Man Vs. Blog

     Today, I saw a documentary called Food Inc. that focuses mostly on how food, as a culture of business unto itself, works today in America. It focuses pretty heavily on how deeply consolidated by a few companies most of our food is, especially our meat. It also shows many workers that produce meat for these companies and the conditions in which they work. Many of them are very obviously being exploited, one stat shows that the average chicken farmer with two chicken houses has typically borrowed $500k and makes about $18k a year.       One chicken farmer for the large poultry and pork company Perdue has enough of what she has to do to make a living and decides to invite the film crew in to show them her working life on a daily basis. She goes into a dirty, dusty shed stuffed to the brim with chickens. She picks corpses out of them and tosses them out as she explains that the chickens bred for food have been made to grow to full size nearly th...

     For some people who lift weights, diet is very important. If you eat with the goal of helping yourself gain strength and muscle from lifting weight you can come at odds with others when you use the word "diet". Let me explain it as I understand it. Mind you, I haven't been doing this long so take this (and everything fitness related) with a grain of salt.      Many weightlifters view the most vital relationship between diet and lifting through ta dynamic of two processes: "bulking" and "cutting". When you lift weights to gain strength and/or muscle mass your body demands more food; more of certain macronutrients and micronutrients. If you fail to eat enough (and rest enough) for your body to repair itself you'll find your progress much slower and less rewarding than it could be if you ate enough. For that reason, to me, eating is more important and difficult to nail than the lifting itself. Anyway, these two processes represent cycles that y...

           Writing an essay about food for my English class has certainly got me thinking more about food, in all sorts of aspects. I can't believe how much of an effect commercial farming has on the environment. Just the example of the role fertilizer play is baffling. Here's roughly how some of it can go, from what I've read: In order to specialize in growing a certain crop, commercial farmers have developed the practice of growing crops in "monocultures". This means they grow a single crop in a single field, year after year. The specific crop demands certain nutrients from the soil and pulls them out in excess. The soil begins to get damaged, running out of this nutrient the crops need and then the crops struggle to grow. Fertilizers with those chemicals are synthesized and put into the soil. Unfortunately, the fertilizer damages other microbes and organisms responsible for keeping the soil healthy. This damage causes the soil's structure to b...

      Content Warning: Themes of animals in pain, animals with health problems/deformities       Lately, my leg days at the gym have been especially hard. I moved up to 5 sets of 5 reps of 245lbs for my deadlift on leg days, certainly not a lot for a lot of guys who have been lifting longer but enough to challenge my grip and legs to the point that I'm basically beat by the time I'm done. Last Friday, I did my deadlifts, a few more exercises, and headed home totally depleted. I go to bed around 10pm, ready to get some much needed extra sleep into the morning on Saturday. 9, maybe even 10 hours.       Suddenly, its 5am and I'm sort of half awake and I hear a loud, distant whining sound. My door opens and my sister comes in sort of frantically. "Adam, Disintegrator is hurt."       Some context: Disintegrator is my cat, she's about 10-11 years old now but you would never guess. When we got her she was stumbling...

          Recently, I watched a documentary called Fresh. It centered around the damages done by modern, mass agricultural practices. The film does a fair deal to educate a mostly unaware audience on what the issues are and whether things like raising livestock and growing crops can be done in ways that are far more humane, safe, and harmless, or even beneficial, with regard to the environment.       I think it did a fair deal to outrage and disturb the viewer with the ugly truths of what goes on behind the scenes; what our industrialized, hyper-detached approach of efficiency and innovation for the sake of the bottom-line is borne out into. It seems like treating organic systems as if they were factories is not only inhumane, but is dangerous to the environment, the food supply, and the continued existence of agricultural as it is currently organized.      I'm always interested when I see documentaries around iss...

    No, this is not my pie, I just like the braids.       Let's talk pie. I'm a guy who proudly makes and eats fruit pie, so let's talk about it. Its been more than a few months since I've made one but I can't think of anything else to blog about right now so here they are: the tips about making pies that nobody asked for. Tips from an amateur baker who's done a lot of browsing the internet. First, some background as to how I began to love pies.      Fruit pies are something I was never into as a kid, they were like a grown-up dessert. To me, eating pie for dessert was like eating Life cereal for breakfast. There's Lucky Charms, Capn Crunch, Fruity Pebbles- why would you ever eat Life? Then, during a cooking/baking phase, I decided to try making pie. The first pie I made wasn't a fruit pie, though. I was listening to the album Ram by Paul McCartney and. in one the songs, he mentions something about a "butter pie". One day, out of sheer ...

