Archives for February 2011

Before I get to the "book deal," a quick word about Facebook. I get a lot of friend requests from readers but I must ignore them all. As my about page states: "Please note that I do not accept Facebook Friend requests from anyone who is not a current or past in-person friend or a family member." I’m not trying to be mean. I can be engaged in comments and I answer emails when I have the time. But Facebook is intended as a personal space for me with my family, physical world friends and a select few virtual world friends I’ve had for years and years. Please understand, and no begging to make an exception, please (as I’ve been subjected to a few times).  Also, there is a Facebook Page for the blog. Onward.

So, yes, I have "book deal;" that is, I’ve made a deal with myself to self-publish my book and work has begun in earnest on all fronts. So, the book is pretty much planned out, cover to cover, and I have made a number of competent & successful contacts in terms of consulting, editing, design, proofreading and distribution into the brick & mortar and online booksellers.

It will be a hardcover, professionally done in all respects. And while I know a lot of published authors (including in the non-paleo world) and have many ways to be introduced to agents in order to seek a conventional deal, I also have an understanding of the economics of publishing and what authors really make for their efforts. Essentially, unless you’re Black Swan lucky, you’re pretty much destined to earn minimum wage. Read up sometime on Tim Ferriss’ marketing efforts for 4-Hr Workweek, on his blog. Essentially, he had to do most of the work, not only to write the book, but market it. My point is, if I’m going to have to market it myself, which I have to do either way, why settle for a couple of bucks per copy on a $25 hardcover?

Plus, I have the wherewithal to finance the up-front costs of production and printing.

Moreover, far from being afraid, I’m elated. It’s a challenge I’m up to and am very confident that I have a far higher chance of big success through self-publishing, since my reward for success will be immeasurably greater. And besides, self-publishing is the wave of the future.

And oh, one other thing: I don’t have to put up with milquetoast editors and a publisher that wants to tone down my invective, dumb down the message, or run in fear of lawsuits. Screw that. When my book comes out, every single word will be just as I want.

So why the sudden surge now, when I’ve been talking about it for a long time? Enlightenment. I recently got a piece of advice from someone in the know (familiar with my blog), that I definitely ought not write another how-to paleo diet, fitness and health book. That that should be only one aspect of it in the larger context of Free the Animal. So, it’s going to be part telling the story and laying the basis for an evolutionary outlook to everything: society, culture, politics, public policy, and yes…religion.

Or, to put it another way: nothing is safe.

This opens a whole new realm, as I have posts on politics, culture and religion going back to 2003 for reference. While this book most definitely will not be a compilation of blog posts, there will be a few dozen included in the book, all tied together with a narrative, a story.

So, here’s the plan:

1. I’m concurrently writing a "Quick Start Guide" (~ 10 pages) on paleo practices primarily for new visitors to this blog. This will be available for free download within a couple of weeks, in exchange for an email address.
2. I’m also concurrently writing a more detailed How-To-Manual (~100 pages) on paleo practices as an eBook download for purchase. This will be available in a couple of months. The paleo section of the hardcopy book will be more story than How-To.
3. I am currently working on the TOC and sub-chapters, with a lede for each chapter.
4. It should then take about a month to go through the 2,800 posts to find the few dozen for inclusion in the book.
5. Then, 2-3 months to rough draft the narrative that ties it altogether.
6. Goal for completion of the initial draft: July 1, 2011
7. From there, I will strive to have it on bookshelves by the holiday season

I will hold myself accountable by giving a progress update at least once per month, so expect the next one by April 1. Please encourage me to meet these milestones, on time. That’s why I’m posting this: accountability.

In the end, I think I will have met two goals. I do want to have a book that gives good detail on how to do paleo. I just didn’t want to write a major work on it, scour for scientific reference, go bug-eyed reading studies, and so forth. I just want a simple, practical, easy to implement guide with my take and style thrown in.

The second goal is to write a book that old-hand Paleos and longtime readers of this blog just might be interested in reading, because it will go far, far beyond paleo, into areas of self-discovery, success, failure, disappointment, and enlightenment.

The title will be, of course, Free the Animal. I should have a half dozen or so subtitles by my next update and perhaps you all can help me decide which hits nerves best.

Onward.

Addendum: It occurred to me that I left out an important detail. The writing style will be decidedly misanthropic. But I suppose you’d have guessed that anyway. The twist is, it’s not misanthropy directed at man qua man, but toward authoritarian aspects in all facets of what’s ironically referred to as "civilization."

A mixed bag of dishonesty and fraud

You’ve seen me poke fun at the monkey enviers before — though monkeys don’t have bananas delivered by the truckload — and this shall be no exception.

So one of the Vegan Menace shitheads (Durianrider of the 30 Bananas a Day crowd) goes and does just what you’d expect any shithead to do: takes a page from the dying, mainstream media playbook and does a hit piece on various well-known low-carb and Paleo diet advocates. It’s 22 minutes of pretty much pure rubbish.

