Bionic Teutonic

Jesus I’m sore today. I just finished the last of 4 free personal training sessions at my gym, and my trainer just wore me to the bone. I’ve never had personal training before this, and I have to say, I got a lot out of it. I went in with some specific stuff I wanted to work on, mainly increasing my vertical jump and speed (acrobatics requires some explosive power, yo) and the trainer was actually stoked. He told me ‘Thank god. You don’t understand. 95% of the people who come in here just want to lose weight”. It was great, because I used it as educational sessions and was very clear that I wanted to learn about things I could do on my own. I don’t need motivation, I just need knowledge. Since yesterday was my last session, I think he must have wanted to give me something to remember him by, because I swear, it was like twice as hard as the other sessions. Walking is taking some conscious effort today.

Ariel just turned me on to the sub-culture that is steampunk (due to this wedding on her site) and I’ve been totally fascinated for the last couple days. I recognize the aesthetic but have never had a name for it. I think the thing I like about it is that is has cross-over with so many other sensibilities, yet manages to be distinctly it’s own thing at the same time. As my friend Ben put it, it’s sort of like a longing for a golden age that never was. People have created some really cool stuff. One of my favorites is this laptop. I want (though could not afford) one. I also like that it has some cross-over with circus fashion (of the el-circo and mystic family circus vein). It seems to be showing up in a lot of places lately. We just got back from seeing The Golden Compass, which is completely saturated with the steampunk aesthetic. I like.

Christmas is coming up and I’m just now starting to think about presents. I actually hate this part of the holidays. Especially coming on the heals of Thanksgiving, which is such a wonderful, non-consumer oriented holiday, Christmas can sometime feel like a gigantic ruse by the capitalists (whoever they are) to make it a requirement that we all buy lots and lots of crap. Not that I’m very good about living a simple, non-consumer oriented life normally, but somehow the social imperative to buy always makes me uncomfortable. Plus, I have to wonder how much of the crap that people get for Christmas goes to waste because they never wanted or needed it in the first place. I try to ask so that I’m getting people exactly what they need, but not everybody knows what they want when you put them on the spot like that. Oh well. If you ignore the consumption, it’s not a bad holiday. Snow (at least in Montana, where I spend Christmas), family, good food.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 9th, 2007 at 6:49 pm and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.