Uncommon purity
Unintelligible reveries

Unannounced fruition
Unabashed pride

Unaltered conflicts
Unrelenting doubt

Unequivocal ardor
Unreasonably obstinate
Uncalculated fidelity

Unspectacular normalcy
Undeserved stigma

Underrated strength
Unwavering loyalty

Unrequited passion
Unwavering certainty

Unlocated Grace

Wait, that sounds gay. Let me try again.

When a man and a man really love each other…

Crap, that’s no better.

It’s hard to talk about male heterosexuals who love each other in today’s society. Somehow the formula has been unfairly mutated into Man + Man + Love + ∞ = Gay. There’s very little wiggle room leftover and that’s quite a sad state of affairs to me.

The mere idea of male emotional intimacy is one of the few remaining nuts that our society has yet to even crack. The term Bromance tries its best to soothe people and let them know it’s just two guys who feel so friendly with each other that they don’t mind opening up about anything. But it doesn’t work. If anything, it comes across as a comical, even clownish, term that’s used to pair two goofballs together who don’t quite fit in with the rest of us. It’s one step above Outcasts and synonymous with Weirdos.

I like the hope of one day having a best friend who knows everything about me and vice versa. I also like boobs (on women). Both are equally awesome and one day I hope people come to accept that.

As if that wasn’t enough, in the next month I plan on launching a new charity website, doubling up HIF, and re-launching an old website that I never fully developed. Plus there’s that whole social and family life that has to be fit in somewhere!

Thanksgiving was quite fun. I got to catch up with a few friends, find out that my little brother is far superior in shooting a gun, and relax a little bit. I’m excited about Christmas as well. This is always one of my favorite times of the year, cold weather be damned. Sitting down to a Thanksgiving dinner with a table full of friends and family and sitting around Christmas morning laughing and joking with everybody are by far two events that I look forward to the most every year. I certainly start to appreciate them more with each passing year as well.

I’ve started to try and be a good friend as well. I sat down back in August during some random Olympic match and made a list of every person I hoped to still be friends with in 10 years. Then I circled the names of anybody whom I’d talked to in the prior two months. I think my list was something like 40 people with only three or four circles. It was a harsh reminder of how hard you have to work at actually maintaining friendships! There are still a few people I need to get back in touch with, especially certain family members, but I’m already pleased with the progress I’ve made. It’s one thing just to call somebody up and say “hey, long time no talk!” but it’s a whole other to actually keep the contacts going from that point onward.

Let that be a lesson, little Gooblings.

HIF has taken off beyond my wildest dreams. It was mentioned on The Today Show (still looking for a vid) and CBS’s Up To The Minute last week, as well as a gazillion local radio, tv, and newspapers. My personal favorite local news segment has been KOVR’s Saving with Dave segment, which used some stock footage of some random dude at a computer to represent me. HIF was also accepted into the prestigious 9rules network over a month ago (before any of this media play) and I have to say the day I woke up and saw that it’d been accepted, I practically jumped for joy. It doesn’t bring with it any huge source of traffic or revenue, but it’s an enormous thumbs up from a collective group of creative and talented individuals whenever they allow a new site into their club.

The New York Times might not be knocking down my door for an interview, but HIF’s certainly become a full time gig that consumes my every waking moment. I don’t want to jinx anything though, so I’ll just leave it at that and say that I’m earning more “on the job” training of how to run a big website than I ever learned in the past 5 years combined.

I’m heading to Orlando next weekend. It’s been a year since I’ve had a vacation. I’m trying to come to South Carolina for at least a week come November as well because it’s been even longer since I’ve seen my dad and buddies down there.

Playoff baseball has consumed my every second of spare time to boot. Busted suicide squeezes! Dominant pitching! Second biggest comeback in baseball history! My predictions being far more accurate than I could have hoped! Jaime Moyer pitching while collecting Social Security! The White Sox are no more! Good times all around.

And that, my friends, is everything I’ve been up to lately. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got more freebies to hunt down.

After being turned down for countless jobs, learning far too much bad news, and being stricken by what medical professionals can only describe as Bubonic Plague, Ms. Luck decided to part the dark clouds of gloom and smile down upon me.

Last week, the November edition of ShopSmart magazine hit newsstands (yeah, I know November is two months away) and Hey, It’s Free was surprisingly mentioned as one of it’s top seven money saving sites on the Internet. (page 34!) For those of you who don’t keep up to date with the Freebie World, this is akin to an athlete being profiled in Sports Illustrated. The only way this could have been better is had they done a full page spread on HIF.

Words can’t express the amount of pride and validation that has bubbled up within me thanks to this surprise of surprises. My first national print mention! I’ve sunk more blood, sweat, and tears into that site than any other project in my life – including most relationships. At the very least, the bump in ad revenue and countless local news mentions was a lovely bonus.

And yet on the grand scale of awesome news learned during the month of September, that ranks a distant second. You might be wondering what possibly could top such a wondrous occasions? Did the Seattle Mariners offer me a job? Did Barack Obama ask me to join his foreign policy team? Even better.

Try finding out that I’m back on my mom’s free airline passes. For a year. Minimum.

Let that sink in for a moment.

I CAN FLY FOR FREE TO PRACTICALLY ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD FOR ANOTHER YEAR!

I really don’t know how to put this to people. I’m a traveler at heart. I’ve spent the last three years of my life helping out my family and there’s no better thing in this world that I could be doing. But I can’t wait to get back out there on the open road. I’m at my best when I’m moving with the tide, flowing from here to there with no regard for the unforeseen.

World, here I come. But first I need to hit up New York. And Spartanburg. And Louisville. And Orlando. There are a few people I need to visit.

Five brownie points to whoever uses the title to figure out what country the job is located in.

I’d originally written a paragraph or two of it for a post here on Shyzer, but that never amounted to much. Go figure, huh? Still, I like it so much that I’m reproducing it here below since I question y’alls ability to click a link and read something on a secondary site. They say write to your audience and I’m pretty sure most of y’all are idiots!

——-

Seeing as how it’s already late in the evening here on AdamJCohen.com and nobody’s posted, I’m guessing today was my day to start things off for the guests posts. Some might say it’s a bit irresponsible of me to forget to do something I’d promised to do, but anybody who knows me is secretly applauding the fact that I didn’t forget outright! I’ve always had a problem with commitment, in that I commit to things and then think my job is finished.

So who am I? The name’s Goob (seriously) and I run a personal site and a freebie site among countless others. You know that friend of yours who always has way too much on his plate and starts 10 new projects every month when he doesn’t even have time to finish one of them? Yep, that’s me.

Adam and I have known each other for about two years, despite not having met in person yet. Hopefully we’ll be able to remedy that far sooner than later. When he asked if I would mind doing a guest post on his site, I couldn’t help but be a little honored. Sure, we’re not talking about the New York Times calling me up and asking if I’d write a cover story for them, but still. To be asked to write something is always an honor.

