MySpace, April 20 – May 26, 2008

Monday, May 26, 2008

So What’s The Big Deal?
Category: MySpace

Okay, so I guess I just don’t get what the big deal is about MySpace. I signed on so I could have a place to blog, ‘cuz keeping a journal is supposed to reduce stress…at least the “experts” say so. That, and it’s kind of neat to play around with profiles and edit the style pages a bit. That’s all I do here. Really. This whole emphasis on friends at this site serves only to point out to me just how many people I don’t know. I have what, ten friends? Maybe? And two of them are a radio station?I just spent the last hour looking for the few people I know…and failed. I looked for people who I went to high school with…and failed. I looked for people I knew in college…and failed. I looked for people I used to work with…and failed. I looked for people I work with NOW…and failed.

In part, this has to be backlash from living a life largely without friends. I haven’t kept up with anybody…and now I have no idea where they are or what they’re doing. I honestly don’t know how people on here can have over a thousand friends. Do they just “friend me” to everyone they run into? Are they just an icon collection to them? I don’t get it.

Maybe I’ll have to cop out and see how many bands I can collect…but it’s not like they’re going to really pay attention to little ol’ me, anyway. I could try to connect with all of the 15 year old hotties here…if I were one of the 32,000 registered sex offenders who have MySpace accounts.

Sigh…

And worse, the only people who DO read this are people who know me, so I have to be kind of sanitary here. I’m thinking of moving this whole thing to some other blogging site so I don’t hafta worry about it anymore.

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Friday, May 23, 2008

I’m That Guy

I’m that guy…you know, THAT guy. The guy with dirt under his fingernails, and grease on his hands. I’m the guy who likes to work on his own car, who replaced the clutch in his own motorcycle. I’m the guy who likes to install faucets and light fixtures, and likes to build things around the house. I’m the guy who likes digging holes and planting trees and who likes fixing the lawnmower almost as much as using it. I’m the guy with a 60lb toolbox, and power tools, and various solvents and oils in the garage. I’m the guy who likes waxing the car, and knows that rubbing compound will take out most scratches on the car. I’m the guy who likes to shoot stuff with a shotgun…and then reload his own shells, and then shoot more stuff. I’m the guy who spends the weekend in dirty jeans, a t-shirt and a baseball cap, rather than shower and shave all 7 days of the week. Yeah, I’m that guy.

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Saturday, May 17, 2008

I’m That Guy

I’m THAT guy. No, not HIM…the other one. I’m the guy who’s been married for eleven years to the same woman. I’m the guy who has four kids…all with the same woman….whom I’m married to. I’m the guy who drives the crappy car and lets my wife have the nice one, because she hauls our kids around…or at least I did when the nice car held all the kids at once. I’m the guy who actually likes mowing grass, and snowblowing the driveway, and painting the kitchen, and watering the flowers. I’m the guy whose favorite sound is the laughter of my children. I’m the guy who can’t stand it when my job takes me to the pediatrics floor of the hospital, because I abhor the sound of children crying in pain. I’m the guy who thinks that Christmas is for the children, and that Santa Claus is alive in every one of us. I’m the guy who thinks that a child’s innocence is sacrosanct, and that those who violate and shatter that innocence should be removed from our society….unpleasantly. I’m the guy who wears my wife’s high-school ring around my neck, every single day; who feels naked when he forgets to put on his wedding band. I’m the guy who may joke about various hot-looking women, but who would never cheat on his wife. I’m the guy who thinks less (MUCH less) of guys who put their wife down while out with “the guys.” I’m the guy who’ll give $5 to a homeless person, and try to preserve their dignity when I do it. (“Excuse me, I think you dropped this, sir.”) I’m the guy who’ll help push a neighbor or a stranger out of the ditch. I’m the guy who’ll drop work in a heartbeat if my family needs me. I’m the guy who weeps every time he hears a newborn’s first cry. I’m the guy who wants to show my family the world. I’m the guy who wants to barbecue burgers on the deck, and roast marshmallows over the campfire. I’m the guy who’s a father, and a husband, and wouldn’t change that for anything.Yeah, I’m that guy.

