A man can only justify his actions if he regards his demeanor with deductive reasoning. This unfortunately is not you, mainly because you’re a fucking douche bag. The whole world seems to be in the dark as to why rock lifting, my favorite exercise on earth, is a worthwhile usage of my extremely valuable time. While lifting rocks, I’ve had more quizzical stares and confused onlookers than I can count. Honestly I can’t even count that fucking high. I dropped out of grade school to start a lucrative career as a test subject for scientific experiments. What I missed in basic math skills, I more than made up for in increased immunity to flesh eating bacteria.

So you may be asking yourself: What exactly is a Rock? A how do I lift it? A: You’re an idiot. B: Grab it and lift it. Sounds simple? That’s because it is. It’s the simplest thing any human being can do. Australopithecines were lifting rocks 5 million years ago, and they didn’t even know how to wipe their own ass. On some level it’s one of the most basic of all human functions. Running, Jumping, Stabbing Rhinoceroses in the balls with a long spear, and lifting rocks (to throw onto Rhinoceroses balls). You may also be asking yourself: What is the advantage of lifting a rock over, say, lifting pink dumbbells. Good question!

A) It makes you more manly. If you’re a woman, feel free to skip past this one.
B) It gives you awesome scars up and downs your arms and legs.
C) You save money on heavy equipment rentals while landscaping your yard
D) You’ll probably get laid more (unverified)
E) It’s harder

This is the real crux of the argument behind lifting rocks. Iron plates are more dense, shaped uniformly, and easier to attach to a handle. Somehow, someone has managed to make lifting weights, the hardest fucking thing the in universe, EASIER! Lifting weights isn’t supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to be an awful experience, one that you do as quickly as possible just so that you can go take a shower and wash away the horrible memories. Fuck 90 second rest periods. If you’re lifting rocks, you’re going to go again as soon as possible just so you can scurry home and treat your wounds with hydrogen peroxide.

There are some simple tips to make rock lifting a slightly less miserable experience. The first is get as close to the rock as possible. Unless you’re hoisting fucking pebbles, it will be impossible to deadlift a rock of the proper size. It will either spin out of your hands or your grip will fail entirely. You need to place torso on the rock. That means getting low. Wide stance, open hips, ass back. You will also need to bend your back. Yeah, I know, it sounds awful, but you’re going to need to get your shoulders closer to the ground. If you’ve trained your back to deadlift, you already know how to relax your thoracic spine (upper back) and tense your lumbar spine (lower back). This is really the key, maintaining control over your spine. Bend at the top, keep the bottom tense. If you can’t do this, practice in front of a mirror picking up pink dumbbells first. Your shame will soon force you to adapt, causing you to develop all the spinal tension necessary to become a man (unless you’re a woman, if so, skip forward).

So now that you’re low, you need to grab the sumbitch. Rocks are always odd shaped (unless they aren’t) so your arms need to be perpendicular to the force of gravity. By gripping straight over the top, the rock will somewhat counter-balance it’s self and prevent it from spinning out of your grip. If the rock is shaped more like a rectangle than a circle, you may need to grab it at opposite corners. Corners present your best option for gripping, and going to opposite corners will prevent it from yawing and slipping. Speaking of grip, your hands are only going to do about half of the job. Your forarms, shins, thighs, and stomach will take up the brunt of the labor. This will be evidenced by the myriad wounds previously mentioned all up and down your body after a rock lifting session. You could wear neoprene sleeves and long pants to counter this, but only if you’re still currently breast feeding. Finally once you’ve gripped the rock and lifted it off the ground, you’ll need to reset the rock if you intend on doing anything more with it. The best way to re-grip a rock is simply squatting down and setting it on your lap. From there you can take a new control position, either arms underneath cupping the rock if you intend to carry it, or arms over the top if you intend to lift it high. Either way, make sure to pull the boulder into your body.

Congratulations! You’ve now lifted a rock. At this point you should do something with it. Don’t prove your father right: You’re not a worthless procrastinator, and you WILL do something with that rock (and your life). You could carry it somewhere, possibly for distance. Try walking it to the nearest tree and back. Too easy? Try grabbing a heavier rock. Not enough rocks around? You probably should have gone to a quarry or dry river bed to do this little exercise, huh? Ultimately your rock carrying goal should be to build things that no one else is strong enough to tear down. It’s a good feeling to know that you can build a rock pile in the middle of an elementary school yard that will sit there for the next 50 years. Because we both know those toddlers are too damned lazy to try to move your awesome monument. They’re also too stupid to figure out how it got there. So you’ll kill two birds with one stone. You get to make yourself more manly, and give children nightmares with one killer exericse. Give it a try. Start light, get low, and enjoy the pains of lifting rocks instead of weights.

We all know the story. Pilgrims come to America. Indians teach them to plant corn inside of dead fish, stuff grows, everyone wins. Unfortunately it’s a lie. When the pilgrims came to America, they were faced with years of abysmal harvests, rampant theft, and a general malaise among the people. They had nothing to give thanks for, as nothing was being produced in Plymouth.

