Big pain, little gain

I am in a world of pain.
The saying goes “No pain, no gain”, and I find myself wondering if there is a directly proportional relationship between pain and gain. If there is, I ought to wake up tomorrow morning looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger back in the 80’s.
Perhaps I should enlighten you as to what has blessed me with this ridiculous amount of hurt. You see, lately, I’ve been working out.
It’s really not my idea to be doing this in the first place. I place the blame squarely upon the shoulders of the modern medical profession for deciding that, for some reason, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, hypertension, obesity, fallen arches, cardiac arrest, diabetes, blood clots, fat deposits, and all the other billions of things that come from a lifetime of inertia are all bad for you.
Like, really bad for you.
Like, bad enough for you that they will all eventually wind up killing you.
That’s not happy news.
But how on earth can something that hurts this much be good for you? Isn’t pain your body’s way of saying “HEY, STUPID! You’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing! That’s why it hurts! How about you stop?” Cheesecake doesn’t hurt, yet cheesecake is bad for me. Cheesecake covered in hot fudge hurts even less, and apparently that’s even worse for me. Where’s the logic?
So here we find our noble hero (that’s me) defying every bit of common sense in his head and exercising.
I don’t know if you’ve ever watched me work out, but I assure you it is an occasion for giggles for everybody.
Isn’t it safe to assume that the people who are the largest are generally the ones who need to work out the most? I’m certainly among that group of “the largest”, and I’m definitely in the category of “need to work out the most”. So why is it that none of the machines in the exercise room are designed with a guy my size in mind? It’s as if they were all built to accommodate somebody who already exercised and ate right their entire life, instead of someone trying to set that plan into motion. This is similar to distributing literature on overcoming illiteracy. You’ll get your message across, but not to the people that really need to get it.
I must admit, my fitness goals are by no means goals of any noble purpose. Yeah, it’s good for my cardiovascular system and all that, but so what? I want to get ripped. I want those huge muscles like Sylvester Stallone had in Rambo III. His biceps were so big that they actually cut off the circulation to the lower part of his arms unless he held them in a certain position. And I don’t want the huge guns to attract the ladies or anything superficial like that. I want to be a superhero.
No, really.
How cool would that be? Who among you can honestly say that you would not appreciate seeing some absolutely massive dude running around the rooftops of campus, stopping the various criminal elements? I suppose if I ran around out in Searcy proper I might run into a few more opportunities to enforce truth, justice, and the American way, but I still think it’d be really neat to be the official Harding University superhero. I’d call myself “Bison”. Not “The Bison”, just “Bison”, like it was my name.
Speaking of Bison, I’d love to be strong enough to grab a Bison by the horns and wrestle it to the ground. I know it’s silly, but I think it’d be cool. And it really doesn’t serve any practical purpose, because how many people do you know who just get randomly charged by bison?
Of course, I want to be one of those people. I’d love to go up to the bison they (the Student Association) bring(s) to campus every year for homecoming and just flip out and start screaming at it, flailing my arms wildly, doing everything I can to spook it. Either that or just tear off from across campus charging it head-on, just to see if I can provoke a reaction.
I’m probably dangerous enough as it is, so it might be best that I don’t have ridiculously huge muscles just yet.
I wonder, would Bison wear a cape?
I’ve noticed that it takes a whole lot more motivation than I really have to get healthy. Being unhealthy is just so darned easy, I don’t get why it should be so much of a hassle to stop being unhealthy.
Maybe I could grow my hair out real long and make some sort of artificial horns, to really complete the “Bison” appearance. And a mask. Masks are awesome.
The weight room itself is an experiment in awkwardness. There’s a section that’s closed off sometimes so girls can work out in privacy, which is perfectly fine, but I just wish somebody would do the same thing for me. I really look like a dork on those things. Besides, I… HARK! THE BISON CALL!
Take heed, good citizens! Fear not the darkness, for Bison, your noble and hairy protector, roams the night! Away!

Aaron Rushton is the (a) humor columnist for the Bison, which gives you all the reason in the world to not take him seriously. Aaron (He) can be reached at (501)305-8453, by e-mailing AaronRushton@hotmail.com, or at campus box 14613. I have completely lost my mind.

Italics means edit. I think I got everything, but I'm not sure... They cut a lot.

