Saturday, January 30, 2016
1.30
Time is a taskmistress to whose lash I do not fall, and yet her weals never grow less tender except that I forget them. My mind is growing numb with all the pain it has been has been forced to misplace. The thoughts of her slide from me each time my consciousness happens to chance upon them and misplace them, deliberate, to protect itself, each welt and bruise more tender than the last not for actual pain but for the suddenness and surprise of the encounter.
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
1.27
“This isn’t what it looks like,” she said.
It looked bad. I didn’t exactly know what was going on, but as my fight-or-flight reflexes slowly uncoiled themselves from the throttlehold they had on my windpipe, I finally started seeing. The scales littered all around the tiny bathroom were making small shuffling noises in the breeze from the open window. A few floated up and got stuck on the sidewalls or nestled in among the haircare products in the shower. They seemed delicate, like the thinnest shaving of wood left on the floor of a craftsman. That’s what they were, too; detritus from a transformation of gnarled oak into velvet-smooth wooden figurine. Her eyes were big and luminous, filled with some emotion—I couldn’t read her face to specify. It was too alien to me, too far removed from my slight experience. She reached out and shoved me away, her hands almost too-soft and yielding, the fingers bowing out from the pressure. I stumbled back into the hallway of our shared apartment space as the door slammed shut.
She, panicked, yelled “I’ll clean it up! Just give me a minute.” Scales billowed around the crack at the bottom of the door.
I picked one up, and it immediately fractured in my hand. I let it drop and picked up another, more careful this time. I held it up to the light, and I could see my fingerprints on the other side: a slight oil signature I had never thought about before. The surface of the little thing seemed to bend the light into vivid rainbow patterns, prisming the result into exactly her shade—the one you would name if you knew her long enough, knew her right down to the deeps and people asked you who she was, and they’d look at you funny unless they knew her first.
Saturday, January 23, 2016
1.23
God knows the end from the beginning. Before you were born, every day you had was numbered and written in a book God has in heaven. He knows your every action before you take it.
None of this feels bad, yet. None of it pinches my mind in an uncomfortable place.
God causes the rain to fall. God causes all things to work together for good. For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his son. Paul begins to constrain us. The bindings begin to hurt. God says "My purpose will stand. I will do all that I please." God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. Pharaoh is raised for this very purpose, that God might display his power.
I cry out: "How can God still blame me?" How are the wages for my actions death, if you knew I would choose them before I came to the choice? How can you punish me for that which I could not avoid? "Why did you make me like this?"
God whispers.
Doesn't the potter have the right to make of his clay what he will? I knit you together in your mother's womb.
It's apologetic and commanding. I fear to hear the God who rebuked Job. I fear to be the Job who didn't listen for forty one chapters of yelling.
He knows the end from the beginning. Don't let your mind escape that. Return to it. Paul didn't worry enough to need it, but I do. Good says "I am." He wasn't were, or yet to be. He is. He was is, he will be is. He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow because he exists at all times simultaneously. We experience time as a long stand stretched over a chasm. God experiences time as a book he can pick up; one he created simultaneously instantaneously. An entire infinite closes itself into his solitary perception. He knit me in my mother's womb out of time, in the same action as he knit my mother in her first existence. He created a timeline in which rain fell in the same action as he created a hard-hearted pharaoh and he saw it all at the moment he made it. God saw me make every choice I will ever make by creating time. He acted every time he would ever act by creating time. He doesn't need a process, nor cause and effect, not testing nor mistakes. He did every thing he would ever do as he did the only thing he would ever do in time. His one touch was consummate.
Of course he made Pharaoh. Of course Pharaoh chose. Neither can exist together, but both exist simultaneously. Free will is predestined. He chose that you will have choices.
None of this feels bad, yet. None of it pinches my mind in an uncomfortable place.
God causes the rain to fall. God causes all things to work together for good. For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his son. Paul begins to constrain us. The bindings begin to hurt. God says "My purpose will stand. I will do all that I please." God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. Pharaoh is raised for this very purpose, that God might display his power.
I cry out: "How can God still blame me?" How are the wages for my actions death, if you knew I would choose them before I came to the choice? How can you punish me for that which I could not avoid? "Why did you make me like this?"
God whispers.
Doesn't the potter have the right to make of his clay what he will? I knit you together in your mother's womb.
