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Saturday, February 14, 2009
Oh yeah, I have a blog. Sorry. So, one thing I've been doing a lot in my blogging hiatus is Thai boxing. For the uninitiated, it's somewhat like kickboxing, but with added knees and elbows and fewer mullets. For those who learn visually: Kickboxer:  Thai boxers:  Aaanyway, I do a lot of this. As I mentioned recently, I got pretty fat and lazy for a while there. It wasn't fun, but it wasn't devastating, either. I ate a lot of cheese, and that was great. Now I train maybe 13 or so hours a week and eat fairly well to sustain this level of activity. I do it because I love the sport and, although I'm an utterly lovely, compassionate, peace-loving person, I have always really enjoyed fighting. It's just fun. But despite this, I'm not terribly interested in sport or health and fitness in a general sense. If I didn't do Thai boxing, I sincerely doubt I'd be running or doing pilates or buying an Ab-doer instead. I'd just be eating cheese. Because those things are boring. It's great being really, really fit, but it's not SO great that I'd buy a Fitness First membership just for the privilege. I bring this up for two reasons: 1. Since I'm really, really fit these days, people talk/whinge to me a lot/ask me questions about their own fitness endeavours and, more often, their desire to get fit/lose weight, but inability to do so. 2. I've been following a great series of posts over at a blog called The Pound titled 'Against the Professionalization of Movement' (parts 1, 2, 3, 4) that expresses what I'm about to say better than I'll probably say it. Here is what I get a lot of: "I want to get fit/lose weight. I hate the gym (or running, or whatever), but I know I should go. I will start going again." First off, if you hate the gym, you're not going to go. You're just not. You might go for a month, or you might go sporadically, but you're not going to go regularly for the forseeable future. If you were going to love the gym, you'd know by now. I have two friends who joined the gym as adults after leading largely un-sporty lives and fell in love with it. I have many, many more friends who haven't. And they never will. Secondly, fitness and weight loss probably isn't going to be enough of a motivator to get you to do something you don't enjoy for any sustained length of time. If you were one of those people who just loved being fit/thin that much, you'd probably already be doing the things that were necessary to get there. My point is this: find something you actually enjoy doing. It depresses me that so many people think the only way they can be active is by dragging their arses into the human equivalent of a hamster wheel. If you just enjoy being active for the sake of being active, you'll get fit as a result. You won't even have to think about it. It also depresses me that many people don't even consider trying the hundreds of activities out there because the fitness industry has them convinced that the only thing adults can do is boring-arse shit like the stairmaster. Here is a list of things you can do that aren't the gym:
(Don't worry, I'm not going to turn into a fitness blogger, because ZZZZ)
posted by Ruth at 10:34 PM Sunday, February 01, 2009
Let me tell you about the worst program on television at the moment. Maybe ever. It's called 4 Ingredients and it's on the Lifestyle Channel and it's not even so bad it's good -- it's so bad it makes me hate humanity just a little bit more. (I still watch this program, of course, but only because I'm kind of addicted to the instant hit of bile I get every time I hear the theme song and so I can accurately relay it's shitness to you in full detail). It's hosted by these two women:  The one on the left has a horrible bogan nasal voice, while the one on the right puts on this faux softly-spoken posh accent, but it's definitely fake because they're from Queensland, and all Queenslanders sound like the Scully family from Neighbours. I imagine her real voice sounds like a rusty buzz saw. She is also up the duff. Since when are pregnant women allowed on television? Anyway, apparently these ladies wrote a cookbook consisting of recipes that only have four ingredients in them, and it was a huge seller, because people are stupid and lazy, and thus someone thought it would be a good idea to give them their own TV show. In fact I'm pretty sure it went down something like this: Lifestyle Channel monkey: These women have written a successful cookbook -- let us give them their own show without screen-testing them first or giving them actual scriptwriters. I'm sure their ability to write a successful cookery book means they can write and present their own TV show. That's... pretty much the only way I can fathom this show having been created. That, or sexual favours. So the primary reason the show is so bad is that they generally make what can