As I sat down to type up a post, I hit the proverbial brick wall in record time. (quick side note, I think we can stop calling it a “proverbial” brick wall. It’s just as freaking frustrating and annoying as a real one.) What the heck was I going to write about? I’ve run Shyzer for over 5 1/2 years, which leads to a lot of topics already having been covered. When you think about what I said earlier regarding my absolute lack of commitment to anything else in my life, it puts the site a little more in context. How in the world have I kept writing for so long?

Then I got to thinking about my writing itself. Newsflash: it’s not that good. Sometimes my writing comes off as if a drunk five year old was at the keyboard. I tend to ramble and create run-on sentences, which then helps to fuel my desire to use too many commas, kinda like right now. I think prepositions are perfect for ending my sentences with. And at the very least, I absolutely love starting my sentences with a conjunction.

So why in the heck do I even bother to write?

I can’t speak for Adam or anybody else beyond myself, but deep down it’s because I love attention. There, I said it. For me, writing isn’t quite the altruistic activity that I wish I could claim it was. It’s me creating something out of thin air and then feeding my ego when people read it. Whenever I fill out a job application, I write in that I’m a recovering comment addict. It’s like crack. Every few hours, I’m checking my sites to see if somebody’s commented, what they’ve said, what they think, on and on and on…

You know, maybe that’s why no company every returns my calls!

A while back, I stumbled across a site chock full of awesomeness. Started during the writer’s strike last year, it’s aptly titled Why We Write and for the most part featured pieces by the writers behind well known TV shows and movies. Some of the newer stuff has been written by average Joe’s, which I tend to ironically not find interesting at all, but the earlier stuff on the site is well worth a read.

One of my favorite pieces is by Bill Lawrence, the creator of Scrubs. “I don’t write because I couldn’t do anything else. I’m a bright guy, I could hold down a number of jobs. I could run a hat shop. I don’t love writing. Nobody does – it’s worse than fishing.” – Haha, so true.

How about the guy who writes Jeopardy questions for a living. Or answers, whatever. I didn’t even know Jeopardy had any writers. I never even bothered to question where all those answers came from every day. For all I knew, Alex Trebek just made them up on the spot every night. Maybe Will Ferrell was covertly feeding him the answers. Turns out it’s nine guys whose only task is collectively coming up with 14,030 answers every year. There are far worse ways to make a living in my book.

My absolute favorite, though, is Damon Lindelof’s entry. It’s not often that I have an epiphanic moment. Learning that there were other people out there who thought the same way I did was such a moment though. So there are other people out there whose imaginative mind takes over far more often than it should? Sweeeeeeet.

And that’s when I realized that I don’t write for the feedback. I write because I love to create things. I write because if I didn’t have such an outlet, I’d most likely be the crazy guy on the street corner wearing a tinfoil hat and screaming about the approaching apocalypse. I write because it pleases me.

One of my biggest influences is a man named Ze Frank, who has created hundreds of different games, videos, and written posts on his site over the years. I once read that he taught a class where he forced his students to create something every day for a month. They bitched and they moaned, but after 31 days everybody had created 31 objects, be it poems, songs, arts & crafts knickknacks, or what have you. Not a single person failed to thank him for the experience.

There are so many things we could complain about these days. People are too demanding, too wasteful, too ignorant, too… well the list goes on and on. But I think one thing we rarely realize is how complacent we’ve become with the limits on our creativity.

We get up, go to work, come home, grab a fast meal from McDonalds, and veg out in front of the TV for a while before starting the process all over at again. That’s no way to live and while I might take the alternative to the extreme (no day job! No home! No responsibilities! Woooo!), there’s still a part of me that can’t help but feel we should all create a little more in our daily lives. Even if it’s just office supplies attacking us.

And just like that, the brick wall lies smashed in a million pieces at your feet. At least until tomorrow, at which point I’ll begin the battle all over again. Hmmm, maybe my life isn’t that different than everybody else’s after all.

Oh, crap, I forgot Adam told y’all I’m supposed to be funny. This post hasn’t been hilarious at all, especially for my standards. Way too much reflection and self analyzing! Ok, um…poop. Heh heh heh, that word is always funny. Until (hopefully) next time, folks!

The story I got from him was always the same. He’d walk in, always fumbling with my chart as if it were made of butter, and break into a smile as he saw me. You could practically hear his brain talking and reassuring him that this would be an easy one. “Hell yes! He has a birthmark on his face! Phew, I can just mention that my brother has one and then get on with the examination!” How many times did I hear the story that his brother had a birthmark that covered half of his face? Beats me, but years later, I can’t remember his name or what his office looked like or even the sickest I might have been when I saw. But damn if I don’t still remember his brother had a birthmark that covered half of his face and it was the same color as mine and there were procedures to remove them if I wanted and did I mention it was the same color as mine and that it was on his brother, but not him because he wasn’t his brother and that ;lkjsdfk

Sorry, I slipped out of consciousness there from boredom.

I never notice my birthmark. Ever. I look in the mirror and either see nothing, since I’m not wearing my contacts, or I see a stunningly, amazing body that is ripped to perfection. Every few weeks I even notice that it’s time to shave! And anybody who has actually seen my body may now commence in shutting the hell up. But my birthmark? I literally don’t see it anymore. Which is why it took me a few paragraphs before I realized this article telling people how to live with a birthmark wasn’t satirical. Somebody actually took the time to write an article about living with a birthmark. Like it’s the same as living with autism or diabetes!

Hell, let me save you the trouble of reading the stupid thing. I can tell you how I live with a birthmark quite easily. I wake up, get dressed (I even wear pants if it’s a special occasion), go about my day, continue to be awesome no matter what, and then go to bed. How might I live if I didn’t have a birthmark? Um…I’d, um…yeah, I’m gonna have to get back to you on that one.

It’s weird too, because every time my pediatrician would launch into his speed rant, I’d hold up a hand and cut him short. Thanks, but no thanks. I loved my birthmark and I didn’t need any brochures about removing it. Yet here on Shyzer, spanning over 700 plus posts, I’ve mentioned my birthmark a whopping one time and even then it was a simple throwaway line to a bigger story. I’ve struggled to come up with posts for more than five years and settled on things from my brother commenting on the bubbles I make while peeing to the eating habits of Australians, but somehow my birthmark fell through the cracks. Yet you’d have to drag me kicking and screaming if you tried to forcibly remove it. Huh, go figure.

I didn’t even think there were any stories in my past where my birthmark played a central role, yet as I thought about it today, one by one a memory would flicker back into focus. I remember a bully in preschool, in a weak attempt to make fun of and embarrass me, once asked if it was where a tiger tried to kill me. I kinda threw him for a loop when I answered, “yes. That’s the scar from when I almost died.” Ten minutes later, I finished telling a harrowing tale of where a baby tiger escaped from his pen and almost mauled me to death. After that, the kids always gave me first dibs at playing with the blocks. Hahaha, even as a kid I was a sarcastic dick. There’s the story of the chick who once asked me if she could kiss and make out with my birthmark. Yeah, that was pretty much the end of that date. I almost wish I’d stuck with her just to see what other stories I might have gained from her clinical craziness. I even have a running gag with some of my friends where every time they see me, they point to my face and say I have something on it and we go through a much longer than needed process that is only funny to us where I try to wipe it off. Good times.

I guess I can understand the aforementioned article though. It’s not even that bad of an article. I guess the aura of a birthmark comes from the fact that 99% of people don’t have one. I can dig and understand that. More than 50% of people have boobs and yet I’m still mesmerized by them, so how can I be one to judge somebody who has questions about a simple birthmark?

For me, it’s pretty damn simple. It’s mine and only mine. The odds of me coming across somebody with the same colored eyes or haircut or shirt are astronomically higher than coming across somebody with the same red splotch on the same part of their face and being the same size. It’s part of my trademark, something that nobody can take from me, but that which is one of the few things I can proudly wear on my sleeve – er, face – for all to see. Even if I don’t see it myself anymore. Maybe this article was worth stumbling across after all.

I can already tell this whole 30 days of posting is going to be a task of epic proportions for me. There’s only so much one wants to share with the entire world and most of what I’ve ever had to say has been archived here on Shyzer long ago. Case in point: before I write any post, I come up with three extremely quick and rough ideas of what I’m going to write about. I just jot down three simple sentences about three random topics and then pick the one I want to talk about most and run with it. But since Shyzer is already 5+ years old, it’s gotten to the point where I need to search through it to make sure I haven’t already talked about it before.

So tonight my three sentences were about how I love birthdays, how I’ve grown to harp and nag myself over my age (and how much I hate the fact that I harp and nag myself over it!), and how I really effing hate my hair.

Done, done, and done. Doh!

While none of those topics were sure to win a Pulitzer, that fact alone helps emphasize my point that I’ve run out of topics to write about. At least that’s what I’ve grown to believe. Yet here I am, creating a post out of nothing, mashing and juggling words to form some sort of cohesive, albeit weakly joined, narrative. But it’s working. Still. Even after five fucking years. That’s got to say something.

Going back and reading that second “done” post above was kind of enlightening in another way. That post wasn’t half bad. Decent writing, not too wordy, good story, even better message. And as I said during Shyzer’s fifth birthday, there’s a lot of crap I’ve written and forgotten about that’s not half bad. Why do I bring this up?

Thanks for the writers strike recently, many of the late night talk shows have been without their usual staff despite being forced to create new shows. As a result, you’ve got guys like Stewart and Colbert and O’Brien basically creating the jokes and the entire show on their own. (quick side note, if you haven’t watched the video where those three guys have a battle royal and pretend the beat the crap out of each other, you’re doing yourself a major disservice.) It can be painfully obvious that the shows are sans writers and none of their shows carry the same zip and level of quality as we’re used to, but at the same time it’s been almost encouraging. These guys are, in a much grander sense, doing what I’m doing here. They have an audience who expects to be entertained and dear God if they aren’t doing whatever the hell they can come up with. By mid-January they were all tapped out and openly stated so. Yet there they are, showing up on my TV on schedule, slugging it out and still giving it their all.

I admire the hell out of Ze Frank. Last year, he created brilliantly funny and witty videos day in and day out. Yet even he called it quits after only one short year and anybody who thinks that wasn’t a calculated move is fooling themselves. The cast of Seinfeld walked away from a 10th season not because they didn’t want to be paid another $10 million each, but because they knew they were out of good ideas. John Elway retired after winning two Super Bowls not because he hated playing football, but because there was nowhere to go but down. These people knew they only had so much, could only be tapped for so long, before they needed a break to replenish and refresh. That’s where the obscure nature of Shyzer comes into play. I can toil and write mundane and pointless crap all I want and it’s fine. I’m not on network TV nor do I have a following of 100,000 people. I can afford to suck and suck and suck as long as I squeeze out something decent every so often. Thus the challenge to create something for 30 measly days. I want to finally know what my suck to good ratio is.

Last year, Ze was 34. Seinfeld was well into his late 30s before he got started with the show. Colbert and Stewart and in their 40s and still able to create material on the fly. Before, I looked at them and though, “Dead God, how did they last that long? I’m not even 25 and I’m already tapped out of ideas!” But that’s not it at all. The more I do this, the more I realize how much crap they had to slog through before they found their voice and honed in on their river of talent.

And while I’ve got no idea when they started creating things, I can assure you it wasn’t much earlier than when I got started. So no, I’m not out of ideas, I’m still figuring out how to come up with and develop them. And at 25, I don’t think I’m so bad at it after all.

Now let’s see what I’m saying come March 6th

I hate to sound like an old codger lamenting about the “good ‘ole days,” but it’s easy for me to see how childhood has changed in the last 10 to 15 years. I was part of the last group of kids who grew up without some form of technology pervading my every waking moment. And this is coming from a guy whose dad bought an NES before anybody else on the block – just as much for him as it was for me. The same went for just about every other technology breakthrough over the 90s. Personal computer, big screen TV, high speed (56k BABY!) internet, you name it, we most likely were the first in the neighborhood to get it.

And yet even still, the majority of my childhood memories are void of complex technology or machinery. In elementary school, I didn’t touch a computer until 4th grade, and that was to play Math Blasters in Horizons class. After school was spent watching an hour of cartoons on FOX (who else remembers when Nickelodeon didn’t have any Nick Toons and Cartoon Network didn’t exist!? Just me? Okay…) before walking down the street to Michael Mace’s house to hang out. I do remember playing my fair share of Battle Toads, Ninja Turtles, and Zelda at his place, but even more of my memories from that early on in life are of me on my bike, racing around the neighborhood with my dog, just looking for something to do. Well, that, and playing in the woods where I found a dog bone and was convinced it was an Indian burial ground. In fact, that was my greatest asset as a kid. My imagination. God, the hours spent playing outdoors or with my Ninja Turtles or Ghostbuster toy gun. I may have played alone a lot as a kid, but I never felt alone after I let my mind run wild for a little bit.

By the end of elementary school and throughout middle school, my main after school activity was calling Chong to see if he wanted to “Play.” For us, Playing consisted of walking around and trying to entertain ourselves. Sometimes we’d find a house being built to Play in. Other times we spent our Play time chopping down trees in the woods in order to make a bridge over a 10 inch creek. Or even more often, Playing meant wandering around in people’s yards, down the nearby streets, along the abandoned railroad tracks, simply looking for something interesting and using our imagination whenever we found it. Yeah, we were older, but using our mind as a source of entertainment was still our key toy.

Sure, we played SNES and Genesis whenever we felt like it, but I can’t seem to remember playing video games for more than a few hours at a time, if that. They just weren’t that entertaining! You can only play so much Madden ’94 before you realize that it sucks. And I’m not trying to make it seem like I didn’t play video games as a kid. I played a lot. But only in relation to other kids back then! Before, I may have been a video game master, but compared to kids nowadays, I would be the kid who couldn’t figure out how reload his gun on Halo. In all honesty, I’d say only about 50% of my free time before hitting high school was spent either watching TV or playing video games.

