I apologize for all the profanity in this post
I'm pretty much 100% recovered from swine flu, though my cardiovascular workouts really do suffer still.
I recently caught up with my BFF from high school, as we have decided to take up martial arts together again, as we used to do Goju style karate during highschool (it's Mr Miyagi's style from the karate kid *does wax-on wax-off*).
Since both of us really do need to up our strength and vitality, and well I probably also need to increase my intensity, we have both opted for Muay Thai Kick boxing. Melbourne martial arts in the city was offering an awesome offer for a 6 month membership, which included unlimited classes in Kick boxing, boxing, karate, and Brazilian jujitsu.
We started Tuesday and so far have done four one hour sessions, all of which were intense and left both of us collapsing afterwards, but we survive better after each session we do. Did a session before my ten hour shifts on Friday and Saturday and have only just recovered now by Monday morning. Next week we are going to start doing standard boxing as well, then gonna jump into the kick boxing class right afterwards (there was this asian girl with Chun-li level legs who recommended us to do it). Hopefully I'll be able to get in about 2-3 sessions a week, and hopefully soon I'll be able to, as my work mate puts it, "SMASH C**TS GOOD".
While doing this I'm also going to be hitting the weights at least 4 times a week. My friend (the same one from high school), has been taking those muscle building powders and such, and while I myself was skeptical, I decided to do my research, and looking at the research papers i could find, i could only benefits of doing these, the major one being health maintenance, taking the pre-workout and post-work out supplies the body with the nutrients working out takes away from the body, which the immune system also happens to use to boost itself. This could explain why I got swine flu before.
So i did my first workout with these supplements today and what can I say, I'm kind of a believer now, I was not only able to push myself further, but I also recovered faster.
Not only that but the post-work out shake tastes like vanilla milkshake, so hopefully soon I'll be able to put back that 5 kg of muscle swine flu took away from me.
Been hitting the western comics pretty hard, going crazy over Green Lantern and Iron Fist (which i got Steven into as well :P).
I remember when I was 15, reading Naruto, and then Bleach when I was 16, thinking Japanese manga was totally the best shit in the world, I mean why wait a month for 32 pages, when I can wait a week for 20 pages.
*START RANT*
I think now I am older and wiser, I sample a lot of mainstream shounen now and I simply vomit, the only new one i can handle now is possibly Psyren. I dunno the logic sometimes that goes through these manga just annoys me, and its not just the puns, I mean a lot of those i get, and if i don't I tend to let it go, but the raping of my language, the fucking lame character names that further rape my language or heritage, or simply the train of thought of either the characters or the plot itself. HxH, Reborn, D.Gray man are all fine examples of this, I remember one example of the first arch in HxH, where the four of them are making their way through the tower, and they have the choice to go left or right, and somehow they make this out to be some fucking mysterious puzzle of who decides to go which way, ITS FUCKING LEFT OR RIGHT MOTHER FUCKERS, 50-50, its not that FUCKING HARD. Oh don't get me started on all that "mafia" bullshit in Reborn, STOP RAPING WESTERN CULTURE YOU DUMB FUCK(Al Capone.baseball bat.untouchables style BITCHES) That being said I still read Naruto and Bleach every week and love the fucking shit out of it.
Also I remember talking about Bleach to some random fuckers and manifest one year, and they were going on about Kubo Taito, now I know he spells his name "KUBO TITE" on his manga, but really, that doesn't give you and excuse to pronounce it "KUBO TEA-TEH", he fucking spells it that way because he is obsessed with western culture, particularly American gangsta shit, so since they spell "tight" as "tite" like they spell "dog" as "dawg" he acts all gangsta and changes the spelling of his name, sorta like a pseudonym.
*END RANT*
So yeh onto western comics, I have come to appreciate them much more now, simply for the fact of story compression, where as manga usually follows story decompression, I get a lot more plot out of less frames in western comics, which usually means I spend more time reading each page.
Immortal Iron fist is probably one of the best reads I've ever had, you can just pick it up and start reading, its like a noir style kung-fu mystical detective comic, but with color :P. the characters are funny and well written, and well drawn, very good use of shadows, but it also delves deeper into human relationships, and while at its core it is a kung-fu comic, it never delves into the power gaining archetype that so many Japanese comics fall into, and in some degree some western comics. It was nominated for an Eisner award (the Oscars for comics) which is strange for a Marvel comic, they usually go for the one shot Alan Moore or Frank Miller bullshit that appeals to all left wing pinkos in their black berets drinking coffee at an almost unknown cafe in a dark alley of Melbourne...fucking hippies.
Green Lantern is more of a guilty pleasure, I mean who doesn't want a green ring that can fuck other people's shit up and let you fly around the universe. Though the writer of Green Lantern Geoff Johns, while claiming to be a strong believer in that all super heroes should be good and all villains should be bad and apparently against the new "anti-hero" craze, has somehow found a way to make this work while defining his characters as "heroes" and "villains" he has given them all so much depth and vitality of character that you can't help be agree with him.
I further apologize for all the profanity
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