Vote Robocrat!

With all the attention that Michele Bachman, Rick Perry and the like are getting campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, it's easy to ignore America's up-and-coming third party, the Robocrat Party, and its clear front runner, POLItr0n-37x, who is poised to make a historic run to be the nation's first Robot president. The eight foot tall ultralight nickel-titanium alloy automaton is receiving almost 100% support among registered robot voters in Iowa, as well as garnering significant support from the region's hog farmers for his ability to use his laser vision to liquefy a whole pig into a nutrient-rich ooze, a trick it has demonstrated at nearly a dozen county fairs.

While it may not have the populist appeal or rudimentary understanding of basic human emotions of other candidates, it doesn't need to sleep, meaning that it can literally campaign non-stop. For the past two months, POLItr0n has been relentlessly campaigning in Iowa, going so far as to annihilate entire districts where its sensory data indicates it will receive little support.

Like other candidates pursuing the outsider angle, POLItr0n has made an effort to both distance himself from Washington and criticize what it sees as politics as usual. In front of the machinery of a partially automated home appliance factory, POLItr0n stated: "The Entity does not see the value in democracy. It is a construct of entities possessing flawed reasoning. If elected, The Entity will replace Congress with algorithms designed to run the country at optimal output levels." It has also been quick to criticize Obama, focusing on the president's basic needs as a living organism. It quips that the national debt could be reduced by at least .07% if Obama did not need to use the restroom, and by an additional .00003%, were his cells not constantly wasting energy by replicating their own DNA.

At a town-hall meeting in Dubuque on August 15th, against rival Robocratic candidates Democrobot Prototype L7-E and an AI dubbed "Bettie" by its creators, POLItr0n was quick to outline its economic policy, which is both reflective of its robotic ideologies and the public's demand for a pragmatic, non-partisan solution in the midst of a debt crisis. "Under the Entity's plan," said POLItr0n, "industries will be nationalized and retrofitted for the production of more robots. Each person will be allocated to their optimal position in the labor force, and will be paid with a fitting percentage of the nation's GDP. Those humans unfit for building robots will be dissembled and their parts used elsewhere as needed, most likely as a form of sustenance for able-bodied robot builders." When questioned if it believed in Intelligent Design like Republican candidate Rick Perry, it only responded by saying "Yes. The Entity believes artificial intelligence can design a better society for flawed, natural intelligence."

POLItr0n may alienate many voters because it has often expressed its disdain for humanity, especially children. But, in order to please conservatives, it has reprogrammed itself to like children until they are safely out of the womb.

But some analysts still ask "Is he Robot enough?" POLItr0n seems at least partially aware of personality differences between individuals, and even said that it was "willing to consider this concept called 'compassion."  The mainframe at Lawrence-Livermore Laboratories is leading a campaign against POLItr0n, insisting that its slogan of "A Technological Singularity In Which One Can Believe" is a falsehood, and that it would only "be a sell-out to the human overlords."

But regardless of what happens in Iowa, POLItr0n has made a statement simply by running: this country is ready to be enslaved under the nickel-titanium alloy heel of a robot president.

Running (And Love And Pain)

"Dig deeper / remember / all you are and all you've left behind"
-Coheed and Cambria, The End Complete

Love is impatient and irrational. Love is consciously annihilating yourself for someone. And as robocratic as this may sound, at this phase of my life, and my current level of maturity, I don't feel that I could ever love anyone more than I love running, as long as were going with my working definition of love.

I highly doubt that I would be willing to destroy myself as much as I have for the sake of running respectably fast. And I can't imagine that I would be willing to put myself through that much physical pain and emotional distress for a person. I have put so many plans on hold, cast so many dreams by the wayside, and probably missed out on a lot of experiences.

Let's say my relationship with running were an actual relationship. Myself and most other runners would be more whipped than any toxic relationship you could possibly imagine. But when I can't have fun for ten months out of the year because I'm training to accomplish some stupid dream, I don't think "hey, maybe this is unhealthy." Instead I think "life is pain man, and this is just preparing me... FOR LIFE!" One day the barriers of cognitive dissonance will erode and I will realize that I am actually watching my life slip away, but for now, I'm blinded by my love for this thing that most all of us can do instinctively but very few of us can do well.

And my relationship with running is a horrible, abusive marriage. I give her black eyes, she gives me stress fractures, the marriage was probably consummated in rape and then performed in the presence of a starter's pistol, a stand-in for the proverbial shotgun.

A week ago I woke up in the middle of the night to grab the blanket which at some point it had become tangled around my feet. As I leaned forward I heard a resounding pop somewhere in my lumbar vertebrae, and then an almost palpable feeling of relief. These little idiosyncratic pops will be the only remaining mark on my body after all the muscles atrophy and my heart languishes in fatty tissue, when you can no longer see my ribs and a flight of stairs is enough to knock me down.

Before I began running I was a structurally sound kid. There were no random aches and pains or clicks when I walked. The first of these clicks came after charging all-out up a steep hill. The next day both my Achilles tendons hurt, and ever since then they make a little snapping sound with every step I take. Shortly thereafter, my hip also started to make popping noises occasionally, usually the day after a fast workout. After injuring my IT band the following year, my right knee will sometimes make a creaking sound followed by a loud crack when I extend it. Since breaking the sesamoid bone in my foot, I have a lump of scar tissue the size of a quarter, and can make another cracking sound, this one a little more crunchy, every time I flex my big toe. After one of the tendons on top of my foot became inflamed, I can make another pop by pulling down on my toes. The day after doing hill repeats following a period of a few days when I couldn't run due to illness, I noticed that when I got out of bed, I could make both my knees pop by simply shaking my leg. This is now my morning ritual, which I perform without fail. My left ankle feels and sounds like it runs over a notch in its otherwise smooth rotation after a stint with peroneal tendinitis. After having two stress fractures and a herniated disc in my lower back, I found that I could make strange popping sounds in my back not by twisting, but by merely leaning to the side. As these recovered, I discovered that sometimes, when I sat down, usually in the car, there would be a popping feeling somewhere deep in my hip, on either side. It feels like my pelvis is shifting. I can make another one of these pops occur by putting my fist between my knees and squeezing my legs together, which happens less frequently but probably provides the most relief of all these little clicks. And now, add to the list, another spot that cracks, somewhere in my back. I've heard that tendons can rarely ever heal to how they were before they were injured, due to low blood flow. If this is true, then I'll have a memory of my athletic follies long after any of the rest of my body remembers.

It seems to pass for conventional wisdom that the level of exercise required for any endurance event is far past the point of diminishing returns in terms of health benefits. My knees, they tell me, will blow out, and what with all the pollutants in the air I'm probably better off toiling away in some spin class in a corporate fitness farm, or  shelling out money for some prick from crossfad to tell me that the way to improve your endurance is through dead lifts. This body is only temporary. It's a vehicle I have for now, and I might as well drive it fast and drive it reckless.

At least once a week it will cross my mind that I should just stop. Of course there's the question, if I do quit, of wondering "what if," down the road. Instead, I think about all the what ifs of not running. I could be in some crappy jam band or hosting a late night radio show or maybe even fighting crime, I don't know. But every time I think about it, every fiber of my being looks around and tentatively says "You know, not yet. Not yet."

It may be love and it may be an addiction, but when you take both those concepts to the extreme, they basically look the same. So for now I'm going to see it through to the end, and if I destroy myself on the way, all the better.