The reason, despite your political, religious, or philosophical beliefs, was that no one was working hard. Because of the structure of society, no one was incentivized to go out and work hard. Those who could do difficult manual labor refused to do so, because of their perceived lack of reward. All property was placed into a communal pool. It was everyone’s job to put into this pool as much as they could, and take out only what they needed to survive. It doesn’t take a leap of imagination to visualize people saying “fuck this” and taking whatever they wanted without replacing anything back into the pot. This is not an antiquated concept. Communist USSR and Cuba are extreme examples of failed societies that removed the rewards for hard workers. Everyone gets paid the same, so no one goes above and beyond the call of duty in hopes of a raise. Of course there was also rampant corruption inside of these systems, but the system was flawed intrinsically. In modern day Ethiopia citizens aren’t allowed to own land. Despite extremely fertile farm land, people refuse to bust their ass taking care of something they have no ownership over. They do just enough to scrape by, and consequently, Ethiopia continues to be the butt of international jokes about the desperation of poverty. In Samoa 90% of every penny earned or crop grown goes to the tribal leaders, who take their generous cut and then distribute the meager remainder to the rest of the tribe. Now about 60% of Samoa’s economy is based on family remittances from children moving abroad, and foreign aid. These are just a few examples around the world of people who, for whatever reason, have decided that it’s better to work JUST hard enough to get by rather than bust their ass and achieve something great.

This isn’t a foreign problem though. Despite the American ethos of hard work and dedication, we’ve become a generation who wouldn’t know the meaning of those words if it bit us in the ass. Because of the successes of previous generations, my generation (young punks) is now just coasting through life on their parents credit and the successes of business men from yesteryear. Work is now a chore; something to be avoided. I’ve seen people work exceedingly hard to avoid hard work. As contradictory as it sounds, the immediate pay-off of avoiding work has somehow taken on a greater status symbol than hard-work in hopes of future gain. This is an unfortunate system of the rigidity of our economic system, and the inability of people to move up and down inside of the system. If you’re born rich, you stay rich. Paris Hilton makes millions of dollars a year despite having no discernible job skills what so ever. If you’re boon poor, you stay poor. Young, talented, hard working kids born into poverty are spoon fed equal portion of welfare and pity until any drive they may have possessed is wiped out by middle school.

Life has become too easy. No one starves to death. No one gets put out into the cold. Because of our prosperity, the worst possible scenario in a recession is sacrificing Chipotle once a week. We’re in a bad place right. We’ve (notice I say we, not you, because I’m included in this too) lost much of our incentive to try to achieve greater things, simply because things are so good right now.

Not to despair. The pilgrims got out of trouble. They went from a purely consumption based system, into a system of hard work with commensurate rewards. In 1623 Governor William Bradford changed the  means of production, from communal lands and communal foods, to private land plots for each family. Because they now had ownership in their land and a direct path to increased rewards, everyone wanted to work harder to make a better life for themselves. This desire to seek rewards incentivized people to work harder, creating plenty of food for everyone around. They gave Thanks, and now we have a national holiday. Happy ending. But it’s not 1623, and not everyone is working hard. We (me too) have forgotten the lessons of the pilgrims of our great nation. In our country we’re producing less, saving less, investing less, spending more, and wasting more. Maybe we’re less incentivized to work hard, but maybe we’re getting soft.

In America we’ve forgotten what it’s like to fail. It seems that someone is always ready to bail you out of whatever trouble you fall into. You go to jail, bail bonds to the rescue. Your bank fails, congress will give you a few billion. You fall into a well, the towns people will dig you out and put it on the news. That’s why I propose the following. Rather than simply giving Thanks for another year of mediocre effort and mediocre rewards, let’s earn it next year. November 2011, I’m spending the entire month in the desert, foraging for my Thanksgiving meal. Bugs, lizards, maybe even the occasional rabbit. I doubt I’ll run across any Turkey’s, but I’m trying to start a new tradition here. I’m going to stay in the desert until I’ve either found enough food to be thankful for, or I die of hypothermia. Most likely I’ll die a miserable death, but at least I’ll learn a valuable lesson. Anything in life worth having is going to be hard.

“Life’s not fair”. I can’t count the number of times I heard that growing up. It was my mom’s favorite colloquialism, right after “shit in one hand and wish in the other, see which fills up first”. Or maybe “shit and Two’s Eight”….. My mother had a filthy fucking mouth. But at least most of what she said makes sense (still have no clue how shit and two somehow equal eight). I remember at 6 years old immediately understanding the gravity of shitting in one hand whilst simultaneously wishing into the other. Even as a dumb ass little kid, I understood right away that if I squatted over my hand and released my bowels, that hand would immediately fill up. Filled up with greasy, oily, putrid, dark brown baby shit. The kind of shit you take when 88% of your total daily caloric intake comes from gummy bears, Tootsie Rolls, and mountain dew. BUT at the same time, I understood equally well that I could close my eyes and wish for toy cars until the cows came home, and that hand would always come up empty. Probably a good thing since now my other hand is full of shit, and I’m going to need to do some major cleaning.

