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Monthly Archives: April 2012
Unknown Spirits of the Modern World: The Chapeater
There are numerous gods of lost artifacts, many having evolved from older gods of long ago times that have modernized the objects they stand for (e.g. “Where did I tie up my horse?” to “Where did I park?”). Others have not needed to update or change much as their embodied objects have more or less stayed the same over the centuries. Some, however, have only relatively appeared and are often overlooked by even the newest gods.
Of the lost artifact gods (or “Losties” as they like to call themselves) the most prevalent are, of course, the Lord of Lost Keys, KeyKlar, and the great sock stealer Lintam, who reign over all the losties as they are some of the oldest. But of the modern losties, there is one of the gods that is rarely paid notice to and yet he has touched many lives across the globe. He is Chapeater, the God of Lost Chapstick.
Chapeater, or Wax Lippy Lips as he is known among the godsect, presides over all of the chapstick in the world. Barely over 100 years old, Chapeater has never been a prevalent lord despite having impacted almost every modern life in first world countries. Unlike KeyKlar, who fashions extravagant armor out of his boons, or Lintam who simply throws all of his boons into a large, mountainous pile, Chapeater has built himself a small cabin out of lost tubes of chapstick. Located in the forests of Canada, Chapeater’s abode is small, uniform and symmetrical, no more than a large plastic box hidden in some trees. “The cold climate is good for the chapstick,” Chapeater says, “because a lot of heat melts the balm. It’s horrible when you wake up and you’re covered in slime. I’d smell like a holistic medicine beach bum for weeks on end.”
Chapeater also remarked that his cabin is comprised entirely of old chapstick tubes with some of them dating back at least sixty years or so. When I inquired as to why he doesn’t replace the tubes, or expand his cabin into a larger house, Chapeater says, “I’m a simple lostie. I don’t need to have large piles of things or lavish costumes. The size of this place gives me all the room I need. A place to sleep, eat and work; anything else is extravagance.”
As to where all the chapstick that he has collected since finishing his cabin has gone, his name is all the explanation one needs. “I eat them. Turn the tube so the rest of the stick shows and then gobble gobble. And now that chapstick is coming with all sorts of vitamins to help the skin and such, I have a much healthier diet.”
Despite being an ignored god, controversy has surrounded Chapeater since the 1980’s, when the God of Lost Pets proclaimed at the annual Lostie Convention that, “Chapeater’s inclusion into the Lostie sect is outrageous. Humans don’t lose chapstick, they merely forget about it and then throw them away when they do find them. He is a trash-digger, not a god.”
“I can understand the argument,” Chapeater tells us, “but the fact remains that this station still exists and that I hold the title. How humans treat these artifacts is of little consequence in the end, for even if they throw them away they will always require more. Then they will think, ‘Where did I put that last tube of chapstick?’, and then their discarded sticks become my boon.”
When asked whether he is worried that his station might one day become obsolete, Chapeater said, “No, I’m not worried in the slightest. I mean, think about: Have you ever finished an entire tube of chapstick?”
Parenting Short Cuts Can Be Fun And Effective
A young boy sits in his room, playing with his toys. He is humming a non-descript tune, making the melody up as he goes along. He is the pure image of innocence, lost in his own world of make believe where everything is true, just and untainted by reality.
DR. CRAVANAUGH: (voice over) This is child psychiatrist and developmental expert Dr. Werner Cravanaugh here with a message for parents of young boys. With the advanced intellect and adaptation many children are going through in these modern times, many new parents have inquired about methods to keep their child obedient. While I usually tell these parents that part of their responsibility to their child is to make sure they feel heard and valued, which is the best way to keep the odds of your child rebelling in your favor, but that each child is different and will present different challenges. Also, children must go through a rebellious phase as it is important to their sense of themselves.
However, my studies have shown that there is a practice that can give you a slight edge in the struggle for your child’s attitude and behavior, and it requires very little planning and takes minimal effort. See here my test subject Barry. He is an average little boy of a middle class family who lives in the suburbs of a mid-western town. He is bright, imaginative and caring for those around him. His parents are attentive, and the relationship between them and him is wonderful. Barring some unforeseen trauma, Barry should grow up to continue to love and obey his parents.
But in this study, I researched tiny ways that can have lasting impacts on a child’s mind and perception. We are about to witness one of the more successful methods here.
Notice how Barry is playing quietly by himself. He isn’t breaking anything, or making a mess, or doing anything underhanded; he is simply a child playing. But with a simple phrase uttered, we can make a lasting impression on young Barry.
While Barry is playing, his mother yells loudly from another room of the house.
MOTHER: (off-screen) YOU KNOW, I CAN SEE WHAT YOU’RE DOING!
Barry immediately freezes, his hand holding a truck hanging in mid-air. He slowly looks out to his bedroom door, and then around his room, making an effort not to move to much.
DR. CRAVANAUGH: (voice over) Notice how Barry is now wary of making any movements or continuing with his previous actions. With a simple phrase, Barry’s mother has made Barry hyper-sensitive to his surroundings. By using this method, which I have deemed the “Parents See Everything Always” technique, a parent can keep their child well-behaved with minimal effort.
Barry slowly puts his toy truck on the floor in front of him.