It's apologetic and commanding. I fear to hear the God who rebuked Job. I fear to be the Job who didn't listen for forty one chapters of yelling.
He knows the end from the beginning. Don't let your mind escape that. Return to it. Paul didn't worry enough to need it, but I do. Good says "I am." He wasn't were, or yet to be. He is. He was is, he will be is. He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow because he exists at all times simultaneously. We experience time as a long stand stretched over a chasm. God experiences time as a book he can pick up; one he created simultaneously instantaneously. An entire infinite closes itself into his solitary perception. He knit me in my mother's womb out of time, in the same action as he knit my mother in her first existence. He created a timeline in which rain fell in the same action as he created a hard-hearted pharaoh and he saw it all at the moment he made it. God saw me make every choice I will ever make by creating time. He acted every time he would ever act by creating time. He doesn't need a process, nor cause and effect, not testing nor mistakes. He did every thing he would ever do as he did the only thing he would ever do in time. His one touch was consummate.
Of course he made Pharaoh. Of course Pharaoh chose. Neither can exist together, but both exist simultaneously. Free will is predestined. He chose that you will have choices.
Friday, January 22, 2016
1.22
Sometimes, I feel like I put you on a pedestal and expected too much. You were always honest with me from the beginning, but I built a personal narrative without consulting you, and that narrative wasn't realistic. I only know that afterwards, of course. Nobody's perfect.
Sometimes though, I think back to the time we had and I realize it was actually really good (hanging out with you and hearing your ideas and goals and desires and future. We were really right, as things go, a beautiful pairing of mental intrigue and physical calescence, every meeting stripping away sodden layers of armor and briefly dying of exposure in a crashing rainstorm until our chiral minds touch sudden electric a raw exposed nerve ending tense and fervid an ache a need a fear. We were pyretic) right up until it fell. A tower of dominoes that shocks and amazes you until one tiny piece slips and the rest of the construction evaporates and you didn't even get a chance to look at it go.
We were two saucers, too long used, chipped and stained and well-loved by others, trying to find if our cupboard should be the same. It turns out we didn't even belong in the same house.
I wasn't fair to you, because I didn't let you know I had mythologized what should have been reality until it was all over. How could I have hinted to you the marble, beautiful smooth and white, I used to carve the tableau of our future? How could I show you the imperious forever I dreamed? It wasn't fair to you that I only told you I loved you once the final knell of us had silenced its long roll.
You had a profound influence on me, and not for worse. Is that fair to say? Is that alright? Neither one of us has to be perfect. You did right by me.
Leave me, Scarmarella. I still miss you.
Sometimes though, I think back to the time we had and I realize it was actually really good (hanging out with you and hearing your ideas and goals and desires and future. We were really right, as things go, a beautiful pairing of mental intrigue and physical calescence, every meeting stripping away sodden layers of armor and briefly dying of exposure in a crashing rainstorm until our chiral minds touch sudden electric a raw exposed nerve ending tense and fervid an ache a need a fear. We were pyretic) right up until it fell. A tower of dominoes that shocks and amazes you until one tiny piece slips and the rest of the construction evaporates and you didn't even get a chance to look at it go.
We were two saucers, too long used, chipped and stained and well-loved by others, trying to find if our cupboard should be the same. It turns out we didn't even belong in the same house.
I wasn't fair to you, because I didn't let you know I had mythologized what should have been reality until it was all over. How could I have hinted to you the marble, beautiful smooth and white, I used to carve the tableau of our future? How could I show you the imperious forever I dreamed? It wasn't fair to you that I only told you I loved you once the final knell of us had silenced its long roll.
You had a profound influence on me, and not for worse. Is that fair to say? Is that alright? Neither one of us has to be perfect. You did right by me.
Leave me, Scarmarella. I still miss you.
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
1.20
The springwater flowed, smooth and even, over the canoe, which cupped the river and held it. The weight of the water rushed into the craft, wedging it down, farther, into the riverbed, against the oppressive bulk of the tree. The sky was clear and the air was hot. Philip couldn't hear anything against the rushing of the blood in his ears. The stillness was unbroken.
Beneath the surface, Katy thrashed silent, hips held down against a gravelly grave, air quickly running out. Afraid to scream, aching to cry out, she scrambled for purchase. The air was so clear she could see the bulk of my brother bend and disappear, and suddenly, there was a lifting. The pressure of the boat lessened, somewhat, then, altogether disappeared. The river sucked her out from the pinch and she bobbed, anticlimactically, to the surface, to hear an altogether new sound: Philip. Primal fear lifted that canoe, and he dropped it against the weight of the current. They both tried to free it. It took the two of them, a log for leverage, and even then my father to pry it loose and set it upright again.
I don't know who lifted that canoe. I hope it was Philip, but I fear it was God. I'm terrified that God had to intervene in my own sister's life because I don't want to admit how close I am to death every day. Each time I hear the whirr of my father's nighttime breathing apparatus, or when I see my mother's gouge in the neighbor's ditch, whenever I think about scraping my face off on the concrete of a humid Florida subdivision, I twitch. We're all living the width of a sheet of paper from crashing thrashing crawling death on the other side, and all he has to do is apply the slightest pressure from a knife and he can cut through to us without even leaving his ghastly haunt. I wish it were Philip who saved my sister, but I fear it was God.
Beneath the surface, Katy thrashed silent, hips held down against a gravelly grave, air quickly running out. Afraid to scream, aching to cry out, she scrambled for purchase. The air was so clear she could see the bulk of my brother bend and disappear, and suddenly, there was a lifting. The pressure of the boat lessened, somewhat, then, altogether disappeared. The river sucked her out from the pinch and she bobbed, anticlimactically, to the surface, to hear an altogether new sound: Philip. Primal fear lifted that canoe, and he dropped it against the weight of the current. They both tried to free it. It took the two of them, a log for leverage, and even then my father to pry it loose and set it upright again.
I don't know who lifted that canoe. I hope it was Philip, but I fear it was God. I'm terrified that God had to intervene in my own sister's life because I don't want to admit how close I am to death every day. Each time I hear the whirr of my father's nighttime breathing apparatus, or when I see my mother's gouge in the neighbor's ditch, whenever I think about scraping my face off on the concrete of a humid Florida subdivision, I twitch. We're all living the width of a sheet of paper from crashing thrashing crawling death on the other side, and all he has to do is apply the slightest pressure from a knife and he can cut through to us without even leaving his ghastly haunt. I wish it were Philip who saved my sister, but I fear it was God.
Saturday, January 16, 2016
My Acolyte Journey: 2014
Forty songs.
Forty two posts.
One year, nine days.
Fifty three weeks, three days.
Twenty three thousand, two hundred forty nine words.
Four thousand, two hundred twenty six unique words. 18%.
Two thousand, one hundred ninety six sentences.
Ninth to tenth grade reading level.
117 estimated minutes to read.
Twice as long as 2013.
13.1% "the"
8.2% "and"
6.2% "to"
5.3% "it"
4.6% "of"
Zipf's Law broken.
"Me" One hundred fifty one times.
"She" One hundred thirty five times.
"He" One hundred thirty two times.
---
"I" One thousand, eighty times.
"Wouldn't" Thirty one times.
"Buy" Forty eight times.
"This" Two hundred ninety times.
"Song" One hundred eighty one times.
---
I would buy three songs. I haven't.
Forty two posts.
One year, nine days.
Fifty three weeks, three days.
Twenty three thousand, two hundred forty nine words.
Four thousand, two hundred twenty six unique words. 18%.
Two thousand, one hundred ninety six sentences.
Ninth to tenth grade reading level.
117 estimated minutes to read.
Twice as long as 2013.
13.1% "the"
8.2% "and"
6.2% "to"
5.3% "it"
4.6% "of"
Zipf's Law broken.
"Me" One hundred fifty one times.
"She" One hundred thirty five times.
"He" One hundred thirty two times.
---
"I" One thousand, eighty times.
"Wouldn't" Thirty one times.
"Buy" Forty eight times.
"This" Two hundred ninety times.
"Song" One hundred eighty one times.
---
I would buy three songs. I haven't.
