MUSCULAR DEVELOPMENT

When I was a kid they said that someone with well-defined, muscular stomach muscles had "washboard abs." Now they call it a six pack. What does this say about our society? Probably nothing. Washboards are so antiquated that some  in the younger generation might not know what I'm talking about. I never had a washboard or a six pack. I suppose you could say I've always had a keg.

Here's something that might speak to current conditions. When I was a teenager and a young man, most people I knew worked out with weights to get stronger. Nowadays it seems that a significant percentage work out to look good. I've always considered muscles as tools, not ornaments. It's kind of like the difference between Fabio and Bill Kazmaier. You may swoon over Fabio's pretty muscles, but I think you'd want Bill Kazmaier to investigate that noise you heard downstairs at 2:00 AM.

 

What does it mean? It's a symptom of modern automation's making us less dependent on manual labor. Back in the day when strength was an asset, bulging muscles said that their possessor could work. Now they say that their possessor has sufficient leisure time to decorate his body with ornamental muscles. I, of course, exclude athletes and manual laborers when I say this.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S ALMANAC TRIAL: LINCOLN'S FIRST MURDER CASE

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S ALMANAC TRIAL: LINCOLN'S FIRST MURDER CASE: According to conventional wisdom, Abraham Lincoln was not a very good criminal defense attorney. They say he didn’t take many cases, and o...

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S ALMANAC TRIAL: LINCOLN'S THIRD MURDER CASE

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S ALMANAC TRIAL: LINCOLN'S THIRD MURDER CASE: When Lincoln was still a young lawyer he defended a man named Spencer Turner on a charge of murder in DeWitt County, Illinois. Oddly enough,...

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S ALMANAC TRIAL: PUBLICATION NEARS

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S ALMANAC TRIAL: PUBLICATION NEARS: The printing is done on Lincoln's Most Famous Case . I received my complimentary copies today, and the books will be in the hands of the...

A HISTORY OF EVIL IN POPULAR CULTURE

I think that I mentioned in one of my first blogs that I had 120,000 words written on The Last Murder with three chapters to go when I learned from my publisher that the word limit on the book was going to be 80,000 words. That caused me to go back with a meat cleaver and cut out what I believed to be a lot of interesting stories AND to collapse the last three chapters into a single chapter. I got the word count down to 90,000 or 100,000 and the publisher was satisfied.

I had some good stories about the post-conviction proceedings which went untold, and I had some words I wanted to say about the phenomenon of celebrity killers. I haven't had the opportunity to tell the story of the post-conviction circus (I probably never will), but I did get an opportunity to say some things about celebrity killers. I was invited to write a chapter for a book of essays entitled A History of Evil in Popular Culture (edited by Dr. Sharon Packer & Jody W. Pennington). They asked me to talk about the near-cult status Bundy gained as a celebrity killer, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity. 

At the time I had no idea how enormous a task the editors had set for themselves. A History of Evil in Popular Culture turned out to be a two volume, 850 page work.  It is set for publication in July of 2014 and is currently available for pre-order. I have no financial interest at all in the book, other than the fact that they're going to give me a free copy. It looks like I'm going to have to clear a good bit of shelf space to accommodate it.