This is week 69 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 476): Sticky Birds and Milkweed

The day started with the tile guy calling and telling us that we had bought wall grout instead of floor grout for him to finish our bathroom floor. We didn’t know that there was a difference, so we had bought the same stuff the last contractor used. I guess the last contractor didn’t know the difference either. The tile guy let us know that we needed sanded grout because non-sanded grout cracks if you use it on the floor. This is mistake number 4,286 added to the last contractor’s fault list. The tile guy said that he wouldn’t be able to finish the job today, but if we got the grout, he’d be back on Monday morning to get it done.

We made a trip to the local home improvement store to get the right grout, and I was admittedly a little irritated that I was still finding major things that the last contractor did wrong. We were able to find a 25 lb bag of grout relatively quickly, and I wanted to get out of there and enjoy the rest of my Sunday with #1GF!. That idea sort of evaporated when #1GF! suggested that we look at lights and knobs.

I run around doing house stuff all week long, but the weekends are #1GF!’s only time to get involved in the process. That means she’s excited to look at house stuff when I’m sick of it. I understood her excitement, so I tried to play along, but ended up sort of standing back while she looked at things. I tried not to be irritated about doing house stuff, but I eventually just told her that I needed a break to hang out with her without thinking about house stuff. She understood, and got me out of there.

Because our friends have a daughter who will be heading off to her first year of college soon, I wondered if I could come up with a list of tips that might make her freshman year easier. As I started thinking of things from my own college experience like “Being on a first name basis with the Dean of Discipline makes it harder to get away with things” and “When people start acting like nudity and needles are normal, it’s probably time to leave,” I started wondering if any advice I could dispense to a college freshman would be applicable in today’s college experience.

When I was in college, there were no laptops, there were no digital cameras, and we had to go to computer labs to use Gopher because there was no World Wide Web available to the general public. Know how much we worried about getting a less than flattering picture of us taken with a camera that wasn’t invented and put on an internet that didn’t exist? About as much as someone stealing our uninvented ipods or 90 pound, $300 dollar a minute cell phones. Shit man, the only phones in my dorm were hall pay phones that the served about 30 guys each, so you were lucky to find out if your girlfriend dumped you two weeks after the fact. Coming from a technological dinosaur age like that, I really started to wonder what the hell kind of advice I could offer the constantly-connected freshman of today.

The more I reminisced, the older I felt, so I put everything aside, had a cup of tea, and watched Matlock until I drifted off to sleep under my afghan. When I woke up after a couple of hours of dreaming about snorting coke off the small of Angela Lansbury’s naked back, I realized that an incoming freshman might get better advice if it came from a number of people in a range of ages, rather than from one guy who is twice the age of most college freshmen and quite possibly deranged.

I recruited help from students and alumni who are a little closer to their college years, and asked them to offer their advice on what can make a freshman year a bit easier. Below are sets of independently written advice that range from me, at the top of the age group, all the way down to a current college sophomore. Surprisingly, there were a few similarities that span across all age groups.

If you’re heading off to college for your freshman year (or know someone who is), I hope you find something in here that makes the year a little easier. If you’ve already completed your freshman year, why not lend a hand and add your year and ten pieces of advice in the comments? Matlock would want you to.

W.A.T.C.H. is a non-profit organization that seeks to protect children by educating parents on the dangers lurking in many toys. I saw on the news that they had released their “Safe Fun In The Sun” pamphlet to help reduce injuries this summer, and the news made it out to be a pamphlet full of EXTREME! DANGER! I wanted to see just what is considered dangerous these days, so I tracked down the original pamphlet to find out what all the fuss was about.

I’m all for trying to make kids safer, but I have to wonder what the hell is going on in the world that creates a need for a pamphlet like this to be written at all. I grew up in the 70′s, and when I think of how people grew up in the 50′s, I feel like a total pussy. I’m sure that when those people think of people who grew up during the Great Depression, they feel like pussies. When I see a pamphlet like this, I don’t feel bad anymore because I know that as time goes on, each generation will churn out bigger and bigger pussies for old people to feel tougher than. Need proof? Check out some of the main points in the pamphlet and tell me that you don’t agree…

Point 1: Protective Gear Should Be Worn With Inline Skates, Scooters, And Skateboards
In the 70′s, we roller skated, rode around on six inch wide skateboards, and rode friggin’ big wheels downhill standing up, usually with the sole intention of crashing into each other. That was what we called a crash up derby. We had no helmets, we had no pads, and we never rode scooters because scooters were for pussies. Even though we smashed into each other in the middle of the street at the bottom of a hill, the most protective gear we had were Toughskins, and the knowledge that our parents would kill us if we ripped another pair of plaid pants.

