Random...Thursday?

[By Crabby]


Random Friday on a Thursday??? What's the Deal?

Sure, it's traditional at Cranky Fitness that Randomness take place on a Friday. But we have Special Plans for tomorrow's post--so what the heck, let's mix things up a bit! What's the worst that could happen?

Outbreaks of silliness, boredom, pointlessness, spontaneous napping...

But no harm done, that stuff happens all the time here anyway! So lets be brave and forge ahead anyway, shall we?


WTF Department: Three Quarters of Women Report Disordered Eating?

You've probably all seen this by now, but a recent survey of more than 4,000 women by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Self Magazine revealed some interesting attitudes towards eating and weight:

• Almost a third of women reported that they'd induced vomiting, or taken laxatives, diuretics, or diet pills at some point in their lives to lose weight;
• Two thirds of the women surveyed (not including those with actual eating disorders) are trying to lose weight;
• Over half of those dieting were already at a healthy weight;
• About 40 percent said concerns about what they eat or weigh interfered with their happiness;
• Almost 40 percent regularly skipped meals to try to lose weight;
  
• Sixteen percent had dieted on 1,000 or fewer calories a day;
• And thirteen percent had smoked to lose weight.

Note: this survey is, of course, depressing. And it's true that women are far too obsessed about their weight. However, can you really take an online survey of Self magazine readers and conclude that their answers represent the views of all women?

Nothing against the magazine, which runs many fine articles, but it's called Self for cryin' out loud. Could it possibly attract, on average, women who are a little more concerned with, well, themselves?

Wait, this just in...

Ninety Eight percent of Men Spend All Day Long Thinking About Women with Humongous Breasts! ... According to a recent online survey by readers of Juggs Magazine...

(And yes, Juggs is a real magazine, though we doubt they bothered to do a reader survey).


A Little Perspective:

Even Cranky Crabs have to stop whining every now and then long enough to appreciate how incredibly fortunate they are. So sometimes it helps to get a glimpse of how horribly complicated and challenging life could be if you weren't born so lucky.

Via Healthbolt is this rather incredible slide show of a baby born with two faces. Apparently this little girl, born in India, can drink from both mouths and blink all four eyes. Local villagers believe she may be the reincarnation of the Hindu goddess Durga.

I will stop complaining about my sore muscles and crunchy knees now, at least for the next few minutes.

Now This Won't Hurt a Bit:

Here's an odd little news item from Marijke's fine blog: According to the Center for Disease Control, more kids and teens than ever are fainting after receiving vaccinations.

(Later, when the insurance bills come due, it's their parent's turn).

Apparently more adolescents are getting shots now (to prevent meningitis and cervical cancer), and teenage girls are particularly prone to fainting.



So We're Done With Health Now, Let's Bring on the Rest of the Randomness!

We be Zoomin':

Check this out if you like cool weird collaborative art. Zoom in or out and the picture seems to just keep on going and going. (Dial-up warning: the program is slow to load even on broadband.)

This Blog Needs More Smut!

Photo by JaHoVil

Yes, even after yesterday's special episode of Skanky Fitness, we're still pushing porn. We know some of you just can't get enough! This time, be sure not to miss these hot, sexy, luscious photos of...

Libraries!

(They really are pretty cool).

And Just When You Thought You Were Safe...

Remember those cute Lolcats? And how it was possible to spend hours checking out "just one more" funny kitteh? Well...

Via MJ ... if you finally wrested control of your computer back and started to get some work done, we must alert you to a possible new threat to productivity coming your way:

Yep, plenty more where that came from at I Has a Hot Dog. You've been warned.

Have a great Thursday, and be sure to come back tomorrow for a Special Post!

Skanky Fitness

[By Merry]

No, not that skanky, thankyouverymuch.

