the gym: the post-modern confessional

In the golden era of Christianity of the dark ages, people went to confessional to absolve themselves of their transgressions, and to wash away the proverbial blood on their hands.


Wracked with guilt or compelled by threat of eternal damnation in hell, they would enter the booth and whisper their transgressions to the priest through the ornate lattice.   


Depending on the gravity of your sin, the priest would ask you to recite x number of Hail Marys, or y number of Our Fathers before granting absolution.

Source: Wiki commons

Four hundred years post-renaissance, knowledge and rationalism has eroded away the foundations of religion such that the majority are left untethered to any concept of sin, or a higher being. 

In today's existential society the fundamental emotion of guilt is just as rife - the only difference is what we feel guilty about.

Given this, who or what do we turn to when we are feeling wracked with guilt? 

THE GYM.

YOU: forgive me, for I have sinned. I ended up smoking half a pack of cigarettes last night.

PRIEST/TRAINER: Do you have any idea how bad that is for your lungs/soul? I thought we went over this at Church/Nutrition class - no cigarettes. Where was your self-restraint?

YOU: I had half a bottle of gin, there was no restraint left.

PRIEST/TRAINER: you know that drinking alcohol is a cardinal sin/empty calories. 

YOU: yes. Oh and I also scoffed down entire bag of corn chips.

PRIEST/TRAINER: trans-fats and carbs? I am truly disappointed. To be absolved of your sins you must say 10 Hail Marys and 20 Our Lords/do 2kms on the rowing machine, followed by 30 minutes of cardio and a 1 hour yoga.

YOU: *sob*.

"REPENT YE AND EXERCISE, THAT YOUR BMI MAY BE BLOTTED OUT. MARI WINSOR 3:19"

the skinny on smoking

We live in a post-modern world where obesity kills more people than starvation. Elaborating on the moral atrocity of the situation is overdone, and preaching guilt about the inequity is akin to a Sunday school teacher telling off the fat kid for not sharing his sweets with his malnourished classmates.

Weight-loss is fucking simple. Take in less calories than you are expending. Repeat until skinny. Logically if people had enough self-restraint and willpower to do this, they would no longer be obese.


In reality we are all busy and constantly ambushed by fast-food outlets. Crucially, we have become so accustomed to instant gratification that we're too lazy to do anything which requires more than a modicum of effort.


If you want to lose weight and you're too lazy to put in any effort, turns out all you need to do is to smoke, according to a recent study published in the British Medical Journal.

If you're lucky you might even end up looking like these people:

So what should you do?

Facebook status updates

I have been compelled by the unholy forces of the gods to solitary confinement to memorise equity law for most of tonight.   What perfect time to write a blog post.


Naturally, my frequenting of facebook increases exponentially, and seeing the same, inane scribblings most people call a 'status update' annoys me even more so than usual.

In the spirit of legal tests, here's one for whether a facebook status update is appropriate or not. (Naturally I ask you to follow the VUWLS Style Guide when you cite this test.) Take heed post-modernists, your posts should be diamonds in the rough, not background noise.


1. IS IT SIGNIFICANT?  - Is the substance of the post significant enough for the reasonable person to find it interesting and/or relevant? What you had for lunch, how you feel, emoticons are trite, unnecessary and you are boring the fuck out of people.


2. IS IT RELEVANT? - Would a significant proportion of facebook users find your update relevant?  If your update alludes to just a few select people, post it on their walls, tag the relevant people if necessary. Otherwise I would analogise this with telling a crowd of people an in-joke with a loudspeaker.


3. IS IT INFORMATIVE/INTERESTING/FUNNY? - does the post should provoke some sort of emotional or intellectual response? The purpose of a status update is to update people, not to annoy people. 


A good indication of a good post is one which provokes responses, in the form of "Likes" or comments. If it was one worth posting, you should be getting a minimum of 5-10 responses. If one of your status updates gets less, be ashamed, you should probably go to confession.