only in the very loosest, vaguest, Microsoft-Word-thesaurus-synonym-choice way be called "recipes". Here is one recipe: Get some lamb. Put some bottled pesto on it. Put it in the oven. THAT. IS. NOT. A. RECIPE. Some are even worse. One was just strawberries dipped in sour cream. That was it: take a strawberry, dip it in sour cream, eat it. And the dishes that DO resemble actual recipes are inevitably constructed entirely from bottled, tinned or pre-made ingredients so they come in under the four-ingredient limit. This is particularly annoying, as they constantly stress how "healthy" their food is. It never, ever, ever is. This was another "recipe": Get a pre-made pie crust. Fill it with canned caramel (yes, there is canned caramel. I know.) Cover with cream. Serve. a) Yuck b) They PAY these women to come up with this shit? And sometimes they just flat-out bullshit to claim something has four ingredients. "Mixed veggies" isn't ONE ingredient, lady. To make matters worse, as I alluded to earlier, they are horrible presenters and just spout off the most idiotic shit. In one episode, the bogan one went on a rant about how she only buys "organics". "I started buying organics years ago. It's just so much better and now I only buy organics." ARGH. I think I actually yelled at the screen. It's organic food, you dolt, not a fucking brand name. Doesn't someone check this shit? Isn't there a producer on hand to have a quiet word with her? Another time, the faux-posh one was reeling off a stupid list of ways to be more healthy (or something) and they were all stupid, but the stupidest one was this: "Eat lots of veggies because they contain antioxidants which help protect your cells from damage." Yes, THAT is the reason to eat vegetables -- because they contain molecules that, according to most studies, consuming more of won't make a shit of difference to your health -- not the millions of actually good reasons to eat them. Oh, and the bogan one has a son called Jaxson. *brain explodes* If you dare, you can read some of their "recipes" here and view the horror for yourself here.
posted by Ruth at 10:53 PM Sunday, January 25, 2009
So, huh, it's been a long time between drinks, eh? Here's what I've been doing with my life instead of posting here: Up until late last year, I was working for an evil magazine publishing company. My business card said 'Editor', but it wasn't all PR freebies, ordering writers about on assignments and scintillating interviews over long lunches. Actually, it wasn't any of that. It was begging photographers for discounts, begging people to write free, rewriting the kind of copy you get when pay writers nothing, de-mangling dull email interviews, being my own sub-editor and proof-reader, trying to avoid the constant ethical compromises I was asked to make... and being told I'd done a shit job of it at the end by my barely-literate, sycophantic boss, regardless. Anyway, I did that for almost two years. In that time, I probably put together about 20 issues of 90-120 page magazines, where I wrote (or re-wrote) the vast majority of the copy, subbed almost everything, organised and oversaw all the photo shoots and image selection, and oversaw the layout and design. I learned a lot. I also suffered from anxiety attacks and heart palpitations, couldn't sleep, ate like crap and put on weight. And I earned less than I did as a bartender for the privilege. I'm actually not at all sorry I did it. But I hope you can all forgive me for not really wanting to spend my down-time writing when I finally got home from work at 9pm. But anyway, you can put away the tiny violins and call off the wah-mbulance, because I'm now working in a super excellent job, with lovely, intelligent people and good hours and interesting, relevant things about which to write, and they pay me to blog and use Twitter and do silly things in Photoshop. So now I'm happy and healthy again, I thought what better time to resurrect this here blog. I may even bring back the much-loved cult comic series, The Illustrated Adventures of Ruth! Crazy times. I know most of the Australian blogosphere have jumped ship in favour of Facebook and Twitter and whatever, but I was blogging long before it was cool and no doubt I'll be beating this horse long after it's dead, too. So: did you all miss me or what?
posted by Ruth at 3:20 PM Monday, May 19, 2008
A few years back, I did a post about my favourite Firefox add-ons. The interwebs, and the ways we use browsers, have changed so much since then, I thought it was worth revisiting. I'm still a big fan of many I nominated back then — FoxyTunes, ForecastFox and Flashblock are still favourites. Some newer ones I like are:
What add-ons are you digging at the moment? If you commented on the original post back in the dark ages of 2005, what has changed since then? Are you still using IE? Seriously? Are you intellectually deficient in some way?
