Good Versus Evil

There's always a struggle. It ranges from that within us to worldwide. And it's usually a choice: It's good versus evil.

If there's a top, there's got to be a bottom. If there's a god, there has to be a devil. If there's good, there has to be evil.

This week, again, evil slaughtered innocence. It broke my heart. How could a teenager kill elementary school babies? I am thankful for my kids and grandkids... and want to keep them all.

And again, some are talking about more gun laws. As if criminals and crazies cared about laws. As if we blamed cars for drunk driving. It's not the car and it's not the gun... it's the crazy and evil people. It's a widespread but allowed mental health problem that started when Cain clubbed Able. I have myself experienced these people mess up others through intimidation and abuse... several times.

Is there a solution? Is there nut control? When I was a kid, armed robbery and shooting threats to local merchants were taken care of by the neighborhood. Customers would beat the crap out of robbers, in the act, and toss them outside to the street, bruised and battered. No 911 needed. Ditto for not accepting bullying and intimidation at school... they got theirs, eventually. Is that the solution?

To me, personally, it's about every decisions I make, from being helpful to others, to what I eat and what workout I do. My solution is to avoid crazy and evil, embrace good, and train hard to be tough and thus able to defend myself and others. Tomorrow, I will do what I do every day... what I CAN do... conquer my own self. And pack heat.


- © 2012 by Willy

P.S. God, please, deliver us from evil.

Dealing With a Threat

"No." I told the young panhandler at the Safeway grocery store door.

"You a rude son-of-a-b$#&$!" he said, lurching forward.

"Say that to someone your age." I said while putting my groceries in my backpack at the bike rack.

Then another twentysomething joined the first as the first continued the insults: "Bring one, you son-of-a-..."

Now, this 62-year-old can take one young punk, but not two. So instead I went inside the store and told the Service Desk. By the time I came back outside, the two punks were gone.

I thought to myself: This assault is in a nice neighborhood, mid-morning, at a nice store called SAFEway... how ironic. There just isn't relief, even on vacation.

Then I bicycled away. Bicycling away from a threat works!

-copyright 2012 by Willy

Sing Song

"Love me tender, love me sweet, never let me go..."

I've been hearing that refrain all day, perhaps due to my noticing of tomorrow's play of the 1956 Elvis movie on the tube. I whistled it continuously during my long Thanksgiving day before-dinner hike today.

When I was a kid... before Elvis... my mother sang a fairly similar lullaby. I felt very cuddled in hearing it. In turn, I hummed this Elvis tune to my kids to relax them at bedtime. Not only that, but I still self-medicate to this ditty. Lullabies are meant to function just so, and work amazingly well.

I'm in the midst of some turmoil: A nutty young punk threatened to beat me up and has evoked memories of early school bullies. I've been sleeping with a shotgun, and Elvis calms me down.

Or perhaps I was hearing God's lullaby.

Prayers can be the darnest things... whistling a lullaby!

More conventional: "For exercise to calm the body and prayer to calm the mind, I am truly thankful, amen."

It's best to accept the situation, prepare for a possible eventuality, and go through channels... calmly.


- non-Elvis text © 2011 by Willy

Intensity

A little trail philosophy: Life's all about moderation in all things, thus intensity is key. Too intense and endurance suffers plus injuries happen. Not intense enough and we gain no training value and just waste our time. Did I say workout intensity or life intensity?

Crosstraining and tempo are important too. That is, I have learned that the intensity should vary with short periods (workout tempo), medium periods (each day different) and long periods (crosstraining).

About once a week I do an extreme-intensity short-duration cardio (when I go stupid that my legs won't move). A couple of times a month I do a hell of a powerlift single-rep workout of some body part (after a significantly 30-minute warmup). Also about once a month I do a high-endurance low-intensity cardio (a daylong hike). Several times a year I hike or bike for a week.

And I am very careful and very slow in introducing new stuff in my workouts and into my life.

This has worked out well for me... if I have the mental fortitude to stick to it. Sometimes I feel like I know the whole story and other times I feel like its completely out of control.