Ignore this at your peril - you may find yourself getting blocked, or losing friends as people delete you.  

the act of publication

Every word I type, every turn of phrase or witticism I construct on my netbook screen can currently only be seen by me (and the ceiling cat).

At the end of my post-modern observations and critiques, I click the orange button in the bottom left corner of my screen labelled  "PUBLISH POST", and it becomes freely available to anybody and everybody.

There are over 2 billion people who use the internet. While only a minute proportion of those will ever reading my scribblings, I seem to forget that everything I write can be scrutinised by any one of those 2 billion people.


I don't think I fully comprehend the significance, or consequences of clicking that little button.

By this, I mean I am genuinely surprised when someone talks to me about something that I have blogged about, even though I know they read my blog.


Is this odd, or is this the post-modern norm? Why don't you ask me, and see if I freak out?

Clothing Identity?

What you wear will often say more about you than you ever could.

Clothes and the like have become the markers of our tribes, of our identities. We are not what we eat, we are what we wear.
To that end the business is forever seeking to give form or tailor to the identities of markets the world over.

I will present a selection of categories for consideration...

The Hipster
(Could I have started with anything less)

Note the retro/bad taste vibe. The rejection of a perceived mainstream. The desire to be different, but not that different. What was once laughable or worthy of scorn becomes a marker of originality on the hipster.

Hipster fashion runs on a simple logic wheel...

The Mainstreamer

Often claiming to be a non-participant of clothing identity wars, the mainstreamer is nonetheless making choices. Their choice is to be largely invisible. Present but not overly memorable. Social appreciation is achieved rather through an attachment of wealth or value to the clothes they wear; the more expensive, the more elitist and important they feel.
Such individuals are indeed prone to ostentatiousness.

The Minimalist

Minimalism is not dead. It's still quite awesome.
The minimalist will limit their clothing to the holy triumvirate; Grey, Black and White.

By their very nature people who show their identity through such clothing choices are not flashgits. Rather they have a sense of style without chasing the latest cool. They have settled into a timeless elegance that can only be achieved through control. Striking statements can still be made, but efforts are better saved for being memorable through simplicity. Think Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's

The Heavy Metal Fan

I refuse to term this group bogans. Being a bogan is having a behaviour. I have known many metal heads who were calm, restrained and intelligent. You're more likely to get arrogant mainstreamer bogans than you are metal heads - it's just that the metal sub-culture is more visible.
Borrowing from many of the sensibilities of minimalism in regard to colour application, Metal fans generally limit themselves to Black.

Metal fashion is about being uncompromising. It's a rejection of trying to dress how you're expected to. This rejection is genuine to the point of attracting scorn from those that have never listened to an Iron Maiden or Pantera album.
Contrary to widespread opinion I think the Metal look can be powerful and striking in a good way when well executed.

Less hair, more attitude; it works.

The Goth

Included as a stand-point to metal, but nonetheless a notable trend of clothing identity.
While the regular Goth look is indeed rather hard to pull off in most, Goth fashion stands as the ultimate in not caring about what others consider of your appearance.
However, it has inspired some looks that are rather commendable. I stress the use of the word inspired there...

The Post Modernist
Where anything goes because it's all a concept.
As long as it's breaking down traditional ideas or concepts in relation to clothing then almost anything could be considered post-modern, but I include this category to that fashion can result in some truly insane creations.

Any girls willing to wear a pair of these?

Seriously?

Or how about this; a futuristic French aristocratic update on the clothing of the flying nun...

Cool, but crazy.

So, you are what you wear.
Where do you fit?

UPDATED: coffees and what they say about you

It's a post-modern, robot-eat-robot society - you're gonna be judged, so you might as well judge others.

Stereotypes are there for a reason - here's a straight forward cheatsheet for judging people based on what they order from the barista:

BLACK COFFEE DRINKERS

Probably minimalist, austere and direct people who don't tolerate frothy, sugary, colourful beverages (or people).

