lazy slacker slob

Yep that’s me.

After spending the morning bunkered down at the office I emerged blinking into the sunshine, only to find rather less of it than I had anticipated. Not much sunshine, but the day was over-blessed with whistling wind, gloomy clouds and the type of rain-drops that you feel are about to develop into a minor hurricane any minute.

So, I chickened out. I schlupped back upstairs and back to work.

Right now I can see a little square of blue sky out the window, taunting me. I am resolved to go for a run tonight, but my resolution is bound to be sorely tested, given the two separate after-work drinks I’ve been invited to.

Cross your fingers for me.

just too tired

Yes, I’m just too tired to think sensibly tonight. I guess that’s what happens when you’re doing 2 and a half jobs at once - none of them at all well, I might add - and coming home to chase two year olds about the place.

Luckily, there’s no security feature on wordpress that says “you must be able to think sensibly before posting”, though that might be a good idea.

So, I’m warning you not to expect anything in the way of sparkling wit or cutting social satire. I haven’t the energy.

Instead, I would like to draw your attention to this week’s edition of that august journal: Famous magazine. In particular, the headline story:

Shock reader survey: what you really think of your body

Yes, it seems after years and years of feeding our collective body image neuroses, it turns out 52% of us would try lipo and 70% have “bikini terror”.

On that basis, I think I’m a pretty typical Famous reader. I’m not particularly drawn to the idea of having my body fat sucked out with a Dyson, but I too would rather drop a dress size that sleep with Brad Pitt. I definitely have bikini terror. It doesn’t bare thinking about.

Running
Only time for 10.5 fairly rapid kilometres this lunchtime. It is my true and honest wish that somewhere in hell there is a particularly sulphurous corner reserved for those who schedule meetings at 13:00.

stop it or you’ll go blind

Err… How can I put this politely? Beating off, wanking, masturbation, all that stuff; we’ve all done it. Well, not me, obviously, but allegedly the other 99.5% of the male population does it all the time. This is despite knowing that, according to various religions, every sperm is sacred, we’ll grow hairs on our palms and/or we’ll all go blind.

Apparently, it gets worse. Researchers have discovered (how many dodgy news stories have you read that started with those three words?) that increased levels of throat cancer have been associated with oral sex. (Giving: I can’t think how receiving oral sex would be a problem.)

Last year, however, Gillison’s team published a major study that found stark differences between the risky behaviours of throat cancer patients with HPV and those without. The HPV-positive cancer patients tended to have had higher numbers of sex partners than the others and were far more likely to have had multiple oral-sex partners.
From theage.com.au today.

Great. Way to spoil everyone’s fun, guys.

Luckily, I think I’m in a position to allay any concerns you, the public, may have. Regard, if you will, the picture that accompanies that story, which I will helpfully reproduce below:

Did you notice how she’s sucking on a thermometer? There’s the problem.

Readers - add this to your notebooks - it’s generally not a good idea to chew or suck on a tube filled with mercury.

I’m surprised she doesn’t glow in the dark!

Running
My usual 12.5km course around the streets near my joint.

an actual long run

I haven’t done a proper long run for I don’t know how long. What with babies and being sick, I haven’t had time.

I’ve done plenty of 12km-ers, a few 16km and two around the 18km mark, but I don’t count a run as being long until it’s over 20km. That’s just my rule.

So yesterday’s run was pretty pleasing. It was just over 22km and it took me exactly 1 hour 40 minutes. Here is on mapmyrun.com

http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/australia/melbourne/189400554396

If you can get the elevation thing to work, you’ll see there’s a bit of up and down there, aside from a lap of the Croydon Golf Course. There was a mercifully brief Maroondah Dam-style climb at around 15km but that didn’t slow my progress too much.

I couldn’t afford to slow down, as the road I was on - Edinburgh Road - had no street lighting or even footpaths and the shades of night were drawing in rather rapidly. It felt good in general, good during, good afterwards and good now.

Happy.

i like the queen

More specifically, I like her birthday. Even more specifically, I like the fact that we get a day off work for the queen’s birthday. The way we celebrate her official birthday, as opposed to her actual birthday, has me a little confused, but I’m willing to roll with it. At the end of the day, I’m willing to celebrate the fact that she has a birthday, and I don’t much care when we do it.

