Down with jogging!

 Posted by at 04:55  Down with
Dec 032012
 
USMC Marathon
Image via Wikipedia
“It’s unnatural for people to run around city streets unless they are thieves or victims. It makes people nervous to see someone running. I know that when I see someone running on my street, my instincts tell me to let the dog out after them.” Mike Royko

Jogging is just wrong!

There is just something terribly wrong about jogging. The only time it makes sense is when trying to escape from some pending danger like maybe your kid’s birthday party or your mother-in-laws visit. Any other time it just courts disaster. First, I don’t believe the human body was designed to run because if it were, humans would look a whole lot different. For example, no other humanoid runs on two legs. If they want to get somewhere fast they go down on all fours like all the other running animals. Just because of our insistence on standing upright we suffer back problems all the time. Now compound that with jolting the spine and bouncing a heavy head while running. Nothing good can possible come from all that stress. For that reason I contend that running is just plain bad for the body. Walking or standing is enough strain for a spine designed for horizontal activity. Add to that the pounding on knee and ankle joints and you have a recipe for total disability. It wears me out just thinking about it. Why do people do it? It is simple and obvious.  Humans are a perverse and destructive species.

Then there is the madness of marathons

Sprints or laps are bad enough but then there are the few that are the crazy (and I mean that literally) people who run marathons. Maybe there was some justification for the first one. The Greeks didn’t have cellphones or even automobiles and there was an urgent message to relay. They didn’t have much choice.   Send a runner! Nowadays there is absolutely no good reason to run 26 miles unless you are mad as a hatter. Today only masochists would put their bodies through all that stress just to gloat about their pis poor judgment.  These are fools, bragging to the smarter people who have better things to do. It is not just the time wasted in actually running the marathon and then recovering from the damage it does to the body. No, on top of the 4 to 8 hours of torture invested in running the marathon, these fools put in months training their bodies to withstand the malicious torture that a marathon inflicts. If they made other people run marathons, we could lock them up as misanthropic, sadistic torturers. Since they do it to themselves, we have to give them a pass. There is just no nice way to put it. It is an intelligence problem. I am convinced that marathon runners are either missing some critical component of intelligence or were tortured and insecure as children.  Nothing else makes sense.

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Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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May 112012
 

I WAS going to write a post this morning about the end of the world that didn’t happen…but then Ralph covered it in his news wrap for the week.

Well…figgering if I was going to copy someone’s work, it might as well be the work of a GOOD writer…***snicker, snicker, snicker***…not to mention that I wanted to avoid a charge of plagiarism (after all, I’m a redneck from Georgia, not a liberal writer for the New York Times) I decided to post a post from one of my other blogs, JuicyMaters, that I wrote last week.

This way I can avoid taxing my limited mental capabilities by having to come up with a Plan B, and at the same time get some important information to you folks who don’t frequent my other sites.  After sorting out the slightly deranged parts of the post below, you might find some important health information that might help you or a friend or family member.  We here at Coots try to insert, occasionally, information that you can actually use…other than How To Be Cantankerous, of course.

For those of you who read both this and my other blog(s) and have already read this, sorry to bore you with what you’ve already read.

For those of you who haven’t been to my other blogs…why?  You can learn all about yurts, homesteading, and other cool stuff at JuicyMaters, and I’ll piss you off with my political ramblings at Common Sense Conversation.  You need to come over.  You REALLY need to come over.  I CAN find you, you know?  If you’ve stopped by here we have your IP address, your browser type, and much more.  With modern computer technology, stopping by here tells us a lot.  We even know what you are wearing while reading this, right down to the color of your underwear…LOL.  Visit our individual blogs of we might have to visit YOU!!!

 

Without further ado, here is that other post:

 

Homeopathic medicine
Image via Wikipedia

Ya know…I kinda like y’all

 

Reading time: 6-7 minutes

 

Yes you!  When I say, “I kinda like y’all” I’m talking about you…the folks reading this. Besides being readers of my blog, I kinda sorta consider you folks friends…and that is why I’m writing this post.

You see, I like writing this blog, and since you are here reading it I assume you like what I write. It is sort of a symbiotic relationship. I write stuff, and you read my stuff, and we support each other that way.

The only way we can do that is for both of us, you and I, to be able to do our part, and that is what this blog post is all about… Staying able to do our part.

In case you all haven’t noticed, my posting has been a bit sporadic. Sometimes you will see two or three posts in a week, and sometimes you’ll be lucky to see two or three new posts in a month. Off and on, I have been having some cognitive thinking issues for about a year, and in the last two or three months the frequency and intensity of my “altered mental state” (fancy medical jargon for “more nuts than usual”) have been getting closer together and lasting longer.

That, combined with a few other health issues popping up, spurred my doctor and I to decide that I really needed to go in the hospital, have a few tests done (“few” being relative. I think I ran out of places to poke and prod) and find out just exactly what was going on.

Now for your regular readers of JuicyMaters, especially the ones that spend much time at the Family Homesteading and Yurt Yak categories, you already know that I tend to lean toward homeopathic medicine and I avoid big Pharma drugs as much as possible. With that said, there is a time and a place for allopathic medicine as well. This past week has been the time, and Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta was the place.

You have to be wondering where I’m headed with this… And if I’m in one of those “altered mental states” that I was talking about. Bear with me… This is actually going someplace that makes sense.