Point 2: Kids Riding Bikes Must Wear Helmets
The second a kid gets near a bike these days, someone is ready to call Child Services unless the kid has a helmet on before they lay a single finger on the handlebars. When I was a kid and finally got a Huffy, I used it for two things: to jump off things like Evel Knievel, and get into smash up derbies like one of the The Malachi Brothers. If you messed up your jump off of a poorly constructed cinder block ramp, or were the unsuspecting victim of the Malachi Crunch, the only thing standing between you and a batch of city poured concrete was a ringer t-shirt and a mess of long hair, my friend. We didn’t wear helmets, because when I was a kid, helmets only served to help you tell which kids you weren’t allowed to make fun of. Everyone else learned to tuck and roll. Hell, not even professional hockey players wore helmets in those days, so why would we?

I’ve mentioned Brad Sucks before, and over the last few days, I’ve somehow gotten really interested in remixing stuff with free audio tools. I remixed a Brad Sucks track called “Making Me Nervous” and made a video for it just to prove to myself that I could do it with nothing but free tools. It’s not the greatest thing in the world, but hey, it’s done.

The only tools used for this were:

• Audacity
• Mixmeister BPM analyzer
• Hydrogen Advanced Drum Machine

Thanks to the free download of the “Making Me Nervous” source files, the job was mostly cutting, pasting, and arranging. The only thing that I actually had to create was the drum track, which contains a healthy dose of cowbell. The video is just a couple of minutes of video shot out of the sunroof with a cell phone, so the quality is on the low side, but you do the best you can with what you’ve got.

My “Making Me Nervous” Remix Video

If you want to hear the original version of “Making Me Nervous”, you can download it for free over at BradSucks.net. Brad encourages remixing of his stuff, and with so many free and relatively easy to use tools available, why not take a shot at a remix of your own?

• that people are good, but they will get away with whatever they can.
• that nice guys finish last where it’s least important.
• in the power of mind over matter.
• in taking a vitamin every day.
• that eating too many chemicals affects our health.
• that cheap cookies taste the best.
• that everyone should get something for free on their birthday.
• in sticking up for the underdog.
• that people who use the phrase “Who do you think you are?” have no idea who they really are.
• that every presidential candidate is identical in that they are the cream of the crop of devious motherfuckers.
• that we always have a choice.
• that the edges wear off as you get older.
• in love.
• that the news is just a reality show without the fun.
Continue Reading…

After I finished up my bastard post, I was sitting on the couch thinking about all the people that I’m a fan of these days. As I cycled through a list of friends, relatives, bloggers, and those masochists who always, always, always take part in FineTune Friday, I thought, “What good does this admiration do for anyone locked up in my head? Who cares if I like someone’s site or admire their actions if I never actually tell anyone about it?”

And I thought, “It doesn’t matter at all.”

And then the slogan that has been guiding me along since I quit my job popped into my head:

“It’s not what you think, it’s what you do that matters.”

We’ve allowed television to ruin our attention spans, and the web to wrap us in the illusion that the answer to every decision is out there just waiting for us to uncover it. The endless choice that we are constantly faced with has made modern decision making something that people avoid, fear, and even dread. Here are 10 simple tips to help you take control of your decisions rather than letting them take control of you.

Imagine yourself driving somewhere. You’re sipping your coffee, fiddling with the radio, and going over some mundane things that you have to do later on. Your head is in fifteen places except where you are. Everything is very normal. There is absolutely nothing that you could have done, so it’s probably best that you never saw the gas truck that ran the light and into your drivers’ side door.

It is not your lucky day.

Last week I mentioned that I went into an open house where the previous owner had written all over the walls (see the post) and while I didn’t find it creepy, it did stick in my mind.

This week, while discussing it with someone, we found out that the house may have been previously owned by Louise Wightman, a former Combat Zone stripper and Playboy model who was convicted of practicing psychology without a license back in 2005.

Wightman had a daughter named Torri with Aerosmith’s head of security, but in May of 2006, the girl skipped school and was killed in a daytime car accident at the age of 16.

When we found all this out, #1GF! and I were wide eyed, remembering how sad the house was to be in. I think we both wanted to know more, but didn’t want to be morbid, googling the details of a dead teenager.

Today, I needed a couple of details to close the books on this story, and Wikipedia led me to Torri’s Wightman’s website. There I ended up seeing the pictures of her funeral, the bloody clothes she died in, and even what I think is her toe tag, warning people to think whenever they get into a car.

From there I ended up finding a link to Torri Wightman’s myspace videos. While fairly typical for teenage videos, watching them was an atypical experience because the happy teenager depicted had no idea that those captured idle moments would soon be frozen in time.

It made me wonder what’s really important to keep locked in our memories. Is it the big events when we’re posing for the camera? Or should we be burning the insignificant details to memory because, in the end, the idle moments make us who are, and will be the things we want to remember most?

After a moment of reminiscing about the robotic anonymity of my old grey cube, I felt a little guilty that you had to be in that office while I sat out in my beach chair. Although I can’t join you in fluorescence, I thought I’d join you in spirit.

I wish I had tacked up a TPS report to the wall of my virtual cube, but I just don’t have the skills.

The Participatory Culture Foundation has just released Miro, a free, open source RSS reader for video feeds. It can handle just about every video format that you can think of, has a built-in bittorrent client, and runs in both windowed and full screened modes. Formerly named the Democracy Player, this cross-platform player is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux.

