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Our Bible passage today comes from most of us atheists' third favorite part of the Good Book, that is, after Job and Leviticus. I refer, of course, to Ecclesiastes:

There Is Nothing New Under The Sun

(Ecclesiastes 1:9-14 NIV) What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. {10} Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. {11} There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow...14} I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

This morning, while tidying up the flood of dross that somehow manages to accumulate in even the most austere of households, I had a sudden wild hair. (Sorry if the real expression here is "wild hare" or something else. I am not a good speller or accurate recounter of cliches, such as one foul sweep, or is it one fell swoop?)

It's either this:



Or this...



Or maybe something else entirely...

Regardless of how it's spelled, my whiled hayre sprouted or hopped up after I received an email from Australia, the gist of which is not all that important, so I will reprint it in tiny font below, the better for disregarding:

Subject: A great online swimming resource

Hi, I found your details while doing research on swimming websites and wanted to share some information that you and the visitors to your site might find useful.

The resource is our “Teach Your Kid’s to Swim” website – http://www.Uswim.com. The site provides a wealth of information for anyone wanting to know more about good swimming techniques and especially those of you with children interested in learning how to swim.

We even have a YouTube Chanel - http://www.youtube.com/user/UswimAustralia which you can subscribe to and be notified whenever a new video is released.

If you think you, or anyone you know might be interested in our swimming information, we invite you to add a link to our page at: http://www.uswim.com (We have provided sample HTML for your convenience below)*.

Please let me know if you would like any further information or if there is anything further I can help with. If you do not wish to be contacted by me in the future please e-mail me to let me know.

Thanks,
Steve Jones
SiteMost Online Marketing
uSwim Australiahttp://www.uswim.com
*We suggest the following link:
Link Text: uSwim teaching your kids to swim
Description: Online swimming lessons for your children
Sample HTML: <a href="http://www.uswim.com"> uSwim teaching your kids to swim </a> - Online swimming lessons for your children.
This immediately raised the question: what imaginable kind of research might have lead Steve Jones of Australia to me?

Epiphany: the Google! He must have tired of chasing skinny-dipping wallabies and old salties out of his swimming hole and Googled something along the lines of "utlimate swimming-related authorities in the United States" and found at the very top of his Google list, "Vlog the Inhaler."

As indicated already, this Epiphany launched my wild hare to hipperty-hopperty out of its rabbit warren, or possibly my wild hair to painfully uncurl itself from its ingrown and inflamed recess. Either way, I was off to my own computer to ego surf "Vlog the Inhaler" myself to see how famous I am becoming in the ether!

Be careful for the fame you wish for. This is, alas, what I found--the apparent rantings of a criminal maniac in full-blown terroristic threat mode:

http://www.shanepowers.com/2008/12/vlog-inhaler-warning.html?showComment=1234115520000#c1027998684 767394656

WARNING: DO NOT WATCH FILM IF YOU ARE SCARED OF SWEARING CRIMINALS THREATENING VLOG THE INHALER

Upon further examination, I discovered that this possibly actionable promise of a beat-down was dated last December. Regular Vlog the Inhaler readers will note that my first post was in January, I am pretty sure.

Thus, with great relief that this apparent madman was targeting ANOTHER Vlog the Inhaler, my anxiety quieted and swimming evangelism took over. I invited the chain-smoking recreant to stop his filthy habit and swim instead.

I may be an atheist, but that doesn't stop me from being an evangelist for the One True Way, which I think we will all agree is swimming endless laps in an effort to shave a tenth of a second off our 50 yard freestyle times.

The fact that there may be another, indeed a whole squadron of other, Vlog the Inhalers out there in the Internet world reconfirmed the sagacity of Ecclesiastes yet again. Just as I was bemoaning my inability to come up with anything completely original, I noticed one of the angry Mr. Shane Powers' linked blog "followers." The name of this linked blog: The Phuckery.

Ecceliastical confirmation No. 2! There is no new Phuckery under the sun!

At the risk of giving Leslie The Fortress Livingston even more hits, comments, and superior blog statistics, please check out a chain of comments initiated here http://forums.usms.org/blog.php?b=1357#comments when I, Jimby, happened to mention in a comment to Leslie that the word **** is automatically detected by special USMS Vice Police software on this site and converted into four harmless little asterisks. This software, I further pointed out, is as good at speling as I am, thus it fine to write fuc fuk fook and fucity fuk fuc fik!

Final note for today: please do not allow the time you have spent tarrying on this post stop you from reading/watching yesterday's post if, indeed, you have not already done to at least a couple times already. In the race for the highest number of comments left on a swimming blog, Leslie seems to have appropriated my strategy of encouraging multiple short comments in lieu of one longish praisefest.

Thus:

Don't: Jim, I don't care how many Vlog the Inhalers are out there under the sun. You are the only one that matters to me! I love, love, love you!

Do:

First comment:

Jim,

second comment:

I

Third comment:

don't

Fourth comment:

care

and so forth, adding considerably to my tally. Thanks!

As hinted yesterday, and fulfilled today, there is a new Thornton Twins film for your viewing pleasure today.

So sweet is this visual confection, however, that I fear it might rot your teeth if you do not first consume something more meaningful and less pleasant to swallow.

So, for your own good, I include the first ever preamble homework assignment for Vlog the Inhaler viewers. Note: I know you don't want to do this. I know you would rather be consuming intoxicants with your friends or children. I know you would even rather be tapering.

But homework is for your own good.

Here it is:

1. This will be my 40th posted vlog, which puts me currently in 12th place for overall number of posted blog entries on USMS. The No. 1 spot is currently owned by my friend, Leslie Livingston, with 126 entries. As much as my fondness for Leslie knows no bounds, so does the necessity of "killing the Bhuddha" require that I either beat her in blogging, or blind and castrate my father and have sex with my mother. There are no other alternatives. I have made the excruciating decision to dispatch Bhuddha Leslie and leave be my parents' cremated remains.

2. In terms of posted comments, I am doing slightly better in the competiton for supremacy. My vlog has currently received 279 comments, safely ahead of Greek Olympic God, Chris Stevenson's 223. However, the damnably affable and friendly and must be killed Bhuddha Leslie has 620 comments, which is frankly just discouraging to the competitive Jimby. It doesn't help much that my 270 comments/39 blogs equals a ratio of 6.9 comments per entry, whereas Bhudda Leslie's 620/126 equates to a relatively less spectacular 4.9 comments per blog. I suppose I could apply the Finnish formula here in an effort to make myself feel a bit better, but the thing that would really make me feel completely whole is to become an Internet Phenomenon.

3. This is where your homework assignment comes in. Before watching the incredibly charming, Feel Good About Yourself Relative To Me, Early Oscar-Contending Short Film in both the Bible and Breast Bud categories, first:

• go back to the beginning of my vlog and open each entry separately.
• on the upper right hand corner, where you will see a little "rate this blog" thingy, click to open, then select "Excellent--Five Stars *****" and click again.
• go to another computer in your house and/or workplace and/or public library and repeat this process.
• at the end of the first vlog entry, where there is the option to leave a comment, please do so. You might want to get out a Thesaurus and concentrate on adjectives of a positive nature.
• E-mail every person you know with this set of instructions and beg them to follow each one to a T. Note: in order to leave a comment, but not to rate my vlog as "Excellent--Five Stars *****", you must get a sign-on name and password--totally free!--and then post at least one or two quick comments in the actual forum discussion threads. This is so that Jim Matysek won't think you are spammers. Spammers! That's the last thing we want here!
• Okay, you have completed your homework for Vlog the Inhaler Entry No. 1. Now, simply move on to Entry No. 2 and repeat the exact sequence outlined above. Yes, this does require another trip to your workplace and/or public library and/or separate part of your house. Yes it does require hauling out the Thesaurus again, though it might streamline things if you leave a Post-It note by some of your favorite positive adjectives. And yes, it does mean emailing everyone you know once again with your exhortations to follow the instructions again in exactly the same way. No one ever said homework was easy. The only thing one has always maintained is that homework is rewarding.
• Next, move on to Entry No. 3. Pretty soon, as you get into the posting, rating, emailing, driving around town, exhorting, swing of things, it will actually become fun! Your friends scattered throughout the Internet ether might not agree, and in fact, they might even ask you to desist and when you refuse (thanks!) they might try changing their email address. Track them down! It's rewarding!
• Once you get caught up with today's Entry No. 40, you should be able to do maintenance Vlog fan activities by rote and on a daily basis. Once inculcated, the homework habit does get easier, I assure you!
• If there are any questions and/or snafus and/or divorces that result from too much time spent on the computer, do not hesitate to post comments about this. Suggestion: instead of one long comment, break it down into many, many short comments. ( I think this may actually be one of the ways Leslie The Bhuddha Who Must Be Met in the Road and Killed Fortress Livingston has amassed her huge advantage over me.)