I’d put the Goobling’s at about 90%, minimum.

So is that bad? Do I think their “generation” is failing at something? No, it’s simply a fact I’ve noticed. It simply make me wonder what their memories are going to be of when they get to be my age. I don’t see how they can be anything beyond video games, computers chats, and disappointing TV shows. I can’t help but feel like they’re missing out on something that I was fortunate enough to experience, something which is gone from kid’s lives forever.

I’m sure my grandparents said the same thing when TV entered my parent’s lives. And the same was probably said a generation earlier when radios began popping up into homes across the country. That doesn’t change the fact that they were right. Things did change and it’s the elder people who see it happening because they remember what it was like “before.” Are either generation better off or worse because of the change? I doubt it, but it’s still hard to watch it happen.

During a week long snow storm, God…I probably would have spent only enough time indoors to eat, sleep, and cure my extremities from frostbite. The Gooblings haven’t even desired to touch the snow. I can’t even think of a moment beyond dinner time when any of them haven’t been in front of a computer, TV, or video game. Literally. No forts have been built. No surprise snowball attacks have been made. No giant snowballs have been rolled into the size of a small car and placed in the middle of a road at the bottom of a hill for a pickup truck to slam into, which caused the driver to chase after us….

I wonder what my kids will say when my grandchildren’s generation welcomes the invention of internal brain computers or automated chore & homework completing robots or something along those lines. I bet they’ll lament over the days when their games were only played on TVs instead of in full life virtual reality rooms, which totally made them better and more hardcore. They’ll recall when Google searches were inaccurate at best and how information on the Internet only seemed to be organized or sorted until you actually wanted to find something and couldn’t no matter how hard you tried. Or even how they had to hide their porn stash in C:/My Documents/Important Files/Saved029/Computer Logs instead of downloading them directly into their brains, which…well I think my grandchildren will have the advantage there.

But my kid’s will be right. Just like I am. Just like everyone before me was.

We all have missed out on something previous generations had. But such is the nature of change.

I never used to worry about my age. It was all relative to me, seeing as how one day I’d hang out with kids three or four years older and the next I might stay inside all day long, playing with Legos and Micro Machines while watching cartoons. The thought of “getting old” wasn’t something that I feared nor anticipated – it was just something I accepted to expect, like the changing of the seasons or the Mariners sucking. People would always ask if I felt old on my birthday and I always thought it silly to answer yes, especially when the questioner was 40 years my senior. I was baffled as to how somebody could actually feel old when they were still in their teens or twenties.

And then my perception began to change for the worse. Somewhere along the way, I started caring about what others my age were doing and comparing myself to them. Well, not quite others my current age, but instead what those older than me had done when they were my age. It’s easy to look at somebody like Condi Rice, with her old-lady scowl that almost rivals Laura Bush for the “Scariest Face” award, and think of how you might like to be Secretary of State someday when you’re “older.” It’s easy to see that day far off in the distance, though, a brief sparkle on the horizon that you don’t give much thought too since it’s “so far away.” And then you read in TIME that she earned tenure at Stanford at age 26 and suddenly that sparkle turns into a mirage.

I remember the first time I read about Lincoln freeing the slaves. History is taught in such a black & white, cut & dry type way that most figures come off as not only perfect, but magical. As a child, your perception is simply that once there was slavery. Then Lincoln snapped his fingers and it was gone. Martin Luther King Jr. talked about his dream and then equal rights flowed forth. Washington woke up and was told he was our first President. Churchill said he’d never surrender and so Britain didn’t. We’re simply shown their end accomplishment and told how wonderful they are while rarely given a glimpse of the path they took to get there. We’re told that these are great men who did great things and that if we ever want to be mentioned in the same breath as them, then we too must do something great – eventually. For these accomplishments were done later in their lives, long after they had ceased to be little kids like you, so don’t worry. Now run along and enjoy recess.

Teachers leave out how at age 23, Lincoln was already serving in the Illinois Congress. Or that the Montgomery Bus Boycott was being led by a 26 year old Martin Luther King Jr. Or how the entire state and militia of Virginia was under the protection of a war hero named George Washington, at the ripe old age of 23.

I don’t know about you guys, but the biggest battle I’ve won to date has been getting Colton to put his socks in the dirty laundry every day. It was this realization that startled me into actually feeling old. How was I ever to accomplish anything as great as Lincoln or Dr. King later in life if I couldn’t even keep up with them in my early twenties?

I never expected anything in life to be handed to me for free. In fact, I hate handouts of any kind. I’ve always felt that if I can’t earn something, I don’t deserve it.

But I always expected to be given the opportunity for everything, which is an even worse illusion to have on life.

Nothing will be given to you for free, not even opportunities. I may never free an entire race from brutal oppression or boldly lead my nation through the jaws of defeat, but I certainly will never do those things if I just sit around and wait for the opportunity to come calling. As long as I never forgot that, never accepted what I had as being the best it could be, then I could keep myself from sliding into that group of people who seem to accept and embrace mediocrity. And it was with that epiphany that I finally started to feel young again.

I’m twenty fucking four years old. Do you not know how many opportunities lie before me, just waiting for me to seek them out and grasp onto for dear life? Lincoln had a law degree and a life expectancy of 35 years. I’ve got the Internet, modern medicine, and the ability to travel from New York to central Kazakhstan in 24 hours if I so please. The only thing we have in common is pure, blind luck.

So how could I possibly feel old?

Just because you’re 23 and out of college, that doesn’t mean you have to propose to your girlfriend. You know, you can try living together while dating first or maybe waiting for a year or two if you want. There’s no law requiring you get married once you’ve been handed a degree or gotten an entry level job at the nearby Kramerica Industries factory. Just because you’re old drinking buddy decided to propose to his lady doesn’t mean you have to as well. It’s not a race, folks.

I understand we grew up in the South where tradition is king, but Christ. I couldn’t see myself getting married right now any more than I could see a small monkey crawling out of my ass tomorrow. In fact, I’d have an easier time picturing the latter. If I ask another one of my friends why they’re getting married and their response is, “Uh…isn’t that like what we’re supposed to do now?”, I may just go postal.

When are people going to stop doing things simply because they think it’s what they’re supposed to do?

Thus, the new norm here at Shyzer is going to shift slightly. First, comments will be turned on much more often than not, as has been the case over the past two weeks. But more importantly, you’ll be able to comment on something new every day. That’s right, I’m going to see how long I can last posting something new here at least once a day. If that can’t pump some life back into this site, as well as challenge me somewhat creatively, I don’t know what can. If anything, this’ll be the perfect way to teach myself how to write succinctly.

I figured I’d wait until at least a week into the new year before announcing this, though – for reasons I’m sure you can quickly grasp. Oh, and for the record, this counts as today’s post. 8 down, 357 to go.

And while it’s sad news, I’m surprised it’s such big news.