posted by Ruth at 12:50 AM Saturday, March 29, 2008
For those who enjoyed (or continue to enjoy) the reviews of Babysitters Club Books here, you may also appreciate these two sites: 1. Blogger Beware: The Goosebumps Blog. Goosebumps was the Harry Potter series for youngsters when I was a kid - even kids who hated reading collected them. I'm not really sure why, in retrospect; I'm told the Harry Potter books are quite good, but Goosebumps weren't particularly engrossing or well-written - although I will admit 9-year-old Ruth did at least find several of them scary - but for whatever reason, you HAD to have them, and most kids also read the words inside. All the kids in my grade 3 class (or maybe just my table that year, which I cannot believe I still remember consisted of Lachlan, Rowan, Saskia, Kate and myself. Wow.) would bring all their Goosebumps books each day and stack them in a pile on our tables to... uhm, I don't know why. Show how many we had, I guess? 2. The Dairi Burger reviews Sweet Valley High. I never read a lot of the SVH books as a kid - I was generally too much of a tomboy to have ever been seen borrowing girly YA fiction books, but generally relished any of the trash my sister brought home - but the reviews are appropriately snarky and I'm sure many of you out there (both of you) did read them. Apparently the SVH books are being re-released and updated, which is incredibly lame. YA fiction isn't generally of a very high standard, and it surely isn't THAT hard to find a moderately competent author to come up with new-ish storylines. Even R.L. Stine is apparently penning some new books.
posted by Ruth at 1:14 AM Sunday, January 06, 2008
You guys, I may have found the greatest TV program EVER: Rock of Love with Bret Michaels It's like The Bachelor, but with the former lead singer of Poison and a bunch of hideous-yet-awesome trash bags. POISON!  Michaels is everything you want in a washed-up rockstar — overweight, over-sexed, dumb as a post and still living off the one hit the band ever had. He can't go near any of the girls without copping a feel and engaging them in a sloppy snog. As Tommy Lee would say, he's sauteed in wrong sauce. The girls are, of course, all "in love" with him, and frequently declare themselves as such. Michaels laps it up then sticks his tongue in their mouths. Highlights include:
But the BEST bit? In the end, he can't pick between the final two girls... so he asks them to share him. It's so good. SO good. It's currently airing on VH1. Watch.
posted by Ruth at 11:41 PM Thursday, December 06, 2007
Excuse my lack of activity of late, it's been a busy month. Anyhoo, I should announce the answers to the three-second musical challenge: 1. Alphaville - Big in Japan 2. Big Star - September Girls 3. East 17 - It’s Alright 4. Heart - Barracuda 5. KRS One - Sound of Da Police 6. Richard Berry & the Pharaohs - Have Love Will Travel 7. Zombies - Time of the Season 8. God - My Pal 9. The Veronicas - Revolution 10. Smog - Cold Blooded Old Times 11. New Pornographers - All For Spinning You Around 12. Del Shannon - Runaway 13. Genghis Khan - Moscow 14. The Knife - Heartbeats 15. Harvey Danger - Flagpole Sitta 16. The Thrills - One Horse Town 17. Helmet - Unsung 18. 13th Floor Elevators - You're Gonna Miss Me 19. T-Spoon - Sex on the Beach 20. The Survivor Theme And the winner(s), with only six correct (plus two half points) is Team Wishlist. Second place was a tie between Supermercado Adam and Desci with four each. Third place goes to Fluffy with three. Half-arsed, effort, guys. But, you know, thanks for entering! Interesting facts: The most guessed was Flagpole Sitta. NO ONE got The Veronicas! Are you all retarded? Desci tells me that the Survivor theme is in fact a Russian folk song. So there you go. As always, the winners get mix CDs, as does anyone else who wants one. This time, I will also be chucking in some mystery magazines from my place of work for the winners. Be excited, folks, we put out some TOP publications. Including a titty calendar. Seriously. Just send me your mailing address (even if I've sent you one before. I keep no records). ALSO, the final Howard blog post is up! Sad, but also happy.
posted by Ruth at 10:20 PM  |
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