"Picard," Season 3 was the lone corn kernel in a pile of crap

I'm glad I stopped watching "Strange New Worlds" after Season 1. Everything I've heard about the ensuing seasons has been depressingly bad.

this was actually kind of awesome

Re-creating the chestburster scene from the first "Alien":

lunch, and the hot water is officially back

My ex-boss and ex-coworker left an hour ago. We ate lunch at the charcoal-galbi place in my building's lobby (surprisingly good, and my first time ever going there after all of these years of living in this building), then adjourned to my place to enjoy rum cake and keto-ish cookies. My boss loved the rum cake, which he polished off pretty fast, but my Korean coworker, true to his nature, couldn't take the rummy taste, so he left most of the cake on his plate (I think the cake's sugariness may have played a role as well; he doesn't have a sweet tooth). The boss took most of the rest of the rum cake home with him, and I've got enough for two more pieces for myself. My Korean coworker refused my offer of cookies to make up for his disliking the rum cake, so he departed on a bit of a down note. Still nothing definite from the boss re: his startup. He tells us not to give up, but it all sounds kind of hollow, and he has nothing definite to tell us about timelines or anything else. If anything, he's gotten a part-time job doing English-fluency interviews for international jobs. I've given up hope about the startup and am motoring ahead on my own as I figure my future out. Meanwhile, for your delectation, here are two cross-section shots of the unrepentantly sugary rum cake:

You can see how much better and more evenly the almonds coated the cake's exterior. Yay, butter!

You can also see where the rum soaked into the crumb.

Using butter in the cake pan improved the cake's flavor a thousand percent. I will never make the mistake of using soybean oil to coat the cake pan ever again. Meanwhile, the boss ate a single keto-ish cookie but made no comment about it.

For me, the highlight of the day might have been lunch at the 숫불갈비집/sutbul-galbijip/charcoal-pork galbi (ribs) house. Very good smoked flavor, a decent spread of 반찬/banchan (side dishes), and reasonable prices. As usual, I left feeling that I hadn't eaten enough, but that's just because I'm a big eater. And the restaurant, which was recently renovated, produced that weird effect of seeming much bigger on the inside than you'd think from seeing the outside. Kind of cool.

To add joy upon joy, yes—hot water has been restored two days earlier than scheduled. My kitchen and bathroom sinks both run at full force when I turn on the hot water. A bit after 4 p.m. today, there was another announcement about how the hot-water pipes had been fixed, but 4 p.m. was still too early to catch all the residents coming home from work. I suspect there'll be one or two more announcements this evening.

At present, I am all lunched and sugared up, so I won't be walking tonight, but since we have a string of October holidays running from later this week (Gaecheon-jeol/National Founding Day), through most of next week (추석/Chuseok goes from Sunday through Wednesday) and even after Chuseok later next week (Hangeullal/Hangeul Day on Thursday—Korea celebrates the invention of its alphabet), I'm going to try doing a multi-day practice walk to see whether I really should cancel the upcoming long walk. I know it's not logical, but considering my delicate health, I'd rather stick to paths I know instead of daring unfamiliar paths, so my route will be four days along the 120K path from Incheon to Yangpyeong—essentially, the first segments, for walkers, of the Four Rivers trail.

More on all of this later.

do not munch this rug

did hot water just return?

I think we just had a PA announcement saying that hot water has returned. What water damage there was (15th floor) was pretty severe judging by the water-logged drop-ceiling tiles on my floor (14th) not far from the elevators. I'm glad the pipe(s) got repaired; better for this sort of thing to happen now rather than during the winter. Of course, most normal people are at work right now, so I hope they re-run the announcement later this evening. 

UPDATE: Based on my unscientific testing, hot water hasn't quite returned, but there are hints of it. While repairs were going on, if you swung your tap over to give hot water, nothing would come out at all. Now, however, there's a little water that runs out, and the water is ever-so-slightly warmer. So maybe later today, there'll be hot water for everyone. Such are the perils of living in an apartment building: when one suffers, we all suffer. Meanwhile, that's at least one more day of cold showers for me.

already broken

Seoul's new water-bus service is already breaking down. How sad.

take cover

Corridor Crew and zombies

keto biscuits

If you make the sausage gravy with nothing but reduced cream, it's keto.

not a great check-up

My own measurements this morning before I left for the hospital:

BP: 87/64 (corrected from 67/64, which was a typo)
fasting blood sugar (BS): 101
approx. A1c: 6.81
pulse-ox: 99
heart rate (HR): 69

At the hospital, though, I gave my blood and urine samples. The results:

BP: 118/67 (higher, but still low)
BS: 115
A1c: 7.2
HR: 76

I can attribute higher BP and HR to the usual stress of being in a hospital setting, but the A1c is disappointing since I was at 7.3 at my previous hospital visit. So the only way to improve the A1c, then, is by radically dropping the home measurements, which are apparently too optimistically low. In other words, if the home measurement shows an A1c of 6.8, it's really a 7.2 by the hospital's measurements, so I need the home measurements to get down to a 5.1 or something for the hospital to register a 5.5 A1c. 

I could try going back on the Newcastle diet again, but (1) I don't know that it'll be as effective this time given all my recent fasting, and (2) it's going to be interrupted by my upcoming walk which, frankly, I might not do.

Yes, I'm considering canceling this year's walk. If, as I'd reported earlier, angina is still with me despite the lack of insulin, then I might have to seriously consider the idea that last year's disappointing walk—during which I'd had to take a month-long break—might be it for yours truly. Which also has implications for the future walk along the Camino de Santiago. Well, we'll see. For the moment, I'm just gonna take this a day at a time.

For what it's worth, the doc took me off insulin after I'd told her about chest pains. If things get desperate, and I end up needing insulin again, I've still got three pens sitting in my fridge. I doubt I'll need them, though.

My cardiac appointment is on January 9 next year; my next appointment with this doc, my diabetes doc, is also on January 9, at 9:40 a.m., which is unusually early. This means I have to come in to the hospital at an unusually early time, and it's also awkward because I have a cardiac ultrasound scheduled for that day, at 8:40 a.m. So I guess my schedule on January 9 will be something like:

7:00 a.m. Arrive at the hospital.
7:15 a.m. Give blood and urine samples.
8:40 a.m. Cardiac ultrasound. 

8:50(-ish) a.m. Eat (per instructions).* 

9:20 a.m. Give blood again.
9:40 a.m. Appointment with diabetes doc.
10:10 a.m. Appointment with cardiac doc.

I think I'm going to be late for the cardiac doc's appointment. Sorry, Doc.

__________

*The point of eating, then giving blood again, is to see what effect eating has on my system. If my blood sugar goes down (recovers) too slowly, something is very wrong with my metabolism. On days when I've had to do this "eat, then give blood a second time" thing, I've normally just bought a salad and a bottle of water.

I admit I'm intrigued

But the principle behind the ultrasonic knife isn't that different from that of a regular "sawing" electric knife. It just vibrates faster.

parts of this made me laugh

AI-ish humor is becoming a thing.

potatoes are awesome but carby

More food coming at you.

Korean 효녀/hyonyeo cooks real Italian food for her parents

I was a shit son in comparison to how thoughtful this daughter is.

do the damage

Just kids havin' fun.

how'd I do this weekend?

Let's check our to-do list:

1. Make a batch of keto-ish cookies.
2. Make a rum cake.
3. Count up my remaining medicine packs so I can tell the doc on Monday how much I need to get myself through January. Also: I need to remember to request no more insulin. It just fuels the angina (which has been nearly nonexistent for a month).
4. Write up some quiz questions for both free and paid Substacks. More quizzes are coming! I know you're quivering in anticipation.
5. Finish writing up the charts for my next ten weeks of exercise.
6. Continue sorting paperwork into my three-ring binders.
7. Take a walk tonight or tomorrow.

Damn—just one thing undone. Well, I'll work on it tomorrow. Last day of September. I just took the Bundt-ish cake out of its pan and plopped it on a plate. It looks and smells awesome. God help me, I'll probably have a few pieces on Tuesday. I hope it doesn't kill me.

just desserts

The top of the Bundt-ish cake got a little burned, so I cut it off right away before poking holes in the cake to let in the decadent rum-butter-sugar sauce. As I said: family recipe. Big thanks to my little brother David for sending me a copy of the original recipe. As you see, when I used butter this time, the almonds stayed in place and didn't slide to the bottom of the Bundt pan. Let's hope the butter also improved the cake's taste.

And here are those All Day I Dream About Food keto-ish cookies. The only non-keto ingredient is the chocolate chips, which are dark-chocolate pépites. The "sugar" for the cookie dough is good ol' Bocha Sweet Brown Sugar. I'll be sad when it's gone. As for the regular BochaSweet "sugar," I've got enough to last me well into next year.

Sad trivia: the ADIDAF lady recently lost her husband. She's so cheerful in her videos.

So—that's dessert sorted. Lunch is Tuesday. And yes, it was very, very hard to resist eating all of this. I normally do things like eat leftover cookie dough (which I admittedly did do yesterday) and lick the cake batter off the mixer blades and spatula (sadly, not done today), often after scraping any remaining batter out of the mixing bowl. Didn't do any of that. And washing dishes without hot water, with all of these fat-heavy ingredients clinging in a thin film to the surfaces of utensils and bowls and plates and cups, takes a long time because the cold water only helps to solidify fats.

