Archives for March 2015

I was just going to leave it at that. And this one too, even though I had a follow-up post planned initially. Then I got this comment from “FormerBlogger.”

A few of us quit blogging (fairly prominent sites) because we were tired of being associated in any circles with Jimmy Moore. You just could never win. If you didn’t affiliate with him, people thought you were a hater; if you did, you just didn’t sleep well at night knowing you were acknowledging a doughy dufus who made money marketing himself. At the end of the day, some of us chose to sleep at night, and put our sites to rest (we had a combined running total of well over two decades).

I asked recently why jimmy moore was so fat. I was met by the excuses of accolytes, from “his book writing made him gain weight” (funny, I wrote two and never gained weight), and “I choose to support Jimmy” (which isn’t even a response). People refuse to hold him to the standards we should hold marketers and salesmen to. Now that he’s jumped into paleo, it’s even more incomprehensible this new crowd is looking the other way. Why isn’t anyone calling this chubby guy out? Why are people funding a lie? Are we saying there are no better alternatives out there? And if not, why not? Where’s the common sense leadership?

And from “AnotherFormerBlogger.”

There are many of us! jimmy moore is obese again, nothing new, I just won’t participate and haven’t in a few years. Not my monkeys, not my circus.

Along the way, there have been a number of mildly dissenting voices; that after years of supporting jimmy moore and standing up for him many, many times, I’d finally had it with him. And, I understand their dissent. The old “baby with the bathwater” thing.

Well, yea, but this has become Rosemary’s Baby, now. It’s high time for infanticide.

…I recall first getting wind of Jimmy in about early 2008, I think. It was also a time where he’d maintained his LC-diet weight loss for a decent while but was beginning to experience problems. As a guy on the decline from 245+ to an eventual 175 myself (then at perhaps 220), I overlooked it, largely because of the podcast. I never read his blog regularly—I have my own. But the podcast was quite something in those days. So much cool info that really helped me gain a wide perspective.

And, it was quite something to initially be a guest, then another appearance or two, and finally, guest hosting it about a year ago. Now, I see the podcast as an endless array of The Usual Suspects to prop up his sycodouche, peppered with the occasional dissenting voice to manipulatively lend a sense of integrity to people who are only looking for authority figures anyway. I choose to not feed into any sense of Guru seeking, going forward. Rather, I wish to declare open season on all Gurus, for whateverthehell reason you like.

It’s difficult to regret any of it, however. I’m more of a life goes on kinda guy, and don’t ever agonize over couldashouldawoulda. Humans are very bad at integrating the context of the time with actions at that time. Give yourself a pass, and just don’t do that shit anymore once you come to your proper senses.

…Someone else pointed me to Jimmy’s “I Will No Longer…” post, where he’s going to let himself off the hook in terms of adhering to pretty much every standard that’s logically, critically integrated into everything his Low-Carb Business is about.

I was talking to a trusted friend this week about what’s been happening in my life over the past year that has had a direct impact on my weight. I’ve been very open and honest about this and working diligently behind-the-scenes to create strategies that will help control the stress that is raising my cortisol and blood sugar levels making it next to impossible to lose weight right now despite faithfully eating low-carb, high-fat. With so many people writing to me sharing their own frustrations about the lack of weight loss despite everything being right in their diets, I wanted to offer up some encouragement to them and myself that all hope is not lost. Keep in mind there are so many non-diet reasons why your weight is stuck or going up, including stress-induced cortisol spikes (what I believe I’m dealing with), lack of sleep, hormonal imbalances, getting older, and more. I’m always amused by those who say the ketogenic diet must not work because people like me don’t have the “perfect” body and weight. Despite our cultural obsession with this, there are many other markers of health besides weight–triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, minimal small, dense LDL particles, A1c, fasting insulin, hsCRP (key inflammation marker), CT heart scan, and many other tests. The fact that these markers are still all excellent for me is what keeps me motivated while still working through the weight challenges.

Shorter Jimmy: I’m so stressed about not losing, but gaining weight instead, that I can’t lose weight, only gain weight.

Do you even need to unpack that? It is too ridiculous; it is to laf. It is designed for his cadre of fucktard sycophants—who are now beyond excuse for their own selves. Read the bolded sections again. Essentially: it’s got to be something else, and not that one thing we can’t speak of, lest it tarnish the LC/Ketogenic magic appeal of gluttony.

Jimmy gained about 60 pounds AGAIN!, in a year or two—an incredible rate of gain in a SAD world where it typically creeps up on people 10 pounds per year—and it could be anything or everything except the one thing that actually caused it: he ate too fucking much, too fucking often.

The CICO guys are once again vindicated. You can’t fool mother nature; you can’t fool physics or thermodynamics. Now, WHY he ate too much too often IS a valid question, and it’s my particular area of interest. In that, all of his excuses might play a role, and others, such as the gut microbiome. But, the role is contributory to making the conscious or unconscious decision to eat too much, too often: the absolute cause of his gobsmacking weight gain over a relatively sort period of time is simply eating too much over that period of time than he expended in energy over that same period of time—and even the Eadesian metabolic advantage of 300 kcal/d doesn’t matter.

People get stupidly confused about this, because they weigh themselves every day and lose the forrest through the trees. The bod doesn’t work like that. Every long-term weight gain is comprised of a wave function with days of weight gain and weight loss, in an overall upward trend. Every long-term weight loss is comprised of a wave function with days of weight gain and weigh loss, in an overall downward trend. The difference is that in the former, it’s higher highs and higher lows. In the latter, lower highs and lower lows.

So, you can count all the fallacious ways Jimmy got fat yet again, if you like, but there’s really only one reason, you silly cunts. Nonetheless, he’s going to let himself off the hook—that people are rightfully holding him to account for—because it’s inexplicable and, “despite everything being right in [his] diet.” That’s called an A priori falsehood. You don’t even need to get up off the couch to know and understand that virtually nothing is right with his diet.

…This is nothing new, though, and guys like Dr. Michael Eades paved the ad hoc way. They taught acolytes well in Atkinianity. Here’s Eades’ modus operandi:

1. You haven’t read the studies.
2. Oh, you have? Well, you might want to look at the full text, not just the abstract.
3. Oh, you did that too? Well, you need to understand how to interpret them.
4. …Oh, BTW, it’s either observational, it’s old, or the researchers don’t understand basic biochemistry, or they’re not serious anthropologists, or whatever.
5. Oh, still not satisfied? Well, OK, then it’s basic biochemistry. I’ll post about it in a year or more.
6. What? A genetic mutation that makes some people different? Dismissible. “Stef,” and Basic Biochemistry.
7. Oh, BTW, there are experts in the field. An expert is someone I think I agree with.

I don’t hate Jimmy, though I can’t bring myself to well wishes, anymore. I’m a bit disgusted by Michael Eades. I think he’s lying an manipulating—which is why I’m glad he went into the appliance business. I’m a sucker for redemption and even though you can do a decent sous vide on the cheap, his creation is cool and I paid for it, so he can’t take it away.

Look here. It’s but one tiny example of what The Duck Dodgers have been dealing with in terms of Eades’ Intransigence for well over a year—though we started off in a very honest attempt to get him to come along with new discovery. Valhalla proved too enticing.

This is from Peter’s blog, last November. The snark goes substantially up the thread, but here’s where it gets funny. Eades:

No dishonesty on my part at all. You once again are getting confused by Draper’s speculation versus what was actually measured.

It is true that Draper did write the above line in the paper in question. But here is where critical reading of the literature comes in. In Table II on page 314 (for those of you who want to follow along from home), in the far right column, it shows the glycogen content of the native foods (meat) to range anywhere from 0.1-0.9 grams. I averaged it to 0.5 grams. Remember, these are not speculative – they are measured. And measured in the native foods. Which is what, I have assumed, we’ve been talking about all along – the native Inuit diet of meat. [condescension emphasized]

Uh, oh.

LOL, so you are having trouble reading. You read it wrong!

Table II is not measured in grams. Table II is a measurement of percent of nutrients obtained from native foods.

In other words, each column is just the percentage of that nutrient that was obtained from native foods.

Try reading a little more closely next time, Dr. Eades!

