- the dodo to Alice.
Here at No Fat Jokes Please we too love celebrating mundane. Like any upstanding paternalistic elitist professes -- mundane is the rabble's security blanket. We go over-board with the celebration, especially when that mundane is our's. Keeping with the trajectory of modern parenting, youth soccer leagues, higher education, civil discourse, and taco trucks, we want equality. Same equipment for all. Our love for equality is only slightly veiled by our disdain for those seeking equal outcomes. Please cease and desist carving out space for warm feelings and emotional stability in gyms. There is not enough Generation Equal Outcome propaganda to parcel out real estate along side actual success. This ain't Average Joe's gym! (Deep breath.) That felt good to get off my chest... Now where was I? Oh yeah, talking about myself.
Recently Jaron and I accomplished personal best on the bench press. In accordance with our mission statement to promote full disclosure; I would like to commend my trainer and friend for putting up his life time best weight... 195 lbs (13.92 stone). I was able toss up a humbling 205 lbs (14.64 stone). That might be a best for me. I'm not sure. I live in the present. The past is just fog; distant pricks of memory. Unfortunately, we failed to lift our current body weight: Jaron 201 lbs and yours truly 216 lbs. Our max lift capped off a grueling phase of circuit. In a paradox of progress, we are on a break from lifting while I tapper for a masters swim meet in early December, but we will continue to blog while I enjoy the rest. Writers will write, and fat guys will eat.
I've turned over the creative capacity to the master of muscular definition in order to focus full efforts toward writing my annual position paper Chronicles of a Lost Southerner. So I hope you enjoy Jaron's next installment of Achieving ODJ: The authorized and agitated journey through America's savage pursuit of thin. I fear the credibility of No Fat Jokes Please may never recover.
This, in fact, ain't Average Joe's Gym, nor is it Globo Gym, or Planet Fitness. We celebrate success, and denigrate poorly designed exercise, which is rampant in today's gyms. Participant ribbons will not be handed out for good effort or best intentions. This is a results based society we live in. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. I haven't even attempted a single rep max on bench press since freshman year in college, 185lbs. More recently I have dislocated my right shoulder three times, and choose not to lift heavy when it comes to pressing exercise for fear of a repeat. 195 is sad in the scheme of things, but I could not be more proud, given the circumstance. Jarvis is taking a break from lifting, but I have no excuse, so I upheld our traditional Wednesday morning routine today. Worked out solo, despite my innate desire to stay in bed on a virtual holiday. Much has been said in this rag about having a raison d"etre. I am now focused on my 40th. It's a scant four and a half months away, and I am celebrating in Thailand for a few weeks, where I intend to become a beast and escape the burden of being a man. Between the existential implications of turning the big four-oh, and the self consciousness of being topless on the pristine beaches of paradise, I am committed to whipping my lazy ass into shape by then! I will embody "fit at forty". How, you ask? Because I know better than the green ribbon brigade. I won't be doing Zumba classes, or sweating like a hostage while holding court on the stair climber, or performing WOD cult rituals. I will do properly designed exercise, for me, by me. That is why I will succeed. Stay tuned...
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