Thanks in advance for all your help!

And now, your spirit filled with a sense of Calvinism and a hard job done hardly and well, it is time for your well-deserved reward.

I give you a portrait of a wretch, and by so doing, the gift of feeling so much better about your own current circumstances relative to mine! Enjoy!

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsX4lVh26MQ&feature=subscription"]YouTube - Breast Buds and Dysthymic Pugs[/ame]

A very short palette or palate cleansing vlog tonight, not unlike the spritz of lemon and quick visit to the vomitarium our Roman forefathers reportedly used to make way for more decadent and sumptuous victuals to come.

There will be no mention of lubricity, callypygeanity, turgor, secretory glands, or other aspects of evolutionary biology.

Instead, I will use this to catch up on some housecleaning matters that no respectable vloggist can leave unattended for too long without attracting the attention of Internet Health and Human Services authorities.

1) what have we learned from recent posts?

• Cream Puffery sells. In the future, if I happen to hit a dry spot vis a vis readership interest, I shall simply drag old Puff out of moth balls, put her in an Ellie May outfit, and maybe, thanks to the miracle of Photoshop, have her remove her top and sunbathe by the cee-ment pond. Hopefully, it won't come to that. But if I have to, I will.
• A certain amount of misery also seems to sell. I think if I were to go overboard with gnashing and suicidal ideation and the like, perhaps my audience would not be able to relate. Thus I have toned it down to a pale approximation of what it is like to be me in a recessionary year in a Pittsburgh winter. I will not post crying jags here. I will keep all cutting secret. No matter how much the Hemlock Society may wish me to publicize their mission, I will not video my self-immolation, unless, of course, this takes the form of dessication by Cream Puff.
• The comments of loyal viewers of my vlog have been a blessing, allowing me to continue the masquerade that I am a male in the prime of life with libido robustly in tact and spirit bursting with bonhomie for all of God's chirpers and slitherers. In point of fact, I am a liver-spotted husk looking forward only to the Great Resting Reward, spiritless and filled with enmity for the mindless protoplasm all around me, a horde of lifeforms all hoping to gain purchase upon my corpse and thus elevate themselves at the expense of my accelerating descent!
• Somewhere in between the masquerade Jim and the reality Jim lies Dysthymic Jim Who Is Only Slightly More Miserable Than You Are (TM)--a creature that I am hoping the audience can
  
  • A) slightly identify with,
  • B) feel slightly superior to,
  • C) not be scared by, and
  • D) not really feel too much about one way or the other beyond a mild "there but for the Grace of God" relief mixed with "he sure is peculiar" amusement. This, I am convinced, is the perfect Vlogging personna that will attract maximum demographic audience attention.
  
  
• Note: If it gets too much, let me know and I will "ask" Cream Puff to make another involuntary guest appearance.

2. Let us all now take a cleansing breath.

One, two, three, four...exhale. Another. One, two, three, four...okay. Good.

Women readers might now want to assume either the Pigeon Pose or the Cat with Advanced Lordosis yoga positions. This will help you feel much more relaxed. If you have a camera, consider setting it on the 10 second delay, re-assuming the stretch, snap a few snaps no larger than 640 x 480 pixils, and email them to me. Who knows? The life force has been kick-started by far lesser stimuli.

3. A word or two on swimming:

Tonight's practice:

• 400 yards of Tai Chi swimming warm up on my own, during which I worked out various muscle adhesions and bone-on-bone grinding ailments/popping sounds.
• 8 x 100 on 1:25 warm up in a very, very sloshy pool
• 4 x 100 kick on 2:00
• 5 x 200 on 3:00 from push offs, the last one sprint (unused to kicking, I suffered from arch and toe and calf cramps that forced me to swim with foot at a right angle to the rest of my body, but still managed a 2:03 in the Maytag waters)
• easy 150
• 5 x 100 on 2:00 from push offs, the last one again sprint (major crampage, but came very close to breaking a minute, maybe a 59.999999 or so)
• 6 x 50 on :40 cool down
• 1 additional EZ 50 on my own to get the total up to 3600, or 2 miles.

4. Dedication/Pathology

Which reminds me: the incredibly affable and dedicated Mary Sweat, inventor and general impressario of the Go The Distance feature on USMS, just emailed a note about January's results. In this, Mary noted:

The maximum distance swum in January was by Darcy LaFountain who swam 179.58 miles (yes you read that right… all in the first month!).

By my calculations, Darcy (gender unknown to me but I suspect a woman) averaged 5.8 miles, or nearly 10,200 yards, each and every day of January.

Are you thinking what I am thinking?

Dysthymic Jim Who Is Only Slightly More Miserable Than You Are (TM) has definitely met his match in the person of one Darcy LaFountain Who Is Unbelievably More Dedicated Than I Will Ever Be, Possibly Because of Worse Mental Illness Than I Have (TM).

Congratulations, Darcy. Perhaps when Cream Puff has dessicated me to death, you can exact revenge on my behalf by challenging her to not a 1-hour postal swim-off, not a 25K national championship open water challenge, but the They Shoot Swimming Horses, Don't They? Nutcase Challenge 2009, the rules of which are that you start swimming and continue to do so till one of you gives up, perchance succumbing to a need to eat, sleep, excrete, or what have you. I suggest you both start swimming sometime next week, and we can revisit the competition sometime in August when it finally becomes interesting and the challenge of hallucinations, skin flaying via chlorine, and bone exposure really begins to test your respective mettles.

One final note: I am hoping that soon, perhaps even tomorrow, there will be another actual movie completed to put up here, the general theme of which is The Lighter Side of Jimby's Sickness Unto Death.

I don't think you're going to want to miss this one!

Then, starting this coming Monday, I will be launching onto my diet of soy protein, which nutritionists among you may know, is very high in phytoestrogens. The theme of the next month or so of nonstop vlogging?

You guessed it!

When it comes to voluptuous women, if you can't beat 'em, join em!

In one month's time, I hope to have the nicest rack of moobs in all the USMS membership roster, including that guy from the Midwest, who that other really tall guy from Arizona is always hitting on when the tall guy's wife Laura isn't looking.
_________________________________________
Note to self: talk to Jim Matysek about setting up a Pay-per-View option here. Hard to predict the revenue streams, of course, but Jim's Death by Cream Puff Dessication, the They Shoot Swimming Horses, Don't They Nutcase Challenge, and Moob Shots Galore all seem, at this point, to have nothing but upside potential.

I am about to take a sabbatical from scrofulous topics to allow my soul to heal. Replacement swimming-related topics will soon include such time-tested crowd favorites as:

• Depression, the serotonergic system, hippocampal neurogenesis, and swimming motivation
• How to be a better fan of Jimby: 25 ways to witness my Vlog more perspicaciously and in so doing contribute to the Vloggist's mental (and eventually, one hopes, financial) well being
• Actual resumption of movies featuring actual shots of water

I anticipate that this might lose me a few viewers who have stumbled upon my Vlog from outside our parochial community, after, that is, having accidentally Googled "buboes, trochar, vaginal kidney removal, girls, girls, girls, Jim Thornton" or other such common search terms.

To ease the transition from the low to the high minded, I will today attempt a middle-minded entry: one that features arguably the most universally loved and Internet stalked woman swimmer, after Leslie Livingston and the mystical Mermaid, in the USMS sorority.



Lovely Leslie Livingston with ultrahigh cheekbone bestows an otherwise unwarranted moniker on Rich "SwimStud" Bell. Note: what exactly is that on Rich's neck?

Mermaid, cropped, loveliness extant despite this

I refer, of course, to:



Kristina "S(he)-Male, the Cream Puff" Ulveling, Scandinavian swim goddess and Princeton graduate

Fans of Cream Puff's swimming prowess may know that she works out with teenagers on a USS Swimming team, and that she is trying her best to post life time records despite being in the 35-39 year age group, and hence at least two decades past her prime as defined by the Clampett Family.



Ellie May Clampett, 19, an marriageable old maid
who, like Cream Puff, put the best face on her crone qualities.

But enough preamble.

Let us cut to the chase here, what say you?

The Maguffin nutshelled: Within the last week or two, Cream Puff Ulveling posted a note on Facebook detailing her performance in a recent USS swim meet.

It was stunningly good.