Did that humble him in any way? Bitch, please: He’s Doctor Eades! And here’s a more recent Dr. Eades (his blog doesn’t have comment hyperlinks, so hit that link and do a Find on a relevant string). He still must assume—and show his congregation of blind-believing, cock-sucking, groupie-whore fucktards—that any interlocutor isn’t aware of studies; only read the abstract if he is aware; or doesn’t know how to “interpret” them if both prerequisites have been satisfied (rather like a Supreme Court interpretation of the plain English U.S. Constitution). In other words, the very only way that you and Mike Eades could ever see eye to eye on any study ever done anywhere, by anyone, at any time, is if you agree with him on its findings.

Your comments make it patently obvious that you have little understanding of the stable isotope literature. […] you need the 15N studies for that. All of which you carefully ignore.

You’re interested only in promoting a specific viewpoint that bears little resemblance to scientific reality. And, like Team DD, you’re fond of cutting and pasting large swaths of text without really knowing what they mean or how to interpret them. And, like Team DD, you’ve drifted into repetitive troll territory.

So (BTW, his interlocutor was just another in “Team DD”):

Right back at you. You are apparently unaware that the 15N values are misleading for determining meat consumption:

“Nitrogen isotope values in particular can be misleading. First, because of the complex nonlinear relationship between food source and consumer, it is not possible to accurately estimate the proportion of meat versus plants in the diet, since large changes in the percentage of meat are indicated only by small increases in 15N values (Ambrose et al., 2003; Hedges and Reynard, 2007). Second, unlike herbivores that acquire all of their protein from plant leaves, foraging humans usually eat plants for their carbohydrate content, and therefore focus on the starch- and sugar-rich storage organs of plants, such as USOs and seeds (Lee, 1979; Marlowe, 2010). These storage organs may have higher nitrogen values (Hedges and Reynard, 2007), and in any case provide a smaller amount of protein to the body and are therefore relatively swamped by the meat protein signal.” – http://pmid.us/24612646

Therefore, you won’t be able to conclude much about meat consumption from 15N values.

But there’s no need to be rude and terse with me. Do you always talk like that to anyone who disagrees with you?? It seems we are talking about different hominid species. I was referring to the dramatic shift from C3 foods to C4 grasses and sedges around ~3.5 million years ago, as explained by the National Academy of Sciences. Nowhere in any of the studies does anyone conclude that high-meat consumption was the most likely source of that shift for early hominids. You are inventing such conclusions if you think that’s what the studies said.

He published the comment, but it’s crickets after that. I’m sure all his Usual Eades Groupie Fucktards took note of that. Not.

I’m not sure if you knew this, but rumor has it that Mike Eades has a Low-Carb, Fire-Breathing, Ketogenic Dragon in His Garage.

“A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage.” […]

“Show me,” you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle–but no dragon.

“Where’s the dragon?” you ask.

“Oh, she’s right here,” I reply, waving vaguely. “I neglected to mention that she’s an invisible dragon.”

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon’s footprints.

“Good idea,” I say, “but this dragon floats in the air.”

Then you’ll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

“Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless.”

You’ll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

“Good idea, but she’s an incorporeal dragon and the paint won’t stick.” And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won’t work.

Now, what’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there’s no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I’m asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.

In this context, the ad hoc, goal-post-moving is a concerted effort by Moore, Eades, et al, to prop up a sense of wonder in the ability to fool mother nature by being a quotidian glutton—only just keep the carbs low. It does work for some, perhaps many people. It worked marvelously for me at 25-30. Doesn’t at 54. But, perhaps the real reason it worked for me at 25-30 is that it satiated me, and I focussed on various active things that took time away from sitting around, wondering what was in the cupboard or fridge.

Again, WHY you eat too much—too often for your level of activity—is the issue you ought best be dealing with. Or, think of it this way: it’s not eat less, move more. Perhaps, it’s move more first…eat less ’cause you’re engaged. Think about the difference.

Well, all is apparently right with the world. Jimmy wrote Cholesterol Clarity to explain away very high cholesterol numbers that normal people don’t have and might want to be concerned about—this is way apart from the Cholesterol Con. Then, he wrote Keto Clarity to explain away his and others’ dietary failure on Atkins. And since it’s now Atkinianity, it can’t be wrong. Explanations, qualifications, and interpretations are always needed to keep the catechism sound for all the children.

Mike: call your office. Childrens needs interpretations.

I’ll be blogging about the process all along the way.

What happens is that initially, you come up with the protoplan, and it develops over time into the working plan. So, for instance, the initial idea was to haul my trailer down there as my initial outpost.

Home Sweet Home — Mobile Version

Thing is, I can rent a place like this for $325 per month—less than I’d spend on self-medicating booze in my American Cage. Palapas Permanente.

WiFi included.

So, doesn’t make sense to haul a trailer and pay for parking it. I’m selling it. Ought to fetch around $10,000. $2,500 of that has just been spent on a DoodleBug, so I can more easily tour the area by air, above the unwashed masses of fray. It’s getting ready to be shipped to me from Everett, WA, now.

DoodleBug

What is it? Why, it’s an extreme minimalist ultralight setup that you hook up to your regular hang glider. It’s basically using a chainsaw engine with a propeller, to fly a hang glider under power. Weighs in at 50 lbs.

Here’s another, some UK WankerDoodles.

For the more adventuresome: “Hang gliding is freedom from the penitentiary of everyday life.”

So, with the other $7,500 from the sale of the trailer, I’m looking towards buying a small fishing boat once I get down there. If there’s enough, a fishing boat and a jet ski.

Much more to come as I sort the adventure of a lifetime.

Posting the pics of myself Thursday night was an impulse encouraged by Beatrice. When she saw me after five days she kept mentioning my appearance; and not just physical, but spiritual—for lack of better word. Sure, I’d been on “vacation,” but it’s also been a working vacation centered around a business I stumbled upon developing here in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. She knew something was fundamentally up with me about 10 seconds from this snapped moment.

That last wasn’t in any way posted to announce that I’ve Arrived! have all the answers, and now have the physicality and spirituality (feeling good in my own skin) to show for it. I just know I’m on the right path now. When that happens, things change fast. People notice, fast.

Beatrice put it best yesterday after a while observing me: “In San Jose you’re a caged animal.”

So, for many reasons I’ll be writing about throughout the process, we’ve decided that the dessert “island” at the south end of the Baja Peninsula is probably the right place for us to relocate, and very soon. Research and planning are already in process. I might even be hauling my trailer down here very soon, as my initial settlement. 1,500 miles.

…So if, as Bea says, I’m a caged animal up there in California—in “The Land of the Free”—then seems to me—minding what words and concepts mean—that before I do anything else, I must escape, right? If being caged and feeling trapped is my paradigm—and there’s absolutely no way to not experience the negative consequences—then haven’t I to break free as just the first order of business? I mean, come on? How do you get right with a fucking cage? How do you get right in a fucking cage where you literally want to bite out the throats of most of your fellow inhabitants because you fundamentally loath them so?

It rings true to me. I hate America and I say that in truth. I have not the slightest sliver of pride in being an American (it got ruined—cool while it lasted), and I would not care a lick if it went the way of rapid exponential decay. Ruined social experiment, with cool digs. I do not care what happens to it, nor any inhabitant of it including myself while here. I stop short of actively wishing it ill, but at the same time, I’m a fan of natural justice. It will be interesting to see what might happen when people like me—or others for vastly different reasons—flee, and spend all dollars elsewhere—even while cashing in on social security or retirement paid by current workers—and that magnifies to the hundreds of billions in time, with those who remain being taxed to make up the difference.

Get your popcorn. I could care less what happens to America. It’s only proof to me that you ought never let a bunch of Puritans get in boats.

Take your Social Security; your State, Municipal, or Federal retirement and move to someplace where you can rent a place with marble floors and an awesome view of the ocean for $800 per month. Lift a middle finger. Laf at the working stiff suckers still buying into the lie and paying your way. Laf at them. Make fun of them. Send them pics of you lounging on the deck at their expense. Spare no hubris.

I am getting my ass out of America and I’m telling you now: it’s going to be a huge trend. America fucking sucks. Too many fucktards.

Escape is now my mantra and if you escape to a better place, then things change for the better because your entire paradigm is different.

