Yoga: The Straight Dope

As many of you know I have recently been dipping into the Yoga pool, and letting its cool, pristine waters wash over me twice a week. It has been a very challenging experience. In fact, if you listen very carefully you can hear the faint lament of my aggrieved ligaments, and the nattering hum of tendons pulled tighter than the skin on Angelina Jolie's face.

I'm still working on mastering the various poses, and as is typical of issues that have dogged me in the past I am probably overly concerned with doing the poses perfectly correctly. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. You're only going to get the most out of this activity if you're doing it properly, right? So in an all too typical feat of self punishment, I've settled on a simple (read: foolish and counterproductive) way to determine whether I'm doing any single pose correctly. I ask myself, “Am I currently in extreme physical pain and discomfort?” and if the answer is no, then I assume I'm not doing the pose right.

Probably not the best approach, eh? That's what I thought. I'll have to work on that.

Here's another thing that bothers me about Yoga, and this has to do with the instructor. Look, if you're giving instructions to make a pose more challenging just fucking say so, okay? Don't be using these weasel phrases like...“For increased emphasis try...” or “A deeper focus can be had by...”

Just give us the straight dope on this stuff and say “If you want it to hurt WAY worse try...” or “If you don't want to be able to comb your hair tomorrow try this...”

Increased emphasis.... Increased physical therapy. It's not the same thing Miss Yoga instructor.

Of Glaciers and Prison Cells. This, is where I've been.

(Joe says, "This is kinda heavy. Less emo stuff is to come")

It's tough to wrap my brain around the last fifteen years. My retreat from life was so glacially slow that I never once felt in any real danger, even as the landscape of my life was being scoured and scrubbed, pushing me, like some prehistoric hunter/gatherer, away from the life I once had.

Of course now I realize that I was the one who created this glacier, and that it was largely illusory. At first I needed it to push me away from the stimuli that frightened and intimidated me, but in time I turned away and started fleeing on my own, never pausing to look back.

Over the last fifteen years I have methodically stripped away all opportunities for good experiences, and worse yet I've redefined opportunity as obligation and burden, further erecting impenetrable barriers between myself and stimuli.

Finally, I know that I have put a staggering amount of time and energy into hurting myself. The only thing I ever let myself be really good at, the only thing I ever put maximum effort into, was torturing myself.

It's still not entirely clear to me why this was so important to me, but my working theory revolves around the idea of punishment. If I accept that there is something worthwhile inside me, a spark that is worth sharing with the world, and I've still spent fifteen years running away and hiding from every opportunity to share it... I think I subconsciously knew I was wasting something rare and pretty special. On some level I believed I deserved the torture because I was too weak to stand the judgment of phantom people in situations that I animated into nightmare scenarios.

If the last fifteen years could be summed up as a prison sentence I have to admit that I was the judge, jury, dungeon keeper, and torturer. I locked myself away for a crime I entrapped myself into committing and then tortured myself because deep down inside I knew that I did have something to offer the outside world after all.

But I'm out now. The glacier is melting. I can see where I've been, and where I'm going.

Roethlisberger Facing Indictment?

PITTSBURGH, Pa. – Two-time Super bowl champion quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is currently under investigation for his involvement in an illicit dwarf tossing ring, according to a report soon to be published by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback is alleged to have staged several dwarf tossing events between 2005 and 2008 in a West Pittsburgh pub he purchased shortly after signing his rookie contract in 2004.

Roethlisberger's name was discovered during a search of documents subpoenaed from ShortDwarf.com, the largest dwarf talent agency in the United States. ShortDwarf had been under investigation for several weeks, suspected of running afoul of federal RICO statutes by illegally transporting dwarfs across state lines.

“We are immensely disappointed that such such a noteworthy figure as Ben Roethlisberger would engage in such a barbaric and dehumanizing activity as dwarf tossing” said Sean Prestin, Vice President of Public Relations for the Little People of America.

Although dwarf tossing is not technically illegal within the state of Pennsylvania, several attempts have been made to curb its popularity, which peaked in the late 1980's, including the very zoning restrictions which led to the search of Roethlisberger's pub late last week.

