New from the Hillbilly Health Club

It is our practice here at Goat Rope, your full service blog, to highlight offerings from our Hillbilly Health Club, where we are proud to offer the latest in hi-tech exercise equipment.

Our newest equipment combines cardio with resistance training to yield a maximum benefit--and help burn off those extra holiday calories. We call it a variable load hydro-lifter (although some people refer to it as a snow shovel).

All you need to do to feel the burn is pick it up and start removing the white stuff. And since the powers that be don't believe in clearing roads around here, this equipment can even be used for extreme endurance training.

Disclaimer: This product will only be available under certain atmospheric conditions, but it looks like we're going to have a lot of them this winter.

Hillbilly health club, revisited

Our latest exercise equipment.

From time to time, this blog highlights offerings from the Goat Rope Hillbilly Health Club, which features such high tech exercise equipment as chain saws, sledge hammers, splitting mauls, dirty barns, pitchforks and wheel barrows.

On display now is little Edith Ann, one of our aerobic training devices. Longtime viewers of this blog will recognize her but may not realize that a dog might be better than a treadmill when it comes to exercise. A study in Great Britain found that dog-owners who regularly walk their beasts get more exercise in than the average gym-goer.

(Besides, I have a theory that it is an offense against whatever gods may be to use a treadmill on a pretty day.)

In little Edith Ann's case, it's two miles early in the morning and two more at night. At a year old, Edith is pretty high energy but we also have Arpad, a slower model for beginners:



It is not recommended for the same person to walk both at the same time as this can overstretch the arms.

"THE IDIOCY ABOUT UNEMPLOYMENT" is shown no mercy here.

TAKE OUR JOBS, PLEASE! The United Farm Workers union, responding to immigrant bashing, is urging Americans to take some of these low wage, back-breaking jobs. Not too many takers have taken advantage of the opportunity.

ONE NATION. A new umbrella group hopes to counter the Tea Party.

SPEAKING OF WALKING, did bi-pedalism give early humans the edge they needed?

GOOD PARENTS/NOT SO GOOD KIDS. The author of this article suggests some unpleasant personality traits may be more a matter of genes than parenting.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

New from the Hillbilly Health Club

It's way bigger in real life.

Anxious to lose those extra holiday pounds? Feel no fret. The official Goat Rope Hillbilly Health Club has a special plan for you.

Our staff of professional trainers has devised the perfect workout using the latest equipment, in this case a tree that fell on a neighbor's yard. The workout consists of using a chainsaw, which around here is defined as a device that works for about 15 minutes, a handsaw and a splitting maul.

The routine, which combines cardio with resistance training, involves deconstructing the tree, loading it onto the "farm use" truck (if it starts) and then turning it into firewood. The stuff that is too small for the wood stove is to be dragged off and dedicated to the bi-annual Celtic bonfire (for which wicker bonfire sacrifices are strictly optional).

Don't be the last kid on your block to sign up!

SOPRANOS UPDATE. El Cabrero's heroic effort to make it through parts 1 and 2 of season 6 of The Sopranos before the Spousal Unit returns is still in progress. So far 9 episodes have been devoured and things don't look too good for Vito right now, even though he's enjoying New Hampshire. After this, progress may be delayed until Netflix and the US Postal Service do the right thing.

I'M STILL SLACKING, but here's a good summary of what the final version of health care reform is likely to do. As flawed as it is, there is some decent stuff in it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE NEW AND IMPROVED HILLBILLY HEALTH CLUB

Earlier this year, just in time for your New Year's resolution, Gentle Reader, this blog offered its readers exclusive membership in the Hillbilly Health Club.

We are pleased to announce a new workout program designed to maximize your fitness goats, I mean goals, based on our new holistic "track and field" program, which combines aerobic and resistance exercises.

The "track" part involves scooping up old hay, straw and goat pellets into a wheelbarrow, tracking them out to the garden, and spreading them around. The "field" part offers the latest in plyometric and core body exercises. Using only the latest in equipment--in this case a spading fork, which looks kinda like a pitchfork but different, and Mother Earth--this will give you results like nothing you've ever tried.

Simply apply spading fork to Mother Earth, old hay and straw, and goat pellets. Go deep with aid of foot, then lift using upper body muscles. (Did you notice the whole body workout?) Then break up clods by whacking them (that's the plyometric part).

Just a little bit of this and you'll have to fight off potential significant others with a stick...if they can stand the smell that is, which you kind of get used to after a while.

Nothing but the best for y'all!

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

INTRODUCING THE HILLBILLY HEALTH CLUB, AND LOTS MORE

At this time of year, lots of people join gyms. El Cabrero is all set to cash in on this trend. I hereby announce the founding of the Hillbilly Health Club. It's all right there in the perty picture.

It has the latest in exercise equipment--including sledge hammer, wedge, splitting maul, wheel barrow and sycamore stumps--and offers a comprehensive exercise program with the following elements:

*Resistance. Splitting and chopping wood. Sycamore is all about resistance.

*Flexibility. Bend over, pick up the split wood, and put it in the wheel barrow. If you are anything like El Cabrero, this can be the hardest part, especially after an hour or so of splitting and chopping.

*Aerobics. Push the wheel barrow to the woodpile.

Holistic health--Appalachian style!

Annual memberships are now available, with special discounts to Goat Rope email subscribers. Ask about special family rates.

SHOCKED, SHOCKED. El Cabrero would like to round out the week of New Year by mentioning three 2007 books that are worth a look. Today's choice is Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Her basic thesis is that economic, political, and ideological elites have taken advantage of human-made and natural disasters to impose an extreme version of unregulated capitalism on populations that would otherwise have rejected it.

Klein does an interesting job of weaving the history of shock therapy and other efforts at mind control with the rise of the Chicago School of economics as represented by Milton Friedman until his recent death. Friedman opposed unions, social programs, public education, business regulations, safety laws, etc. in the name of the "free" market.

He acknowledged that most people would find this distasteful, and said that

only a crisis--actual or perceived--produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.

Friedman got the chance to put his ideas into action when General August Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected president of Chile in 1973 and imposed a military dictatorship. Then, with the help of mass murder, repression, and torture, he was able to advise the regime on how to impose the blessings of the "free" market.

Klein's book looks at several examples of disaster capitalism in the U.S. and around the world. Katrina was a classic case in point, as was the development of Iraq's "Emerald City" as a free market utopia under the direction of Friedman disciple Donald Rumsfeld in Iraq. Both of those went over real well...

It's interesting that in WV, some advocates of "Unleashing Capitalism" have tried to create a climate of panic and crisis in the hopes of pushing through a political agenda which includes attacks on union membership, worker safety rules, etc.

SAD NEWS from Kenya.

PUBLIC OPINION ON IRAQ is at odds with the views of many presidential candidates, according to this item.

THE STATE OF THE NATION in the Bush years is the subject of this New Year's Eve NY Times editorial.

LABOR UNDER ATTACK. Here is some info on the anti-union bias of the Bush Labor Department.

TWO YEARS AFTER SAGO, mine safety is still an issue. As Ken Ward reports in today's Gazette, 67 US miners have died since that disaster.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED