Published and new poem

I can't say I'm not published now, because I am officially published in a literary magazine!  I found out about their call for submissions on Writerscafe and one of my poems impressed them, so now it is in a magazine called "Wednesday Night Writes."

https://sites.google.com/site/wednesdaynightwrites/current-issue

I also wrote a new poem, which I just finished editing today.  I don't even remember what riled me up to write this but it is kind of a culmination of my feelings on the skinny beautiful women we admire and tear apart with media.  While women are a victim of all these fads and diets and trends, I have a certain dislike (hate is too strong a word) for the people that wholeheartedly follow these trends, whether they help to enforce them and to create them or whether they are outside the trends and simply follow them...

I don't know if I should be saying more with this poem, but it has gone through a lot of adjusting (rhyme scheme, evening out the amount of lines in each stanza) and I feel proud of the finished product.  Maybe I will change it later.  I don't know at this point.  I personally like it.

Crumbling Under a Feather:

You strip naked and then

Display your protruding ribs and your gentle curves

Bask in the lust and admiration of drooling men

Glued to their MacBooks, fingers pressed to nerves

You think you are a sex symbol

Your beauty commands respect

Strong and nimble

Attention simply what you expect

But you’re wrong about your power

You’re weak, tied with a tether

A fragile, dainty flower

Crumbling under a feather

You do what they tell you to do

Tiny tits are better than sagging thighs

Body hair like buzzing flies

Cellulite

Overnight

You are a socialite

Swallow pills so hearty

Starve day after day as you become more vein

Stay up all night at parties

Prolong the pain

Hover over the toilet below

Half crying, half vomiting, hungover

Your guilty pleasures are reality shows

The Biggest Loser, Extreme Makeover

Love, sex and lust

Drive you to do this

Or maybe you just want trust

For someone to care instead of dismiss

The powder from the thick white sponge invades your nostrils

It is the bread, your red nail polish the wine

Vogue and Cosmo your glossy gospels

Your closet of designer shoes a shrine

Cocktail dresses and Gucci are your new burger and draught

Finding nourishment in Martinis, icy words

Why do you think this will make up for your past?

All it does is make it worse

7 Reasons Why I Hate My Gym and Gyms in General With a Passion

Yesterday, it was raining profusely the entire day and I wasn't able to go swimming and since I was at university I didn't have access to DDR, so I was forced to go to my stupid university gym.  This will be a Cracked-style post.


I fucking hate my university gym and here's why...

1. Loud music


The music in the gym is way too loud.  Ridiculously loud.  Dance club loud.  That volume is appropriate for a rave or a rock concert, but in my opinion it has no place in a gym.  

Why not just make the gym look like this, why don't you?

If you want to listen to something that isn't Katy Perry or Skrillex via your iPod you have to crank the volume up to max and even then you can still hear booms of sound.  What do you do after that?  Hold the headphones in tightly while screaming along with your music?  No, that is too undignified for my taste.  


And just who is benefiting from this music other than the few staff members and the sad suckers who forgot their headphones?  Most people at the gym bring their MP3s with them to listen to while they work out.  


Anyway, they should at least turn it down so my ears aren't ringing by the end of my workout.

2. Boring, uninspiring surroundings


I love walking outdoors.  It is probably my favourite form of exercise and that is because the scenery is constantly changing as I walk and there are so many interesting things to take in.  I usually see something new every day.  No beautiful scenery can be found at the gym, unless you are talking about human scenery.  Then there's some. ;)  But on the whole, the gym is an off-white, industrial, modern and horribly boring space.  When I'm on a walk I am often too absorbed in my music and the view to pay attention to the fact that I am actually exercising, while at the gym it's all I can think about and I find myself obsessively counting the minutes until I am finally finished.  This makes the gym an unpleasant experience for me.  


I propose an invention that will improve this flaw, although it may have already been invented...


Virtual reality glasses that project beautiful scenery surrounding you as you use the treadmill.  It could also have a function that finds scenery that suits the music you are listening to.  Like the streets of Liverpool for the Beatles, an abandoned slaughterhouse full of kidnapped prostitutes for Marilyn Manson, a beautiful beach resort for Owl City, lush Canadian scenery for The Tragically Hip, the cobbled streets of Paris for Yann Tierson's Amelie soundtrack, etc.  I could go on forever. 

Now that's more like it.  I'm much more motivated to run.

In the corner they would have a video of you on the treadmill so that you are aware of where you are spatially.  There could also be some safety features on the equipment to ensure people do not fall off.  With this invention people could travel to places they might never reach in their lives.  Working out becomes travel.  It would be awesome.  


Some skeptics would say that one could just use their own imagination in order to do this, but seriously, are any of us smart enough to do that anymore???


Anyway, that would make the gym experience much more worthwhile and actually worth all the money people pay for a stupid gym membership.  

3. The TVs don't work


Most good gyms have several televisions hanging from the ceiling and if you want, you can plug your headphones into the TV audio and watch a show while you work out, which is great.  We have lots of TVs at our gym too, but our audio device is broken.  Has been for the four years I've been at the university and even though there have been renovations all over campus, nothing has been done about this problem.  So the TVs at our gym just dangle from the ceiling playing shows I will never be able to hear while pedalling an exercise bike.  They don't even turn the TVs off the save power.  I guess they do that because students are always touring the university so they want to give the impression that they don't have a shitty ghetto gym.  Yay lying and wasting energy!

He would make an excellent university president.  Much more transparency.

4. 30-min cardio limit


Apparently you can't go over 30 minutes on the cardio equipment.  Which sucks because I am aiming for an hour of cardio each day.  I understand that there are a lot of people that use the gym, but honestly that rule is bullshit.  Next time I'm going to do an hour and see if anyone does anything.  

5. Stupid jocks who lift weights in a douchey fashion


Every single gym except women's gyms are teeming with these creatures.  They lift the weights way too fast and lift more weight than they can handle in order to look impressive to their male friends.  They like to grunt and parade themselves around while resting from their "pumping iron."  I don't usually lift weights at the gym so I don't have to hear their stupid chatter, but they are pretty damn annoying.

6. Seeing professors working out


It's just kind of awkward.  This year pretty much every time I went to the gym I saw my Theory Professor working out at the gym and it was always too late for me to leave when I realized he was there.  That happened last year as well.  I think that guy is some kind of gym rat.  I just find that experience weird and annoying.  I don't like seeing my professors sweating and panting profusely unless they're the hot ones.  And that is never the case at my stupid gym.  I have never seen a hot professor there.  Alas.

At least Farnsworth doesn't use my gym.

7. The Stupidity of the Concept


The fact that people are stupid enough to pay through the nose for what they could accomplish just as easily with long walks and weights at home is mystifying.  I've never had a membership outside of my university gym (included with tuition) other than one-week trials and using the free guest pass.  Gyms just seem like a waste of money.  Unless the gym has a bunch of cool features like a hot tub, a sauna, swimming treadmills, a dance party room, DDR machines, etc then I don't think a membership is worth my money.

Oh yeah, that's right.  Tell me I'm perfect.  Give me an A.  This should be my professor.

And those are my seven reasons.  In conclusion, my gym and most gyms suck.