This Will Separate the Sheep from the Goats

Either I’m on fire today or I’m just willing to do anything other than clean the pool, so here comes more blogging.

My wife tells me Candace Owens has published authentic texts from some snitch, revealing that Charlie Kirk was, maybe, not happy with Jews because a Jewish donor that gave TPUSA two million a year cut Kirk off for refusing to denounce the raving, ignorant, immature, frat-boy antisemite Tucker Carlson.

Supposedly, Kirk said something about his Jewish donors living up to stereotypes. Maybe I can find it.

I got it! Here: “Just lost another huge Jewish donor. $2 million a year because we won’t cancer Tucker. Jewish donors play into all the stereotypes. I cannot and will not be bullied like this. Leaving me no choice but to leave the pro-Israel cause.”

Kirk supporters will say the texts were taken out of context, but my response to that is that there are many things context can’t fix.

This reminds me of some lines from a Woody Allen movie. A Latin American dictator has been deposed and replaced by a rebel leader who will, of course, be the next dictator, because Latin America. When they try the former dictator, this exchange takes place:

Rebel Leader: You are accused of killing over a thousand people in your term of office… of torturing hundreds of women and children. How do you plead?

Diaz: Guilty… with an explanation.

There are a couple of things wrong with what Saint Charlie said.

1. There is something wrong with anyone who won’t “cancer Tucker,” because Tucker is rapidly moving into Josef Goebbels territory. It’s not subtle. There are no grey areas. It’s not debatable. Reasonable minds may not differ.

2. “Jewish donors play into all the stereotypes” is, well, antisemitic.

I’ve known more Jews than Moses, and while every ethnic group has people who live up to and even exceed stereotypes, I have not found Jews to be particularly stingy or manipulative. Actually, if I had to come down on one side or the other, I would say that on the whole, Jews are more generous than Gentiles, and I haven’t noticed any difference when it comes to manipulation.

I have known some Jewish people who were a bit aggressive, but I can’t say they seem more aggressive than Gentiles. Except with women. That, I have been a witness to. But only in Israel. I don’t know what it is with Israeli men, but they hound women relentlessly,like they have a quota. I haven’t seen it here in America.

There are definitely Jews who don’t like Gentiles, but I don’t think that makes Jacob’s children any worse than the rest of us. It’s not like Gentiles are free of bigotry.

Just to open myself to criticism, I have found other groups to run more truly to stereotypes. American ghetto blacks are frightening. Cubans are hard to live among because of the materialism, machismo, and corruption. Many of my own people are just emotional ghetto whites. I have found Jewish people to be less consistent with stereotypes.

They tend to promote antisemitic notions in their own self-deprecating humor. Maybe they should reconsider that. I learned the only antisemitic jokes I know from Jews.

The third thing wrong with Saint Charlie’s text is that he says he is abandoning Israel because a few Jews quit sending him money.

So he was not Saint Charlie after all. He was Charlie the Whore.

All you folks who got mad when I said he wasn’t a real minister, line up and have a plate of crow with kreplach on the side. I didn’t even insult him. I wrote of him approvingly. I just said he wasn’t a minister.

For the slow, I will explain. You do not change your support for a country or anything else because people stop paying you. Support is supposed to be sincere. If you pretend to support anything just because you are paid, you are a huge and despicable whore, and if your work endangers a small and perpetually-beleaguered country that continually faces unfair existential threats fomented by Satan himself, you may be among the kings of whores.

Is Kirk even in heaven? I doubt it now. How can a professional liar go to heaven? The word says the lake of fire was prepared for “all liars.” It says lying is abomination, just like sodomy.

Everyone lies, but not everyone makes it a career and refuses to repent.

If he lied about Israel, what else did he lie about? Maybe he was not even conservative. Maybe he was like Candace Owens and Arianna Huffington, who defected overnight when they saw the side where the grass was greener.

No one becomes conservative or liberal overnight. This should be obvious.

Andrew Breitbart worked for Drudge, then for Huffington, and then for himself. He flapped like a windsock in a tornado. He was a snake. He was no conservative. I said so, and the usual toadies criticized me for being right. Don’t speak ill of Saint Andrew. Kirk looks even worse.

If there is anything positive in the new Kirk revelations, it’s that it makes me, the main character of the universe, feel even better about not worshiping Kirk. I did think he was a good guy who helped Trump get elected, but I never thought his shtick of sitting in a chair and arguing with unprepared liberals made him a great man.

I guess the fact that I feel better is not all that helpful to the rest of the world, but it’s something.

I told my wife I was upset with Jews for not sending me money. I will be happy to “cancer” Tucker. I do it all the time. I cancered Candace. I’ve cancered all sorts of enemies of Israel. I do it sincerely. Still, no checks.

The fact that I am obscure and have no impact on society could be part of the reason.

I’d settle for hamantaschen. A big tray, once a month. Cherry and apple. I know apricot is more traditional, but cherry and apple would be better. Made with butter. No Crisco. I’ll be watching my doorstep. I’ll even put up a mezuzah.