Miro displaying the channel guide

With a million video players and sites out there, why should you care about Miro? You should care about it because Miro is the first solid step toward independent TV. By creating an integrated player and channel guide, Miro is not trying to supplement your TV watching: It’s trying to replace it.

By including a built-in channel guide that containing nearly 1600 channels, Miro is taking all of the legwork out of finding quality, independent video on the web. With more channels being added every day (trust me, I volunteer moderating them. It never stops.), there is something available for every taste. I ripped the following category list out of the channel guide this morning so you can get an idea of the wide range of channels available:

• Activism 44 Channels
• Animals 14 Channels
• Animation 62 Channels
• Arts 217 Channels
• Business 44 Channels
• Comedy 227 Channels
• Education 120 Channels
• Environment 27 Channels
• Family 32 Channels
• Food 33 Channels
• Government 10 Channels
• Health 22 Channels
• International 117 Channels
• Kids 8 Channels
• Mac 16 Channels
• Movies & TV 194 Channels
• Music 177 Channels
• News 158 Channels
• Politics 102 Channels
• Religion & Spirituality 42 Channels
• Science 36 Channels
• Sports 77 Channels
• Technology 165 Channels
• Transportation 11 Channels
• Travel 65 Channels
• Video Blogs 196 Channels
• Video Games 19 Channels

Tons of content doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s anything worth watching though, right? While I will admit that there are a few high school video blogs in there (LOL! OMG! WTF! BRB!), they are generally outnumbered by the amount of quality content. If you like news, ABC, NBC, Reuters, BBC, Fox, G4TV, and plenty of independent channels are available. If you’re a sucker for comedies, there are tons of regularly produced, independent sitcoms like The Burg, We Need Girlfriends, and Cearealized.

I currently have over 50 channels loaded into my player that range from G4 TV Shows to independent web-only sitcoms, and there are more videos in those channels than I could watch in a week.

If the guide isn’t enough for you, you can blaze your own trail with the built in video search feature. It will let you hunt down videos on Blip.tv, YouTube, Videoh, DailyMotion, Google Video, Blogdigger, and Revver from a single interface. It will also allow you to save those searches as channels, so that you can get constant updates on your favorite topic, whether it’s “Robot Chicken” or “chicken monkey donkey porn”. You can even set up playlists of channels to have Miro play all of your videos back to back in full screen.

With all this downloading, it would be logical to expect that you have to keep a watchful eye on your hard drive to keep it from getting packed with the videos that you never watch, but Miro is designed to work within a limited space. When you add a channel from the guide, Miro will manage the download and storage of the videos to prevent your drive from filling up. After you watch each video, you have the option of saving it, deleting it, or letting it delete itself automatically after a set period of time.

Sound cool, yet? It should. It’s the future of independent content.

Miro Will Kill Your Television… if you let it.

The Participatory Culture Foundation is a Massachusetts-based non-profit organization which seeks to balance the playing field when it comes to producing and distributing content. They were recently funded by the Mozilla Foundation and seek to help solve the growing problem of a small number of corporations controlling mass media. You can help balance the scales by turning your eyeballs away from the TV and onto Miro. I have no affiliation with the PCF beyond being a volunteer channel moderator, so I’m not employed by them nor am I qualified to speak for them. If you want to blame someone for any errors or mentions of chicken monkey donkey porn, you’ll have to blame me in the comments or by email.

This week, I’ve been forced to face the fact that I’ve wasted a decade on a company that is a professional dead end. I’ve wasted a number of brain cycles trying to determine whether it’s better to quit, transfer, or drink the Kool Aid, but after a run on the beach today, I thought, “None of this shit matters. None of it. It’s all bullshit.”

And it brought a smile to my face.

It may have been my distinct lack of oxygen, but the thought grew to include everything. Work, hobbies, morality, everything. We like to think that if we work hard, we’ll get the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We like to think that honesty is the best policy and that the dishonest are always shown the error of their ways. The good guys always win. The fact of the matter is that people get ahead by lying, cheating, stealing, and dumb luck. We don’t like to believe it happens, but the world doesn’t really care what we like to believe.

Your local graveyard is littered with devils and angels, lying side by side, and the world still turns without them. Three generations after they died, most are all but forgotten. Good or bad, their choices had no lasting effect on the world.

And odds are, neither will yours.

The only effect that your values and actions will shape is you.

If the only important thing that you can truly shape is yourself, what will you become?

(Did anyone get the title reference?)

Where have I been? I turned 35, and had been toying with the idea of shutting this thing down and moving on. I’ve been writing about four posts a week for five years, and I’m not famous. I’m not rich, either. And I’m certainly not a better writer. Hell, not one single irresponsible female has thanked me for all my posts by jamming her sweet, sweet cans into my inbox.

When I consider the amount of time that I sink into this thing, it seems like a pretty big waste of time.

When you consider that all that fucking Jared guy from Subway had to do to achieve fame, riches, and an inbox full of sweater muffins was to shove one less hoagie into his fat-ass face every day, this site looks like a pretty monumental waste of time.

