For no particular reason, let’s take a moment to take remember of the inventors — the King, in my opinion — of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Offhand, what can I say? The man was a genius and a force on stage. He pretty much invented the double-bend (at least on electric guitar, for rock music), which you can hear throughout many of his songs, most notably the intro to Johnny B. Goode. It’s about the fourth…well, it’s not a note, so, three-four notes and then a two-string power chord sort of bend. Ba-da-da-*dah*-*dah* — it’s the last two. And believe me, a double bend is really a son of a bitching thing to do right, especially quickly. It hurts the hell out of your fingers.
Some trivia about Chuck — he started out, and always maintained that he could “fall back on”, painting houses. Also, the original recording of Johnny B. Goode does not contain the lyric, “little country boy”; it’s “little colored boy”, but the studio struck the word colored and replaced it with country for radio play (“Oh my but that little colored boy can play…” — the song is autobiographical). And, of course, there’s the Chuckwalk, or Duckwalk, which is kind of hard to play guitar while doing, and also does a real number on your knees.
Late us take a moment to remember the late, the great, Chris Farley — whom would rather not be served decaf coffee crystals.
Just as a side note, I’ve always found it sad that Chris Farley was tagged as “the fat guy on SNL”, because he would have been just as funny with the weight off. In fact, the Chippendale’s skit originally had nothing to do with weight, really. It’s all a damned shame.
But…somewhere, I hope Chris has the right coffee and is drinking it in his VAN down by the RIVER.
Everybody has got to stop hating on carbohydrates so much. Even I’m bad about carbs these days, and that isn’t me, really, but rather me in middle age cutting down on them a bit too much to try to keep up muscle.
The thing is, people need to understand what carbohydrates (“carbs”) are used for in the body. Spaghetti, and most pastas, are carbohydrates; so are potatoes. Bread is mostly a carbohydrate, except the fortified part. Some carbohydrates are complex carbohydrates; some are simple carbohydrates. Do you really want to go your whole damned life without any pasta, any bread, sugar, potatoes, though? Probably not, and you don’t need to – you just need to know what to use the carbs for.
So there’s my little speech on carbohydrates. Kind of simple, really. You can have them, just don’t stuff your face with them, and work off the energy. Get some protein, and get some vegetables, and so on. Highly controversial stuff, here, such as, you know, act sensibly and so on. Again, I am not a medical doctor. This stuff is just science. Science – like magic, but it works. The links in here are all to trustworthy sources (two are to Harvard University nutrition; one’s to Wikipedia, one’s to the American Diabetes Association).
Someone recently asked me if I could name a movie remake that was much better than the original and I could not do it offhand (you can sort of get away with it with TV with spinoffs and such, and a couple reboots). It took me an hour to finally come up with — LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS.
Okay, so the original 1960 movie and the 1986 remake are arguably almost two different pieces of work completely, since the remake is a musical and the original is a B scifi movie released in 1960 (original title — THE PASSIONATE PEOPLE EATER). The original is still a Roger Corman classic, even if it is a cheesy, low-budget movie. However, the 1986 musical remake keeps much of the spirit of the original but also…speaks for itself:
I am actually not joking here, not in the least. Okay, well, I’m not stating mistruths. Maybe I find this a bit amusing, because the map below is actually accurate.
So, I think we have two basic things to remember. The number one thing comes from the great John Cleese, and that is, simply — don’t mention the war. Number two, and only slightly below that in importance, is to not declare war on birds. You will lose. They’re dinosaurs. They’ve survived worse, trust me.
I know it seems counterintuitive, but there were a number of initial studies done a long time ago that showed a good deal of evidence that inhaled cannabis, and this is really strange, since you’re inhaling smoke — did not only not cause cancer but in a small to moderate way helped prevent it. Which I know makes absolutely no sense, but I did read about it — it was in THE WEEK Magazine, years ago, in print — I do not have the link. The article had a picture of Cheech & Chong with the caption, “At least they won’t get cancer…” underneath it.
Out of curiosity, since I couldn’t find that original article and was getting conflicting information (and I trust THE WEEK, it’s one of the few sources I actually do trust these days, though even that digest is losing impartiality), I looked up some studies recently on whether or not there is any real truth to the notion that marijuana may aid in retarding and preventing lung cancer. There are, in fact, several scientific studies backing it up. Here’s one of them.
I don’t really think smoking anything is that great for your health — smoking marijuana can give you breathing problems at the very least and so on — but it does apparently coat your lungs with some sort of resin that seems, these studies claim, in early trials (especially on animals) does not cause cancer, and that, at best, actually fights lung cancer somehow by coating the lungs with certain chemicals that fight tumor growth and actually program the cancer cell to die, which the cell is usually is pre-programmed not to do (see: apoptosis — death of a cell — for some reason cancer cells usually don’t have that activated, somehow marijuana unblocks the apoptosis center and can thus kill a cancer cell off).