Turns out, surprise surprise, that not everyone out there maintains a body fat percentage in the single digits. Of course, he picks & chooses "carefully" (that is, to support what I call lying by context). For instance, while the subject matter is "paleo," he includes a mixed bag of photos of various authorities in the field of diet and only one of them is actually a paleo advocate, Loren Cordain. The others are various low-carb, WAPF, and Zone advocates. And frankly, while I have always maintained that Cordain is a hero to the movement, his saturated fat phobia is very unpopular amongst most Paleos I know. The underlying dishonest and manipulative device is that he’s "exposing" paleo as something that will "make you fat" because the folks pictured aren’t ripped, instead sporting what could be considered average body composition for healthy men & women (~15-20% and 20-25% BF, respectively) who aren’t concerned with being ripped & shredded.

And while he does mention Mark Sisson of Mark’s Daily Apple and Sean Croxton of Underground Wellness, he includes no photo of Sisson and chooses a photo of Sean’s head only, drinking a beer. I found this photo of Sean in about 5 seconds.

Sean Croxton

Here’s Sean’s take on the affair from his blog. An excerpt:

As usual, he cherry-picked his “overweight low-carb/Paleo” pictures and left out guys like Robb Wolf, Mark Sisson, Art Devany, and myself, who can certainly get our Chippendale on if we really wanted to. He even went so far as to leave a comment (posted below) accusing Mark of using HGH and Art of using steroids. This is utterly ridiculous and defamatory, in my opinion. It’s as if all fit meat eaters over 50 are juicing (and not the kind with the fruits and veggies).

And just go to MDA to see many photos of a ripped, washboard abs Mark Sisson. And how about all the various Crossfit websites all over the net, most of which have photos of clients? Where are the photos of those paleo adherents?

So that was the first part. The second part involves criticizing these folks (primarily Sisson) for their lack of "dietary purity," i.e., for incorporating things like coffee, wine, dark chocolate, protein powder, canned sardines, fish oil caps, etc. Well, individually, anyone can take paleo as pure as they’d like and a lot go pretty pure. I commend them on their individual choice, approach and ultimately success in finding what works for them, combined with the level of commitment they’re individually comfortable with. After all, in self-experimenting and seeing the results in themselves — results as are demonstrated continually on my Real Results pages and Sisson’s Success Stories pages — they have become authorities in themselves and on themselves. How it is that some vegan shithead knows what’s best for them?

Now, I happen to be an FOS (friend of Sisson). We’ve spoken on the phone many times about this whole paleo / Primal thingy and so I know first hand what Mark is up to: maximum inclusiveness. He knows very well that in promoting his 80/20 rule (80% compliant, 20% a mixed bag of non-paleo/primal or "cheats") that he casts the widest possible net for those who are simply never going to make it if all they can do is source local grassfed and pastured animal products, local organic vegetables & fruits, exclude all dairy, and drink only water. Hats off to anyone who makes those choices for themselves and it may even be optimal for most to go that way, but I for one think that every percentage point of purity one strives for above 80-90% compliance ushers in increasing levels of diminishing returns.

Face it, if you’re going to operate a paleo blog or consult clients and insist that supermarket meat is "poison," that a trip to Mc Donald’s now and then is going to kill you after it makes you very sick, you are going to have a very small audience. Fine, if that’s what you want, but then please don’t even imply that you are anywhere near as valuable to the general movement as a Mark Sisson. It’s simply not true in any context.

But we shouldn’t expect anything different from the vegan Menace. After all, the dietary part of it is only a front for the underlying ideology which, to sum it up, is essentially the hating of humanity for being human.

Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn.

To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living.

Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The body, these waterheads imagine, is a temple that should not be polluted by animal protein. It’s healthier, they insist, though every vegetarian waiter I’ve worked with is brought down by any rumor of a cold. 

— Anthony Bourdain

The final part of this video takes dishonesty and manipulation in the other direction by showing various pictures of various "vegan" athletes with various degrees of impressive body composition. The thing is, I simply don’t believe it. If they’re claiming they got that way on a pure raw vegan diet, they’re lying. In manny photos, the lean mass pictured is simply impossible on a diet consisting primarily of fruit, as this particular sect of the vegan Menace advocates. Whether they’re getting the high protein needed for that level of lean mass from various powders or sneaking meat and other animal products when no one is looking I don’t know, but they’re getting it somehow.

Here’s the deal. It’s pretty hard to take a ripped and strong paleo and say, "yea, but you got that lean mass and strength from sneaking Mc Donald’s, pizza and Hot Pockets." It’s not necessary. Nor would it make any sense to say, "well, obviously, you’re a raw vegan and are lying about it. You can’t be eating lots of meat." But because of the profoundly unnatural way the vegan catechism works, the inverse does not hold true at all. It’s very easy for these ripped guys with substantial lean mass to claim they’re vegan (popularity mongers) and then chow down on meat & whey powder in the privacy of their own homes for even more popularity and guru status, especially for their primary prey: impressionable, irrationally exuberant young women with shriveled brian mass.

