September 07, 2007

Friday Freakishness

Yep, it's time again for Friday's random health and not-so-health related linkage!

First up: Soldiers in Iraq, particularly female soldiers, are going off and getting cosmetic surgery without permission, according to this interesting blog post. (The source is actually a military site with ads like "Imagine...No Liberals!" so caution is advised). Anyway, these unauthorized surgeries are becoming more popular because troops are getting paid more now than they used to, and medical procedures over there are cheap.

Apparently military folks are getting breast augmentation, nose jobs, liposuction and tummy tucks, which are sometimes botched by unqualified doctors! Crabby knows the first thing she'd think of doing if sent off to a foreign land to fight a bloody war is go get elective cosmetic surgery. How 'bout you? But unfortunately, troops are ending up sidelined from duty for extended periods when they should be off doing soldiery things instead.

And via Healthbolt, always a favorite source of amusing but educational health items: A speed-dating study out of Indiana University came to this conclusion: men look for beauty in assessing potential partners, while women seek wealth and financial security. Shocking, declares Cranky Fitness, just shocking!

The study also found that women were pickier than men. While men on average wanted to see about one out of two of the women again, the women wanted to meet only a third of the men. (The article didn't say which third--lets just be tasteful and assume the top third, from the chest up.)

And now a weird, too-small-to-be-useful, but intriguing study of Poets and Suicide, brought to Cranky Fitness by PsyBlog, a thoughtful psychology blog that Crabby somehow hadn't come across before. The study (which can be found here) used a computer program to analyze the text of 300 poems written by 20 different poets, half of whom eventually committed suicide. What sort of differences did they find in their poems?

Suicidal poets were not more likely to use words associated with negative emotions or mention death than the non-suicidal poets. However, they were more likely to use the first-person singular (I, me, my) than non-suicidal poets. And suicidal poets focused on sex more than non-suicidal poets.

So: "There once was a man from Nantucket..." was simply a cry for help? (Note: Crabby did not even realize there was a non-obscene version of this limerick, but apparently it all started off quite innocently!)

Now we make the leap from Surgery, Sex, and Death... to Fitness! But at least it's not Boring Old Normal Fitness.

So Kelly from Fitness Fixation, whom Crabby already adores, wrote a very funny post recently about blogging and swearing. (Her Mom even pipes up in the Comments; it's really cute). However, Crabby couldn't quite figure out how to sell that as health-related. But it turns out Kelly has another great post over at That'sfit in which she tells us How to Get Fit by Slinging Your Beloved Family Members Around Like Human Barbells! Now THAT is fitness related, so we're good! (And actually, the post contains some really smart ideas about exercising with your kids).

But here's where it starts to get weirder, because, well, Crabby doesn't have any kids so she was googling around looking for instructions on how to use one's pets as barbells. (Not for real! Just to find a funny picture, she swears).

Alas, no funny (free) pictures, but she did find some weird animal exercise stuff! She'll spare you the rest of them but she'll leave you with this bit of strangeness: (Warning: you may want to Turn Down Your Sound because this contains annoying music).

Crabby has NO idea what to make of that.

Anyway, she hopes you all have a great weekend! Crabby may stop by the blog and post something inconsequential, or she may go outside instead and play in the sunshine!

UPDATE: Well, Crabby was playing in the sunshine, but she returned home from her exciting adventures to discover her Feed was Suddenly Invalid! Crabby needs to feel Validated as much and as often as possible--so to be told that she now has Zero subscribers was a bit of a shock. She's going to Monkey Around with this post and see if perhaps the embedded YouTube video destroyed her feed, since that's the only thing unusual about it. She'll replace it with a link and see if that helps.

25 comments:

  1. OOOH, I'm first! The vidoe was great. Have fun playing outside!!

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  2. vidoe!?!? I was so excited to be first, I forgot how to type. Oh well, now I am first AND second, and that's a first for me!

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  3. How cute! I'll bet the bull dog and chimp met while speed-dating.

    Have a great weekend! :)

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  4. Finally. The Nantucket mystery solved.

    "men look for beauty in assessing potential partners, while women seek wealth and financial security."
    The mind boggles.

