The Journal of Joe The Peacock. Yay.: 01.2005

1.28.2005:

1:07 AM

So, I was bored tonight, and thought I'd just be silly and contact a brand new user from Mentallyincontinent.com via AIM. I had no idea what I was going to say or do, I just thought "Hey - the first user I see with an AIM name in the profile, I'm going to just say hi."

SO, as I clicked down the list of "Who's Online" on the site, Holly was the first one to have an AIM name in their profile. And this is what happened:

(I've changed the IM names to protect both the innocent (Holly) and the jerks (Joe and Jeremy) -- And thanks for being a sport, Holly :) )

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joe: this is bot. ask any question and it shall be answered. press "1" to see a numeral.

Holly: oh a robot that makes more sense

joe: *beep*

joe: I am at your command

Holly: thats nice

joe: how is the weather in your town, state or provence

Holly: fine wish it would snow more so theres no school

joe: that is good

joe: what is your favorite sporting francise

Holly: i dont like sports much

joe: yes I like them too, they are my favorite squadron.

joe: How did you hear about MentallyIncontinent.com

Holly: google the i-am-bored.com

Holly: was a link

joe: i did not understand this response please try again.

joe: How did you hear about MentallyIncontinent.com

Holly: a link at another site

joe: i understand that you found MentallyIncontinent.com through a link at another site. is this correct?

Holly: duh

joe: i did not understand this response please try again.

joe: i understand that you found MentallyIncontinent.com through a link at another site. is this correct?

Holly: yes

joe: have you ever used the real yellow pages in your local hometown?

Holly: no this is a small town and i dont have to look anything up in the phonebook

joe: i understand that you use the real yellow pages in your hometown. have you ever seen an advertisement for MentallyIncontinent.com?

Holly: no i said i DONT use the yellowpages

joe: i understand, and what did you think of the MentallyIncontinent.com advertisement in the real yellow pages in your hometown? would you rank it as "Very Good", "Good" or "Really Good"

Holly: i never saw it

joe: i did not understand this response please try again.

joe: i understand, and what did you think of the MentallyIncontinent.com advertisement in the real yellow pages in your hometown? would you rank it as "Very Good", "Good" or "Really Good"

Holly: leave me alone so i can read something funny on the website all about you and your mishaps....i feel sorry for you

Holly: goodbye

joe: i did not understand this response please try again.

Holly: bye

Holly: do u understand that?

joe: i did not understand this response please try again.

Holly: BYE

joe: I am afraid you have not answered appropriately in the time allotted. Your survey is not valid.

Holly: good

Holly: bye

joe: goodbye, and thank you for using the JoeBot!

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Then, Jeremy signed on and talked to her.

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jeremy: hey there holly, I'm an admin at mentallyincontinent.com and just saw you just conversed with our joebot, so I wanted to say hi and welcome to mentallyincontinent.com

Holly: hi

Holly: r u a robot too?

jeremy: no no

Holly: thank God

jeremy: but i am interested in your response. was your conversation with joebot "good" "great" or "I couldn't ask for anything more?"

Holly: thats interesting theres no "i hate robots" on there
ill say good

jeremy: fantastic. we're always trying to improve the joebot.

jeremy: it's not very good at dealing with people, but all of the stories you see on the site were actually generated by that robot.

Holly: uve gotta be kidding me

jeremy: it's a plug-in.

Holly: r the stories true?

jeremy: nah, they're all actually put together through random word generation, the plugin is an advanced algorythem developed to randomly build stories.

jeremy: we enter a scenario, a couple key pieces we want, and it comes up with them.

jeremy: we do have to edit a few incorrect words, but all in all, it's a pretty impressive piece of software

jeremy: though i really have no idea why it's so difficult to talk to one on one through aim.

Holly: heres a scenario: when my dad was in highschool he took a car apart and put it back together in his school and drove it down the hallway

jeremy: hah, that is quite the scenario.

jeremy: ok, well, i'm gonna run. welcome to MentallyIncontinent.com enjoy the stories. Thanks for taking the time to check out the site.

Holly: bye

jeremy: p.s. if anyone asks you how I did, please rate me high, i'm pretty sure i'm close to being fired.

Holly: why would you be fired?

jeremy: I shouldn't even be telling you this, I'd get in a lot of trouble if it got out, but joe isn't a good man. I'm actually talking to you from a small warehouse in taiwan. I've tried contacting the authorities for help, but was caught out

Holly: liar

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Then, i went back and did this:

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joe: Hello! I am JoeBot!

