Sighinide

Sometime in late June, my Disney+ sub is going to run out, and I’ll likely renew, but not before finally cashing in my netflix gift card and trying that service out for awhile.

I’m kinda… not looking forward to that. I still have a bunch of stuff I need to watch on Disney+, including the Bambi movies, and a few remaining other films. And of course random eps of Lab Rats or whatever.

I’m going to divide the other stuff, like the Tangled series, into seasons. Like I finished with the first season, and I’ll start the second after I renew, whenever that is.

Here’s hoping the second and third season there are as good as the first. It’s unfortunately a roll of the dice these days; I like Rapunzel as a character, and don’t want to see her veer into some kind of… weird Star Wars esque heroine, like… I don’t know, the new ones, the Disney ones. I can’t remember their names.

I’m doing the same with the other really good shows on the service, like Kim Possible. I’m stopping after the second season, there. More to savor, later.

I’m still not considering anything Star Wars related, and anything modern Marvel is still just a no-go, right now. I was thinking about the new Hawkeye series, since so short, and I like Hailee, but still… IDK, I’d rather watch Bambi, frankly.

Uhm… well, there it is. Not so sure about Netflix, as a service. IDK what their back catalogs look like, but… the originals do not seem to be my thing. It looks like a lot of cringe, or a lot of stuff that might be a chore to watch, and the only reason for me to do so would be to investigate stuff about… IDK, me, I guess.

Tho I suppose there is likely to be some gems lying around. I’m not sure what they have, really. It might be another adventure, there. I’ll need to withhold a final judgement for now.

Whatever is there, tho, it’s likely to be quite a bit less cringe than the news shit, lol. Although I must say that I do get a kick out of how stupid that stuff is.

I still watch that stuff out of the corner of my eye during dinner, every weekday. I see it as a way of venturing outside my little cultural box I suppose.

Is it just me, or is that stuff actually getting dumber? I don’t know. Maybe not, since I don’t follow it. But I do think it noteworthy that the other day I actually surprised myself by laughing out loud at how stupid and preposterous the content was, which is not something I have done in the past, or at least recently.

They’ve been going on a lot lately about Trump shit, which I’ve been tuning out; I’ve no idea what any of that stuff is. Too boring/irrelevant. I remember seeing at lunch a bunch of police officers huddled in some room during an MSNBC broadcast. IDK why, something Trump related apparently. No idea. I didn’t laugh at that tho, too boring.

I did laugh at some segment about some Southern congress thing, where two southern black congresspeople were kicked out of some congress for gun control something something. Then they came back for some reason, IDK why. But during all of this nonsense some MSNBC anchor showed some grainy footage of one of them entering the building, climbing up some stairs where a bunch of white police officers were just kinda standing around on guard, like some scene out of those old videos about the school integrations that they used to show in public schools.

It just looked so… hokey, so fake, so… ridiculous, like something out of a 70’s SNL skit about Southern life, that I literally could not stop myself from laughing. I actually hate to do this, since it makes my boomer parents feel bad, but I legit could not stop myself, lol.

I think at least part of the funny here involved the congressperson’s hilariously stupid hairstyle, which was some ridiculous afro-like thing that has not been seen in any real world situation since the early 80’s. The “news” also featured some “We-shall-overcome” gospel singing stuff, stuff that was apparently recorded in present year, like in 2023, literally. Like… what?

Whatever this nonsense is, it looks like a scripted play designed to push the buttons of boomer liberals. It’s just so… impossible, all of it, that I can’t watch anything on the news anymore without getting some vicious cultural dissonance, and it’s hard to know what to do with feelings like that. Should I laugh? Just sit, confused? Walk out of the room?

I don’t want to do any of those, really, since I would prefer not to make my parents feel bad, but still, it’s a weird ass feeling to deal with, and it’s happening literally every day now.

But… whatever. The commercials are still just… commercials. Dumb as shit, etc. MSNBC has been playing a ton of commercials lately for some new movie about some “important” “historical” black person in the 1700’s or something who was “forgotten about by history” (i.e. never existed in the first place), I guess because they want to rope in the liberal boomers for an audience. IDK, I’m not going to watch it anyways.