There would be a long list of swimmers aged 15, 17, 13, and the like. Then, at the very top of the list, give or take a place of two, would be someone aged 37!

That someone was our little Puff!

So I sent her a quick Facebook note to show my admiration for her ability, despite being a withered ancient harridan, to beat the youngsters.

But let me not tell you about our conversation. Let me show you it, complete with pictures.

My comments in manly bold "Impact" font.

Kristina's comments in purplish pink "Georgia" font.



Kristina, you are one magnificent specimen, a human pug if ever there was one.

I don't know which races you used the B70 for, and which you didn't, but the only ones I can beat you in are the 50, 100, and 200 freestyle. Everything else, you squash me. And if you were wearing the non B70 for these shorter freestyles, you might beat me in the "only marquee events that truly count" too!



Well think you Jim. However, I protest! I looked up your times and feel that I take you in every event but the 100 FR. I didn't actually try in the 200. LOL Do I sense a gridge coming on?

Note: I am not going to change any of Kristina's wording, for she is the Princeton grad, not I, think you very much. However, her reply here sent me to the record books to see if indeed she was close to me in any of the shorter freestyle events.

First, I looked up me so far this year, then I looked up her (not listed, alas) so I had to go to last year's Top 10 listings. I shall paste in the findings:



Jim as of Feb. 5, 2009, at 6:55 pm eastern time. One needs no eye wear or squinting to see that our Jimby is currently in 1st place.




Cream Puff as of some moment in Ancient History. It's really hard to read, but in the 100, you will see (if you squint) that our Puff is in 7th place.


Oops, in my overconfidence I accidentally omitted the word "can" take you. This is going downhill fast. . .

[picture of me, Jim Thornton, originally posted in this very spot right here was deleted because I found out you can only have a total of 10 pictures in a blog post. The deleted photo just showed me in a hot tub, my lithe musculature golden from the sun, a kind of unconscious oozing of male sensuality reaching out to grab the reader by her neck and massage it till she goes limp with pleasure and relief from stress. Really, you aren't missing much.]

Kristina, even if what you say is true, the supreme marquee event of all swimming time is--and I don't think even Grant Hackett and Janet Evans would dare disagree with this--the 100 freestyle.

Why is it, do you think, that an aging male with a history of extensive psychiatric prescription use would be able to best a young, firm, hard-bodied dystaff vunderkind in swimming's marquee event?

Yes, you are correct!

It is because I have two adorable pugs, and you have only one--as cute as little Wanky is, (s)he's a solitary pug and thus unable to train your core the way Lefty and Biscuit train mine!

P.S. Kristina, to try to get more viewers on my vlog, I am going to feature you. I hope you don't mind. I will let you know when it is up. --Your stalker.

_______________________________________

Final note: After posting this P.S., I did give Kristina 17 seconds to reply with any objections. When I didn't hear anything, I turned Facebook off and put today's Vlog together.

To sum up:

I am better than Cream Puff in the 100 Freestyle. And probably the 50 and 200, too. Na na na boo boo!

I am a scrupulously fair-minded person, however, so I will allow the whipped Cream Puff to have the final word here. Since she didn't exactly say anything, I shall let a photo of her do the talking.



And on this note, my sabbatical from the scrofulous begins in earnest...unless I receive dozens and dozens of protests to the contrary. Or at least one.

A mini self-vlogging here before the more severe self-vloggulation of swimming practice begins in 1 hour and 10 minutes.

It has occurred to me, after receiving several comments, possibly from women with kidney stones and delicate Scylla and Charybdis-like nether passages to same, that a section of yesterday's vlog may have seemed to some of you (i.e., those who avoid reading about the latest scientific findings) to have been the arbitrary and sickly imaginative fantasies of a creeper.

I refer specifically to my offer to remove Jessica Alba's kidney through her birth canal.



One woman emailed me the following (in response to my circulation of the vlog url http://forums.usms.org/blog.php?b=1313 to select teammates in the hopes that they would A) open the vlog, B) click the "rate this vlog" button, C) select "Excellent!" ******, and finally D) either read it or not; once the Excellent tab has been checked, their further behavior is not my concern.

Anyhow, here, in its snippity snappity entirety, is what this snippy-snappy snapper wrote me, ostensibly in reference to Jessica, vaginas, and kidney extractions:

Jim, I don't rally need to get your email reply to all the Masters. I don't particularly get your humor. I would appreciate if you make a note to remove me from your group list, unless it is something you need to send to me specifically.

Thanks,

--Humorless Cur*

*name changed slightly

Not long after this, another young woman, whose opinion I care deeply about, and whose kidney I have long sort of wanted to extract with my trochar (see picture), told me she found the whole business tasteless, sick, and marveled at how I could have any friends at all.


Trochar being used on a rodent

Anyhow, we went back and forth on the topic of me, my lack of friends, the reason girls don't like me, why she thinks I am disgusting, that sort of thing, in other words, putting myself willingly through the Dr. Kurt Dixon "time is a violent stream and the world is a meat grinder" exact summation of La Condition Humane.

Then all of a sudden it occurred to me why this other woman (not Humorless Cur, the other one) was so mad about the whole business:

She thought I had made up the whole concept of kidney through vagina extractions!

As soon as I realized this, I felt so much better!

No, one thousand million times NO!

Jimby did not make up anything, ever, in the history of my life, having to do with vaginas and medical intervention! No, no! This is not my world! I have no desire to intrude here in any but the most wholesome of natural ways! And even this, due to no fault of my own, has proven by and large impossible!

Science made this up. Science and scientists and real men of Medicine and Hippocratic First Do No Harm Oaths!

I honestly and truly thought that this new procedure, publicized widely via the Associated Press yesterday, was something that everyone already knew about!

'Natural orifice' surgery is the final frontier


Ewen Callaway, reporter
We've all heard about the urban legend where a person wakes up in a hotel bathtub with a scar across the abdomen, one kidney lighter.
However, a new surgical procedure could make donating a kidney nearly scar-free - at least for women. For the first time, doctors extracted a kidney out of a patient's vagina for the purpose of organ donation.


You can read the whole thing here: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/sh...ry-is-the.html


So there. I think we all feel much better now knowing that beyond all possible question, your vlogger is 100 percent not a creeper.

Never was, is not now, not ever gonna be!

___________________________________________
Technical notes for those interested in the nuts and bolts of vlogging:

1. Attentive readers will note that Jimby has pioneered the self-referential "meta-vlog" in today's offering. Within the present vlog, he has provided a link to yesterday's vlog. He is considering going back to yesterday and inserting a self-referential link to today's, or yesterday's future, vlog. But he fears that he might somehow get stuck in a circular loop and spend the rest of eternity in something very close to perdition.

2. Another quality evident in today's effort is the use of random boldings of words and thoughts and so forth. Readers of comic books will see that Jimby has simply taken an old technique from Spiderman inkers and applied it to his own work a la Mary Jane below:

Omnes Vlogia in Tres Partes Divisa Est

Or, as Caesar himself might have described today’s practice:

Veni to the pool, Vidi how hot and disgusting the water was, and Vici despite myself

Part. 1. Bill

This morning, I received a couple emails from my best swimming friend in the world, Mr. Bill White, father of Liam White, who at age 8 handles all my more complicated technology installations and software problems. Bill handles the easier snafus. Bill is also the father of Ciara, the cutest little girl in all the world. When I was going through a particularly stubborn bout of depression a while back, the application of Ciara to my head like a tablet of skin-leeching ketamine was as close as I could come to feeling like my old self.




Bill White, best friend, and Ciara White, human antidepressant tablet




Liam White, Boy Genius

One of Bill’s emails described the removal of a kidney for transplantation purposes through a woman’s vagina. He suggested that I might consider having part of my liver removed through my anus and writing about this for Men’s Health magazine, my employer, for at least the myopically foreseeable future. I thought perhaps I should instead specialize in removing transplantable tissues through women’s vaginas, that I thought perhaps I would be better at this. Bill suggested that I could tell them I have a special surgical trochar that is particularly effective at such removal. I replied that I do indeed have such an instrument. And just as oilmen remove petroleum from deep in the earth by paradoxically pumping stuff in, so does my trochar work on this same pumping in to remove pay dirt out principle.

But this is off the subject of today’s vlog. I just thought perhaps some of my readers might enjoy a bit of romantic whimsy, seeing as Valentine’s Day, aka, VD, is not that far in the future.

Bill’s other email was, however, to prove the subject of today’s vlog. (Sorry for yet another momentary digression here, but I am using the word “vlog” of late interchangeably with the word “blog.” It is true there is not official video accompanying today’s post. However, I am hoping that I might be able to paint a video with my words that the reader can run through his or her own cranial VCR apparatus.