I always thought people saw him more as a gimmick than anything else. A source of mild entertainment as they watched from the comfort of their home as he wrestled a croc or stabbed at a snake. As we saw him more on TV, we got used to seeing him around, but there really wasn’t anything beyond that. He simply was that crazy guy from Australia that we all liked listening to partially because of his cool accent and partially because he did things nobody else would do. His TV shows here in the states did moderately well in terms of ratings and his movie didn’t really set any records in terms of earnings. What I’m trying to say here is that while a celebrity, he was a D-list celebrity at best and somebody who you didn’t notice when you went a few months without seeing him on TV.

And yet I can remember when other, arguably “bigger” celebrities died recently and their deaths didn’t get near as much attention as Irwin’s has. I’m not saying it’s not sad he died, but I’m just left wondering how much of these condolences are real and how much are from the “ex-high school” crowd.

I guess I should explain the “ex-high school” crowd. One of my major pet peeves is when people display false emotion. I don’t care what emotion it is, I don’t care what the setting is, if the emotions you’re displaying aren’t real and are simply what you think they should be, then you’ve joined the crowd. In fact, there’s no group worse at this false emotion than all the people you used to go to high school with, which is where the name comes from. You know exactly who I’m talking about – say you’re in a bar and you spot somebody across the room who you went to high school with. As soon as they see you, they come running up and pretend y’all were best friends. They as how you’ve been and want to hear your whole life story just as long as you can fit it into 10 seconds. Then they cut you off, brag about their latest job or kid, and then make some over the top gesture about how you two need to get together and “catch” up sometime.

No, we don’t. We didn’t talk in high school. We don’t talk now. There’s a reason I didn’t hang out with you before and I bet it has something to do with your crappy personality that you so eloquently just put on display for everyone within earshot. Don’t patronize me with this false sense of past brotherhood, as if we were close only to have drifted apart over the years. That’s not how it was, trust me, I’m a history major. Sure, come on over and chat if you want, but don’t insult my memory or my intelligence.

Some people do this far too often in their lives and it only gets worse when they talk to you about somebody who isn’t around or who might even be dead. They conjure these memories out of thin air, lamenting over what they lost and how wonderful that person was. They pretend the person was a saint and that they could do nothing wrong and I just don’t understand how or why people do it. Speaking nothing but good and completely false things about a person after they’ve died helps not their memory or legacy, but instead tarnishes and insults it. Speak the truth, no matter how little the good was.

When I die, I want people to remember and speak of me as for who I really was; warts, faults, and everything else. Don’t make me out to be my generation’s Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. I simply want to be remembered and credited with whatever I managed to accomplish, no matter how little or great. And I think other people deserve just the same treatment.

And thus, I hope that the “ex-high school” crowd didn’t highjack the Steve Irwin memorial today. That said, however, if all the condolences that people expressed were completely real and heartfelt, then so be it. You earned them, mate.

But the problem with blogs is that they evolved and spread. In April 2005, reports came out that 40,000 new blogs were popping up a day. Reports this month have that number in the neighborhood of 80,000.

Eighty Thousand New Blogs.

A Day.

When The Real World first aired, it was an instant success. Same goes for Survivor. The reason for this is simple: people were intrigued by the front row voyeuristic view they were given, found it refreshing in a sort of queer way, and wanted more. And more they got. Now you can turn on the television and find a hundred knockoffs that are so lacking in quality, it’s not even remotely funny. Well blogs are no different. The blogs that were hugely popular when I first discovered the trend offered a raw and clear view into the author’s life. There were no filters on what the authors published and we got to see it all; the good, the bad, and the ugly that occurs in all our lives but which few of us ever share with others. It was the next evolution of reality TV. No longer were the stations and producers deciding what we at home got to see. People could now open up their lives for anybody and everybody to peer into and the most successful ones were those that offered the most unrefined and uncensored vision possible.

But as always, people sitting at home thought to themselves, “Pfft, I could do a much better version of this.” With reality TV, that meant they had to compete against thousands of others and get cast on the show. With blogs, that meant all they had to do was create a free account and start posting.

And for every worthwhile blog that has cropped up each day due to all the attention CNN and Fox News have given bloggers in the past year or two, 79,999 horrible ones featuring high school kids giving bad movie reviews or some pissed off patriot talking about how we need to support President Bush suddenly appear on the Internet. I had hoped blogging would be a flavor of the month with the general public, like pogs or those slap bracelets people always had in middle school. God we looked retarded walking around with those on our wrists. But instead, it looks like blogging’s here to stay with every soccer mom and NASCAR car dad out there, along with those retarded terms the news media like to make up, like soccer mom and NASCAR dad.

All this does is dilute the pool even more. As a reader, I’m sure you know how hard it is to find a decent blog nowadays. Most of my all-time favorite blogs are still the ones I unearthed long before Shyzer was ever conceived. But 2005 saw the closings of the last holdouts of that generation, most notably Doc from Doctor Grosz. And with that said, given my odds, I feel confidant in saying I’d put Shyzer up against any other random blog out there – that is, whenever I have it running on all cylinders. I don’t try to be perfect in everything, but I most certainly strive for perfection in anything I do happen to partake in. If I’m going to spend my time on something, I’ll be damned if the final output isn’t as close to perfect as humanly possible.

I enjoy the uniqueness and randomness of my personality. Given the option of taking two roads, I most certainly will always select the one less traveled. Not because of some idealistic, romanticized view I hold on life, but simply for the selfish reason that I hate being like everybody else. Remember, this is the guy who as a kid, pulled out a map and found the city farthest away from his hometown when he decided he needed to pick a baseball team to root for.

For what’s the point of screaming when everybody around you is screaming the exact same thing?

That said, I hate admitting to myself that Shyzer has slipped in terms of quality lately. I’m lucky if I have this baby operating like I do with a rough hangover, much less running to the standard I expect from myself. Couple that with the unnecessary stress of updating every few days and the fact that I’m partaking in an art form that everybody else seems to be enjoying, and you can see why the idea of closing shop seems appealing at times.

And yet I can’t bring myself to do it. This isn’t just some website to me. I truly view Shyzer as an extension of myself, for better or worse. What I want is for Shyzer to regain some of its uniqueness that it once held and to start properly reflecting some of my personality. I don’t want half of the people I know operating sites similar to it and since I know I can’t go back in time and prevent blogs from becoming a cultural phenomenon, I’m left with two choices. On one hand, I could take down all my material and replace everything with a simple splash page like most people who feel the way I do have done…

Or, I could force Shyzer to evolve. I was one step ahead of the curve last time, so why not do it again? Plus, if everybody before me is closing shop, wouldn’t I be contradicting my own philosophy by following suit and turning off the lights as well?

I think this whole post best exemplifies how Shyzer is indeed an extension of myself, for if you think things are a little weird around here, you should take a guided tour through my head. I’ve always been a person who simply does what feels right, not what he thinks he should do next. In times past, I’ve usually listened to my gut and while it’s been known to play tricks on me every now and then, things have always turned out right in the end. See: Mariners, Seattle. Girlfriends, past. Australia, best few months of my life spent in, etc. Yet for the first time in my entire life, nothing feels right and yet nothing feels wrong. I can’t seem to find a clear frequency to my gut and instead all I’m picking up is static. I don’t know what to do next with my life and frankly, it pisses me off far more than it scares me. Fuck not knowing what direction to take Shyzer in, I don’t even know what fucking direction I want my life to travel for the next few years.

