Dude plays video game, gets ripped.Although I guess that the kind of obsessive dedication it takes to hunch over a glowing screen at all hours of the day and night is, at its root, the same kind of obsessive dedication it takes to make like a hamster on a treadmill for a good sized chunk of your time, while dining on heaping portions of Nature's Organic Soy-Fortified Self-Flagellation Crunch washed down with Hair-Shirt Smoothies.
(Although I'll point out that if the price of that level of fitness is being nutty enough to refer to yourself in the third person, I think I'll pass.)
As an EVE player, guess who I just moved to the top of my list of people to Gank?
ReplyDelete"I realized I wasn't being true to my brand."
ReplyDeleteI think that remark will stand the test of time. Like when Leonidas said "WE... ARE... TRUE... TO... OUR... BRAND..."
Or Nelson: "England expects that every man will be true to her brand."
Or Uxbridge and Wellington (the Mitchell and Webb of their day):
"By God, I've lost my leg."
"By God, that's hardly true to your brand, old chap."
I wish I had that kind of dedication to fitness. If I spent as much time working out as I do on Warcrack, I'd be a world class athlete...or dead more likely. Of course, it would be a little more difficult to look like my Gnome Rogue or Pandaren Monk ;p
ReplyDeleteAlthough, in all honesty I'm fairly panda-shaped.
ReplyDeleteHis mouth looks like Macaulay Culkin's. AHHHHHH!
ReplyDeleteAnyway. Um. Wow.
Having been a low sec pirate in my day, and not a great one, I followed his blog for quite a while.
ReplyDelete"As an EVE player, guess who I just moved to the top of my list of people to Gank?"
Good luck with that. Not that it's impossible, since it can happen to anyone at any time, but he was a rifter nut and pretty good on them.
OTOH, one of the reasons I stopped playing was being bored in 0.0, so maybe a goal like that would have gotten me back into it.
He executed his fitness plan as seriously as Roc would execute a mission. He told himself his weight loss was a matter of life or death.
ReplyDelete"If I do not make these changes today, and every day going forward, I will die," he says.
Um, that's gonna happen anyway, geek.
Hey, everyone needs a hobby.
ReplyDeleteI met a class of Soldier while I was downrange who do little in their free time besides hit the gym.
We're not talking door-kickers and "operators" who need to be in top physical condition. We're talking the Human Resources specialist who did our personnel paperwork. And we're not talking fitness, but vanity muscles. He couldn't pass the run portion of the APFT because all he did was lift.
Don't get me wrong - there are worse ways to spend one's time downrange. But at some point, I really believe a person begins to lose focus. What's more, we have him to thank for the state of the United States Postal Service.
The reason the USPS isn't in deeper debt than it is has much to do with the likes of these people ordering astonishing amounts of nutritional supplements and shipping them to his APO.
I remember watching said clerk making a drink out of a white powdery substance that he scooped from a small bucket which looked precisely like the buckets that drywall joint compound comes in. Looked about like it too. I asked him how it tasted and he said, "You get used to it." He worked out about 4 hours every day and was in constant pain.
It's funny, Tam, but I remember thinking about hairshirts at that time too.
He told me it was pure protein. He took great globs of the stuff daily and he lifted constantly. He barely went to the mess hall - all he took for sustenance was this spackle-looking stuff.
I once pointed out to him that I was 19 years older than he was, shorter, weaker, and I smoked; but I could run 2 miles 8 minutes faster than he could. He told me I wasn't "ripped." I pointed out to him that a sprained wrist was all that separated him from Peter Griffin. "It's a risk I'm willing to take" was his reply.
To each his own, but I fail to see the point. Constant pain, no life and eating Plaster of Paris for dinner aren't for me. I figure that the level of fitness I can get with a normal lifestyle, decent exercise and normal foods is the fitness level I ought to be at.
gvi
The normal stereotype is that gamers game because it's a hobby that doesn't require moving, but I say for every one of those, there's another that's made the connection between exercise and leveling up.
ReplyDeleteTime to re-order that Purina Gym Rat Chow.
ReplyDeleteSo we have a buff Sheldon Cooper? That's disconcerting.
ReplyDeleteAVI, the "door kickers" are all extremely fit, but they don't look like a sack of footballs. They stress endurance, and as far as muscular development goes tend towards wiriness. If they ever had to deal with the big buff and ripped specimens they'd be most likely to run around them a few times to disorient them, and then punch their solar plexus or temple as Lurch tries to steady himself on his pins.
Steve, you've amply proved my point.
ReplyDelete