#WholeFoods’ Wholly Unhealthy Employees

Posted: March 11, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll
3/10/2013

I recently went to a Whole Foods for the first time. I have never been in the tax bracket that allows me to shop at Whole Foods on a regular basis. Luckily for me, my roommate was picking up the tab. Here is what I noticed when I went in:

  1. It smells like pepper
  2. The selection of healthy foods, beverages, supplements, and spices is amazing
  3. The majority of the products are expensive
  4. The majority of the employees are not just fat, but obese

This is not about to become a fat shaming article. You may naturally be thinking this is an isolated incident. However, one week after going into that Whole Foods I went into a different location a hop, skip, and away from downtown Chicago. There too, I did not see one thin or muscular employee. This shocked me.

I assumed that every employee of Whole Foods would be required to look healthy. Not models, not beefcakes, not hot bodies, healthy. I have now been to three Whole Foods locations in the Chicago area and have seen two employees that are not fat or obese.

Image isn’t everything, but when you charge the kind of prices Whole Foods charges for what they claim is a healthier food supply, shouldn’t their employees be representing a healthy image? I mean, I was also shocked by how many of them didn’t look like they had seen the inside of a shower this calendar year, but none of them stank so that means nothing. I don’t care if they look like dirty hippies because being a dirty hippie doesn’t cause heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, or stressed joints (no pun intended…okay maybe a little).

I thought obesity was mostly caused by the food supply of high fructose corn syrup, trans fats, hydrogenated oils, antibiotics in the beef, steroids in the chicken, farm raised salmon, aspartame, and Hostess products. So either the employees at the Whole Foods are eating that shit because they don’t care about their health, or can’t afford to shop at Whole Foods based on what they make and what the store charges, or both. Neither of which is a good message to send out.

This is not about fat shaming. I don’t actually care that there are so many obese people working at Whole Foods. It just genuinely shocks me that they don’t either.

#hijackRAW or Trolls Being Trolls & Trolling Trolls Trying to Unite Trolls

Posted: March 7, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll
3/7/2014

Which came first? The chicken or the egg? Was RAW in Chicago this past week good because of the threat of #hijackRAW? Or did WWE play their audience like a violin and cut their strings?

I have much love and respect for the organizers of #hijackRAW, or I suppose I should say the attempted organizers.

Before they even got to the arena, during the week leading up, the trolls were out in full force spitting their mirrored self loathing venom at the @chicagorawcrowd for trying to try at something, anything, that involved something they love and want to improve. Then of course the minute Vince McMahon didn’t walk to the middle of the ring to ask CM Punk for the privilege to suck his dick on live television to prove he wanted him to be in the main event of WrestleMania, everyone turned on everybody.

I’m just kidding, they couldn’t turn on each other because they were never united. Trolls jealous an spiteful that they didn’t have the brains, balls, or creativity to attempt something like #hijackRAW movement were shitting on the concept in advance of shitting on it Monday night.

The movement didn’t do themselves any favors by being naive enough to think that Vince McMahon cares what they say after they pay to get in the arena to try and mess with one of 52 live broadcasts in a year. But all us wrestling fans are naive. We are all consciously naive, after all if we weren’t, after seeing one UFC event we would never watch pro wrestling again out of shame.

But wrestling is about imagination, creativity, and vicarious living. The hijack organizers were just a little too naive, and slightly too big marks to enact any meaningful change. Paul Heyman knew this, and like the lapdog of Vince McMahon he has always been, went out there and did what he has done best since 2001, destroyed the heart, spirit, and will of adult, male smart mark wrestling fans.

What happened to the crowd was sad. Put all the cynicism, sarcasm, snarkyness, and told ya so bullshit you want over it. If you’re a male wrestling fan over the age of 21, you hoped something meaningful would happen on Monday, and it didn’t. The Usos winning the tag titles means nothing. Cena and Wyatt’s promos mean nothing. The crowd shouting down Triple H and Stephanie (barely) for one segment means nothing. It was just another RAW on the Road to WrestleMania. One RAW out of 52 that will happen this calendar year.