…Closet meat eaters. It makes a big difference.

At any rate, here’s the vegan body compositions not shown on the video, to come full circle on the dishonest manipulation and scam of the thing, for the benefit of shriveled brains that just can’t know any better. Click for the full size version.

Vegan Stick Figure People

Many of you might recall where these clips came from when I poked fun at vegan elitists back here.

In the end, this is about dishonesty, manipulation, and downright fraud for the purpose of promoting an anti-human ideology. First you have their bullshit, easily exposed lies about how the human digestive tract is herbivorous, that meat rots in the gut, that we don’t have killing weapons as carnivores do (we have big brains; that’s our killing weapon, dumbshits), that vegan B12 deficiency doesn’t exist and is of no concern, and on and on. And even when they do acknowledge evolution as having some authority in the diet, it is to highlight various primates. Depending on which particular species of primate you’re talking about, divergence into hominoids happened from about 5-30 million years ago.

Paleos, on the other hand, are focussed on what happened once hominoids emerged and what drove that emergence. Most likely, it was the scavenging of carnivore kills. That is, just as we observe chimps killing and eating smaller primates today (and sometimes their own species) and using tools like sticks to dig and rocks to crush, these same crushing methods were probably used to get at the big-bone marrow and high-fat brains inside skulls…and the rest is history. Once these primates were able to access highly dense nutrition, a metabolically costly big gut became less and less necessary while a big brain became increasingly advantageous. So, to balance this out metabolically, according to both Kleiber’s Law and The Expensive Tissue Hypothesis, our primate ancestors’ guts shrank over millions of years and their brains grew such that hominoids emerged. Moreover, modern humans have the exact same metabolic rate, pound for pound, as any primate ancestor, but with inverse metabolic costs associated with guts and brains. Only evolution can account for this and only by the increasing access to high density animal nutrition — first from scavenging and eventually, cunning brains that could hunt, trap, and kill prey and then finally, cooking to extract even more nutrition from less food.

Simply stated, no longer did we need to sit about eating fucking bananas all day long. Durianrider in that video above boasts of eating up to 70 bananas a day (30 just isn’t enough, I guess). Now think about that. Assume he sleeps only an average of 6 hours per night, leaving 18. That means that during that time, he has to eat 4 bananas an hour, or one every 15 minutes — for 18 hours.

…Well, I told you he’s a dumbshit. He could get far more nutrition in two 15-30 minute sessions per day on good helpings of meat, fish and vegetables. Hey, go ahead and toss in a banana or two per day and leave the other 68 bananas for the 5-30 million year old evolutionary ancestors.

In the end, this is just pitiful. It’s so unscientific; hell, anti-scientific — to go right along with the anti-humanity. These people or, perhaps more accurately, retro-humans — WAY retro — must be feeling the pinch of the totally sensible and successful paleo movement. Hell, even Dr. Oz gets it mostly right. You’ve come a long way, baby!

Update: Here’s a short video of stick-figure-man, Durianrider himself, getting his monkey on and no, I don’t mean masturbating in public. So, it’s work safe.

Alright, now go get on those Facebook and Twitter buttons at the top and get to ruffling feathers partout!

Bacon Eggs

Doesn’t get much simpler than that (click for the hi-res version). Since there’s no bread I recommend having a spoon on hand if you don’t lick those pastured yolks off the plate, as I do.

That’s very flattering, and a nice post. And yea, I’m well aware that I’m the bad guy for some, or many. I’ve also yet to see a single of my detractors accomplish much of anything in spreading the word. I, on the other hand, had 184,000 visits and 340,000 page views to my blog last month.

So it’s really funny when people tell me I’m a disservice to the paleo / LC community with stats like this, and having started some years ago with visits at about 10,000 visits per month.

So, based on my experience, I’m the one who knows what the eff I’m doing and all the nattering nabobs of negativity haven’t an effing clue, and they all know exactly what they can do about that in terms of self-fornication.

Of course, I rarely ever talk about this because those people are just "pips." All they ever "contribute" are complaints about the way I, Sisson, De Vany or others do things to advance the paleo message in ways we have found and proven to be successful, while the hand-wringing pips do absolutely nothing but bitch & moan; they never did anything, haven’t produced anything ever in this area, and never will amount to a runny shit.

My comment, here, slightly edited. Additional history here and here.

Addendum: I neglected to mention that Steve Cooksey, the author of that post about moi in the first link told his story of his experience with diabetes and the Two ADAs back here.

Perhaps it can, if that’s part of the cause

I did’t expect to do another self-indulgent post on my neck & shoulder troubles. So I’m doing this because I think it might be my last or second to last post, once I report full recovery — and just as importantly, might give a clue as to a course for others suffering from chronic, agonizing pain.

I first let the cat outta the bag back here. And then my friend and MD radiologist with specialization in neuroradiology (spine & shit), Dr. Kurt Harris of PaNu commented thusly:

Very sorry to hear about your shoulder girdle pain. Are you under any (perhaps unacknowledged) stress lately? I am a big believer in John Sarno’s conception of TMS. I actually have a quite a lot of clinical experience with this. One clue which many are amazed to hear is that psychogenic or psychosomatic pain is often WORSE than that associated with cervical herniated discs, fractures or tumors!