Example: Imagine Jessica Alba laying herself upon my chaise longe and announcing, as she removes her backless hospital gown, “Okay, Dr. Thornton. I am ready to have my kidney extracted by this novel means of yours.” Now imagine a couple lovely nurse-fluffers bustling around me, unbuckling my belt, and so forth. I say: “Trochar! Stat!” And within a minute or two, the nurses have the instrument ready and glisteningly sterile for the procedure.



"I'm ready for the procedure, Dr. Thornton!"

Here is a link to Bill’s other email, i.e., the one actually relevant to today's vlog. It is a press release entitled:

"New Study Reveals Swimming Can Cut Men's Risk of Dying in Half:
Research shows swimming may be the prescription for longevity."

http://www.nspf.org/Documents/Press_...s/PR_Blair.pdf

The good news here is that guys like me, at least if you believe research conducted and supported by the National Swimming Pool Foundation, and there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t believe such research, anyhow, the good news is that guys like me don’t have to die young, and in fact, we will be around for a very, very long time hoping to shove our trochars in to remove young women’s kidneys whenever the need for donor tissue arises. (And the way we old coots drive our Cadillacs, god knows there will be plenty of need for donor tissues!)

Part 2. Ronald Gainsford, Redux

Last night’s practice was incredibly grueling. I managed to finish it, come home, get in bed, read this awful book about a woman serial killer, a book that I tell myself during daylight I am not going to finish, but when night time comes around and natural grogginess is turbocharged by the Sandman’s imminent visitation, and I am too doltish to think of anything besides impossible evil vs. improbable good, I find myself turning once again to the bosom of this woman serial killer.

Where was I?

Oh, so I get up, waste a lot of time, think I have made progress, check, realize that progress was an illusion, send a friend of sort a couple quotes from Marcus Aurelius, and call it a day.




Mr. M. Aurelius of Rome

Then I go to the Y for a restorative super slow Tai Chi swim to keep massive adhesions from cementing my few remaining muscle fibers into the deltoid equivalent of lock jaw.

On the way, I stop at our mailbox and retrieve an oversized manila envelope from Ronald Gainsford, the fellow regular vlog readers will recall is a 79-year-old heart transplant recipient and incredibly accomplished swimmer who was one of the top 5 butterfroggers in the early 1950s, when “breaststroke” consisted of fly arms and breast kicks.

When I got to the Y, Ronald was there, as always, swimming a practice. He told me he has been gradually upping his effort to get ready for Worlds when he turns 80. He said that the hard thing was that he works his ass off in the pool to get stronger, then he has to go home and take all this antirejection medicine that makes him physically weaker. If there exists a more admirable Sisyphus swimming on Planet Earth today, I have yet to meet him.

When I got home, I scanned in Ronald’s letter and pre-Steeler game picture, complete with overhanging icicles. For what it’s worth, Ronald told me that he could not watch the last 10 minutes of the Superbowl because his heart could not take it. He kept his head down during the actual plays, and only watched them on replay.

Here’s Ronald’s latest note. I think this is the best evidence of all that the research Bill sent me was, in fact, valid.

Part 3. Dysthymia.

I have been sinking ever so slightly of late into a pit of despair, not sure exactly why, but the collapse of the global economy in general, and my economy in specific, might play a slight role. On this note, I shall now quickly paste in the two quotes from stoical philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, that I sent earlier to my Facebook friend. If these provide you any solace or succor, I am glad to have done so.

1. Time is a river, and a violent stream. For as soon as a thing is seen, it is carried away and another takes its place. And this will be carried away too.

2. Never surpass the sense of your original impressions. Perhaps they tell you that a certain person speaks ill of you. That was their sole message; they did not go on to say that you have been harmed by him. Perhaps I see my child suffers illness; my eyes tell me so but do not tell me his life is in danger. Always keep to your original impressions; add no interpretation of your own and you remain safe. Or at the most add a recognition of the great world order by means of which all things come to pass.

Epilogue:

Special thanks to A) Mr. Onefish, whose kind comment about my vlog inspired me to postpone the female serial killer’s shenanigans for a little bit tonight and write this instead, and B) all you lovely young women out there in Swimmingville who have begun the not-easy but still-right decision to donate one of your kidneys to needy children, and to let me extract this kidney through your vagina, despite the fact that the procedure I will be trying has yet to receive FDA approval.

Preliminary notes:

I realize that some of our ranks like to make excuses for their swimming times, or perhaps to put this in more charitable terms, place some perspective on the factors that interfere with optimal performance.

Some, well, me, are not like this. We are the Clint Eastwoodian, John Waynesque type swimmers, who never apologize, never explain, just let our swimming do our talking for us. Often "our action does our talking for us" in this sense involves a Gatling gun and a wide open plain strewn with bloody corpses in Speedos, being pecked by vultures.

The excuse community, in the case of the recent YMCA meet I took part in, might well cite factors such as:

• insufferable air inside the dank pool chamber, air which allegedly triggered dozens of asthma attacks in youngsters the day before
• heat levels that are as close to an August day in Houston as you can find on a February day off I-80 in Western PA
• an ongoing deterioration of global financial markets that contributes so much stress to those individuals subject to pathological worry that it would be hard for me, I mean them, to breathe successfully from a ventilator in an ICU oxygen chamber, let alone unaided in the Gitmo of that fetid, fetid YMCA!
• the remains of a bubonic cold that, though abating, refuses to abate completely
• a stretched out speed suit that is so cheap they can barely give them away when new, and this one is not even close to new
• diving blocks that were so high off the water that nitrogen narcosis remains an ongoing concern during the breakout to the surface
• lanes that measured approximately 18 inches in width. not lane lines, but the actual lanes themselves
• the entire meet, which began with a 2025 yard warm up around 11, and finished not too terribly long after 2:30, with many of my, I mean the swimming person's, own events arranged 1-2-3 just like that!
• etc.

But I am not one to take refuge in even the most rational reasons for failure, and so I will leave all these above (and many, many other) excuses unremarked upon.

Thus, without any adieu whatsover, or ado, or whatever the correct term is, without any of it, here are my results from yesterday's meet at the Franklin YMCA (not far from Clarion, PA, for those of you who know our neck of the woods):

• 100 freestyle AGE GROUP: 55-591 JIM THORNTON 56 M SEWY 53.56

• 50 freestyle AGE GROUP: 55-591 JIM THORNTON 56 M SEWY 24.63

• 200 IM AGE GROUP: 55-591 JIM THORNTON 56 M SEWY 2:20.32 29.03 37.70 43.50 30.09

• 25 butterfly AGE GROUP: 55-591 JIM THORNTON 56 M SEWY 13.28

• 200 mixed freestyle relay AGE GROUP: 100-139 SEWY A 141 X SEWY 1:49.08 BILL WHITE 38M, MOLLIE NADLER 24F, BRANDI GEISENDORFER 23F, JIM THORNTON 56M23.44 27.94 32.69 25.01

Now I must leave to do tonight's practice:

• 10 x 100 on 1:25 warm up
• 5 x 200 on 2:30 (get average time)
• 4 x 200 on 3:00 (beat previous average)
• 5 x 100 on 1:20 (get average)
• 3 x 100 on 1:45 (beat average)
• 1 x 50 on :45 easy

total 3650

Possibly more commentary to come. I shall closely monitor the success or failure of this totally excuse-less swimming vlog to see if such fodder is what my blog-hungry audience craves, and if so, provide more of it; or if not, then quietly allow the hardcore swimming stuff to atrophy away, vlogging more about the subtler aspects of aquatic Jimnitude, which may or may not include the erotic death fantasies few readers have a taste for.

Too exhausted to vlog extensively.

Swam okay at meet today, times to be reported later when officially on web. Foreshadowing: massive heart valvular damage and/or other performance-inhbiting physical catastrophes were not validated by meet today. need to do follow up checks, however, and remain vigilant

Events:

100 free
50 free
200 IM
25 fly
200 mixed freestyle relay

the meet started at 12:00 with my first event at 12:15. the meet ended around 2:30 with my last event at 2:00.

i may have more words on the "need for rest between events" that seems to be required by hot house flowers who did not grow up in the acid rain and toxic fumes of Pittsburgh.

As tiring as the meet was, the Superbowl was much, much more exhausting. I am limp. I am ennervated. I am like the guy in the Victorian collection of ribald erotica, the Pearl, who is forever claiming, "I spend! I die! I am spent! I am dead!"

I am that guy.

Only football oriented.