So, I just stopped posting. It seemed more than pointless. And thanks to Google’s retention policy, most of my prospective employers for the next 50 years will be able to find every time I said shit, fuck, cock, dick, ass, and vagina. And if they find my cunt post, this site becomes downright self-destructive.

The thing is, I turned 35 and I really don’t feel like I have much to show at this stage. Nothing in my life is even remotely horrible, but I don’t feel like I’ve actually achieved anything. I work all day wearing off the corners that make me unique, and when I actually have free time, I don’t have the energy or imagination to think up anything better than shopping for music or tech items that I don’t need.

Some people have kids, good jobs, houses, or hobbies that mask their lack of a true calling. Other people hole up and drink a lot. I’m still expecting my true calling to crash down on me like a loose jet engine out of the clear blue sky. And I have no clue even where to stand to even get hit.

Most of the time that seems fine, but when I have milestone birthdays and look at the grand scheme of things, it really, really doesn’t.

So, I stopped spending a large portion of my free time writing to see if anything got clearer.

And it sort of did. Even though I originally started writing this as a virtual memory aid, in the last couple of years, it’s transformed into a way to make new friends and connect with old ones. You all know who you are. You harass me when I don’t write, you were nice enough to make and mail your shameful musical favorites CDs (remember that one? I still have every one of them all…), and now, one of you even visited me.

You’ve gradually turned this virtual monologue into a series of real life dialogs.

And I guess that’s what it’s all about.

That and fart jokes.

One of the first posts that I ever published was an experiment to see if I could shut off my television for 7 days. At the time, I found the first two days were marked with definite withdrawal, but after that there was a marked increase in brain activity as my brain transformed from a passive observer to an active participant.

Because I’ve been feeling the life sliding out of me lately, a couple of days ago, I started the experiment again. And because television is a habit backed by billion dollar marketing machine, it’s a tough habit to break. I’ve gotten a lot of shit done over the last couple of days, and even though my brain seems to be coming up with more ideas lately, it’s not smart enough to help me avoid getting my ass whipped by #1GF! in every game of Lost Cities we play.

If you need a little encouragement to participate, check out the original Kill Your Television post

I’d love to hear if you participate and if it does you any good.

Recently, while reading the latest corporate voodoo on how to get ahead, it dawned on me that it overlaps with some of the problogger voodoo on how to generate traffic to a website.

It Doesn’t Matter How Hard You Work…

Have you ever spent time writing a post that you were sure would bring in more traffic? Ever find yourself irritated as hell when crappy posts like “The Top 5 Nice Things You Can Say To Someone” gain incredibly hearty footholds in all the major news sites while your posts don’t get a single comment?

If you’ve been blogging for any amount of time, you probably have felt this way at one time or another.

It Doesn’t Matter Who You know…

Or maybe you spend your time pouring through sites trying to get on the cutting edge of music, games, or whatever your field of interest. Even though you might digest some of the tastiest links on the planet for your content, other bloggers can throw up 50 words about their baby’s new pajamas and get 426 comments more than you, none of which mention viagra, sex farms, or weight loss.

You’re not alone on this.

What Matters is Who Knows You.

Although we might not want to believe it, the thing that gets you ahead in both business and web publishing is not how hard you work or who you know, but rather who knows you. And who does know you? In my case, it’s four Chicagoans, two Canadians, and a guy from New Jersey named Chris. And maybe I’m at the top of my game. But what about all those bloggers out there who you read daily, never leave comments for, and laugh out loud at? I’m not talking about the major leaguers. Everyone knows about them. I’m talking about the unknowns: The Underbloggers.

How are people going to get to know them? For all the posts that they’ve donated to us, we could spend two minutes advertising for them.

I’ll start. Take a look at the list under “Blogs on the Radar” on the right. At least 20 hits a month on their feeds are coming from me because I read them every… damned… day. And even if they are little stats whores, they probably have no idea it’s me because I’m pulling their RSS feeds. And the list is full of good posts and interesting characters. There are ‘Vegas bartenders, DJ’s, strip club DJ’s, death metal loving Kung Fu masters, and even people from Chicago. Yes, Chicago.

Do me a favor. Drop a link to all those underbloggers you regularly read into the comments. If those bloggers check their stats, they’ll know someone appreciated them enough to do some free advertising for them. And any links to them will only help them in search engine rank and hopefully make them more popular.

And don’t feel shy about dropping a link to your own blog.

Today is a day that I’m pretty embarrassed to be a Masshole. For those that don’t know the story, Turner Broadcasting paid two guys to put up LED signs as part of a viral ad campaign for their upcoming Aqua Teen Hunger Force Movie. The signs featured a picture of a Mooninite giving the finger. Turner arranged to have signs put up in Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle. They did this two or three weeks ago.

I took a four day weekend this week. I can’t say that it went as planned…

Day 0: Notar Hero

After last week, all I wanted to do on Friday night was escape into a few hours of Guitar Hero II. I put on my free GHII winter hat, applied the free sunburst sticker to the guitar controller, and waited for the PS2 to warm up. Unfortunately for me, the awesomeness that is Guitar Hero proved to be too much for my crotchety old PS2, and it revolted with a series of growls and grinds that made game play impossible.