Someone asked me in comments:

Richard – Have you cut out all booze?

“No, haven’t, but being busy most of the time on productive endeavors simply gives me better things to do. Hell, funny enough, but being here on vacation, I drink less than at home. First two days here I had a total of a beer, a margarita, and a Piña colada. Last evening, and most days, are very similar.”

Someone else.

So Richard,

What have you been eating lately?

What is the food/diet of the week/month?

You see, assholes like Mark Finnegan are like Moore and Eades groupies. They’ve got to have The Diet that is Good For Everyone, forevermore (easier to sell books). Rather than experimentation and change—meaning you’re dynamic, rational, thinking, skeptical—they see it as weakness…all the while, the fraudulent, dishonest, and manipulative intransigence of Moore and Eades is a sign of strength. But anyway, I can’t really care about fucktard wankers showing up to jerk off in my comments, so…

“Basically, I try to always prefer whatever is cooked by hand from a list of real food ingredients. I eschew stuff in boxes, processed food, fast food. Bottled salad dressings. Especially, all deep fried stuff, even french fries, now. If I do opt for the fries, it’s always something like just a few bites of them, leave 2/3 of them. Probably, eating ANYTHING deep fried ought to go as the #1 don’t do it.

“Otherwise, no, don’t care much. Last night, Bea and I ate in the room here in Cabo. We shared a wonderful bowl of caldo de pollo (truly awesome) and a flank steak quesadilla with guac and fresh salsa. We split a can of Mexican coke.

“Soon, we’ll do the breakfast buffet. I’ll probably have a croissant, brie cheese, a big bowl of mixed fruit including papaya; scrambled eggs, refried beans, some potato, and a glass of either orange juice, or this cactus & celery smoothie they have.

“No doubt by the pool this afternoon, we’ll share grilled fish tacos on corn tortillas garnished with fresh red cabbage, fresh salsa, and fresh Mexixican sour cream (which is amazing and creamy not paste, BTW).”

Here’s been an example of my Fuck Low Carb and Fuck Faux paleo breakfast most days here. Not afraid of anything.

Croissants, Brie, Mixed Fruit, Cactus Smoothie, Coffie, Eggs, Beans, Potatoes, Sausage, Bacon

But you may notice I don’t have either two cubes of butter or, embarrassing, untoward helpings of sausage & eggs. And then, I never ever do seconds anymore, and I always leave almost a little something of everything. It’s an ethic I’ve come to embrace because I believe I got fat because of wall-to-wall gluttonous relatives, and with rare exception. They’re just gluttons about food, always have been. Occam’s Razor. I was just taught that way. More is always better. Clean your plate. Then go back for more. Thank the cook.

All of them only liked “paleo” while it lasted because it was a magic way to still be a glutton. Occam’s Razor.

Beatrice could tell you, because she’s mentioned it a lot of times over months. I’ve become super critical of taste—I especially loath over spiced and especially, salty. I will not take more than a bite or two of stuff that doesn’t please me, and if it does, only a reasonable amount and leave something.

It works better than anything and just as another commenter said, that I agree with:

Thanks in large part to your blog, I have also come full circle, and food is once again just food. This is after about four years of wandering in the desert through many different highly restricting diets (vegan, paleo, keto, “clean”, etc.). What’s hilarious to me is that I’ve started right where I began, with Brad Pilon’s “Eat Stop Eat.” The addition of resistant starch makes it that much easier to fast. And that right there is easily 98% of what I actually need to be healthy and lean. The rest is just over complication. Thanks man.

I had a sneaking suspicion way back when, and this is like 2009. What if Brad is right, and so long as you’re not a total glutton, what you eat is less important than when you just don’t eat?

Alright, I’ll have more later. Right now, I’ve been using Google Earth to absolutely be amazed at what that drive down the Baja Peninsula in my lifted Beemer with big tires is gonna be like.

It’s rumored that I’m afraid to post pics of myself, for any number of reasons, and I’ve heard them all (obese, diabetic, hypothyroid, alcoholic…a complete mess…even sarcopenia in a recent comment on Eades’ blog). The fact is, I’d rather it really not be about me personally, going forward. On the other hand, some insist, so here’s a rarity.

Greetings from Cabo San Lucas.

But then again, it’s a bit distant, poor lighting, etc. Well, OK.

I’m sure it’s imperfect for a formerly fat guy, now 54. But I found something curious. While a total omnivorous meat lover, the more I switch out some of that protein and fat for some carbs—and even GASP!—2 or 3 sugary sodas per week—the more favorable seems to be my weight and body composition. It doesn’t hurt to almost never snack, either. Oh well.

And oh well here, too: fair game. jimmy moore started this whole issue at AHS12 by publishing an unflattering pic of me, sitting and hunched over.  Let me return the favor for the “thriving” king of nutritional ketosis.

It’s All About the Thriving…And a Ketone Meter and Strips

…I’ll tell you something else. I don’t need to wear a girdle, because “TV makes me look” fatter than George Clooney.

The other day I was approached by an older white dude in Cabo, as I was out and about and in a tank top.

“Sir, are you a veteran?” he asks.

“Of what?” I ask back politely, even though I knew what he meant—having a certain disdain as I do for the outright hijacking of a perfectly good word.

“Were you in The service?” hijacking another one.

“Well, I was a Navy officer way back in the 80s.”

“…So you are a veteran.”

“I didn’t fight in any wars or anything, but it was a pretty cool job.”

“Well thanks for your service,” holding out his hand, which I shake politely. “I saw your flag tattoo and just wanted to thank you.”

“Uh, it’s a Black Flag,” I say with a not uncertain level of emphasis…“you know? No Country?”

I wish I had a picture of the look on his face. And without a single word, he turned and scurried off. Nonetheless, nice guy. I understand his paradigm and the whole set of assumptions upon which it rests, for I advocate multi-paradigmatic thinking as part of an omni-centric mindset.

…Let’s juxtapose that with Veronica, a 20-something, dark complexion, petite Mexican woman that works in the member services call center here at the resort I’m at in Cabo (she’s ‘in the service,’ and I ‘thank her for her [good] service’ often). As I recount at that link, I talk to these bi-lingual girls almost daily (+ Hector, the lone wolf), sometimes several times per day but after three years, it was the first time meeting. Victoria sees me and exclaims excitedly.

“Is that an Anarchy tattoo!?”

“Yep, Order from Anarchy,” I reply; ”and that’s not all,” as I lift my short sleeve to expose the Black Flag.

“Yes, no country, right?” she asks.

Becky, her co-worker, looks over at me with a smile. “Victoria thinks different.”

Indeed; different set of assumptions, lives in a different paradigm.

…Speaking of paradigms, how about the one where everything us humans are, we owe to meat; AKA, The Low Carb Paradigm? It rests on a whole bunch of assumptions now being knocked down right and left, to the general consternation of cocksure LC Diet Gurus with cadres of followers living in yet an additional paradigm: Guru Worship. Like worshiper Marley Harris:

You may look like George Clooney but you think like Einstein which is why I’ve long been an Eades’ groupie.

Embarrassing. Over-the-top waymore where that came from, in metoo comments to a post that’s so ironic it’s difficult to imagine straight faces—but such are paradigms with certain sets of assumptions. More on that in a subsequent post blast. Anyway, tons of Swedes took very seriously our takedown of the Inuit as a ketogenic society in general, as well as our exposure of Vilhjalmur Stefansson as an opportunist, lying, sac-of-shit fraud that literally stole money from investors based on falsehoods, and got people killed so he could steal more money.

Dr. Eades loves “Stef.” Paradigms.

One thing cool about the Internet is its international foundation. But, that cuts both ways. Who can forget the jumping-up-and-down excitement of all the Swedes jumping on the LCHF bandwagon? Problem is, Swedes—though generally “commie” as hell socially—are nonetheless not your average Guru worshipper to the extent doG & Cunt-ry, Colorful Flag Waving ‘Mercns are. They just aren’t. Paradigms… Different sets of assumptions—perhaps that are taken more fundamentally than those temporarily adopted for the LCHF bandwagon.

