barack obama

I don’t know if you’ve been following the election in the good ol’ USA lately. I’ve been trying to avoid it, but keep catching glimpses of news stories out of the corner of my eye, so to speak.

There seems to be the normal bunch of nutters and/or born to rule types. There’s a Clinton on the one side and some late middle-aged white guy on the other side. Ho hum. However, there’s also a guy called Barack Obama, who’s regularly compared to Kennedy, I guess because he’s, for a politician, astonishingly handsome and seems to have a knack for feel-good rhetoric.

I, for one, like the guy. He’s far more appealing than Hillary Clinton, who reminds me of one of my son’s irritating toys, that sings in a twee American accent and won’t turn itself off and you can’t find the battery and you end up bashing its head on the concrete out of sheer frustrating.

But, I am pleased to see The Onion laying into him this week:

Obama Practices Looking-Off-Into-Future Pose

One of the best stories from those guys in years.

Running
I REALLY needed a run today. What with one thing or another, it’s been a few days since last time. So, it being Friday and all, I decided to take an extra long lunch break and go for an explore.

In retrospect, the entire length of Latrobe street isn’t the most conducive to fast running, at lunch-time. After I cleared the city I was able to up the pace and cruise around the Capital City Trail for a bit and then back into work via Nicholson Street. Here it is on mapmyrun.com.

fags

Some of you may have read the title of today’s post and thought “oh-oh. JH has lost it – he’s going off on some sort of homophobic rant, Andrew Bolt-style”.

Others may have thought “oh good. A post about lollies of yesteryear”.

Both camps are sadly wide of the mark. It’s about cigarettes.

Way back when, back when I was at school and uni and for a while afterwards, I used to smoke. No, I used to SMOKE. I loved the things; couldn’t get enough. There were chimneys that envied me. I had yellow stains on all my fingers and other places too. I had a cigarette between my lips for most of the day, even before I got out of bed in the morning.

Have you ever seen movies with Humphrey Bogart? Well, that was me, except with lank, unwashed hair and faded Guns n Roses t-shirts. (I still can’t figure out why girls didn’t like me.)

I spent a rather entertaining two weeks kicking the habit aged 22 and never looked back. Now, ten years or so later, and I haven’t thought of a cigarette in years, which partly accounts for my superhuman strength and endurance.

So, I was a bit miffed today when, crossing Lonsdale Street in something of a hurry, I spied a pack of death sticks between the lanes and instinctively thought “god I’d like a cigarette”.

A wierd feeling, I tell you. It felt like vertigo, like I was being catapulted back to a time when people thought Friends was funny and that our way of life was under threat because we built a casino.

Ahh those were the days. (Except for the cigarettes of course).

Running
A couple of laps of the tan yesterday lunch-time, but nothing today. I wore that RFTK 2008 t-shirt for the last time. It’s C.R.A.P. I run for about 200 metres and thing miraculous turns into a ball of sweat; it weighs an absolute ton.

would you buy a ticket from these people?

I see our new whiz-bang high-tech “smart” ticketing system has been pushed back yet again. Now it looks like it’ll be 2012 before we see any movement.

Jaysus Christ! I reckon I could go to Ticket System Uni, get myself a PhD in Ticket Systems, design a system from scratch AND install the thing personally in the time it’s taken to do this.

Running
I’ve had a couple of passable runs in the past 2 days, lifting my hopes of some sort of minor recovery from the last month’s depressing slothfullness.

Yesterday was 18.5km around the streets near place. There were a few good long hills thrown in and I finished it feeling strong and fast. So, pretty heart-warming.

Today a 13km run including 7 reps of the Anderson Street hill. With any luck the fitness will come back eventually.

fraternising with the troops and a virtual run

I’m a bit confused about this:

Apparently, that photo is something like a “before” picture. What, allegedly, happened after this was taken is that one of the people in the foreground had some sort of minor orgy with a bunch of people in the background.

This is a scandal, apparently.

I’m not overly upset. Hey, soldiering must be a fairly lonely job and if they want to while away their evenings up-close-and-personal with Angry Anderson and a stuffed toy, what’s the harm?

What’s that you say? They had sex with Tania Zaetta??? That’s just disgusting. Arrest them!

Running
I’m about to head out for a run soon. I’m pretty confident it’ll happen, but at this stage it’s an alleged, or virtual run. We’ll see.

Edit: You will be relieved to hear it turned out to be an actual run. Here it is mapped out. Quite a loverly day today innit?

Corporeal mortification
Em suggested yesterday that my cold-shower thing was akin to taking myself out the back and whipping myself with a birch rod.

Not so. Running with one of these would be:

You can buy them from http://www.cilice.co.uk/. I’m sure that’ll come in handy.

