Hot Pepper Review (Video)

Here it is you guys! Here is my hot pepper review video! I hope you guys enjoy it, because I feel like it's pretty fun (plus I endured a fair amount of pain to make it). Also, I'm pretty excited about the fact that I finally got to try a ghost pepper, since that was something that I had on my bucket list. I still want to eat a reaper though.

Coming Soon to a Computer Screen Near You

I just thought I would give you guys a heads up on some things that I have planned for this blog in the near future.

1- Starting next week I will be posting a series of videos (which, by the way, are much better quality than my regular videos because my sister helped me with them) of me "reviewing" a selection of ridiculously hot peppers. The will include a ghost pepper, and at least two that are hotter than the ghost pepper. So yeah, hopefully you guys will get some amusement from my pain.

2- I think I can now say with confidence that my new body weight exercises are working! I'm pretty pleased with the results I've been getting, especially since I was half afraid I was going to end up losing the results I had gotten from my workout with the sandbags. Because of this, I wanted to get some new pictures taken, and my sister has agreed to take them for me. You guys probably don't care about this, but I'm kind of looking forward to them. I think I might get kind of ridiculous with them this time, do some crazy shit.

3- Okay, so I have this idea.......I can't decide if I'm actually going to go through with it or not. I feel like it could be fun, or it could just be really fucking embarrassing. I think I've mentioned a few times how I've always wanted to try acting, but never really had the opportunity? Well, at this point I think I can safely say that's never going to happen. I still think it would be fun though. So I had this idea that I might make some fake audition videos for parts that I would want to play. I don't know though...........maybe.....maybe......

Peach ghost pepper ^

Does This Sound Like an Old Ship to You?

Sooooo....... I think there is a cance I may have a cracked rib. I don't know, I mean I've never had one before, so I'm not sure what it feels like. But it hurts when I breathe, and it hurts a lot when I move in certain ways. At first, I thought "There's no way that's what it is!" because I though for sure that if I had done something to crack one of my ribs I would remember it. Then, today, when I tried to do sit-ups with my 100 pound sandbag I realized what may have happened. See, when I layed back with the thing on my chest I was suddenly in an intense ammount of pain. Since I'm a dumbass, I went ahead and tried to do the sit-ups anyway. I found that I just physically couldn't. Then I started to realize that there is a chance that I have been slowly crushing myself to death for the past month or so. In retrospect, perhaps putting a hundred punds of weight directly on my ribcaged and then sitting up and then letting it smash me into the floor fifty time in a row every day was not the best idea.

Anyway, my dad and I were supposed to finsh my pump-house today, but that didn't happen because I had an emergency project that had to be done riht away. Since I couldn't use my sand bag (and I was obviously not going to let intense pain stop me from doing my workout) I had to find some other method for working my abs that would be as effective without the possibilty of ending up with a punctured lung. So we had to build a something that would allow me to hang upside down, and do sit-ups that way. I still don't think there's any chance that we would have gotten the pumphouse finished (it ended up being much more complicated than we had anticipated) but we certainly would have gotten a lot more done than we did. Oh well, at least I can do sit-ups without possibly dying. So that's something.

Claire- What does a cracked rib sound like?

Matt- ......an old ship.

Hell of a Workout

Well, I think I did enough physical labor over the weekend that I should be able to count it as my workout for the rest of the week (of course, I won't ....but I should). On Friday I helped put up hay, yesterday I dug a ditch for the water to my camper, then today my dad and I started work on the pump house.

The hay went pretty smoothly. That is, until a drunk guy decided to park his truck directly in the middle of the road and then get out and walk away! Apparently, this guy and a woman in another vehicle met on the road and, as opposed to  just scooting over so they could pass each other, he just sat there and tried to force her to back up. When she didn't, he started yelling profanities at her, then got out and walked away. It held us up for a good half hour. We did manage to get plenty of hay to last for quite some time though. So I guess it worked out okay.

As for the ditch digging, digging is the one type of physical labor that I absolutely hate. I think the main reason for this is that our property is basically nothing but fucking rocks! Every time I stick the shovel into the ground *thunk*. Then I spend ten minutes trying to pry the rock out, so I can lift the shovel up, plunge it back down and *thunk*. Every fucking time! So yeah, when I said I dug a ditch, what I really meant was that I dug a half-assed ditch that I will now probably spend the rest of the week working on, trying to get it deep enough to be any good.