         I've just come back from the store with something familiar, yet very different. Among the many odd flavors I could have expected; pineapple, watermelon, bubble gum, strawberry- this one is definitely one I wouldn't normally expect.       I grab the pale green package between my fingers, it crackles and pops. On the cover, standing out against the pale green, are a bundle of bright green, jagged leaves, a tag informs me that it is made with whole leaf green tea. I pull the top of the packaging off at a seam then pull open the ziploc seal underneath, preparing my nose for the scent which already faintly permeates the bag.      A strong, frosty scent hits my nose, overwhelming any ability to sense green tea. I'm reminded of some of the colder winters I've experienced; the few, brief instances I've seen snow in my life. I pull one out of the package, the edges are jagged. Its pale white, shaped like a leaf. Its dec...

           Advertising today comes in all shapes and sizes: a billboard on your way to work, a promoted tweet on your timeline, social media accounts for companies, deals advertised outside the store as you enter, the product placement your hardly noticed in the latest movie, 30-45 second clips in between your shows on tv or just 5-10 before a Youtube video. All of it serves a brand and how that brand is being represented has usually been meticulously considered. Creators of advertisements consider how their ads can fit in with and strengthen the brand of the companies seeking their service.      They may ask themselves: who is the commodity for? Where is the audience? What is the purpose of the ad? How can an ad achieve that purpose for the intended audience? What is the most effective way to present the ad to achieve the intended result? If we examine advertisements carefully we can deconstruct some of these questions and pull out ele...

      I've always been fascinated by learning about new musical instruments. I want to know what they sound like, what they do best, how they're played, how they work, what techniques are employed in playing them, and what goes into caring for them. Usually, that leads me to scouring the internet for information about foreign instruments, instruments lost in time, and videos of them being played. One instrument that caught my eye awhile ago was the sheng, a Chinese wind instrument with roots in ancient periods of China's history.      The sheng is not an instrument that looks familiar to any other common wind instrument. Unlike a trumpet or trombone, it does not stick out forward. Unlike a flute, it does face horizontally, either. Even unlike an oboe, it doesn't face downward. Instead, it features a series of pipes which face straight up.      The appearance of the sheng seems to demand attention, it grows upward from the players han...

     In the past couple of months, I got into lifting weights. I hesitate to say "back" into lifting weights, I've gotten mildly into it for some periods of time in the past but after some relatively recent health problems its become a more serious commitment. What's nice is going to a gym with free barbells, if you want to squat or bench press you aren't locked into an, often unnatural, range of motion. In the past, even when I had no access to a squat rack or barbell to squat, deadlift, or anything, I was interested in how people moved so much weight, why they did it, and what the culture built around it was likely.      What I think I've found, I think, might run contrary to people's first conception of gym rats, powerlifters, etc. In my experience, the people who are often passionate about lifting are deeply interested in nutrition, form, discussing these aspects, and even fostering that interest in others. Most of the community is very supportive,...

I’m not sure what my opinion of blogs was at their inception but, maybe by osmosis, I’ve developed the same generally cynical response to the term “blog” that so many others have. That it’s trivial and it’s more reading than I’d like to do. If I were to dig a little deeper and be more generous to what I could think of blogs, I could say I appreciate how personal they can be, and, by extension, how varied the opinions and subjects expressed can be. How they can be small, passion projects.  In this conception, they are more interesting. It still takes more effort than I’d like to put in to read them, but because of how diverse blogs can be, I don’t think I’m justified bucking off the entire medium- reducing it to vain, unimportant rambling. I’ve looked at three blogs, two of which my sister tipped me off to. She enjoys reading and, regularly, has helpful advice on organization, managing stress, and being more productive. My aversion to blogs has kept me away from a l...

   My name is Adam Benjamin Pena, I am 24 years old and have lived in Phoenix, Arizona all my life. I'm going to GCC because having some form of higher education seems to be a prerequisite with getting a well-paying job. Since, increasingly, it seems like a well-paying job is synonymous with something tech-related so I'm going after a degree in computer science.     I love animals, I have three cats (and another we've been babysitting so long that it feels more like 4) and one little dog. One of my cats we found in the rain, very sick and malnourished. The vets were worried she wouldn't make it. She pulled through, but never grew very big and has a wonky eye. Picture related.  I like to cook/bake, play video games, try new foods, play music, and, most recently, lift weights/exercise.   However, my most time-consuming and most long-lasting hobby has been playing music. I mostly play guitar and piano but I have loved playing other instrumen...