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I’m not one to go the “[x] changed my life” route. I mean, I’ve had a ton of inspirations and I tend to think of life as a big matrix of all those internal and external factors (plus the nefarious impact of the Trilateral Commission, of course). That said, I have felt a million times better since I started doing yoga last fall.

Now, my caveat is that it took a long time for me to start doing the stuff. I bought a DVD of some Yoga Journal series a few years ago, but never bothered to pop it in the player till last summer, when my brother inspired me to give it a try.

Listening to the calm, soothing voice of the instructor, I have never felt so ready in my life to punch someone out. Back on the shelf it went.

Fortunately, my bro turned me on to the book that got him started, Yoga for Regular Guys. YRG’s written by a pro wrestler, with an intro by Rob Zombie. As such, it doesn’t have the “calm, soothing” demeanor that pushes me into a rage. And the workouts don’t involve holding a position for 5 minutes or anything. It’s the first exercise regimen I’ve stuck with for more than a few weeks, and the results have been great: back pain’s all gone, my mood during my morning commute is much more at ease (when I work out in the morning, that is), and the official VM wife sez my ass is sagging less.

So, in that respect, I guess this has changed my life. (Not in any mystical way. I mean, while it’s nice that I feel more peaceful from these workouts, I have no desire to go the Maxon Crumb route and start “cleansing” with dhauti.)

All of which is preface to Ron Rosenbaum’s recent article on the “hostile New Age takeover of yoga“. Ron seems to share my twitch-like reaction to the “calm, soothing” instructors, “that soothing syrupy ‘yoga-speak’ that we all know and loathe”. He proceeds to dissect the “yoga lifestyle” and its attendant fashion and accessories.

But he takes it to a whole new level when he checks out a recent ish of Yoga Journal and dissects an article called “Forgive Yourself” in which the writer obsesses over a 20-years-gone high-school friendship in a way that borders on the psychopathic.

I can’t begin to do justice to Ron’s takedown of the article, the hippytrippy mindset of the editors who decided to run it, and the self-centeredness of their version of ‘forgiveness.’ You really need to read it for yourself. I’m gonna do some shoulderstands and be Mr. Plow for a while.

(Official VM Bonus! “How to deal with dead-and-gone relationships” advice: A few years ago, a buddy of mine who was engaged told me how he sorta wished he could go back and show some of the women from his past how he’d ‘grown up’. I said, “We all wanna fix the past, but when you’re really grown up, you won’t have to worry about proving it to old girlfriends. Let it go.”)

Well, maybe I don’t feel like posting today! Whattaya think of that?

Just about everyone wants to get his words in print. At the trade magazine publishing company where I work, it’s become far less of a thrill for me — my 10th anniversary is next month — but the associate editors and freelance writers always get a jolt when they  see their first byline.

Still, that drive to get your words and thoughts out in the public can be a bitch. For me, I’ve found that this blog is a pretty good outlet. It’s not suitable for everything I want to write, but it gives me a good forum for exploring the world, sharing neat or funny links, and opining (okay, ranting).

Which leads me to wonder: if we had blogs 15 years earlier, would the Unabomer/Unabomber have been so focused on getting his manifesto published? Happy 11th anniversary in captivity, Mr. Kaczynski!

“One sure sign that you’re getting old is when you notice yourself stubbornly refusing to move up to newer versions of your software.“

To all my Jewish readers out there: have a great Pesach!

To all my True American readers out there: have a great baseball season!

To the Gators and the Buckeyes: have a great 3OT game tonight!

‘Fess up, girls: who’s your Hollywood crush?

I don’t do much car-blogging. I’ve never been a gearhead, and I’ve never believed that I “should be driving” a fancy sportscar or luxury sedan. I drive a Honda Element.

Or, as BusinessWeek put it in its review of the new Asian street gang version of the Element, I drive a “boxy trucklet,” the “automotive equivalent of a cardboard box on wheels,” a “cube-on-wheels” “with aerodynamics only slightly better than a concrete slab.”

Which is to say: guilty as charged.