In other news, I am thinking about resistance training.

Back when I was in law school, I lifted weights a lot. I maxed out almost every machine in the University of Miami Wellness Center (gym, for normal people). I never got big or bulky, except for a 48″ chest. It always blows up, even with slight exertion. A genetic aberration, I guess. Too bad it’s localized.

I thought machines were pretty good, but it turned out they were not. For example, I used to lift 300 pounds very slowly, with deep motions, for 8 reps at a time. I didn’t bounce the weights three inches from full extension and claim I had lifted 300 pounds for real. Then a guy asked me to try a barbell, and I managed one repetition of 220. My strength was real, but it was only good for motion in a straight line with no freedom in any other direction. I could not stabilize a 300-pound bar.

Also, I wondered why I never looked particularly strong. People who were a lot weaker than I was looked better.

Lately, I have been considering doing a little resistance training. I did some last year, but I let it go. I am not trying to look buff or compete in contests. I just want to avoid crumbling faster than necessary in old age. I don’t want to have to ask the wife to open jars for me, and I don’t want to be easily injured because my frame has atrophied.

I learned a few things this week. I sort of knew most of it already, but I didn’t bother to put it all together until today.

A guy calling himself Anatoly popped up in my Youtube feed. He weighs about 180 pounds, but he looks more like 150 because he has no fat. He’s skinny.

He goes to gyms dresses as a janitor. He goes up to guys who are so full of steroids they will definitely die by 60, and he asks if he can try the weights. They laugh at him and make condescending remarks, and then he lifts more than they do, effortlessly.

I must make a disclaimer: I am assuming the bodybuilders in his videos are not shills. They could be.

He’s a powerlifter. He has benched 330, and he has deadlifted 640. People say he has lifted more and that these are old records. His real name is Volodymyr Shmondenko.

Benching 330 is not amazing, but it’s 110 more than I ever lifted. I don’t think he uses drugs, because his numbers are really good but not shocking. I could be wrong, though, because he could be someone who has limited genetic potential and looks like a good natural bodybuilder when he’s on the juice.

I found out that the bench press is not a great exercise. It makes you strong for doing one highly unlikely motion you will never make except when working out or trying to impress someone.

So anyway, I looked at this guy, and I thought I should think about powerlifting.

Here’s something weird: muscle size doesn’t correlate well to strength. For example, Schwarzenegger used to lift something like half of what his workout buddy lifted. His buddy Franco Columbu, was 5’6″ tall. Schwarzenegger’s claims have gone as high as 6’3-1/2″, but some witnesses say 5’11” is more like it. At least he’s taller than Burt Reynolds, who wore three-inch heels.

In any case, he was a lot bigger than Columbu. I saw Columbu lift the back of a Fiat and move it. I think it was in Pumping Iron.

Found it.

I had a fake friend in law school, and he was 6’6″ and weighed 330 (that he would admit). In the gym, he benched less than half of what I did, and I was not maxed out. The machine wouldn’t go high enough.

It’s not because my arms are shorter. I have long arms for my height. He was just naturally weak.

Bodybuilders commonly get two things wrong: they think they’re strong, and they think they can beat other men up. They’re not as strong as they could be, because they work out the wrong way. They can’t beat other people up unless they’re fighting untrained people. Fighting requires skill. Strength is not very useful if you have no skill and your opponent has lots of it.

Most untrained men can’t hit another guy with their left hands. It’s just right-right-right-right. That’s really something. And the rights are usually looping love taps that leave their faces and bodies open.

Bodybuilding is not about being strong. It’s about looking strong. This is why we now have men paying doctors to insert big pieces of plastic in their bodies to look like muscles.

What I’m getting at is that the majority of weight-training wisdom in America is aimed at making men look strong, and the things most men do actually limit their strength gains while filling them with relatively weak muscle.

I should have learned about this back when I was really working out, instead of waiting until I was ready for the shuffleboard court.

I have studied up, and I have learned a few things.

1. Bodybuilding is not a good way to build strength.

2. The really strong guys are powerlifters and strength trainers.

3. Powerlifting is a competitive sport, and while it shares things with strength training, it’s not the same thing. If you want to be strong, you want to use strength-training methods and forget about powerlifting.

4. Isolating muscles, which bodybuilders love, severely limits real-world strength. To become strong, you want exercises that involve multiple groups. The reason to isolate muscles is to make them big and impress all the other possibly-latent dudes in the gym shower.

5. To get strong, you want sets with low repetitions. A maximum of 5. Not the 8 or 12 you may have heard about at the gym. You set weights so you can lift them safely a maximum of three times. You lift until you can lift them 5 times. Then you increase the weight.

This is great, because it means less work.

6. Strength training, which involves heavier weights, is less likely to injure you than vanity training, which requires you to use your joints over and over. This surprised me.

I was very glad to learn that isolating muscles was stupid, because the more you isolate groups, the longer and more miserable your workouts will be. Your body has a lot of muscles to isolate.