Your comment “sharp, agonizing pain that had me fantasizing about either cutting off my own arm, or having a .40 caliber for dinner” is typical in patients with TMS type pain.

While I didn’t brush it off entirely, I was under the "sound obvious conclusion" that the cause was simple: I’d been lifting more weight (at 50-yrs-old) than ever before in my life, by a large margin. I overdid it (and in fact, the condition first manifested most prominently at the gym), injured my rotator cuff, and now I have to pay the price.

The thing is — and I didn’t really take stock at the time — but I was already a good month or more into the pain by this point and it just was not improving, but seemingly getting worse. My wife saw Kurt’s comment and would regularly look at me and say: "TMS." Perhaps she knows me better than I know myself or care to acknowledge. We’ll see. At any rate, it simply struck me, at a glance, as a little woo woo and magical.

Fast forward a few weeks and I posted this: This is One Big Ass Pain in the Neck! Here, I revealed that what I had learned in the interim is that I actually had no shoulder injury, which counted as my first error in assigning a cause. From there, MRI results are in, and it’s a narrowing of the spinal canal in my neck as well as narrowing of the nerve root at C5/6. Yesterday at my spinal consult the doctor called it a "pinched nerve." I’m not up on the technical lingo and whether that implies any sort of stenosis or herniation of the disk, I don’t know. What I saw on the MRI myself on the side view was a protrusion about 1/4" in diameter by about 1/32" to 1/16" into the spinal canal. A pimple. The top down cross sectional was more difficult to understand, for me, but apparently, the nerve root is crowded or pinched by the disk protrusion.

So what caused this? Is the disk protrusion causing the pain, or is it a consequence of the pain? Or is it a coincidence altogether?

Actually, I have no idea and the information I have gathered suggests that many or most disk herniations present without symptom. kurt harris in an email told me that half the MRIs he looks at for people of my age have disc herniations and there are no symptoms.

Are we looking for a convenient cause? And when surgery repairs the disk, is that surgical repair the real cause of the amelioration of the pain? Or, does the event of having a surgery and associated expectation invoke another effect altogether? I suspect that both structural repair, especially egregious, does a lot of good and that there are also cases where surgery is expected to improve things, setting the mind at ease and in comfort, and voila: success.

Hmmm, live long enough and become increasingly uncertain of what you think you know.

Alright, some of the foregoing and most of what remains is speculation on my part — it’s a bit of a game; like, when you go to see a movie and because it’s crafted after a formula, you know how it ends but want to see it anyway. In this case, the formula — at least to me — is revealed on page one of the introduction of the book I’m going to discuss.

An article in Forbes magazine in August 1986 reported that $56 billion are spent annually to deal with the consequences of this ubiquitous [emphasis mine] medical disorder. It is the first cause of worker absenteeism in this country and ranks second behind respiratory infection as a reason for a doctor visit.

All this happened in the past thirty years. Why? After a few million years of evolution, has the American back suddenly become incompetent? Why are so many people prone to back injury? And why has the medical profession proven so helpless to stem the epidemic?

Well, even if you’re only a casual reader of this and other "paleo" oriented blogs you will clearly recognize: thems are fightin’ words — in a good sense, of course. Perhaps we’re dealing with something beyond pure diet but that still holds deep evolutionary context? Did our paleolithic ancestors have to get the kids to ballet and soccer, all in one afternoon? Did they own a dozen rental properties, or a business with employees? Did they have a concept of unemployment? What, like the jungle disappears?

So I only read the first three pages or so of the book intro and had one of my best nights of sleep in weeks. I had a staunch conviction I was onto something and to some extent the pain, still present to some extent, had lost a lot of its power to invoke anxiety, perpetuating the cycle and downward spiral of chronic pain.

…I didn’t take this whole event seriously until about 2-3 weeks in. It was a shoulder injury. I took nothing for it, save some ibuprofen when I might wake up in the middle of the night with pain. It would go away on its own, as has every ailment I’ve ever known counting 50 years of life on Earth. And then, weeks later, I found that drugs like Vicodin and Percocet didn’t even touch the pain. Might as well drink water.

And oh, yea, sorry. You want to know: what book? Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection. That’s by John E. Sarnos, MD. He’s been working at this since only about 1965 at the New York University of Medicine. Feel free to dismiss.

Fast forward; to my best night of sleep in weeks. I still had to get up almost every couple of hours and move around for a few minutes to loosen up (1:30, then 3:30, but then lasted to 6:30 for 3 hours in the final round). But while the pain upon getting up is usually the worst and takes hours to resolve, and then gradually over the course of the day until time to hit the torture chamber once again (bed), this was mostly gone in a few minutes. Bea left, the maids were not due to arrive for another 2 hours, so I decided to read Sarno for a good 30-45 minutes; but really read, integrate. Think hard.

