Weightlifting: How I Lost Ten Pounds

 

People who post half-naked pictures of themselves on the internet are wankers.

I've been at about 200 lbs or so for several years now, with the weight seemingly creeping ever-upwards, year after year. At 38 years old, I finally got tired of having a dadbod. No one who lifts five days a week and spends hours outside performing physical labor should have a spare tire, right? So I decided to get jacked by cutting out junk carbs, processed sugars, and alcohol. Many of us get into the habit of having some sugary snack, like a bowl of cereal after dinner, or maybe a granola bar or two throughout the day. Both of those options aren't considered unhealthy, but they're just extra carbs with little nutritional value. For years, my alcohol consumption has varied between 14 and 6 drinks a week. I've cut it back to about 2 to 3. This single change has made me feel so much better. It's amazing how even a moderate amount of alcohol seems to affect you, and the older you get, the worse it drags you down. As far as junk carbs are concerned, that means no chips or cookies or chocolate chips or soda (diet is fine). Some leniency is recommend--I allowed myself one sugary treat a week, as well as the aforementioned 2 to 3 beers. In four weeks, I've went from around 202-201 lbs to about 191 lbs as of this morning. I still eat plenty, usually three to four meals a day, focused around lean protein, vegetables, fruits, and healthy dairy like yogurt. As for eating out, I do that maybe once a week and try to eat something that doesn't have a lot of carbs.

I didn't try some gimmick like intermittent fasting or an all-meat diet. I simply cut out almost all unhealthy foods. In the evening, if I feel like snacking, I'll eat some grapes or a couple oranges, maybe with a slice of cheese. Replacing sugar cravings with fruit really worked, since fruit has sugar in it, albeit unprocessed and lower-calorie. As for my lifts, they remained pretty stable, despite the weight loss. I'm focused on powerbuilding rather than pure strength right now, but I managed a 295 for 7 beltless high bar squat and a 235 lbs for 7 bench press this week, with reps in reserve. 

I think most of us are oblivious to how much garbage we consume on a daily basis. We live in a society where we are bombarded by fast food advertising showing fattening, high calorie food being consumed by young, fit people, which subliminally affects our psyches. I don't think it was that hard to cut all the junk out, but then again, I've never been as addicted to sugar as most people. You don't need some idiot guru telling you how to lose weight with a special diet or one weird trick. Just cut out the junk and be active. It ain't rocket science.

The Esteemed Critic Reviews Beverly Hills Cop; Scavenger's Reign; Alan Wake 2

 

Beverly Hills Cop--One of the iconic films of the nineteen-eighties, Beverly Hills Cop features Eddie Murphy at the height of his popularity, playing Axel Foley, a Detroit cop with a penchant for bending the rules. Axel witnesses the murder of one of his old neighborhood buddies, and so he has to travel to Beverly Hills to track down the killer, art dealer, bond hustler, and drug kingpen Victor Maitland, played by Steven Berkoff. Initially at odds with the local police department, Axel's charm is such that he eventually turns them, especially Judge Reinhold and John Ashton's characters, who function as comic relief. Although it's full of quotable lines--"We're not going to fall for a banana in the tailpipe"--Beverly Hills Cop is straighter than say, Rush Hour. Murphy's Axel feels like a street-smart cop, and you'll overlook the rather uncompelling plot to bask in the light of Eddie's comedic banter. Wikipedia states that Beverly Hills Cop was the highest grossing R-rated movie in the US since 1977, which is quite a feat. It's also notable for its rather modest action sequences and car chases, lacking the sort of bombast and million-dollar budget similar flicks would demand. You can make a good movie without breaking the bank, folks. You just need a compelling leading man.

Scavenger's Reign--A hidden gem on Netflix. Any fans of great animation, truly alien worlds, and compelling characters that have actual arcs should watch this immediately. It does have a good amount of body horror, but I haven't been so wowed by a work of visual sci-fi since Annihilation.