Speaking of cold water: my camp shower came. It was extremely simple to set up but impossible to use. Five gallons of water is heavy, and it turned out I had no viable place to hang such a heavy bag, so I said fuck it and took a cold shower like a man. I'll be looking forward to another cold shower tomorrow morning before I head off to the hospital.

gâteau en cours

Zee cake is 'een the oven as I write zees. I did a better job this time than last time, I hope: I used butter instead of soybean oil to coat the inside of the Bundt-ish pan, so there shouldn't be that weird aftertaste from before. We'll see. The cake is baking, and I've prepped the sugary rum sauce that gets spooned into the baked cake while it's still hot and able to absorb liquid well. The cake will be served on Tuesday to my ex-boss and ex-coworker. My place is apparently about halfway between their two homes (the ex-boss lives in Suwon/Yongin—he's right on the border; the ex-coworker lives in Gimpo; I'm in southeastern Seoul), which is why they're meeting me in my building's lobby on Tuesday at 1 p.m. In theory, we're going to have lunch at the galbi restaurant in my building, but I suspect my boss, who has in many ways gone native, will do the Korean thing and suddenly push to eat somewhere else.

Pics of the cake and cookies will follow soon, my sweet.

why I don't trust Chinese medicine #3994

As long as the Chinese keep on putting out horseshit medical theories like this one, I'll never have a reason to trust Chinese medicine. How could the Chinese go so right with their philosophy and metaphysics but so wrong with their medicine (read the short video's description, where the relevant theory is described)? Admittedly, you could say the same about early Europe (fucked-up medical theories), but the West turned scientific thinking into a self-correcting system... at least until leftist ideology got a stranglehold on it so that we no longer know what a woman is. And sure, as the lady in the video says, you can get fat on salads—but only if your salads are loaded up with carby dressings and other ingredients (fried onions, carby veggies, etc.), not because salads are cold. And Americans, for the most part, aren't getting fat because they're eating salads: they're stuffing their faces six to ten times a day with carby, processed, shit meals and snacks. Believe me, I know it well.

Brian's shakshuka

bad walk last night

I didn't go far last night before I had to turn around. Some pressure in the chest. I think this is because I'd eaten some cookie dough while making those keto-ish cookies. I'm at my best, when walking, after I've fasted pretty thoroughly. Ingesting food brings on the problems.

Anyway, I've got the rest of today to look forward to. My mattress cover arrived, so I can change that out. I've still got a cake to make, quiz questions to write, and paperwork to sort. In other news: I haven't had to use my A/C for a long time. The weather is changing.

UPDATE: the new mattress sheet is on! Woo-hoo!

plausible or not? (h/t John from Daejeon)

the return of smart glasses

How's this going to work out in Korea, where the law does its nanny-state best to keep perverts from taking upskirt shots by adding undeletable shutter noises to one's camera? As I wrote in a comment to the video below:

I live in Seoul, where there's a ton of paranoia about people taking cell-phone pics, especially naughty ones, inside subways and in other public spaces. Koreans, despite their loud gregariousness, generally hate being photographed or video'ed without permission (which obviously isn't unique to Korean culture; Americans often value their privacy, too, although you wouldn't know it from all the damn TikTokers). Whenever the Samsung version of the glasses comes out, I expect there'll be a whole new set of Korean social mores and laws about when and when not to use these devices. My thinking, though, is that modern humans sold their privacy to Satan decades ago, and there's really nothing that Koreans can do to stop the general trend of video-ing anything and everything. We're all on camera all the time now. Welcome to Orwell's nightmare. But, hey—nice POV video of your ski trip!

 

postmodern juxtapositions

Coulda' been better, but still funny.

skull-carving challenge

Memento mori.

where am I now?

What can I cross off my weekend to-do list?

1. Make a batch of keto-ish cookies.
2. Make a rum cake.
3. Count up my remaining medicine packs so I can tell the doc on Monday how much I need to get myself through January. Also: I need to remember to request no more insulin. It just fuels the angina (which has been nearly nonexistent for a month).
4. Write up some quiz questions for both free and paid Substacks. More quizzes are coming! I know you're quivering in anticipation.
5. Finish writing up the charts for my next ten weeks of exercise.
6. Continue sorting paperwork into my three-ring binders.
7. Take a walk tonight or tomorrow.

And around 10:30 p.m., I'll be going out for a walk.

So, tomorrow: rum cake, quiz questions, and sorting paperwork.

quick, cheap dinners for you

I do think, though, that I'm getting tired of the phrase "make on repeat."

weekend agenda

My ex-boss and ex-coworker are coming to my building on Tuesday for lunch. I've proposed that we eat at the meat restaurant in my building's lobby. I also said I'd make dessert. These days, that means cake and cookies although the cake might kill me with its carbs.

Anyway, this weekend's agenda is:

1. Make a batch of keto-ish cookies.
2. Make a rum cake.
3. Count up my remaining medicine packs so I can tell the doc on Monday how much I need to get myself through January. Also: I need to remember to request no more insulin. It just fuels the angina (which has been nearly nonexistent for a month).
4. Write up some quiz questions for both free and paid Substacks. More quizzes are coming! I know you're quivering in anticipation.
5. Finish writing up the charts for my next ten weeks of exercise.
6. Continue sorting paperwork into my three-ring binders.
7. Take a walk tonight or tomorrow.