The search found clear evidence of dwarf related recreation, including a custom three lane alley for bowling nights and a large east wall overlaid with Velcro target boards designed to “catch” dwarfs tossed like darts, according to the Allegheny County Sheriffs department.

When asked to comment about an unconfirmed report that several dwarfs were being housed on site, sleeping in dresser drawers and bathing in dish basins, a spokesman for the department issued a “no comment.”

However, Prestin and the LPA do not doubt the authenticity of the report.

“The kinds of people who participate in this depraved pastime treat little people like props, not human beings.” Prestin even insisted that in some rare cases ill-performing dwarfs had been put down by the event organizers.

“Oh yes. They'll call them all sorts of names... Like 'Shortcake' or 'Tiny' or even 'Ooompa-Loompa.' Sick bastards.”

Telephone messages to Roethlisberger and his agent Ryan Tollner were unreturned. Dan Rooney, longtime owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers offered support to his beleaguered quarterback.

“Ben is the leader of our franchise and has always been a solid person on and off the field. We're confident that when all is said and done he'll be standing tall over these ridiculous accusations.”

Mr. Rooney rejected several opportunities to re-word his support of Roethlisberger.

When reached for comment, NFL spokesman Brandon Teabow said, “Dwarf tossing? Is that even illegal? You know, after the whole dogfighting thing it doesn't really seem like that big a deal... What? Oh... No! I wasn't making a joke! Stop laughing... Hey, don't write that down!”

Pieces

There's this dream I have. I'm standing at the edge of a cliff, peering into a bottomless pit. There's a rusty bucket sitting at my feet. I carefully kneel down and grasp the wiry steel handle. It's a very heavy bucket. Heavier than it should, or even could be. I don't want to look at what's in the bucket. I rise back up, holding the bucket with two hands. I pause, feeling a cold breeze blow in my face. It's a strong breeze, and uncomfortably cool, but it's blowing me away from the chasm. Away from oblivion. I'm grateful to the breeze.

My arms are beginning to suffer under the obscene burden of the bucket. The wire handle is digging into the flesh of my palms and my fingers are going white from deprivation. How long have I been holding this bucket? Why won't I look inside? Why... Why is it so bloody heavy?

My groaning arms and screaming fingers are joined by my snarling back. The chorus is sublime. They sing of pain and desperation, but my mind picks up only a whisper, and the bucket remains in my grasp.

The pain is sharpening my recall. I've been standing at the pit for a very long time. I've been carrying the bucket even longer. It's never felt quite so heavy though. How did it get so heavy? I'm carrying it... It's my bucket. What did I put in there? And why don't I want to look?

My legs are shaking now. A rickety murmur joins the torture symphony. Clarity is my reward. Every time I try to think about what's in the bucket my eyes are drawn to the bottomless fissure before me... I've stood on the precipice of this chasm for as long as I can remember. I don't stand as close as I used to and I sometimes wonder why I come here at all anymore.

My feet are leaden. The weight of my cargo is driving me to shift from one foot to the other. A thumping baseline of dull discomfort. The orchestra ascends. The bucket overflows.

The bucket holds pieces of me. A broken arm when I was seven. A broken heart when I was seventeen. One eye spying only the future, another only the past. Each forever blind to the present. Ears that hear only criticism... A heart that fears.

I tip the bucket over the bottomless pit. The pieces tumble out and into the nothing. It takes a while. The symphony plays out to a diminuendo.

For the first time that I can remember I feel like I can go somewhere else. Anywhere else. My arms, my hands, my back, my legs, my feet... they can sing another song.

I decide to hang on to that rusty old bucket too. You never know when you'll discover something nice and want to bring it along with you.

Terror at AIG

“...It was carrying a pitchfork!” Gene's words slipped out between heavy, raspy breaths. “And the other one... What, was that a flamethrower?”

Torches and pitchforks. The irony may have eluded Gene, but not me. As we rested in the narrow stairway between 54 and 55, I couldn't prevent a smile from spreading across my face.

Gene wasn't quite so amused. “Really? You think this is funny, Templeton?” He was finally getting his wind back. “You know they're here for us, right?”