It speaks poorly of humanity that so many people are lifting for stupid reasons. Why would anyone want to be weaker than necessary while working out harder than necessary? It’s effeminate, prancing around in shiny thong panties with other men, hoping your calves are more cut than theirs.

Different types of workouts build different types of muscles. Low reps build strong muscles. Supposedly, they also increase your body’s ability to “recruit” muscle fibers, so you get more power out of the muscles you have.

With all this in mind, you can see that it’s incredibly stupid to lift like a bodybuilder. You will work harder, be weaker, and endanger your body more. Also, if you’re looking for workout advice on the web, you have to be careful to detect bodybuilder garbage. Any fitness guy who says the words “big” or “bigger” while demonstrating an exercise should be ignored.

If you look around the web, you can find pictures and videos of men who look like refrigerator repairmen or Uber drivers, lifting enormous weights with their seemingly-flabby, untoned bodies.

All this makes me think of Dwayne Johnson, AKA “the Rock.”

People love this man. He’s a professional nice guy. He tries to avoid saying anything negative. He always smiles. He wants you to see him with his tiny daughter and his tiny dog. He gives people supportive shoutouts. I don’t like him.

I used to think Johnson was great, because I was foolish. Back in law school, I thought WWF wrestling was a hoot, and I watched it diligently. I loved the Rock character. The funny eyebrow. “It doesn’t matter what your name is!” The people’s elbow. Hilarious.

I should not have let the WWF’s excrement enter my mind, but I did.

He became an actor, and eventually, he hit the juice really hard. And lied about it. He says he hasn’t used drugs since he was a teenager, but the world is full of men his age, and so far, he is the only one out of hundreds of millions who has managed to look like the Hulk at age 55.

He lies and says it’s all about diet and exercise, like no one ever dieted or exercised before. Like no one else on Earth worked hard until he invented work.

He claims he has been a workout fanatic since he was a little child, but somehow he was bigger in his mid-fifties, with almost no body fat, than he was at any point earlier in his life when he was blessed with more natural testosterone and better recovery abilities.

People say he’s naturally big because he’s a Samoan, and many Samoans really do have a genetic edge. Well, he’s only half Samoan, his non-Samoan dad was on steroids, and no other Samoan has ever looked like him without drugs, so BS on that. He was half Samoan when he was working out like crazy and 30 years younger, and he was smaller.

Now he has given up drugs because he has clogged arteries, which steroids cause. He has dropped 50 or 60 pounds, or maybe one third of his total muscle weight. People are not 100% muscle. He claims he did it for a movie role. No; he did it to avoid an early grave.

He is a role model for kids, and they go to the gym and try what he claims he does, and they get lackluster results. They don’t look like he does, because they’re not on drugs yet, and they don’t get as strong as they should because they’re doing glamour exercises that make weaker muscles.

Then what do they do? Many do what he really does. They use drugs. Then they blow up and look like him. They go bald early. They get scarring acne. Their testicles all but vanish. Like Johnson, they grow breasts that have to be cut out. They have rage problems. They suffer from depression. They cry for no reason. They remain short because steroids end natural growth.

This is all bad, but it looks like he hurt his health and hurt kids without even getting as strong as he could have. He blew himself up so he could be a shirtless dandy for all his little bros, but smaller guys who don’t look like dangerously overinflated tires are much stronger.

On top of that, many women find grotesque steroid physiques a little repulsive. Steroid users tend to look like they’ve been skinned.

I am probably never going to work out seriously, because I am too lazy. I know I will never do long workouts assiduously, so I have reasonable goals.

I came up with an exercise which turns out to be very, very good for strength development. I put two dumbbells by my feet, I squat to get them to waist level, I curl them to my shoulders, I press them overhead, and then I do it all in reverse.

I don’t strain my back the way squats or deadlifts could. I give both sides of my body the same treatment instead of allowing a barbell to shift the work to my right side. It’s not bad for an old guy who has modest expectations.

I haven’t done any resistance training at all at least since the beginning of the year. I started up today, and I managed 5 reps with 42.5 pounds on each side. It will never win me any prizes, but it’s an okay start for an old man who mostly lifts a fork. Lifting dumbbells is harder than lifting barbells for the same reason lifting barbells is harder than pushing machine handles, so you end up using less weight.

If things go well, I should be up to maybe 60 pounds per side in a few months. I may add another exercise if I think I’ll keep up with it. I should get back to climbing stairs with a weighted vest.

I almost never feel I’m not strong enough, although putting tires back on hubs while sitting on the ground is an area where more power would be nice. I’m doing okay, but I think it’s wise to try get a little better and avoid falling apart too fast.

Preventing injuries is important at my age (or any age), and stronger muscles are harder to hurt.

Hopefully, my arteries will remain clear, my strength will be optimal in relation to the amount of exercise I do, and I will never have to drop 50 pounds in three months and come up with lies to explain it.