After a little investigation, I found that I had to do a more advanced version of my last PS2 dismemberment, this time not only removing the laser, the laser guides and the snake motor screw, but I actually had to melt and bend a plastic clip to give the laser a better ride up and down the screw (meow). Needless to say, now that the PS2 is at the tail end of its life cycle, I am finally well versed at repairing it and have ithumming along better than when it was new.

Note to self: In a pinch, a hair dryer will not miraculously act like a heat gun no matter how MacGuyver the idea seemed at the time.

Day 1: Raked/ran errands

I went raking at #1GF!’s family’s house. On the ride down, we listened to Howard Stern on her brother’s satellite radio, and I found that even though I throw around more f-bombs than an angry trucker with sore nuts, I got really tired of hearing swears on the radio. I guess there is just something about DJ’s having to dance around swears that seems more fun than the swears themselves.

Within a few hours of our arrival, the gutters were cleaned, the yard was raked, and we were on our way back home. On the way back, #1GF! was beyond delighted that her brother had a remote control to the truck radio, and sat in the back seat flicking through the channels in her own impromptu version of “Name that Tune“.

the day ended with us running some errands and picking up some delicious chicken cutlets, which I ate while jamming through the easy and medium levels of GH2.

Day 2: Attended a wake for a good friend’s grandmother

It’s a strange to admit, but when people in my family die, I sometimes dream about them the night they pass away. It has happened for a few of my family members, and although it doesn’t happen all the time, I get nervous when people that I know are the only other people in my dream.

On Thursday night, I had a dream that I heard a noise in my living room. When I went to investigate, I found a friend that I’ve known for 26 years standing there looking confused. When I asked him what he was doing in my living room, he just sort of stared at me and said he had no idea. When I woke up, I spent a few hours convincing myself that my dream had nothing to do with my superstitions, and it only happened for family.

Two days later, my friend called to let me know that he had been with his grandmother when she died on Thursday night. I didn’t mention this to him, and I’m not claiming anything other than it’s weird. If I was superstitious, I might say that “family” is not always about blood.

Day 3: Broke up with IPOWERWEB & found out my aunt died

I talked about the ipowerweb fiasco yesterday, but that was relatively minor compared to the news of my aunt passing away.

About a year ago, my aunt had been diagnosed with three to six months to live. She had beaten her diagnosis by a long shot, and was actually doing relatively well, when she took a sudden downturn and within 48 hours had passed away.

My aunt had a raspy laugh that came from her toes, which was hard to resist joining in with, and like all of my Mom’s siblings, she had been blessed with a quick wit and a great sense of humor.

For only the second time in my life, I will be a pall bearer. And even though I can’t do anything to repay her for all the laughs she gave me over the years, I have to say that I’m honored to have been asked to do this for her.

Day 4: Waited…

Wakes and funerals are difficult by nature, but waiting for them to arrive can be tough, too. I couldn’t really relax yesterday because my aunt’s wake and funeral are coming up. It’s not that I think that wakes and funerals are grueling affairs, but waiting for them brings out those feelings of being a little helpless, a little distracted, and a lot like you’ll never know the right thing to say to those people who feel worse than you do. I wasted time and ran errands until I went to dinner with my parents, yesterday, but if I were smart, I might’ve spent the day living.

The grid below contains samples taken from over 50 songs from various styles, most of which should be relatively easy to identify for people who have had access to a radio at some point over the last 30 years. Your job, when you have a few free minutes, is to see how many that you can identify.

The catch? The samples are all drums.

Instructions

Clicking on will play the sample. Clicking on will give you the answer. If you were right, click anywhere in the box to turn it green. If you were wrong, click anywhere in the box to turn it red.

Scoring

When you’re done, marking all the colors, click “Score Me” at the bottom to display your score. Because you’re self-scoring, what you call a correct answer is up to you. It can be as strict as whether you know both the title and the artist, or simply whether you can hum a couple of notes. Have fun with it.

Score Me

It should be noted that while I am really, really handy with Perl, I wrote this all in . Because I’m really, really rusty in , you may have noticed a complete lack of posts over the last two weeks while I put this bitch together. It was partly because of the , but mostly because WordPress doesn’t really like to play with without some arm wrestling. I would like to have written it in Flash, but I was stopped by both the $400 entry fee and the fact that I’d probably still be working on it. As always, the only reason that I do this crap is so #1GF! and you might have some fun.

1. If you are under the age of 23 and leave the house in pigtails, people might think you are cute. If you are over the age of 23, people assume you are trolling for pole.

2. If it’s 1826 and you live in the old west, wearing a leather vest, chaps, a six-gun, and a Bowie knife says, “Don’t tangle with this outlaw.” If it’s 2006, the same vest and chaps when paired with studded saddle bags and leather tassels hanging from your handlebars say “Please rub random testicles on any non-leather surface.”

3. If you live in some rural farm area and leave the house wearing a cowboy hat, people might assume that you are a wrangler. Irrespective of sex or personal preference, if you are seen wearing that same cowboy hat in the Northeast, people will assume that the only thing you’re looking to wrangle is cock.