My testosterone levels went from semi-manly, to girlish, to invertebrate, and then back to Arnold Schwarzenegger right after a horse sized hypodermic injection of clear and cream.

But enough for now.

To sum up:

I am spent.

The Pittsburgh Steelers, and those of us whose fandom nourishes their efforts, are the highest forms of life to ever exist in the Universe. If you are an atheist, it is time to reconsider your views.

There IS a higher power.

And that higher power is me. And the rest of the team.

This is a picture of a fortress, the metaphor that the lovely Leslie Livingston has embraced as her USMS inner identity. How and why she chose such a metaphor is lost in the mists of time.

Or I guess you could ask her.



This is a picture of Vlad the Impaler, the medieval ruler (upon whom Dracula is allegedly based) that serves as the inspiration for the lovely Jim Thornton's USMS personna. That and Woodstock from the comic strip, Peanuts.

Jim picked Vlad the Impaler as his self-image because it sounded like Vlog the Inhaler. Really, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Hopefully, this, too, will soon be lost in the mists of time.

Jim picked Woodstock because in his inner mind's eye, he is an adorably cute little yellow bird who doesn't talk.

Naturally, when Jim "Vlog Woodstock" Thornton needed counsel about his vlog, he sought out the advice of Leslie "Fortress" Livingston, whose blog "FAF AFP Digest" sets the standard for blogging excellence on these forums.



Picture of Leslie (on left, with beard) and Jim (on right, in dress) undergoing therapy.

Some of what was discussed can't be revealed here because of mandated reporting laws, Amber alerts, the 10 Commandments, and other aspects of Society's ********, man. But the advice that can be reproduced is this:

"Jim, maybe if you put an occasional workout into your Vlog, you'd get more viewers and comments."

Point taken, Mistress Fortress! May I have another, please!

Here's what I swam today, which I should add is the capstone on a January totaling 36.73 miles:

• 1 x 1000 broken into a 600 with open turns and a 400 with flip turns, the whole thing incredibly slow, but no less torturous for the slowness, as all the while "Up the Lazy River" played in an endless loop in my brain

• 20 x 50 on 1:05, the interval chosen so that the exhausted brain would not actually have to count, but rather rely on the clock to more or less do this for him.

• 1 x 10 minutes in the Sewickley YMCA steam bath

• 1 x 8 minutes in the Sewickley YMCA men's shower room, shaving during my shower

• 1 x 30 seconds in the pool again to stop sweating from the steam bath and shower

• 1 reasonably average flight of stairs to the lobby

And home again, home again, like a fat little pig!

Tomorrow, we have a meet in Franklin, PA, 1 hour and 23 minutes from Sewickley. Those interested in the nice local league we Western Pennsylvanians swim in can view not only our meet schedule but Top 10 Times dating back to 1982. Simple click here and enjoy yourself:

http://www.amymsa.org

Finally, Leslie, I shall be monitoring the Vlog's activity in the wake of your excellent advice. Who knows? Perhaps one day, the student might even catch up with the teacher. And you know what must happen then, eh?

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Why northern swimmers get better workouts than the hot house flower types from California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, and other meteorologically pampered regions of the earth.

• Number of miles swum so far in January, 2009: 30.01

• Average yards per day during the past 9 days post the "end" of my sickness: 3227.78

• Qualitative self-assessment on the Jim Healthometer scale, wherein 91 percent is realistically the best I can hope for: 42 percent

• Qualitative self-assessment on the Jim Healthometer scale during the height of the bubo outbreak: 37 percent

• Number of yards swum during practice today before I began seeing lights that weren't there and found my muscles were shaky and my head light-headed: 2100

• Number of packets of Gu required to complete tonight's practice: 2

• Total yards tonight's practice: 4000

• Days I have been alive: 20,562

• Predicted life expectancy in days based on somewhat suspect on line caclulator at http://calculator.livingto100.com/calculator/age : 32,850

• Remaining number of days: 12,288

• Current Top 10 Times for the Age Group I might make it to:

100 Freestyle SCY Men 90-94 (2008)
# Name Age Club LMSC Time
1 Brud Cleaveland 90 FMM Florida 1:46.17
2 Russ Witte 90 SWOM Ohio 1:54.05
3 Tom Haver 90 SDSM San Diego - Imperial 2:20.05
4 Donald B Pope 93 MICH Michigan 4:38.01

• AT (Anaerobic Threshold) time per 100 SCY one year ago based on the 1 hour swim: 1:14.61

• AT time per 100 this year based on the 1 hour swim: 1:16.6

• Most recently measured sperm count, including gimps, two headed specimens, dead ones, and assorted monstrosities: 965,000,000 per ejaculation

• Three favorite excerpts form William Wordsworth's ODE INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD:

*


Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?


*


Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy


*


Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' Darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!

In a very rare, in fact, unheard of double vlog posting in one day, I present to you breaking news from the cutting edge of swimming celebrity journalism!

I, your humble gossip-mongering Masters swimming vlogger, feel I simply can't sit on this story. It is THAT timely and topical.

Tonight, while wasting time on Facebook, I noted that two of my "friends" were on at the same time I was. These two friends were:

Ambrose "Rowdy" Gaines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowdy_Gaines



And Ian "Guitar Neck Penis" Crocker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Crocker



What initially caught my eye and inspired me to talk to Ambrose was a product he was apparently hawking:

Blu Frog Energy (Easy Cash Opportunity)

Ambrose, AKA, Rowdy, is listed as one of the administers of a marketing site on Facebook set up to sell this stuff. I found this a bit, well, disgusting. So I began the chat and will reproduce it in its entirety for your vicarious reading pleasure:

__________________________________________

Ambrose 'Rowdy' Gaines

hop on over to the new energy drink, "Blu Frog"! TLC's all new healthy energy drink! http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=3772010 9826. about an hour ago
10:31pm James how much do you get paid for this?

10:32pm Ambrose hey there, you are paid in commission for every case you sell
there is a whole set of commission rates

10:32pmJames good luck

10:33pmAmbrose oh i'm not apart of the selling at all. i'm just sharing the opportunity with other people

10:33pmJames okay. well, good luck to them then

10:34pmAmbrose haha. alrighty then

10:34pmJames hahahaha. don't mean to be a hard ass here or a sumbitch. nothing wrong with money

10:35pmAmbrose haha i gotchya brother...

10:35pmJames is this the actual ambrose, or is it an ambrose impersonator? part of Ambrose Rowdy Gaines Amalgamated Enterprise LPC INC Holding Co.?

10:36pmAmbrose i'll let you decide that

10:36pmJames I think this is a wholely owned subsidiary of Ambrose Inc. Which is still closer to celebrity than I have gotten all day

10:37pmAmbrose LOL hey i'll be right back

10:37pmJames The real Ambrose should be out with supermodels or practicing his annoucing diction

AT THIS POINT, AMBROSE'S PROMISE TO "BE RIGHT BACK" BEGAN TO SEEM DUPLICITOUS. OH, LET'S NOT PUT TOO FINE A FACE ON IT. THE BASTARD LIED TO ME. AFTER AN AGONIZING 47 SECONDS OF ANTICIPATION, IT BECAME ABUNDANTLY CLEAR HE WOULD NOT BE RIGHT BACK. I BEGAN TO WONDER IF HE WOULD BE BACK AT ALL.


THEN MY EYE CAUGHT THE ARRIVAL ON THE SCENE OF ONE OF SWIMMING'S OTHER GREAT CELEBRITIES, ONE MR. IAN CROCKER, BUTTERFLYING LEGEND. ALAS, IT SEEMED LIKE MR. CROCKER HAD A PROBLEM. IT WAS A PROBLEM, MOREOVER, THAT I THOUGHT PERHAPS I COULD HELP HIM WITH: RELIEF FROM THE CONDITION HE CLAIMED TO SUFFER. TO WIT:

Ian Crocker
is bored out of his mind.7 minutes ago

10:41pm James
Is this the actual Ian Crocker who is bored out of his mind?
Ian? Mr. Crocker?
Yo!
Mr. Ian "Bored out of his mind" Crocker?
Say, there!
Mr. Ian Crocker!
Eee Eee!
Crockadock!
Is this Mr. Chokablock o' Crockadock Eee Crocker?
Theory: Ian Crocker's people put out on Facebook that Ian Crocker is bored out his mind and within nanoseconds swimming groupies descend upon him and...
Ian? Ian!
This is your mother, young man!
I am over at Jim Thornton's house and--no, it's none of your business what I am doing at Jim Thornton's house at this hour, Ian.
Ian, you impertinent little...
Go to your room!
You come over here, and I will give you something to be bored about.