I’m hoping that this isn’t what Netflix content is going to be, since that is what I’ve been hearing it is on the internet. A lot of woke, with all of it being very very same-y, and thus also boring and predictable. And the new stuff is all Gen Z oriented, etc. But I’ll wait and see, first.

*Shrug*.

IDK, it’s all just TV crap, anyways.

Whatever.

LOL

Tonight I took a look at the full moon and took it all in, for a few minutes. The moon is… special, and a full moon moreso than most other kinds. It’s something that unites us; I can’t imagine there’s a person in this world that hasn’t looked up at a full moon at some point and not lost themselves in the night’s magic.

It’s an awesome sight, really. Full moons are so beautiful. They’re prettier than the sun, for sure, since you can’t even look at the sun with your own eyes to see it. A full moon is a treasure.

I’ve come to appreciate the moon more these days than I did when I was younger. Now that I think about it, it’s the only celestial body that I can see clearly with a glance from a window.

I have a couple apps on my watch for moonspotting: one to tell me the moon’s azimuth angle and elevation, and another to tell me it’s phase and fullness. And I have a compass, too, to point me in the right direction.

It’s an eternal thing, the moon. It was here before we were and it’ll be here long after we’re gone. Compared to it, we are nothing. You could say that everything we have is nothing in comparison, save for the Earth itself- which we don’t own anyways, since we’re just passengers on it. We don’t own it any more than we own the air we breathe.

Well…

I was going to segue here into some very interesting things regarding the last Tinker Bell movie, but I just realized that that would turn this post into a book, since so very very much to talk about. It’s just… too much, and it’s too personal, too significant. No way could a random post on a blog do all of this justice.

I was going to write about one thing, and then pretend that I didn’t see the rest of it- you know, like I always do- but… even that takes energy, and time; it’s still a dance, after all.

It’s just too much.

I’ll just say this, then: the last Tinker Bell movie was a great one, the best of the series for sure, and maybe as good as anything else done by Disney, save visually. Though of course, I’m hugely biased.

Maybe one day I’ll explain why. We’ll see.

So much to think about… I mean this stuff is just so huge. So complex, so… different. In a good way. In a very… raw way.

Well… I don’t have the time.

In regards to yesterday’s post, I remembered this morning why I was confused about why Lucy wasn’t on the soundtrack to her Tinker Bell movie: it was because she was on the other Tinker Bell soundtrack / album, and I was getting the situation confused, since it was… so very, very confusing, lol.

Bafflingly, Lucy didn’t have a song on her Frozen-esque Tinker Bell movie- I mean, I say Frozen-esque because it had a ice magic, a snow king, a magical realm of winter and an ice palace and separated sisters and everything- but she did perform Frozen’s Let it Go on the Tinker Bell album that had nothing to do with the Tinker Bell movies, Frozen-esque or otherwise- the Disney tribute album “We Love Disney”, you know, the soundtrack compilation that had nothing to do with the Tinker Bell series, but featured the character Tinker Bell prominently on the cover.

You get it? Yeah, it makes perfect sense now, right?

Riiiiiiight. Of course! I mean… right.

You know- if even the obvious details about this stuff are so confusing, why would I ever think I could wrap my mind around the full picture?

IDK, but the mind boggles, either way.

Thank God, really, for the consistency of our celestial bodies, lol.

They bring a beauty to this world that doesn’t require thought, or batteries, or even other people, to appreciate.

And that is truly something to cherish.

Hooo boy.

OK, here we go with another one of these things.

I guess I have some stuff to think about, or something.

So I’ve been watching Disney+ stuff. I saw a bunch of Miraculous episodes awhile back, and now I think I’m caught up with all the eps. I’ve been grateful for this series, it’s a lot of fun to watch and it’s been interesting to see how others have interpreted my powers and the effect that they have on stuff.

The main characters in this series are all just splinters of my own personality, of course. Gabriel, Adrian, Marinette, and most of the rest at least are just my own differing approaches to this or that problem or situation. And all of the miraculous stuff- all the trinkets and powers, are ones that I’ve developed over the course of my doing magical stuff over the years.

Watching this series has in fact given me a few new insights into everything I’ve been doing, and that’s nice for sure. Even the theme song (the Laura Marano one) has taught me a couple of things.

Speaking of which, ahhh yeah, well, I was going to segue into talking about Vanessa here, but let’s just say that I’m doing more… stuff with her too. But that’s a complicated story in and of itself, as you can imagine. Dating sisters simultaneously can be… complex, for sure, which is why for awhile I stopped. It’s tough to keep things equal at all times in those situations, which it really must be for them to work out. Although now, tho, things are shaking out to the point where such things don’t seem to even matter anymore, since I’m becoming increasingly the only game in town, and everyone seems to be more comfortable and… yeah, you know, that’s not really the point of this post anyhow.

I’ve also been plowing through the movies and such. A few random notes:

Rescuers Down Under might be the rare Disney animated sequel that is better than the original. In fact it might be the only one. The original is one of the weaker of the classic Disney flicks for sure, being only okay, and not amazing. It’s a far cry from movies like 101 Dalmatians and Dumbo. The sequel is good, and honestly pretty good, being one of the better of the direct-to-video flicks they used to release. It’s fun and looks nice, with good animations and strong characters.

The little kid in the flick is an obvious carbon copy of yours truly, natch. The usual tells and nods are everywhere, the kid looks exactly like I did at his age, etc. There’s a new mouse named “Jake” and sometimes the script slyly equates the kid and the mouse. “Jake” of course is short for “Jacobsen”.

I’ve also been plowing through more Kim Possible stuff and man, is that a good series. I’m almost all the way through season 2 at this point. Love everything about it. Great characters, great humor, great action… that series is just awesome. I’m honestly dragging it out because I don’t want to finish it, lol. The same with Phineas and Ferb. And of course each episode I see takes me awhile to process, since I’m the prototype for Ron Stoppable and Kim Possible of course, and also Phineas Flynn and Ferb. So each episode I see of both shows is a way for me to pick apart stuff from my past that I’ve long forgotten, and a chance to just… reminisce, which I enjoy a lot.

Things like little throwaway asides can become objects of fascination when watching these shows. Like… I remember that flower! That bystander! That random line of dialogue! It’s pretty trippy. And it’s… difficult, I guess, since I have to watch each episode and take it in on so many levels at once.

And I’m not just watching this stuff for myself, either, since these series led into the creations of my girlfriends, and I want to know who whose people are, and where they come from, too.

I also watch other stuff, Kick Buttowski is a lot of fun, and I’m done with Star Vs. The Forces of Evil, which was a good series. It had a great start and it ended well, although I can see some of the criticisms people had with the ending, etc. It was well worth the watch.

I’ll watch Gravity Falls and Amphibia some time in the future.

I’ve also been watching some other, random oddball stuff, stuff like that Billy Dilly show and Pickle and Peanut. Both are… weird, lol. Pickle and Peanut is a cross between Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Beavis and Butthead, believe it or not. Not something I expected to find on Disney+, but there it is, lol. Billy Dilly is… also weird, it’s a mixture of Gary Larson’s Far Side comic and… IDK, some nonsensical cartoon for very little kids. It’s not as good as I’m making it sound with the Far Side reference, unfortunately. It’s just kinda… there.

I’ve also been watching the Tinker Bell movies, which I like a lot. They are much better made and more interesting than I expected. The whole lot of them seem almost of be a kind of proto-Miraculous. The characters look very similar to what you’ll find in Miraculous, and they even act similar too, and even sound similar. It’s kind of eerie at times.