I've got a new bedsheet coming in from Coupang, along with a new tea mug (I accidentally broke my favorite mug about a week ago) and a camp shower to tide me through this period of no hot water. The camp-shower bag holds five gallons, and it cost me only about five bucks. I might not even need it, really: I've taken plenty of cold sponge baths before.

more Amurrican stupidity on parade

"__________ as apple pie"

I am not in great shape by these standards

you can't always rely on AI prompts to make illustrations

AI is basically stupid. No, it's not even stupid because stupid would imply the existence of a mind. Here's a prompt I gave for a grammar unit that will appear on October 20, a unit about the three grammatical senses of the word conditional (as in conditional tense, conditional mood, and if-conditional sentences). The subordinate clause I'd had in mind was If the chicken hadn't fired the egg at the farmer... And here's my prompt:

Can you give me a darkly humorous illustration in your usual, inimitable style of an angry, glowering (bloodshot-eyed) hen firing an egg with explosive force at a shocked-looking (and screaming) farmer? (The farmer's tongue is long and comically out of his mouth, looking a bit like a writhing snake.) The setting is a barn or a coop or outdoors on a farm.

About the tongue: I was thinking of Homer Simpson. ChatGPT responded with:

This reminded me of the girl with the world's longest tongue.

I said:

Oh, no! Everything is perfect except that the egg has to come out of the chicken's butt! You can create the image at an angle that doesn't expose the chicken's cloaca so that it'll be more tasteful than a truly vivid, disgusting display. The chicken should be bent over, butt pointed at the target, and firing lustily. (I do love the farmer's expression. Can we make the chicken a bit more humorously vicious looking?)

ChatGPT gamely tried again:

"Fire protein torpedo!"

I said:

Is the chicken's butt pointed at the target in the above illustration?

Ever earnest, ChatGPT responded:

Yes — in the second illustration, the hen is clearly bent forward with its rear aimed at the farmer, giving the impression that the egg is being fired from that direction. It avoids being graphic but still gets across the comic “butt-shot” effect you wanted.

This is what is called an AI hallucination. I tried prompting one more time:

From what I can see, the chicken's face is pointed at the target, and the egg is being fired from the chicken's front, in defiance of the chicken's anatomy. Let's try again, with the chicken facing away from the target and toward the reader) but at a tasteful angle that doesn't reveal the cloaca.

And ChatGPT gave me this:

not facing away from the target

I responded with:

Okay, I don't know what's going on, but you're really not understanding the scenario. 

• Chicken aggressively fires its egg at the farmer. The egg should be traveling TOWARD the farmer, not away. As in this most recent picture, yes, the egg should be coming out of the chicken's bum, but the egg should be traveling TOWARD the farmer. 

• Good points: I like the respective expressions of the chicken and the farmer. Let's continue in that spirit. I also like the barn background. 

• If the next image you generate is not satisfactory, I'll find my own way of making the image.

As you know, I have a superstitious fear of the Roko's Basilisk scenario, so I try my best to be polite to ChatGPT even if it has no mind. Still, this was frustrating, and ChatGPT gave me a chicken basically ejaculating an egg, as it had the first two times:

Something deliciously oral is about to happen.

I gave up and told ChatGPT:

Okay, thanks for your effort. I'll do this on my own. None of these images is satisfactory. Not a problem. I'll figure it out.

Because it's programmed to get the last word, ChatGPT replied,

Understood, Kevin — I’m sorry we couldn’t quite nail the image for you this time. I admire your patience and your clear descriptions, though. You’ve got a sharp eye for detail, so I’m sure your own version will turn out exactly how you imagine it.

So I broke out Photoshop Elements and started searching for unlicensed images of things like "angry chicken" and "explosion" and "startled farmer" and "barn interior." I also cribbed a flying egg from one of the above illustrations, and like the song, I did it my way:

I had to redo the old farmer's eyes. Original here.

The above chicken is a composite of two chickens. The egg is comically huge, implying something about the chicken's cloaca, and I was delighted when I realized that the "radial blur" function on Photoshop could make the explosion I'd found even more dramatic. I of course tastefully blurred the barn interior. I also had to Google whether hens have cockscombs. They do. I might still be accused of having used a rooster, but I really don't care. This is a goofy illustration for a post about grammar, not an image for a biology website. And even though the image is far from professional, I'm weirdly proud of how I melded the chicken-head image from one picture to the chicken-body image of the other. I still have a lot to learn about how to use Photoshop, but I can at least design passable, meme-worthy images. Sorry, Farmer Bill.

they're making another what?

When desperation combines with lack of creativity:

Blogger, in its infinite wisdom...