Remember Per Wikholm? Got an email today, and he even runs a website called LCHF (low-carb, high fat). But apparently, they operate within a meta-paradigm where it’s assumed that one must be honest and maintain integrity. Perhaps they even think that having a Guru status, bestselling books, and thousands of self-admitted “groupies” that tweet your every proclamation as word from Einstein, is probably a bad sign and a bad idea.

I´m really proud to have brought the RS revolution that you started on the FTA blog to Sweden. Now the train is really rolling and recently several people on Swedish LCHF for diabetics FB forums has started to test different forms of bean based pasta like blackbean spaghetti and other pastas made from green beans and soybeans. They all report only minimal post prandial bood glucose elevations, in the same neigbourhood as a stictly ketogenic LCHF meal would give.

Yea, you can get Black Bean Spaghetti.

Oh, my. Assumptions becoming too fucking stupid to continue to hold, on the right and just to the left. What are cocksure Gurus to do?

…And what of The LECTINNNNNNNNNS!!!!!?

Well, more assumptions that created paradigms are going to come crashing down and with any luck, many of the “paleo” hucksters who built businesses on the basis of toxin-free “Paleo” living on brownies and cookies will come crashing down too, for I loath them the worst.

Perhaps you recall that The Duck Dodgers began a series on hormesis, which is a favorable biological response to low levels of toxins and stressors.

1. The Hormesis Files: Chronic Ketosis and The Case of The Missing Glutathione
2. The Hormesis Files: Who’s Afraid of Unrefined Sugar?

Looks like it’s going to end up being about a 5-part series. Here’s an official The Duck Dodgers update.

The next hormesis files post is going to shatter the Paleo™ toxins myth—since the very tribes / cultures (Inuit / Masai) that paleo™ uses to justify a high fat diet were intentionally going out of their way to obtain the very toxins that Paleo strives to make people fear: a fear that is zero more than an opportunity to promote a low carb agenda with Gurus and their Groupies all on board. It has no basis when the eating habits of these cultures are examined more closely.

For instance, the favorite edible plants of Inuit were dwarf fireweed (Chamerion latifolium) and alpine mountainsorrel (Oxyria digyna) both of which are an antiscorbutic, and both contain a substantial amount of the same plant toxins that Cordain warns against. Plus, the Inuit drank lots of Labrador Tea, which is flat out poisonous in high doses. And the Masai ate even more of the same Paleo™ toxins than the Inuit did. So, modern Paleo™ will soon be proven as a lie for the promotion of Gurus and consumption of groupies.

Fuck that shit.

Dr. Eades has derisively referred to The Duck Dodgers as Team DD, implying that it takes a whole group to challenge him when in fact, he seems to take advantage in argumentum ad populum by encouraging and cultivating thousands of blind-believing, sycophantic groupies.

If you meet the Buddha, kill him. – Linji

Yesterday’s Day 1 post.

A busy couple of days. It began with a flurry of inquiries via VRBO (listings here and here). The way I work those is to quickly answer any questions, if any, then tack on the boilerplate with all the rates and options. It’s fire & forget. Never a follow-up, I don’t add their emails to a list, and they’ll never hear from me again unless I hear back from them with specific interest. When I do, I go to work to check availability, set them up with online booking, then lock it in and get their paperwork to them.

Ideally, I can have it all done in an hour or two, all online, zero physical paperwork. So, out of all the inquiries, perhaps 5 or 6, three got back to me, lots of questions, spoke with one woman in New Jersey, called the booking office and got confirmation on availability for all three, set them up with online booking via OwnerReservations.

Then I met Scott for breakfast. He’s the sales guy I fist bought from just over three years ago and have since popped for two additional contracts, the latest one just three weeks ago. Part of the reason I’m here, as I said, is to experience the place myself after setting up 54 reservations for others over the last three years. The other part was to get the low-down on the new Solmar Co. resort HKS Architects designed: Rancho San Lucas Vacation Club, 4-5 miles up the coast. My Grand Solmar contracts will give me access to this property as well.

Whereas, The Grand Solmar is a reasonably small property—locked in by a mountain, ocean, and The Playa Grande (another, older Solmar property)—that will have 250 rooms and suits when the final building is complete in July, this new property is enormous, like 3 miles along the beach, and will have 600 rooms, suites, and villas. It’ll have a Greg Norman golf course, a road straight from the airport (already under construction), a salt-water lagoon, lazy river, and a wave pool. So, it’s more like a Disney resort property in terms of all the family centric stuff.

Incidentally, in case you think Grand Solmar isn’t world class, 1,136 of 1,373 reviews on Trip Advisor are 5-Star. Only 17 reviews are 1-Star—the sorts that would complain about accommodations in The Taj Mahal. Pretty much in line with my feedback. Out of 54 bookings, only 1 complaint over construction noise and an unavoidable power outage.

So, after all that, I had lunch for $7 including tax and tip, by the pool.

Sake

Then, having been there a while and considering the idea, I sent emails out to the four sets of my guests staying here concurrently: “Hey, if you happen to see a guy with long hair, a black flag tat on one arm and a devil on the other, stop and say hi.” I almost immediately heard back from George: “I saw that yesterday, see you soon.” A couple of hours later, Michael and his daughter swam up in the Sunset pool and we chatted for a long while. I’d left the blog address in my signature, and he’d already read my previous two posts. It’s really gratifying to see families so enjoying themselves.

I met Scott down at the lobby for dinner. He’s lived here for 9 years, and this is his favorite place:

Maro’s Shrimp House

It’s #7 of 388 restaurants in Cabo on TripAdvisor, with 2,703 reviews. Here’s why.

Grilled Butterflied Shrimp and Lobster Tails

That plate goes for a whopping $22. The lobster was firm & tender, like lobster should be and the clarified butter comes in one of those ramekin thingies with a flame under it. The shrimp was crazy good and the “cocktail” sauce? Slightly spicy, slightly sweet. Reminded me of chutney. So highly recommended. Can’t wait to take Bea there. Scott insisted we go early, so we were seated immediately, by about 6:15. When we left about an hour later, there was a huge group waiting for tables.

Scott showed me around Cabo a bit, pointing out some other restaurants of interest, like Hacienda Cocina. Then he dropped my back and I stopped by the lobby bar to chat with folks which seems to come so naturally in a place where most are here for a week, Saturday-Saturday, or Sunday to Sunday. You keep encountering the same folks over and over, and it’s quite nice.

Then I sat quietly by the pool for about an hour, marveling at how the ambient temperature was literally perfect.

Via iPhone 6, no flash

Having fielded some questions for all three of those potential bookings during the day and getting them all set to finalize, I was a bit disappointed that nothing had come through. So, hit the sac. When I got up this morning at 7, there were two bookings, a 1BR Suite and a Studio Suite. That just paid for this whole vacation, times 4.

Jumped on the phone at 8 when the booking office opened, and Marta answered the phone—one of six bi-lingual call-center people (5 gals, one guy) I talk to regularly. She took care of both bookings promptly, like always, and I told her I had a surprise.

Two hours later, I walked the 5 minutes over to Playa Grande where their office is located and walked through the door. Total “Rock Star” moment ensues. Turns out that while a few members do rent their places out, nobody does it even close to what I do, or to this extent. Also turns out I get dispensation over a number of policies and procedures, such that I can get on & off the phone fast. It was really surreal and a total joy, to finally meet people I’ve spoken with dozens of times over three years, but never met face-to-face.

Lunch by the pool after wasn’t really photo worthy, as I figured ‘well, you’ve got to have at least one poolside club sandwich on vacation.’ Obligatory. And I’m just a bit OD’d on fish and shellfish, so I believe I’ll be heading over to the Ruth’s Chris on the marina for that Big Filet, medium rare, and perhaps a Cesar salad. I’ll chock it up to penance to the doGs of low-carb dieting for my wayward ways of late (…and I had a Mexican, cane sugar Coca-Cola with that sandwich, too).

Here’s the kickoff post from yesterday and the full set of photos of The Gand Solmar Land’s End Resort.

First full day was spent getting a lay of the land, and lots of pool & sunshine. And, of course, lunch by the pool. $10, including tax and tip.

Of course, some people come to Cabo for this:

…Or, this:

…For still others, me included, it’s this:

Sea Bass Stuffed with Shrimp and Scallops (though, a bit salty for my taste)

…And of course, “the real Mexico:”

Taco Bar!