I think my inner child has been screaming bloody murder lately. You know those times when people hold the lighter really close to the fuse and wait for someone to bump them? That’s where I’ve figuratively landed over the last few weeks.

And knowing that I have been in that mood, I keep my head down, limit my contact, and try not to blame people for things that aren’t their fault. In my experience, it makes for less apologies later.

Concerned Parent: Do you know how dangerous myspace is?

Admiral Ackbar: Come on.

Concerned Parent: There are predators that prey on children there.

Admiral Ackbar: Oh come on. It’s media hype. Predators have been around for a thousand years. That’s why your parents told you not to talk to strangers or get in vans with clowns. Right now, the media hypes the predatory hunting ground as myspace to freak people out and get them watching the news. 20 years ago, the same stories ran about telephone chat lines for the exact same reason. And in the beginning, the news was controlled by the Church, so the story was quietly squashed so as not to choke off the supply of alter boys. Oh, and video games cause violence and Judas Priest kills children.

Concerned Parent: [stunned] But, I like Judas Priest.

A couple of weeks ago, #1GF! and I walked into the complex gym for an early morning workout. Because it was half passed early, the lights were off and no one seemed to be there, except, in the hall, neatly placed, sat a lonely pair of sneakers.

Confused, we both stood for a minute listening for any sign of life.

Hearing nothing louder than our own breaths, I gave the “raised eyebrow point at the men’s room” gesture, which is listed in most military manuals as “You want me to check the men’s room for some sort of creepy barefoot naked guy?”

Of course, I got the nod from the commander, and in I went.

There was no one in there.

After shrugging the “all clear” sign, I motioned for #1GF! to follow me into the workout room. Once the door was shut behind us, I actually said the following:

“I know you probably want to check the ladies room, but if there’s a big, bloody suicide in there, it’s going to ruin any chance of a workout. There’s obviously no noise coming from in there, so if there is a body in there, it’s not going anywhere in the next 30 minutes. So, do you mind if we check after we work out?”

Considering that the owner of the lonely shoes was never found, was my statement an indication of a deep character flaw or merely good time management?

Let’s say that you check your web logs regularly to see if anyone is checking out your site. And because you’re a closet link whore, you like to visit new sites that link to you to see what you might’ve gotten the link for. Let’s also say that you happen to be scanning one particular site, and you don’t see your link under “Cool Blogs” or “Daily Reads” or even “Blogs that Don’t Suck.”

Your site is simply listed under “Reciprocal Links.”

My question is: Do you feel good because no matter what, the site owner had to take the time to at least type in your URL and give you a link (which they didn’t have to do), or do you feel bad because you didn’t get linked for any other reason than you linked to them first?

+ + || – - ?

Proof I’m Getting Old

1. At the gym, when rolling back to do some dumbell bench presses, I heard enough rapid fire, muffled cracking noises that it sounded like someone had lit a whole pack of firecrackers inside my chest cavity. In truth, it sounded like Chinese New Year in there.

2. I don’t have a myspace page, and I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Further proof: I can’t fucking believe I just used “fuss” in a sentence.

3. When I recently saw the year a person had to be born in to buy cigarettes, I realized that it was the same year that I made out with that fat chick in the 3rd row at the Monsters of Rock Concert. Even after all these years, you still suck, Dan Dokken.

4. On my way out the door this morning, I got frisked by #1GF!.

Me: What are you doing?
#1GF!: [matter of factly] Seeing if you have your phone.
Me: So, you frisk me? Couldn’t you just ask me? When exactly did I cross that age when my answers are suspect enough that you have to pat me down rather than ask?

5. My 34th birthday is in 5 days.

6. When I was assigned seat #69 in a work move, I didn’t high five anyone.

Proof I’m Still Young

1. My sister sent me a birthday card on which she not only changed the “You’re 4!” to “You’re 34!” but she didn’t even attempt to conceal that the card was originally sent to a four year old by someone named “Aunty Dora.” Instead, she just penned in “+ your sister” right below Aunty Dora’s signature. People do not do that sort of thing to their respected elders.

2. I still have a blog, it has a skull on it, and I’m a l33t hax0r with mad sk1llz.

3. I think they should stop trying to raise the driving age, start trying to lower the drinking age, and make shirts illegal.

4. #1GF!’s final response to point #4 to above: “I just pat you down whenever I get the chance.”

5. I’m still hoping to be able to sock away enough to be able to afford the naughty nurse in addition to the skilled one when they put me in the home in 30 years.

6. When I got assigned seat #69 in a work move, I wanted to high five everyone.

Morningwood – Self titled (rock): I discovered Morningwood while looking for new bands online, and put it on my possible buy list. During my most recent CD buys, I was more than a little disappointed to find my “discovery” on the top 25 rack at a local store, downgrading it from “possible” buy to “improbable”. While looking for the other CDs on my list, I somehow got within earshot of one of the local hipsters gushing as if Morningwood were the best band since sliced bread. Maybe it’s the way hipsters ac-cen-tu-ate ev-ery syl-la-ble, or the way they are soooooo into everything, but by the time I could get myself out of earshot, I wanted nothing more than to choke someone with a studded belt and set the bin on fire.