Songs for a Neophyte: 2015.40
Wanna Be Cool
Chance the Rapper/Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment (ft. Big Sean, Jeremih, and KYLE)
[A respite of one month is too long in my endless quest through the year's best music, sighted down the lens of Stephen Barry's musical tastes. I have only a few quibbles with my methodology from previous years. Clearly, I have only a fledgling ability to reckon with the actual sound of a piece, but I feel I have been doing these songs an injustice by focusing so heavily on the elements with which I can clearly identify and intellectualize. Words and pictures are just distracting; they're not the music in the artist's heart. This year, I want to start by listening to the song, usually for the first time, writing words that describe the music as I do. I'll follow each tone poem (an inappropriate usage of the phrase, but still an apt description) with a forget-the-music, write-the-words section. I'll include my friends' thoughts, any lyrical analysis, or dissection of the music video. I think that needs to be after the music. I'll cap each song analysis with a single word to sum up what I think. I like some of the things I did last year and the year before, but as with all intelligently-designed projects, I need to wrack the edges of this one just to find out if my preference for my method was just comfort in the comfortable. And, as always, I might just change my mind on this halfway through and try something else. Neither of us signed up for this, but here we go.]
Acapella
Scat
Bare
Youth
Dissipated
Joy
Fresh
Speech
Monologue
Full
Constructed
Rhythmic
Old-style
Changeable
Morphic
Intelligent
Lyrics.
This is a way more intellectual piece of music than Firework by the illimitable Katy Perry, but it has the same message. In fact, it has the same message as a lot of music. Be yourself. There's nothing to be ashamed of. I just happen to look past the saccharine message because something in the music forgets to be Royals by the pretentious Lorde. It's like the guys got together and all accidentally wrote verses about how awful they felt trying to fit in, then they just kind of assembled them and somebody in the next room was dropping a needle on random records for five seconds at a time and they all thought "That's it!" Maybe that's not what happened, but I like to think it was.
You know, I like how seriously rappers take their lyrics. Other genres tend toward mediocrity and comprehension (from Billy Joel to Justin Bieber; from Johnny Cash to Blake Shelton), but hip-hop and r&b are a constant battle to see who is the cleverest in the land.
They're the last popular poets, actually. Back in the day, Milton was on the shelf next to the Bible. Now, poets are the property of language fanatics and English teachers. Nobody's doing anything clever anymore, not anything that people will read. The last people pushing allusion and alliteration, hucking hyperbole and building with metaphors are the rappers. English used to be such a scrappy language. We wanted so badly to be like Italian and French that we fought wars in words just to be taken seriously. Chaucer was just imitating Boccaccio. Shakespeare was just stealing from Ovid, Xenophon, and Dante (and Chaucer). Milton wanted so badly to be Homer. Now, English is on top, and nobody using it is taking it seriously.
Janelle
The dissection has more of yourself in it than I was expecting. It's enchanting, and it makes me want to have a similar structure? But I talk about myself all the time. I have a million billion stories that I share every chance I get, but I get the feeling that everyone who matters has heard them all at least twice. I talk so much about myself that I feel at the very least self-important and at the worst megalomanic. I want to change the very way I respond after the very first post. We'll see if I do.
Stephen--Father of Forties
I picked up on the youth. This song is pounding with it. It's a remembrance of times past when things were worse, and an exhortation to those in the same place. Do you really think, though, that a song would have helped you in your youth? Or is it really more about seeing your adult self and realizing "Oh. I survive this, thank God," that gets you through?
Yes.
Chance the Rapper/Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment (ft. Big Sean, Jeremih, and KYLE)
[A respite of one month is too long in my endless quest through the year's best music, sighted down the lens of Stephen Barry's musical tastes. I have only a few quibbles with my methodology from previous years. Clearly, I have only a fledgling ability to reckon with the actual sound of a piece, but I feel I have been doing these songs an injustice by focusing so heavily on the elements with which I can clearly identify and intellectualize. Words and pictures are just distracting; they're not the music in the artist's heart. This year, I want to start by listening to the song, usually for the first time, writing words that describe the music as I do. I'll follow each tone poem (an inappropriate usage of the phrase, but still an apt description) with a forget-the-music, write-the-words section. I'll include my friends' thoughts, any lyrical analysis, or dissection of the music video. I think that needs to be after the music. I'll cap each song analysis with a single word to sum up what I think. I like some of the things I did last year and the year before, but as with all intelligently-designed projects, I need to wrack the edges of this one just to find out if my preference for my method was just comfort in the comfortable. And, as always, I might just change my mind on this halfway through and try something else. Neither of us signed up for this, but here we go.]
