It’s that time of year again. No, not just time for students to go back to school, or the musings about Halloween costumes becoming more serious.

It’s time for Dragon*Con, where your illustrious hosts will be herding geeks, participating in MMORPG discussion panels, and generally having a grand old time. While we’re not going to be giving any fitness-specific talks, it’s probably safe to say that we’ll be keeping an eye out for healthy eating destinations, at least some of the time. And, since some of us (okay, maybe it’s just me) have a penchant for being up first thing in the morning whether we want to or not, it’s likely that we’ll taking the hotel fitness center and hot tub for a spin.

Plus, of course, there are all the fabulous celebrities, vendors, and friends we don’t get to see nearly as often as we’d like. The Supplement-IT folks have told me that they’ll be around somewhere, too; I’m planning on swinging by to say howdy.

And, yes, there will be a fair number of calories burned because of us – Krystalle and Rafe will be spinning six hours’ worth of very danceable tunes at the MMO Gathering of Heroes party on Saturday night.

Oni's Gun Show

There’s a new convention on the calendar, put on by the irrepressible and alarmingly driven Onezumi Hartstein. Not only is she the driving force behind a new art and webcomic convention, she also draws a couple of webcomics of her own, as well as provides advice and guidance to aspiring web artists. Shoehorned around all this are a day job and a dedication to fitness that make us say, “Damn, woman.”

After a fair bit of wrangling, strategic tentacle deployment, and the dangled carrot of  a future arm-wrestling match, we managed to duct-tape her to a folding chair long enough to drag some answers out of her to see exactly how she fits this much energy into one human body.

While dance simulators are nothing new in the realm of console gaming, the upcoming release of the Kinect for Microsoft’s XBox 360 opens up the field to a whole new world of possibilities in the realm of getting your digital groove on. One of the first games that we’re going to see tackle this new level of booty shaking is Dance Central from MTV/Harmonix (the folks behind the phenomenal Rock Band series). Featuring tracks from the likes of Lady Gaga, No Doubt, and Bell Biv Devoe, Dance Central will follow in the footsteps of the Dance Dance Revolution series that came before it by including a feature that will allow you to track the calories you burn while playing the game. While there hasn’t been any word on whether or not new tracks will be available for digital purchase to add on to the initial game, it seems fairly obvious that the with the success that MTV/Harmonix has had selling content for Rock Band they will follow suit with this new franchise. This would help to remove the one obstacle that always seemed to get in the way of regularly using Dance Dance Revolution as a means of getting your exercise in – The songs get old after a while!

On Tuesday, August 17th, at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, MTV/Harmonix announced several new songs that will be available with the initial release of Dance Central. Look behind the cut to see what new grooves are going to be available, along with a list of tracks that had previously been released.

My name is batty, and I’m a modern day cavewoman.

…yeeeeaaaaaaaahno.

Does anyone remember Encino Man? No? OK, we won’t mention it again.

What I mean is that I live a primal lifestyle.  In my neverending quest for fitness and health, I came across a few blogs that advocated living and eating the way our ancestors did, prior to the agricultural revolution. The more I read, the more it made sense to me.  I nom-nom-nomed my last processed protein bar back in March of this year, and haven’t looked back.  The ensuing changes – mental and physical – over the last few months have been astounding.

Want to know more? Drag your clubs this way, please.

Sinfest (c) Tatsuya Ishida

It’s practically a given – if you buy a pre-packaged “healthy” meal, it’s all but guaranteed to have broccoli in it. This penchant for bundling the ubiquitous green stuff is so pronounced that some metalhead friends of ShrinkGeek have likened an unwanted opening act that performs at numerous shows headlined by more desirable bands, “The broccoli of metal.”

What, however, is behind this? Why does broccoli wear the mantle of “default healthy food” in the same way that bacon and cheeseburgers are shorthand for “crap that is bad for you”?