Friday, April 30, 2021

New Video: Boys Don't Cry

 

 

Man, the Cure was/is a great band. The live incarnation of TPM used to play this at Knockbacks bar on Seventh Street in Cincinnati. This is just me and an acoustic guitar.

 

Sunday, April 25, 2021

Weightlifting: Building the Monolith: Week 4 Observations

 

Four weeks in, Building the Monolith ain't too bad. I've had a couple set back--got a terrible head cold that lasted over a week, which led to my separating the assistance work from the first workout and then doing workout 1 and workout 2 two days in a row--but I'm powering through and I've gained about two pounds or so of muscle, which ain't bad considering I'm not following the recommended diet.

What I've learned

Keep to the suggested percentages excepting the deadlift. I thought I'd jack up my deadlift working max considerably on week 4, because the 360 lbs max I started with is lower than 85 percent. Well, I just bumped it up to 370 and went about my business, because doing five sets of five deadlifts after seven sets of five bench presses and 100 curls and rows sucks. I can pull 480 any day of the week, if not 500, and 85 percent of 480 is 408, not 370. However, the deadlift is a different beast from other lifts, and while I don't really believe that it affects the CNS in some magical way, it does drain your resolve to live if you beat yourself up with volume. Given the ridiculous back work in this program, I think it's fine to err on the side of caution and go a little lighter than 85 percent (370 is 77 percent of 480). This is a bodybuilding program, after all.

Separating the assistance work ain't a bad idea if you're low on energy or time. Due to one hell of a head cold, this last week as been a bitch to get through. I do the first workout on Thursday, but I had to watch my kids, and I just didn't have the energy to do seven sets of squats at 90 percent. So instead, while they were at the playground, I did 75 pullups (still working up to 100) and 140 pushups. That night I did the facepulls and added some curls. This made doing the first workout on Friday a lot more reasonable. I do the assistance work in between sets, so I'm often gasping for breath. While the cardiovascular benefits of that approach are great, working out while sick sucks. The first workout takes the longest for me, so I may start separating the assistance for the last three weeks.

Eat more but the diet is unrealistic for anybody not twenty years old. As a thirty-five year old man, I'm not going to be scarfing down double cheeseburgers and twelve eggs like I'm trying to become a lineman. I have eaten more, but I've taken a more sustainable approach to weight gaining rather than see food, eat food. Of course the people who actually do the diet are going to get more out of this program. If you want to gain twenty pounds of mostly muscle, then by all means, listen to Wendler, he knows best. I'm thinking about longevity and overall health at this point in my life. Your goals might be different.

 

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

My Pile of Shame

 

I've seen a lot of posts on the net recently about managing one's video game backlog, or "pile of shame." The backlog is a result of a consumer culture, where one lives in perpetual fear of missing the next big thing and so purchases commodities that they will never enjoy or even experience. People are addicted to buying shit; gamers in particular, it would seem, probably because almost all video games now are digital downloads, and it's a lot easier to click on a Humble Indie Bundle than it is to drive down to the ol' Gamestop and plop sixty bucks down on a Blu-ray. My PC that I built last year doesn't even have a disk drive. The last game I bought on disk was Dishonored 2, and I still had to download the damn game off of Steam. So I decided to look at my own Steam list and see what games I had purchased but never played, in the interest of accessing my own backlog, and whether I too have the money-burning disease.

What I learned

1. I have almost no unplayed games. Not to toot my own horn, but if you define a backlog as games you've purchased but never played, then I have nothing that fits that criteria other than separate multiplayer modes to otherwise mostly single player games, such as Resident Evil Resistance. There are a couple of Quake expansion packs I've never played, Fallout 2 (I really should get on that), Fallout Tactics, and a bunch of games I've actually played, just so long ago that Steam doesn't remember, such as Portal and various Half-Life spinoffs. So yeah, that's good, right?

2. I have 13 games that I've played under two hours. Well that's not as good. Some of these are titles that I just bounced off of and never came back to, such as Monster Hunter: World (which came free with my graphics card, so it probably shouldn't count) and FTL: Faster Than Light. There was awhile there where I would buy popular indie titles just to try them out, even though I knew they weren't my jam, such as Super Meat Boy (not much of a platformer fan) and Crusader Kings 2 (everyone else loved it; I couldn't figure out how to play). Still, there's nothing there that I spent sixty bucks on, and I've since stopped buying games that I likely won't like. X Box Game Pass for PC is perfect for the dabbler and is a much better option than blowing cash during Steam sales.

3. There are still some games that I'd like to finish. I've spent 3.3 hours playing 2016's Hitman, and I remember enjoying those hours, yet for some reason I moved on to another game and never came back. Similarly, Dragon Age: Inquisition has taken up 3.2 hours of my life, and it was alright, yet I balked at the time commitment a massive RPG requires. I haven't even played LA Noir for an hour, yet it has a really cool setting and concept. Fallout and Fallout 2 are classics that I've hardly touched. I should probably at least give these games another shot before plopping down sixty bucks for another title.

