to happen.

JH