Look, if you've come to this blog looking for intelligent, perceptive comments about health and fitness, then please let me direct your attention to Crabby's thoughtful, insightful, and well-written post of day gone by. But that was Crabby. To mis-quote Senator Lloyd Bentsen, "I've met Crabby McSlacker, and Merry's no Crabby McSlacker."

In other words, lower your expectations down a few notches. And your sense common decency as well. That opening photograph was but a mere foreshadowing of skankiness e'en yet undiscovered.

In the interest of looking busy while avoiding housework Being Helpful, I was looking at the search keywords that led people to this site. A lot of people in Finland seem to be looking for fitness porn. Or maybe it was people in Poland. Or Cleveland. Definitely somewhere that ended in 'land' at least.

What are they hoping to find? Hunks in trunks? The Swedish Bikini Beer Team? Pictures of people performing sleazy acts on treadmills? People performing sleazy acts with treadmills? (Hell, I'll believe anything. I stopped being shocked with the story last year of the man who was having an affair with a bicycle.)

Skanky never sounded like a particularly pleasant word to me. It conjures up pictures of a woman who's not overly fussed about details such as hygiene, halitosis, or herpes. But on the positive side, at least people are concerned with fitness!

Clearly there's a need here. I'm not proud. I'll write a post on Skanky Fitness. Crabby always said this place doesn't have standards.

Okay then, listen up. Classy posts have gone the way of the dildo dodo.
This will be worse than Vanilla's pickup lines for runners.
Worse than Crabby's Porn for women.

We're hitting ... um... bottom.*

Hunks in trunks!

These outfits were clearly designed to let you focus on their sexy knees

These hunks in trunks look like they've been doing drugs (but medicinally, so it's okay)

Women in unusual poses on bicycles!

One way to tell if a man's too cheap to buy a tandem...

Women riding bicycles in unusual costumes!

Well, she's not wearing a helmet. That's unusual.

Pole dancing peep shows!

Actually, I think that's rather sweet...

Anyway, is that the sort of thing people are looking for? Do Google keyword search results give a skewed representation of what people are craving when they click on a link labeled "Cranky Fitness"?

Trying to figure out Google searches is enough to create a certain feeling of Crankiness, but it's not doing much for my fitness, so I have to ask. What are you looking for?


*And no, no matter how many jokes there may be in the phrase 'hitting bottom', I absolutely refuse to write a post about Spanky Fitness. No, I'm sorry. Even if the well of inspiration runs dry and lol cats go 404. Ain't happening.

Random Friday: Lose weight, make $, and have your husband do the housework

[By Merry]

[Warning: Introductory paragraph contains potentially harmful levels of frivolous levity as well as trace elements such as irony. If you have been advised by your doctor or other health professional to take life seriously at all costs, avoid the first paragraph. You might want to only lightly skim the whole post for that matter.]

I asked Crabby if she wanted to stop undergoing de-box (a necessary part of re-Crab) long enough to do a Random Friday post, and her response... well, let's just say it was something like this:



So I figured I'd throw out a collection of oddities and leave her to unpack in peace. Much safer that way.


Protect your brain... or give it a workout and burn calories?

In the Good News department, drinking coffee protects your brain. I'll drink to that. They recommend you drink a cup of coffee a day. Well, if I must. No word yet on the health benefits of drinking frappacinos.

Did you know that hitting your head against the wall burns 150 calories an hour? Yeah, I didn't know that either. Sounds like it might be true, but I kinda hope that they didn't test that one too strenuously.


With this ring, I do solemnly swear... no more sweeping?

Today's husband creates an extra 7 hours of housework each week? Really? Women spend an average of one hour a day (see, I can too do that math stuff) cleaning up after their man? I'm trying to figure out how the husbands manage to create that much extra work each day. It must be that the men simply stop doing any housework once they marry. Huh. Now there's an argument for getting a sex change.


Pop quiz! How good is your memory?