Acapella
Scat
Bare
Youth
Dissipated
Joy
Fresh
Speech
Monologue
Full
Constructed
Rhythmic
Old-style
Changeable
Morphic
Intelligent
Lyrics.
This is a way more intellectual piece of music than Firework by the illimitable Katy Perry, but it has the same message. In fact, it has the same message as a lot of music. Be yourself. There's nothing to be ashamed of. I just happen to look past the saccharine message because something in the music forgets to be Royals by the pretentious Lorde. It's like the guys got together and all accidentally wrote verses about how awful they felt trying to fit in, then they just kind of assembled them and somebody in the next room was dropping a needle on random records for five seconds at a time and they all thought "That's it!" Maybe that's not what happened, but I like to think it was.
You know, I like how seriously rappers take their lyrics. Other genres tend toward mediocrity and comprehension (from Billy Joel to Justin Bieber; from Johnny Cash to Blake Shelton), but hip-hop and r&b are a constant battle to see who is the cleverest in the land.
Only class I'm passing is English and MathThere's so much to commend in these few lines, but my favorite piece is the very simple rhyme split to the beginning of the next line. It's not uncommon in rap, but I like it anyway.
I don't know, maybe because they both got commas
Maybe because my older bro was on the honor roll
And the other one was always up in front of the honor
So I'm in the middle like the line in the divide signs
They're the last popular poets, actually. Back in the day, Milton was on the shelf next to the Bible. Now, poets are the property of language fanatics and English teachers. Nobody's doing anything clever anymore, not anything that people will read. The last people pushing allusion and alliteration, hucking hyperbole and building with metaphors are the rappers. English used to be such a scrappy language. We wanted so badly to be like Italian and French that we fought wars in words just to be taken seriously. Chaucer was just imitating Boccaccio. Shakespeare was just stealing from Ovid, Xenophon, and Dante (and Chaucer). Milton wanted so badly to be Homer. Now, English is on top, and nobody using it is taking it seriously.
Janelle
The dissection has more of yourself in it than I was expecting. It's enchanting, and it makes me want to have a similar structure? But I talk about myself all the time. I have a million billion stories that I share every chance I get, but I get the feeling that everyone who matters has heard them all at least twice. I talk so much about myself that I feel at the very least self-important and at the worst megalomanic. I want to change the very way I respond after the very first post. We'll see if I do.
Stephen--Father of Forties
I picked up on the youth. This song is pounding with it. It's a remembrance of times past when things were worse, and an exhortation to those in the same place. Do you really think, though, that a song would have helped you in your youth? Or is it really more about seeing your adult self and realizing "Oh. I survive this, thank God," that gets you through?
Yes.
1.16
I've been running from you, Yeti. I know you need me to survive, but I'll run just the same. Our relationship is complicated. The fear is secondary, and it isn't the driving force behind my running, but it does rush me onward without looking back. Yes, the fear alone is keeping me from looking backwards, at least, reevaluating the primary motive of my pell-mell speed. As far as I'm concerned I'm running still for the same reason I started. The claws and teeth don't distract me, Yeti, because the fear is secondary, as much as you think that's all I boil down to at the end of the day. Don't confuse me.
I'm running--not for fear, and not for some other primal animal instinct that boils up from my fervid intestines, but--because I crave the attention. God I love it. I hope I always outrun you, Yeti, for I've finally found the exact formula to perfect fulfillment, and to be eaten would ruin everything. You understand, don't you?
I'm running--not for fear, and not for some other primal animal instinct that boils up from my fervid intestines, but--because I crave the attention. God I love it. I hope I always outrun you, Yeti, for I've finally found the exact formula to perfect fulfillment, and to be eaten would ruin everything. You understand, don't you?
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
1.13
I've got cracker crumbs on my shirt front. I've fallen asleep on the bench in the park. My stuff has fallen off and spread out over the ground in a fan around me. If I knew how hot you were, I'd have the good sense to be embarrassed, but I sleep. Forgive me.
Friday, January 1, 2016
12.31
How much would I need to weigh to have the same waist measurement as height? I wonder if there's ever been a person who was bigger around than they are tall, and by how much? Is it possible for a person of my height to be as big around as they are tall, or would the skeleton rebel?
Hypothesis: because of the square-cubed law of mass, it is impossible for me to be as big around as I am tall.
