Lazy Linkage

(Photo by Crowbert)

So here are a few Random Links for your weekend reading pleasure. (See, longtime readers, how I'm not making a big production out of this? Just a few miscellaneous items I wanted to mention. Not a return to full-on Random Friday Neurosis).

On Six-Packs and Life-Suckage:
First off, Kelly at Fitness Fixation wrote a great post this week called "Why You May Never Have a Six Pack." But it's about much more than six packs abs--it's about genetics, and hard work, and high expectations, and how life sometimes sucks.

Plus, being Kelly, she's hilarious and serves you up your minimum daily requirement of swear words. ("Hey, we are fucking snowflakes. We are all different," she reassures us, and I'm thinking I might need to put that phrase on a nice bumper sticker or T-shirt.)

Big Fat (and Calorie) Liars:
Two of my favorite blogs, Elastic Waist and The Great Fitness Experiment, alerted me to the incredibly depressing (but somehow not totally surprising) news that restaurant chains often totally lie about how many calories and fat grams are in their foods.

Just one fun example? Macaroni Grill's "Skinny Chicken," which is supposed to have 500 calories and 6 fat grams was found by an independent testing lab to contain 1,022 calories and 49 grams of fat.

I hope their corporate pants are totally on fire right about now. But repercussions? Are there ever any?

Grrrrrrr....

Can You Put Cranky Fitness in Your Compost Pile?
Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on your perspective), Cranky Fitness is not available in print form. So we have no worries about how you choose to dispose of our posts once you're done with them. But did you know there are all kinds of weird things that you can not only recycle, but actually add to your compost pile? Like, for example, junk mail, latex condoms, and used masking tape? For more weird examples and other green tips, check out Ecosalon.

Be More Popular!
And finally, I thought I'd pass along some tips for bloggers looking to write some high-profile Personal Development posts. (The kind that get Dugg and Stumbled and bookmarked in the way that Cranky Fitness posts rarely are). Anyway, this Productivity Hack article contains some very useful tips, like:

Start off with an inspirational quote, preferably by an Asian spiritual leader. Include a picture of people jumping. Always tell people to make a list of their goals...

You get the idea. In my ramblings I see a lot of these kind of "productivity" articles, yet somehow I remain stubbornly unproductive--imagine that. This perhaps explains why!

So, back to work...

(Cartoon by Natalie Dee)

JUST KIDDING!

Have a great weekend, y'all.

(Oh, and don't forget to check out our weekly giveaway post below if you're looking to score some free stuff, or even if you just want to weigh in on Germy Gyms).