Souvenirs and Tequila Shots

…Have too many tequila shots, and the signage becomes a redundancy.

All the photos were shot with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1 12.1MP Micro Four-Thirds Interchangeable Lens Digital Camera with 14-45mm Lens. Everything, including the night shots, was on the auto setting—so no futzing with shutter speed or aperture, and only a couple photos came out too blurry to publish. The rest here, on Flickr.

Finally, got word that Beatrice got so jealous that she’s book a flight for Thursday. Same Alaska flight I came down on, fling back Saturday on the same flight. More later. Enjoy yourselves out there.

Update: Days 2 & 3.

Got in yesterday after a great flight experience, for once. San Jose – Cabo, direct, on-time 9:22 am departure, 2 1/2 hour flight, $50 upgrade to 1st Class. Then, an effortless $17 shuttle ride to The Grand Solmar Land’s End Resort & Spa.

As I may have mentioned, I’ve been renting out my contract rights for three years now—about 50 sets of guests, and this is the first time I’ve stayed in it myself. Kinda over the top. I’ve stayed in Four Seasons that aren’t as nice. But, it’s a semi working vacation. My aim is to write a comprehensive travel guide to the resort and stuff within walking distance. Been shooting tons of photos.

Open Lobby

I’ll be uploading all the photos to Flickr for anyone looking to check it out. …Well, I just did… The Internet smokes here, even by the pool.

In the meantime, here was breakfast. When I go to tropical places, I pretty much eat only fruit & fish—some eggs & beans for breakfast is OK—breakfast meat not required.  So, here was breakfast. $13, including tax and tip; and including coffee, OJ, breakfast rolls and a pot of yogurt.

I was kinda laughing at all the people paying $30 for the buffet, when I couldn’t even eat all I had.

OK, more later. I’ll hit the Marina later. Suggestions for great seafood welcome. Just don’t tell me Cabo Wabo. I hate Sammy Hagar, who ruined Van Halen, as far as I’m concerned.

Update: More from the first full day.

I like Mafia movies; principally, because it’s just a form of alternative government and indoctrinated people make meaningless distinctions about it.

Everybody pays for government.

‘Mercan fanboys and girls say stupid shit like, in making bad distinctions: “it’s a protection racket.” Well, what do you think the fucking US Feds are—with their endless election spectacles—dumb shit? They’re objective, not for hire? Laf. The POTUS commands the highest payoffs in the history of planet earth.

Oh, I know: you live in a particular paradigm, resting on a set of assumptions. You learned it, were indoctrinated with it; and as such, mount resistance to any other paradigms upon which alternative sets of assumptions rest that are scary different from your assumptions.

Let me tell you my working assumptions:

1. I have my own moral code
2. I recognize that others have theirs
3. I eschew forcing anyone, but I’d be delighted to blow brains on the wall should those others engineer to impose their sets of assumptions or corollary paradigms on me
4. Don’t want to be locked up
5. I like to trade, where something I want less goes for something they want want less too, but each wants what the other holds, more

That’s pretty much it, but you ought pay for protection if you’re not isolated, and what fun is there in being isolated? Conundrum.

For me, owing to the logical conclusions of my assumptions, much “bribery” is pretty moral. Let’s say a zoning commission stands in the way of you developing your property as you like. Pay them off, develop it. Win win.

…Or, because of some particular sort of social-political activism—where people waste their time trying to move society—suddenly, you find your business model that contemplates voluntary trade between you and the customers you cultivate in jeopardy because someone or a group has out-bid you in terms of payoffs, favors, political swag.

…So, imagine what you might be able to do if you moved to some island in the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, whatever—or many places in south America on the continental beach. Imagine that for some Jacksons hand-to-hand, now & then, a Benjamin now & then—along with invites to your parties as notable guests—you could enjoy not only freedom to go about your peaceful affairs, but actual solid protection, the best money can buy?

But no, you want to CHANGE THE SYSTEM! Well, you’re not much on balance sheets or P&Ls, are you?

Listen: Unless you’re into the mega-millions here in the Good ‘ol USA, you have been priced out of the market for ‘freedom.’ Don’t buy into that fucktarded DEMOCRACY!!! shtick, where you spend your entire life agitating for what you will never, ever see. The only ones who see what they want in “The Land of the Free,” anymore, are those who can pay to play. Do you imagine that the Corp executives of the 100 largest companies in America agitate about politics? No. They have a concern, they make a phone call, money flows, they typically get results. The only risk they really face is getting too exuberant or well known, because then they become a target for a takedown, just so everyone “knows” that what’s always in play, is never in play.

Free the Animal means assessing the landscape. If its unsuitable for survival and well being and happiness, migrate to where it can be.

Only the human animal will spend its entire life—wasting it—on trying to change the minds of others, their sets of assumptions, their paradigms, how it shakes out and most importantly: the market over your personal agents of force.

…This is why I simply hurl insults, and typically eschew long winded philosophical essays. But in the end, I just like grabbing an idea and see what I can write about it.

This was a rather tough little experiment I’ve done on occasion for quite a while now, perhaps over a year or more. That’s simply because I really don’t have much problem with good sleep. Since I’m human, live in a complex world, and have made my way in producing my own income since 1992, I expect that sometimes I’m going to have disturbed sleep. Or, hell, I’m married, too. 😉

…Sometime back, on the late Seth Roberts’ blog, I caught wind of an intervention where one takes maybe 1-2 TBS of honey (17-34g sugar carbs) before bed each night, and has better sleep. I’ve mentioned it in comments a couple of times and have been told that Ray Peat and Matt Stone have advocated fruit juice for the same purpose. It got me thinking. Could that be why my dad, and so may others, like a glass of warm milk before bed? (I dislike warm milk—I like ice cold milk—and I suspect the therapeutic value is in the sugar, not the temperature.)

I’ll get to my details in a minute; but first, I Googled around this morning…something like: ‘sugar before bed for insomnia.’ And zero of the links on the first page of results mentioned anything about sugar. Instead, it was all links to popular bogs with lists of up to 10 things to avoid. News Flash: Don’t drink a Venti mega-quadruple-shot mocha chocolate latte frappuccino before bed. Some of this was from “paleo” bolgs of the sort where you have to have a list of instructions to, literally, do anything, Cage-the-Animal, style. Curiously, when I was in college, senior year, taking a course on vector calculus for fun that I didn’t need, I found that pulling all-nighters in advance of tests, with copious coffee, nonetheless didn’t hamper my ability to crash at 4-5am for a few hours.

So it’s taken a while, since I sleep pretty damn well. I’m BULLETPROOF! (apologies to Dave). But I also got interested because the dream state often reported with lots of fibers for the gut opened my eyes to the vast complexities of what we take for granted every night. I wondered what might happen, combining the two.

So I did. Now, I use a fiber concoction of more than a dozen things, and I often mix it with 4 oz of OJ, and 4 oz of whole milk, and often with a raw egg (Orange Julius with smoothness and texture). …I’ll be putting up my recipe soon: no longer interested in developing and marketing a product.

OK, so as I said, this took a while, because I wanted to intuitively shake out the confounders—not in a purely scientific way, but more an intuitive one. Just make sure I’ve done it in enough differing circumstances that I get some sense of real resolution. Obviously, someone with chronic insomnia would make a far better test subject. On the other hand, one doesn’t need to be an insomniac to enjoy better, deeper sleep.

Accordingly, sometimes I take a TBS or two of honey, sometimes about 4oz of OJ, and I’ve even tried 4-6 oz of craft root beer, made with cane sugar (I just avoid HFCS, I doubt it would make a substantial difference towards the goal). Can’t tell any difference, which leads me to believe that sugar can help you sleep better, deeper, longer. When I do this, I very often experience bouts of very deep sleep lasting 4-6 hours in a stretch, without waking up, or having to expel yellow saline. Add the gut fibers, and you get a dream novel on top of it—leading you to believe that you do, actually, have a novel or two of your own weird making, in you. Various probiotics might help too, and I’ll soon be blogging about a new one from the UK—mega high dose, intended for short-bout dosages of 3-6 days, periodically.