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Friday, May 16, 2008

I’m That Guy

I’m that guy. You know, THAT guy. I’m that guy with glasses, Dockers and a button-up shirt, wearing track shoes. I’m that guy who says “I need to return this” when he’s thinking “take yer fuckin’ piece o’shit back and give me my goddamn money back.” I’m that guy driving the Volvo, with jazz coming out of the windows, but not TOO loud. I’m that guy who looks like a repressed asshole, like a college-educated jerk — kind of pudgy like he’s never done an honest day’s labor in his life. I’m that guy who looks uptight enough to blush if a girl looks at him. I’m that guy who gets caught looking at a girl’s legs and tries to camoflage it by looking for a garbage can that isn’t there, or something. I’m that guy who looks like a nerd…a twitchy nerd…a twitchy, uptight, Volvo-driving, stupid-expression-wearing, nerd. Yeah, I’m that guy.

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Saturday, May 10, 2008

Bloggity Blog

I haven’t blogged here in a while. It’s become harder to really let myself say what I want around people that I know. I know anything I blog here is going to be read by my neighbor, and my tae-kwon-do classmate, and my brother-in-law, and my wife and…well most of my friends are people I know. So I can’t blog anything about them. Some of my friends live in the same house as me…so I can’t blog –– and as punctuates most everything I do, a baby pooped and I have to stop what I’m doing and go handle shit.

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Friday, April 25, 2008

I Dunno

What’s wrong with people? Are we actually getting stupider (legitmate word if you’re in 4th grade) or is there just an extreme shortage of people willing to point a finger and say (loudly) “Hey, you! You’re doing it wrong!”Today, I was waiting to turn left out of a driveway. I had to wait for cars…nothing strange there. But then the guy waiting to turn left INTO the driveway waved me out. There were no other cars coming, but there WERE cars waiting behind him. I stared at him for a second, then waved him out of the way with both arms… the physical version of “hey, stupid, get outta the road!” And he waved me out again, this time impatiently. To get things moving, I pulled out — squealed out, actually, and in the company van, too.

I fumed about it the whole time I was driving. I mean fer chrissakes, don’t they tell drivers anymore that if they’re in the middle of the road, they shouldn’t just STOP and wave people out of driveways? If they don’t have anyplace to be, maybe the drivers BEHIND them actually want to go somewhere. Thus the reason they’re in CARS, on the ROAD, trying to DRIVE SOMEWHERE! And I thought about it some more. Why didn’t the guy behind him honk or something? He was being a moron and holding up traffic…I’D have honked — a long, loud “Git the f*ck outta the road, you f*cktarded ass-mummy!!” If I’d have put the van in Park and gotten out, he’d have been mad at ME.

And I thought about it in a broader sense. The morons rule the world. They cross the centerline of the highway while driving…and the people they’re playing chicken with don’t flash a light or honk a horn or anything. Morons pull out in front of people, then slam on their brakes and turn…and nobody honks or anything. Morons cough or sneeze on you or your family, and if you say anything they either pretend they don’t notice, or they get mad at YOU.

One time, I was waiting in a long line to pay at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Indiana, and this dizzy bitch walked past everyone and straight up to a register. NOBODY said anything…so I did.
“Ex-CUSE me, but wait your turn.”
“Oh,” (and this absolutely floored me) “I thought I just walked right up…”

I thought I just walked right up?! Never mind the eight people waiting with their bill in their hands. Never mind the existence of lines since the beginning of freaking HISTORY…no, SHE thought she’d just walk RIGHT UP! Gawd! How did she survive the drive to the place? How many red lights did she run because “I thought they meant everyone else,” and how many pedestrians did she run over while driving on the sidewalk because “I thought I just drove over here…” Is she serious? Really?

So I dunno. Maybe it’s because the biggest thing anyone reads anymore is an issue of People magazine. Maybe it’s the whole Real World-Surreal Life-The Osbournes-ANTM-Survivor-Big Brother-Tila Tequila-Paris Hilton-Hamster Dance-America’s Got Talent mentality that’s being fostered by our televisions. Maybe it’s all the artificial colors in our food. Maybe everyone’s Zoloft is reacting with their Zantac and causing stupidity. I dunno, but it’s really annoying.

Hey! Stupid people! Please stop!

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Sunday, April 20, 2008

Randomnity
Current mood: cheerful

I haven’t blogged anything in a while, and should. It’s harder to do when people who know me read my blog…like, oh, I dunno…my wife. Can’t go on about my extra-marital exploits; can’t complain about my girlfriend’s shortcomings; can’t talk about that court order at ALL.Yeah.

My brother-in-law (BIL) moved in with us last weekend. We cleaned out a corner of our basement and made a space for him. It kind of saddens us that all we can offer is an unfinished basement — bare cement, plastic sheeting over the pink insulation for walls, and the ceiling is floor joists and heating ductwork. I was able to run a couple of extension cords to his “room” for power for his 47 different video game systems. He’s also borrowing one of our cars while his is KO’d. Again, I’m kind of embarrassed that it’s older than he is — it’s an ‘84 Crown Victoria…it’s navy blue, 17 feet long and slow. It gets all the gas mileage of a V8, and has all the power of a 4-cylinder.

On the other hand, I’m actually proud to be have something to offer — we finally have a house big enough that we can clear out a 10×12 (or so) room without really cramping our lifestyle (if we actually have a lifestyle…I suspect we don’t.) and we have a car that is in decent shape that has done nothing but sit for a year — heck, my BIL driving it is actually HELPING us out…the car needed to be driven to kind of keep it in working order. It’s not going to send us to the poorhouse to have another person living here, not by a long shot, and that’s a decent feeling.

(subject change…) Home improvement season has started. Some people call it spring, I think. We’re starting to work on the house to start making it what we want. We put in new solar lights by the sidewalk, and we’re testing out different samples of paint on the walls. I stained the porch, deck and the kids’ swingset, and they all look much better. We’re starting to water the yard, and the grass we planted last fall is sprouting nicely this spring.

Oh, and I got Guitar Hero III for about 1/2 what it costs in the store, so I’ve been playing the $!t out of that for the past coupla days. It’s not a real guitar, but it’s fun.

Later.

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MySpace, March 4 – 11, 2008

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Phoney Baloney

Okay, so I’ve had a cell phone for a week now. This is not earth-shattering news (“Where was the kaboom? There should have been an earth-shattering kaboom.” 10 pt. if you can guess the reference there) to most people, but this is the first cell phone I’ve had that was mine, and the first phone that we as a couple have had since, oh, I’d guess 1998 or so. At that time we got a 15-minutes-for-$15 plan, and threw a phone in the glovebox of the car. When it started costing us $50 per month if we made a call, we canned it. It served its purpose when my wife was commuting from Lafayette, Indiana to Indianapolis, Indiana, which if you don’t know Indiana geography, is a 50-mile drive each way.

Anyway, last week we entered the 21st century and got a pair of phones on Sprint’s cheapest family plan. I like the phone, it’s a cheap knockoff of a Razr — which I guess is a good phone or something — and it has a camera and some web things to play with. My wife’s is pink. I have exactly one contact in my phone, and it’s my wife. Wait, I take that back, I have my dad in there, too. That’s two contacts. I’m not giving my number out to everybody — hell, I’m not giving my number out to anybody at this point. I’m paying like $50/month to have an inert phone in my pocket, basically.

But having one of these things has made me look even closer at the nasty, rude, boneheaded and dangerous things people do while on their phone. Driving is a big one. I seem to be behind more and more people who shake their car around like a rag-doll and play chicken with oncoming traffic…and when I can get beside them, they have that phone crammed up agains their ear. I just want to get a cellphone jammer (illegal in the U.S., but selling like hotcakes out the back of Manhattan electronics stores) except I want my jammer to broadcast the message: “Hang up your phone and drive your fucking car!”

Hellsticks, cell phones today are like cigarettes were when I was a kid. When people exit a building, they have the phone in their hand before they’re even out the door, and it’s flicked open and dialed after two steps. There are so far unproven theories that cell phones can cause brain cancer, and are equivalent to a couple of drinks, when it comes to driving ability. Ladies’ purses used to have a cigarette pocket on them, now they have a cellphone pocket. There are movements to ban driving and talking on a cell phone.