So I got it. Great life lesson for a toddler. Nothing gets accomplished by wishing. But what about “life’s not Fair”. I thought life was fair. Back then everything seemed fair to me. At school each kid would have to read aloud in class, in order, to spread the misery around to all students equally. Me and my brother got the same cash payout for cutting the grass. All was well in my baby faced, snot nosed, rug rat world. It didn’t click until I became an adult. All the great things in my life were due to some unforeseen bias acting upon me in favorable ways. I had good parents who taught me values (unfair, most kids are raised now by Sesame Street and the Tele-tubbies). I went to a decent school, with teachers who actually taught (unfair, some teachers do this instead of teaching) and I was born in America (still a pretty good place to grow up).

OK so I graduate high-school, and then I finally get it. Now I’m an adult, and I realize life isn’t fair. So what to do? Give up? Try harder? NO, I know……I’ll ask someone else to try to make things fair for me! How could that go wrong? So at 17 I got a nice union job doing manual labor, and I paid the Teamster’s Labor Union $30 a month to make sure that I got treated fairly. They’re fighting for the little guy, making sure everyone gets a equal treatment. Just ask, they’ll tell you. And boy were they right. Everyone got equal treatment, regardless of whether they deserved it or not. I fondly remember comparing productivity numbers with my senior co-worker, and we determined I was 4 times faster at the same job, despite him having been in the position for over 20 years. So what’s fair? Should I get paid 4 times more than my lazy ass friend? NO actually, HE got paid 4 times more than me. I was 16 times more productive than him, and due to his 20 years worth of fairness, in a recession I would get laid off before him. Awesome.

So what the hell is fairness then? Is a race only fair if everyone starts at the same point, or finishes at the same point? Unfortunately neither situation is practical. I could train sprints for the rest of my life and never beat Usain Bolt in a 100M race. Even if we both start on the starting line, he’s starting miles ahead of me in terms of awesome sprinter genetics. Does that mean the only logical solution is for me to lobby the race organizers and attempt to get a head-start? This seems to be the trend? Seven states just passed minimum wage increases. The politicians and voters alike claimed it was in the interest of fairness. Unfortunately those who aren’t able to vote must not be entitled to fairness, as rising minimum wages has wiped out hundreds of thousands of teenager jobs, despite the fact only 3% of workers over 25 make minimum wage. Where do those jobs go? China I’m guessing, or to our future overlords, super-smart computer/machine hybrids. I haven’t seen a 16 year old cashier at the grocery store in years. Mostly I just go through self-check. Or you could point to the recent FCC ruling that now makes the internet more fair and neutral (as if the internet weren’t great enough already), despite the fact that it’s almost certainly going to make internet access more expensive for the average user, despite having questionable or no-effect on internet neutrality.

So now I finally get it. Life isn’t fair. There will always be winners and losers. This is called competition. Most of us think it’s great when Georges St. Pierre dominates the next possible contender. It’s fun to watch, and it forces the other fighters to train harder in hopes of besting GSP. But none of us get our panties in a bunch about the loser. He loses, so what? We don’t require GSP to wear a weight vest to make things more fair. We say tough shit Fitch, train harder and try again or you’ll get cut from the UFC. And that’s OK too. Because one time losers always end up bouncing back and becoming eventual winners. Fitch has had some great fights, made a lot of money, and will undoubtedly have a great career, both peri and post-UFC, despite his loss to St. Pierre.

I realize too now that even as a child, the things I thought were fair, weren’t even remotely equitable. The slowest readers in class had to read one paragraph, just like me. Except it took them six times longer, thus prolonging their humiliation. And even cutting the lawn was bullshit. My brother and I both got paid five bucks, despite him being more athletic and physical than I. It took him half an hour, and it took me a fucking week to cut the grass. Did I mention we had a push mower when I was kid. Ya, a fucking push mower, like they had in the roaring ’20′s.

My little 60 pound body pushing a rusty ass 30 pound lawn mower uphill, dodging dog shit, avoiding the patches of bare dirt in our decrepit, neglected front yard. Ugh it was awful….and I got $5 for it. But I’d do it anyways, because I’d rather have the $5 than $0. Honestly I would have paid $5 just to prevent my brother from getting any money. I’d fight tooth and nail just to get an slight advantage over my siblings.

Real life is a lot like that too. People should compete and reap the benefits and downfalls of their own hard work (or lack thereof). Just like Jon Fitch’s one time loss to the best fighter on earth is somewhat of an afterthought now. One time losers eventually morph into long term winners with proper persistence and motivation. As long as everyone is ACTUALLY starting from the same spot, even the slowest person will still eventually finish the race. I can deal with that, even if it means I personally am going to end up in the middle of the pack. After-all, that’s only fair.