Today, before we could start on the pump-house, we had to move the world's largest rock out of the way. It was insane. My dad and I each had a bar that we used to try to pry the thing out of the ground. We had to pry it up, then slide blocks under it, then pry it some more, then slide the blocks, then stack blocks on top of each other, then pry some more. It took forever, and I'm fairly certain that I was almost no help at all since, every time I tried to pry the thing, my bar just kept sliding through the dirt. Anyway, we finally managed to just roll the thing over into the ditch (not the one I just dug, but the one with the little stream in it).

So yeah, good times.

Except the digging, the digging sucked!

Ganglion Cyst Smash (Video)

That weird-ass lump on my hand came back, so I got my sister to smash it for me again. And this time you guy get to watch. You're welcome.

Ⓥ Discrepancy

I think socializing is more of a challenge for me than it is for most people. I assume this is mostly due to the fact that there are two distinct sides to my personality that often seem to conflict with one another. Because veganism and animal rights are the most important things to me, I'm always trying to connect with other vegans. I just feel like I can't be totally comfortable with non-vegans. It seems like having a shared belief system should automatically gives us a deeper connection.

The problem with this is that, to some extent, some of the stereotypes about vegans tend to hold true. Vegans in general do tend to be rather emotionally sensitive, peaceful, and loving people. This makes perfect sense; obviously those who are more empathetic would be more likely to care about the lives of others, both human and non-human. The thing is though, I'm not like that. I'm not a particularly sensitive person. In fact, I sort of pride myself on being completely unsentimental and unflappable. This makes it very hard for me to communicate with people who I should, logically, have every reason to get along with perfectly.

On the other hand, the people who I have a somewhat easier time talking to are often those who I ultimately have nothing in common with, other than a basic communication style. I like talking to people with dark or twisted senses of humor and a fondness for sarcasm. Unfortunately for me, it seems that there are very few vegans who fit this description.

It's also a problem for me to find other vegans who share any of my interests outside of animal rights. I have a propensity for things that are exciting, dangerous, violent (martial arts and the like), painful, etc. Most vegans don't seem to be interested in those sorts of things. I can totally understand that, it does appear to be a bit of a contradiction. However, I don't see why it has to be. Why do people have to be emotionally sensitive to see the inherent injustice of the way animals are treated in our society? Is there some rule that says that you can't be "tough" and still compassionate? I don't think so. I mean, when you think about it, what's more tough than protecting the innocent? Isn't that pretty much the strongest thing one can do?

It seems to me that even those who are totally okay with other types of violence should still be bothered by violence toward those who have done absolutely nothing to deserve it. Even those who have little tolerance for overly emotional people should have sympathy for the pain of those who are genuinely suffering. I guess I just don't understand why there aren't more angry, sarcastic, thrill-seeking vegans out there.  

Don't Worry, I'll Get There

You guys remember when I was talking about how I bought a sand bag to use as a weight? Well, I've been wanting to get a heavier one forever, but couldn't find any. I guess most people don't like the idea of picking up a hundred pounds of sand, go figure. Anyway, I finally decided to just "make" a heavier one. So I bought two fifty pound bags and poured them into a pig food bag then taped the shit out of it with duct tape. It was a pretty lengthy and annoying process, but I was really excited about trying it out. I used it for my sit-ups today, and that worked out pretty well. However, when I tried to use it for squats, I realized that I just physically couldn't get it into the necessary position. I was able to pick it up, but I could not hoist it up over my head to get it on my shoulders. It was rather disappointing. I was looking forward to being able to do less squats; I've been doing sixty of them with the fifty pound bag. Instead I still had to do sixty, but I had to do them after I had fucked around with the new bag for like ten minutes, trying to figure out how to get it to work. I guess I'm just going to have to practice picking the damn thing up until I get strong enough to lift it over my head.

Daredevil Punch (Video)

I finally filmed myself trying to do the punch from Daredevil, that I was practicing when I fucked up my hand. I'm still not that great at it, but I think I would do a hell of a lot better if I had a higher ceiling. I was trying to do the best I could for the camera, and that didn't work out especially well. First my foot went through the wall, which I'm sure my dad is going to love. I mean, that wall was in pretty bad shape to begin with, but still. Then I scraped my whole forearm on the ceiling, awesome. Anyway this is after that, when I was being a little more careful, which is part of the reason it looks kind lame. 

Because I'm Crazy

So you guys know how I've been working on doing pull-ups for a long time now. Well, I've finally gotten to the point where I feel like I'm pretty decent at it. When I first started I couldn't do very many at a time (actually, when I started out I couldn't do any at a time), so I started doing several sets within a short period of time, because I thought it would help me progress faster. I think it worked, because I have made quite a lot of progress. I always do them when I go to feed the pigs, and I would do three sets in the mornings and four sets in the evenings (because, for some reason, I can never do as many per set in the evenings). Here's the thing though, now that I can do more of them at a time, I've still been doing that many sets. It's become a pretty huge pain in the ass, and takes a long time to do. 