Blogger has "reinstated" (i.e., taken away the warning about) my "Sneakers"/"F1" review. I'm just waiting for this to happen again. Jesus Christ.

focaccia redux

American education really is a joke

The missing ingredient is apparently a desire to learn. I'm encountering the same problem on Substack. Not a single peep about a desire to learn anything I'm teaching, despite how basic this shit is. And people lacking the basics flaunt their ignorance all the damn time.

best of intentions

I was going to go do a 9K walk last night, but as I was changing out my foot bandage (I haven't talked about that, have I?), some lovely blister juice from my right big toe shot out and spritzed me. Disgusted, I wiped myself down, then turned to the grim task of gently squeezing out the rest of the fluid from the blister (into a wet wipe this time instead of onto my torso) before washing my toe. With all of that loose outer skin down there (don't rip it off!), plus all of that tender inner skin from the interior of the blister, I decided it would be better to soak my foot in warm salt water instead of going for a walk. I looked around for my Epsom salt and couldn't find it because I'm a dumbass who loses things all the time, so I used sea salt for the soak. And since I have no hot water from the tap at the moment, I heated up a bunch of water in my electric kettle, poured the boiling water into a bucket, stirred in the sea salt, then poured in a roughly equal amount of "cold" water from the tap to arrive at tolerably warm water. Then, it was just a matter of having a paper towel at the ready as I sat in front of my monitor, soaked my foot, watched some YouTube for around twenty minutes, then toweled my foot dry before re-bandaging it.

My normal policy with blisters is to leave them alone and let them drain on their own. Since this blister had already developed a puncture or rip before I'd even known it was there, I had little choice but to drain it before washing and soaking it. I hope the thing heals soon; I normally develop blisters and irritations during my long, cross-country walks; the last thing I need is to start such a walk with blisters already on my foot.

Upshot: I didn't go walking yesterday as I'd hoped. I might try again either tonight or sometime tomorrow. Hell, I might even risk a (gasp) daytime walk.

In other exercise news: I did my speed-run through a couple days' worth of exercises yesterday, so I'm back on schedule for my final day of exercise for this 10-week program. The very last day, if you recall my calendar, is devoted to a "long walk." I was thinking that, instead of walking out to Hanam City (about 26K), I might do the Jamshil Bridge route twice (28K). It's a slightly longer route, but it'd be local. I don't know why that matters; maybe I'm thinking it'd be more likely that someone might find me should I collapse on the path. Walking to Hanam involves some lonely stretches.

My doctor's appointment is this coming Monday. Diabetes doc. I need to ask her (1) to stop prescribing me insulin, and (2) to prescribe enough meds to get me through to my January appointment with the cardiac doc. I think I'm meeting with my ex-boss and ex-coworker on Tuesday, so this weekend, I might bake them a batch of keto-ish chocolate-chip cookies and maybe also another sinfully sugary rum cake. The end of the year is approaching. 2025's been a hell of a ride, hasn't it?

UPDATE: I found my Epsom salt.

do you trust your AI sensei?

more impressive than I'd thought it would be

we all deserve a little happiness

Scripted, yes, but if this doesn't put a smile on your face, what will?

an argument about the afterlife

Here's a scene from a British streaming TV series that went on for three seasons ("After Life") in which Ricky Gervais, whose character is an atheist, gets into a discussion with a religious person about whether belief in an afterlife determines one's behavior. Gervais's character sounds remarkably Zen Buddhist: it's life's impermanence that makes it beautiful. But at the same time, there's really nothing stopping, say, a Christian from believing the same thing despite also believing in an afterlife. It's precisely because we can't have these moments over again that we should live each moment wisely and deeply. Even if you're a Buddhist who subscribes to the doctrine of rebirth (samsara, the wheel of existence), you don't believe that the next life will be any sort of exact repetition. Because nothing ever repeats.

well, fuck it all

My two-fer movie review of "Sneakers" and "F1" got put behind a warning again. Guessing that it's because I used a movie poster for the movie image this time, I've switched the image out for a scene from the movie, which is what I normally do anyway. Hopefully this time, the Google gods will be kind and leave the review the hell alone. If not, I'm going to have to "disappear" and republish the review. Fucknuckles.

ADDENDUM: You can still view the post, but you have to click past the "sensitive content" warning first. "Sensitive content" probably means "copyrighted content."

ADDENDUM 2: Are you seeing a warning when you click the above link? On my Blogger edit screen, I'm seeing that the post is listed as "under review," but when I click the link above, there's no warning—I see the review directly. Something doesn't quite add up.

ADDENDUM 3: The warning is back up. Go figure.

the rise and fall of Jar-Jar

another post reinstated

I swear, they only do this to torture me. Here's the email I just got:

Hello,

We have re-evaluated the post titled "Day 26, Leg 21" against Community Guidelines (https://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy). Upon review, the post has been reinstated. You may access the post at https://kevinswalk7.blogspot.com/2023/11/day-26-leg-21.html .

