Plague of Strength

Opinions are like assholes- everyone’s got them, but mine just happen to be far better and more beautiful than they have any right to be, and far more well reasoned than the opinions of most other people. That said, here are more of my opinions on things, per your requests, plus the list twenty or so articles I have between half and three-quarters of the way done.

Every Thing is Not for Every Body

One phrase I picked up in the last few years is “everything’s not for everybody,” which is often used to mean “mind your business” but could just as easily mean “this isn’t for you/him/her/whatever.” I’ve never in my fucking life advocated everyone lifted, and frankly was far happier in the gym when there were far fewer people in them. With that in mind, I cannot for the fucking life of me understand why people persist in evangelizing their sport like some half-assed Biblical prophet- if you do it, you’re as fucking bad as these “strength coaches” who are little more than personal fucking trainers.

Whatever your interests are, let them be your interests. They don’t have to be everyone’s goddamn interests, and if you only have five cubes of badass boullion, you’re not going to make 5000 bowls of badass ball broth out of five by adding nothing but water, and that’s what’s happened to gym culture. Stop dragging your friends to the gym if they don’t want to go- they’re just taking up fucking space and getting in the fucking way. And if they do end up staying, they just fuck up the culture worse because they don’t love it or live it- they just talk endlessly about it.

With the Covid nonsense we should blissfully see gyms that never should have existed in the first place blink out of existence, along with some great gyms that just ended up getting fucked by posers and new jacks who blurred the line between great and dogshit gyms. And we’ll see an exodus of lifters from strength sports as they all follow Hafthor and Eddie and the rest of them into the realm of dancing monkey on Youtube. For fuck’s sake, do not try to lure people back to the gym- let them suck elsewhere. We have a unique opportunity to recreate the lifting scene into one where lifters from different disciplines train together in hybrid sessions and everyone goes back to having fucking fun in the gym, rather than doing whatever the fuck you guys think you’re doing if you’re doggedly following a program in the literally blind pursuit of what are undoubtedly going to be mediocre results?

In short- the lifting world is likely going to be a lot smaller and a lot more awesome in the coming years, as the feeble and unfuckable trend back toward eSports and whatever other non-physical pastimes they should have stayed in in the first place.

Vegetarianism is a Stupid Fucking Religion, but will be a Viable Option As a Diet for Lifters in the Future

As I have written at great length (here, here, the fallacy of Indian religious vegetarianism here, and those horrible Skinny Bitch broads here) vegetarianism and veganism appear to be the outgrowth of mental illness, sexual prudishness, and a healthy dose of wild-eyed, zero-reading comprehension Christianity. Like Christianity, they are evangelical movements that gained great traction in the 1970s, as hippies without direction ditched the free love and bought firearms to point at peaceful protesters walking down their street while screaming hymns about how their benevolent and loving god is actually a vengeful prick with a little dick and a superiority complex. While I’m sure Jesus was a rad dude who could probably handle six foot bong rips like he was 1976-era Tommy Chong, his evangelical followers in particular seem not to have any idea what the man was about, which is likely why they abandoned meat eating although meat is one of the few foodstuffs the Biblical Jews were actually allowed to eat (when they were done beating their wives because it’s Tuesday and killing their children for losing at Backgammon).

I’ll admit, the French Christian egalitarian vegetarians of the Middle Ages seem like they were in every way superior to the Boomer version of evangelism, but the Spanish decided to help them shuffle off their mortal coils during the Inquisition for being chill bros who were all about giving free love and living like overgrown, under-hirsute Ewoks. Had they been able to share their Gnostic views with the world rather than have them ripped from their skull at the end of a pike, we likely would have been much friendlier with them, as they lack the judgement and moral superiority of modern vegetarians and vegans and would have had a far more logical bit of reasoning behind their diet- it’s the nice thing to do.