The other thing I’ve done many times, and perhaps more importantly, is to not do any of that before-bed intervention, but wait for one of those nights where I wake up sometime between 2-4 am, and it takes 1-2 hours to get back to sleep. I’ll eventually always get back to sleep; but what I’ve found for myself, including last night—which prompted this post, finally—is that it almost never takes more than 2 hours, or less than 1 if I do nothing, but it can take only 15 minutes.

Since I’ve been doing this a while in many different ways, last night I decided to try to bring it home for me. I went to bed tired at about 11pm, having been up since 6am. Went to sleep head-pillow like. Woke up 4 hours later. Usually, it’s take a piss, go right back to sleep. Not this time. Tossed, seemingly wide awake. Had a little bout of restless leg (this is a rare acute thing for me; chronic for my dad—since I was a kid). So, after an hour—it’s 4am—I go in, take about a half cup of OJ with a couple of ounces of salty club soda (straight OJ is too sweet for me), and next thing I know, it’s 7:15.

So, there you go. You can try it if you like, or stupidly believe it’s going to kill your pancreatic beta cells…and that it’s more important to live in sleep frustration over years and decades than “kill beta cells” in your imagination, because: that’s what the LOW CARB RELIGION HUMANOIDS want you to believe because they live in deprived sleep misery themselves, and want plenty of commiseration and comfort—perhaps so you can come up with a low-carb alternative.

Or, just whatever. Try it and see, or don’t. And I don’t care either way.

Sometimes you really need to think in terms of essentials.

Are the great, integrated-with-human-nature ideas and ideals of Enlightenment—where a state ought to be subject to the same moral code as citizens—the most important thing? Or, is the most important thing the actions of a State that was supposedly-specifically founded on such ideals?

The critical distinction to make is the one over what comes down to lip service vs. action. They always spouted lots of shit. But what do they do, at the same time they’re saying? 

There’s another, though. It’s the one that both D and R desperately need for any political parity or gain. You must fool everyone, but the most important fools are the flag wavers who only want a State they can call their own…it’s in advance of the Heaven they can call their own, too. You have to cut to chase: you just call it a war, catch-all style.

What’s particularly prescient to me, though, is that American Flag Wavers lie: they don’t call it Holy (Jihadists are more honest that way). See, doG fearing Republicans are politically powerful; but they principally respect Bibles and preachers, and others of like “mind.” They learned to ‘give unto Ceasar what is Ceasar’s’ long time ago, cheap whores they are. They put down swords and reached into pockets instead, placated. It’s geopolitical on scale.

Such is the “Land of the Free” landscape, now—far removed from the rather light theism of the founders born 300-400 years ago. Therefore, if you tell them it’s war! then they think ‘walls-tumbling’ Joshua—or any number of other genocides—and because it’s their doG, they’re OK with it. They read it, or someone preached it to them and they said “Amen Brother”…because they read it, or someone preached it to them before. It’s a circular thing.

…So yea, I got stirred up this morning. Made me weep a bit, even.

He’s been “DETAINED” and “tortured” (when it’s America, torture must be in scare quotes, see?) for 14 years. Took 6 of those for his 400+page NYT Bestseller written in 2005-ish to make it out, with redactions.

I guess there’s that. At least, we don’t have to worry that “freedom of speech” is actually an Enlightenment moral principle, or anything. When we don’t want someone to speak or write free, then we get on the distinction bandwagon. See, he’s not an American citizen under CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTIONS!!! and even more, we’ve labeled him as an enemy combatant. He has no rights; and certainly not, since he’s been subject to “American persuasion” now (euphemisms for tortured), for 14 years.

He has never been charged with any crime. He has never stood trial for any crime. He’s been in prisson for 14 years. Be proud, Americans.

In my book, this makes America a usual suspect at very best. I reaffirm my desire to eventually become a citizen of a peaceful country, and to burn my American passport in effigy.

The last thing I want to do is die as a citizen of a place I didn’t ask to be born in, and that I reject as good and moral.

I’m going to buy and read Guantánamo Diary during my Cabo runtime, all next week. Least I can do.

…Oh, and just as an aside, read that eminently cool dude Solzhenitsyn: The Gulag Archipelago.

Real Food. I get it: meat, fish, fowl, vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, starches. I mean: I really get it. It’s rather easy…so say billions of hominoids, 4 million years and counting.

I don’t get this, anymore:

Here’s my PS story:

I’ve never been obese and today I’m lean (4-pack) with good insulin sensitivity (low fasting insulin). But these days I have poor starch sensitivity (BG spikes too much if I eat more than 3-4 oz starch in a meal). In 2013 I discovered it with a “sweet potato blood sugar challenge test” a la Kresser. So I went low starch. A1c improved from 5.7 to 5.1. Then I read about PS from Freetheanimal. I immediately started in Dec 2013. In January I repeated the potato test. I was *ecstatic* that my post-meal BG peak after an 8 oz sweet potato was 130 and <90 at 90 minutes!!! (It also lowered FBG from the 90s to the 80s) Holy cow! So I transitioned to PHD with 6-8 oz of white rice or potato per meal. But my ecstasy was short-lived. Some random post-meal BG tests 3 months later showed that my starch intolerance was back despite continuous PS supplementation (FBG also went back to the 90s). With chagrin I dialed back my starch intake per meal to keep BG spikes <140. Try as I might by looking for whatever else I changed (e.g. supplements, sleep, stress), I couldn’t get my temporary incredible starch tolerance back. The only BG effect that remains is lower BG 90 minutes after meals. Maybe my gut flora was in a transient state in the weeks following starting PS, and the final species mix doesn’t give me that wonderful starch tolerance. A recent post mixed-meal insulin and C-peptide test confirmed my post-meal insulin output is a bit less than half of a healthy person – a weak “first phase” insulin response. I hope it’s due to the Incretin system and the gut flora’s influence on it. (And thus fixable), rather than late-onset diabetes type 1 beta-cell-killing antibodies.

So now I’m gonna try the Inulin and Acacia supps added to the 2 tbsp PS (which Goddess notwithstanding, I like because of sleep quality). That she mentions her Inulin and Acacia “bionic combo 2” (without psyllium) “burns fat” may be a clue that it improves the Incretin system.

BTW I am curious why Steve Cooksey (diabetes warrior) has not explained why he stopped PS, and has not updated us with his “bionic” experiment since January.

For me, I love being of some service to others when and if I can, right up until I sense I’m being a disservice.

I read the above and my first thought is to wonder how it was possible for billions to live happy lives before blood glucose monitors and A1C lab testing. I’ve tossed all of that: see Real Food, above.

Take your chances, or don’t, but I’m solidly out of the game of endless, boundless, and unbridled deconstruction and dis-integration, i.e., disintegration.

Good luck with that.

This is really spectacular, folks. About a minute. They set an eagle off from the top of the needle of The Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

It’s why I take glides myself.

One thing to take note of is how the Eagle pulls in his wings in order to increase airspeed in the final seconds, as he approaches the ground.

Why?

Wind gradient. In a gliding configuration (not under power; and birds typically glide into landing, only employing power in the last second…analogous to a flair in aircraft) as you get closer to the ground, wind speed decreases as a function of air friction on the surface. If your airspeed is just barely over stall and you are flying into the wind, you can find yourself under stall speed in an instant.

All in all, it’s a spectacular show.

I’ve lived with a school teacher for about 20 years now. Still learning.

You know what she’s taught me the most? She wants anyone and everyone who comes in contact with her to do better than she did. It’s her raison d’etre.

Isn’t that a beautiful ethic for anyone who calls themself a teacher? If you call yourself a teacher, your Carte Blanche dispensation—for wherever you are—is to set up your students to be better than you. Perhaps you’re a ghetto teacher—or you teach the kids on Park Avenue. Each teacher is there for a reason. There’s no reason for any of your students to remain there long time and it’s your job to simply open their minds to opportunity and inform them of the starting skills.

They’ll take it from there if you’ve done well.

Beatrice was there, I’ve had pics in my email for a while. It became local news, too.

Here’s what Bea’s longtime mutual teacher co-worker friend, now boss by her choosing (he begged her), K.R. Smith Principal Aaron Brengard said in that video, Fifth Graders Test Their Nautical Skills With Homemade Cardboard Boats:

“We wanted to prepare our kids for this world.