_____________________________________

ALAS, NONE OF MY APPEALS TO MR. CROCKER MANAGED TO BRING HIM SUFFICIENTLY OUT OF HIS TORPOR TO REPLY TO MY EARNEST REQUESTS FOR A DIALOGUE AMONG SWIMMERS. AT FIRST, I WAS PEEVED, THEN I STARTED TO WORRY--SHOULD I CALL 9 1 1 AND TRY TO GET HIM PSYCHIATRIC HELP AND POSSIBLY AND STOMACH PUMP? THEN CONCERN TURNED BACK TO PEEVISHNESS, AND I WENT BACK TO CHECK ON AMBROSE AGAIN.

10:44pmJames I just attempted a conversation with another, albeit somewhat less famous, swimming legend, Mr. Ian, Bored out of His Mind, Crocker. No progress was made.

10:45pm James I see that the Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Ambrose "Rowdy" Gaines Incorporated Amalgamation Inc. Off Shore Licensing and Leasing Company is off helping other Facebook friends hop on over to Blu Frog Energy Drink Sales and Riches!

Later, brother!

_____________________________

Maybe I am being unfair. Okay, I acknowledge that it is possible I am being unfair. It is now 11:14, almost a full half hour since Ambrose promised to get right back to me.

I will quickly check Facebook to see what Rowdy and Ambrose have to say. I am sure all is forgiven and forgotten, that we are best buddies again, and that they will probably be asking me for videos of my swimming strokes so that they can provide free pointers.

Be right back!

_____________________________________________

Please join me in boycotting Blu Frog Energy Drink. As for you Ian, I could have saved you, man. It was only boredom. You didn't have to die. If only you'd replied just once so I could have triangulated your location and notified 9 1 1.

Rest in peace, Mr. Crocker. Where you're going now, I hear boredom is the least of the problems--and all they give you down there to slake your considerable thirst? You guessed it! Blu Frog Energy Drink, the choice of damned swimmers everywhere.

1.After my recent and seemingly interminable throat-bubo-nausea interlude, I’ve emerged into a more normal state of Jimnitude, which is to say:

• grogginess that borders on a pathological Epworth Score (http://www.umm.edu/sleep/epworth_sleep.htm );
• motivation that is, at best, lackluster and in need of pharmaceutical intervention (http://www.drugfree.org/Portal/DrugI...ces/index.html );
• low-level economic heeby-jeebies (http://finance.google.com/finance?cl...q=INDEXDJX:DJI )
  
• alternating with inappropriate libidinal cravings http://www.mermaidcastle.com/mermaid...g_in_Waves.jpg

2.To make up for my indolence in the water, I have tried to use last Sunday’s hour swim followed by YMCA masters meet to jump start a return to reasonable monthly yardage. Last year, my Go The Distance http://www.usms.org/fitness/content/gothedistance miles totaled 43.3 miles for January. This year, I have managed only 25.89 so far, though I have a few more practices remaining in January to try to bridge some of this deficit.

3.One way I have been trying to up the miles without completely breaking down is to alternate regular practices with relatively slow, easy technique days. For example, on Thursday, I did a very slow 1000 warm-up using my trademarked Tai Chi SwimmingTM technique. At some point, I hope to be offering workshops on this exciting new swimming program. But for those of you who either can’t wait or are still saving up the $1299.99 cost for a half day seminar, I will give you a teaser hint: just swim as slowly as you possibly can without drowning.

4.After tai-chi-ing for 20 minutes or so, I did 7 sets of 5 x 50 concentrating on different aspects of my freestyle: 1) head down, 2) high elbow catch, 3) six-beat kick, 4) stream lined push off, 5) tight tuck during flip turn, 6) stream lined push off with two tiny SDKs, and finally 7) put all this stuff together. Then I did some trademarked Meditatively Hypoxic Ommm Cool Down 50sTM. Again, I plan on eventually hosting expensive (but worth it!) seminars on this, but for those of you on a swimming budget, the teaser idea here is this: Hold your breath on the first 25 while chanting your personal mantra; open turn, a few restorative cleansing breaths on the wall, streamlined pushoff, followed by a return 25 where you can breathe ad libertum while chanting your other personal mantra.

• Note: as part of your enrollment in my future seminars, I will provide you with your own unique Meditatively Hypoxic Ommm Cool Down 50sTM MantrasTM, both one for going down during the breath holding portion, and one for coming back during the re-oxygenation ad libertum portion. Until you receive your unique mantras, feel free to use the generic “bearers bonds” and “spirochetes”. Note: do your best not to dwell on the meaning of these mantras, which were chosen purely for the sound the words make in the silent resonating chambers of a swimmer’s skull.

5.It is now 1:20 p.m.—time to pack up my bolsa—the ultimate in both masters swimming bags and Mexican Mercado shopping containers (http://www.mexgrocer.com/61045.html) and head down to the Sewickley YMCA ( http://www.sewickleyymca.org/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx ) and repeat this same easy practice, only doing it as 25s this time and not 50s.

Very short vlog today, with only a tiny bit of swimming relevance.

As perhaps the most sickly human being in Christendom, I find myself having to tighten my esophageal sphyncter by pure force of will to keep today's foodstuffs--one (1) cold leftover grilled pork chop; the remainder of a carton of cottage cheese; a frozen and semi-thawed Gatorade, red color; and a packet of GU--from making their egress from my stomach in the wrong direction.

Will this keep me from going to swimming practice?

No, one thousand million times no!

I am made of sterner, albeit more nauseated, stuff.

To bolster my resolve, I will take comfort from the new wind blowing across the fruited plains, which promise to minimize the ruination to come and help us overcome the ruination we have already been subjected too.

I say, put the scalawags into the debtor's prisons, and let us debtors get to spend our incarcerations in the country club prisons where the CEOs used to go.

Criss cross, guy! Criss cross!

With any luck at all, I will be put into a California prison with a swimming pool, where I can represent the prison league in masters competitions with other incacerated but well-meaning debtors nationwide!

On this note, my twin brother's latest filmic homage to our times: a real charmer featuring young Cameron, the same little vunderkind who appeared in the classic "Sunk" video posted a while ago.

Enjoy!

Theme: It's a small world after all.

When I swam last year with Team Pitt Masters in Pittsburgh, I got to know a number of incredibly nice swimmers from not only Western PA but all over the world. Two such fellows are Yiu Law and Bodo Reitz (no relation to Heather, I am pretty sure). Yiu, pronounced "You," is originally from the Far East; Bodo is from Germany.

Here is a picture of the three of us after practice one winter night as we prepare to go out into the cold:



Bodo recently moved back to Germany to work for Siemens, I am pretty sure, or some other company that uses extremely smart physicists for medical imaging technology type work. He told us where in Germany he was moving back to, but I don't spreken zee Deutsch all that well myself, and it didn't sound like Munich, Berlin, or Hamburger, so I was pretty sure I wouldn't know where it was even if I could remember it.

Time moves forward.

A couple days ago, I got wind through Leslie Livingston that our mutual friend TJ Morton--see picture below with TJ on the right and Aquageek on the left:



--anyhow, I got wind that TJ, whom I'd met at Colony Zones SCY Championships in years past, was moving to Germany for 2-3 years starting next July.

As sad as this is for us Americans, I figured the Germans would be very encouraged by TJ's immigration. I decided to email three swimming friends--Bodo, who I knew resides now somewhere in Germany, and Lydia & Craig Holley (alas, no pictures available) who used to work for military intelligence in Germany and swam there on a masters team for a number of years.

Even as I tip-tapped out my email, I figured the chances were tiny either Bodo or Lydia or Craig would know of swimming possibilities in TJ's future town of Erlangen, which I personally had never heard of and figured it must be some Bavarian backwater where villagers with rakes and torches still hunt wild boars and fear vampires.

Bracing myself for ridicule--"You know, Jim, Germany is a large country, how are we supposed to know masters swimming teams in--what did you call it? Erlangen!!!"--I nevertheless did what I figured was my duty: connect TJ with a replacement group of like-minded aquatic buddies in the pacified Fatherland.

Here is what I wrote:

________________________________________

Dear Bodo, Craig, Lydia, and TJ,

A quick word of introduction:

TJ Morton is a great guy I have become friends with at USMS swimming meets in the D.C. area. He is moving to Germany this summer and is trying to figure out the masters opportunities there.

Bodo, Lydia, and Craig are all swimmers with ties to both the Pittsburgh area and Germany. Bodo just moved back to his native land; Lydia and Craig lived in Germany for many years before relocating here to Sewickley.