And as I went through the rest of the introduction and got to about page 20, I could literally feel the pain somewhat "melting away" while at the same time, experienced transient tinges as if to ask, are you sure?

Let me cut to the chase. This book immediately raises the possibility that my status in life, my circumstances recently, and the way I have dealt or haven’t dealt with them may be the real, fundamental cause of my chronic pain.

I have never seen a patient with pain in the neck, shoulders, back or buttocks who didn’t believe that the pain was due to an injury, a "hurt" brought on by some physical activity. "I hurt myself while running (playing basketball, tennis, bowling)." "The pain started after I lifted my little girl" or "when I tried to open a stuck window." "Ten years ago I was involved in a hit-from-behind auto accident and I have had recurrent back pain ever since."

The idea that pain means injury or damage is deeply ingrained in the American consciousness. Of course, if the pain starts while one is engaged in a physical activity it’s difficult not to attribute the pain to the activity (as we shall see later, that is often deceiving). But this pervasive concept of of the vulnerability of the back, of ease of injury, is nothing less than a medical catastrophe for the American public, which now has an army of semidisabled men and women whose lives are significantly restricted by the fear of doing further damage or bringing on the dreaded pain again. One often hears, "I’m afraid of hurting myself again so I’m going to be very careful of what I do."

And wow, the very first page of chapter one set a stage for me. If you’ve never experienced any of the foregoing, you’ve heard it a million times from others. And without getting too deeply into the reading, here’s other tidbits that hit me like bolts of lightning. Rather than spend time typing quotes, I’ll bullet; which is, admittedly, not like bolts of lightning.

• Common "growing pains" in children are unexplained but resemble sciatica in adults.
• The mind can command a physical reaction over an emotional one. I.e., if you can weep uncontrollably, why can’t you feel physical pain uncontrollably?
• In a study, 77% of patients for these types of conditions were 30-60 years of age. Only 7% were in their 60s and only 4% in their 70s. If these sorts of maladies are the result of general degeneration and aging, how to explain that? Interesting that the lion’s share of injury takes place during the average stressful, productive years of one’s life.

So here’s how I think it ends, and here’s where I also ask for commenters to chip in. Holy Jesus Facetious did I ever strike it rich with the best commenters in the paleosphere. Just look at that. So many avenues to pursue. I feel deeply fortunate and thank you all for the many insights, suggestions and well wishes (and the emails too). Do know that the high traffic of this blog means that when you give a few minutes of your time like that to share, you are probably helping many people who really need the benefit of your experience. It’s a huge part of why I do this.

…Yes, I have endured various and many faceted stresses in the last few years. Without a total airing of dirty laundry: much money lost in the markets, decided to "strategically" dump a number of rental properties either to foreclosure or short sale; and I had to personally attend to my company and primary source of income after being absent for some years. Once I dug back in there, I realized I should have gone back a few years ago; which caused tremendous anger, directed primarily at myself. …And some anger that would justly be directed at others, potentially repressed and unexpressed explicitly, due to sensitive circumstances. And so maybe, the rage often expressed on this blog just didn’t make up for that.

So what caused my pain? Lifting weights, or my mind? I didn’t ever cry my heart out, I really didn’t. Maybe I should have. Or, maybe I should have laughed at it. maybe I should have said to myself that so long as I have my Beatrice, two doggies, my guns & ammo, I’ll be totally fine even living in a tent.

…And so I sat there; reading, laughing. I laughed & laughed as pain drained. I gathered my stuff and went off to my office with a certain resolve and anticipation and not dread…not the dread that had made me stay home and do minimal work remotely, most days recently. Many dark, very dark days.

And then, I stopped. It was nearly at the top of the 2nd flight of stairs at the office building. I realized I just bounded up them and had a smile on my face the whole way. And I laughed. And I kept laughing.

The thing is, as I see it, faking it will not work. The first step is to totally dismiss the fear and anxiety of your pain. The rest is automatic. Once you’ve done that, you can’t help but laugh.

Alright folks, as I said, I wanted to see if I could guess how the book ends and so Sarno fans, jump in and tell me where I’m wrong, right, or misguided. And get your Facebook and Twitter folks to chip in with the buttons, above. You might really help a friend or loved one.

Wherein, you decide who’s the Alien

~ Employee calls in with Monday Sickness for the 2nd time in about 3 weeks. What’s that? If you’ve ever been an employer you know what I mean.

~ I head off to my Sick Care provider ’round 10 or 11 AM. Though I’ve been there many times recently, parking is unobtainable almost anywhere; even, at the top level of the garage. I imagine it’s Monday Sickness all around.

~ When I do finally find parking and head in, the place is packed wall to wall. Almost exclusively it’s people with apparent metabolic syndrome, perhaps better than half morbidly and grossly obese. I stop to have a "moment of humanity," to reflect at how much I can’t wait for universal, single payer "healthcare" to become a reality so that I can begin to chip in for their costs. Cough.