Even though I felt like I was validating hipsters everywhere, I somehow ended up with the album in my hands right before I hit the register. And trust me in that I felt more than a little dirty handing over that ten spot for it. The only small way that I felt could wash off some of the shame was to avoid listening to the album until after I got home…which seemed to work for me.

It seems that a lot of people that I’ve talked to lately have told me that they don’t feel like they are on the right track with their lives. I feel this way every so often, so I have a lot of sympathy. During those periods of doubt, I usually take one of those “YOU CAN DO IT!” books out of the library and read it from cover to cover. I feel so great afterward that over the following few weeks, I happily return to the grind while my spirit slowly dies down to it’s normal levels.

A few months will go by, the cycle repeats, and I get another book. Years go by, and I’m still where I was despite all that reading. While the books are heavy on inspiring rags to riches stories of people “just like you” churning out gobs money and happiness in their spare time, they seem to be devoid of any real insight into how to churn out gobs of money and happiness. In my spare time. Doing what I enjoy.

Luckily, I was poking around on digg.com and came across an article by Paul Graham entitled, How to Do what you love. This was the first thing that I’ve read that actually offered somewhat of a path to getting where you want to be in life. Whether it is right or wrong, it had a a ton of points that had me nodding my head and handing it around like acid at a Phish concert.

My favorite part fell under the section on how to tell if you’re being honest with yourself about what you really want to do with your life. It was a simple two word phrase: “Always produce.”

“‘Always produce’ is also a heuristic for finding the work you love. If you subject yourself to that constraint, it will automatically push you away from things you think you’re supposed to work on, toward things you actually like. ‘Always produce’ will discover your life’s work the way water, with the aid of gravity, finds the hole in your roof.
-excerpt from How to Do What You Love

The quickest way to becoming the world’s strongest man, is not sitting on the couch reading the biography of Mariusz Pudzianowski. The quickest way to becoming the world’s strongest man is to lift a lot of weights. And if you don’t want to do that, then you probably don’t really want to be the world’s strongest man. You want the prestige and the free lifetime supply of weight gainer, but not the reality of what the title entails.
So, if you find you’re a bit lost, take a read. Hopefully, Paul Graham’s article will pick up where all the cheerleader books leave off and you’ll be on your way to where you really want to be. I, unfortunately, have to go stand on the couch and practice air guitar, because when my band takes off, I. am. outta here.

A small sample of the shit I’ve been eating for admitting to buying a Kelly Clarkson CD:

“first even jenny says your gay for the kelly clarkson.”

“I don’t know man. I always looked at you like the guy in High Fidelity, tons of music knowledge with an uncanny ability to find music with cowbells. Now that is all tainted with the thought of you cruising in the EVO with Kelly Clarkson all cranked up to 11 dancing and tapping the steering wheel.”

“I was looking at your music reviews and said, ‘don’t know it… Don’t know it… KELLY CLARKSON?!?! I had to come right over. I don’t think I can look at you the same.’”

“You don’t like Kelly Clarkson. You like ‘KILL YOUR MAMA! KILL YOUR MAMA!’”

Of course, they were all kidding…

There’s no way that I’ll sit here and defend Kelly Clarkson as the pinnacle of musical perfection, and I expected a certain level of grief for admitting to making the purchase. I suppose that I should be grateful that these people once had a vision of me being cooler than I actually am, but I’m not going to lie just maintain that image. That’s not why you’re here. You’re not here to see me cool. You’re here because you know that “the only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.”*

Me and you are tight. We’re like this. And I can’t lie to you, now can I? Not a chance.

When it comes to music, though, the world is full of liars. You know all those people with the bad haircuts who only listen to the most ultra-exclusive, undiscovered bands out, and once the bands get more than 90 fans, they drop them cold? Yes, you do. They wear those little tiny glasses, carry messenger bags, and are always talking about how they liked the band’s early stuff before they got so commercial. If engaged in a conversation for more than five minutes without getting punched in the face, they’ll inevitably tell you what you should be listening to.

They may claim to be heavier than thou, or more obscure than thou, or more underground than thou, but you can always count on them claiming (even if silently) to be cooler than thou. For them, music isn’t about notes and chords. It’s not about kicking back and letting your brain blindly decide what moves it.

It’s a disaffected outlook, a bad haircut, wearing all the right clothes, dropping all the right band names, and living in hip, shitty little apartments in the city. It’s acting like they don’t give a shit what people think about their musical taste, when they actually care the most about what people think.

To them, music is a race to get there first, and a junk bond in which to store their credibility.

