Milestones

Situps
So, I don't do situps very often, because these days the thinking in strength and conditioning circles is that doing tons of spinal flexion exercises is relatively risky compared to the benefits. However, situps are still a pretty standard way to test abdominal strength/endurance, and one of the things that motivated me to start strength training seriously was my discovery about a year ago that doing even one good full situp was quite a challenge for me.

Yesterday, my trainer had me do an exercise where you lie in situp position with your toes against a wall, and sit up and touch the wall. I thought I might be able to do it twice if I was lucky. I did it 15 times. And then another 15 times after a suitable rest break. And then 12 times after that.

It's not quite the same as 42 full situps, because you get a bit of a boost from being able to stretch your arms forward. But still, rumors of the nonexistence of my abs may be exaggerated.

Bouldering
I discovered a crucial difference between bouldering and top rope climbing yesterday, when I unexpectedly made it nearly to the top of a bouldering wall: when you boulder, you not only have to get up the wall, you have to get back down again. Seriously, I felt like a kitten up a tree*. I considered looking cute and waiting to see if the fire brigade would come get me, but that seemed unlikely. I settled for stepping down a couple of footholds and then jumping off.

*I think primates are supposed to have frontal cortices for handling this sort of thing. Mine never seriously entertained the possibility that I would get more than a couple feet off the ground.

Music query: songs with the same names

So, the other day, I was listening to Iron Maiden's "Moonchild", and reflecting that I am very fond of two other songs entitled "Moonchild", one by Chris Cornell and one by Fields of the Nephilim. Three very different songs, with the same title. A quick search of Amazon.com's MP3 downloads suggests that there are many many more songs titled "Moonchild", most of which are presumably distinct songs, and not covers of any of the three I've named.

It seems odd that "Moonchild" should be such a common song name. In the case of the Iron Maiden and Fields of the Nephilim songs, the title definitely reflects the persistent fascination that hard rock artists have with Aleister Crowley. Still, based on Amazon search data, songs entitled "Moonchild" comfortably outnumber songs entitled "Love Under Will". So I don't think we can entirely credit The Great Beast for this.

It also occurred to me to wonder whether this was the only instance in my music library of three non-identical songs with identical titles. I really ought to find or write a script to extract statistics out of my iTunes library. A cursory visual scan of song titles didn't reveal any other instances beyond, "The Only One" by The Eden House, "The Only One" by Evanescence, and near-identical, "I'm the Only One" by Melissa Etheridge.

Do you know any songs called "Moonchild" that are not one of the ones I've listed above? Do you have favorite songs that have the same titles but are completely different songs?