Holly: i know we talked before

joe: The Customer Satisfaction program at MI is in full swing now! I have been initiated to survey you about your experience with the admin: [JEREMY]

Holly: high

joe: 1) did you have an experience with the admin: [JEREMY] this day?

Holly: yes

joe: I understand that you have answered: yes.

Holly: yes

joe: 2) Would you rate your satisfaction with Jeremy as: 1) high 2) very high 3) extremely high 4) fire him now.

Holly: 3

joe: I understand that your response was 3) Fire him now.

joe: Thank you for using JoeBot!

Holly: bye

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And that's when Jeremy said:

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jeremy: oh god, they're coming.

"jeremy" signed off.

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1.05.2005:

7:30 PM

Ok, maybe I'm not the guy to do it... I dunno. But lately, it has become more and more apparent that if I don't, no one else is going to. So, I have decided to share with you:

Joe The Peacock's Official Rules Of The Gym.

I have come up with some fairly simple and OH SO necessary guidelines for those of you who have decided to pay your membership dues and head to the mecca for pretention, the local gym. These rules are NOT hard to follow, and I think that anyone and everyone who's ever stepped inside a gym, even to deliver a newspaper, would agree with me on all of them.

First, For The Guys:

1. Stop oogling the girls. It is human nature to look at beautiful things, and the more beautiful they are, the more you want to look. But come on - show some respect. Get a look, go back to whatever it is you were doing.

2. Stop oogling the girls. Seriously. Stop. I know you're a beast and have only six braincells, every one of them tasked with thinking about boobie. But for chrissake, have some decency, you jarhead. You're making them uncomfortable.

3. Stop oogling the girls. Yes, it's THAT bad a problem that I have to say it again.

4. Flex in the mirror at home. Sure, you need the mirror to watch your performance as you lift. And yeah, it's really cool to see yourself as you are all pumped and stuff... but must you do a full pose-down in the presence of everyone there?

5. If you sweat a lot, carry a towel. Wipe down the equipment you use. It's just respectful. No one wants to lay in your salty perspiration - if we did, we'd just walk up to you, turn around, and rub our backs on you like a bear would a tree.

6. Wash your goddamn clothes once in a while. Please.

7. If you cannot bench 315 lbs, don't get your buddy to sit there and "spot" you while the ladies pass by just so you can rattle the plates. Really, this one isn't too huge a deal - you want to damage yourself, fine by me - you're an idiot and deserve the pain. It's just frustrating to sit there and watch you trying to showboat for a crowd what doesn't give a shit.

8. If you don't know how to use a machine or do a certain exercise - ask a staff member or someone doing the exercise to teach you a bit about the equipment and routine.

9. However, don't go asking in the middle of a set. It's called "lane courtesy" and it's a term borrowed from bowling. While someone is concentrating on working out, don't go bugging them.

10. Unless your name is Lee Haney, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Joe Weider, don't give unsolicited lifting advice - Unless you see someone who's risking SERIOUSLY hurting themselves. And even then, be polite about it.

11. Just because she's female does NOT mean she needs or wants you to spot her. Leave her alone and go back to your machine, Randy Pan.

12. The treadmill is NOT the place for a race. Eyes down or straight forward - let other people have what little privacy is afforded them by line-of-sight displays.

13. A Hypothetical situation: let's say there's 5 exercise machines in a group. For the purposes of this discussion, assume the leftmost is #1 and the rightmost is #5, with #2, #3 and #4 falling where you'd logically assume they would. If I am on machine #1 and there is NO ONE ELSE ON ANY OTHER MACHINE, do NOT get on machine #2. Especially if you haven't been following rule #6.

14. Wear a goddamn shirt, you fucking prima donna.

15. To clarify: Shirts consist of a torso and sleeves. If you've cut off half the torso to show your abs, you've failed at rule 14. Same if you've cut off the sleeves. And if you've EVER spent money on a spaghetti-thin single strip of cloth that goes over each shoulder and meets a 2" wide peice of fabric around your waist, you're a disgrace to humanity and should IMMEDIATELY proceed to the vascectomy clinic to save the human race from your spawn.

16. SHUT THE FUCK UP. No one cares what you bench, used to bench, will be benching, etc. and so forth. Write it in a journal at the gym, and if you really need to talk about it, read it aloud to yourself when you get home.

17. Grunting is understandable and ok - yelling is not. Quit trying to draw attention to your Herculaean efforts by screaming like a banshee.

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Now, because I am not one, I don't really know much about the rules for women as they apply to other women. But I do have a few guidelines for you gals.