So finally I decided that I'm going to cut down the sets, just so that I won't have to dread feeding the pigs quite so much. I decided that I'm going to do two sets in the mornings, and one in the evenings, and that's it. The way I see it, now I can just keep increasing the number I do per set (I'm currently at 12) without it taking quite so much time. The problem is, now I'm kind of freaking out about it. I know it's insane, but my brain is like "NO! You can't do that! You'll lose all the progress you've made!" and I'm like "No, Brain, I'm still doing way more than I used to. It'll be fine." and my brain is like "No, I'm telling you. Your arms will turn to mush!" So yeah, I'm now trying to force myself to do less pull-ups and to believe that my brain is wrong. 

I Just Couldn't Wait

You know how I said that my dad and I were planting some Carolina Reapers? Well, they are officially planted, but they haven't come up yet. It was driving me crazy wondering what they tasted like, so I broke down and ordered some dried ones online.

I'm not sure if there will be a major difference between fresh ones and dried ones but, I must say, they weren't as hot as I expected (by the way, I still fully intend to eat a fresh one on camera when we get some). The flavor is quite good though, almost berry-like. Anyway, I just ate a little piece of one to see how hot it was, then I put a whole one in my rice-cooker with my teff. When I tasted the finished teff, I thought "Hmm, should have used two."

Also, I just realized something kind of funny (at least to me). The reaper is the new hottest pepper, replacing the ghost pepper because, just like in Supernatural, reaper trumps ghost. 

Comic Women

I know I pretty much always seem to have a slightly different perspective on feminist issues than pretty much anybody else.....well here's another one. I know a lot of people are pissed off about the way women are portrayed in comics (see the Hawkeye Initiative), and I can see where they're coming from. The truth is though, I kind of love it.

Don't get me wrong, some of the poses are pretty over-the-top, but the fact that there is someplace where women who are strong are also seen as sexy seems like a good thing to me. Yeah, they all wear skimpy little outfits (which is kind of ridiculous) but then again, all the guys wear spandex (which is equally ridiculous). They are also very strong though, like as strong as the guys, and (here's my favorite part!) at least in most cases they are actually drawn to look like they are as strong as they are.

I have always thought that "strong" women in movies and TV tend to not look very strong. The problem is that they are subject to Hollywood's beauty standards and therefore are basically required to be thin and feminine looking. As far as I know, comic are the only place where female characters can not only be as strong as male characters but also actually look as strong as the male characters. Plus, the guys in comics are okay with the women being as strong and muscular as they are, which I don't think happens often anywhere else. So yeah, I think a few dumb looking poses are worth it to have strong women be seen as a good thing.  

Typhoid Mary is crazy as fuck, but she's also really tough and muscular and all the guys are really into her, despite the fact that she's always kicking the shit out of them (at least that's the case in the Deadpool comics I've been reading).

Vegan Super Power; Not Getting Tired

Last night was my last class until August. The New Instructor is leaving for the summer, and apparently they couldn't find anyone to cover the Friday class. I guess I'm just going to have to find some other way to get out my aggression for the next month and a half.

Anyway, it was a good note to end on. It was the most intense class we've had for a while. There were two other guys there, plus the Instructor, and we kept alternating partners so I got a chance to work with him a little on each thing we did. All of the students, myself included, always sort of take it easy on each other, but he doesn't really (I mean, I'm sure he does, but not as much as the rest of us). So I always feel like I get a much better workout with him than with the other students.

We worked on blocking punches for a little while and then spent the rest of the class on kicks. We kept a really fast pace the whole time, so we got a lot more work in than we usually do. At the end, the Instructor joked that he was going to make me keep working because I was the only one who didn't look totally worn out. I was still real fucking sweaty though. I think I get much more of a self-esteem boost from stuff like that than I probably should.

I got some pretty nice bruises too, on both hips from holding pads for kicks and this ^ really weird one on my wrist because I'm a dumbass and left my bracelet on under my gloves while blocking punches.

Consequences (Video)

I, once again, didn't really have much to do for my video this week. So I just thought I might as well showed you guys what I did to my hand the other day, when I knocked it on the ceiling trying to do the Daredevil punch. It doesn't look nearly as gross on film as it does in real life though.

Luck or .......Something Else?