Had people simply said that the fucking truth, which is that they either like to appear like they like animals more than they like eating hamburgers, or they actually do like animals more than they like eating hamburger, we would never had even had to discuss this fucking topic. Being the obnoxious fundamentalists that they are, however, the veggie crowd is incapable of such a reasoned and objective verity and have relied instead on a bad combination of shitty science and even shittier cherry-picked religion to foist upon us the idea that vegetarianism is natural (only in times of famine) or as healthy as an omnivorous diet (meat is theorized to be integral in the expansion of our mental capacity and our development of a small waist). In short, literally every scientific argument for hardcore vegetarianism/veganism is complete horseshit.

That said, eating a plant-based diet is not without its obvious benefits. I’ve personally never been a fan of greens and don’t eat them as often as I probably should, but it is indeed food with nutritive value. And though beans in all of their various forms contain aflatoxins, estrogen, they’re still a handy and economical source of protein in a pinch. Are they meat? Not yet, but that’s not for lack of trying. The veggie industry is driving a hell of a lot of innovative change in manufactured meatless foods that are high in protein, so in the next decade we might see food worth eating (I was not all that enamored of the Impossible Burger, but if I was hungry I’d eat it if that’s all I had).

“3D bioprinting technologies, initially widely recognized in medicine, are nowadays gaining popularity in producing foods such as meat,” said Yusef Khesuani, co-founder and managing partner of 3D Bioprinting Solutions, in a statement. “In the future, the rapid development of such technologies will allow us to make 3D-printed meat products more accessible and we are hoping that the technology created as a result of our cooperation with KFC will help accelerate the launch of cell-based meat products on the market” (TechCrunch).

For some reason, chicken nuggets seem to be the food on which the vat-grown meat industry is hanging their hates, because KFC just got into the mix as well, and it makes good sense from a financial standpoint as well as an ethical and an environmental one, because vat-grown meet requires no care and feeding beyond whatever a machine feeds it. There is no noise to reduce from squawking chickens, no odor of chicken shit to eliminate, or sick/injured animals to tend and care for. And it’s for those reasons that the less mentally flexible among you will end up eating “dat dere communist ‘meat,’” but if you’re of that mindset you’ll probably offset the good you did by eating the vat-grown meat by beating your wife and burning science textbooks because a fat orange man who thinks the earth is less than 10,000 years old told you to, so it will all balance out in the end- you’ll still be a real piece of shit in the eyes of anyone who isn’t the most pointedly bad person of whom they can conceive.

Frankly, the options of vat-grown meat or high protein, quality vegetarian foods seem like a step in the right direction for humanity, because between factory farming and just the fact that eating animals for food will no longer be necessary in the future. I’m pretty low-key about my opinions on green shit and animals, but I’m certainly not afraid to share them- I like most animals more than I like most of the people with whom I interact on the internet. Two of my cats eat an entire roast chicken three times a week because I love them so much I feed them better than you people feed your kids, and I likely communicate better with them than any non-felinolgist. Though I see no reason that I should eat chicken if there’s a dope alternative, I’d never deny my peeps their chicken because dinosaurs and rodents are what cats are evolved to eat (and my cats are getting pretty fucking jacked on this diet- though you can’t see it when laying down, they both walk like lions and have seriously muscled shoulders).

In short, vegetarianism and veganism are a choice based mostly on emotion, and you’re free to make decisions based on emotion- just don’t try to sell us on it as fact, whether it be because you have a firearm fetish or an unnatural attraction towards celery, or whether it’s your love of your lord and savior, be his name Jesus or Steve Jobs. If you like something that much, your reasoning is likely in no way logical, because none of that shit is worth getting your clit or misshapen and unladylike man-clit (hey, if they’re gonna occasionally get it called a ladydick, I suppose turnabout is fair play) hard about.

Perioditization Can Work, but We Live in a Universe of Infinite Possibilities, So that Statement Actually Means Very Little

If anything’s possible, it should not surprise me that a segment of lifters I despise treat my favorite activity like it’s forced fucking labor to attain goals so mediocre simply being alive could essentially replicate the results. People who enjoy perioditization don’t actually enjoy lifting. They enjoy talking about lifting, and taking pictures of themselves lifting, because they are bereft of a personality and have decided to adopt a Disney version of what I embody as a cover for their utter nothingness. Should souls exist, they either lack one altogether or it’s so anemic it’s not going to amount to shit anyway, because there is no art in their existence- they simply are because they were born. Like the mythical golem, they are an irritation we should all be happy to see the back of.

