Man Up

It's been almost three weeks since I clocked in at 255 and felt the need to tell the world, or just the few people who stalk me here, exactly how fat I had gotten. I haven't re-read that post yet, but I am sure it says something about what I want to do to trim down and blah blah blah. Well I do know that I intended to post my weight here a lot more often than I had as a way to motivate myself to lose more of it....and that hasn't happened yet either. I have so many good ideas, but never seem to follow through with them.

So here I lay ready to try and nap before another long, boring midnight shift. I am cozy warm in my bed, and since I am sans clothes I have no desire to get out of bed and put my feet on the cold wooden floor. But thinking about how I haven't posted my weight yet, I do have enough motivation to get my fat ass out of bed and check. My current weight is 251.5 lbs. Now, this is better than 255 of course, but considering I have been bouncing between 248 and 252 the last couple weeks, this is the higher end of my current weight spectrum. I know my lunch was huge and is sitting very heavy in my stomach right now, but I still should be a lot lower than this. I have so many things around me reminding me to lose the weight....now I just need to man up and do it.

Mad World

The first commercial I can remember seeing for a first person shooter type game that incorporated a song that really sold the commercial, and therefore the game, to me was the commercial for Vice City that used I Ran by A Flock of Seagulls, interspersed with gameplay clips. The ad was an attention getter, and the game absolutely rocked. Vice City wasn't a pure FPS game, but it was the first FPS type game I ever bought, and opened me up to a different kind of gaming.

Now I won't proclaim myself as a great FPS player, but I continue to get better with the gameplay as I seem to exclusively play Call of Duty when I turn on the 360, and my ability to strategize quickly and several steps ahead makes my learning curve a little less drastic. I think the multiple layers of strategy involved has greatly added to the addiction factor of CoD for me. When I bought Modern Warfare 2 last year I was pretty new to FPS games, completely new to online multiplayer FPS games, and a few years behind anyone who played CoD from the first title on. I got my ass handed to me for a while, but quickly adjusted to a lot of things in the game and the nuances of the different kinds of matches within the game, and was holding my own before I knew it, and saw that I could excel at times as well.

So, back from my gaming tangent now...this was intended to be about the use of songs in commercials for games, and how effective they seem. The title for this post actually comes from the song used in one of the best video game commercials I've seen. Gears of War used Mad World as the background for their gameplay clips, without using any of the game sounds. It was kind of eerie to watch, but definitely grabbed your attention seeing the contrast between the action of the game and the slow, quiet nature of the song. I liked it so much, I changed my profile picture on Myspace, yes I said Myspace, to the Gears of War symbol. Then again, I guess it couldn't have been all that great if I didn't actually buy the game.

When GTA came out with San Andreas, still one of my favorite games of all time, they used Welcome to the Jungle in one of the commercials that aired before the game ever came out, and I was even more geeked for it's release they I already was. Thankfully, the game lived up to the height and my expectations. I played that game for a long time after finishing the storyline for it. By comparison, I rarely played GTA 4 after completing the storyline...although it was the first game I ever tried Xbox live with, so it obviously served it's purpose for me.

Recently, with the CoD franchise releasing Black Ops, they used Gimme Shelter in a commercial that had real people, including some celebrities, acting out game scenarios. The ad hit the air approximately two weeks before the game was released. I was more or less lukewarm about the game up until that point, but the ad sucked me in and before I knew it, I was trying to find a place online to preorder the game.

I'm generally rather critical of advertising nowadays, but some of the ads I've seen for video games show that sometimes the advertisers just get it. Whether it's a song that just seems to fit, or Mr. T talking about hacking a game, some of these commercials can be outstanding pieces of work. Maybe the ad agencies for other products should take notice.

Photo Credit: Emrah Icten
Check out some of his other great images here.

Kirabaz

I only work two midnight shifts each week, and it seems like it gets harder and harder to get myself up and ready for them as the weeks go on....but tonight I was treated to something unexpected as I was getting ready that really made it easier for me to get moving, and made me smile.

After my shower I dumped Kira's dinner into her bowl and went on about my business, just like I did last night. She picked through her food as I threw on some clothes and made my own dinner. She finished her food as I was sitting down to eat, then of course joined me in the living room to sit and stare between my feet in the hopes that something will hit the floor....but since I wasn't eating much, she was out of luck there.

As I took my plate, glass, and fork to the kitchen, Kira jumped up and got in front of me. Though instead of escorting me to the kitchen as I expected, she ran into the computer room and dug out a stuffed animal from her cache' under the computer desk....the only Guinness-proof area of the house she has free access to. As I walked to my room from the kitchen, she met me in the hallway with the stuffed green frog and a playful bounce in her step. I haven't seen her do anything like that in months. The relief I felt was staggering.

Earlier in the day, I had a short conversation about how mothers will always have some sort of worry where their kids are concerned....well my dogs have always been like my kids, and I have been worried about Kira for a while. She is definitely not a winter dog, and has seemed to be a little more down lately than I would hope. Seeing her acting like this, though, made me smile from ear to ear and gave me a huge sense of relief. I hope to see plenty more of this behavior in the near future. I'm sure that would do wonders for my recent over-the-top stress levels.

I Can't Drive, 255

A few days ago I stepped on the scale, and was pretty horrified at what I saw. The first reading on my scale is usually a couple pounds high, but seeing a big 257.5 staring back at me really shocked me. I had thought I was hovering around 250, but to be hovering around 260 instead was a big surprise. After a couple more times on the scale, my weight ended up being a flat 255....which is still terrible, but seemed a little better to me than the original 257.5.

There are plenty of things I can attribute this weight gain to, including the lack of sleep and energy on this crazy work shift....but the bottom line is that it all boils down to me. I know what I need to do to keep from ballooning up to this weight, I just haven't done it. For a couple years I was somewhere in the 225-235 range, and kept it there without much effort on my part. That range was still at least 20-30 lbs more than I should weigh, but I could have my cake and eat it to at that range. Here I am another 20-30 lbs above that, so I must be eating a whole lot more than cake.

While the food is definitely a problem, the biggest change I can attribute this quick gain to is actually what I drink. I am pretty much addicted to the cherry Pepsi I get at the 7-11 by my house, and took my refillable cup there just about every day to get my 44 ounces of extra sweet cola. I haven't completely broken that habit yet, but in the last few days I have had a lot less cola. One thing that may help expedite this is that 7-11 changed the cherry syrup/Pepsi ratio, and it doesn't taste nearly as good to me anymore.

I don't like sounding like a broken record, but it's time to try the weight loss thing again. Maybe if I make a point of posting my weight every couple days or so, that will help. Everything is a little more real when it's written down. I have quite a few other things at my disposal to help me too, now it's just all on me to utilize those tools.

Get the Picture?

I can't stand looking at the bland, pictureless posts I've been putting up from my phone lately. I'm looking for a free app that will allow me to post pics with my phone, but until I can find something like that I am just gonna add pictures later. I may not use the same picture as I would in the moment, but at least it looks better and, makes it easier on me to be able to do it later than to search and search for a way to do it every time I want to post something from my phone.