Yesterday, a client was telling me about all of the times he had been in the emergency room. I'm really not sure how we ended up talking about that, but it was a rather interesting conversation. After he had gone through this whole list of different injuries and whatnot, I said that I had never been in the emergency room (in fact, I've never been in the hospital at all). He said "You're really lucky." and I was like "Yeah, I guess I am." but the truth is, I think luck had very little to do with it. I'm fairly certain the fact that I have never been in the hospital is due to a combination of taking excellent care of my health and extreme stubbornness.

As I have mentioned, many times, I don't get sick nearly as often (or nearly as badly) as other people. I also think that, on the rare occasions (or the more frequent occasions from back before I was so concerned with being healthy) that I have been much more calm about it than a lot of people. When I was young, I used to get sore throats a lot, and the doctor wanted me to get my tonsils taken out but my parents and I decided against it, and it worked out just fine. There was also the time, back when I was at WVU, when I had a sinus infection for like months and my mom swears that, at one point, it looked like one of my eyes was bulging out of the socket. Again, it eventually went away. I mean it seems to me that in most cases, people get sick, then they get better, why bother with the hospital?

There have been times in my life though, when the sane thing to do probably would have been to go to the emergency room. I know there are plenty of times when I probably should have gotten stitches. There was that time, when I was a kid, that I stepped on a rusty thumb tack and a couple of days later my foot got all red, and swollen, and hot, and I had red stripes running up my leg. There was the time I drove my car off a bridge; I wasn't actually very injured (aside from the air-bag burn all over my face), but I just feel like most people probably would have gotten checked out anyway. There was the time, not so long ago, when I punched a door and got that huge, bulbous, fluid-filled knot on my hand. It turned out to be fine, but at the time I thought I might have permanently ruined it. Not to mention the big, weird, knobby thing that's always on my hand.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm not so much "lucky" as I am an exceptionally healthy dumb-ass. Plus........

Don't Fear the (Carolina) Reaper

Have you guys heard about the Carolina Reaper? If you haven't, It is the new hottest pepper in the world. Ever since I first heard about them, I've been dying to try one. Unfortunately, you can't exactly just buy them, so my dad and I recently ordered some seeds so we can grow them ourselves. The people we bought them from (and who originally developed them in the first place) are the same ones who make the official iZombie hot sauce, which I also really want to try! Anyway, assuming we can actually get them to grow, I'm definitely going to film myself eating one for my video blog. Eating the Jolokia (the former hottest pepper) was on my bucket list, so I think this will take it's place. Anyone want to try one with me, so we can embarrass ourselves on the internet together?

Sorry Lowell, the Jolokia is not the hottest anymore! Also, the company that sells the Reaper isn't called Beelzebub's Bum, but it is called Pucker Butt Pepper Company, which is almost as absurd.

Cruel and Unusual

I ran out of time to write yesterday, so I'm doing my Muay Thai class recap today. 

It was me, the New Instructor, his Girlfriend, and a New Guy who was there for the first time. We went over punches again, since the New Guy needed to know that before he could really do much of anything else. We all took turns holding the pads for each other, so I got a chance to work with the New Guy and the Girlfriend. They both seem pretty cool, which is nice. I felt really bad for the New Guy though, because it turns out that he is left handed, which means that all of his punches are backward for the rest of us (his 1, 3, and 5, are our 2, 4, and 6, and vice versa). Trying to keep track of which punch is which is confusing as shit anyway, I still get them wrong sometimes and I've been there for-fucking-ever. So him having to hold pads and call out punches for us just seemed like too much to ask on his first day. Plus I know I fucked up several times when I was holding for him, and I'm guessing the Girlfriend probably did too. I just feel like, unless his brain is a hell of a lot more organized than mine, the poor guy is going to be totally confused for a long time. 

Also, I didn't get any good injuries at class, but I did manage to knock the skin off my knuckles during my workout yesterday. I've been practicing the patented patented Matt Murdock jump-up-and-kick-off-the-wall-spinning-punch, and yesterday I miscalculated and punched the textured ceiling in my workout room.  

I feel like I'm getting better at this, but I'll have to film it to see what it really looks like. If it looks decent, I'll let you guys see it too. 

My Cover Is Blown

Last night the New Instructor's Girlfriend was there. When I came in, he turned to her and said "Whitney is the one with the knife in her boot." Then he turned to me and said "I told her. I told everyone!" and I was like "You've let my secret out!" I mean really, how am I supposed to be an assassin if he goes around telling everyone?

Anyway, things went well. I ended up working with the same guy I worked with last week, and he seems cool. We worked on combinations with punches kicks and blocks, and I feel like we did pretty decent. 

