Leg Day

 

As we age, our balance tends to get worse. There are reasons, and chief among these are that leg strength lessens, and fast-twitch muscle fades. If you stumble or trip, slow-twitch muscles might not be quick enough to recover. 

Most injuries to the elderly involve falls, and, really, you’d rather avoid that. 

It is important to note that while the bigger muscles — quads, hamstrings, gluteus majors, calves, and core need to be worked, so too the smaller stabilizers we tend not to think about. There are stabilizers all over one’s body, but here I speak to the southernmost.

Here’s a simple way to see where those little ankle, leg, and hip muscles are, and what they do: 

NOTE: ASSUMING GOOD HEALTH, DO THE FOLLOWING WITH SOME NEARBY SUPPORT — A WALL, A CHAIR, SOMETHING STURDY IN CASE YOU LOSE YOUR BALANCE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart.

Shift your weight onto one foot, lift your other foot, doesn’t matter how high or what angle, where you keep your hands, just so all your weight is on the opposite foot.

After a few seconds, longer if you are fit, you’ll probably notice some adjustments your body makes to stay standing. Little motions, in the ankle, or knee, maybe the gluteus minimus, the hip. These are the stabilizers, and while they get worked with squats, leg-extensions, or -curls, calf-raises, they might need more. 

If you can’t do this unaided, you can put one hand on a support until you can hold it, then move toward doing it without the support. When you hold the position comfortably, you can switch your weight to the other foot. Do this a few times, increasing the time you spend balanced on each side. 

Keep your eyes open. There is another test with eyes closed, but not useful for walking around, since the sighted among us tend not to walk with their eyes shut. 

Get good at this, then you can add weights. 

Hereunder, a variation of a farmer’s walk. (Aka farmer’ carry — basically walking around holding a weight in each hand. This is good for legs, hips, torso (core,) shoulders, hands, all like that.)

Stand on one foot, switch, repeat, holding a dumbbell or kettlebells in each hand. Start with light weights. Count reps, or set a timer and go back and forth. I like to do five seconds, then switch, for a minute per set. Your mileage may vary.

There are things one can do to get better fast-twitch dynamics, tai chi, plyometrics, but that’s a different post.

Guitar Clerk's Bane (1969)

 

When guitar players go into music stores, they tend to want to pick up the axes and play a few riffs. The more popular a song is, the more likely it is that -- if you are a clerk in a guitar store -- you will quickly get real sick of hearing it, because every wanna-be who comes in will sure as hell play it.

Recall the sign on the guitar store wall in Wayne's World? No Stairway to Heaven ... 

Now it's different, but back in my day, it was Deep Purple and Led Zep and Beatles, and for the acoustic guys, Mason Williams.

I thought it would be fun to put together a little parody of this, so I came up with this. Did it about … twenty years ago, when I was still playing guitar and ukuleles still
a few years in my future.

A mash-up of the oh-crap-not-again! pieces the guys behind the counter at Music City were hearing in the late sixties: Smoke on the Water, Stairway to Heaven, House of the Risin’ Sun, Classical Gas, Blackbird … 

Inaccurate

 

Getting a lot of posts on my feed from gun-guys, praising the civilian shooter who engaged the killer in Twin Falls during the In-N-Out mass-murders Saturday.

To be fair, I don't fault the guy's bravery -- he stepped up. I believe that having the civilian and an off-duty Highway Patrol office firing at him almost certainly caused the killer to back off, and thus saved lives. Points for that. 

That the gun guys are having orgasms because a good-guy-with-a-gun was there? If he fired multiple times at a killer and missed hitting him? And the off-duty cop didn't do any better?

Nothing to brag about there. Where did those stray rounds go? 

If you are going to take a shot in a crowded area and you can't hit your target? Don't shoot. 

Wyatt Earp supposedly said, "Speed is fine, but accuracy is final."

As the late Bill Jordan -- a man who could pick aspirin tablets off a table with his duty revolver -- said: “The history of gun fighting fails to record a single fatality resulting from a quick noise.”

Temper your enthusiasm, guys. He missed.

Writing: Person and Tense

 

A brief explanation of two writing constructs — person and tense.

When you tell a story, the first thing you have to decide is, Whose story is it?

Person goes to the viewpoint character(s): First-person, Second-person, third-person. These can be limited to a character, a camera-view, or omnipotent viewpoint, depending on whose head you want to get inside to hear their thoughts. Can be one, none, or all.

These viewpoints are, respectively, “I,” “you,” “he/she/they.” Mixing them up in a single work tends to confuse readers.

Tense, goes to time — past, present, and future. 

Combined, they give you a way to offer your tale.

Most commercial fiction is told in third-person, past-tense: Somebody did something, it’s a done deal, and the writer is telling readers about it.

“He traveled in another dimension.” This gives you options to switch viewpoint from him, to her, or them.

First-person:

“I traveled in another dimension.” Limits you to one person’s interior.

Second person:

“You traveled in another dimension.”

That’s with past-tense.

___________________

Present tense, first-person:

“I am traveling in another dimension.”