Honestly, I don’t see what the big deal is. They’re phones. I have no desire to always be talking to someone, and I refuse to let myself be tethered to a ringing phone when I’m not at work. Really, I don’t get much from hanging on a phone talking to anyone. It’s a phone…call me if you need me to bring home milk and snow tires. I’ll call you if my leg’s broken or my car’s stuck.

Bah. ’nuff said.

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Monday, March 10, 2008

Now We Can Vote!
Current mood: apathetic

So…tomorrow we will have owned our house for one week. We are homeowners — Landowners, even, so now we can vote. I should be excited about it. I’m not. This isn’t the first time we’ve owned a home, and this isn’t even LIKE the first time we owned a home, but that time went so horribly wrong that it’s kind of taken the fun out of it. It’s sort of like, not special to me anymore…home-ownership is supposed to be a big deal, but based on our first experience, it’s just a money-suck. I suppose it helps that we bought the house we already live in, so there’s no big move associated with closing on our house….we really just send our rent somewhere else. And if the furnace breaks WE have to pay for it. Hooray.

It’s not that this house is BAD or anything. It’s been rented for the past four years, so it’s kind of dingy, but nothing’s really trashed or anything. We have plans to replace ugly carpets, countertops and stuff. We have plans to paint, and install wainscoting, and finish the basement, and plant a garden and stuff. We can MAKE this house really nice, but right now it’s just kind of grungy and brown. Yes, brown. The outside is brown, the carpet is brown, the floors are brown, the counters are brown and the inside paint is the worst, it’s kind of a tan/brown/pink/orange congomeration, depending on the light. Uck.

But once we do that stuff, this house will be great — we have a back deck and a private back yard with woods. We have a garage, and enough room for all of us, and the house is laid out fairly nicely. Our last house was just too small — 832 square feet for a family of (at that time) four is just impossible. We ate each other, and it was bad. On top of that, our last house was built with a near-total lack of quality…we had shingles blow off, we had siding blow off, we had cracks in our foundation and warps in our roof, and we had zero privacy on our lot. And if we still had that house today, we’d have been lucky to sell it for 80% of what we bought it for in today’s plummeting house market.

So what’s my point? Good question. Let’s see…we bought our house. I’m not excited. Home-ownership has been a let-down for us. I think that’s it. Maybe once we get some of our plans in motion I’ll get more excited. Until then….

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Saturday, March 08, 2008

I’m 72% Redneck. Aw, gawd.

Thank you, Margie, for giving me another addictive quiz. So I’m 72% redneck. I’m kind of surprised by that…if you knew me you wouldn’t picture me living on a farm or camping or eating squirrel, I guess. I’m as likely to say “predicament” as “trouble.” But I guess I’m a redneck. H’yuck.

Are You A Redneck

(x) have you ever lived in the country?
(x)shot a gun?
(x) own a gun?
(x) hunted? (3D targets)
(x) driven a truck?
Subtotal= 5

() chewed tobacco?
(x) gone camping?
(x) listened to country?
()owned a country cd?
(x)fished?
(x) worn a cowboy hat?
(x) worn cowboy boots?
Subtotal= 10

(x) ridden a horse?
(x) seen a farm?
(x) worked on a farm?
(x) lived on a farm? veg. farm w/ rabbits, doves, chickens
(x) fed a farm animal?
() worn carhartt?
(x) lived in a small town?
(x) worked on a car?
Subtotal= 17

(x) seen a nascar race?
(x) been to a nascar race?
(x) been to an oval track?
(x) seen a demolition derby?
() been in a demolition derby?
(x) seen a figure 8 race?
(x) talked on a cb radio?
(x) had a cb in your car?
(x) seen smokey and the bandit more than 10 times?
Subtotal= 25

(x) watched the dukes of hazzard episodes?
() owned more than two cars that don’t run?
(x) been to a junkyard
() been a racist
() been in a INTERNATIONAL vs john deere argument?
() gone cow tipping?
(x)made love in a truck on a back road
Subtotal=28

() had to ponder whether your family said tire or tower
() been sprayed with deer pee?
(x) worn camo?
(x) ridden a 4-wheeler?
() owned a cabin?
(x) went swimming in the pond?
Subtotal= 31

() drank white lightening?
(x) had your whole family on the front porch?
() thought that wal-mart was the coolest place ever?
() own a shirt with a rebel flag?
(x) eaten venison (deer meat)?
(x) cooked over a fire?
(x) ever been muddin?
(x) ate squirrel?
Subtotal= 36

Overall= 36

Now multiply your score by 2 and post it as “I’m –% redneck”.