The World Wide Waste

The internet is really, really, really big.
The internet is also really, really, really stupid.
That’s pretty much all I’ve learned since 1998. I’ve used EarthLink, I’ve used AOL, I’ve used Sprint, I’ve used Juno, and I’ve used about 15 different internet companies that don’t even exist anymore. I’ve seen pop-up ads for Beanie Baby websites, I’ve received spam e-mail for spam-blocker programs, and I’ve gone to lame Geocities with some annoying song looping in the background, just to be asked to pass it on to 15 or more of my closest friends and family to prove that I love God, knowing that if I delete this 259K e-mail, the Devil himself is going to come to my house and kiss my little sister.
All these things have been brought forth for one simple reason, and that is to teach me that the internet is really, really, really big, and really, really, really stupid.
And I suppose this is a little unfair of me to say, what with characterizing an entire system of interlinked servers and computers and users and hubs and alloys and compositions and things with molecular structures as just plan big and stupid, but it is an inescapable truth.
But why is the internet stupid? I am so glad I asked.
To answer this question, I must first explain something that not necessarily everybody already knows. The internet does not actually exist. The internet is not a thing that manifests itself physically somewhere in the wilds of Outer Mongolia. Instead, it is merely a never-ending network of computers all hooked up to each other. These computers are also hooked up to stupid people. And so, I reiterate. The internet is stupid.
If you ever feel like you’re getting more than your money’s worth here at Harding, hit up the internet for a little while. If you ever feel like your brain is becoming too smart for your own good, hop into a chat room for a minute or 30. You actually feel your intelligence slowly slipping away from you, as if it were magically being siphoned from between your ears by the cathode rays of your computer monitor.
For those of you who don’t want to wind up gouging your eyes out with your keyboards, let me go ahead and report my findings. I’ve built up immunity to stupid, so I’ve done all the dumb work for you.
There are several groups of people on the internet, all of them equally not-smart. Among the chiefs of the clan of stupid are those who seem to think that capital letters irrefutably equate importance, authority, and credibility, no matter how grammatically eccentric their messages may be. For example, let’s just say I’m on a message board about comic books. I know that seems absolutely unfathomable, but let’s just pretend.
I might be posting whatever humble opinion I have in a calm and gentle manner, complete with punctuation and functional grammar as well as a generous helping of lower case letters. So what’s the first thing that gets posted in response?
YOU ARE WRONG THAT IS NOTRI GHT I THINK YOU ARE DUMB THAT IS THE DUMBST THING I HAVE HEY YOU DUMB
This is, of course, a perfectly valid and unstoppable argument against whatever it was I said in the first place.
While the constant-caps thing can get annoying at times, I think a step up on the tick-me-off ladder is the class of people online who are very simply one-track minds.
Please don’t misunderstand me. “Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” are both excellently funny films, and I am a fan of both. From the Time Warp to the Great Black Beast of Arrrrrrrgh!, I’m with it. But I do think that there might be a better way to waste valuable bandwidth than yet another collection of sound bits from either of these movies – Ghostbusters webpages, for instance. A far superior movie, yet horribly underrepresented on the hullabaloo of dork that we call the internet.
I think the worst thing is when people feel that simply because they are online, they must be excessively profane. And it’s not just that they’re typing in vulgarities, they’re putting said vulgarities in places that don’t really make a lot of sense. Bear with me, gentle reader, and I shall demonstrate.
I #@$%& think #@$%& the worst thing #@$%& is when #@$%& #@$%& #@$%& people feel #@$%& that #@$%& #@$%& simply #@$%& because they #@$%& are on#@$%&line, they must #@$%& be excessively #@$%& profane, #@$%&.
Feel free to pronounce “#@$%&” as “BEEP!” That’s what I’m doing.
OK, you know what? I’ve been thinking, and I’ve realized that the absolute worst possibility would be a combination of all three of these: some big-letters-only idiot with a fixation on some 70’s cult flick and a penchant for profanity.
HEY DID YOU #@$%& THINK THAT #@$%& SHARKY’S MACHINE WITH #@$%& BURT #@$%& REYNOLDS #@$%& WAS GOOD IT WAS #@$%& GOOD BECAUSE #@$%& BURT #@$%& REYNOLDS #@$%& WAS IN IT BECAUSE BURT REYNOLDS I MEAN #@$%& BURT #@$%& REYNOLDS #@$%& IS ONLY IN GOOD MOVIES AND HE WAS IN #@$%& DELIVERANCE AND DELIVERANCE IS #@$%& BUT IN A GOOD WAY
I think I need to boil my computer now.
Aaron Rushton is the humor columnist for the Bison, which gives you all the reason in the world to not take him seriously. Aaron can be reached at (501)305-8453, by e-mailing AaronRushton@hotmail.com, or at campus box 14613. Offer not valid in IN or OR.