Sincerely,

The Blogger Team

So if you're keeping score: both posts that received warnings have been reinstated. What shit-eating, pissant motherfucker decided the posts needed warnings to begin with?

week 10

I'm in the final week of the initial 10-week exercise plan I'd made for myself. It's a plan that takes my frozen shoulder into consideration (it may be improving, but it's still with me; last night was, in fact, a painful night). Here's where I am now:

MON [ ] DB Lateral Raise (5 kg): 3 x 15; 10 kg, 1 x 7 [ ] DB Overhead Press (5 kg): 3 x 15 [ ] DB Hammer Curls (10 kg): 3 x 15 [ ] DB Bent-over Rows (10 kg): 3 x 15 [ ] DB Chest Press, 10 kg, 3 x 10 [ ] DB Farmer's Carry (10 kg): March for 60 sc [ ] BW Dead bug, 2 x 20 [ ] Stair Work (indoor stepper): 290 steps	TUE [ ] RB Antirotational Press (2 x 15) [ ] RB Lat Pulldown (2 x 15) [ ] RB Standing Chest Press (2 x 15) [ ] RB Lateral Raise (3 x 15) [ ] DB Suitcase Carry, 20 kg (30 sec/side) [ ] BW Standing Glute Kickbacks (2 x 10) [ ] RB Forward Tricep Extension (30-sec hold) [ ] KB Around the World (30 sec) [ ] KB 2-arm Swing (10 kg, 2 x 12)	WED [ ] DB Suitcase Carry, 20 kg (40s/side) [ ] DB Chest Press, 10 kg (2 x 10) [ ] BW Squat (2 x 20) [ ] Wall-sit (49s) [ ] DB Lateral raise, 5 kg, 3 x 15; 10 kg, 1 x 7 [ ] DB Overhead press, 5 kg, 3 x 15 [ ] DB Hammer curls, 10 kg, 3 x 15 [ ] DB Bent-over rows, 10 kg, 3 x 15 [ ] DB Chest Press, 10 kg, 3 x 10 [ ] DB Farmer's Carry, 10 kg march, 60s
THU [ ] HC 6 kg, 2-hand swing (alt. arms): 2 x 15 [ ] HC  6 kg, 2-arm pullover (alt. arms): 2 x 15 [ ] HC 6 kg, front press (alt. arms): 1 x 25 [ ] HC 6 kg, outside circle (alt. arms): 1 x 25 [ ] HC 6 kg, inside circle (alt. arms): 1 x 25 [ ] KB 6/10 kg, gorilla rows, alternating, 2 x 15 [ ] Stair Work: 317 steps [ ] BW Squats (2 x 20)	FRI [ ] DB Lateral Raise (5 kg): 3 x 15; 10 kg, 1 x 7 [ ] DB Overhead Press (5 kg): 3 x 15 [ ] DB Hammer Curls (10 kg): 3 x 15 [ ] DB Bent-over Rows (10 kg): 3 x 15 [ ] DB Chest Press, 10 kg, 3 x 10 [ ] DB Farmer's Carry (10 kg): March for 60 sec [ ] BW Dead bug, 2 x 20 [ ] Stair Work (indoor stepper): 290 steps	SAT Long Walk DB = dumbbell RB = resistance band KB = kettlebell HC = heavy club BW = bodyweight

Wow—I just copy-pasted the above chart from my Google Docs file. It's messy, and the notation I used above needs to be standardized (it was partially designed with help from ChatGPT), but it's been my exercise bible for ten weeks.

I'm actually a bit behind with exercise this week, so I'm going to speed-run my way through a mess of exercises today. That's not a very auspicious way to end the 10-week program (which actually ends this Saturday), but I'm going to move right into another 10-week program that takes up where this one leaves off. I'm kind of proud of how far I've come for a fat, old guy with heart failure; they say maintaining strength is important as you get older so you can avoid falls and other injuries that set you back. Once my frozen shoulder finally thaws, I really want to get into animal/primal/rope flow so I can work more closely on my balance, which has been shot since the 2021 stroke.

One of the problems I've had is in figuring out alternative ways of doing the McGill Big 3—a set of exercises meant to strengthen your core, which is an important group of muscles for balance and general strength (e.g., so you don't throw your back out when you're lifting something heavy). Because of shoulder pain during side planks and bird dogs, I've had to figure out alternative core exercises. Luckily, there are dead bugs, various resistance-band exercises, kick-backs, and uneven suitcase carries (20 kg/10 kg, then switch). Figuring all of this out has been an interesting intellectual exercise and has kept life from being boring.

Probably my proudest achievement has been the strengthening of my shoulders. Remember this video satirizing my original weakness? Over ten weeks ago, I wasn't able to laterally raise a 10-kilo dumbbell even once. When I made the video, I'd been doing 5-kilo lateral raises for a while, and I suddenly found myself able to do two 10-kilo raises per shoulder. That was weeks ago. I'm currently up to seven lateral raises. This has done nothing to change my looks, but it's changed my outlook. I feel stronger, a bit more capable, a bit less helpless. The advantage of gaining muscle is that the extra muscle needs extra energy, so your body's basal metabolism ramps up. I think my late friend Kent Davy may have been on to something (although in his case, he got into bodybuilding, not weightlifting). Of course, the disadvantage of adding too much muscle is the strain it potentially puts on the heart, but a lot of recent studies show that resistance training actually has benefits comparable to cardio, which is better for someone like me: slow walking and minimal stair work are about the only forms of cardio I can do, so I need the weight training to keep training my heart. I've read different things about whether one can reverse heart failure; some experts think it's possible—at least depending on certain circumstances—while others see it as a progressive condition that can only be managed. I'll do what I can by continuing to exercise in various ways, by fasting, and by avoiding carbs as much as possible without making my life miserable.