The fans couldn’t stop tripping over each other or going into business for themselves to get a message across that didn’t involve CM Punk. If any other crowds are considering following suit, may I advise using profanity to piss of the censors and really putting Vince on his heels. Better yet, the only way to send a message is to #BoycottRAW not to pay $50, $100, $150 or more per ticket, buy merchandise, concessions, and pay for parking to say you don’t support what a publically traded organization is doing.

But kudos for the effort. Props for the desire. Respect for trying something which is always better than trying nothing. Maybe some other crowds will follow suit and learn from the failures of the Chicago crowd. Failures are just lessons after all. We all learned some things on Monday. Whether we wanted to or not.

Year Zero #Yoga

Posted: March 7, 2014 in Stimulus Space Response
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by @anarchyroll
3/7/2014

Very few things have changed my life as much as yoga has.

I started practicing yoga in 2009. I was looking for something new to incorporate into my exercise regimen as well as something to get me out of bed in the morning. I had cable at the time which had an on demand section of channels. One of which was Exercise TV which has since become a Hulu exclusive channel. I started with a ten minute, AM Yoga routine, and have been hooked since.

There are no magic pills in this world. Yoga didn’t cure me of anything. Yoga didn’t overnight change my life. Yoga didn’t make me unrecognizable to my friends. I didn’t become a Buddhist.

What I have come to realize over the past several months is that yoga planted the seeds of paradigm change and shifts in my life. As humans, we can do nothing without breath. Breathing comes before entertainment, shelter, food, or water. Yoga is first and foremost about proper breathing. About getting more oxygen the brain and extremities, before the stretching aspect.

The increased oxygen to my brain slowly but surely started to change the way I thought. Slowly but surely changed the way I perceived myself and the world around me. Slowly but surely allowed me to bend more so that I would not break; physically, mentally, emotionally.

Yoga calms me down and de-stresses me physically and mentally. It literally removes physical tension from my hips and back. Metaphorically it calms me down and slows my constantly racing mind (probably from the increased oxygen going to my brain).

Yoga is the one exercise literally every human with all their limbs can do. There is pre-school yoga and senior citizen yoga. There is highly feminine yoga as well as yoga for bros and regular guys. There is yoga for abs, legs, back, and of course the butt as you’ve noticed from the yoga pants that are inescapable year round these days.

Yoga changed my life by changing the way I looked at everything. I thought yoga was for women and the excessively spiritual. I found that it is literally for everyone. It can be molded and shaped to fit any individuals specific needs and wants from a physical or mental exercise. I use it to calm my mind but also to stretch my muscles in between weight lifting sessions. This helps prevent injury as I am much less likely to tear an overly tight muscle since it gets stretched in a challenging way four to six days a week.

The more I learn about yoga and the more I do it, the more I love it. I am so happy and grateful the practice came into my life and I can’t recommend it highly enough to every man, woman, and/or child that may come across this article at any time in the present moment or future.

Why is yoga my year zero? Because of yoga I started meditating. Because of meditation I started listening to audio books. Because of audio books I began to love learning. Because I began to love learning I realized I could learn to love anything that I previously didn’t like. Once I started trying and liking different things, I started looking at what I had been doing previously and why I didn’t like so many things. Once I started doing that, I started doing the heavy lifting of taking action in the direction of being my best self. I was able to see through the darkness to get to the dawn. I was able to see that sometimes you have to take two steps back to take three steps forward. Everything changed after yoga, everything. And is still changing.

Yoga as the gateway to meditation is another story for another day. I have provided links to multiple yoga websites that will provide you with greater information and detail about the practice of yoga and I encourage you with all of my being to try the practice for yourself, it will be worth your time, energy, focus, and breath. I promise.

Namaste

Student Loan #Debt & The #Education Bubble

Posted: March 6, 2014 in Excess and Algorithms
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by @anarchyroll
3/5/2014

A lot has been written about student loan debt, but apparently not a lot of research has been done into the subject. The Department of Education releases default rates once a year, but that is just about it. Are you surprised at this? So was the New York State Federal Reserve Bank. Two analysts working their essentially had to do a bulk of the research that is now often cited by the media and protest groups.