Everything I think about doing next sounds at the same time great and horrible. I’m 23 years old and as conceited and naive as it sounds, I still know and believe that I can do something great in my lifetime. I don’t think I’m destined to do something specific, that some higher being put me here just so I could follow a path that was laid for me. But I do feel with every fiber of my being that I have the potential to do and be something great, that greatness is within my grasp if only I discover the path to it before it becomes overgrown with weeds. That’s what I worry about most, missing or ignoring my one true chance at greatness. I’ll never be able to settle on having a “regular” life. If a time traveler from the future came to me right now and told me that in 50 years, I’d be retiring as the district manager of some regional office, I think I’d lose my will to live right then and there. I’ve never been able to stomach the thought of simply becoming a small cog in the machine of life, becoming somebody who will be mourned for a few years after his death and then simply forgotten, becoming just like everybody else. Becoming Normal. Becoming Average. Come Hell or high water, I’m going to find a way to make a difference and achieve something, even if it destroys me and sends me to an early grave. And that, my friends, is something I give my word to.

To make matters worse is that despite having more friends than I’ve ever had in my entire life and living at home with a family that absolutely adores me, I feel more alone than I’ve ever felt before in my entire life. I no longer have that one deep and close friendship to rely on like I used to have with a few certain people and for the first time in my life, I’m staring down the barrel of uncertainty utterly and completely alone, with no one standing next to me who entirely and fully understand me. But like they say…well, my knowledge of quotes and proverbs has picked a wonderful time to fail me, but hopefully there’s a saying or two out there that would make me feel better.

I don’t know if you can tell from the way I act on the Internet, but I’m an extremely private person in real life. I don’t like talking about myself or my thoughts or plans or dreams or whatever with most people. Sure, I’m goofy as hell, but rarely in a serious way and more in a comedic relief type manner. Whenever things turn serious, I tighten up and retreat into my head. And that’s where Shyzer’s importance in my life came in. It was an outlet for me to come and say what I thought and be myself and do my thing. And yet, as time has gone on, the occasion of censoring myself has grown more and more frequent and the main cause for this has been due to the fact that I know who is reading Shyzer. I know people don’t want to read some cookie cutter crap that’s censored and refined and even if that’s what they want, I wouldn’t write it since it’s boring as hell to do so. I want to be as candid as possible, but there’s certainly more I wish I could say on here. Fuck, I’ll be honest here. In the past three and a half months alone, I’ve probably stopped myself 20 times from posting something in particular. “Shit, this is totally gonna piss off so and so,” or “Oh fuck, if she reads this, she’ll think I’m a fucking psycho,” or “Dear Christ, it will take all of 10 minutes for my phone to start ringing if I hit the Publish button.” I don’t enjoy defending myself or my actions. I’ve never subscribed to the belief that I should have explain myself to people, partially due to the fact that I don’t like confrontation and partially due to the fact that most people just wouldn’t understand.

I have nobody to blame but myself for getting all my friends and family into reading Shyzer and even as I type this, I hope everybody who reads Shyzer continues to do so. For years now, I’ve been known to pimp Shyzer on a daily basis and the last thing I want to do is say, “Hey you! Yeah, even though we’ve known each other for 15 years and you’ve been reading Shyzer for months now, fuck off so I can have the liberty to say whatever I want.” I promise you, that’s not what I want, at all. As a writer, you want as many people as possible to read what you have to say, even if it might ruffle a few feathers or force a family member or two to disown me.

But even more importantly, I’m going to stop writing what I think people might want to read and start writing what I want to write. If you find the new Shyzer too boring or too one-dimensional (ie, only shit I’m interested in), sorry mates. Like I’ve already said, this is an extension of me, not y’all, and I’m going to try my best to make posting a pleasurable experience for me once again compared to the chore I currently view it as.

So here’s the deal. In a few days, I’m going to open Shyzer’s doors again and try something out. The comments will be turned off, the tagboard will be taken down, and I’m not going to track my stats or see who and how many people are reading what. I desire no feedback on what I write here. If you want to read Shyzer, that’s great and if you don’t, no worries. I am still trying to find my true calling and while this may seem like I’m blaming my lack of vision and initiative on Clay or Fellner reading Shyzer, that’s not it at all. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, I’m merely trying to “simplify, simplify, simplify.” Perhaps if I clean things up and clear my head here on Shyzer, I’ll be able to do the same thing in real life.

And if that fails, at least I’ll have tried something, because what I’m doing not just ain’t working and I can already hear my window slowly closing.

Next round of the Religion Tournament will be uploaded when I wake up. Next version of Shyzer will be uploaded whenever I feel like it.

I can see why this movie is ranked #35 over on IMDB. It’s one of those movies which is so good, you start breaking words apart simply so you can lengthen the time you spend praising it. For instance, when the movie ended, I didn’t just say out loud to Koral and Casper, “That was beautiful,” oh no, I broke it down into syllables. “That…..was….beau-ti-ful.” It’s basically Memento with a love story and I honestly don’t even think The Birthday Syndrome had anything to do with how awesome I thought the move was.

I’m a strong believer in The Birthday Syndrome. For those unenlightened souls out there who have yet to ever hear about the syndrome I made up in my head, it goes a little something like this: On your birthday, everything seems a little better than it really is. It’s almost like an extension of the childhood Stay Home From School Syndrome, where trashy soap operas and Price As Right episodes seem heavenly, simply because you appreciate the fact that you’re not sitting through math or science at that very moment. But The Birthday Syndrome extends to the entire day and goes far beyond the realm of daytime television. TBS unexplainably enhances your daily activities from morning till night. You’ll wake up feeling more refreshed, you’ll have an extra dose of energy throughout the day, and your pillow will feel softer when you finally plop your head down. The sugar in your birthday cake will taste sweeter, your rum & cokes will be, um, more rum & cokier, and suffice to say everything else will be more everything elseier.

So to all you people out there who bitch and whine about how old you are when your birthday comes around, stop wasting your only Birthday Syndrome of the year and enjoy it. And if that doesn’t work, go watch Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind and stop raining on my parade. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to watch a funnier episode of The Daily Show and eat some of that sickly sweet birthday cake upstairs.

I should be used to this by now. And then with Colton only being six, I naturally am assumed to be his father when it’s just the two of us out and about. But Julianne is nine. Clay is thirteen. This means that if Clay was my son, I would have had to have him when I was Julianne’s age. I don’t think my 4th grade days were THAT wild and crazy.