    Enjoy the sunshine.

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  5. Crabby,

    Eclectic!!

    That's the word.

    I love your Friday posts because they are eclectic.

    That sounds so much better than I love your Friday posts because you have so many things jumbled together.

    Another great Friday!

    Terrie

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  6. Well it's no wonder we're so bogged down in Iraq if our soldiers are too busy getting nose jobs and D-cups to get on with the business of... what is it we're there for, again?

    And I'm not at all surprised that women are pickier than men. What actually IS surprising is that while a man will harass a woman for being "too picky" (she's stuck up if she won't go out with him, yanno), the same man will call a woman a slut if she's not picky ENOUGH.

    All of which proves that you can't please everyone!

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  7. Years ago, I actually saw something on TV where some woman was exercising, using her cat as a barbell.

    So I looked this up ...
    Catflexing: The Catlover's Guide to Weightlifting, Aerobics & Stretching

    Ha, ha ... my 13 pound tabby will sure give me a good workout!

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  8. That video was absolutely bizarre! Nice one :)

    "women were pickier than men"...well of course we are.

    And I *wish* I could use my cats to work out...they crawl all over me when I stretch or use the exercise ball. It'd be so nice if they could help me out instead of drive me crazy. It made me giggle, as (to try and make him go away) I did some curls with one of our cats this morning. I must say that they don't work as well as regular free weights- very wiggly and fuzzy and they won't stay put. Suppose it's back to my regular barbells next time!

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  9. Hi Holly!

    Well especially since I apparently haven't changed my comment time stamp from California time, it makes it look like we're both extraordinarily early risers. And I didn't even notice vidoe!

    Hilary...that's too funny!

    Hi Leah, yeah that study was SUCH a surprise. And the Nantucket thing almost makes me want to start composing (non-obscene) Cranky Fitness limericks! (Or perhaps not).

    Hi Norabarnacle--yeah, I worry a bit whenever I see animal stuff about mistreatment. If it was just what we saw on the video, it didn't seem too much worse than normal animal 'play' but I do wonder what we might not be seeing behind the scenes in the training process.

    Hi Terrie,
    I love the word "eclectic" for that very reason! It's a great euphemism for "random and crazy-assed and not particularly discerning!"

    Hi Bunnygirl,
    That cosmetic surgery thing seems so odd to me! And I'm with you, I don't think women should get criticized for being too picky, especially not by obnoxious guys whom they are being picky about. There's still such a double standard around that!

    Merry Mishaps, what a great link! That's the very sort of picture I was looking for.

    Hi Geosomin,
    Leave it to a scientist to actually conduct a Cat-as-barbell experiment! But alas, as mine would probably wiggle too, it sounds like back to drawing board for my hopes of a feline-assisted fitness program.

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  10. Oh, boy, another Cranky Fitness post! I wonder what Crabby will talk about todaOH GOD, CLOWNS! CLOWNS!!!! AAAAAAH!!!

    Sorry...sorry. I have a bit of a phobia, and they all seemed to be looking right at me...

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  11. That video is so funny and weird. I love the part where the chimp is tugging on the dog's legs, like, "c'mon! let's go!" lol!
    and I agree with Jim. clowns = freaky.

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  12. Jim,
    Aren't they creepy? So many of us either loathe or fear clowns one wonders who the hell actually likes them? Yet there's always more of them, piling out of those little clown cars by the hundreds to terrorize and annoy yet another new generation of kids.

    Hi Katie, & thanks again for the link back at your place! And yeah, nice classy way to end a post, huh? But well, it's Friday.

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  13. I don't like the more modern circus clowns either. *shudders* However, the history of clowns in general is pretty interesting.

    I never really understand when people are surprised about soldiers doing dumb things. Granted, I live on a military base and frequently see it. You have to keep in mind that they are mostly 18-25 year olds with wayyy more disposable income than sense and no parents breathing down their necks.