“The ever changing world.

“Jobs that our kids are going to have aren’t even created yet.

“Having these skills—like these STEM skills—science, technology, engineering, and math—that having the collaboration they do….our real life…

“We don’t think we need to wait until they’re in the real world to make it the real world.”

Bea signed up with Aaron nearly three years ago as a boss (she’s constantly hand picked by all bosses—she pics her boss), as a freshman Principal, from previously talking over coffee and lunch in the break room.

He had a vision. He was fully invested in taking a big risk: change the culture.

Yes, he was young, dumb, and cocksure enough to take it on.

It’s always the requirement for change. When we get older, we get resigned. I feel it in myself. I know that I’ll eventually die with most of my aspirations unfulfilled. It’s very, very important that the young feel they can move mountains and it is up to teachers to facilitate their formation into an ideal of a belief that it’s possible and it’s up for grabs always.

There’s your “Land of the Free,” if you can tolerate it.

I’ve blogged about it—Sons of Anarchy. Just basically spent around 100 hours over several weeks watching the thing, getting so absorbed I dreamed about it over and over, every night. Ever done that? Spend a chunk of your life so cut-off that you really can’t explain it to anyone, but you have to see it to the end?

Sons of Anarchy is only a TV show. That much is true.

It’s over-the-top drama, too. That much is true.

Unless you’re a moron, the series that ran 7 seasons ought make you question some of your premises. If it didn’t, you’re dismissed. It’s about the dryer lint in the whole thing. What comes way out in the wash.

How may times have I written “when seconds count, the cops are only minutes away?” In that way, it’s much like The Wire. Cops are, and ought be always playing catchup with smart, organized “criminals.” Why? Because there are laws. It’s not a level playing field.

Chew on that opiate of masses, let me know what you think.

These guys don’t call the cops, unless perhaps they’re on payroll.

Anyway, this counts three times I’ve been owned by you Brit Wankers who think you can play an American:

• Jamie Bamber (Apollo)
• Hugh Laurie (House)
• Charlie Hunnam (Jax)

Hugh, I knew he was English perhaps midway through the series. The other two, not a fucking single clue until it was all over and I dug into depth on what obsessed me.

You gentleman rock. How many American actors could truly fool the British?

Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love. — Wilhelm S.

Team DD, as Mike Eades calls us, have been in such heavy swing over the past week that I’m buried in emails. I want to get it sorted out and blog it soon. One of my goals in this is being first to publish. We pretty much have a good handle on what Eades is likely going to say, and I want to publish it first.

On the other hand, I’m just too busy. 🙂

Well, actually, I’m just living a so-called life. You know about last weekend in the Carmel Highlands. Monday was a down day for me, Tuesday was working vacation inquiries, Wednesday was a booking for one of those, for Cabo; a drive up to the cabin with the dogs, a day trip yesterday to my brother’s in Placerville with the dogs—and another booking via iPhone. Then this morning, yet another booking for Cabo. guy paid $3,000 for 6 nights in the 750sf Studio Suite, when I could get him the same room for $2,150, for 7 nights. Problem is, his dates were more important than cost, and the 7-night deal requires a Saturday or Sunday arrival. But it’s last minute: April 1 arrival.

Now, doggies and I are anxiously awaiting Bea’s arrival this evening (they’re all up in paws, out on the deck in the sunshines, currently).

So here’s just a few things that crossed my attention and I mostly lafed and saw irony.

~ Heard a news story about how the last Kentucky coal mine that was a union operation just shut down. No more coal mining union work in Kentucky. Laf. More laf is that lots of guys interviewed prefer dealing on their own for pay and benefits, rather than sink dues into a pot that’s primarily focussed on the union’s political sway. Laf. Laf. Laf.

~ Apparently, the Justice Department’s Report on the “Enterprise of Fergusson, Missouri” had some fart-atomizing repercussions. See, according to Steve Martin, there exists a zone above the O-zone, and it’s called the Fart Zone. That’s where farts float to, and it’s why we must protect the ozone. If the ozone falls, all those farts will float back to earth and—this is important—not necessarily to their original owners. And so, couple of cops got shot in Fergusson. I can’t bring myself to give a wet fart, about it. Do you, really? Do you really, truly care? I don’t.

~ Sweet Briar, a woman-only college (now there’s a metaphor!) is shutting down due to financial realities (what, do men run the place? Financial realities? :). I heard a bit on NPR on the drive with doggies up to Placerville, from Arnold, yesterday. It was hilarious. I had tears of laughter running down my face. Apparently, what they loved most was that in that cloistered place, “Their Voice Was Heard!”

Got that? It wasn’t that their voice was generally irrelevant, that they often spouted so much cunty, mindless stupid shit that normal people just roll their eyes as politely as possible. No, it’s that they were generally ignored until, at 18 years old, they signed up for tens of thousands in annual tuition so they could co-miserate with other miserables, who nobody in their right mind could possibly take seriously, anymore. Laf. Laf. Laf.

…Alright, gotta run. I’m trying with the blog, but it’s really only when some thread of inspiration needs a firm pull that I’m blogging, now.

Headed to Cabo March 21 for a week, so I’m hoping to blog the travel log I’m going there to write. Tired of getting questions from the 60-70 sets of guests I’ve put in Solmar over the last three years, never having stayed there myself—like a drug dealer who doesn’t sample his own product.

I can do a stream of conscience on sacred institutions.

I can do a stream of conscience on the distinction between anarchism and nihilism.

But I can also blog about domesticated dogs. My Rat Terriers. 30 seconds.

Something happened yesterday, and it made me take account of the push-pull, profit-loss, ins-&-outs of caging them.

First, it’s far too late to free them. We bred out the stealth, smarts, social pac, viciousness that would allow them to survive on their own. Cats are different, for a very simple reason beyond the fact that they’re independent. You can’t really breed out claws and strength to weight ratios—at least not yet, chickens an exception—so they can still climb into trees and lay in wait for unsuspecting birds and squirrels. Almost any house cat can live feral push:shove, and almost no house dog could.

I speculate that Nanuka—Nuke—could give it a good go. I often call her “Nuke the cat,” because of her house mannerisms. By contrast, Scout was a rescue found emaciated in a field, young. I didn’t want another one after Rotor, but:

Beatrice was very trepidatious with me, knowing shit. She played it—me—and finally got me to come over just to see him. She knew she’d arouse the savior in me, and it was all elementary after that.

That’s the ungrateful butt hole in the foreground, a couple of months later. And you know what? That’s what I love the most about Scout; or butt hole, depending upon circumstance. He owes nobody anything and he feels no guilt. He’s of a domesticated lineage.

…I strive to divorce and distance myself from the way I grew up having dogs all the time: black labs. Back then, in the 60s, it was a brutal sort of thing. Dogs were beat into submission. Potty training consisted of rubbing their noses in it. People really did love their dogs, they just knew no better and stupid shit flows down hill pretty much like all shit. It’s really dumb, when you think about it. Virtually every dog lives to please its captor. They don’t need to be dominated.

Moving along to the story, shaking my head over the stupid, brainless, follow-the-leader, take-for-granted, unthinking bullshit I learned as a kid.

Scout and Nuke are so attached now, and he’s gained 1/3 body mass that was evidently programmed in his genes and just required ab libitum quality high protein food. Now, his chest plate can no longer fit through the pickets in the fence up at the cabin. Still my captive.

He’s still a crybaby, though. Bea and I do tradeoffs. I’ll take ’em up to the cabin, or I’ll go up myself for my own break. No matter, whatever the arrangement, when Bea’s here or there but then leaves with travel bags in hand, he cries. Big. Loud. Wailing like you never heard. She was his savior. He’s glued to her and it’s too complicated for her to push him away. And why ought she? He hasn’t need of surviving on his own.

…Yesterday, I took an Uber to go get my car from Tommy at California Wheels. Last touches (new rear shocks, machined front, hub-centric adapters to eliminate some wobble).

I just love her now. The 2″ suspension lift, combined with an extra 5″ of wheel/tire diameter, gives a good 4-5″ more off the ground, and there’s no X5 in the world quite like her, now. And only 120K miles for an ’06. She’ll be in my bed for a while.