Alan Wake 2 is a gorgeous game with remarkable graphics and a unique presentation influenced by the works of David Lynch (namely Twin Peaks) and Chris Carter's The X-Files. You switch between writer Alan Wake, who's been trapped in a parallel universe called the Dark Place for thirteen years, and FBI agent Saga Anderson, who is investigating the sleepy Pacific Northwest town of Bright Falls where Wake disappeared. In the twenty-seven or so hours it takes to complete Alan Wake 2, you'll wander through dense forests, a dilapidated theme park, a grimy alternate version of New York, as well as the small town of Bright Falls itself. The narrative is dense, and Saga must often retreat to her Mind Place, an imagined room where you'll pin photos onto a case board and try to unlock the next bit of the story. Wake, trapped in his looping hell, has the ability to rewrite portions of the story, which usually manifests as toggling environmental changes so that the player can find whatever MacGuffin they need to progress through the level. Both characters are beset by Taken, humans possessed by the Dark Presence, a malevolent entity attempting to escape the Dark Place and wreak havoc in the real world. To fight Taken, you'll have to burn off their darkness with a flashlight and then shoot them like you would in any other modern survival horror game. To say that Alan Wake 2's gameplay owes a debut to the recent Resident Evil games would be putting it lightly. Like that series, you'll find stashes that'll be locked and usually require a small puzzle to be solved in order to loot. The game is pretty generous with ammo and health, however, and you'll never really feel like you're down to your last bullet. Similarly, although Alan Wake 2 possesses ambience in spades, the horror never really hits home. The Taken are creepy rather than horrifying, and nothing truly grotesque or otherworldly ever crawls out of the shadows, unlike in say, Resident Evil Village (oh god, that mutant baby still gives me nightmares). While the narrative is never quite pretentious, I don't think it's as good as Remedy seems to think it is. We get into Saga and Alan's characters a little, but over the game's overly generous runtime (it starts to drag at about the halfway part) you still don't quite feel as though you know them, which is a shame, because this is a very narratively heavy game, to the point where parts of it feel like a walking simulator. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the overall package: how often do you get to play a game influenced by Twin Peaks? How many song and dance numbers do you get to battle through? But I feel as though Alan Wake 2 needed better gameplay to truly justify its runtime. Control, Remedy's last game (and part of Alan Wake 2's universe) had Jesse's mystical pistol and supernatural powers that really made the combat enjoyable. Whether or not you enjoy Alan Wake 2 will likely depend on your interest/tolerance of weird Lynchian tropes. One final note: Alan Wake 2 is pretty scalable, but the ray-tracing features will require a real top-end card and frame gen. On a 12 gig RTX 3080, I was able to get a steady 60 at 1440p with DLSS enable on the Balanced preset, but I could only turn Transparency (RT reflections) on. Enabling Direct Lighting with Ray Reconstruction brought frame rates down into the 40s in the forest sections. When playing at 4k, I had to lower DLSS to Performance mode and turn off RT effects entirely.

Screenshots:

 

How to Maintain One's Mental Health in the Age of Doomerism

 

Man, 2024 ain't starting out great. We got the Trump versus Biden rematch that no one wanted, a boom in AI that will almost certainly result in massive losses in jobs as shitty computer programs poorly perform the work of real flesh and blood human beings, and heat records are already being set in many places in the world. Right-wing parties are increasing their support in Europe, while wars in Ukraine and Israel still continue. Meanwhile, the world collectively twiddles their thumbs as the climate crisis reaches the tipping point. How does a thinking person maintain their mental health? The future looks grim, doesn't it? Are we lurching toward fascism, with an orange moron at the helm? Will my children grow up in a world where 100 degree summers are the norm? Will AI beget a Terminator scenario, where Skynet wipes out civilization?

I don't know. But you probably shouldn't worry about it.

Thousands of years ago, people had this same problem. Stoic philosopher Epictetus said "Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems." Nothing is gained when you worry about what you cannot control. Although it is hard for me to admit, I can't do anything substantial to stop the climate crisis or the return of Donald Trump. This is not an argument for apathy; I can engage in politics by protesting, donating, and voting. I can support climate advocacy groups and vote for politicians who take global warming seriously. But my actions will have an almost infinitesimal effect on the issues. Such is the nature of life. We like to pretend that we are in control, that we have agency, when so much of our lives are predetermined before we are even born. Your genetics, the wealth of your parents, and the times that you are born into cannot be changed. You simply must do what you can (and you should do what you can; being involved is good for your mental health) and live in the present. I have a loving wife and two wonderful boys. I work for myself in the beautiful Ohio Valley, farming peaches, apples, and pears. My material situation is good and should improve. I live in a spacious, if old, house that still needs some work, but the mortgage is cheap. I have friends whom I enjoy spending time with. I engage in hobbies like writing, music creation, video games, and weightlifting, and I derive great satisfaction from them. In other words, my life is about as good as it can possibly be. It is possible that a lot of people suffering from anxiety have similar lives--if you're food insecure or about to lose your job, then you're probably not wasting time worrying about politics. Although we're in a transitional time period and great strife might lie waiting on the horizon, we still live in absolute comfort and wealth compared to most of human history. The great kings of antiquity didn't have air conditioning or antibiotics; nor could they watch football on their 55 inch 4k televisions. For most of our existence, mankind has lived only in the present, focused on survival. Worrying about existential problems is a luxury we simply haven't had for most of our time on Earth.

The existence of suffering is the first Noble Truth of Buddhism. You will suffer in this life, for we are mortal beings aware of our uniqueness in the world. What you can do is accept that truth and embrace the joys that life brings. Live in the present, do what you can to improve the world, while not failing prey to the disease of apathy. Maybe give the cesspool of the internet a rest while you're at it. Let's see if I can follow my own advice.      

New Music: Sunny Afternoon

 

The Kinks were one of the greatest band in rock 'n' roll history, but I've always felt that they don't have the same reputation as the Beatles or Rolling Stones on this side of the pond. Sunny Afternoon has a music hall vibe and a rich protagonist bemoaning his tax rate, something the Beatles also were concerned about. It's a great pop song, with its memorably sinister descending D minor figure that features a brief bit of chromaticism (C to B to B flat). I do my best to cover it, in the interest of fun. I'd like to do more covers, but there's always the issue of can you make it better or different than the original? Otherwise, why cover a song? (There's that fun thing I mentioned).

The Esteemed Critic Reviews Godzilla Minus One

 

Godzilla Minus One is a Toho (made in Japan) Godzilla movie released in 2023. Unlike the Legendary entries, which have devolved into some sort of Monsterverse shit, Godzilla Minus One is really about post-war trauma rather than watching kaiju smash together. Shikishima is a failed kamikaze pilot racked with survivor's guilt who witnesses a giant dinosaur wipe out an island base in the closing days of World War 2. He attempts to rebuild his life in the ruins, taking on a lost woman named Noriko and an infant named Akiko, but he keeps this surrogate family at a distance, for he is unable to overcome the specter of his cowardice, as well as the deaths he believes it caused. He gets a job as a minesweeper and befriends the crew, and is on the scene when Godzilla emerges, having been created by the Bikini Atoll nuclear testing. Recognizing the same creature that he saw during the war, it soon becomes Shikishima's personal quest to defeat the monster, who is approaching Japan, ostensibly for revenge against the humans who created it. Ryunosuke Kamiki is excellent as Shikishima, portraying him as a good but disturbed man who cannot escape his PTSD. As the losses pile up, Shikishima and his minesweeper buddies concoct a plan to deal with the monster, and the viewer suspects that the protagonist will finally get his release. I won't spoil the ending, but things do not proceed as one suspects; whether the conclusion is appropriately realistic (sort of a weird thing to ask about a kaiju film, right?) I will leave to the viewer. Regardless, Godzilla Minus One is the rare special-effects driven flick that wants the watcher to feel something and to ponder notions of duty, sacrifice, and what it means to really do the right thing. Undoubtedly the best Godzilla film since Shin Godzilla. Watch it on Netflix.

Video Game Review: Hellblade 2; The Esteemed Critic Reviews Starship Troopers

 

Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 is Ninja Theory's sequel to 2017's Hellblade, which focused on Senua, a ninth century Pict warrior on a quest to bring back her dead lover from the Norse underworld. In Hellblade 2, Senua is hellbent(!) on stopping the viking slavers that ransacked her village, and so she becomes enslaved and travels to Iceland. Her ship is destroyed, and soon she discovers that the reason the Vikings are enslaving people is to give them in sacrifice to giants that would otherwise eat them. Senua is a seer, one who can peer behind the veil, and her psychosis is represented by the Fates, voices that you constantly hear in her head, as well as the Darkness, an entity that's a shadow of her abusive father. It's all very well done, and the rocky desolation of Iceland is evocative of Dave Egger's The Norseman. This is a violent, horrific tale, but there's redemption in the end, and Senua is more than a sword-wielding heroine. In fact, Hellblade 2 is less of a game than an interactive movie. You'll engage in limited combat against only one enemy at a time, as well as solve puzzles that are usually just a symbol-hunt or a simple reorganization of the environment. However, the presentation is impressive, and Unreal Engine 5's full feature set is utilized, resulting in gorgeous environments that you'll be eager to explore, even in a limited fashion. It's only about an eight-hour trip through Hellblade 2, but if you're a subscriber to Game Pass, it's worth the journey. Just don't expect something like God of War.

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 Hey, that's not Hellblade 2!

Starship Troopers is a 1997 sci-fi flick by Paul Verhoeven, director of Robocop and Total Recall. Technically a loose adaptation of Robert Heinlein's novel, the movie is a parody of fascist wartime propaganda. Although it flopped upon release, it holds up pretty well in 2024. Starship Troopers' chiseled heroes and heroines (Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards, mainly) aren't so much real people as they are props meant to represent Americans in their vapidity and uncritical consumption of propaganda. Soldiers are brutally maimed and ripped-apart, but Van Dein's Rico doesn't shed a tear or have a moment of self-doubt. He and his fellow Mobile Infantry soldiers are glad to give their lives away without any thought, and their general mood is a chummy frat-house comradery that's psychopathic in its stupidity. Verhoeven really didn't think much of America, and while the faux-patriotism of the Bush years is long gone, the fascist propaganda has only increased. Let's just hope we don't all get sacrificed in the coming years in some mindless conflict that could've been avoided, had Americans only possessed a shred of analytical ability. Critic out.