It looks like I may have to take a break from class for a while soon though. The New Instructor is leaving in two weeks and will be gone until August. Apparently, they are getting some new guy to take over most of the classes, but he can't do Fridays. Oh well, I guess I'll jut have to find some new outlet for my aggression for a month and a half. 

Furthermore

This is actually sort of old news, but it pissed me off at the time and I was just thinking about it and thought, since I'm on this whole feminism kick the last few days, I might as well write about it. A while back I found this article about how magazines are now starting to Photo Shop models to look "healthier." Well, I don't if that's a good thing or a bad thing really. It seems to me that if a model is so thin that magazine editors think she looks unhealthy they should just encourage her to actually get healthy, but whatever that's not what this post is actually about.

The thing about the article that pissed me off was the picture of Cameron Diaz. Now, don't get me wrong, she is very thin. However, I don't think that she is unhealthily thin and it looks to me like what they really did was not to make her look "healthier" but to make her look more traditionally feminine. They smoothed out all of her muscle tone and made her look more soft and curved everywhere. One of the things they say they did to the photo was to smooth out the "bony definition" on her hip. I would think that people who make their living taking pictures of people's bodies would have some understanding of the human body. That isn't her fucking hipbone they smoothed out! It's the muscle that runs over the hipbone (the obliques, maybe?), and it will only show up like it does on her if you do a shit-ton of sit-ups! In the original photo, she did not have the type of body you get from starving yourself, which is what the article makes it sound like, she had the type of body you get from working your fucking ass off. I don't know how she felt about it, but if some magazine shooped out all the work I had put into my body and then claimed that they did it to make me look healthier, I would be kicking someone's ass and, in the original photo, she looks like she is more than capable of doing it.

Helpless or Bitchy?

So, my dad and I have been watching Angel lately. Tonight we watched the episode "Billy". This was the episode with the guy who had the (really lovely) power to make any guy he touched become a woman-hating psychopath. Anyway, it was a very feminist episode and, whenever I think about that sort of thing, I always find myself analyzing the different perspectives on feminism and what it means to different people. I know I have talked a little about this in the past, but I think I have a slightly different idea about this stuff than most people do. For example, overall I thought this episode was great, but there where a few things that really bugged me. One was this scene with Cordelia and Lilah where Cordelia convinces Lilah that she should help them because she is a "vicious bitch" and that no vicious bitch would ever put up with someone making her feel helpless. That bugs the shit out of me! I feel like that tends to happen in A LOT of shows. The girl is either, at least somewhat, helpless or, at least somewhat of, a bitch. No one seems to know how to write female characters who are both strong and pleasant to be around. I feel like we need to try a little harder to let women know that you don't have to be an asshole to be strong and take care of yourself.

One of the things I did really like about the episode though was Cordelia's sword fighting, because something that frequently irritates me about "strong female characters" is when you watch them fight and you can tell that, yeah the character is strong but the actress playing her isn't. I thought Charisma Carpenter looked like she could do some serious damage.

Let Me Explain

Here is my list of all the reasons I can think of that I SHOULD take the bounty hunter training.

1- It is probably the closest I will ever come to doing the things I actually want to do, which are all only viable careers if you live in a fictional world.
2- There is a chance it might actually give me the things I am looking for in a job; meaning, enjoyment, excitement, enough money to live on, a decent amount of personal freedom, etc.
3- I think it might just be the best chance of me ever making use of my, very specialized qualifications.
4- Whenever anyone, specifically my parents, give me advice on what jobs I should try I frequently find myself saying "Do you think I look like someone who could get hired to be a ______?" Well, you know what? I think I kind of do look like someone who could get hired to be a bounty hunter.
5- It would make me feel like a total badass which, as I'm sure you all know, is one of my biggest goals in life.
6- I think there is a god chance it could help me to achieve some of my other goals, like maybe #31, #36, #79, and #83 for example. Or maybe I just think that because I watch too much TV, who knows.
7- The training costs $600, which sounds like kind of a lot of money (at least to me) until I think about how much debt I have from all of the other education I've gotten that ended up doing me absolutely no good. So basically, even if I never use it, it's not that much of a waste when you consider my history.
8- If I don't end up actually working as a bounty hunter, I still think the training may very well be the coolest fucking thing I've ever done. Seriously, just read the schedule and tell me that doesn't sound like THE MOST FUN!
9- According to this site, in WV, the average bounty hunter makes $45,000 a year. Shit, if I could make half that I'd still be doing better than I have with any of my other jobs (sadly).

10- I found this on Pinterest yesterday and I thought to myself "You know what? Okay! I will!"