When I got back, I parked, and happened to run into Bea, out checking the mailbox. Told her I’d gone to get the car, get it washed, etc.

“When did you leave?” Uh.oh, loaded question.

“’bout 3:30.”

“I got home at 4:45 and someone was dying in there. Scout was crying and wailing like never. I ran to the door.”

In Bea’s apartment, we have a sliding glass door onto the patio. There’s also a doggie-door insert. But when I leave, I close both off, because people are constantly walking dogs by and mine are of the mind that no other dogs have a right to exist in this permutation of a universe. So I closed it off when I went to get the car.

What I didn’t know is that Nuke was tucked away behind pillows on the couch outside.

Trauma ensues. Picture this. They are separated by a glass door, one outside, one inside. Scout is so very attached to Nuke. I feed them separately, so they can eat in peace, but when Scout is finished, he always goes and lays in front of the bedroom door, acting coy, waiting for me to uncage Nuke.

So, once Bea broke in and rectified everything, walked and fed them, there was fallout. Not from Scout, from Nuke, my girlfriend of 10 years and thousands of walking miles.

She loves and hates me. Whenever there’s trouble—like fireworks, thunder, or a smoke alarm, I’m THE ONE she comes to and there are no substitutes. I adore the implicit in that and accept my role wholeheartedly.

But now, she didn’t come to me. Didn’t come to anyone. We kept finding her in the oddest corners and cubbies in the apartment, kinda hidden away—she only does this at fireworks boom-boom time. Or, she’d just lay somewhere near me, not too close, just close enough for me to maybe notice she was there. She was hurt, in whatever way that means for a dog that’s been with you for 10 years; this was a display of hurt, of incertitude, of confusion, perhaps. It was something, nowhere nothing. And it mattered to me a great deal.

So I spent the evening being the most pathetic person you could ever imagine. I felt so damn bad. It was unmistakable that the thing had affected her and there’s no way to sit her down and tell her. Has to be actions and attentions. And you have to realize: they’re still going to think you’re an asshole and did it on purpose over some kick-the-dog issue you have. They’re captives, after all, and dependents to boot.

…Hours later, I went to bed. I thought perhaps if I took her to the bed—she sleeps with us sometimes, on her terms exclusively—tomorrow would be another day, today forgotten. So I looked for her, couldn’t find her. She must have found someplace to tuck away. So, I went to take a final piss and when I opened the door, there she was, as if to say, “OK, prove you still love me.”

After about a minute standing next to me under the covers, she went to sitting position, 2 minutes later, to a nice relaxed lay. An hour or so later, she got out and went to her preferred bed, normal ever since.

Make of all of it what you wish.

Here’s the post I actually started to write yesterday, got off on an iconoclastic tangent over the rather silly institution of marriage, went with a stream of consciousness on that, hit publish before I chickened out. The way things roll, sometimes. It’s a real blog, not made up to suit anyone’s particular fancy, not even my own, all the time.

For me, the true anniversary is the day Bea moved out of her apartment in 1998, and into mine.

Anyway, got up to the beautiful Hyatt Highlands Inn Friday afternoon and enjoyed fabulous weather the whole time.

Hung out, had a great dinner (steak frites for me, caesar salad for Bea), to bed early in a super nice suite. Breakfast Saturday morning was a splurge for both, things we almost never have.

The view from the table is amazing (this one was taken two months ago, but same place).

IMG 2894

Then we had a quite amazing experience for several hours. We went out to Carmel Valley to a place called Refuge. This is off the web, as they don’t allow cameras or electronics.

Anyway, there’s about 6 pools of varying temperatures from very warm to very hot, and what sold me on going there was the 4 cold pools. Two of them are kept at local Pacific Ocean temperature, about 55F, and two of them are at mountain stream runoff temperature, about 42F. It’s on 2 acres, and they also have a steam bath, huge sauna, and a relaxation room with the mood music softly playing, or whatever it’s called. It’s all co-ed.

What I’ve learned from cold therapy or thermogenesis via my own experience and Ray Cronise, is that the biggest bang is to stay in just long enough to feel the shivers coming on. Then you get out and warm up naturally in the sun or whatever, and fortunately there was plenty. Once you begin to shiver, your body is really turning on glycogen in order to fuel the shivers. You want to stay where it’s more likely to be accessing fat primarily.

But, you can cycle, which is what I did. Hot tub for a while, then into the cold. Initially, it took about 6 minutes for the shivers to start in the 55F pool, and about 4 in the 42F pool, submerged to the chin. After doing this cycle about a half dozen times over the 3 hours we were there, on my last cycle, it took over 6 minutes to bring on shivers in the 42F, and in the 55, I ended up timing out at 10 minutes without shivering, but we had to leave to make an appointment.

So, apparently, you can adapt very quickly and quite profoundly. Here’s another thing. After having a 150 gallon livestock watering tub in our backyard for two years, that I’d fill from the garden hose, I could never get Bea to try it even once. Well guess what? She did two cycles of 5-min each in the 55F pool, up to the neck. She came to realize how it’s addicting, and noted how when getting out of a hot tub, you start to feel cold right away but when getting out of the cold one, you feel warm.

I very highly recommend this place if you’re anywhere near the Bay Area, or traveling here. Coolest thing I’ve done in a long while.

Dinner was a ribeye at Rocky Point Restaurant.

Then yesterday after checking out, we headed down there again for brunch, and snagged the best seat in the house.

All in all, a fantastic weekend. Beatrice arranged the whole thing, too. I popped up a whole bunch of additional photos in Flickr.

How about you?

Or, are you a product of of immaculacy?

I’m sure you’d prefer to believe that in your tender comfort.

Clean birth. That’s what you want, right? They fucked in a Biblically and/or Socialistically sterile room, and that’s where you were eventually born. It’s just simple biology. Off spring are you. No dirty fucking.

…My dad will probably regret that he’s been trying to get me to watch Sons of Anarchy for some years. Finally, after false starts, I did. See, I’m actually a real anarchist—have been for almost as long as I can remember now, and words aren’t deeds and fuck orders. Makes no difference to me which gang colors get caught in crossfire—if you’re not too indoctrinated or stupid to understand what I mean.

But initially, I saw the TV program as just nihilism, which I care not for, because it’s nihilism. Anarchism is just real people, take away external authorities. Nearly everything we actually do daily is anarchistic. Just, you don’t know it. The best shit you do in your life is devoid of executive order; or, even statute or municipal ordinance.

That fucking stupid shit for moron voters is all pimps hoping to entice you into being their whores. Most of you take up the bargain, because you have lost essential humanity. And what’s fucking hilarious? Tons of fucktards keep that ethic alive by following a commander-in-chief to their deaths, to die for indoctrinated, collective values. I’m not criticizing the value proposition. Rather, I’m critiquing the source. Was that really his values, had you kinda left him alone since the first time he shot pee onto your face when you helped him because he—like they all—shit himself?

The essential tragedy of humanity is that we’re not on our own in a matter of hours, months, or even a coupla years. No, we have to stick around and be pets for fucking 18 years and the cost is that you get to be as fucktarded as your parents, generally. And they’re only fucktarded because they went through the same rigamarole.

Everyone is innocent. Everyone is guilty. Sometimes, it takes too much time.

Two people—the true honest and upright anarchists—I adored the most in SOA through 4 Seasons: Opie and Chibs. Now one is gone (by my pace).

(Direct link)

I will not be commanded
I will not be controlled
I will not let my future go on, without the help of my soul

Opie’s moral-compass role: life in the club, and death for it by his own decision was in the highest regard for his own life, his own soul, his own level of outrage in personal social context. He was a long-suffering anarchist. No executive order, no comfortable pension at the expense of the faceless; only earned torture at his own hand, for some mistakes. Frustrating humility at every step, in a better direction.

I’ll miss you, you frustratingly inspirational character. Fuck! Could’t you just have gone with the crowd and kept doing your long hair in different ways, man?

You don’t pick your family, but you can pick friends and associates. It can be a life or death decision. You ought take it seriously, before you’re all in.

Here. Opie was so respected amongst his actor peers that they had to send him out Samurai style.

It’s just a TV drama and in this one, lots of people die. This one, I took personally.