It started when I took Juls and Clay to the dentist. Two school helpers, two nurses and one doctor later, I knew we were going to be in for a long day. By the time we’d walked out of the dentist and into the mall, I’d given up on correcting people and just started playing along: “Huh, what? Oh, Clay? Yeah, he’s a great kid, thanks. I tell ya, I can’t wait for him to grow up and start making the big bucks though, because I want to retire and let him take care of me as soon as possible!” or “Your daughter is precious as well. My little Julianne over there is a sweetheart. You should see the adorable little bracelets she makes for me. She can’t cook or clean worth a damn, but I’ll beat it into her eventually.”

And this isn’t the only misguided assumption people make about me. Last week, my mom and I were mistaken for boyfriend-girlfriend far too many times and while that may be a huge compliment to her looking young and fresh, it raises far too many Freudian issues that I would just soon rather forget. But I think the real kicker came today. The kid’s babysitter, who has got to be in her 70s, called the school and when they called back, I picked up the phone and was greeted with, “Hello, is this Clay’s father? Well, your wife called earlier”… I mean, sure, who doesn’t like older women? I just prefer mine not be on Medicare yet.

But the other night made it all worthwhile. Juls came home begging me to take her and a friend to the local skating rink since her school was having a fund raiser for a few hours. I had plenty of work to do and was kind of tired, but I could tell she really wanted to go. She spent a few minutes picking out her clothes and packing her little purse and when we arrived, she paid and got her own skates. It was around this time that she finally told me she had no idea how to skate.

Her friends tried to teach her, but after 20 minutes I could tell this wasn’t going anywhere and when I walked over to her, I could tell she was discouraged and embarrassed and ready to leave. So I did the only thing I knew to do; I went and grabbed a pair of skates myself, laced up, and as soon as I stepped into the rink, the number of people who had no idea what they were doing doubled. I never learned to skate since the skating rink near where I grew up was a tad redneck and hillbillyish. (Although, now that I think about it, every skating rink I’ve ever set foot in has fallen into that category). Juls was still grabbing onto the side, so I pulled her out into the middle with me and for the next hour and a half we twirled around like idiots and fell down approximately every seven seconds. But the whole time, we had these giant grins on our faces and by the end, Juls was getting the hang of it.

As everybody was putting their skates away and getting their coats on, one of the moms sitting nearby came up to me and said:

Hey, I wish I’d had a dad like you while growing up. Mine would have just sat over there in the corner and shouted instructions to me until I started crying.

Ok, so I guess there are worse things than being mistaken for a dad.

I hate making realistic plans. I use the term realistic plans because I’m all for daydreaming and imagining what I’d do if some unexpected event happened, such as a plague killing 99% of the population or being given the chance to make contact with a previously unknown race. Those I know will never happen and yet they are fun to think about. But try and get me to plan what I’m going to do for the next week, let alone year, and I cringe.

Plans never turn out like you plan them to. They always go awry, usually in the most unexpected way possible so that even had you planned for ever imaginable scenario, you’d still be amazed when you looked back and saw how far off course you’d gotten. Like the Chinese say, there are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same. So there’s no need for specific plans, but instead spend your time trying to figure out what you want to ultimately accomplish. As long as you’ve got that in sight, everything else just seems to fall into place.

And yet I find that I make plans all the time. This time last year, I had a Master Plan. I knew what I wanted to do, I knew how I was going to do it, and nothing could stop me. And yet here I sit, 12 months later, amazed at how much I deviated from what I had in mind. My goals and desires completely shifted and I can’t help but wonder, come 2007, will I be thinking the same about what I have in mind today?

For starters, 2005 saw the collapse of my journal process, which to most people means absolutely nothing, but to me is monumental. In some aspects of my life, I am amazingly anal and I hate that fact with a passion. My journal and how I went about writing it every night was one of the biggest meticulous feats I went through every day. And then in February I found that I hadn’t written in it for a week. By June, I was a month behind; now, three months. I’m slowly going back and filling in the gaps, but the pure fact that I let it get to this point proves that maybe one day I’ll be able to break some of these habits of mine that I detest.

I’m sure people are sick of reading the word “Australia” on here, but when talking about 2005, there’s no way around it. Sure, I was only there for four months or so, but the impact it had on me was monumental. I almost feel as if I came home a different person and I honestly have no idea why. So many little things about me changed, for better or worse, and truth be told I’m still discovering some of the changes.

For instance, remember one of the first posts I made when I came back to the states talking about the things I’d give up to go back to Australia? Well, at the time, I said I would have ditched watching baseball in order to go back. Well, I’d say I’m one step beyond that now in the fact that I no longer live and die by the Mariners and Packers. Before, when Seattle or Green Bay were knocked out of the playoffs / didn’t even make it, I’d literally be in shitty mood for a good week or two. Now? Not so much. Sure, this is small and insignificant in the great realm of things, but for me, it’s simply strange to see the shift in myself. And there are hundreds more that I won’t even bother detailing here, but that happened all thanks to that island out in the middle of nowhere.

Then there’s the bloody obvious. My undergraduate years came to a completion in August. I still don’t know how I honestly feel about that. It’s not like school is over for me – grad school will come eventually, followed by another few years after that I’m sure. But for now, I’m not attending classes regularly for the first time in my life since I used to watch Sesame Street daily. At dinner tonight, I looked at Juls and Clay and then started laughing when I realized they had school tomorrow. Me? I get to sit around and write all day. This is most certainly the life.

And speaking of sitting around all day, I’ve been here in Virginia for a little over four months as well. It’s one of those times where you don’t realize something until you sit down and add it up and then scrunch your face all tight and go, “Huh? Have I really been here that long? Damn….”

And how could I forget last January? For the Internet junkie that I am, it’s a miracle it took me so long before finally meeting somebody like Andy. I say that because before meeting him, I’d only known him on-line, hence making him the first person I’d ever met having previously known them only via the Internet. I’ve just always thought that was kinda cool.

So what the hell should I expect from 2006? Well, some more time in Virginia for starters, which is actually a good thing. I surprise the hell out of myself when I say I’m loving it up here. I just never thought I’d enjoy living at home again, but what with the kids keeping me young and laughing at things with my mom, I find the days up here seem to just fly by. But what else might go down this year?

Who the hell knows. And that’s the beauty of it – I’ve got no idea what might happen this year and I’d be retarded if I tried to predict it. Just as long as I stay happy and accomplish some of these goals I’ve written down over the past few months, I’ll be satisfied. And with that said, I’m off to work on one of them. Enjoy 2006 folks.

That being said, when we were trying to fly down to South Carolina for Thanksgiving, my mom was working and Jeff was going to Oklahoma and my dad was, well, in South Carolina, which meant that I was Supreme Commander of Allied Goob Siblings for the day. And trust me, after being stranded in one of the busiest airport in the world on the busiest traveling day of the year for a few hours, it wasn’t a fun job.

I finally found a few open seats and promptly parked the traveling circus in the fixed location while I went to see if I could find an area of the airport that had more than one bar of cellular reception. Eventually I found such a spot, but it was right in front of a ground gate, which meant that every few minutes the door would burst open with a loud whoosing sound as a ground agent walked in. Also, right above me, there was a giant speaker for all the gate announcements. And finally, there was a small group of people behind me whose only common bond was that they were angry at “The Man” for not allowing them to smoke in an airport.