Unhappy Epilogue

Right after I published this article yesterday I went looking for the tan cat in the pic above. Fwerfs apparently had been clipped by a car while checking out a skunk carcass on the side of a road past our house and someone clipped him on his deaf side. It looks like he went to take a bit of a lay down (he was a fucking badass and was going to end up having Chris Benoit-level CTE at some point due to head injuries) and died. As a result, I’ve been a weeping fucking wreck, because I’m fairly certain I love my cats more than most people love their kids. Anyway, he was a rad little man who was endlessly happy, and his cheer definitely changed the tone of a lot of my interactions as I’ve genuinely been trying to be a nicer dude because of him- he was going to be doing food deliveries to the needy on Fridays with us, among other things. In any event, love your crew and make their happiness yours- you’ll be a hell of a lot better person for it.

Coming next will likely be what was intended to be another “Your Fat Is Your Fault,” though I realized the entire series should be re-titled “You’re Fat Because You’re Republican. You Forgot Because You’re Fucking Stupid and Weak.” As such, I have collected quite the statistical basis to support that title, and I did not have to look far. Literally every lie the Right tells themselves about their nature is a bold-faced lie so confusingly untrue it’s a wonder they’re delusional enough to believe it. But, then, they all think they can buy their way into a heaven ruled by perhaps the angriest deity in the history of human mythology in spite of the fact he’s expressly stated such an act is impossible, and they think flying one of the most un-American flags ever hoisted over our soil is an act of patriotism. It’s a topsy turvy world we live in.

At some point, I will also fill you guys in on the books in development, and I’ll do some training vids and shit so you guys can see how much better you can look at 44 than 34, even if you were a fucking world record holding powerlifter at 34 (as I mentioned, powerlifting reeeeeeeeeeeally isn’t all that hard to be very good at) and you took a couple of years off from lifting hard to drink your face off. Till then, here’s the other shit currently at that top of the pile and more than 50% done:

• Falling on My Sword: I’ll Admit It- I Have Written Some Shit With Which I Disagree, Part 3- Rise of the Machines
• Patreon Extra: Klare Onderrichtinge der Voortreffelijke Worstel-Konst, the 17th Century Dutch Hybrid Fighting Manual 
• Boxing Was at the Base of the Beef Betwixt the Bowery Boys in the Story of Gangs of New York
• Patreon Special: The No-Shit Glory, and I Mean Glory, of Taco Bell
• I’m a Bad Motherfucker, Not a Fucking Role Model- The First Black Mr. America and Badass of Whom You’re Likely Never Heard, Harold Poole
• Books, Movies, and Music: Numetalcore is the Shit 
• Fustigation Fury: A Brace of Buxom, Brawlin’ Broads Battle Bitches, Bigotry, and Bros in Gilded Age America (Female Fustigators Part 2)
• Fustigation Fury: Training To Fight From The Primeval To The Present- James Figg, Joker to Elizabeth Wilkinson Stokes’ Harley Quinn, Plus Jack Broughton, Tom Sayers, and More of the Foundations of Modern Boxing (Boxing Part 1)
• Fustigation Fury X Empire Builder Diet- Fish, Chips, Cup o’ Tea, Bad Food, Worse Weather, Mary Fucking Poppins, and Training to Fight (Victorian and Georgian Era Diet and Training Methods)
• Fustigation Fury: Training To Fight From The Primeval To The Present- Karate, the “Traditional” Hybrid Style, Part 1- Everything You “Know” About Karate is Wrong
• Fustigation Fury- Chinese Weightlifting Dates Back to the Fourth Millennium BC, and the Chinese Martial Artists Who Used It Did Brutal Shit
• Female Catch Wrestlers, Mildred Burke, and Others (Female Fustigators 3)

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