Amy had to work late on Monday, so our anniversary dinner consisted of pizza and the rest of a fantastic bottle of champagne left over from the weekend (a wedding gift). We gave each other our “paper anniversary” gifts: she got me a wonderful print of a New Orleans photo by Frank Relle, and I gave her an IOU for a photo album / book of memories that I’m in the process of making. It’ll be great. Just late.

In keeping with our made-for-each-other-ness, we also hunted through TiVo to find an episode of Mythbusters that we wanted to catch: Underwater Car. As the episode guide says,

If you’re unfortunate enough to drive your vehicle into the drink, is it possible to escape, or will a watery grave be your fate? Heading poolside, the guys get their feet wet by doing some intensive underwater training. Then the pressure is on as they seat themselves inside a submerged car and do their darndest to get out.

Entertaining and educational! It promised to be even better than the Diet Coke & Mentos episode!

We zipped through the “B-Team” segments, which we were convinced was assigned to them as a joke: “Why don’t you guys go figure out if a piece of paper can actually be folded more than seven times or something?”

The first thing I learned about a car in the drink is that, once the vehicle is completely filled with water, the pressure equalizes and the doors will open pretty easily. Getting to that equalization point without running out of oxygen is a challenge. And before that point, the pressure of the water makes it impossible to get the door open.

The Mythbusters tested to see whether windows are openable underwater. As it turns out, the manual window strips its gears without opening, while an electric window, though still operable despite the presence of water, isn’t strong enough to open the window against the weight of the water in even minimal circumstances. So if you go in the drink, get the door or window open quickly, before too much pressure builds up.

Now, faux macho psycho that I am, I’ve long contended that, were I trapped in Underwater Car, I’d kick out / shatter a window and escape that way. This belief is based solely on the fact that I once cracked the windshield of my car with a single punch, about 15 years ago. (My brother was pretty impressed.) I always figured that it meant a panicked Gil would be perfectly able to crack one of the windows enough for the water-pressure to shatter the whole shebang, allowing me to escape. (Of course, it’s possible that Hyundai was using substandard glass in its windshields, but hey.)

Or, as it turns out, I could just use the LifeHammer.

After discovering that windows aren’t openable, the Mythbusters tested various ways to break an underwater car window. They found that standard “things you’d have in the car,” like keys or a cellphone, wouldn’t make a scratch. Even kicking the glass with steel-toed boots didn’t do the trick. So they resorted to a hammer designed to shatter the window in emergency situations (or if you’re a carjacker, I guess). It smashed the glass so completely, with what appeared to be a moderate swing, that I immediately jumped onto Amazon to add a couple of them to my shopping list.

Now I just have to figure out which wedding anniversary is the “glass-shattering hammer” one.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to print this blog out or make a PDF of it, but it used to look godawful in that format. I just figured out how to tailor the CSS file to allow for a print/PDF that looks like the actual page (which you may also think is godawful, but hey). So, if you want to print out the site to show it to all of your non-internettified friends, you can do so with impunity!

Yesterday was the birthday of the official VM wife, so we celebrated with a fancyish dinner at Mignon, in Rutherford, NJ. Because I’m a practical hubby, I got her Lightroom for photo editing & organizing, and a cover for her Mini Cooper. And because I’m romantic and all-powerful, I also blotted the moon out of the sky for her.

For apps, Amy ordered scallops, which turned out to be less a stand-alone food and more a delivery system for the sauce and other accouterments. I went with a tuna tartare salad, which was dosed with chili pepper straight from Los Alamos. Fortunately, my taste buds recovered well enough to appreciate our Alaskan cut ribeyes. The quirky highlight of the meal, however, was at the beginning, when we were served our bread. In addition to the standard butter, the dish also contained “meat spread,” which was basically a little steak tartare intended to be spread on the bread. It may sound gross, but trust me, it was fantastic. Unless you’re a vegetarian, in which case it really was gross.

Anyway, earlier in the day, my friend Cecily stopped in for a lunch visit, and dropped off a birthday gift for Amy and an early anniversary gift, which is putting the pressure on me to come up with a good one. Only 8 days to go! How do I top that lunar eclipse?