~ I saw one or two lean individuals with things like plaster casts or braces on their arms or legs — as though their condition is a result of some misguided and unadvised misfortune on some athletic field or something. Serve’s ’em right. Fuck ’em. It’s the middle aisle supermarket jockey’s I’m all about, today.

~ I head in to get X-Ray and MRI images on DVD of my neck/shoulder for review by various entities outside the Glorious Safety Net that, due my dickheaded shortcomings, I don’t unquestionably trust with my life or mobility. Maria Maria (as she calls herself) is out. The folks in records department tell me she’s out to lunch. Metaphor?

~ Sos I go over to Harry’s Haufbrau to get lunch super heavy on pastrami for my brother & family who are moving into a super cool old house with big yard all around on an old orchard homestead smack dab in the middle of a newish townhomes development. When I place my order, dumbfuck old guy behind me pleads that he’s just one, and can he go ahead? "Yea, OK, sure man; but I’d have never asked that." He goes ahead anyway, in spite of the rebuke. WhaddamI, gonna starve in the next 5 minutes? I drop off lunch and have a good time heckling for a few hours.

~ Head back to Sick Care Provider and Maria Maria to discover she’s still out to lunch. Or, is it that really, she was out for the day with Monday Sickness, as I’m now finally informed.

~ I come home and engage in out-of-context sanity whilst reviewing email, Twitter, chewing on blog post ideas. Walking and raw feeding the dogs. But not before a hellish drive plagued by people who learned to drive only today.

~ And while I made reservations to take the Valentine out to dinner for the first time on this occasion since I can remember, I forgot to get the flowers. Go. Perhaps I should get a card, too? Nothing remotely says what I would say. Blank card? Don’t like the pictures or drawings or cartoons, either. Square peg. Round hole. It’s just flowers, love.

~ I get tulips in a pot with dirt that won’t rot in three days. Perhaps she’ll smile this spring when they’re still lovely.

~ We head out at ’round 7pm for California Cafe in Los Gatos. Restaurant pretty packed for a Monday. They have a Valentines menu. Most tables are for two. How lovely. It’s a Valentines menu (did I write that already?). What joy. After 10 minutes or so at table without so much as a whiff of an overworked server with a minor in annoying behavior, I head to the bar for drinks.

~ But dinner was good. Really good. The gimmick of the occasion didn’t compromise the quality. Damn!

~ They comp’d us another round of drinks ’cause I had to get the first. Not damn!

~ Perhaps aliens aren’t so bad; or, perhaps it’s not so bad…being an alien.

Are you an alien? have you seen Aliens? So Tell your Facebook Friends and Twitter followers, using those newfangled clickable buttons. You won’t be reported. Promise.

I’ve had this nag for a long time.

Back when I was 20-something and living in Japan, I had visible abs. Not when I showed up — too many pizzas in college saw to that — but gradually, over some months as I ate more and more on the Japanese economy and when at sea and visiting Korea, the Philippines and other places in Southeast Asia, eating the standard food, I dropped weight: got lean.

But was I strong? I dunno; never tested myself. Did I care? Why should I? I was single, made very good money and had a party disposition galavanting in countries were my wages made me a "rich young man."

Do the math.

Among the many comments to my last post, one stood out to me.

so thats leangains for you mr, give me one rep full effort!!! kyaaaaaa!! me? healthy, pain free toned muscles all around, with my crappy bodyweitgh metod of chins, push ups, squats a backpack and a set of dumbbells. ( yes im an ashole) give those muscles a rest!

Leangains is grossly missrepesented, as you can see from my reply. But then, a commenter drew attention to the "toned muscles" bit with a lol and it got me to thinking about the time I was pretty weak, but had "toned muscles."

Well, perhaps I’m old fashioned. I think that if evolution dictated that we men were to be stronger than the female in general, and to such an extent that on average, a man can kill a women with bare hands at will and that women must live their lives under that realization and amazingly decide to bed down with such potential killers; that we, men, ought to take a moment every now and then to thank our fucking lucky stars. Secretly, I think the women have a perception far advanced past our own (but don’t tell anyone, particularly my wife, that I said that).

Please don’t give me the knife or gun in your sleep BS, or the severed penis. That street goes both ways and breasts can be severed with knives. I’m talking about the evolutionary reality of brute, foundational strength.

Clear?

OK, so how come so many 20-something Paleos are content to become weak leans? This is sorta analogous to the skinny fat term that perhaps came from Art de Vany, but is right on.

You know what? I don’t give a runny shit about what 20-something paleo is eating, especially on Twitter for shit’s sake. I don’t even want to get into the inanity I see because it’s just so banal, and it goes on day after day. Yea, I get it: you like fucking avocados. Hey, news flash: when I was a 20 year old I could get 4 avocados for a dollar at the fruit & vegetable stand and I would eat all four at a sitting when I did.

That’s a long way off. It doesn’t matter. No one cares. And if I did it today, I would expect a big yawn in absence of serious effort to construct a complete meal and competently photograph it.