I leaned back against the cold steel railing and closed my eyes for the first time since our flight from the lobby. He wasn't wrong. The...robots were targeting the executives, and they were hitting the mark more often than not.

When I opened my eyes Gene was sitting on the steps, one hand pressed into his forehead and the other roughly scrubbing through his thin, gray hair. “...Never should have taken the bonuses...”

The incessant bleating of the fire alarm and the periodic rumble of robot destruction below and the one thing I wished I didn't have to hear was Gene's whining.

My response was cut with more sarcasm than he deserved. “Why, yes Gene... If only you'd turned down the money, the killer robots never would have attacked.”

His chuckle was wry. “Who do ya think sent em, anyway?”

“Well, seeing as how anyone with a 401K has reason to want us dead, might be kinda tough to figure.”

The rumble below became more pronounced. The machines were methodically pushing their way up, floor by floor. We still had a good half a dozen floors on them, and they weren't using the stairs. If we could make the top ahead of them...

Gene dragged himself off the steps and finished my thought. “What happens when we reach the top, Roy?”

I shrugged my shoulders as we continued climbing, “Maybe we can get to the roof?”

Gene, the fat ass, was already wheezing after climbing 2 floors. He always did like the executive wet bar more than the executive gym. “And... then what? I mean... unless you bought a helicopter with your bonus and didn't tell me, I think we're still screwed.”

His face brightened momentarily with unreasonable hope. “...Oh man. Pleeeease say you bought a helicopter and didn't tell me...”

His optimism was wiped away clean by my shaking head. “No. I went with the boat, remember?”

We climbed the rest of the way in silence.

I leaned in close against the door to floor 66. I could still hear the robot carnage on the floors below, but it seemed quiet on the other side.

“The government?” Gene was really hung up on the whole “who” question. I worked in derivatives. You learn not to ask the who question when you're trading in derivatives, or the what, where or why for that matter.

“...The ones who gave us all the money, and wrote in the loopholes for the bonuses? Come on. Now be quiet. I'm trying to find out if we're about to die horribly.”

I cracked the door open and peered down the hallway. All clear. 66 had been mostly empty for a while. Most of these guys had taken their “retention” bonuses and quit a couple weeks ago. Wherever they were, I hoped they were dodging robot pitchforks too. I closed the door again and turned to Gene. He had finally stripped off his jacket. His dress shirt was soaked with sweat. He was still on about the who.

“...Aliens...? Terrorists...? George Soros...? Hugo Chavez!?” He was about 5 minutes away from fingering zombie Franklin Roosevelt.

I waved Gene quiet and turned back to the door. “Alright. The roof access is on the north side of the building. You ready?”

Gene gave a slight sigh, and a heavier grunt, and we were through the door.

The soft florescent lights on the 66^th floor flickered occasionally. The vibrative din of the machines on the floors below continued, but were intermittent. I imagined that the robots were finding fewer targets the higher up they proceeded. Most people were either cut down as they descended attempting to escape or had fled up the building and were already on the roof, trapped, with no where else to climb. Gene and I crept along past empty offices as quickly as we dared. We both would have preferred a dead sprint, but the prospect of rounding a corner recklessly into the waiting arms of a machine kept our scamper cautious.

Gene's nerves demanded conversation. Quiet conversation. “...think the whole city is overrun? The country? Is this like War of the World and shit?”

“Worlds, Gene. War of the Worlds...”

We were coming up on a corner, and one of two main elevators on the east side of the floor. I slowed down, listening intently for the distinctive elevator bell that would signal a robot arrival, and very soon after, our departure.

I glanced back to tell Gene that we needed to move quickly past the elevator and saw him standing, ashen faced, staring into an open office. We did NOT need to be dicking around by the elevator.

I trotted back to retrieve him. “Gene, this is not the time to be lusting after someone else's leather cou-” My voice caught as I got my first look inside the office.

A pair of legs were splayed out on the floor behind a large oak executive desk. A rivulet of blood trailed the length of the legs, threatening to stain a pair of freshly shined Bruno Magli's. The wall opposite was spattered in a predictable crimson pattern. I made for the interior of the office.

“Are you crazy?” Gene grabbed my arm. “..Robots.”

I pulled away. “This wasn't the machines. At least not directly.”

I found the gun lying on the floor under the desk, having to lean down closer to the corpse than I would have liked. Gene was making every effort to not look at the body, gazing out the large office window.

“...No flashing lights... No cops. No tanks. No soldiers... No fucking help is coming, huh?” His voice was flat. He was finally getting it. We were the bad guys. Nobody rescues the bad guys.

“I think our friend here came to a similar conclusion.” I checked the chamber on the .45. He'd used the only bullet. Greedy bastard.

I set the gun on the desk and patted Gene on the shoulder. “Come on. Roof access is at the end of the hall.”

The elevator bell rang behind us when we were nearly half way down the hall. I wasted precious fractions of seconds turning around to confirm visually. The machine was all sleek and shiny curves of icy blue steel. It stood around six feet tall, and like many of the ones we'd seen in the lobby earlier its right arm ended in a hellishly sharp looking pitchfork. The first step it took off the elevator had that robotic herk and jerk, but it soon settled into a surprisingly smooth gait, a casual jog.

I turned and ran, in a very uncasual (<---Not a word, but it should be. - Joe) manner. I quickly outpaced Gene who had taken off in a Pavlovian sprint the second he heard the bell. I could hear the metallic clank of the machine's footsteps as it galloped behind us. We were fifty feet away from the stairs to the roof. The machines had avoided the stairs so far...

I slammed through the door to the stairs. It wasn't locked, but I don't think it would've mattered if it had been. I took the stairs three at a time and tried to listen past the pounding of my heart for any indication that Gene was still with me. I slowed my pace as we finally reached the door out to the roof. Gene's gulping gasps behind me were a welcome sound. I gazed back down the stairs. The door we flew through remained closed. The pursuit was at an end.

“...Thank God for killer robots who don't use the stairs, eh Gene?” It seemed an odd time for jokes, but the long and steady flow of adrenaline was making me punchy.

In Gene's state of cardiovascular distress, his choking laugh was a bit dangerous. When his hacking cough finally subsided we pushed through the door and out into the cool early evening.

There was a ring of about seven or eight of them, an interlocking mass of midnight blue steel surrounding us on all sides. The air was thick with a well oiled smell. It was like being in a Harley Davidson show room. To my right and behind me Gene began to sob. I backed up against the door back into the building and looked down the stairs from where we'd come. The door at the bottom was open. A machine stood there now, arms folded casually. Gene fainted in a heap.

It was over. I dropped to one knee and waited. The machines were still just standing there. Were they even on?

I heard a voice. A human voice.

“...Excuse me...Excuse... Pardon... Can I just squuuuueze through here please?” The voice didn't sound distressed at all, and had a familiarity to it. It seemed to be coming from behind the ring of robots.

The person behind the voice slid between two of the machines and into view. He was, well, fat. Made Gene look like an Olympic swimmer by comparison. He was wearing a cheap windbreaker and wild brown hair poked out from behind a ratty Detroit Tigers baseball cap, but it was the scraggly beard and thick brown glasses that cinched my recognition. I wished Gene had stayed conscious long enough to see how on the right track he had been...

Michael Moore. Liberal muckraker and, apparently, robot rabble rousing overlord. Well, that answered the who question. The why question came unbidden to my lips.

He gave that characteristic nervous chuckle before replying, “Heh... I got sick of waiting for the people to rise up, so I did it for them.”

I noticed some sort of remote device clutched in his chubby hands. He pushed a button and the machines parted to give me a view of the city. In the distance I could see a building burning.

“Is that the Citicorp building?!”

Moore nodded.

“And I've got cybernetic grizzly bears tearing up the New York Stock Exchange...” He frowned a bit when I didn't laugh, “Come on? Bear Market? That's pretty good stuff.”

He brought the machines back into place, and I readied myself for the end. But he wasn't quite done yet. “Care for a little irony before the end there, chief?”

I shrugged my shoulders. Just get it over with you fat-ass commie...

“These robots,” he motioned to his metallic minions, “they're all made of genuine GM parts.”

He pushed another button, folded back into the darkness, and the machines moved in.

Finally.