Learning Day: Strengthening the Eyes

Don’t judge yet. Everyone deserves a chance.

That sounds like staring into the sun. But everyone deserves a second chance.

Reps of the sun. I’m in love. Someone thought this way and lived long enough to write it down. I’ll backtrack.

Ever worked out and thought “I wish I was fucking blind?” ‘Join me.

Or rather, Bernarr MacFadden. The man prison forgot. In case you skip retina curls, I’ll zoom in:

He repeats himself three times to get you a sclera pump. Step one of catching up to your jacked baby. Your baby is jacked, right? And one of eight? Bernarr breaks life downs into simple rules. Laws. Principles. Maxims. Commandments. It’s not a cult.

“Glasses are eye crutches” is the best joke I’ll type today. Sure, there’s raw disdain for glasses, which sit between doorknobs and wheels on mankind’s scorecard. But the real magic’s his disdain for crutches, and all non-barbell medicine. Bernarr thinks all bodies come from menus, and commoners just have shit taste. Standard madness for money, but distinct for health.

Still, Bernarr’s message speaks to me. I have too many eyes, and my workouts only take three days to finish. Normally, I’d face those plagues separately. I’m trained to break problems into parts, instead of myself. Another lie from Princeton before resegregation. Strengthening the Eyes offers a simpler path: dead eyes can’t be weak. I’m melting my eyes right into my lean body mass.

Who’s Bernarr? The Edison of delusion. If you have bigorexia or think walnuts cure stab wounds, Bernarr’s your spiritual grandfather. If your family recipes include extra laudanum and zero vaccination, Bernarr’s your actual grandfather. He had eight confirmed kids across three legal wives, and the plurality lived. Many were even consensual. Lazy for modern daemons, but Bernarr invented disorders we’ve only begun to perfect.

And looked the part.

I met Bernarr through Physical Culture, the perfect magazine. Not good, or helpful, or the product of a sane culture, or anything the future will respect. Perfect.

Consistently perfect.

Every sentence opens doors. I’m certain the “youth-beauty prolongation contest” is worth our time/spiritual health, and that our champion’s 11 children could drive 12 documentaries. But our eyes can only take so much work per mesocycle. Save some for the perfect ads.

Note The Physical Bankrupt vs. The Physical Millionaire. It shows how far we’ve fallen. Before the weight gap became a chasm, physical billionaires were unthinkable. Physical millionaires proudly shared 1920s bodybuilding secrets for the public good. Secrets like smaller trunks, and standing upright. Today’s robber barons hoard their muscle knowledge, leaving serfs to drown in bowls of ice water.

Imagine buying any other magazine. Especially if you were sane– stand-up this good didn’t come for decades. As for true believers, they could join Bernarr’s figurative cult or the literal one. You couldn’t lose, unless you had a health problem or skirt. Then your troubles had only begun.

Naturally, Bernarr’s everything-expertise includes your eyes. Because he fried his.

Artful, really. Staring until our eyes break is our destination and origin. There’s a grad school word for that, but my notes are unreadable.

“I fucked my eyes up but good,” opens an eyecare manual beautifully. And “I have no editors” opens anything beautifully. There’s nothing quite like catching a first date lying. Many of you leave, and I respect that. I lock in. Bad liars are just improv novelists. And in the McFaddenverse, all science is wrong.

I’m a professional bully, so take this with a grain of salt. But I’ve also read two (hundred) issues of Physical Culture. “Vitality” is a go-to filter word for dick stuff. Bernarr wrote a lot about how much more sex health gurus should have. I pray the bullshit levels here are above fifty percent. But Bernarr’s likely oversharing about wrecking his eyes and erections in one manic sprint.

The martyr Bernarr struggles with his vision for a grifter’s lifetime: two weeks. But pure, focused hatred of dweeb science pulls him through. He’d rather lose his eyes than let nerds touch them.

And that’s how Bernarr invented optometry. Spoiler: fasting cures glaucoma, near-sightedness, and scissors. Bernarr’s eyecare tips aren’t far from his parenting tips. Troubling. His kids didn’t survive those. My advice: if you believe in a global medical conspiracy, don’t fuck with the conspiracy.

That oculist’s name? Rasputin Luciferson.

It sounds stubborn, but I get it. Bernarr’s two tiny coffins deep into the bit. Glasses would look a touch selfish. You can’t walk back "It's better she's gone; she only would have disgraced me." Well, you can with Real Americans. But Bernarr cast his net wide, and he had a Healthatorium to think of. Leftists get fussy about tiny coffins.

For all the other fiction, the Healthatorium’s real. Bernarr bought, renovated, and reopened a sanitarium as a jab-free getaway. That sounds depressing, but at least Healthatorium’s a funny word. His two boarding schools had boring, wordplay-free names. And he ran them for twenty years. Less funny, unless you imagine an entire school staring directly into the sun. Football teams. Mathletes. English teachers. All staring at the sun, instead of the elephant in the room. Then you’ll end up cackling on the 1 train, en route to Columbia’s corpse. Get it together, Minitrue can see you.

Man, LinkedIn’s UI is ancient. Anyway, the healthatorium(s) had slick brochures.

Another time. For now, Bernarr’s done talking about himself. Mostly. It’s time to define the problem: why do your eyes suck, and why’s it your fault?

Okay, that’s worth less than nothing. It sounds like a drunk wrote it. But most executive summaries are flashy nonsense by design. Shaking keys keeps executives from remembering they don’t read. With the reader hooked, Bernarr gets more scientific. In his way.

Stay calm—I know the classics stand out. Meaningless expressions. Impure blood. Degeneration. Another crank would sprint to eugenics, and Bernarr dabbles. But with Physical Culture, there’s only one destination.

Amazing. I’ll love life until I wake up in El Salvador. Even then, you can make your own fun in a lightless gulag. Like dancing. Try this classic, It even works handcuffed to a radiator. It’s time to get funky.

To the left now!

To the right!

Take it back now y'all!

One hop this time!

Ten hops this time!

Criss-cross!

Criss-cross!

That last drill’s called a “Twitch retirement plan.” Master it and you’ll own land, whether or not you can see it.

I can hear the critics, and they’re right. Eyeball dancing’s a stupid fucking waste of our short lives. All isolation lifts are. You should hit heavy compounds to keep your eyes jacked. Bernarr still has you covered.

 .

At a glance, this has nothing to do with your eyes, or even the Casper Slide. Recall that we started out staring into the sun. Pure atomic, retina-scorching light. Yoga’s a revolutionary improvement. Bernarr’s re-reinvented optometry, without a lens in sight. Or anything else.

Besides, it’s honest living. “Try harder” is the company line on disability, and Bernarr’s single-digit genius adds fun diagrams. No progressions or anything, because no one expects you to succeed. They just need something to point at when you ask for eye crutches.

In fairness: Bernarr gestures, through the wreckage of his mind, at your overall health impacting your vision. Then he reaches miles further to squats fixing your dying eyes. And you know what? Go for it. It won’t help, but at least you’ll be brolic. Disney might even bring your show back.

I finally see the potential here. What’s our next drill? Rack pulls with our eyelids?

Ah, an acid bath I mix myself. Can I sue my own dumb ass if it goes wrong? McFadden’s estate? Archive.org? My agent says I need a face, and he’s the only reason I can eat. I need him more than my eyes.

Ah, everything really comes back.

This one’s better than it looks: done right, it’s a bowl of eye drops. I question the lack of numbers. And having Physical Culture readers mix anything more volatile than water and air. I respect everyone’s opinion, except theirs, and anyone similar. If you call vaccines a communist ploy, don’t…nevermind. Play with acid. Throw an acid pool party. I have a guy, he can get you all the acid you need and an old-school super soaker. Thank me later. Just keep putting America First.

Neck-ups! I can’t see a thing without these. They’re great for when texting feels too productive.

Then again.

Do we still say “devil’s advocate” before belting our stupid opinions? I’ll assume so. Devil’s advocate: life’s chaotic enough that any anchor has value. Even your quads. Even quads based on a lie, like healing your eyes or becoming beautiful. Let’s try the next drill out, whatever it is. Don’t worry, Bernarr’s too dead to con us into his vertical.

Ready? Honest effort.

Cool, vintage ahegao again. Practice your best softcore face. Bernarr doesn’t mention tongues, but you know the score. Record your last set to track your progress. If your boss asks what’s up, tell them it’s love. Trust me, I just did it here and it’s cool. The dean said there’s nothing left to ruin.

My eyes feel a little worse now, so that’s enough practice. Quality program: I think I’ve finally and completely found my mind. But is the science sound? Why do some eyes simply refuse to retain muscle, no matter how much you inject?

Glorious Muscle Leader explores a few answers, and forgets all of them. His final verdict (or at least the one closest to the end): leave your cave. Your eyes suck because you’re a 1925 iPad kid. Play outside and you can ditch the cane.

Familiar gripes about kids today follow. That tracks. The generation that called your grandparents shut-ins also spent too much time inside, like their newspaper-addicted fathers before them. It all goes back to Tigerslayer Kruk. If he spent more time tigerslaying and less time jacking it in his cave, we’d all have perfect eyes today. Fire was a mistake.

So was Bernarr. A memorable one, like enlisting or an even-numbered marriage. Health delusion’s still a thriving bookstore section today, but no one has the same spark. That special brew of ego, headline addiction, sex crime, and avoidable corpses.

No one.

Anywhere.

Okay, one paragraph.

Bernarr invites a comparison. The people want RFK jokes. They shout from the rooftops, after reading polio news on touch screens. They shout from the children’s hospitals, in half-finished measles wards. They shout from my inbox, asking if I’ve heard of the walking abortion on every channel. But RFK jokes just make me want a Kennedy erasure device. You know, a plane. So, for the subtext averse: this dried-out antivax sex offender resembles modern phenomena. And family tradition has value.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Russell Bauman, who stares the sun into submission each night so we may enjoy darkness. Thanks Russell.

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