The to do list around the house is getting overwhelming, and I feel like it’s all I can do to keep my kitchen clean.  The rest of the family like to watch plenty of TV, and if I don’t sit and do that with them I don’t get to spend time with them during the week.  We are too knackered to do anything too interesting on a weeknight, and they Skype with Gran on Monday, soccer and cubs on Thursday, etc etc etc.  I can’t fit it all in and I’m finding it significantly frustrating.

I’ve noticed since I stopped drinking regularly (at Christmas, we do presents to Jesus, mine was to stop drinking habitually and just enjoy alcohol at social occasions, from January to Easter.  I’ve quickly grown to enjoy socialising more…) I have more energy and need less sleep.  My sleep cycle has gone wacky and I now go to sleep when Mon does and wake up at 5-5:30 in the morning.  Yet I still don’t get any of these things done and am rushing to leave the house on time.  What’s going on???  What is filling up my time so much that I can’t keep up with chores and still get some creative time?

OK I’d kind of love to give up TV, but I’m one person out of four here and if I did that I’d lose time with them.  We don’t zombify in front of TV like my parents do (my Dad yells at my kids if they discuss what’s happening on the screen) so it’s an interactive time for us, but still I could live without it.

I looked through the rest of my week and found the problem.  It’s Google Reader.  I have over 25 different websites on there, giving me constant updates of fascinating facts, comics, posts full of links to go to and further accumulate trivia, humour and whatnot.  It’s brilliant, I never have to miss a post, and if I’m not online for a day or two there’s so much I have to pick up on! SO that’s where that hour or more a day went….

So in the interest of being more my having less, I’m trimming my feeds.  I’m keeping a couple that actually have tips on living and being more, but the pure distractions are going, even if they are interesting and intelligent.  Goodbye Lifehacker, goodbye MentalFloss.  Goodbye Cosmos,  goodbye PopSci.  Farewell Slashdot, so long Register. Seeya John K, adios Evil Mad Scientist Labs. It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed your company, you’ve been great really, but you are just a distraction from things that should be important. I’m keeping a few, like Zen Habits and the Art of Manliness, because they only post every few days, and I’m a better person for reading them.  I’m keeping most of my comics, cos you know, all work and no play makes Jack a violent psychopath, but I’ll drop the ones that are only occasionally amusing. I’m keeping Cracked, even though it’s often peurile and offensive it’s also occasionally insightful, and funny as $%^&

Then maybe I’ll get some life.  If I use this hour in the morning to clean kitchen, post here more often, maybe do my Spanish lessons in this time a couple of times a week, then maybe I can play my guitar more evenings, dust off the pen and paper and break out some lyrics.  If I don’t have to spend the first half of Saturday getting the routine cleaning done, I can get some big jobs out of the way and then as a family we can play games or do projects together in the afternoon.  And since God has blessed me with the need for less sleep, I can make the most of that extra time and I won’t be complaining all the time about doing housework while everyone else is relaxing.

Often when we are in pain we feel like we are alone, the only one that feels the hurt, but suffering is all around us.  What does all this suffering mean for Christians?

There are some sound practical reasons for pain. Pain is your body’s very urgent way of telling you that you have just done something stupid, and so you learn to be more careful next time you use a power saw.  If you have anaesthetic at the dentist, they’ll tell you not to eat until it wears off – if you don’t feel pain you won’t know that you are chewing your tongue along with your double whopper burger.

There is a rare condition known as Congenital Insensitivity to Pain. Children who suffer from this feel no pain, so never learn to avoid dangerous and painful situations. When they are old enough to learn, they need to be taught to avoid things that the rest of us know by reflex, if they live that long.

So we know pain serves an important practical purpose, but there are some kinds of pain that we do better to face rather than avoid.  A long distance runner knows this – lungs bursting and muscles blazing, you push through and the endorphins will kick in, the pain goes away and you can run that last five ks to take the silver, knowing next time you’ll push even harder through that pain and get the gold. Or playing rugby – 160kgs of opposition prop busts through your team’s line and it’s just you between him and the trophy. If your mind is on the pain and not the prize, you’re going to be the villain in your team’s loss.

We feel uncomfortable about the little painful things like giving someone else bad news, or pulling off a bandaid, or going to the dentist, but we feel better once we face these pains and can move forward.

We know from the Beatitudes, aka the Sermon on the Mount, that God honours our suffering, but he also uses it, to remind us of our need, as an opportunity to experience his love in ourselves and in the people around us. Our hurt and vulnerability are part of our shared humanity.  Suffering breaks us, and allows God to transform us.

Psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski developed a theory of personal development known as Positive Disintegration.  He believed that those with the potential for personal development will go through phases of disintegration, often painful periods where preconceptions and inherited beliefs fail, and force a reassessment of everything in their life. These periods are often associated with depression or other mental health issues, but those with the strength to pass through them develop strong inner values that allow them to live rich lives and become highly valuable members of society.

This is not unlike the way God allows us to be broken, to make room for his healing and love to come into our lives, and change us. Embracing these times in our lives allows us to grow in the spirit, to move from our spiritual childhood and become stronger and wiser people of God.

We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life is at work in you. – 2 Corinthians 4:7-12

The healing work of Jesus in our suffering is our transformation, not just the first step into accepting Jesus, but throughout our life and growth as Christians.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. – 1 Corinthians 11-13

But our society doesn’t value suffering and change.

We’re taught to believe we’re just fine how we are, and we’re expected to be happy all the time. If something makes us unhappy, or we see someone unhappy, we don’t examine it or question it, we just do whatever it takes we to make things happy again.

[See post to watch Flash video]

Almost anything we want, we can buy.  Anything we want and we can’t have, we just buy other stuff to distract us. If there’s any discomfort, we fix it or avoid it. If it’s 26 degrees we turn on the aircon, and if it’s 19 we turn on the heater. Anything we can’t just fix, we can distract ourselves with sport, alcohol, TV, magazine. Most people don’t want the highs and lows of suffering and transformation, we want our lives to be a bit beige.

Australia is one of the least religious nations in the world.  I think part of the reason for this is that we have it so soft, we can so easily avoid suffering and the chance for transformation that it brings.  We fear change, and run away from any uncomfortable questions or situations God throws at us. Even as Christians here, we can find our selves living a comfortable faith that doesn’t grow and isn’t challenged, but if we take off the happy helmet occasionally, we can allow our sufferings to bring us closer to God.

We love cake decorating for birthdays at our house, here’s some cakes to avoid

Speaking of cakes, here’s an idea for candles for nerdy loved ones

Were you scared of the Dr Who theme as a child?  I wasn’t but I know several people who were. Here’s a way to work through those issues

For people who work with groups of kids, or groups of adults who like to play games, here’s a bunch of wide games and urban games and stuff

If you like Scrabble but want more excitement, here’s a word game for people in a hurry

Do you have neat handwriting, but prefer to type?  Here’s a way to turn your handwriting into a font

And when you are finished bludging on the internet, here’s some tips for productivity and happiness

Extreme Sports Goat

They can leap 12 feet in one jump and land on a safe point, to escape predators or just cos they can.

Envy his balance

And they don’t take orders from anyone.

Or what?

From Damn Cool Pics

Jackson Pollocks 'Something I vomited up'

To some extent in art the skill is in the underlying meaning, not necessarily the execution – it’s a bit like an obvious invention – I could have though of that, but I didn’t.  Why an artist chose to do something a certain way, how that interacts with other art and the social and political context, and its influence on future art, all of that contributes to the artistic value of a work, otherwise Picasso is just a guy who couldn’t do noses.

The monetary value is like anything – if a few people with a stupid amount of money want something, they bid it up to stupid values just cos they can.  Or possibly to tick each other off.  Then galleries that want a piece of that significance have to pony up the dollars or be left with local artists of insignificance to display.

In the case of Pollock, according to some guy “The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation from value — political, aesthetic, moral.”

It’s clearly been liberated from any artistic merit as well, somehow creating an object of purely monetary value.  It’s like selling air, it’s genius!  If Pollock had planned it all along, then the act of fooling the art buying world with drunken splashings would have been the actual piece of art and it would have been brilliant.

But since he took that act of making the painting as his serious piece of art, he’s probably just a bit of a wanker.

Nonetheless, many people have begun to avoid vaccination, and Measles/Mumps/Rubella in particular, because of a study linking MMR to Autism Spectrum Disorder. I suppose this is a reasonable concern, although you know, living in a house full of gifted people a bit of autism doesn’t scare us!  But not only was the link based on a single study, the study has been retracted by the journal that first published it, The Lancet.

Not only were there several outright falsehoods in the paper, and a tiny sample space, Andrew Wakefield, the doctor responsible for the study, has been found guilty of “dishonesty and misleading conduct” during the period of the study, and risks being struck from the medical register for this and other sins. In addition, a year before the study Wakefield applied for a patent for his own measles vaccine, so had a lot to gain from discrediting the existing vaccine.