OK, perhaps it was time to call out the 20-somethings, because no one ever does but alas, there is an inherent advantage for leanness in them and I have yet to hear one call that out. Instead, I see some implication that they are paleo Gods because they have abs. Big whoop. But worse, I see that so many are content to sit on their lean laurels while remaining weak, risking not being able to pay back; or, to really strut their stuff as men.

You see, there’s not really a mystery about why women bed down with killers. That’s how evolution designed it and they eagerly snuggle down to their role in the scheme. That means that your ego is well massaged. Your part is to be strong enough and determined enough — and serious strength builds serious determination — that you hold up your end. It serves a smart and capable women to have a natural born killer as a mate. Her job is to tame. Your job it to train.

…Not impressed with the weak-leans. …But keep on those bodyweight "exercises."

Addendum: It quickly became apparent in comments that I may not have been clear enough or distinct enough. The dig on bodyweight exercises is merely an archetypical reference, not a dig on bodyweight or really any form of exercise per se, so long as one’s goal is to attain reasonable strength. My point is that just as you can be a skinny or a fat fatty, you can as well be a fat weakling or a skinny weakling….a ‘weak lean.’ What I’m arguing for is a bit of a shift in emphasis away from leanness as a primary goal towards strength as a primary goal. Sure, get lean & ripped, but not at the expense of strength…and certainly not as the starting and end point for those already lean once diet is tuned up.

Addendum #2: OK, this one is to clarify something that’s not a failure to draw distinctions on my part. This is simply to call out your basic mush brained imbecile with no rational sense of perspective. So guess what? According to mush brain (@vic574m on Twitter — Victor Moreno) you need a total of 1,000 pounds combined on deadlift, squat and bench in order to write the post I did, above. This is nonsense and has no application to what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about — and anyone with an ounce of sense knows this — being competitive in powerlifting.

Nope, I don’t total over 1,000. Currently, 735# to be precise (325 DL x 5 reps, 225 squat x 5 reps, 185 bench x 5 reps). If I plug those into the One Rep Max Calculator, it comes out to 827#, which I contend is strong for a 50-yr-old and likely in a very high percentile even amongst today’s 20-somethings. And so I’ll just call his original Tweet — "do you even total over 1000? Don’t be calling others weak if you don’t man, everyone got a right to do what they want" — dumb on just about every level I can imagine. Most egregious is this sort of girly man ideal of "don’t judge."

More about my Leangains workout regime here and here.

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Today is not a particularly good day, nor have I had one in a while. I’m not sure there even would be a good day to get an email like this. It’s from a female of the human species, in case you find that meaningful (though I don’t).

Hi Richard,

I really enjoy your take on fitness and general health, your last post on vegetarians and vegans was hilarious!

I am contacting you today on behalf of SKECHERS Fitness Group, and we are reaching out to fitness enthusiasts like yourself to see if you are interested in trying the latest technology in fitness footwear.

Bloggers selected to participate will receive a pair of Shape-ups SRT training sneakers, compliments of SKECHERS. Participants are asked to try wearing the SRTs, write a positive or neutral blog post or article about them, and then direct readers to skechers.com to learn more about Shape-ups technology.

The SKECHERS Radius Trainer (SRT) is designed for a high-intensity workout with maximum calorie burn. Wearing the Shape-ups SRT may help activate and strengthen muscles typically underused in daily activity – potentially resulting in a stronger back, firmer legs, and a tighter abdomen. The SRT features Kinetic Wedge Technology – an ultra-soft Resamax™ kinetic wedge that extends from heel to toe, giving each stride a gradual transition. The softer, lower layer provides superior cushioning and creates natural instability, which helps increase muscle activity by forcing the foot and body to constantly adjust for proper balance and positioning. An Advanced Stabilization Insole (A.S.I. ™) supports and stabilizes the foot to prevent it from flexing before the proper point, and a Roll Bridge™ increases side-to-side stability and utilizes reinforced heel pillars to control your forward movement.

Please reply to this email or call me directly at xxx-xxx-xxxx if you are interested in reviewing this revolutionary product.

Thanks in advance for your time and consideration, and we hope to hear from you soon so we can send you your complimentary pair of SRTs!
 

"I’d rather stick needles in my eyes," to quote Garrett Breedlove (Jack Nicholson) in Terms of Endearment.

OK; wow. You know, I get emails almost every day from someone wanting to promote some product, service, their blog, their e-book…what have you. Clue #1: I get over 100,000 visits per month and I have NEVER done any of that. Ever. The very closest I ever came was to suggest to Mark Sisson a guest post on fasting; for one, because I’d already had contact with him and two, because he’d just published something on IF and I honestly thought I had something to contribute from the realm of self experimentation. And it was two-way. Mark followed up with a Q&A here.

Before I get to what I really want to talk about, which is search engine optimization and social media in this new Intertube world, let’s deal with the specific bullshit of the email to lay the foundation.