I've got to be careful about my passions, whether in health and fitness, with my personal life, or at work. One injury, whether physical or mental, and life goes awry for a long time. Since the physical and mental states correlate, one completely affects the other. Action reduces anxiety, and it does apply to both the physical and mental... I've found that the battle is not with or about another but within myself. A mental anguish state can have a physical fitness solution, or an apparently physical barrier can be overcome with the right thinking.

And that thinking had better be with the right positive attitude, with a smile on my face and happiness in mind, and both solo and in community.

- © 2010 by Willy

High and Mighty versus...

Tiger Woods is the latest casualty in a never-ending list of The Fallen.

Here he is, the best at his field, a Billionaire, married to a swimsuit model... the perfect man everybody aspires for... and he gets taken out by what appears to be ego. Money and power goes to their heads. It's called temptation. The devil exists.

The funny thing is that it also happens to a lesser extent to the average guy. I'm sure Tiger Woods gets a million temptations for every one of mine. If you go by percentages, he was bound to fall.

I'm not the best in my field, although I'm very good. I'm not a billionaire, although I do well, I do not know any swimsuits models, although I did score a trophy wife once (or she me) when I was a socially awkward young man. I do understand the lift to the ego that leads to succumbing to temptation, but neither the temptations nor the trophy wife were worth the trouble.

No, I don't know if I'm getting hit by angel or devil, so I play it conservative. My solution has been to limit my exposure and thus minimize temptation. T. Boone Pickens, the oilman, says that the higher a monkey climbs a tree, the more people can see his ass. So I stay in the brush below, doing my thing... I'm pretty high up at work but refuse further promotion, so I get an awful lot done. Every now and then a lady smiles at me... I must remind her of her grandfather... and I ignore it. The love word comes up occasionally and I respond that I love her like a sister. I watch out for games and my favorite word is no. I don't look for "it," I apologize if the wrong impression is taken, and I bolt. And a dear old lady runs my favorite hangout, so I do not flirt with waitresses... it would be like flirting with my mother.

It may seem like a lot of work to constantly monitor and be aware of what I'm doing... to stay in stealth mode... but it's nothing compared to the loss resulting in a fall from grace. God exists too.


- text © 2009 by Willy

Lock Up?

"We lock up more of our citizens per capita than brutal dictators like Robert Mugabe and Fidel Castro," wrote Cynthia Tucker in her request to end the War on Drugs.

I've got news for her. In the early 1960's, Castro's Cuban revolutionaries shot the entire previous party dead... up against a wall. No going to see a judge. It was televised, day in and day out. "Paredon!" they chanted. Thousands and thousands died, so there was no locking them up in the hoosegow. And many of the ones that were lucky enough to get to jail ended up dead anyway, due to starvation and sickness. Rape, murder and looting (in that order) were wholesale and only deterred by hefty walls and demonstration of defensive gunfire. No getting caught and going to jail for that, since the murderers were the new revolutionary party. Then in the 1980's, Fidel sent his prisoners here via the Mariel Boatlift and emptied his jails.

Since then, news and pictures have appeared of dissidents being beaten to death at the US Special Interest Section in Cuba ("the embassy")... no need to lock them up either.

Yes, Cynthia, brutal dictator Fidel Castro doesn't lock up the citizens... he kills them instead. Your statement is an insult.

"Tijuana authorities found 275 pounds of marijuana and a half-completed tunnel under the border," quipped Jay Leno, "Wonder why the tunnel was only half completed?"

Dahhh! Is it better to laugh with Leno and be ignorant like Tucker, or be stressed with the truth?


- text © 2009 by Willy

Trouble

You have known people that are just trouble. Matter of fact, you might have married her like I did, and then some time later forgot and looked for another just like that again. Duh! Maybe I've liked trouble, but most likely I've responded to attention, getting further involved in the excitement... and the trouble.

Now I fear trouble and stay away from it. Trouble... that says it all. Whether it's the difficult and nasty micromanager for a project at work, or the flirty gal in the bike club looking for a provider, I want none of that, and I straightforward state so up front. Now when I see those people I see a big "Touble" neon sign above their heads, and I duck away.

I like my relatively uncomplicated life.


- text © 2009 by Willy