Of course, you all took the video test at the end of that Random Friday post a couple weeks ago, right?
Ahem, I said, Right?
Anyway, in case you've forgotten it was a test about your powers of observation. Last I checked, everyone who took the test had the same result the first time around, and several of us bombed the second time as well. Or was it a failure? This link explains the condition of change blindness, where you 'see, but do not observe.' I liked this explanation, since it made me feel that I wasn't unobservant, I was merely a normally evolved human. Nice to be normal some times, y'know?

Lose weight, make more money, have a successful life

Apparently the skills needed to lose weight and keep it off are also the skills you need to make more money and be successful in your work: motivation and discipline.

A researcher from the University of Chicago claims that "after controlling for cognitive ability, general equivalency diploma (GED) recipients earn less than other high school dropouts." According to the study, people who took the GED to get out of high school didn't have the drive to succeed that other people who dropped out did.

Does that make sense? I knew highly intelligent people who took the GED to get out of high school early, and they certainly didn't make what's usually considered a success of their lives. On the other hand, I wonder if they wanted to. People who take an unconventional path aren't always unhappy with their choices.

Internet Weirdness

The Internet is a weird place. I mean, why have a website devoted to passing a little red ball from one person to another? Am I missing something here? I know it looks like an iPod advert, but what is the point? Is it supposed to be teaching me mouse-eye coordination or something? (Am I being especially foolish to expect that there be a point?)

And I'm all for stopping people from smoking, but an e-cigarette? This battery-powered device lets you "inhale nicotine without the tobacco smoke and tar" and other "nasty stuff."

I'm glad that people can smoke this thing indoors and get their nicotine fix without annoying the people around them -- but when did nicotine become something that wasn't "nasty"? I wonder who sponsored that research.



I don't know if the following video counts as porn for women or not. Strikes me as more silly than salacious, but I thought it was only fair to include it to refute the claim that men don't like to do housework. (They just apparently want to do housework in ways that are new and damn strange innovative.)

I mean, if men are so leery about doing housework, how do you explain the popularity of extreme ironing... underwater?



Have a great weekend!

Psst, Girls... Get Your Hot Porn Here!

[By Crabby]

Cover Photo: Porn for Women

So I'm about a year late on this and you all probably have seen it, but what the hell: this book looks hilarious. And there's a new one coming out soon called: Porn for New Moms.

The premise: guys who actually do their share of the chores and are extremely sensitive to their wives desires are... well, mostly amusingly fictional. But to the extent that they do exist: they're HOT! Hotter, actually, than the square jawed guys who bare their six pack abs and pose in skimpy underwear.

So the "pornographic" pictures feature men dusting and vacuuming and saying things like this:


Which play on gender stereotypes, sure, but so what. They totally crack me up.

I probably shouldn't be weighing in on the issue of heterosexual chore division at all, since I have zero personal experience to draw on. But I have noticed that it's not an uncommon expectation that the "home" stuff is predominantly the woman's job, even when both spouses work. And that this expectation persists even though women have been saying "hey, what the hell's up with that?" for the last 40 years or so.

The good news: apparently that expectation is finally beginning to shift a bit, and there's more recognition that guys who do chores are hot! And that at least some men are figuring out that learning to pull their own weight domestically can make them a more desirable mate.

I often wonder how some of you gals who have demanding jobs and kids and a bunch of other responsibilities manage to get enough time to pull off healthy meal planning and shopping and cooking and still have time for exercise. Do chores ever get in the way of your health goals? And are you getting 50/50 help from your significant other? Or are we not quite there yet?

(Anyone hear an odd noise, sort of a chomping, spitting, gargly sound? That's the sound of Crabby physically restraining herself from expressing opinions on matters she knows nothing about. She will be listening, for a change, not spouting off, if any of you want to share how the whole chore-sharing thing works in your relationships or what sort of stuff you've observed watching other couples you know. Crabby will put on her anthropologist's pith helmet and take notes! She finds heterosexual relationships fascinating.)