Just like any other thing I post on here, I am not telling you to go get high right now so you don’t get cancer. That’s idiotic. Smoke marijuana, don’t smoke marijuana, I don’t care; it’s your business. It’s just that I was long convinced marijuana caused lung cancer, until I started reading that it maybe it didn’t about…it was a while in the past…fifteen years ago? — when I read that article in THE WEEK. And it’s still debatable. I think maybe the goal would be to get the active chemicals into your lungs without smoking anything, in the end.
You can Google further and draw your own conclusions.
Alright, alright, I might as well drive up the hit counter a bit with some more NSFW links. These are to pinups, glam photos, semi-nudes, and so on, of Mamie Van Doren, whom you might not all know, but who was a bigtime blonde bombshell in the 1950s and 60s. Though Van Doren continued to work for quite a long time, in fact, there’s a nude scene of her in 2000, which is a bit…yuck, but it’s in the links somewhere, I think, if you want to look at it. Mamie mostly got nude in the 1960s, which is a little bit of a shame since she was at her best in the 1950s, but there are some naughty photos from the 50s in there. 😉
Personally, I myself do think there is some mild benefit from using supplements that help the body naturally produce HGH. The problem with supplements, almost all of them, unfortunately, is that you can’t get enough of the stuff into your body and processed by your liver to actually get the supplement into your system in effective amounts. So don’t go supplement crazy, but yes, you can legally take many, many things that stimulate the release of human growth hormone if you want to live forever (it’s still not proven by science, though, damn you all, that even direct HGH injections do any of that). And taking a supplement that helps the body naturally produce human growth hormone — if taken responsibly, according to directions — is usually not inherently dangerous. I mean, I once saw my late mother overdose on water and have to be taken to the hospital, and I know of other cases of that, so even all you people out there telling other people to “hydrate” all the time need to watch out in terms of safety.
Take spinach, for example (and don’t overdose on it). Spinach contains glutamine, which is very good at temporarily boosting human growth hormone levels. And a lot of it. And spinach is pretty safe. Although, as noted, you can even overdose on spinach. It can happen. But I do know there’s a lot of interest in HGH and so on because, hell, who doesn’t want a fountain of youth? It’s really wishful thinking so far, at least from all the studies. Again, however, a responsible supplement or two that helps your body naturally release and regulate human growth hormone is not necessarily a terrible thing. Okay, so there, you’ve heard my warning on the whole issue. So what can you take to get the body to naturally produce and regulate HGH on its own?
First of all, and I mentioned it — eat a lot of spinach. I did not say to eat insane amounts of it (this especially applies to any and all fellow Americans — we are all very much too much “CONSUME MASS QUANTITIES!”). The glutamine in spinach can naturally boost HGH levels by up to something like 78% — temporarily. And spinach contains natural glutamine, which is what helps you out. Now, glutamine supplements? Yes, they’re okay, and can be found at pretty much any drugstore or supermarket. It’s just that your body doesn’t process the supplement as effectively (or in some cases, that effectively at all) when taken in pure supplement form versus when taken in a natural form like food that simply contains the vitamin or amino acid and so on. If you are going to take the supplement, or supplements of any kind, please do not be an idiot. Take as directed and make sure your supplement is obtained from a trusted, lab-tested source, because a lot of supplements get contaminated with bad things when made — the cheap ones, especially. In other words:
Arginine is generally most naturally found in meats, seafood, and nuts, among various other sources. Again, there are supplements for it, but please be careful. Just be careful with all of this, is what I’m saying. I am not a medical doctor, and I do not endorse any supplement usage myself. I ain’t selling anything here, in other words. I’m just a UC Berkeley graduate (and not in the Sciences, in the Arts) with too much time on his hands. This is all just basic science and some of it is controversial, though all the links in this post are from trustworthy sources. Double check if you so wish.
Okay, you want a very strange but very useful tip or trick for your TV? Or your digital receiver box, if you’re using a TV that doesn’t have one built in. This tip, or trick, or whatever you want to call it, has worked for me for a very long time with antennas, and I do not know why (it may be the shielding around the cables being used), but, try this:
Instead of screwing the antenna cord end firmly into your TV or your digital receiver, try just barely connecting the damned thing. I kid you not. By that, I mean, have it so the male antenna cord end is barely even touching the female receptor on the TV/receiver. In fact, if you can, just have them touch and don’t even screw the damned antenna end in at all.
Now try auto-scanning for channels. I kid you not, you should receive at least about 48 channels in any market, over the air (OTA) — including things like MeTV, which is a pain in the ass to get on any streaming network. I ended up with 54 OTA channels.
Seriously. Try it. Muck about with the antenna cord by barely attaching it, see what happens.