I use myself not because I am a good proxy for all humanity (I am in the top 5% of males worldwide even if I can't find a source) but because I am most familiar with my own body. I am 74.5 inches or 189 centimeters tall. There was a time I accidentally claimed to be 200 cm and a German person laughed at me, but I'm not that far off in the grand scheme of things. Also: this puts the lie to all the height charts in manga with svelte Japanese high schoolers being 190 cm. I currently weigh 194 pounds or 89 kg. Essentially, I need to never change weight because 189 cm/89 kg has a nice symmetry. My waist size is 86 cm and my rump is 104 cm. I figure in a perfect world I would balloon out symmetrically and make my math simple.
So: is it possible? Casual Male XL sells pants for people of 190 cm height that are 182 cm circumference. If a retail chain sells pants that are nearly my goal circumference, I think we are in business. Hypothesis shattered. Now to figure out how heavy I would have to be.
Hypothesis: I would be lethally obese, but I could definitely be as big around as tall.
I could get very scientific here. I could go and find lists of people and their relative height to waist size at various weights. I could construct a theoretical model and try to fit a projection to the data. I would want at least twenty examples of people roughly my height (Can I find John Candy's waist size?) to construct this model. This will only lead to bad places.
Walter Hudson
On the list not for his matching height (I don't actually know his height), but for his waist size even if it's probably an outlier. 302 cm at 545 kg. First data point!
Hugh Laurie
Hugh's height is 189 cm. I have no idea his pants size.
Lawrence Fishburne
The most B.A. man with a tooth gap is 183 cm and someone has promoted wild speculation as fact. Where are they getting their figures? Either way, it is reassuring to think that I might be able to share pants with Lawrence Fishburne.
Sidney Poitier
Sidney is 189 cm. I'm not actually finding any useful information at all, but I am enjoying myself immensely. Look at this woman who politely suggests that the director was an idiot for cutting out the raunchy Poitier scenes. Plus, Sidney and I are both Pisces!
Extra information:
Jon Minnoch, the heaviest man alive, lost approximately five times my weight while hospitalized and still weighed twice as much as I do.
I'm done looking at celebrities of roughly the same height as me. I'll never build my statistical model. I think my only resort is to find the density of fat and muscle and check my math using the square-cube law. So. Fat is 0.9 g/mL and muscle is 1.06 g/mL. I don't assume there will be much more muscle in a really heavy person than in a muscular person. This is partially conjecture and partially because I went to Bodyworlds one time and saw that under our skin and fat, we're all pretty much the same size? Besides, they had a thin slice of a fat man and he was normal with a load of adipose just like . . . layered on him? This is a perpendicularly-sliced man in a disturbing video. So all I really have to do is figure out how many ml of fat I would need to expand, like an prolate spheroid, to achieve a distance around my minor axis of equivalence with the distance of 2c from pole to pole on my z-axis.
Thanks, Wikipedia. So, I want to set 2c to 189cm and since a is the equatorial radius of the spheroid, I need (circumference) 2πa = 189 cm. Woaaaah 2c = 2πa, meaning that there's some magical relationship there that I am too mathematically inept to figure out. Guys, we're on a journey. A journey which started with me trying desperately to figure out what x and y are before realizing they're so utterly unimportant as to be laughable. If I'm treating myself as a simple spheroid, which I am, because I'm liking picturing my fat self as a football, the equation for volume doesn't care.
a is approximately 30.08 cm if my equator is 189cm. That would make c = 94.5cm and the whole volume problem easy enough to figure out. Let's plug it in to Wolfram Alpha. 358159 . . . units. What the heck is my units here? Cubic centimeters? I mean, I guess so? And cm^3 is actually just mL, so. Wait: crap! I have to figure out my displacement to subtract my basic human frame from the 358,159 mL estimate of my goal volume. Maybe I can estimate that, too, but we're getting really extreme in our estimations, here. No human is shaped like a prolate spheroid. I estimated I am roughly 88.1 liters in volume, which is extremely disappointing that I break my ~89 theme. Wolfram Alpha says the human average is 66.4 liters, which is 66 kg of water. Obviously, water is the closest estimate for human density? Meaning 88 L of human weighs the same as 88L of water? But I know this to be untrue for me because when I let my breath out, I sink to the bottom of whatever pool I'm in. I've tested to at least depths of 6 m. So. Actual height: 189 cm. Target waist: 189 cm. Estimated actual volume: 88.1 L. Target volume: 358 L.