It’s a sad fact that most of the cool people I’ve met in my life have turned out to be pretty uncool. Or fake. Or assholes. Or all three. And most of the time, the cool is just a perfume to mask the stink of whatever is rotting inside them. But the deeper you have to dig through all the layers of cool, the more likely you are to find people that grew up in some hick town on the same uncool shit that we all grew up on. They my be listening to Boris now, but when no one’s looking they’re listening to stuff that is completely uncool. And if they’re not, they’re completely wasting their time:

Because when you’re alone, there shouldn’t be anyone left to impress. Music isn’t about cool. It’s not about right or wrong. It’s about feeding your brain what it needs to get by.

So, I can’t understand the Musical Vegans, who consume a very limited subset of music while rejecting all others. For me to get what I need, I need to be a musically omnivorous. There is just too much music in the world to worry about what’s cool or to pigeonhole myself into some narrow slice of the musical spectrum.

In my collection, Richard Buckner sits with Bullet LaVolta, Burn the Priest and Junior Brown. Clutch is next to Clarkson, HateBreed next to Ben Harper, and Only Living Witness next to the Old 97′s. Pig Destroyer touches the Pixies, Shadows Fall touches the Shins, and Killswitch Engage touches Kraftwerk. Even Lords of Acid is allowed to get its unique brand of nasty all over Lamb of God.

So remember, I’ve never claimed to be cool. It rewards me far less than being musically omnivorous.

*Lester Bangs, Almost Famous

#1GF! and I went into a Barnes & Noble to grab a coffee the other night while I picked up a book that Chris’s Mom wanted me to read. We were pretty jovial going in, which was promptly doused by the coffee guy behind the counter. I can’t say that he was rude in any way, but he completely resisted any attempt that we made to engage him in any friendly banter.

At the time, I thought to myself, “People have bad nights. He’s obviously having one. Plus, how much should a person have to smile and pretend that taking coffee orders is some great social experience for eight or nine bucks an hour? How much customer service do we, as customers, expect? We expect that guy getting the shitty wage behind the counter to kiss our asses and be our best buddies for the 2 minutes that we grace him with our presence. If they don’t, we think that they’re assholes or suck at their jobs.”

So. My question is. How much do you think that the people that you come in contact with owe you for just being you?

So I took a couple of days off last week, and I’ve been in a bit of a slump ever since. Sometimes that means more posts, sometimes less. I don’t know if it has been the inescapable “Welcome to London” weather or my job that brought it on. Maybe it’s a combo of the two. Don’t get me wrong: By no means can I sit here and pretend that my job is bad. It isn’t. I get paid ok, I don’t have to wear a uniform, my co-workers are generally smart and funny, but it’s not like I’m a playboy photographer or race cars for a living, either. After 11 years with the same company, it’s feeling like a walk down a dead end road. It’s a relatively pleasant walk down a tree-lined dead end in a safe suburban neighborhood, but it’s a dead end just the same.

So, I’ve been in one of those funks where I start bouncing my crazy ideas like the drift racing team, the bikini car wash, and other ways to make a million dollars off of my friends. Then, I try to calculate how long I could live work-free on my current savings. Most of the time thinking is done without showering while staring blankly at the walls. And the malaise usually fades away over time like a nagging cold.

And today, something changed.

I threw on a couple of t-shirts and set out for the beach, where the waves were crashing so heavily that they sounded like a busy highway from a quarter of a mile away. And when I got there, I just ran until I was sufficiently worn out. And then, I simply walked home in the rain.

When I got to my mailbox, two things were there. The first put an instant smile on my face. Brian over at www.schuss.net answered the CD challenge all the way from the great state of Washington (one of the few states that I have personally and aimlessly toured in a rent-a-car). Although the world champion distance in the challenge so far has come from the home office in Eskilstuna, Sweden, I think this edges out San Fran for the Continental US distance title.

Thanks, Brian. Way cool of you.

The other thing was a letter containing all the newspaper articles about Chris, my childhood friend, who died back in August. His mom sent them along with a really nice note thanking me for the post I wrote about him. When a mother loses a son, and she thanks you for a small post in some small corner of the internet, you might feel very, very humbled. And when you stop to think that Chris’s sisters and parents live with his death every day, while you sort of dumped your heart into a post and moved on, you might feel like you really don’t deserve the praise.

I can only say that the articles were fucking heart breaking, but had the right effect of making me think: I’m sober, I’m alive, and the small stuff really doesn’t matter.

Thanks, Barbara. I mean it.

My Mom is a board/card game fan, so that’s what we spent her birthday doing. While playing a game of Loaded Questions, one of the questions that everyone had to answer was, “If you could choose the method of your own death, what would you choose?” (Nice question for a birthday, eh?)

The answers weren’t as interesting as the pursuant discussion about people who say “He wouldn’t want to live this way” right before they pull the plug on grandpa.

I want everyone to hear me now:

If I lose an arm, I want to live that way. If I can’t walk, I want to live that way. If I’m in a coma, I want to live that way. If I’m a drooling, bodiless head in a bucket, I want to live that way. If my eyes turn into clams and my dong turns into a terrier, I want you to keep my eye sockets moist and leave a bowl of water on my knees.

Am I being clear?

Good.

On a side note, one of the other questions was, “What would you like your famous last words to be?” Being genetically similar, my father answered “Oh, shit” while I answered “It seems safe to me…”