World’s Ugliest Shoes

You know what? I don’t even care if all the gibberish-gobbledygook, "scientistic" total pile of steaming and reeking dogshit in paragraph 4 of the subject email were true (Jesus, would that not be fun to deconstruct?), or somehow meaningful; or, somehow desirable for a human animal.

These shoes are fucking fugly! The only upside I can see is that it makes it easy to spot a fucking moron; with whom, you want nothing to do with ever in your life. Seriously, people…can we not draw a line…somewhere? Don’t fucking come anywhere near me with those gawd awful things.

I’m warning you!

But isn’t the first paragraph of that email interesting? Only thing is, that was the post at the top of the blog at the time. So, she thinks either I’m stupid, starved for attention, or willing to sell my reputation for a pair of fugly sneakers…

…which I don’t fucking wear anyway.

Meaning: no way did she investigate deeply enough to find my original, extensive post on my experience with the human foot in walking over 5,000 miles: Learning to Walk. Nor did she notice my posts about Vibram Five Fingers vs. RunAmocs; here and here. And finally, she surely didn’t notice that I just bought three pairs of shoes, modified for minimalism.

So this is less of a post about the inanity of "shoe technology" in favor of the amazing appendage we call feet — with 4 million years of evolved "technology" — and more nerves in them than the heads of your favorite organ, guys (thought I’d throw that out), and more about the inanity of handling SEO and Social Media badly. Really badly.

…And oh, just so you know: yes, it’s quite a thrill to get used to walking barefoot…guys…

What struck me about this email was that it came from an SEO (search engine optimization) firm, clearly hired by Skechers to promote their product. And while I have not a problem in the world with Skechers producing and promoting fugly crap to stupid morons (hey, Skechers, how about put lights in them!) who don’t know any better, I do know better. And so do a lot of people on this newfangled Intertube thingy.

This is just such an illustration of what’s all wrong with modern business, now. Look, sure, the easiest and actually valid criticism of this post is: "hey, Richard, it was just one SPAM. You think Skechers cares?" No, I don’t, and if I was just some guy who had only his family and in-laws at Christmas to give a thumbs up or down to, that would indeed hold true.

Instead, this is going to be seen by tens of thousands. It’s going to be tweeted and FB’d by dozens and in turn, it’s going to be seen by thousands, perhaps tens of thousands more. Now, multiply that by just a few SocialMedia savvy folks who don’t take kindly to what is essentially a dishonest scam posing as a legitimate request for a review, with a personal reference, even.

So, OK, even if it’s true I’m overreacting, will this campaign, on balance, help or hurt Skechers and more specifically, will my objections and those of others make a big difference? My guess is help, and no. But will that always be the case, and, what it the risk at the outset? What if someone was to do a really clever, derisive YouTube that went viral? What would be their defense, since they spammed about fucking ugly shoes?

You know what? Had she simply been honest, would’ve made all the difference. Even being just as wrong.

"Richard, I looked around, see you’re into barefooting, Vibrams and other minimalist footwear, and I know this is a total longshot, but I wonder if you could just give these a try. I’m totally willing to risk whatever judgment you arrive at. I think they’re that good."

But and oh-yea, from the email.

Participants are asked to try wearing the SRTs, write a positive or neutral blog post or article about them, and then direct readers to skechers.com to learn more about Shape-ups technology.

The mind boggles. But for the record, she’d have received a very, very polite and cordial thanks, but no-thanks for the former and you’d have never caught so much as a whiff. And so you must ask yourself: why are companies so unwilling to risk that sort of up-front, straightforward honesty?

I’m only now paying a little attention to the ins-&-outs of social media. Yea, I’ve been using Facebook and Twitter for a while, got a decent amount of followers on both; but mostly, I just always focussed on writing my blog 1st, promoting and backing winners, second. Yes, I link to winners or those I perceive as future winners. You want attention? Be good. Be unique. Never be fucking boring; and when you are, which is inevitable, quickly follow up quick as you can with a new post, just like I do. Get the boring shit off the top of the blog ASAP once you realize that your readers somehow don’t think it as brilliant as you do.

I’m always mystified by the emails I get almost out of nowhere from a blogger I’ve never or only recently heard about, with a dozen or less posts in the archive (I have around 3,000, I think) and wow, they have an e-book (for sale). Bonus: there’s an affiliate program and I get 50% or more.

I don’t know; I’m no social media wizard, but it seems to me that if I had a a book or e-book, people would buy it because I wrote it. And the only reason they would want to do that, is that I took the time and effort to get people to want to read what I write.

Pretty much everything I’ve read about social media so far (and I’m reading more and more) boils down to one thing and a corollary:

1. Be meticulously and excruciatingly honest and forthright.
2. (Corollary: you’ll have less competition that way)

P.S. Mark Sisson, whom I mentioned above, Skewered these "shoes" a while back.

So are you pissed off with big companies who only play the numbers, counting on lots of stupidity, rather than being genuine, honest, letting you know up front that something may or may not be to your liking, hype free? Then blast this out to your Facebook Friends and Tweet it until your feel you’ve planted the seed of justice. Buttons up top.