 

Present tense, 2nd-person:

“You are traveling in another dimension.” Thank you, Rod Serling. Don’t see this one a lot, but it has its uses. Choose-Your-Own-Adventure or Time Machine YA books, for instance.

Present tense, third-person:

“He/she/they are traveling in another dimension.”

Present-tense can give you a sense of immediacy — things are happening now. 

____________________

Then one gets into future-tense, and future-perfect tense which tend to be a can of worms:

First-person:

“I shall be traveling in another dimension.”

Yadda, yadda, yadda. 

____________________

Now I told you all that so I can tell you this: 

I am not a fan of first-person, present-tense for a novel.

First-person, past-tense works really well for mystery stories, and a lot of the best ones use this. You solve the crime using only what your investigator knows. But first-person-present-tense? A lot of mainstream fiction uses this, and, to me, it always feels artsy and pretentious, trying to compel a reader to see the actions as deep and meaningful. It seems more about the writing, and less about the story. The first story I sold started out this way, got rejected several times, and when I redid it in third-person-past-tense, it found a buyer. 

Now, that said, I have read and enjoyed books done in this style, but the caveat is that — for me — they are few and far between. So if pick up a book and it is written this way, it has two-strikes against it, and if it doesn’t pull me in on the first page or two? I am likely to put that book down. 

Born of Man and Woman

 Given the nature of evil in our world, the monsters among us — with power over us — I sometimes feel rage at the injustice, at the horrors that beset us. I understand how, when the law fails, why vigilantes arise.

Batman is damaged, but effective.

I am reminded of the late, great writer Richard Matheson, and his story, “Born of Man and Woman.” Hereunder, the last paragraph in the tale. This was told from an eight-year-old child’s viewpoint, published in F&SF, July, 1950, Matheson's first fiction sale, written when he was twenty-two years old. Twelve hundred and fifty words that chilled me when I first read them at the age of fourteen, as part of his reprinted collection, Third from the Sun.

“X—This is another time. Father chained me tight. I hurt because he beat me. This time I hit the stick out of his hands and made noise. He went away and his face was white. He ran out of my bed place and locked the door. I am not so glad. All day it is cold in here. The chain comes slow out of the wall. And I have a bad anger with mother and father. I will show them. I will do what I did that once. I will screech and laugh loud. I will run on the walls. Last I will hang head down by all my legs and laugh and drip green all over until they are sorry they didn’t be nice to me. If they try to beat me again I’ll hurt them. I will.”

Old Jock Speaks

Most of my resistance workouts — weights, bodyweight, core stuff, I do in the late afternoons/early evenings before dinner, six or seven days a week. I run a four-day cycle for various muscle groups. Walking the dog and martial arts forms aren’t part of the equation here. 

Not a morning person, my biorhythms flow better later in the day.

Too, when I am working, sitting in the chair, I have a timer set every forty-five minutes, whereupon I get up, stretch, do some toe-touches and -raises, air- or wall-squats, like that, mostly for circulation. Sitting too much is a killer.

Here of late, to shake things up a bit when the gong goes off to get out the chair, I have been doing a single set of reps with a kettlebell or dumbbells, or chins and dips, like that. 

Work is force through a distance, and spread out over the course of a day, one set every forty-five minutes, I’m doing more sets and reps of whichever exercise I’m electing, so more work, but easier, because I’m doing only one set at a time. Not getting the pump as with three sets.

Now, I’m still doing my regular workout before dinner, but that focuses on a different exercise than the one I’m doing every forty-five minutes. 

For instance, if I do light dumbbells in a compound movement — curls and Ahnahl presses during the day, then I’ll do squats/deadlifts/back stuff in the evening. 

This is not a new concept, just the first time I’ve played with it, and I’ve only just started, so it’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, it does after a few weeks or months. Assuming I keep my diet the same, I would expect to drop a couple pounds of fat and maybe add a little muscle. 

Stand by, I’ll report back in a few weeks.

Work-in-progress: Ripple: Reapers

 San Antonio, Texas

Bleys

She liked San Antonio, despite there being so many drugstore-all-hat-no-cattle cowboys. You could always tell the real ones from the wanna-be’s, the real ones had a look—tanned, seamed, weathered faces, the shirts and jeans and boots good quality, but never new-looking. And something about the eyes, their gazes taking in everything, silently judging all they saw. Lot of them Mexicans—boys and girls—in this part of the state, and nobody gave them any shit—at least not other real cowboys.

The Daisy Bar and Grill was twenty degrees cooler than outside, early in the evening, but it was still about seventy-five. Lights were dim, lot of beer signs. A good crowd, fifty, sixty people, men and women, a big dance floor, and there would be line-dancing later in the evening when the band showed up. Called themselves the Yee Haws, the band did.

Nobody in the place wore a mask against Covid. She didn’t care, she was immune.

When she was in San Antonio, she usually stopped in here for dinner. 

They served burgers and fries, chicken strips, and burritos, and the shrimp burritos were excellent, drenched in molé sauce and melted cheese. Probably three thousand calories, though she worked out enough to stay ahead of the weight gain.

