Bill Cunningham | Fluent August 9, 2013By Joanna Nikas

Look at this here I think Bill Cunningham should have done us a favour and pointed out that the vast majority of the "men" in his shoots are homosexuals. Big ass lady bags. Pants so high and tight they are actually capris. Skirts and leggings.

Budgeting

McDonalds and Visa teamed up to make a budget for minimum wage workers. You can find a write up on it here:

McDonalds’ suggested budget for employees shows just how impossible it is to get by on minimum wage

The original PDF is here.

I'm going to steal this graphic 'cause I'm lazy:

Now I want to point out something here. If you're making minimum wage and assuming you don't live somewhere where having a car is absolutely necessary, then a few things should be changed in this budget:

1)No Car Payment. If you make minimum wage you will be using public transport and/or a bike for all your traveling needs.

2) No Car Insurance. Since you won't have a car, you don't need insurance. Combined that's $150 back in your pocket.

3)Cable/Phone: Umm..You make minimum wage. You do not get cable. Period. You get an antenna and you point it for the best reception of local over the air (OTA) channels. When there's nothing on that interests you, you read a fucking book, preferably one that will get you off the minimum wage treadmill.

Next you get a cell phone with the minimum cost per month as possible. Guess what? You don't have the luxury for large ass data plans. If you can afford one, get one so you can apply for jobs online during a break. Since they combined cable and phone lets say you save 50% by dropping the cable part so your savings is $50.

Next thing. You make minimum wage. You do not buy lunch while out. You carry your lunch TO work. You cook a whole mess of food on your day off. You eat left overs for the rest of the week and carry some for lunch. You're going to save a whole lot of money this way.

So by the note I made here, one adds $200 to the savings line.

The author of the blog entry complained about the heat line being 0. Every apartment I've been in has included heat and hot water in the rent. So it's OK to expect that the heat line will be 0.

A $90 electric bill is actually pretty high. Especially if it is for a single person. I have quite a few electronic devices sucking power and I rarely hit $90 in electricity costs. This usually happens in the summer when the AC is running. If you have a $90 electric bill, I'd check to see if someone is tapping your line. Seriously. Next I would be checking what is running. Unplug every damn thing in house (except the fridge) and see what's sucking power. A single person should have an electric bill around $40. Take the savings from the lack of car and insurance and purchase florescent bulbs. You'll rarely have to change them even though they will cost way more than an incandescent bulb. They will also burn far less electricity.

You making minimum wage? You should wash your clothes by hand, particularly your draws as soon as you get home. Your wardrobe should be lots of dark colors that you can get away with wearing more than once before having to wash them. Your entire existence is about efficiency in order to maximize the amount of money that stays in your hand and to maximize the time it stays in your hands.

Lastly, you and some of your minimum wage people need to start a susu. Each time you get paid you each put in a set amount of money into a pot. The pot is awarded to one of you each month/week/whatever you all decide. No one gets to drop out until everyone gets paid in the round. This will allow you all to get a once a month (or whatever) boost in income. It is like a savings account you get to tap. Interest free.

This does not negate the point that the author made about the need for minimum wage being increased. However, I have seen people with marginal income do dumb shit with their money. Matter of fact I've seen people with relatively high income do dumb shit with their money. So money smarts should always be a part of the solution to poverty.

So We're OK With Violence Against Men Eh?

Above is the new video by KFC. Let's go over it.

Man introduces himself to a woman. We'll call this the "bar scenario". Offers her some KFC. We'll call this the "Can I buy you a drink" scenario. Woman tastes the KFC bites and is so overwhelmed with emotion that she slaps the man in his face. We'll call this the "Violence against men" Scenario. This is of course a play on the widely socially acceptable phenomenon where women are allowed to hit men, in public, with no consequences whatsoever.

We'll call this the "culture of violence"

She *could* have given him a light "friendly tap" on the shoulder. She could have kept her hands to herself. The situation could have been one where there were two women and they hit each other. It could have been a situation where the dude slaps the woman in the face. Oh wait....that last one couldn't have been done.

So remember, when a woman is slapped in public by a man it's violence against women and condemned far and wide but if a man is slapped in public by a woman he "must have done something to deserve it". Besides we shouldn't expect women to control themselves when they feel an onslaught of emotion....

Osmo

Right.

So anyone who knows me knows that I take holiday to watch Le Tour De France live. Which means getting up for 8AM start times on non Col or Alp days and 6AM for anything that has the words Tormalet or Huez in it.

This year there was an advert for a product called "Osmo". Apparently Peter Sagan, an excellent sprinter is using the product. What is it? Well it's a hydration product that is said to be science based to deliver proper levels of nutrients in a manner that the body can quickly absorb. In a moment of advertising influence I looked up the website, saw all the rave reviews and decided to go get some.

So today I took my first ride with it. I used the orange flavor in a 20oz water bottle in a 16 mile ride. Definitely not a stage of Le Tour but enough for me to get dehydrated if I wasn't drinking anything and definitely enough to lose essential minerals.

Rewind. I took a 3 mile run in the morning having drunk that Gatorade Pregame fuel drink. You're supposed to have that 15 min. before "competition". OK. I'm not explaining myself properly.

Look. I cannot stand having anything in my stomach when I run. Bike? eh? But before run? No. Not only do I not like the feeling of "heavy stomach" but I risk getting cramps during the run and if I'm not careful some serious gastro issues after.