They found that the percentage of 25-year-old college graduates with student loan debts essentially doubled while the average loan balance increased 91% from 2003 to 2012.

Economists are looking at education borrowing as the next bubble that could burst and drag down the US economy along with it. Much like the housing bubble, there are a lot of government backed loans being given away with a rubber stamp to large amounts of people who are unable to immediately if ever repay. Government officials are openly comparing student borrowing to the mortgage-backed security crisis of 2008. And remember, this article opened with the fact that there has been little study and even less data available on the subject.

Mortgage backed securities, credit default swaps, and derivatives trading are all complicated things. Let’s keep the education bubble concept simple.

Student loan debt in America = $1.2 trillion (with a T) more than any other form of consumer debt.

Much like the series of articles written about quantitative easing (QE), there will be multiple articles written about student loan debt as well as the debate over raising the minimum wage. These are the three economic issues I feel most passionately about and wish to shine light upon. Let those numbers listed above wash over you for a bit. Do you know anyone dealing with student loan debt? How are they doing? What is their quality of life?

It’s not just the loan or the interest, it is the unemployment, underemployment, or complete non-existence of careers in the fields thousands if not millions of students are graduating with each year. It’s not just the monthly payment on the loan(s). It’s the monthly payment on the loan plus rent, utilities, food, transportation, etc.

The Education Bubble and the student loan debt crisis are one and the same. They are intertwined, they are two terms describing essentially the same thing.

How is higher education a bubble akin to the dot-com, real estate bubbles, and other asset bubbles? We’ll cover that in part 2…

Joakim Noah: #NBA & #Chicago Sports Legend in the Making

Posted: March 4, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll
3/2/2014

I’ll take hard work over born and bred talent any day of the week. More often than not, so will the city of Chicago. The only thing they love more than a good work ethic is a fun place to drink with minimal exposure to minorities, hence why the Chicago Cubs franchise makes so much money without winning in a century.

Joakim Noah is the embodiment of hustle and desire over talent and skill. Yes he has talent, but his craving to apply maximum sweat equity to his profession is what has made him a two time NCAA champion, two time NBA all star, and the unquestioned heart and soul of the Chicago Bulls franchise.

I have been a fan of Joakim Noah since the suit he wore on draft night. From there he won over the hearts and minds of both myself and the entire Chicago fan base by getting noticeably better every year of his pro career and by constantly hustling his ass off every single game regardless of time of season, home or away, regular season or playoff, nail biter or blowout. That is the kind of effort that Chicago demands of its superstar athletes. Or at least the ones who want to be considered local legends.

Derrick Rose is now perceived as being soft, fairly or unfairly, right or wrong. He has suffered legit injuries, it is in his method of recovery that a very large, very thick cloud on his integrity and grit has arisen. The only question regarding Noah is whether or not he’ll get ejected from a game for wearing his emotions on his sleeve so intensely.

With Rose habitually out of action due to injury, Luol Deng being traded, and the Bulls organization following protocol and refusing to make a trade at the deadline, Noah is both the metaphorical and leader of the Chicago Bulls for the remainder of the 2013-14 season. Because of this, they are winning. Noah has taken his game to the next level, matching his fostered talent with born perseverance. He is scoring more points, grabbing more rebounds, and assisting his teammates scoring more.

The only people who don’t like Noah now are out of towners. Fans of other NBA franchises who just can’t stand that Noah has just enough skill to back up his mouth. Chicago loves him and likely always will. He is the new A.J Pierzynski, who was the new Jim McMahon, who was the new Norm Van Lier…and the beat goes on.

Noah is everything that is right about pro sports, and he smokes weed. He’s not an arrogant primadonna. He’s not lazy. He’s not soft. He doesn’t negotiate his contract in public. He gives time and money to charity. He constantly thanks and gives props to the fans. You need only have vision to see the effort he gives every season, every game, every play, every minute, every second. Joakim Noah is the heart and soul of the Bulls, but now the talent is matching the will. If those two continue to intersect and correlate with better tangible performances, he’ll be a legend of the game in addition to a legend of the city, which he already is.

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