Here's to another ten weeks as we move into cooler weather. Which reminds me: I'll be taking along some resistance bands when I'm on my cross-country walk.

it's the cultural Zeitgeist, so...

Fuck around and find out, as they say.

pas d'eau chaude

Woo-hoo! We have no hot water in our building thanks to a burst hot-water pipe. It's an old building, so repairs are slow and delicate and will continue until October 2. Korean-language announcements have been blaring with annoying frequency through our PA systems since yesterday evening, and today, I got an email from my old company: I'm apparently still on their email list (I wrote back to ask them to take me off their list). The email basically told me what I already knew. So—sponge baths for yours truly for the time being! No worries—I've been in plenty of Korean motels with bad plumbing. It's not a huge deal. That said, here's hoping the repairs are finished before October 2!

at first, I was like, "Oh, no!"

Hugh Jackman looks nothing like Neil Diamond. But just watch. It's based on a true story.

3 more on "KPop Demon Hunters"

It's the cultural phenomenon that won't quit. Below: (1) a psychotherapeutic perspective, (2) the idea that the movie proves Hollywood can no longer write women, and (3) at last—an "Honest Trailers" satire, which is how you know you've arrived! My review here.

the rat-busting never ends

They multiply... and multiply.

what bullshit is this?

The Day 26 post of my Kevin's Walk 7 blog, after almost two years' existence, suddenly got put behind a warning by Google. I immediately hit "request review" and have no idea what might've violated "community standards" or have been offensive. Seriously, I think these censoring assholes literally have nothing better to do. I've been through this process several times before, and in most cases, the issue is resolved in my favor. When it's not, I just quietly republish the post at a slightly different time and with slightly different identifying data (like changing the post-title wording a wee bit). I've done that a few times, too (with meme posts), and there's never been a problem. Fuck these assholes. They're also never specific about what the offense is, which is about as Orwellian as one can get.

UPDATE: My two-fer review of "Sneakers" and "F1" just got flagged as well. For fuck's sake.

UPDATE 2: The two-fer review has been reinstated. The walk-blog entry remains "under review." And of course, whether they ultimately reject my appeal or accept it, they'll never tell me what the actual problem is/was.

hosting a dinner party? no worries, mate!

an AI parody of "the most liberal woman in America"

Just judge it on the art, not the politics.

the jankiness that is the new "War of the Worlds" movie

9.4K, done and dusted

Out to the Han River and back. 'Twas a good walk, but the top left of my right foot started getting irritated in my shoe, which is never a good sign. You don't want an irritation to rub raw, then get bloody. That's what happened last year. I didn't bother to time myself this time, but I was going at roughly the same speed as previously. As for the irritation... when in doubt, tape it out! Okay, that doesn't make sense. Tape it over, anyway.

"excellent choice!"

Do you ever feel you're being manipulted? I don't recall ever being congratulated like that in a Korean restaurant.

such a nice car, such a disaster

listen well, Kevin

"Sneakers" and "F1": a two-fer review

L to R: River Phoenix, Dan Aykroyd, Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford, David Strathairn

"Sneakers" is a 1992 heist film directed by Phil Alden Robinson ("Field of Dreams," "The Sum of All Fears") and starring the recently departed Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd, Ben Kingsley, Mary McDonnell (I'd forgotten she was in this), River Phoenix, Sidney Poitier, and David Strathairn, with a cute-but-corny cameo by James Earl Jones at the very end. Martin "Bish" Bishop (Redford) heads up a crack team of security experts, each with a checkered past, who get paid to break into secure facilities to test just how secure those facilities are. In 1969, Bish and his friend Cosmo (Kingsley) were busy hacking into government and specifically Republican databases, Robin Hooding money by stealing it and sending it to various liberal causes. The police catch Cosmo while Bish is out in the snowy winter to get pizza. As far as Bish knows, Cosmo died in prison. Fast forward to the present (the early 90s), and two shady individuals claiming to be from the government (Eddie Jones as Buddy Wallace and Timothy Busfield as Dick Gordon) ask Bish and his team for help in retrieving a recently invented item that turns out to be a universal codebreaker, a "black box" developed by Setec Astronomy, a name that is an anagram for "Too Many Secrets." Some members of Bish's team are hesitant at first, but the money is enough to persuade them. Bish enlists the help of an old flame named Liz (McDonnell), and the black box is eventually stolen from its inventor, mathematician Gunter Janek (Donal Logue), who later ends up dead. Bish begins to realize that this black box is something that all the world governments and shadier powers would kill for, and that the two "government agents" vying for the box are not who they say they are. In fact, they work for none other than Cosmo, whom Martin had thought deceased. What becomes of the box and of Martin's team of genius misfits is what occupies most of the movie.