FLAT WHITES / LATTES

A bit more mellow, less austere people who are a bit warmer and more approachable.  They may not have the strange allure of the edgy angsty types, but they are probably nicer people to deal with.

FROTHY CAPPUCCINOS, OR COFFEES WITH HAZELNUT/CARAMEL/VANILLA SHOTS

Like the coffee, the person is probably bubbly, and diabetes-inducingly sweet.  They drink coffee solely for the social, clucky aspect of catching up with their Bridget-Jones friends. They are approximately two decades away from the stiff gins and Dido CDs.

VENTI TRIM SOY GREEN TEA CAPPUCCINO WITH HALF STRENGTH HAZELNUT SHOT WITHOUT CINNAMON AND WITH CHOCOLATE SPRINKLES INSTEAD IN A SPECIAL TAKEAWAY CUP

Tragically misguided people who believe the more customised their beverage is, the more cultured/interesting they are. Fussy for the hell of it, even though they can't even tell the difference when it comes to the coffee. The non-alcoholic $11 liquid they are holding in their hand is a statement, in a beverage form.

ORGANIC SOY CHAI LATTE

Secretly wishes they drank actual coffee, and uses a moral high-ground or lactose intolerance as an excuse.

HOT CHOCOLATE/MOCHACCINO WITH 3 SUGARS, EXTRA CREAM WITH MARSHMALLOWS. OH - WITH TRIM MILK PLEASE. (Thanks Matt)

Bitch please! - the only thing getting thinner is your wallet. We get that you're trying to lose weight, but unless you're running a marathon on your next break I'd start by not drinking a meals-worth of calories in a beverage. 

Eh, whatever helps you sleep at night fattie.

fonts

As a minion of post-modernism, I type everything I do.


Whether it is pressing the physical buttons on laptop keyboards, or tapping away at the screen on my iPhone, typing has replaced handwritten work.

As a consequence, the skill of having beautiful handwriting reflective of your personality and your emotions has become moot - all 26 characters look the same no matter who types them, or where they are typed in the world.

Fortunately, the post-modern gods of supply and demand have not left us in the lurch with the clinically sterile Arial and the stodgy Times New Roman, with the explosion of fonts and typefaces available today.


I like to think of typefaces as the post-modern response to personalised and emotion-conveying handwriting.

We may not write everything by hand, but we have millions of fonts to choose from, many of them being free - just search 'fonts' and you will find entire websites dedicated to them.


Here's an overview/refresher (click for the larger image):

Fonts: USE THEM.

Proper Use of Some of Our New-Speak

Language is de-constructing.

Whole sentences are being condensed into acronyms that are then being made pronounceable and being formed in new words. The rules of spelling, grammar and intelligent written sentence structure are being voided literally as we speak.

Yes ladies and gentleman, a universal new-speak is being created right from our own mouths.

The source and driver of this butchery of all the rules you were taught at school; our un-friend The Internet. Aided and abetted by the Text Message.

This post is going to examine a few of the more notable developments and how they should be properly employed;

FML

Pronounced: "Ef-em-ell"

Source Sentence: Fuck My Life.
Cultural Source: Single serving story site http://www.fmylife.com/
Proper use: Not for anything average or lame, FML is reserved for only the most tragic and disheartening moments in your life. Using it on the mundane will make it lose its power.

ROFL


Pronounced: "Rof-ill"

Source Sentence: Rolling on the Floor Laughing
Cultural Source: An offshoot of lol, most likely born in the murky depths of MSN and online chat rooms.
Proper use: An appropriate response to a funny joke or story where a user wants to convey their appreciation of humour beyond just a simply lol.

Lol, Rofl, and Lmao are all closely linked, and arguably indistinguishable in actual practice.

PWNED


Pronounced: "Owned"

Cultural source: A competitive computer gaming typo that has gained significant recognition through the Pure Pwnage Canadian web-series - http://www.purepwnage.com/home_outside
Proper use: Whenever you are able to dominate another in a competitive sense. Simple, brutal, triumphant.