Among the other things they found at “Big Piedmont” was that my carotid arteries, both of them, left and right, were clogged with plaque. The right carotid artery was 30% clogged… Not enough to do the Roto Rooter on, but the right carotid was 100% blocked…TOO occluded to fix, oddly enough.

From a 50% occlusion to a 99% occlusion, doctors can clean out your artery, but once it’s completely blocked it is blocked for good…maybe. We’ll get back to that “maybe” in a minute.

Here is where I try to keep you folks, my readers and friends, able to read all this stuff that I write.

This problem has been coming on for a year or better. At first I ignored it, actually finding it mildly amusing. “Oh gee, I feel drunk and I haven’t had a drink in a few years…ha ha ha.” As time went by, as the episodes got more frequent, more intense, and lasted longer, I still played the typical macho American male… “I’ll get over it.”

As late as three months ago the problem probably could have been fixed, but I waited too long. Now, doctors tell me I’m just going to have to put up with it for the rest of my life. Understand, as long as my other carotid artery stays open it is really not that big a deal. Some mild disorientation? Yes. Occasional trouble finding a word I know as well as I know my own name? Yes. A need to nap occasionally what I was never much of a napper? Yes. But it is not a tremendously huge deal. For example, I’m still safe to drive.

But dammit, it is inconvenient… And was totally unnecessary.

The problem is simple to find before it gets too bad, and fairly simple to fix. In fact, it is so simple to find that many insurance companies pay for annual carotid artery ultrasound that will find the problem quickly and painlessly.

For those of you who might already have the same problem I do, remember that “but once it’s completely blocked it is blocked for good…maybe” back up there part way through this post? Well, while a 100% blockage might not be repairable surgically, I’m holding out hope that there is a homeopathic way to fix the problem. My research starts today, and I will let you know if I find anything that will help clear the blockage.

For those of you who do not have this problem, or who think you might but are not sure, here is my recommendation, from someone who learned the hard way:

For folks over 50, and certainly for folks over 50 who have diabetes and/or cholesterol problems, get an ultrasound of your carotid arteries annually.

If you and I both do that, I’ll keep writing stuff, and you’ll keep are reading this stuff that I write. I kinda like it that way, don’t you?

 

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Bob@HayleStorm Interactive

Bob comes to us with a skeptical attitude and a full cup of Cantankerousness. He also writes about homesteading and yurts over at JuicyMaters.com and rants about politics at Common-Sense-Conversation.com Most of the time, though, you'll find him at HayleStorm.net, cranking out great websites for clients OR writing tutorials teaching them to build their own sites.

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Oct 202010
 

**If you missed Bob’s debut here at the coots check it out here.  If you wan’t to read some sage wisdom about simple living check out his great blog at JuicyMaters.com.  Thanks for another great article Bob, you are most definitely now one of us Coots**

Sheesh!  Lately it seems that this is Old Cantankerous Coots instead of Cantankerous Old Coots.  Ol’ Ralph over there concentrates on retirement over there at his blog, and then links us to other bloggers who talk about retirement, some very active retirement but retirement just the same, and I just sit here, fat and happy, making those funny raspberry noises…phlettttt…

I’ve done my best to ignore the aging issue, and some health problems have conspired to help me do so.   After all, I can blame my inability to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail on diabetes based foot problems, NOT on the aging process.  My lack of endurance I can lay at the feet of my own stupidity, smoking induced COPD, NOT on the aging process.  Same thing with my lack of strength.  A couple of years ago I decided that my shrink in rehab didn’t know what he was talking about, that I could have a drink, just one little itty bitty drink before dinner, and not go back to the half gallon of gin a day I had indulged in for a few years before going to rehab.  Eight months later I found myself in the ICU almost dead from malnutrition and a badly damaged liver.  See?  My lack of strength is due to the booze, NOT the aging process.

This morning though, I got slapped in the face with the cold dead fish of reality.  Oddly, it was not a physical limitation that woke me up, but a mental unwillingness to do what I used to do.

A little you need to know about me so this make sense.  Either I am Oscar Madison or Oscar Madison is me.  I purchased my housekeeping skills at Oscar Madison R Us.  My philosophy tends toward, “Wash the dishes?  Why?  There are still clean dishes to use…”

Combined with that has always been a college kid’s nonchalance toward left over food storage.

OK…  With that background, I ordered a pizza last night.  Not a personal pan size pizza, not even a large pizza, but a super sized great big humongous pizza.  After all, the difference in price between a small pizza and a ginormous pizza these days is about 37¢, and (college kid thinking here) the leftovers would make  a fantastic breakfast this morning, right?

Well, I got up this morning, fixed my coffee, and felt my stomach say “feed me, feed me”.  I walked into the kitchen, saw the pizza box on the counter (where any college kid would have left it), and started to eat the remainder for breakfast.

“Started to” is the operative phrase here.

Shit!  Maybe I am getting old(er).

Bob@HayleStorm Interactive

Bob comes to us with a skeptical attitude and a full cup of Cantankerousness. He also writes about homesteading and yurts over at JuicyMaters.com and rants about politics at Common-Sense-Conversation.com Most of the time, though, you'll find him at HayleStorm.net, cranking out great websites for clients OR writing tutorials teaching them to build their own sites.

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