Category: blogiversary

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.

Before I head out to find one (or more) election night parties, with hopes of something huge to celebrate about, I’ll re-post, as part of my “30 Days of Blogiversary” posting, my cynicism and anger at the worst possible outcome of election night 2004.

G’night, and I hope we wake up in a better America tomorrow.

*****
Work, America. Keep working. Your president and his staff of rich old white men require your hard work, your sweat, and the blood of your sons and daughters, in order for them to have more money and inflate their flaccid tiny pricks for another fucking. “Freedom” is on the march, they’re stealing your “democracy” and shipping it overseas, but you, the one with hopes and dreams, you just keep your head down, be fearful of the dark-skinned men in beards and the men who want to marry each other. Shuffle along, willingly put your head in the noose and just never ever ask any fucking questions. They know what they’re doing. And you don’t. You don’t know what they’re doing, because you love Jesus and you love America, you know, you read about this back in your state-run school, back when you did read, before all the flashy pictures of wife-swapping and explosions on the teevee distracted you, before they taught you to hate the smart people, you wouldn’t want to be a smart person, would you? Smart people don’t drink beer and have sex, no, their locked in their mom’s basement eating bag after bag of cheese-flavored crunchy snacks. Just keep fearing when they tell you to fear, just keep listening while they’ve switched your participation and citizenship with a glitzy blue-but-mostly-red map and talking heads telling you what to feel (not telling you what to think, no, ’cause thinking’s bad and, hell, even the president don’t think, does he? He just roots out terror and flips the bird at anyone who disagrees with him and marches his toy soldiers off to die for “liberty”.

Work, and sleep, and drink your hard-earned domestic beer and listen when your pastor lies to you about what Jesus says and fear, fear, fear what they want you to fear. And when the world attacks you because you’re an American, and your leaders call them “terrorists”, make sure and completely misunderstand both why they’re attacking and what America really has become.

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.

From the early days of my blog, when I was still trying to figure out what to write, and when, comes a post that’s reflective and thoughtful. It came at a time when I was redefining what I could do in physical terms – Just three days prior to this post, I ran in my first-ever 5K race, the 2004 Shamrock Run, after having been exercising on and off for a couple of years, and a couple of months of “training” for the race.

I was on a steep weight-loss curve – after having resigned myself to the fact that I was just the size I was, and that couldn’t change.

Obviously, I was wrong. I could lose weight; I proved it to myself in the most dramatic fashion.

I could run; again, the proof was in the doing.

These early reflections, below, are still with me even today. I’ve internalized the idea that I can set goals, and that I am not carved in stone. I can change.

Here’s to the future.

*****

First, I understand that fat cells never (or rarely) ever die. They grow and shrink, but you never really change the number of cells you have during your adult life.

Second, I understand that fat cells are where your body stores toxins and poisons and other gunk that doesn’t get filtered out by your liver.

Third, it’s my understanding (as well as making logical sense, assuming the above two assertions are true) that when someone diets, their fat cells dump the poisons and toxins along with the fat. It’s a side-effect of dieting that I’ve read of in several books.

Lastly, I’ve been fat for at least my entire adult life.

That all being the case, then during this whole process of shrinking from 225 to under 180 lbs (or for that matter, from 240 in August 2000, my highest weight ever), I’ve been dumping, along with the weight, poisons that I have carried around with me for my entire life.

I don’t know if it’s scientifically true… but I’d like to think it’s metaphorically true.

So in many ways, I am, in fact, a brand-new person. Or at least, cleaner. I’ve shed more than weight; I’ve rid myself of past hates and fears… At least.

I feel… great. Amazing, in fact. I don’t want to leave behind my past; it’s what made me what I am. But there are certain parts of “the old Brian” that I am not going to miss at all.

This is apparently all part of my adjusting self-image. Brian is dead… long live Brian.

For the next 30 days, I’ll be reposting one from the archives every day. The posts will include “B5” and the original date of publication in the title, and will be tagged “blogiversary”.

This is a fun short one, inspired by a night with my friends.

Enjoy.

*****
Went out tonight with friends. Played some darts, had dinner at Hoda’s (it was very good. One friend had been to Turkey before, and she proclaimed the food at Hoda’s to be top-notch).

Afterward, we went to shoot some pool, and while I was waiting for my shot, I noticed a guy in his early twenties, and dressed in a t-shirt and baggy jeans.

His t-shirt read:

“Bros before hos.”

The bestbestbest part was — He was playing all alone. No bros, no hos.