If all I had to do was gain fat, this is how much I would have to gain.
That's pretty intense, but there are loads of people who weigh more than 332 kg. That's only 730 lbs, and that's me as an oblate spheroid. I gain mass much faster than I gain volume, due to the square-cube law of mass.
My BMI would be something like 93. It's not even on a normal chart. Anyway, I'm excited I don't have to buy pants like this anytime soon, but maybe this gave you some small joy to picture me as a football-shaped humanoid.
Thanks.
Hypothesis: because of the square-cubed law of mass, it is impossible for me to be as big around as I am tall.
I use myself not because I am a good proxy for all humanity (I am in the top 5% of males worldwide even if I can't find a source) but because I am most familiar with my own body. I am 74.5 inches or 189 centimeters tall. There was a time I accidentally claimed to be 200 cm and a German person laughed at me, but I'm not that far off in the grand scheme of things. Also: this puts the lie to all the height charts in manga with svelte Japanese high schoolers being 190 cm. I currently weigh 194 pounds or 89 kg. Essentially, I need to never change weight because 189 cm/89 kg has a nice symmetry. My waist size is 86 cm and my rump is 104 cm. I figure in a perfect world I would balloon out symmetrically and make my math simple.
So: is it possible? Casual Male XL sells pants for people of 190 cm height that are 182 cm circumference. If a retail chain sells pants that are nearly my goal circumference, I think we are in business. Hypothesis shattered. Now to figure out how heavy I would have to be.
Hypothesis: I would be lethally obese, but I could definitely be as big around as tall.
I could get very scientific here. I could go and find lists of people and their relative height to waist size at various weights. I could construct a theoretical model and try to fit a projection to the data. I would want at least twenty examples of people roughly my height (Can I find John Candy's waist size?) to construct this model. This will only lead to bad places.
Walter Hudson
On the list not for his matching height (I don't actually know his height), but for his waist size even if it's probably an outlier. 302 cm at 545 kg. First data point!
Hugh Laurie
Hugh's height is 189 cm. I have no idea his pants size.
Lawrence Fishburne
The most B.A. man with a tooth gap is 183 cm and someone has promoted wild speculation as fact. Where are they getting their figures? Either way, it is reassuring to think that I might be able to share pants with Lawrence Fishburne.
Sidney Poitier
Sidney is 189 cm. I'm not actually finding any useful information at all, but I am enjoying myself immensely. Look at this woman who politely suggests that the director was an idiot for cutting out the raunchy Poitier scenes. Plus, Sidney and I are both Pisces!
Extra information:
Jon Minnoch, the heaviest man alive, lost approximately five times my weight while hospitalized and still weighed twice as much as I do.
I'm done looking at celebrities of roughly the same height as me. I'll never build my statistical model. I think my only resort is to find the density of fat and muscle and check my math using the square-cube law. So. Fat is 0.9 g/mL and muscle is 1.06 g/mL. I don't assume there will be much more muscle in a really heavy person than in a muscular person. This is partially conjecture and partially because I went to Bodyworlds one time and saw that under our skin and fat, we're all pretty much the same size? Besides, they had a thin slice of a fat man and he was normal with a load of adipose just like . . . layered on him? This is a perpendicularly-sliced man in a disturbing video. So all I really have to do is figure out how many ml of fat I would need to expand, like an prolate spheroid, to achieve a distance around my minor axis of equivalence with the distance of 2c from pole to pole on my z-axis.
Thanks, Wikipedia. So, I want to set 2c to 189cm and since a is the equatorial radius of the spheroid, I need (circumference) 2πa = 189 cm. Woaaaah 2c = 2πa, meaning that there's some magical relationship there that I am too mathematically inept to figure out. Guys, we're on a journey. A journey which started with me trying desperately to figure out what x and y are before realizing they're so utterly unimportant as to be laughable. If I'm treating myself as a simple spheroid, which I am, because I'm liking picturing my fat self as a football, the equation for volume doesn't care.
If all I had to do was gain fat, this is how much I would have to gain.
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| From Wolfram Alpha |
My BMI would be something like 93. It's not even on a normal chart. Anyway, I'm excited I don't have to buy pants like this anytime soon, but maybe this gave you some small joy to picture me as a football-shaped humanoid.
Thanks.
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