Hack the Block

[kingtycoon]

The truth is - it hasn't been a great year for me. There have been feelings that didn't get felt right, I suppose, I suppose that's the way to say it - that feelings weren't helped. That was stinging and real. There's that other business about my poor hoof though - and I think that had a harder role in the way things have been than I've been able to see or confront.

Plantar fasciitis. That shit, if you didn't know, fucking sucks. Its wrecked me on dancing with any regularity & also on walking enough. I went from 5-6 miles a day to about 1 and am also a big fatso as a result. And it still hurts like a fucker. I take the (not at all recreationally useful) pills & I do the exercises and I think to myself a despairing unbidden thought "this is how it is now, I will die and when I do I'll have this thing where my foot hurts".

But you know - I think it's finally turning a corner - getting healed or well? I've done all the nonsense with nostrums and prodigies. Really the saddest thing was buying the special night-time sock. There's a ruinous & deep unsexyness to having a special night-time sock that really hammers home the notion that your days of making hearts throb & flesh quiver is all at an end. "Hey baby... wanna see my orthotics?"

Not that there isn't something liberating about just giving up on trying to be a desirable mate - but that too is sort of a terrible concession. Anyway - moping is not unappealing for its own reasons and I'm not especially inclined to want to pursue it here. Fuck moping. This is about something cool I found out.

There's this one game...


Kind of I'm an ideal player. I have my nose in my stupid phone all the time anyway - and busted foot or not- I do walk a lot. So I started messing around with it and I think I might be pretty good at it. Ingress - it's fun. I found out about it because I got curious about the upcoming Pokemon AR game - it looks like these are the guys who are making it - their existing game is interesting. Fun too. You have to try and control your neighborhood by visiting specific places and you're best served by doing this on foot. So wandering my landmark strewn neighborhood - and around my church infested commute - it turns out that there's a lot to see just below the surface - all the weird East 93rd street storefront churches that I see every day - and now fight over with other players. It's a weird good time so far.

And then there's the strange & funny curiosities - where I'm demonstrating my regular commute - my day-to-day the unique & specific realities of my life as a person who goes around to places. So I'm the pioneer discoverer of weird places


And weirder still are the peculiar objects in my vicinity that I am the master & governor of. The Panda Statue by my house that I can interact with while lying in bed is my base of power. So it's fun to have my power base rooted in this statue of a panda. That's a thing that happened to me.


Meantime those blue fuckers have tried to colonize my neighborhood - they're warlike aggressors & it's my task to root them out of the Spirit Corner - for example.


The thing is - when I walk a lot my foot doesn't hurt. It's after you wake up or stand up that it gives out and is in pain - it's hard to get going but okay to keep moving - so this will do, now, today - as a reason to stand up and start going when it straight up sucks to do so otherwise. I'm aiming at getting alive and being right, I just needed to wake up out of the sleep of hurt-foot-laziness.

Comments

[aslant.livejournal.com]

Plantar fascitis, yo that shit is so shitty, I'm sorry :( mine has always cleared up with new shoes. It acts up if I wear shoes with non flexible soles, or if I wear open back shoes (flip flops, slippers, slip on sandals, etc). My kids get it pretty bad too.

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

Man your kids? That sucks.

Supposedly I'm supposed to have this happen because of how my feet are flat but whatever! I think also it's because of Mr. Chuck Taylor. No more cheap shoes. But also - I guess, no more cool shoes?

Did you know I was a shoe salesman? For a while! I know about them - men's department was where I was - and this was at a glorious time in the early aughts when men's shoes were cool & fancy both at once - i won some neat Cole Hahns in a sales contest and that kind of set the standards for me. Now I look around and want to get something nice & shit man...

Fluevogs are crap now - they fall apart if they're looked at too assiduously - and if it does seem like it's a nice shoe - it won't fit me, and if it fits me and is sturdy it's ugly as hell. I bit the bullet and ended up with Eccos and I can't stop feeling like a tacky old european man.

But what can you do?

[aslant.livejournal.com]

I have pretty flat feet, too. But I also think arch support in shoes is total and complete horseshit. You can't fix a skeletal issue with a bit of foam nonsense, but you can fix it by retraining your muscles and altering your gait a little bit. If I focus on turning out my leg, as a column, from the hip, then my arch magically appears and I walk on the outside edge of my foot instead of the whole flat part of it. (Not turning it out like a ballet duckfoot, just engaging an outward rotation muscle by the hip -- the fallen arch is caused by the leg, as a column, having an unnatural inward rotation because of weak muscles, because we as a species and me as an individual are not ape-ing enough in everyday life, basically.) Check out Katy Bowman's Fix Your Feet for info on this, too. She's a great biomechanics resource.

In conclusion, fuck podiatry.

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

You really got lit up about this! I get it though - you get mad as heck when you have a sore foot.

Maybe I am walking wrong. Maybe I picked up lazy habits. Hm.

[aslant.livejournal.com]

tl;dr of Bowman's method is to stretch your calves a ton, squat to develop the glute muscles to engage the walking motion from the glute instead of the lazy hip flexors, and make that external rotation to counteract the weak hip.

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

This strassburg sock seems kind of okay - I don't have a lot of experience yet but it might do what you need.

[aslant.livejournal.com]

and yes! i am fired up! fuck the man's broken stupid medical system, in so many ways.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

I thought I might have seen you walking down Wilton late last week, but your body language seemed pretty closed to contact.

(BTW, I've had a ton of trouble with plantar tendon fasciitis, but also have some useful remedies, coming out of that.)

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

Hah - well, often, if I'm walking that way I'm going to eat - which I don't do often enough - and then, when I do I'm kind of intent on having supper or whathaveyou. Also, I probably have a demeanor of studied unaproachability - cultivated by years of going to places where I shouldn't have.

I'll try to be friendly though - promise! I'm way nicer than I look.

And sorry about your own paw - this stuff is no good & who knew? Who knew you could have these problems. Not me that's for sure.

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

I haven't futzed with this yet, but there was a game...NethSpace? Or something? Anyhow, it seemed similar, but it was about the internet. The game was a browser plug-in & you could leave paths & mines & treasure & whatnot on various webpages & people with the plug-in would interact with them.

[rasa.livejournal.com]

The special sock thing made me laugh out loud, I'm sorry/thank you.

I installed Ingress but I live in the 'burbs and walking isn't really an option/there aren't many portals. ALSO, the learning curve is pretty huge, I have no idea what to do or what I'm supposed to do.

Where Have You Been?

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

There's neat tricks you pick up I guess. Maybe I'm good at games generally - I'm good at walking around and going to new places so that's part of it.

I wonder what it'd be like to be where there aren't like dozens of portals all around you all the time - this is my life separated into the touristy arts district - the high end university & the abandoned looking storefront churches of the rust belt's bleakest corners.