Taking New Speak too far can result in trouble. You risk sounding like an 11 year old girl if you get carried away...



To which there should only be one proper response.

how to make the best of your misc hour

The best way to describe misc hour is to describe what it is not.


It is not the busy rush of the morning, it isn't the bustle of the afternoon.  It isn't the winding down of the evening either. 

It lies in-between the last hour at work, where things slow down and time begins to play tricks on your mind, and the time when you have arrived at your next destination and you are busy thinking about dinner, social functions or the preparing for the next day. 

I think a great opportunity is lost here - take a moment to mentally extract yourself from the hoards rushing to public transport and take stock of the world you live in.

Grab a seat at a streetside cafe, order a beer or a nice coffee. Savour the drink, while sitting back and watching the masses rushing to their next destination. People are at their most honest when they're pre-occupied, and it's interesting speculating where they might be heading to.  

Make the most of misc-hour.

Why the Internet isn't your Friend

The internet isn't your friend, so quit expecting it to be kind to you.

Sure it may be where you can trade, bank, communicate, research, stalk strangers and be entertained. But your usage of the Internet is only a slim slice of the pie.

In truth, the Internet is vast and uncaring. The Internet is discomfort, danger and disagreement downloaded and dispersed in an indispensable form.

The Internet couldn't care less about you unless your upset reactions were somehow entertaining.

In our post-modern faceless society the internet is the easiest place to be mean to total strangers, as best illustrated in the "Greater Internet Dickwad Theory"

Maybe you've asked yourself by now; "But who out there is the cause of this potent mix of apathy and cruelty?"
The answer is; those younger than you - but specifically those sociopaths still young enough to think they're funny.

What can you do to stem the flow of hurt feelings you feel whenever someone does or says something you don't like?

Petition to take away their free speech?
Grow a thicker skin?

My recommendation; stop thinking the Internet is here to hold your hand and serve you.
It's not.
The Internet is here to serve everyone; and for some that means it's here to humiliate and mock you in a public manner from a-far.
Be careful what you do or say, because the Internet trolls are lurking for their chance to strike...

Jesus: theme and variations

Ask 10 people how they see Jesus, and you will get 12 responses.


This is your post-modern guide to the types of Jesuses and their attributes.


CATHOLIC JESUS: THE GUILT-TRIPPER
Guilt is simultaneously the honey and the vinegar of Catholicism.  


To quote Dylan Moran, "All good religions are based on guilt". 
Guilt-tripping Jesus and sideshow Mary are the cornerstone of the great religion that is Catholicism - the pinnacle of Christian denominations.

Feel the guilt, enjoy the shame.

NEW-AGE JESUS: THE APPROVAL JUNKIE
New-age liberal denominations have popped up everywhere, in knee-jerk response to the rapidly aging congregations and youth apathy to anything religious.


New-age Jesus is characterised by his "anything for approval and popularity" approach, even if it means compromising on everything which makes the denomination vaguely religious.

Whenever this happens, this Jesus bitches about them on twitter.

Anything goes, so long as you still like me.

ULTRA-ORTHODOX JESUS: THE PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVIST

This brand of Christianity considers itself the vanguard of Christiandom, taking pride in its principles, rules and traditions.

Since one of the principles is not to judge others, you won't find orthodox followers bible-bashing on the streets. Instead, this Jesus inspires its ultra-orthodox followers by example - through passive-aggressive behavior.

Jesus preaching his technique to his disciples. 

If you're complaining, you're not suffering enough.

POST-MODERN JESUS: THE FUNNY IRONIC ONE

My personal favourite, instead of pointing at things and looking angsty and wistful, this Jesus likes the funny side of things and enjoys the irony of the son of God being a dick.

I can be a dick, but I'm still getting into heaven before you. 

HA.