DR. CRAVANAUGH: (voice over) I hope you have enjoyed this demonstration.
A line of text appears below Barry saying: Overuse of the PSEA Technique may lead to irrational paranoia and inflict permanent damage to their sense of reality. Use sparingly. Barry puts his hands in his lap and simply stares into blank space. He is no longer humming.
And Thus, History Was Made
When You Dream
Oh, the foolish things we do as freshmen in high school. When I come to think of it, this was actually the first movie I ever made.
The Best Part
Diet: Exercise – Anaerobic Exercise
No, I didn’t misspell aerobic; YOU misread. Maybe you need some new glasses.
If you can't tell what this is, go see your optician.
While aerobic exercise gets its energy from a mixture of glucose and oxygen, anaerobic exercise says a big, “FUCK YOU,” to oxygen and gets its energy from only the glucose in your body. This makes sense since the word anaerobic (first coined in the 1880’s) means “in the absence of oxygen”. Now this doesn’t mean anaerobic exercises are done without breathing; that’s as silly as it is extremely lethal. All it means is that your body is not using the oxygen you are breathing in to trigger glycosis, which is the metabolic process that converts glucose, sucrose and other chemicals from the –crose family, into energy.
Through something called anaerobic metabolism (what clever names these scientists give these things), your body accesses energy stores that are only found hiding in your muscles. The amount of oomph anaerobic metabolism creates is enough to help you punch a charging rhino into next week.
Accurate depiction.
So if it burns more fat and creates such high amounts of energy, why don’t we just tell aerobic exercise to screw off and simply do anaerobic exercises? Well, let’s take a look at that heartrate chart I showed way back when I still felt blogging everyday was going to be fucking easy.
See where anaerobic exercise falls on our chart? See how it’s labeled “Hardcore Training”? That isn’t a bullshit title, it really is hardcore. Anaerobic metabolism is only set off when you start driving your body with more intensity than aerobic exercise requires. Aerobic exercise is about longevity; it’s about running a marathon at a comfortable pace so that your body doesn’t give out long before the end. Aerobics is the normal, hardworking Joe of exercise.
Anaerobic exercise, on the other hand, is the total badass of exercise; it comes in wearing a leather jacket, drop kicks a cop off of a cliff, has relations with every woman in the room, and then paints a mural of Bruce Lee by spitting Bacardi 151 on the wall and then lighting it on fire. But if you have ever been that person at a party, you understand that unless you are fueled by some outside source (cocaine), you simply can’t live your entire life at that break-neck pace. While the fuel that anaerobics draw from creates high-octane energy, you have a very limited supply of that fuel. While a person can continue to do aerobic exercise long past forty minutes, the human body can only keep up anaerobic exercise for about five minutes.
This is partly because anaerobic exercise creates a build up of lactic acid. Lactic acid is a byproduct of glycosis and other metabolic functions, and it is normally released or reprocessed by the oxygen you consume. Anaerobic exercise doesn’t use oxygen though, and the lactic acid that is produced during these exercises just sort of hangs out in the blood stream until your body starts using oxygen normally again. While raising the acidity of your blood seems awesome because you take one step closer to being like the xenomorph in Alien –
"Yeah, I've been working out."
- it can also lead to acidosis, which, if we all remember A Few Good Men, can lead to all sort of problems.
Problem #1 - I make Jack Nicholson angry.
Acidosis can cause a number of physical maladies: Shortness of breath, coughing, headaches, dizziness, weakness, muscle failure, seizures, vomiting and diarrhea. While the medical studies have shown that a build up of lactic acid is not the primary cause of acidosis (link), it is a factor. The human body was simply not designed to maintain such a high energy output for a prolonged period of time.
Having said that, anaerobic exercise is a great way to lose weight. It burns through stored glucose (e.g. fat) faster than aerobic exercise, and recovering from a build up of lactic acid makes your muscles stronger. What exercises are considered anaerobic? Any intense exercise that you can only keep up for a few minutes; sprinting, biking up a steep hill, maxing out while lifting weights (lifting the heaviest weight you can without injuring yourself), climbing up a stair case at a brisk pace with 50 lbs. strapped to your back. If there was a scale that measured how hard you work, with laying on the ground at 0% and running from a deranged, chainsaw wielding killer at 100%, anaerobic exercise would be at about an 80%. 
And the good news is that you don’t have to do just one type of exercise in a single workout! While jogging at your normal pace (aerobic exercise), you can start sprinting (anaerobic exercise) and after 30 seconds to a minute you can return to your normal pace. Then after five to ten minutes later you start sprinting again. This cycle is called interval training, and if you are serious about losing weight you will want to work it into almost every exercise routine. Doing short bursts of anaerobic activity will get your heart rate way up and your body will burn through more fat, and the aerobic exercise will give your body time to recover by letting your body process the lactic acid and returning your heart rate to normal. Because you are only doing the anaerobic exercise for a short period of time, you won’t work yourself into exhaustion, and you’ll still be burning fat during the aerobic exercise. And because almost every exercise can be modified to be anaerobic, interval training is easy to insert into any work out. It’s a win-win situation.
The picture at the beginning was of a goat standing on a cow, by the way.