So, For the Girls:

1. QUIT ENCOURAGING THE GUYS. Christ... this is the GYM. It's not a single's bar, quit treating it like one. I'm ESPECIALLY talking to those of you who laugh and flirt and flip your hair all over the place and blatantly poke your ass out when there's a guy present, and then get all pissy and angry when his eyes become glued to it. Wonder why the guys break rules # 1-3 in their list, making you feel so gosh darned uncomfortable? It's in part because you broke this rule. And while I'm at it,

2. NO MAKEUP. you come here specifically to get sweaty, and the last I checked, Mabellyene has not a single product geared toward gym use.

3. Closed-toed shoes only, please. I know you're a girl, and as such, you're not supposed to stink, but your toes sweat just like mine do.

4. Wear appropriately fitting workout clothing. Before you leave the house / locker room, look in the mirror again. and again. Ask your friends. Ask them again. It's one thing to wear close-fitting workout-specific clothing and spandex. Its another thing entirely to wear those clothes one size too small because you think they tighten your flab and make you look like J-Lo from the back. THey don't - if your ass and legs looks like a chewed wad of bubblegum out of spandex, they look that way IN spandex.

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And then, there are a few things that really apply to everyone in general.

For everyone:

1. Stop comparing yourself to everyone in the building. You are there for YOU. Who cares if you lift more or less than anyone else, if you run slower or faster, if you can swim farther and faster, etc? If you're an athlete, relish in your own performance and quit grandstanding for those smaller / weaker / less fit than you. If you're a beginner or are just starting out, quit giving a shit about what other people may or may not be thinking about you right now - get in there and work your hardest.

2. Don't laugh at the fat guy / girl. They're there just like you are, they're working just as hard as you are. In almost every way possible, they're 10x the athlete you are - not only did they show up to the gym to get better, they did it amidst snickering and comments from assholes like you - and that takes more guts than you'll EVER have.

3. Don't spit in the water fountain - spit in the sink in the locker room or in the trashcan.

4. Passing wind is a natural occurance, especially if you are exerting yourself. If someone lets one or 2 fly, or burps a little while running, just grow up and let it slide. That said,

5. Don't go farting all over the place. If you ate something last night that didn't agree with you and your intestines are blowing like the foghorn of an icecutter, STAY HOME AND RUN AROUND THE BLOCK. If one's coming up and you can at all help it, sneak off to the corner or in the locker room and do it there.

6. Wipe down the goddamn equipment when you're done with it. And YES, you need to wipe off the bridge of the bike / crosstraining machine, you need to wipe off the display of the treadmill, you need to wipe off the handlegrips, and you need to wipe off the bench / seat of whatever you were sitting on. All of these things are entailed in WIPING DOWN THE GODDAMN EQUIPMENT.

7. Be curteous with "working in". There are quite a few unspoken rules of the gym, and this used to be one of them until now. It goes like this:

If you are alone and you see another solo person working out on equipment you need to use, wait until they are done with the set and ask nicely if they mind if you work in.

If you are alone and there are 2 people on your needed equipment, it's a bit less kosher to work in. If you can help it, wait.

If you are alone and there's 3 or more folks, just wait or use something else.

If you are not alone, you don't work in unless invited. Do not ask. Not even if it's just one guy and every other peice of equipment is taken. It's one thing to be by yourself and work into a team's routine, but it's just wrong to impose a 2-person waiting period into someone's workout.

8. When you need to wait on equpiment - do so at a close enough distance to indicate you're waiting on that machine but a far enough distance that you are not crowding whoever's currently on it. And don't stare at the person on it currently - it's uncomfortable enough knowing you're holding someone up, so don't make them feel like more of a jerk by making them think you mind.

9. When someone else is waiting on your machine - cut down on the lollygagging. If you're with a buddy, don't clown around between sets and make the person / people wait on your goofy ass. It's just rude.

10. Eat somewhere else. Don't eat your energy bar / granola nut cluster / peanut-butter-coated-pinecone-rolled-in-birdseed when you're on the equipment.

11. Don't sing along with your walkman. If you're singing along with whatever shitty music they're piping over the speakers in the club, that's kinda annoying. But there's NOTHING more annoying than some dipshit trying to be the next Ashlee Simpson while listening to the song over their headphones. It's not karaoke, and you're liable to get a 5lb plate hurled at you.

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I think everyone will agree that these rules are not out of line. In fact, I think everyone would agree that they are really very simple and direct. AND NECESSARY. Please share them with anyone you know that attends a gym or otherwise works out.

Thank you.

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The Journal of Joe The Peacock. Yay.

1.28.2005:

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