By Crom! I'm pretty tired of property rights issues. How about you?

Yeah, I was a big Conan The Barbarian fan long before the Arnold movies came out. I loved the comics. I nearly memorized the Robert E. Howard stories as a teenager. They proved to be my ruin as a weightlifter. I wanted to be able to do everything Conan could do. Warning to kids! Conan is a FICTIONAL CHARACTER!! Don't try this at home!!

I loved the movies, but I was into bodybuilding then and I loved Arnold. Even with the whole '81 Olympia thing. The movies were great Sword and Sorcery. They even advanced Cimmerian theology beyond the books. I also loved Mentzer. [I AM NOT GAY!! he shouted defensively. Making you wonder if he doth "protest too much."] I flourish pretty well under Mentzer's principles, but even working out once a week... Well, it's hard to maintain the enthusiasm and discipline. I found John Defendis' workout easier to follow, even though it didn't seem to work at all for me. 40 sets for biceps, 60 sets for triceps... You get almost immediate results: the arms do swell up. Just imagine what you do for Major Muscle Groups. It's an exciting and addictive way to train. But... Well, where is he nowdays? Looks like the same place I am.

My joints couldn't handle that. They broke down.

Twenty years later, I started running. I got up to regular runs of 17 and a half miles. Then the joints broke down. Later I discovered that the problem there was my shoes. I can run quite a ways in my Earth [walking] Shoes. Even though I promised myself that I wouldn't run until I got back down to 225.

Just walking 3.5 miles five times a week has brought me significantly below 14 stone, as the Brits say. That's 238 pounds. Today I was 229, after my walk. A little dehydrated, but I'll take it. Thirteen stone, here I come!

I've taken up the study of marketing as my hobby. The thing that's kept me from blogging is that I found a guy with a habit of offering tons of content to read if you buy his books. There's lots of free info on marketing on the web [for a nominal fee - and the danger of spending a lot of nominal fees (yes, that's self-directed irony)].

Peter J. Fogel did that to me. Michael Masterson and Robert Bly are The Gurus of Marketing.

I've also discovered through them the original Self-Help book - well, after Ben Franklin's which I still haven't managed to get ahold of - Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, available online. Masterson considers it crap - he says wealth is the result of behavior: actions you can take now are vastly more important than getting your mind and heart perfectly straight - but that's more a criticism of Hill's followers than of Hill.

Masterson: bump your income by getting involved in your company's income stream (sales, marketing, product creation and I forget the other - I've made my decision) or starting your own company - in particular, providing either useful information for people to use or the products, equipment or services those people need - invest in Real Estate (rental and "flipping"), bonds and gold. Stocks are okay IFF you spend a lot of time researching them. But, though all the other wealth building methods require a ton of research, investing in stocks requires the most research if you actually expect to get wealthy from them. He has recommendations for that too.

Hill (though I haven't actually finished the book yet): obsess about money and [but] give back to society. You can't get rich without the help of Society, so plan now for giving it it's cut.

I find value in both approaches, they're not mutually exclusive. I suspect it's the students who have objections, not the Masters. If you read any book of either you'll be better off for it. And better yet if you read all of both.

I'll get the links for you later. It's late. Early to Rise is Masterson's newsletter, I need to take that advice.