Had to eat the burrito with a knife and fork, and she washed it down with a Dos Equis dark. They made pretty good margaritas, which was probably where the bar’s name came from, that being Spanish for “daisy.”

She was at a table for two, alone, enjoying the burrito and beer when a tall man in a dark, shellacked, three-crease Cattlemen straw hat, a black shirt with mother-of-pearl snaps, and new Levis came to the table and sat across from her. 

She glanced down, and saw what had to be dark-gray alligator-hide boots, then back up at a smile that revealed expensive orthodontia. 

“Hey, darlin’, how you doin’?”

He was a handsome man, maybe thirty, a fake tan, dishwater blond, a cleft-chin. He was a handsome man, maybe thirty, a fake tan, dishwater blond, a cleft-chin. The accent was Texas, but she’d bet a year’s pay he was a fake.

“You a cattle man?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Under other circumstances, it might be fun to lead him on and see how long it took before he messed up his cowboy act, but all she wanted to do was finish her meal and get back to her hotel. She had driven five hundred miles since yesterday, and she was tired.

“Not a reaper, for sure.”

“’Scuse me? A what?”

She smiled. She could almost hear Glen Campbell singing the opening of A Rhinestone Cowboy. “Never mind. No offense, but I had a long and tiring day, and I just want to finish my burrito and then go to bed.”

“I like that second part,” he said. “Happy to keep you company.”

More orthodontia shined.

She smiled back at him. “You know, I bet you’re a pretty good dancer when the Yee-Haws crank it up. Probably you can ride a horse. But you’re about as much a cowboy as this bottle of Dos Equis. That hat? Set you back, what, five, six hundred dollars? Tailored-shirt, that’s another two hundred. Somebody cut those Levi’s to make your ass look good—and no back pockets to spoil the line. Another couple hundred. That’s an Omega Speedmaster watch, seventy-five hundred. That pinkie ring is gold, with an Australian opal, three, maybe four thousand. Those boots, another three grand. Call it fourteen, fifteen thousand and change, so unless you own a thousand-acre ranch, or ten acres of downtown San Antonio, you ain’t no kind of cowboy.

“Got some muscle, so a gym and personal trainer, three times a week? Good-looking woman jock, I bet.”

“I’d guess you are a … stockbroker? Maybe a high-end lawyer, or have a rich daddy? You come to the bars for your cosplay, and pick up a different sweet young thing on the dance floor every time, take her to a nice hotel, fuck her silly, and feel like God’s gift to women. 

“How am I doing?”

His face wrought into an angry snarl. “You bitch!”

She laughed. “There you are.”

“I might just wait outside until you leave,” he said.

“That would be a stupid mistake. I’m too tired to kick your ass, so if you are there when I go? I will put a few rounds of 9mm into your crotch. One of them might hit your dick, tiny as it likely is, and tear it right off. If you live, you’ll need a penile implant just to pee, and sex just won’t ever be the same.”

He blinked at her.

“Oh, yeah, I have a pistol—probably you do, too, out in your car, hell, this Texas, everybody is strapped. But you don’t have a gun on you—that would spoil the line of those snug jeans and fitted-shirt. Might have a boot-dagger, but bringing a knife to a gunfight is usually a bad tactic.

“I’m an excellent shot, and fast, and you won’t be the first idiot to find that out the hard way. So you want to sit right there until I finish my burrito and beer, and then watch me leave. Are we clear?”

“Bitch!”

She took a sip of her beer. “You have no fucking idea, pal.”

Memories and Time

 

Those of you in the bloom of youth — yea, even unto middle-age — might not yet be aware of a double-edged thing that happens as you get older. Allow me to speak of this:

1) The speed of time increases.

2) Your memory regarding time degrades.

A thing you do, a movie you saw, a song you liked that your degraded memory gives you?

One that was only a couple years ago? This can — and will — turn out to be much, much longer than that when you look for the evidence.

Had a conversation online yesterday in which I spoke of training with a spear in my martial art. Only been a year or two since I started down that road, right?

Um. Well, Stevie, actually, no.

You bought a wooden training spear in 2017. A couple entry-level live-bladed weapons in 2019. Your first designed-for-your-art spear, custom-made by Chuck Pippin was in January, 2023. Your ultimate Damascus spear Ch’elema — Our Lady of Darkness — again from Mastersmith Pippin, arrived in the middle of 2025.

Moreover, your first thoughts on drills, djurus, langkahs, and a pedagogy? Why, you wrote that down in October of 2022.

The first two spear djurus were created between January and May, 2023. The third djuru came in June, 2024. You did eight short reference videos covering this material, in January, 2025.

You been doing this a while, Stevie. Don’t listen to your degraded memory. Write things down, and then look ‘em up when you want to feel bad about losing your marbles. If you can remember where you put the file.

I am about ready to hide my own Easter eggs — assuming, of course, I know what they are when I see them. Still, I can tell the difference between a horsie and a tiger, so I must be smart, right?