I am not sure exactly where Erlangen is, but if you guys could drop TJ a line and let him know any advice you have for him swimming in Germany, we would both be very grateful.

Thanks!

--Jim

________________________________________

Within a couple hours, Bodo wrote us back:

________________________________________

Hi TJ,

this is Bodo writing, I just moved from Pittsburgh back to Germany early last year, actually I ended up just in the same area you are heading to - some 12 miles away from the 50 m indoor pool in Erlangen (although I usually go to the pool which is located 1.5 miles away from my apartment).

So this should already demonstrate that there are plenty of opportunities to get into the water - within city limits of Erlangen there are at least two indoor facilities (open in winter) and several outdoor pools (open in summer) and most villages around have public pools as well. The Roethelheimbad (50 m indoor pool , open the whole year around plus an outdoor facility in the summer) is actually close to the Areva site.

This is a link, to get a few pictures of the public pools in Erlangen:

http://www.erlangen.de/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-152/

(sorry, only the navigation is available in english, the description itself is still in German)

There are several swim teams in Erlangen, I don't know them, but I am sure that they have either a masters program or another program you like - I will check the next time I go to the pool (I happen to have training in Erlangen this week) for a list of teams, and whether they have their own web site.

Feel free to email me any questions you might have about the area, I am happy to try to answer them.

Later,

Bodo

________________________________________

By the time I found Bodo's letter in my email box, TJ had already replied:

________________________________________

Thank you Bodo. I am very excited about moving to Europe. As a matter of fact, the ONLY thing holding me here has been my masters swim team and the friends I have made at meets.

As the time for us to move approaches, I will have more questions. I believe that we will visit in May for one or two weeks to find a place and to see the area. Most of the American AREVA employees that I know of, live in Nurnberg, but we would enjoy living in a small town in the countryside too.

I look forward to meeting you.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,

T.J. Morton

________________________________________

Thanks, Bodo.

TJ, Bodo is an incredibly nice guy. I had no idea that he had moved so close to where you are going, but now you will know a wonderful friend when you and your family are in Germany!

Small world!

--Jim

________________________________________

The next day, Craig responded, too:

________________________________________

All,

Erlangen is just outside, (north), of Nurnberg....like most German cities it will have a swim club with a website and contact info. Masters swimming in Germany is everywhere, very well developed, and lots of fun. let me find their website with contact numbers and I'll get back to you.

Craig

their website is http://www.ssg81erlangen.de/training.htm,

their masters group is run by Jürgen Thiel, they have contact info etc on the site.

________________________________________

Jim,
Thanks again for putting me in touch with Bodo and Craig. I will miss my swim team and meet friends, but I'm sure I'll make new ones. Plus, it's only 2-3 years.
See ya' Jim,
T.J.

________________________________________

Time and again, it truly amazes and inspires me how our goofy sport of plodding back and forth in the water seems to unite and cement friendships in people who would otherwise have a nil probability of ever even seeing, let alone meeting each other.

TJ, AKA, Iwannafly, please do stay in touch with all of us here on the forums and let us know about your new German swimming friends.

________________________________________

Epilogue:

I actually saw Craig's wife Lydia at the Y pool today. She hadn't seen the emails, but when I explained the situation, she told me she LOVED swimming masters in Germany. "They don't really get into the training so much as over here," she told me. "You might have scheduled practices two times a week. But they REALLY get into the meets. And the food they prepare afterwards is all home-cooked andwonderful."

Lydia also said that the Germans are extremely fastidious about their suits. The moment they finish a race, they take off a wet suit and put on a dry one. The men, she says, change on the deck! They wrap a modesty towel around their waists, drop the wet suit, then shimmy the dry one up unseen.

TJ, perhaps you might want to practice this maneuver at home before moving.
________________________________________
Final notes:

I was going to go onto Babelfish http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_txt and translate this whole page into what would surely be unreadable German. But I see that, as always, I have gone on a bit long in my vlog today!!!

Or as TJ might soon be saying this, Aber ich sehe, dass, als immer, ich auf eine Spitze lang in meinem vlog heute gegangen bin!!!

So, I shall just end with a few more pix gleaned from the Erlangen masters web site. These evidently show a bracing summer meet in a land thus far untouched by global warming:

Baby girls and baby boys
ready for pick up in eight weeks.

--excerpt from a recent Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ad for AKC-registered pug puppies


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A couple quick additional notes to the above:

1. I posted the following thread on the regular forums, but in case anybody missed it, I shall repost here. It is my request for master swimmers and their pugs pictures for an upcoming photo assemblage for which today's vlog is a teaser: For some peculiar reason, it seems that a lot of the nation's top masters swimmers are also pug owners.
   
   Ande Rasmussen, Kristina Ulveling, Heather Rietz, and--well, ah, me--are all owners of at least one and in some cases multiple pugs.
   
   I am hoping to do a little vlogumentary about the curious connection between swimming and affection for flat-nosed little dogs.
   
   If you are, or know, a swimming pug owner, would you consider sending me some photos (resolution 640 x 480 at least) showing you and your quadrapedic wards. Please include your name, your dog's or dogs' names, and any theories you may have about the link.
   
   The photos do not have to show pugs in the water, or wearing goggles, or decked out in a matching Speedo and Zoomers with its owners. But you can certainly send such pictures if you have them.
   
   Send to Jamesthornton1@comcast.net or post them on your FB and/or USMS photoalbums. Just let me know where I can find them, and I will do my best to make your pug famous!
2. On an unrelated note, if you have not already seen these blogs, I highly recommend anyone who has considered weight training as an adjunctive performance booster for swimming to read Chris Stevenson's trenchant (is this a word?) and fair-balanced analysis at http://forums.usms.org/blog.php?b=1105 Ditto for Leslie The Fortress Livingston's equally trenchant (again, assuming this is a word) and fair-balanced (maybe a little less so than Chris's; after all, we hypochondriacs are subject to wishful thinking and placebo effects) comments, which I shall paste here: Here's you answer on the other issue, copied from my blog:
   
   I see you're trolling around for answers on this question. For me, they make a huge difference. I think the key factor in my improvement since Austin is weights. And I still don't do them frequently enough or with heavy enough weight. Much as I'm not fond of them, I will probably carry on with the endeavor through Indy. Ande calls weights "free speed". The ranked swimmers on my team (guys anyway) all lift. You should be lifting for general health and fitness anyway or you'll have the gradual erosion of muscle mass problem.
   
   Kick sets are likewise a a staple for me. I do them for two reasons: they save my shoulders and they are essential for sprinters. However, I think they're key for your fav 200 free as well. Most elite 200 freestylers, kids and masters that I see, have a constant 6 beat kick. I've seen some without it of course, but many of the best have it. I think ehoch commented on this in his "speed zone" thread. I think my ability to do a decent 200 back as a drop dead sprinter is due more to my kick work than my training in general.
   
   If you're looking to improve your swimming (and you've improved a lot in the last year with Bill's workout despite the buboes), these are the obvious two areas for you to work on.
   __________________
3. Summary: Weight lifting, kick sets, good for swimming. Pug ownership--quite possibly, even better. Again, please send in your pug photos! Jamesthornton1@comcast.net

“Whatever you do, don’t ever let anybody put you in the trunk of a car.”

--J. Ronald Gainsford, 2006, over a pasta dinner in the Polish Hill section of Pittsburgh




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Today’s vlog is the first in an occasional series of profiles of teammates I’ve become friends with thanks to a shared interest in swimming. Ronald, now 79, was at one point the fourth fastest butterflier in the world. He missed out on the Olympics, alas, because two of the guys faster than him were also both US citizens, and the team only took two American representatives in the fly.



Such factoids are probably the least interesting things about Ron, who grew up in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh back in the days when this was known more for thuggery than the University. At age 10, he and his friends offered to “protect” the cars of people who came to watch Pitt football games. Those sports fans who paid indeed got protection. Those who didn’t got flat tires.

A couple years ago, when I was swimming regularly at Trees Pool atop “cardiac hill” in Oakland, Ron would regularly remind me to be careful, claiming he knew personally at least three murderers within a block of the pool.

One, who suffered some form of insanity, had bludgeoned his victim to death with a hammer. Because of this, Ron would always keep his hand in his gym bag as we walked through the streets to the pool. He showed me once what he kept in there, but I can’t say what it was.

I did, however, ask him how “they” could know what his hand was holding.

“Oh,” he told me. “They know, all right.” Then he laughed the way guys do who don’t ever let other guys put them in a trunk of a car.