YEEHAWW! If your redneck score is over 50%, you can officially call yourself a redneck

Dont sound surprised!!!!

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Wednesday, March 05, 2008

My Wife.

I don’t blog about my wife. Ever. There are consequences for that.

Currently listening :
She Hates Me
By Puddle of Mudd
Release date: 02 September, 2002

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Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Antidepressants, Redux

Okay, I tried to post a blog last night, and got too far in to start over when I fumble-fingered some hotkey-sequence-of-instant-Firefox-death. I guess ctrl-shift-I (or whatever it was) means “close immediately, the user wants to fuck up what he was doing.” Not that I’m bitter.

So anyway…I read someone’s blog — someone I may not know, someone who may not be on Myspace, and the last line of their blog mentioned antidepressants, and how you can’t find life in them…life is in you. Had nothing to do with most of their blog. But it reminded me of my former life (say, five years ago or so) when I was on the things.

Here’s the deal…we lived in Indiana for five years. Indiana is the polar opposite of me. To get along with my co-workers, I had to not be me. And that screws one up. I also lost my grandmother, grandfather, mother and an unborn baby while I lived there. Indiana was my very own special five years of hell. And then I moved from there to here, and started a high-stress Help Desk job — national turnover rate: 18 months. I lasted: six years.

So I went from everything-except-my-job-is-Hell Indiana, directly to my-job-is-intense-burning-Hell Michigan. And I burned out…I burned out hard, and totally, down to a smoldering, black bit of volcanic slag. And then I spent another two years at that job. You do what you have to if you support a family.

So yeah, at one point along the way, I got set up with antidepressants. When you start taking them, you don’t immediately feel better. You feel drunk. You feel just-past-buzzed for the entire day. For a month. It takes a month for your brain to accept what the pills are doing to it and settle down.

And then after two more months, that breed of pill stopped working for me. Did I mention that I have huge tolerances to pills? When I take cold medicine, it only works the first time around. If I get another box of the same stuff, it doesn’t work. So they switched my meds. And I spent another month drunk. And after that, I had several months in which the pills made me not-depressed.

That’s what they do. They don’t make you happy. They make you not-depressed. They cut out the lows, and they cut out the highs as well, and they leave you with a middle-nothing kind of blah, day in and day out.

And then that prescription started losing its effect, and I was staring down the barrel of another med change, and another month of side effects, and that’s when it happened. I had an epiphany.

It’s silly, actually, and sounds flippant. I realized that my problems were all in my head. Yeah, I know how it sounds, but it’s deeper than that. I was driving home from work, and thinking, and I realized that there is no drug, no therapist, no doctor that is going to know what’s going on in my head as well as I do. If anyone is going to take charge of my upstairs it’s me. My depression and associated stuff…was all in my head. MY head. I was done being a collection of symptoms, and ready to be ME again. I weaned myself off the drugs, and haven’t taken them since.

It scared my boss shitless. She became my new manager while I was deep in the burned-out-depressed-bitter-cynical-drugged-poor-me-I’m-hurting crap…and then I told her “Oh, I went off my meds.” Her eyes bugged out of her head. It was funny, though I understand in retrospect. There I was, one of the problem-children of her department, and that was all she knew of me, and she thought I was going to snap and start killing people with a hacksaw. Oh…good times…

But there it is. I’ve been there, and somehow managed to snap myself out of it. Life is inside you. YOU. Not a bottle of pills. Use them as a tool, as a crutch…as a TEMPORARY crutch. But never let them be your life, because your life will be a middle-nothing blah, and that’s not living. If you don’t want to be depressed anymore…don’t be. It’s as simple as that. It’s as blisteringly hard as that.

Peace out. (delivered like Kip on ‘Napoleon Dynamite’)

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