The third film in the series, The Great Fairy Rescue, was one hell of a trip. It featured a small girl who desperately wanted to be a fairy, who seemed to have my own brain implanted into the head. I’m not sure of how else to say this. The entire movie was filled with her crafting together collages and drawing pictures that were identical to the ones I made myself in middle school, many years ago. And when I say “identical” I mean it. I had to stop the film more than once because I could not believe what I was seeing. Absolutely mind blowing. And I know I’m right because I still have the collages and drawings. Really… unnerving, and a little confusing, although also kinda flattering, which… I suppose makes it the same as the rest of this stuff.

It was also a good movie. That helps.

I just finished Secret of the Wings, the fourth flick in the series, which is the one with Lucy Hale in a co-starring role. It was good, as well, and I liked watching it, and it seemed very… IDK, athletic? It was crammed with obvious references to sports, believe it or not. Skiing, figure skating, track and field, biking, snowboarding, swimming, and even stuff like bobsled and luge. It was kinda baffling. Seeing this stuff always makes me wonder if these movies don’t have ulterior purposes, like they were being used to support training of young athletes, somehow.

And this is also an impression I’ve gotten when watching Miraculous as well. Lots of sporting references, everywhere. And it has not escaped my attention that the setting of Miraculous– Paris, France- is the next home of the Summer Olympics. Makes me wonder.

I don’t know. I’ve also been picking apart these flicks for relationship references, and I’ve always found them, and they’re usually several layers of symbolism deep.

Anything with Lucy Hale in any capacity will be of course crammed with subtle relationship references, and a starring role from Lucy will bring with it shedloads of more overt stuff as well, and so many in fact that I don’t have the space here to even begin covering this topic, unfortunately. Surprisingly, she wasn’t on the soundtrack, although watching it I could have sworn she was, since many of the songs sounded very… Lucy Hale-esque, like they might have been Disney-fied cuts from her solo album.

But… Laura Marano was on the soundtrack, of course, and so was Selena, and Bella, and Bridgit Mendler, etc. Bridgit’s inclusion here at one point confused me greatly, since she had the starring role in The Secret World of Arrietty, and was on the soundtrack there, too, so I used to get Secret of the Wings and The Secret World of Arrietty mixed up, since they both featured Bridgit in some capacity, and these were both movies about tiny hidden magical creatures, and both were released domestically by Disney, etc.

This stuff can get very confusing, very quickly.

I’ve also been watching live action movies, having recently watched Stuck in the Suburbs, amongst other movies. That one was fun and very much of it’s time, and I hate to admit it but it was really nice seeing Danielle Panabaker in something. I’m not going to get into my past with her, but at one point she was my #1 girlfriend, you know, kind of like… Lucy Hale, Laura, Selena, Bridgit, Bella, and… you know, others were, at one or another point, here or there. Just I guess so you have some frame of reference.

My God this stuff gets complicated fast. If you were to put something like this into a harlequin paperback readers would throw their hands up in confusion after the first few chapters. It’s not even a love triangle, it’s more like… a love dodecahedron, or some kind of interdimensional love hypercube.

I sometimes feel like I’m living in the middle of the world’s most overcomplicated softcore sci-fi b-movie, or something. Like if you were to take one of those schlocky old softcore Cinemax flicks, you know, like the kind they aired back in the 90’s when nobody watched the channel- and stretched it out into a hundred weekly installments, like that would be my life, or something. Really unusual.

At any rate there are three more movies in this series to watch: another Tinker Bell flick, some other probably related fairy flick involving an evil king, and the early 2000’s sequel to Peter Pan.

IDK. Is it significant that Mendler played the part of “Candice” in that Undateable show? I mean, paging Phineas and Ferb, here. Is it significant that I got weird vibes watching the sports stuff in Secret of the Wings, like a few people might have watched it, against their will, A Clockwork Orange style, with the sound off and Beethoven or Britney Spears blasting in the background? I mean it’s just a creepy vibe, and I get a lot of weird thoughts sometimes, but still…

I have wondered in the past where some of my athlete girlfriends, like the Gracie Golds and Bombette Martins of the world, have actually come from, since their public histories don’t make much sense, and I sometimes get that “uncanny valley” effect from them where it’s like… it’s just… different, somehow. I mean… “Gracie Gold”? “Bombette Martin”? Wut? But… IDK.

Speaking of Bombette, what… is actually the deal with her and… you know who, honestly? The mind kinda boggles, here.

Yeah. IDK, and maybe that’s a good thing, honestly.

Well, I’m stopping this one before it veers into territory that’s too unusual for my mood.

Maybe it’s back to Pickle and Peanut for the time being.

Or maybe I just really, really, need to get out of my head and get some fresh air.

*shrug*

Honestly, IDK. I guess I need to blog about this regularly but I mean, christ, I’m bored.

IDK.

I’m… not the person I was 20 years ago, lol. Back then, or even 10 years ago, I made it a mission to sleep with 2, 3, 4 or more girls, every day, in order to keep things running smoothly. I think I blogged about this before, at various points. I think it was the “running an empire” stuff that used to fascinate me so much.

Since then I’ve been slowly but surely winding down the time I spend doing sexual things with my girlfriends. I think that now on average I do something once per day. I might do something twice on one day, or not at all on another, but overall, I think the average is once, daily. And even then I’m having to struggle to remember, sometimes. I’ve become so distant with this stuff that sometimes people feel a need to remind me, I guess because they think I’ve forgotten about them, or something.

IDK. Am I just getting older? Or what?

IDK.

Honestly, it’s just so boring. There is very little out there anymore that is truly interesting to me.

Taylor Swift is on tour, and wow, that just… could not interest me less. I keep forgetting, honestly. It’s just… boring, all of it. Everything I’ve seen from her new tour is just a “meh”, or worse, ugly and nasty, like… you know, that one video. The one before the tour. Whatever the case, I’m not bothering to even look into it, anymore.

I’m really struggling to find any new girls interesting enough to sleep with. I just don’t find them interesting on any level. I mean, pretty, yes. Interesting? No.

Fifteen years ago I would probably be banging Jenna Ortega on a weekly basis. Now? Nah. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever touched her, and I might actually never even get around to it. Same with… IDK, everyone else, lol.

I’m just really, reeeeeeally bored. Like, crushingly, brutally bored. I’m so bored that I can’t even find the energy to pretend to be interested, anymore. There’s just… nothing out there that is interesting. Pretty? Yes, there are many pretty girls out there. But that’s it, they’re just pretty.

TBH, I can see my interest in this stuff waning further, with time. It’ll be a reality one day that I do something once every other day, perhaps, and then, even less frequently. It’s life, I guess.

I still have to get around to saving the new pictures from the recent Oscars ceremony. I keep forgetting to do so. But… yeah.

To be blunt, I think the only thing that might serve to make me interested again is seeing something not public, i.e. like the stuff that I’ve heard exists elsewhere, “sets” and such, of people. But I’ve still no idea where such things can be found or how to get them, or even if they exist, like at all.

You know, like those ones that we saw during the “fappening” seven years ago or whatever.

Something like that might make me more interested, but I’ve no clue where to find any of that stuff, or even who can point me in the right direction to do so, so… *shrug*.

I’m just really, really bored. What I need is something material, something real, to get me interested again. Without that, there is nothing to… do anything with.

As it stands right now, I think I’m just going to have to cleave off a bunch of relationships, mostly because… IDK. I mean, it’s not like they did anything wrong, I guess (or did they? And if they did, does that even matter? Or… whatever, honestly) but just because I literally can’t get it up for them anymore, at all, for any circumstances. There’s just nothing there.

I’m not going to waste time figuring out who, at this point. It’ll just happen naturally.

But yeah, I think I summarized things well here. I need to plot out my future, and for that, and to do future things, I’ll need save my energy and direct it towards such planning.

Ugh, well, that it for this essay, which I honestly hated writing, since it was so fucking boring to even discuss this crap. But, I feel like I have to do it, so…

Blah. Well, I’m not going to be with anyone today. I think I’ll just exercise again and go to bed. Or maybe read a book, or something.

Or maybe both.

Yeah, both, I think. That sounds interesting.

I’ve been tweeting a bit lately and enjoying it, so why not blog something, too. It’s been awhile it seems. My last post here was on the first of the month, wow.

Uhm, well, I don’t have much to say right now. I mean, I do, it’s just… almost midnight, and I’m getting a little tired. I mean, I actually do have a lot to say, it’s just that… IDK, I’ve been busy I guess. Or maybe the stuff is too important and I don’t know how to start talking about it, or… IDK.

Well, you have to start somewhere, lol.

I guess my random laugh of the day, aside from the twitter nonsense, was the… chuckle(?) I got from realizing that one of the new exercises I’ve been doing this year, Kang Squats, are called… Kang Squats. Yes, Kang Squats. Like the Marvel character. You know, the one in the new Kathryn movie.

I laughed, yes, because of the name. It’s like… IDK, while doing them I got an image in my head of doing Thanos Presses, or Galactus Curls. I was like… wut, lol. Yes, I literally laughed because of the name.

Not my proudest moment, lol.

Speaking of Marvel… IDK about the new movie, TBH. I’ll probably watch it of course if for no other reason than to see Kathy, but still, people just don’t seem as enamored with this one as the prior major entries in the franchise. IDK, since I missed most of those.

I have been watching the hell out of the old Marvel cartoons on Disney+, tho. The 90’s ones. Those are really good. I saw most of them as a teen back when they first aired but I’ve forgotten them since, so this is basically like a fresh watch, and they’re a lot of fun. The plots are simple for the most part. Bad guys try to wreak havoc, good guys stop them before the allotted time runs out. But beneath the simplicity of the outlay is some depth.

The world building in these shows is superb. The creativity is obvious, and the visuals are pretty nice, too, and sometimes even excellent.

And they have the old comic style to them that I like. I’m not a fan of mixing political commentary with superheroes-in-tights fight scenes. There is a real optimism in the style, and the characters, even the bad guys, are uniformly pleasant to watch. And there’s nothing inserted within the shows to be purposefully annoying, which is very nice. And the colors are bright, and it’s easy at all times to tell who’s who and who is doing what and why.

A lot of people are rejecting the new Marvel stuff because it apparently lacks everything I mentioned above. The CGI is everywhere and it’s too complicated to understand, the characters are too complicated, the plots are too complicated, there’s too much politics, too much annoying shit, etc. And I’ve heard people talk about the heroes not being “heroic” enough, to the point where they don’t even wear their costumes as much as they should, and other stuff. IDK, because I’ve haven’t seen almost all of the new movies. And there’s too much darkness. Not in style, but as in literally, like people need to turn the lights on.

I’m just staying away from it, same as I’m staying away from everything new from Star Trek/Wars and DC, etc. Honestly, I’m a middle aged man. I’m too old to be impressed with any “deep” political commentary delivered by someone standing in front of an obvious green screen wearing a rubber mask and neon colored tights.

90’s Marvel is good stuff, tho. I like the shows and will continue to watch them.

The crown jewel of them all seems to be the Silver Surfer series. That is a very good series, much smarter and more poignant than the others. Also better written, and it has the best visuals of them all.

Watching that show I was really impressed. Every episode seemed to be a study on mind control, and also on the importance of memory and purpose. Very interesting stuff.

I’m midway through Iron Man and Fantastic Four now. Good stuff. Fun to watch. Fantastic Four in particular has a strong Silver Age vibe I’m digging.

Watching these series I was struck also with how much their content has been leached by others. I’ve seen characters, situations and visuals that were copied directly from these series by Japanese manga artists and anime shows, for instance.

Maybe these series are underrated in general.

In other news… love makes you do weird stuff. I spent forty five minutes today looking for an online copy of Stefanie Scott’s old E.P., New Girl in Town. She removed it from her Spotify. I just… wanted to hear it, again. Not sure why, I guess it’s just because it was by Stefanie Scott.

I couldn’t find any of it, anywhere. I did tho find an old copy on one of my external drives. I can see why she removed it; it wouldn’t fit at all with her current image. Honestly, it wouldn’t even fit in with current Disney, which is… kinda baffling, honestly. I mean, the company, not the situation. Or maybe I mean both.

Yeah tho, love does make you do weird stuff for sure. I might be the only 40+ year old man on Earth to listen to that EP this year, or even this decade. It’s old Disney kid stuff that was pretty obscure even upon release. This wasn’t Selena Gomez and the Scene or Demi Lovato, for sure.

IDK, I guess I just love the sound of her voice, or something. Like it makes me feel comfortingly happy. I mean, even though it doesn’t even sound like her at all in the way she talks or sings now, but still… IDK.

Love is a weird thing. Almost inexplicable sometimes.

You know- I need to get out more. I think I’m nursing an epic case of cabin fever, here. I’ll make it a point to do so this year.

In regards to the pushups, I still have the problem of there not being enough space on the offer. It’s like… I’m a tall guy, much taller than average, and I have long arms for my height. And the rooms I have to work with are small, and have a lot of furniture.

I’m kinda stuck, then. It’s like… I can do them, but, I have to worry about bonking my head or elbows on something, and I have to think about how to get up off the ground, and it’s an awful pain.

For the pilates, the unused bed in the guest room will suffice. I mean, there is literally nowhere else for me to do them, lol.

IDK

I need a space to gather some thoughts here on this, so uh… here.

I actually took a couple months off from exercising, believe it or not. I mean, except for like… sporadic stuff. IDK, maybe I wasn’t feeling well. It’s possible. That… illness, or whatever, was never formally diagnosed, and it seemed to come and go as it pleased.

But nevertheless, this year has been much much better than previous ones. I still think I might have fixed things by killing the you-know-whats, so good.

But I still took a lot of time off. I do this sporadically, and TBH it seems to help things in the long term. That way when I go back to working out I do so with a fresh eye. It allows me to re-consider things and to cleanly re-draw the map, so to speak.

Every year I add more… stuff, to the routines I do, and this year is no different. I’ve added a handful of squat variations to my basic dumbbell routine, which should make the onboarding process to the hallowed pistol squats a little easier. Because Christ, those things are tough. I still can’t get even close to a good form with those. I need to some transitionary exercises, and the ones I’ve added should suffice.

I also filled in a few gaps in my basic dumbbell routine, things like overhead shrugs, etc. What I’m trying to do here (and, I think, have successfully done), is to hit every muscle, basically, from my neck to my ankles, with three or four basic dumbbell exercises. To execute, I do the whole routine in one fell swoop, for a grand cardio… experience. A true whole body routine, with those comfortable, contoured PVC dumbbells I love so much. It’s a lot of fun.

That’s the standing dumbbell routine. For the laying down one, what I’m doing now is a complete routine- presses, scapula presses, flys, triceps stuff, etc, and everything else. And then, I’m doing it over again, with a pilates twist, by re-doing everything with my feet and legs elevated in the air. And then, I’m doing it all over yet again, in the bridge position. Not with heavy weights, lol. Just those PVC things. Hilariously weird but it works, the pilates style stuff and the bridge routine I do to increase my core strength, since I guess I’ve figured out the next step in my pilates stuff, too.

For the pilates, my long term goal is to incorporate a variety of bridge-based leg lifts, circles, and other types of exercises, but I don’t quite have hip strength, yet. Hence the dumbbell stuff I discussed above. They will serve as a… bridge, lol, to doing those.

Also this year I’m doing incline pilates exercises, too, by propping myself up and doing leg circles, lifts, corkscrews, butterflys etc. at an incline, which is… different, IDK. It’s much harder, in some ways. I’m still doing the traditional stuff too, of course.

All of this pilates stuff is now being done because all of the traditional exercises are too easy. I’ve mastered stuff like oblique V-ups, for instance. There’s no challenge there anymore, so I need to go hunting again. I mean, you know.