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I’d like Ronald even if his pearls of advice hadn’t, at least theoretically, saved my life.

About nine years ago, I wrote a story on Masters swimming for my former employer, Men’s Journal magazine. Like most men’s magazines today, this publication was so obsessed with their youthful demographics that a guy past 40 doesn’t stand a chance of making it in as an athlete. I am pretty sure the following passage, which was my favorite part of that particular story, ended up on the editorial room floor.

I will paste it in here because I think it will give you another idea of what Ronald has been through, and why he’s such an admirable fellow, and why swimming seems to offer all of us some real hope for salvation:



When it comes to inspirational tales of the heart, there’s one man on our team who clearly trumps everybody: Ronald Gainsford, a 70-year-old retired Pittsburgh public school teacher. In 1953, Ron was rated fourth in the world in the 100 and 200 yard butterfly. He missed the Olympics only because, he says, "the three guys ahead of me were also from the U.S."

I first met Ron over the lunch hour when I spied him swimming laps at the Y. You could tell immediately from his form that he was a great swimmer, so I tapped his shoulder in between laps to recruit him for our team. He stood in the shallow end and pointed to a huge scar running down the center of his chest. "I’d love to," he told me, "but I’m not supposed to compete. I’ve had a heart transplant, and my doctors don’t want me to go too fast."

Ron told me he’d suffered a minor heart attack at age 55, followed by a devastating one in his early 60s. His heart was too badly damaged to be helped by bypass surgery, so his doctors kept him alive via medications, knowing that his only ultimate hope was a transplant. For five years, he told me, he’d lived "a nursing home quality of life"--unable to even walk the 25-yard length of a pool without stopping to rest.

Just after turning 65, with his heart now pumping only one-sixth the normal blood volume, Ron finally received a donor heart from a 25-year-old guy killed when his pickup truck slid off an icy road. Though the surgery went well, Ron developed a staff infection that came close to killing him again. The day we met at the Y, Ron had just started swimming again and was trying to build up to 20 easy lengths a day.

All of which helps explain my utter astonishment when, eight months later, I run into Ron here in Baltimore. Not only is he competing but he’s swimming some of the fastest times in his age group.

"What’s happened to you?" I ask him.

"After I talked to you in Sewickley," he explains, grinning, "I just kept slowly, slowly building up my distance in all the strokes. I went from 400 yards a day to 1800 yards. I said to myself, Hey, you’re getting pretty good at this, maybe too good for just recreational swimming.

"So I went back to my cardiologist and told him I wanted to compete again. I underwent a full catheterization, and the results came back great. My doctor said, ‘I don’t see any reason why you can’t compete if you really want to do this.’"

The Baltimore meet, it turns out, is Ron's third since getting the thumb’s up. In April, he medaled in several events at the highly competitive US indoor nationals. In July, he placed 4th in breaststroke, 6th in butterfly, and 10th in backstroke at worlds in Munich. Even as his times continue to drop, he’s refuses to take full credit for the accomplishments. A day doesn’t pass, he says, without him thanking the young guy whose heart beats inside him.

"Whenever I talk about my races," he tells me minutes before the freestyle relay, "I always say we swam well."

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I’m not sure how many septuagenarian swimmers visit my vlog, but if you know any guys who same in the early 1950s, and perhaps competed at or against the University of Pittsburgh in those days, I would truly appreciate you passing this vlog on to their attention.

Ron is talking about possibly swimming at the Worlds Masters meet when he turns 80. He did swim at the world transplant games recently, and I think he would do really well at the regular games, as well.

Ronald, a life-long bachelor, lives alone. He goes to the Sewickley YMCA pretty regularly. I’ve tried to talk him into joining the computer world, what with email and Facebook and USMS forum discussions. But he won’t go for it. If you have a spare moment and think of it, send him a postcard.

I’m sure it would make his day. And you will have a friend for life.

J. Ronald Gainsford
167 Carnation Avenue
Pittsburgh , PA 15229-1001

Q & A with Jim Thornton
Second in an occasional series
Interview by Jim Thornton

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Q: Jim, I don’t want to get too personal here, but a lot of your fans—myself arguably foremost here—are desperate to know: How is your health?

A: Jim, first of all, thanks for asking. And believe me, I’m not trying to duck your question. It’s just that health is not something Clint Eastwood, Troy Polamalu, Vince Spiegelman, and other men of our ilk think about. Truth be known, we probably suffer a form of emotional leprosy. That rusted railroad spike through my scrotum? Oh, I suppose it might hurt if I thought about it. That’s the approach guys like us take to “health” and “pain” and “weirdly unnerving somatic sensations that seem like they could prefigure bird fancier’s lung or maybe a humongous myxoma.” So, to answer your question, “How am I feeling,” I ask you in return, “What is this feeling that you are talking about?” Maybe you should talk to Paul Wolf. I understand he postponed his 500 short course yards freestyle while moving up an appointment with his masseuse. Paul probably knows what his “feelings” about his “health” are.

Q: Yeah, yeah—I know Paul: the guy with the occasional big toe gout.

A: You know, there was a recipe for squirrel in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette today. It sounded delicious...until I read that you have to kill the squirrels before you ingest them.

Q: Okay, I think we get it now, Jim. You’re no namby-pamby like, well, you know. Or his friend, well, you know. Or him, her, and the other one, too.

A: Listen, Jim, I don’t mean to sound like a hard ass here, though you probably could roll out pastry dough on my buttocks, so hard and cold and marble-like are they. I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. True, I’m no namby. But I am, at least occasionally, a pamby. I have a softer side. I emit the occasional inarticulate keening when things don’t go my way.

Q: (chuckling) As if!

A: No, really, I kid you not. This pamby has known plenty of loss in his life. Yesterday, for instance, I managed a pathetic 4700 yards during the 1-hour postal swim. Do the math. This works out to an “anaerobic threshold” pace of 1:16.6 per 100. Last year, I could hold 48 and a quarter x 100’s on 1:14.61. A couple years earlier, I managed 49.96 x 100’s on 1:12.06. The reaper’s gaining, and his stench makes you want to cut off your nostrils, believe me.

Q: Marvelous phrase, that! Jim, your whole approach to life—so hard-boiled and tough guy and testosteronated to the max, while allowing the occasional pamby keen to break through, too—well, if you’ve got emotional leprosy with a softer side, I say, how can I get me some of that, too?

A: It’s easy, Jimbo. All you gotta do is lose. Lose everything that was ever anything to you. A decent AT time. Skin unmottled by buboes. An esophageal passage that hasn’t been scraped crimson with nails. A 1998 National Magazine Award followed by three subsequent nominations in 2005, 2006, and 2007 that all came to naught. Lose these things, then regain them, then lose them again. Losing makes winners what they are: really, really, toughened up losers.

Q: Man, Jim, that is a great paradoxical philosophy. Losers are the new winners?

A: And there’s a flipside to it, too.

Q: What’s that? That winners are the new losers?

A: Jimmy, I think you’re going to have to find out that one on your own. Here’s a little movie about me in my non-swimming life. Watch it a couple times. I think you’ll learn something.

Q: Is there a prize to encourage viewership this time? A swim cap, perhaps?

A: Maybe. Then again, maybe not. You’re gonna have to find out for yourself. After all, what have you got to lose but a small chunk of your remaining life? And so what if you lose this? At the risk of beating off a dead horse, let me repeat: Losing makes winners what they are: really, really, toughened up losers.

Today's vlog is best described by the same adjectives that describe my hour swim:

• interminable
• monotonous
• pathetic
• sick (and not in the good way, as in That swim was sick, dude!)

The Steelers are about to start playing, and I can only say that if my lack of heart is any indication, we are about to be beaten down again. I hope I am wrong.

To encourage viewership of today's vlog despite its myriad drawbacks, I have put three bonus features in, sprinkled throughout so you have to watch the whole thing to find them. These are:

• a prize
• a mention of the temptress Mermaid
• an actual phone text from Leslie The Fortress Livingston, which includes a spelling error! Such a thing is as rare as a postage stamp showing Abraham Lincoln smoking a banana. You really, really don't want to miss this.

Finally, if you need more incentive to watch this long, meandering, and strangely obnoxious in terms of acoustic quality vlog, add one final item to our list:

it begins to answer a question that I think every masters swimmer at some point begins to ask himself, herself, or, in my case, itself.

When do things really start to fall apart?

I think you will find the answer you a searching for in today's film. Not to give too much away, but the number "56 years old" plays a part here as one swimmer learned today for itself.

Enjoy! Even if that is really not the right word at all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMxK-KXFfjo&eurl

or simply click on this: