Archive for 2009

The INTRO

It seems as if I have once again decided to inflict more harm (self-discipline really) onto myself in the name of I-dunno-what (something provocative). I’ve decided that on top of being Ubervegan I’m going to be sleeping two hours a day. Yup, TWO HOURS A DAY, for at least three months (aiming for a full year).

Now, you may be wondering just how the f**k I’m going to live on two hours sleep per day for three months. The answer is simple really: through polyphasic sleeping. See “normal” people (referring to the majority) practice what is known as monophasic sleeping which more or less means “sleeping one time per day”. From this you can deduct that “biphasic” sleepers sleep twice per day, “triphasic” thrice per day, and “polyphasic” more than thrice.

Polyphasic sleepers usually go through five phases (the humor comes from realizing that they resemble the five stages of grief):

1. Pre-polyphasic phase (denial)- The soon to be polyphasic sleeper is extremely excited about final getting to master time and space, they “knew something like this HAD to exist”. Imagining all the things they will do with their new found extra time their blood pressure continues to rise.
2. Infected-pre-zombie phase (anger)- The polyphasic sleeper has began their nap schedules, was doing fine, but is now feeling the effects of sleep deprivation arriving.
3. Changing-into-zombie phase (bargaining)- the polyphasic sleeper now starts to desperately try everything to stay awake (picture someone chugging a whole case of red bull), even though they realize that things are slowly getting worse and worse.
4. Zombie phase (depression)- The polyphasic sleeper is now defeated. Now resembling a zombie (drooping arms/shoulders, slow paced, bloodshot/puffy eyes, murmured speech, etc.) they are drained of all energy and are only waking up from their naps by pure instinct.
5. Defeat phase (acceptance)- The polyphasic sleeper now believes that everything they read/heard was a lie, they “knew nobody could live on two hours of sleep per day”, and soon accept that they need sleep. They now proceed to take that 8-24 hour nap they’ve been desperately craving for.

…Wait, what? The outcome is a failure? Why the f**k do this then? Are you a masochist now Arsène? Continue Reading →

I know a lot of y’all have been waiting for this; MY UBERVEGAN UPDATE (the crowd cheers)! It’s been so long since my last update (about two months ago) and a lot of things have happened in the meantime though. I might as well start from the beginning.

One of the first things that I did after the last update was that I coined the term “ubervegan” (yup, I know, it’s a little self-obsessed but if more people decide to become healthier and practice this I want to at least get credit for being one of the first people on the diet). Continue Reading →

I wonder if a people took the time to let The Matrix movie sink in, or if they just agreed with it, agreed it was thought provoking, and took it for what it was in it’s simplest form, just a movie. Most people don’t know that the whole modern “brain in a vat” question actually originated from an amazing philosopher named Hilary Putnam (a skeptic’s skeptic if I had to label him). And, of course the movie brought forth a lot of questions; A LOT. But, The main question of “Are we just brains in vats connected to computers?” is what I’d like to focus on.

So…. Are we just experiencing what these super computers projects upon us and labeling it “reality”? Are we just brains in vats connected to computers? Continue Reading →

Every once in a while I look around me and wonder why there are so few people who think like me, causing me to go through this whole self-awareness thing which is… overly time consuming. But, something which I always account for my weirdness/smartness (<— gotta love my cockiness) is my love of books… yah, it was said, I LIKE BOOKS. Can’t blame me though, I don’t watch TV, and from what I know I’m not missing out.

Anyways, a few fictional books I read impacted my view of the world a lot more than the others did. Here’s a list of my 10 that did:

Continue Reading →

Read the title? It’s COMPLETELY true. I HAVE NOT turned on my TV, or played video games, in a little over two years now. And you know what? I don’t miss it one bit.

My journey to not watching television didn’t actually start with me planning to not watch TV at all. My journey started when, as usual, life got so busy that I couldn’t catch up on my shows anymore. But, I of course (being an anime fan) knew that you can watch shows online on your computer(WITHOUT commercial breaks). So I started applying my methods to local shows (not just animes that aren’t broadcasted in North America). At first, I ended up actually wasting even more time watching these shows, because one show led to another, which led to another, which led to another, etc. to the point where I once spent 3+ days indoors just watching these shows straight, with no sleep. At this point, I kinda took notice of my problem (I had a life to live goddammit!).

At this point I started taking conscious notice of my television/movie intake. First, I wrote down all the shows I watched (73 <— :o) and decided that I would limit myself down to five shows only… FOREVER (or for a really really long time). Like a smoker who chooses to go cold-turkey I almost had a stroke when I was limiting my list to only five but in the end I was able to accomplish my list. For the past year I’ve only watched FIVE shows, read only THREE mangas, and I play NO VIDEO GAMES!

I’m now at the point where if I do go over my friends house and they have the television on and they ask me whether I want to watch something or play video games I can say no and feel no regret whatsoever. Altogether, I now spend at maximum 10.5 hours (1.5 hours per day) watching shows and movies (either online or at the theaters).

Some of you might judge me and say I still suck at this whole “no television” thing since I do in fact watch the shows I like online. But I can say that I did spend a month not watching television, movies, etc. anywhere and guess what… I hated it. That month I ended up wasting far more than 10.5 hours on re-correcting my work which was only incorrect because I was on edge all the time. My “edge” of course coming from me not having that “turn your brain completely off” mode that these shows regularly used to provide for me (this was/is my meditation). And thus, I decided to re-introduced these five shows (and movies) back to my life by setting aside 1.5 hours a day.

I make this sound sooooo much easier than it actually is though. This whole process took me one year to implement down to a system which I was happy with, and the cravings didn’t go away until I was 1.5 years in. All good things take time.

I will however, provide a “top 10 tips” list to help you guys along faster than me (hopefully). So without further ado:

Continue Reading →

Here’s troubling news:

“In February 2009, the Economist magazine announced that over half the world’s population now belongs to the middle class.”

Why do I find this to be troubling and not a sign of progression? Continue Reading →

I’d like to start by applauding you, yes you (don’t look surprised). I’m applauding you because you by some miracle have had enough patience to even read this current string of words (yup, this one right here, and this one, and this… you get the point). I’m applauding you because with the social conditioning present around us, we should (by their calculations) have the attention span of a dog.

For example ask yourself how long are commercials? How long are YouTube videos? How long are regular blog posts? Do you think that all these things by some chance just happened to take up less than five minutes of your time? If you do, then you need to dig deeper into the matrix that you live in. Because, (here’s the shocker) big businesses (like Google & YouTube) have conducted “surveys” and “experiments” and have deducted that you (yes you as an individual) have the attention span of a dog and/or cockroach, pick the one that sounds nicer to you, makes no difference because the matter of the fact is that they DON’T think you have the attention span of a HUMAN, which you are… hopefully (if not, send me your pictures, I won’t send them to the government for big sums of cash… promise :)).

YouTube sends memos to all it’s partners informing them to not go over 5 – 10 minutes. Commercials become so straight forwardly simply and quick they basically all say “BUY OUR SHIT!” Blog posts become so simple they resemble Twitter posts. Reality television shows show people coming from “poor” to “rich as fuck” in one hour. Movies show people’s lifetimes in less than two hours.

And in all this do you know where we, as humans, end up? With us losing our sense of patience. Continue Reading →

As promised, like I mentioning in my earlier post on what truths women have about men, this post will be about the truths men have about women. Such as: Continue Reading →

We all know women keep certain things from men (men from women too but that’s later), not a surprise to many of you. Here’s a few of them: Continue Reading →