Since I run relatively quickly (6:15 min miles) Just water is not going to cut it, particularly on hot days. Particularly in the AM. Normally I'd run at midday, but in the summer, that's asking for heat stroke. So it's mornings or evenings. Mornings it is. Which means empty stomach, good for no sloshing and gastro issues, bad 'cause I've just finished an 8 hour fast. So enter sports drinks.

I long since dropped high fructose corn syrup from my diet. That eliminates Gatorade*, Vitamin water and those things. I've tried coconut water, but ended up with it fermenting in my stomach. Not good. So I was on water and losing minerals. What to do?

Osmo.

Osmo is a powder that you put into water. I saw that the on product directions said to add 2.5 scoops into 20oz of water and I got nervous. This is a small container vs. things I've gotten from say, GNC, so I thought that this was going to be an expensive habit (it is if you're poor). Luckily the scoops are small.

I put it on my bike and set off. When I drank my first swig I knew this was different. You know that feeling when you're thirsty and you drink some nice cool water and you can feel this "feeling" in your gut as the water hits it? Yeah, it felt like that. That was good. The second and most important thing to me was that unlike Gatorade and Vitamin Water, it wasn't sweet. It had a light taste. So either you're being cheated or this is serious stuff, not "lets get 'em hooked with sugar" stuff.

If you look at the ingredients you'll note that the most pronounced items are vit. B6, B12 and C. The other main ingredients are sugars (sucrose), Potassium and Sodium. I could tell there was quite a bit of sodium because I could taste it leaking out of me. I've tasted my sweat before, but this was different.

I won't say that I broke any endurance records....personal endurance records. Nor will I say that I didn't feel the workout. I did. But I did not feel drained. This is important to me because usually if I do a run and a bike in the same day, I will feel....blah, time to sleep.

Now for all I know this could all by psychological. I suppose I will find out in the days ahead but not having gastro issues makes it worth it.

I rate this a buy. I'm not being paid by these folks. I'm just a happy customer.

Reminder folks, you still have to eat right and get decent sleep.

*The regular drinks have high fructose corn syrup the pouches have sucrose. Matter of fact the ingredient list of the Gatorade Pregame drink has a lot of similar items to the Osmo but is noticeably sweeter. It may be due to the fact that it's meant as a pre-workout drink whereas Osmo is meant to be taken during a long term event.

Gandolfini Was Not "OK" Before Heart Attack

When I heard that Gandolfini had died I was not surprised. I know that sounds morbid but it's true. When I heard the rumor it was a heart attack I was not surprised either.

at 51, his death was at a relatively young age. When you're that age and you don't die of an accident, there is usually an underlying medical condition. Gandolfini's condition was not unknown to anyone who saw him for it literally right in front of him.

The news commentators were trying to be kind, but I knew that the gut that Gandolfini was carrying was the most likely "cause" of his death. Many men are carrying a lot of weight around their waists. It is known that for men, having such a large omentum is a sure sign of impending heart disease and diabetes.

We men need to take this issue seriously. That "big teddy bear" look may have some cultural cache in many communities but it is not healthy at all. Gandolfini wasn't always that big. He grew. I see this a lot among men and women. I see their high school photos and a vast majority of them, while not slim by any means were not as large as they let themselves get. And let me be clear, most of them let themselves get to whatever size they got to. They ate whenever and whatever they wanted. They avoided exercise. They made excuses and rationalizations for their increasing size. They did not take it seriously when they could not climb stairs without gasping for air.

These people are currently having their lives and health risked by so called "fat acceptance" movements by people who actually could not give a fuck about their physical health. Many have bought into the binary that says that either your huge or your anorexic. Few of them look at those pictures I mentioned earlier and see that there is a wide middle ground that they should be in.

Gandolfini did not have to die just now and if you are carrying a large gut you don't have to die prematurely because of it either.

Has Technology Killed Cursive Handwriting?

From Mashable

But in recent years, the nation's Common Core State Standards — which at least 45 states and the District of Columbia, have voluntarily adopted — took out the requirement for cursive instruction in K through 12 schools...Putting pen to paper stimulates the brain like nothing else, even in this age of e-mails, texts and tweets. In fact, learning to write in cursive is shown to improve brain development in the areas of thinking, language and working memory. Cursive handwriting stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, something absent from printing and typing.

Agreed.

I never had good handwriting and I was alarmed one day when I realized I had forgotten certain cursive letters. Now I take time out daily to write the alphabet in cursive both as individual letter forms as well as a continuous string. I also pick a paragraph or two off of a website, usually a news site and rewrite it in cursive.

I definitely notice the difference. While I'm no expert on brain development I can certainly say that my fine motor skills in my fingers has improved.

Rent A Tire?

Are these people fucking nuts?

When the tires on their Dodge Caravan had worn so thin that the steel belts were showing through, Don and Florence Cherry couldn't afford to buy a new set...

The Rich Square, N.C., couple last September agreed to pay Rent-N-Roll $54.60 a month for 18 months in exchange for four basic Hankook tires. Over the life of the deal, that works out to $982, almost triple what the radials would have cost at Wal-Mart.

Just how stupid do you have to be to do some dumb shit like this?

Look, if you can't afford new tires then you buy second hand tires from a tire shop. They won't last anywhere near as long as new tires, but you aint' payin' 1k for tires that cost $300.

Secondly, if you cannot afford to purchase at least second hand tires, then you cannot afford a car. LA Times