For now I’m nixing the pushups and doing isometrics instead, since those are more fun. Fun is a key element, here. Pushups just aren’t… fun, lol. So I’ll do them some other time. Maybe I’ll wait on those and finish the bridge stuff and the squat stuff first, IDK. That should make them easier anyhow.

I mean, any guy who can do a pistol squat should be able to do pushups easy too, right?

I mean, IDK, lol. I guess we’ll see.

I still have “noodle arms”, though, as was pointed out in Frenemies. I mean… IDK.

It’s kinda weird, honestly. My arms are still spindly looking but oddly enough I’m confident that I’m stronger than 99% of the adult population out there. It’s strange. I mean, when I go out and look around, I often struggle to find anybody, really, that I suspect could match me in terms of overall strength, despite how my arms look, lol.

There is always that one guy, though, for sure, lol.

It’s a good thing that my exercise goals so closely match those of my girlfriends. There’s a kind of serendipity there for sure.

I’m not sure I’ve talked about this much but I also do face exercises- the facial yoga stuff that is popular with women, chiefly. I like that stuff, too. I make it a point to work out every muscle on my face regularly. Like… seriously, lol. I have them all catalogued, and have been cobbling together my facial exercise routine for something like 15 years now, off and on. I hit everything, including the eyes. It’s a lot of fun, sometimes, which is I guess kinda the theme here.

I wish pushups were more fun, lol. I mean, you have to get down on the carpet and it’s dirty down there and kinda dusty and… you know.

So, yeah. The long term goal here is to, by the end of this year, perfect my bridge dumbbell exercises, incorporate a variety of bridge based exercises into my pilates routine, perfect my incline pilates exercises, and, maybe, do a full pistol squat, with good form.

Maybe the pushups will wait for next year. IDK. I will continue with isometrics though for sure.

Ok, good, then. For this little corner of my life I got a plan going.

I can’t believe I literally just sat and begged to McKenna for tickets to see her concert. Like, literally, I just shamelessly begged, pleaded, whined, threw tantrums, practically cried, etc.

And I did this in front of the whole world.

Whether this was really really brave or really really pathetic I’m not sure.

I guess we’ll let history decide this one.

Oh yeah, I forgot to choose a winner.

Uhm… Laura?

Yeah, that one. Laura… Marano. Or maybe the other one, IDK.

You know, Vanessa? Or I mean, like, the other Laura, maybe. Like… that one, you know?

Nah, Laura Marano.

Or maybe like… Vicky.

No I think it’s Laura.

Yeah, Laura. So… ok, then.

Yup.

Yeah.

Well, that was a great birthday! I got a lot of great stuff, from sooooo many people.

The winner, this year? Kathy Newton, for sure.

You know what, tho? I’d say everyone’s a winner! Or at least- everyone that participated, because of course, you were kind of supposed to.

See- it’s important that people try, even if they don’t take home the prize.

But that’s neither here nor there anymore, really, because you know what’s more important, right now?

Tomorrow!

Because tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, and you know what that means- tomorrow is a great day for… presents! And, especially and most importantly, presents from my girlfriends, of course.

See- this situation here is kind of a win-win for all involved, I’d say. I mean I think it’s a great opportunity for all of the…. runners up, and all of the… people who just I guess kinda forgot, to make sure that they get noticed, too.

So- everyone now gets a second chance to win! Isn’t that great? I know I think it is!

So we’re going to be re-doing the competition again, tomorrow, and I’ll be sorting out the presents and the winners and losers again and categorizing and grading everything for… posterity, honestly, and not for purely selfish reasons, because that would be uncouth- and we’ll see who wins, then.

It’s for posterity, really. I mean, because this stuff is historical, and such. I mean, it’s like… a piece of world history, or something.

So… yeah. It’s gonna be so fun, really, sorting out allllll the great gifts I get tomorrow! I can’t wait!

And no pressure, either. Because I mean, even though I’ll be grading everybody it’s not like it matters, right? What matters is of course that you try. I mean because like… I’m not selfish, really. Just… motivational! Yeah, I’m just like, inspirational, and stuff.

It’s gonna be sooooo fun!