But how best to celebrate? A cake? Candles? Lolling around the barbecue in a drunken stupor? What is the correct etiquette here? I am be-fogged.

It’s all a bit pointless, and it always comes around as such a surprise.

This year I had no idea this was a long weekend until about 4pm Friday afternoon. In fact, I’d spent much of the day wondering why no-one was accepting my meeting invitations for Monday morning. I was getting a bit miffed.

But now, all is crystal-clear. It’s not the queen’s birthday, so we’re not coming to work. Right. I get it.

Running
11km on Friday afternoon with AM and a guy called Jamie. I have a fun planned out for today, a long-ish one, but I am in negotiations at the moment. It might end up being delayed until tonight, in which case the route would have to be changed to something a touch more street-lit.

vague old me

Spending your whole working day slumped over a computer keyboard tap-tap-tapping away has its good and bad points. On the plus side, you tend to become rather well-informed on such fascinating topics as the use of ajax in faceted navigation elements. On the other hand, you tend to lose touch on the real world.

That happened to me today. I left the office and ensconced myself in a rare seat on the train, ipod on the go, and quickly became engrossed in a juicy game of soduku. All well and good, you might think.

You’d be wrong. Firstly - I was on the wrong train. I meant to go on a Lilydale line, but ended up on a Belgrave train. Not the end of the world, if you remember to get off at Ringwood and change. I didn’t remember and ended up somewhere cold, strange and unpleasant. I made it home alive and in one piece, but only just.

Running
I made it home, copped a bit of good-nature ribbing from the beloved spouse then headed off for an invigorating jog. A hill session over a course I’ve not done for a while. V. enjoyable.

atta boy bong su

I do like to use this humble column to celebrate life’s achievers, the famous and the not so famous. So it gives me great pleasure to extend a hearty clap on the back to Bong Su, the 34 year old elephant from Melbourne Zoo who has set a world record.

From theage.com.au today:

BONG Su, the 34-year-old bull elephant at the Melbourne Zoo, has smashed an Australian and a world record, and all it took was a little gentle persuasion.

Not only did he help companion Dokkoon become the first elephant in Australia to get pregnant through artificial insemination, but he has broken the world record for elephant sperm concentration - 2.2 billion sperm per millilitre, compared with the average of 600 million a millilitre.

2.2 billion eh? That’s quite a lot of swimmers. Apparently the average human jizm only has 20 million. By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, Bong Su is 100 times as fertile as me.

It did cross my mind that old Bong has gone a bit too far. 50 times would have been impressive. 100 plus is just rubbing it in.

Then again, I’ve never tried to fertilise an elephant. I imagine that would take a bit of doing.

Running
12 or 13km this lunchtime in the general tan vicinity.

Incidentally, the creeping de-tanification of the tan proceeds apace. The dark gray gravel stuff has spread like some noxious weed across most of the river end of the track. I don’t mind overly, despite what I may have said earlier. It may be sacrilege but I don’t actually like the tan surface. Give me bitumen any day.

night-time fog

I see Steve has been setting some sort of land-speed record around Latrobe Uni on the weekend. He should be careful, at that speed he’s in danger of taking off and landing somewhere unpleasant: Preston, perhaps or Reservoir.

My weekend was far more prosaic. Not for me the setting of 100 metre records, nor drunken brawls outside city night clubs. I spent the weekend pottering in the gardening, having intense conversations with a two year old and shivering.

It was last night before I managed a run; dark and vast walls of fog disfiguring the landscape. But, I ask you, is there anything better than fog?

Clearly no, that’s the answer I’m looking for.

If you’ve got a nice heavy fog, chances are it’s cool and there’s little wind. If it’s REALLY foggy it has the added benefit of protecting passers-by from the sight of my unsightly limbs sweating their way up and down the footpath.

Anyway - last night was 18km around the streets in 1 hour 20 minutes. Not blistering speed, but pleasing. There were a couple of reasonable hills thrown in there and I choofed up them with no real problems. Here it is on mapmyrun.com.