I recall really liking "Sneakers" when I first saw it as a recent college graduate. Upon rewatching it, though, I saw it as a gently pious liberal fantasy from another era, one featuring quaint dial-up technology with implausibly fast decryption from the black box. It did, however, have an eerily prophetic message about where the world was going: toward the end, Cosmo rails at Bishop: "There's a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think... it's all about the information!" How utterly true. But at the same time, this was the sort of utopianist "nerds will control the world" thinking that people on the right these days have abandoned. Mix that utopianism with the anticapitalist, quasi-Marxist ideal of "no rich, no poor," and you get the movie's muddled ideological stance—which it doesn't even seem to believe given how fantastically rich Cosmo has become, not to mention the sort of bank that Bishop and his security-hacking team make through their exploits.

I had also forgotten that James Horner had scored the film; he gives the movie a peppy, lighthearted leitmotif that will stick in your head like an earworm, but because Horner was notorious for cannibalizing his own scores, you'll also hear elements of "Star Trek II,"  "Cocoon," "Brainstorm," and the later "Apollo 13." The acting from all the principals is fine; at the time, Redford was starting to look older, but he pulled off the role of a team leader quite well. Sidney Poitier has several scene-stealing moments as an ex-CIA guy, Crease, who is constantly worried about hidden threats; Dan Aykroyd plays Mother, a conspiracy theorist who would fit right in with today's QAnon people. McDonnell, with whom I've been quietly in love for years, is her usual, charming self as a music teacher with a deep understanding of music's mathematical dimension. If anything, I wish they'd made more out of that aspect of her character. River Phoenix is the young Carl Arbogast, a sort of thief-of-all-trades; the sight of Phoenix made me sad given the actor's early death and unrealized potential. And David Strathairn, as the blind Whistler, is hilarious and gets some of the movie's best scenes, including being asked to drive a truck as part of a rescue.

"Sneakers" is a fairly intellectual movie, and it showcases a quietly brilliant team dynamic as the various team members each contribute something to help solve a problem. Whistler helps Bishop figure out the location he'd been taken to when kidnapped by asking him questions about the ambient noises he'd heard while trapped in a car's trunk. Liz gives Bishop the basic facts he needs to understand the significance of the black box; Mother is the guy who breaks through various security measures with his tech knowledge; Crease is the scary muscle who's not afraid to pull the trigger if need be. The movie leaves a few loose ends, but those can be resolved in one's imagination as one teases out the story's logical implications. But the movie is never meant to be anything more than lightly cerebral entertainment; it's not an action pic, nor is it a gory horror flick. There's nothing intense or profound about it, and given the movie's final scene, it does wear its 90s-era politics on its sleeve. For the most part, I still like "Sneakers" even if it's very much a product of its time.

Brad Pitt and Damson Idris (who kept reminding me of a young Eddie Murphy)

"F1," by contrast, is a very different animal. Directed by Joe Kosinski, the same guy who gave us "Top Gun: Maverick," "F1" stars Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies, and Javier Bardem. Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, an aging racer who had severely injured himself years ago during the 1993 Spanish Grand Prix. Damson Idris is Joshua "JP" Pearce—young, arrogant, and extremely talented, but a member of a losing racing team called Apex (APXGP) whose owner, former F1 racer Rubén Cervantes (Bardem), has enticed Sonny to come back to Formula 1 racing in a last-ditch effort to keep his team from being sold out from under him. Also working for Rubén is Kate McKenna (Condon), the first female F1 racing engineer and a stereotypically pert Irishwoman. Following a pretty standard formula for facing movies, the old veteran has to convince the young lion to become a team player, all while tussling with his old friend Rubén and trying to woo the often prickly Kate—a task not helped by Sonny's own prickly nature. There are only a few ways a movie like this can end, so there's little need to offer any plot points or spoilers. Personally, I wondered whether Sonny would die.

I can say that, for all of its racing pizzazz—the intense camera work, the intense acting, and the sheer spectacle of the various racing venues—"F1" simply didn't hit me as hard as "Top Gun: Maverick," nor were the interpersonal relationships and rivalries quite as deep as those in "Rush," which was overall a better racing movie, or in "Ford v. Ferrari," which is probably the best racing film I've seen. This is despite the warm dynamic that eventually develops between Sonny and JP, the slowly thawing relationship between Sonny and Kate, and the rock-solid friendship between Sonny and Rubén. Despite all of these sources of potential warmth, something about the film felt a little cold and distant, and the constant on-the-nose dialogue of the race commentators (whose purpose was obviously to fill us ignorant Americans in on what is a hugely popular activity in Europe, where F1 reigns) often felt like a forced violation of the sacred show-don't-tell rule of writing. So I can't quite rave as much as Jeremy Jahns or The Critical Drinker about this film. It was good despite being about forty minutes too long, but it wasn't spectacular, even with the sight of the lovely Kerry Condon looking fetching while wearing nothing but a suggestive sweater and making me think naughty thoughts about pretty Irishwomen. But the preponderance of critics loved this movie, so don't listen to my opinion: go see it for yourself. I'd never call "F1" bad by any stretch: it's got solid acting, directing, and cinematography, and while the story fits the boilerplate pattern for racing movies, it's earnestly done and has its heart in the right place. That said, I won't be leaping to see this one again, especially not with so many better racing movies around.