Sadly, as these articles note, much of the damage has been done and the retraction will probably do little to repair the situation.  Search google “measles outbreak” and you’ll find the usual Botswana and Zimbabwe and other third world countries with poor health and vaccination standards, and in the mix you’ll find Ireland in 2010, right here in Victoria in 2009, Sunshine Coast in 2009, England in 2006, all related to decreasing rates of MMR vaccination.

That’s right, 11 minutes. Players are getting pretty well reimbursed for that.  The Wall Street Journal did a frame by frame analysis of recent broadcasts in the US and came up with this stat, averaged across several TV networks.  The rest of the time?  Well there’s an hour of commercials, and there’s probably a bit of in-broadcast advertising to get through – ‘here’s the RazorCompany close shave plays, brought to you by RazorCompany’ etc -  but on top of that the clock in grid iron keeps running when the ball is out of play, so on top of the 11 minutes of actual football, there’s 67 minutes of players mostly standing around.  There’s another 17 minutes of replays – yup, more replay than actual game.  This is as bad as cricket, but at least nobody is claiming that cricket is exciting.  The rest is taken up by things like coaching staff and referees hanging around, with a shocking 3 seconds of cheerleader time.

It would be interesting to do this to other sports. Cricket we’ve already mentioned, but that’s not a fast moving football style game so can be excused.  Rugby League would be good, should rate much higher especially in cheerleader time, although there’s a good proportion of ingame advertising in league and you miss plenty of game watching replays.  Soccer, lots of play time but still not much action.  Aussie Rules would be good, the clock usually stops pretty promptly when the action stops, so a 20 minute half has been known to go over half an hour, but I think Rugby Union would score best – the telecasts really capture the free flowing nature of the game.

I don’t have so much free time that I want to do this analysis frame by frame, but it occurs to me that some kind of time tracking app could be used, eg you punch in and out of play and replay and ads as tasks. More news if I ever get around to doing it :)

Sartre would approve.  More Garfield Minus Garfield

Elves got to get paid, son

This led to some discussion at our house.  I thought it was funny as hell, the lady interviewed in the news report didn’t seem traumatised or upset, she was kind of amused that the guy had kept up the character the whole time.  If he had just worn the suit and acted like a bank robber, different story, but to make the effort to act Santa the whole time almost makes it seem like the money was secondary to the awesome braintweak, like an Improv Everywhere mission, but with a gun.

On the other side of the discussion, Santa represents a lot to people, especially children.  Even knowing that this is clearly not the real Santa, I guess it’s kinda upsetting for kids, and little ones could find this a mite scary.  Also, you know, on principle it’s a misappropriation of the person of Santa for selfish ends, an armed robbery is a serious and dangerous thing and not associated with a giver of gifts and bringer of Christmas joy.

I can see both these points of view, but I can’t get too upset at the situation – to be honest, for most of the last hundred years Santa has been used and abused by marketers and advertisers who want to separate us from our money, so it seems only fair for him to cut out the middle man and get a bit of that action himself!

Art of Manliness has the Bodyweight Workout for Busy Men. As well as more on the effectiveness of this type of training, it has a sample routine with a good variety of exercises to get you started.  AoM also has a feature on 35+ different kinds of push ups, with videos, which allow you to exercise different areas more than others, or just make them a whole lot harder!

Simplefit.org suggests a simpler routine, but adds a logbook, and also a busy community forum to compare tips and experiences, and keep you motivated.

Bodyweight Culture also has a forum and plenty of articles and features.  There’s loads more to find on the web, so keep looking for different stuff you like and build your own.

Don’t forget the importance of warming up.  This is probably my biggest failing as I’m impatient and short on time, but it does make a difference as far as improving your workout, preventing strain and also recovering quickly. It’s hard to find a good warm up routine that will fit in the short time frame I have.  From what I’ve read, you mainly want to get the blood flowing before you start, so a little cardio with light full body movements are good, such as star jumps, high kicks and rowing, eg sit on the floor and reach for your toes and back, but don’t over stretch.   Stretches are important warming up for sport but less so before a bodyweight workout, but they make for a good warm down afterwards and help your overall flexibility.

Lastly, while one of the advantages of the bodyweight workout is that you don’t have to blow wads of cash on equipment, the chin up or pull up is one of the best single exercises you can do, so you’ll need somewhere to hang fromand chances are you’ll need to make or buy something. If you have exposed beams somewhere like a basement or patio, here’s a home-made bar that will hang over an I-beam. Instructables has a plan for a doorway mounted pull up bar with no screws or holes, instead there’s a significant amount of engineering involved to get it right. Or if you’re willing (and permitted) to screw into ceiling or walls, go for it!

That’s the end of the series on bodyweight workouts. If you are  thinking of starting a humble exercise programme, let me know!