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  14. is the botched surgery a way of getting out of service? just curious...

    and studies find women are pickier than men? what next - the sky is blue and grass is green?! my world has been turned UPSIDE DOWN!

    and now i'm off to cancel my gym membership and I'm sooo using my nieces as free weights from now on.

    have i mentioned that i ♥ your blog :)

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  15. Sweet Jesus, Crabby! Are you trying to overload your readers here or what? There's enough material in the first paragraph alone to write a dissertation about! Violence, patriarchy and cosmetic surgery!(Sing it with me... Go together like a horse and carriage!)

    After I recovered from that, I read about suicidal narcissistic poets! What an interesting study! But I wonder why so many narcissistic poets didn't kill themselves? I've always thought it had more to do with mental illness, and that sometimes mentally ill patients are self-absorbed; however, not all self-absorbed writers are mentally ill. Does that make sense? (I definitely need to reread the study) Lord Byron = case and point. Sylvia Plath also comes to mind. Plath was ill and self-absorbed; her husband, Ted--just self-absorbed.

    OK-I'll shut the hell up now! :)
    Thanks for a wonderful post!

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  16. The blog post about the cosmetic surgery for soldiers is strange in that it doesn't link to any legitimate newspaper. "The Strategy Page", which seems to be the original source, lists a dubious string of sources, but doesn't pinpoint where exactly this information for the article specifically came from. Hmmm...

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  17. Hilarious! ...and interesting. I never knew the Man from Nantucket poem beyond the first line! I also found the difference between suicidal and non-suicidal poets to be quite fasinating. Very educational and entertaining. Thanks.

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  18. Hi Lisa,
    Another clownaphobe! And good point about the young age of most soldiers. I guess I just hate to think of how young and possibly immature they might be when it comes to their other duties! But I guess it's traditional when it comes to soldiering.

    Marie, thank you so much! And I'm so impressed with the little heart thing, I have no idea how you did that! And I do hope you post photos on your (awesome) blog of you niece-a-cizing your way to fitness!

    Hi Soap Box girl! I actually left it to smart readers like you to write those dissertations down here so I wouldn't have to! But I love the patriarchy and horse and carriage song. As to the poetry study, I suspect it was too small to really mean much of anything. Take just twenty famous poets and three hundred poems and I bet you could probably conclude just about anything you wanted. But it was still sort of intriguing.

    Hi Anonymous--
    Yeah, it's hard to quite tell how seriously to take that info, since it's not sourced. And it doesn't pretend to be a research study or anything. I took it to be sort of an anecdotal account from someone who's aware of the military crackdown on these unauthorized procedures, not an actual authoritative report about the situation.

    Thanks Lily T.! Cranky Fitness always strives to be the leader in providing Important Health News, like what the obscene lines of the Nantucket limerick are and the latest in Animal Fitness Videos. Thanks for stopping by!

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  19. I think the 'dating' study said that guys went for every attractive woman regardless of their attractiveness, whereas the women looked in the mirror prior to the meetings, and realizing they were hotties, went for the guys with more bang for the buck!
    Dr.J

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  20. "men look for beauty in assessing potential partners, while women seek wealth and financial security."

    Hence men look for women 10 years younger, and women look for older men that can provide financial security...

    ROFL Bunnygirl

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  21. Dr. J,
    Or, more buck for the bang! (Sorry!)

    Hi Talia,
    I do think that might explain the age difference thing! Of course since men croak earlier, it maybe isn't the best long-term strategy for women, but it certainly maximizes initial income. I find it fascinating how much of our current social behavior seems to come from our caveman/cavewoman brains!

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  22. Huh. Back in my graduate student stuck-in-the-lab days, I was looking for somone female, alive, and at least partially human. Of course, grad students aren't all that high on financial security scale...

    And instead of enjoying the sunny California afternoon, I've been sucked into watching silly Japanese game show videos. Your Friday postings are't so good on fitness ☺

    I love your Friday postings...

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  23. Hi Quito!
    Well, at least as a lab denizen you had access to partially-human females! Did you learn how to create them yourself? And those Japanese game show videos are indeed weird and addictive. Thanks for stopping by!

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  24. I'm from Japan.
    Glad to meet you.

    Indeed I am sorry,Please link to this site.
    Keep it up please.

    ReplyDelete

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