4. You shouldn't feel the need to complete every title you buy; yet you probably should play a game a while before you buy another one. People can do what they want with their money; however, you have to come to terms with the fact that your time is limited and you will never play every video game, watch every movie, read every book, listen to every piece of music, etc. I don't want to spend time figuring out how to play Crusader Kings 2, and that's fine. I'm not much of a strategy gamer. Even games in genres I like, such as the Outer Worlds, I don't feel particularly compelled to finish, even after 18 hours. I think it's fine that I never beat Divinity 2, even though it's one of my most played games.

So in conclusion, I don't have much of a backlog problem, which I knew already. What a fine internet man I am. Stay away from those Steam sales, people. You won't play half of what you buy.  

Friday, April 9, 2021

Weightlifting: Building the Monolith

 

I've been wanting to tackle Building the Monolith for some time; however, my dislike of 5/3/1 as well as the volume crammed into each workout made me rather hesitant. How do I get all that shit done in an hour was my thinking, yet after a week on the program, I don't think it's really that bad. Admittedly, my training maxes are around the 85 percent that Wendler recommends, so the weights aren't that heavy. The most challenging part, I think, will be the diet. I usually eat around a pound of meat a day--twelve eggs is a different story. I've been averaging around eight a day, which isn't Gaston level, but that motherfucker was as big as a barn, which is the point, right? I've been wanting to get back to around the 200 lbs level, as opposed to the 193-194 I'm hovering at now. Anyways, let's get into the nitty-gritty of this thing.

Changes made

This wouldn't be an internet weightlifting program review without fucking the whole thing up with a bunch of needless changes, would it? The biggest change I implemented was box squats instead of free squats. My hips are messed up, but they've been fine since I started doing box squats and pin squats. The lateral shift I do when the weights get heavy can be controlled with box squats, and since I don't give a shit about my powerlifting numbers, box squats it is. I also switched dips for pushups because my right shoulder is a bitch. I don't have a good way to do weighted pull ups, so I'm doing pull downs. Everything else I kept the same.

Training Maxes

Squat-350

Press-150

Bench Press-255

Deadlift-360

So these are all in the 85 percent range with the exception of the deadlift. I've only been doing singles for deadlifts, so I thought I'd build my way back up instead of rushing headlong into madness. You adjust your training max during the fourth week, so I'll probably bump the deadlift up considerably.

Days (click here for percentages and details)

Day one is the heavy squat day, with 7 sets of 5, followed by 3 sets of 5 in the Press, with an additional set done with as many reps as possible. The assistance work is done in between sets of the main work; that's the only way you'll get this done in an hour.


Day two: Deads for 5 sets of 5, followed by 7 sets of 5 Bench press, with rows and curls done as assistance. This day is heavy on the upper back--I don't see how you can't get a Gaston-sized lat spread from this program.

Day three: 3 sets of 5 squats, followed by a set of 20; then 10 sets of 5 Press, with weighted pull ups (pull downs in my case). Not as bad as I thought, but the set of 20 only starts out with 45 percent. It'll be up to 70 by the end of the program.

Conclusion

Yet to be seen. Probably depends on how many eggs I manage to cram down my gullet. Wish me luck, folks.

 

 

Thursday, April 8, 2021

New Video: Theme from a Tragedy

Put this together years ago when I was working on ambient/electronic music. The tune always struck me as something that would air during a particularly dismal scene. For all the songs I wrote during this period, I used a layered approach where an initial theme is compounded by increasing layers of complexity. This is a common approach in electronic music, where you can have a motif looping throughout a song very easily, and things like tempo changes are a little harder to pull off without the benefit of a live drummer as opposed to a drum machine. I enjoyed making all of these songs, which I tentatively put in a folder called "Winter Trees" but I've yet to return to making similar songs, preferring my garage rock niche. That being said, I find myself listening to ambient music very often these days. We'll see where TPM goes in the future.

Sunday, April 4, 2021

Writer's Block: The Coming of Spring

 

Cold mornings awaken

To warm afternoons

Spent in the tops of trees

And down below

Pulling the prunings

Out of the rows

 

We wait for the bees

To give us labor

We pray for the frosts

To leave us fruit

We soak in the light

As it is given

 

I start the spring

Hidden from the sun

Hat on head

Arms covered in sleeves

Gloves hiding hands

Legs in sundered jeans

 

We are all ready

To leave death behind

The birth of a season

Brings new purpose

Fears vanishing

With the freshness of hope

 

 

New Music: Firefly

  A twelve-year old song that I wrote in Cincinnati. I don't believe it was ever played live, which is a shame, since it's a nice li...