Have a look at that website, if you get a moment. It’s by-line is “How luminous is darkness!”. Hours of amusement. You can buy belts, hair-shirts, chains and a frankly alarming collection of cilices all shipped to your door in “discreet packaging”.

But beware:

When used within a structured and disciplined prayer life and under the direction of a Parish Priest or spiritual advisor it can be used as an aid to worship. Any such penance performed in a spirit of pride and not humility will surely block us off from God.

Oh – it’ll probably also hurt a bit.

They also have “penance forums“, which would no doubt be entertaining reading. Presumably, that’s where you go if you’ve slept with Tania Zaetta.

an actual run

It wasn’t pretty, in fact it didn’t even have a nice personality, but it was a run. It was 12 point something or other kilometres this lunch-time.

I started at work, shot up through the Exhibition gardens, jumped puddles of latte-types oozing out of cafes in Carlton before ending up semi-vertically at Princess Park. Two laps followed and then a dispirited slump back to work.

Doesn’t sound that great does it? But still, there’s nothing quite like a run to break up the day especially if you can follow it up with a bracing cold shower. It makes me feel all tingly, in a nice way. (Jojo – get your mind out of the gutter).

I have my post-run showers in the disabled facilities on my floor. I start super hot, all the better to kill the various infections growing on my unmentionable bits. Then, when my body is looking the other way, I switch it way down to the cold side.

A bit of blubbering usually ensues, sometimes even a manly squeal or two. But it’s worth it. If you see me at work in the afternoon walking around with a sort of idiot grin, you’ll know – I’ve had a cold shower.

more stupidity

I think it’s fair to say my cardigan’s online debut yesterday was something of a success. That’s my story and I intend to stick to it.

The most positive comment came, worryingly, from Stumac:

You’re so right…

From Andrew.

Choc full of animal magnetism and rugged good looks

Em gave it 8/10 and Morsey said:

I think you can wear the cardy ithout any concerns at all- it looks manly even.

There was no need to sound so surprised, but still..

All this praise was fairly gratifying, especially if you ignore the fact that it came from a bunch of people who consider it perfectly acceptable to wear some sweaty combination of shorts, lycra tights and running shirts in public.

Louise seemed a sole, underwhelmed, exception to the rule.

I can’t help feeling that, given time, even she too will warm to the sartorial splendour that is the cardigan. No-one can resist for long.

back to the tan

What with one thing or another (reproducing, being 30km away) it’s been some time since I sampled the delights of Melbourne’s running mecca AKA “the tan”. Well, I got out there today, and lo and behold it’s no longer tan!

Well, some of it is, but great swathes of the place, down by the yarra, have been dug up, fenced off and replaced with a whole heap of gravel in a rather unnattractive, stalinist dark grey colour. I don’t know who’s in charge of the place, but they need to have a word with their decorator.

It was a 12km run, at average-ish pace.

Speaking of unattractive designs, I finally have that picture of me in my cardigan I’ve been promising.

I’m not sure the photographer got my best side, and the camera he/she was using mysteriously filtered out the rugged good looks and animal magnetism I was telling you about the other day. Still, for what it’s worth, here it is.

beki’s musically challenged

If you are just starting out on a career in the blogging world, head this piece of advice: never blog drunk. God knows what might happen.

The odd thing about yesterday’s post is the absolute and complete lack of alcohol or any other stimulant. I was sober, stone-cold stober.

Odd.

Moving on….

Beki’s musical challenge
A couple of days ago on Beki’s blog, she asked, nay demanded, all concerned to answer a couple of personal questions vis a vis one’s taste in music. I would never dream of denying Beki a thing, even now she’s flounced off up to Sydney. So here goes:

1. Name your all time favourite song that you will never get sick of
   Song to the siren by Tim Buckley
2. List the ten songs that would make the “sound track of your life” i.e. your other favouritist songs that are not your bestest ever
   I shall be released – Bob Dylan
   So real – Jeff Buckley
   There she goes – The Las
   Famous Blue Raincoat – Leonard Cohen
   Shiloh town – Tim Hardin
   Down by the seaside – Led Zeppelin
   The same deep water as you – The Cure
   Road – Nick Drake
   God only knows – The Beach Boys
   Blackbird – the Beatles
3. he one song that you love but are too embarrassed to admit it to anyone (and now I’m making you admit it to anyone). The more embarrassing the better
   We have all the time in the world by Louis Armstrong.
   I think it comes from the soundtrack from some 60s James Bond film. That being said, I think it’s way cool, no matter what anyone else says.

Question 2 was pretty much songs picked at random. There are a whole lot more that could make the list on another day. I also excluded classical music, just to make it easier.

Running
11km this afternoon. It was windy and unpleasant. So was the weather.