I mention all this because of who I was calling. United’s 800 employ listing number. It’s completely automated and one of the glitchiest pieces of software still in existence. With this software, you don’t punch keys on the phone, oh no. You fucking talk to the computer and it listens. This might be cool in theory or on Star Trek, but it’s horrible over a cell phone using 2005 technology. My mom used to go into the broom closet and make us all sit quietly on the couch while she used it and even then we’d get grounded if we talked or fought or sneezed. Yet here I was, standing underneath a speaker, next to a door, and behind a bunch of people who will one day die of cancer.

“What is your destination city?”

“Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina”

“click-click-click…did you say Seoul, Korea?”

“No.”

“What is your destination city?”

“Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina”

“click-click-click….did you say Seoul, Korea?”

“NO!”

“What is your destination city?”

“Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina”

“click-click-click…did you say Philadelphia, Pennsylvania?”

“NO! JESUS, THAT DOESN’T EVEN SOUND LIKE SPARTANBURG! NO, NO, NO!”

“What is your destination city?”

“GREENVILLE FUCKING SPARTANBURG, SOUTH CAROLINA!”

It was about this time that the chick behind me turned and smirked that I shouldn’t yell at a ticket agent like that, even if it was over a phone. Now, under any other circumstance, I probably would have let it go. I mean, she was stressed about not being able to smoke and she was pretty hot, so normally I would have just smiled and walked to another location. But by this point I was tired from not having slept any the night before and frustrated from being stranded and annoyed from listening to her airhead comments behind me for the past 20 minutes.

“It’s an automated phone system, hun. I could call it’s mother a string of four letter words and it’d still want to book me on a fucking flight to Korea. Now fuck off, leave me alone, and go find a place to smoke your cancer stick.”

Ladies, they tell me my charm is irresistible.

After finally realizing we weren’t going to anywhere other than Asia via this route, I returned to Fort Goob to formulate a new strategy. Of course, by this point Juls and Clay had passed out to Dreamland and Colton was dancing around doing his “I really gotta pee but I don’t want to tell anybody” dance. I woke Juls to take sentry duty over our luggage and marched hand-in-hand with Colton to the bathroom and as we exited, an elderly lady looked at me with a level of scorn I’ve never seen before in my life. But I’ll admit, she had a giant pair of brass, because she leaned over to her husband and quite loudly proclaimed how America’s youth today were all going to hell since we all apparently are having kids at age 15. Thankfully, my tongue had already been loosened for the day and I proceeded to go off on her. As we walked back to Fort Goob, Colton asked me what a “bitchy, bitter hag” was.

I blame the Pilgrims.

Or Starbucks. It’s always fun to blame Starbucks for things.

As you can see, I’ve made some changes here at Shyzer Industries. During my final few days in Australia, I decided that when I got home, I wanted to give Shyzer a new layout. A few weeks later, I decided that I wanted to switch from MovableType over to WordPress. Then last week, I decided I wanted to switch hosts. So, I figured why not do it all at once and kill three birds with forty-eight stones, because in all honesty the number of problems I ran into trying to do three major things like that at once made it such a bloody hassle.

But now it’s done and frankly, I enjoyed the challenge. Along the way, I learned quite a bit about MySQL databases, I picked up some php coding skills, and I became dangerously competent in Photoshop. I know, it’s frightening. And to think, it only took me staying up until 0900 every morning for the better part of a week to accomplish everything!

First off, this theme is centered around the images about. I use the plural version of image, because if you haven’t discovered this yet, it changes. Every time you reload or go to a new page on Shyzer, the image above will randomly change to any of the ones I have in a certain folder. At last count, there were 46 of them, but I’ll be adding to it as I come across more images that I find reflect the mood I’m looking for. And of course, I’m sure I’ll grow tiresome of some and delete them.

Basically, the inspiration came from this photo, which I fell in love with the moment I laid my bleary eyes upon it. The green on white struck me as beautiful at first, but then I began to love the idea of what was happening in the photo. In my mind, the guy in that picture up and decided to just pack a bag and take off. Hop on a train, let it carry you to an unexplored land, get off in the middle of the night, and just go where your feet carry you. I had that feeling when I was on the plane going to Australia almost eight months ago and it’s such a wonderful rush. It’s where I see myself right now too; poised to take yet another leap into the unknown and knowing absolutely nothing in the future is certain. I just can’t wait until I get to experience that new domain just over the horizon.

All of the photos I’ve used convey that feeling to me in one way or another. Some are of people actually traveling into the unknown. Others are of people dreaming about it. Or at least that’s what I like to fool myself into believing.

Not everything is fully functional on the site right now and Lord knows I have plenty of tweaking to do, but all the interactive stuff should be running. The search function should work, the tag board should work, the comments should work, all the link in the right column should work other than “Sub Pages.” But with that said, if you find anything screwy with the new layout, by all means let me know so that I can fix it. I’m 99% sure this layout works in Internet Explorer too, but dear God was that a battle. Seriously folks, you’d be doing me and yourself a huge favor if you’d just switch over to Firefox. But I digress.

[edit] I just found two things that don’t show up in IE, the horizontal bars separating the sections in the right column and . Damn you Microsoft, I hate your shitty products! [/edit]

Anyways, hope you enjoy the new look. Now I’m off to go catch some z’s before the rest of my family wakes up.

I would literally give anything to be able to bring the dream I had last night into reality.

Like the title says, I never really was a Southern Boy. It’s just not my cup of tea. South Carolina will always be my home, there’s no masking or escaping that, but it will be a home that I visit only during holidays and then leave behind again for a while. If anything, Australia finally gave me the courage to get the hell out of this state and go do my own thing, which is exactly what I’m doing.

This is the first step to bigger and better things. I’ve already made plans that will almost triple the number of countries I’ve been to in my life in only a year’s time, the first of which occurs next month. And as we all know, moving back to Australia is actually not that far off in the horizon =)

But to begin any journey, you’ve got to make that first step. Well here’s mine. It only took me 10 years to get the hell out of this place!

Okay, maybe that last one is a bit of a stretch, but growing up, it sure seemed like she was always pregnant. It felt as if every few years she was breaking the news to me that I was about to receive a new brother or sister. The first time it occurred, she sat me down and carefully tried to explain that she didn’t love me any less and that I would grow to appreciate my new baby brother as much as I did her and my dad. By the time Colton was baking in the oven, it had gotten to the point where she just turned around to me while driving to home and mentioned, “Oh yeah, I’m pregnant again!”

When Tommy, Clay, and Colton were all on their way, I resented them all. Tommy was about to cramp my style of being an only child, we had to move to a new house and new school district because of Clay, and I felt Colton was going to do nothing but make our family more hectic and chaotic. The only one I was ever excited about was Julianne, because she was the first baby sister I was going to receive. Of course, the day each of them transformed from some weird blob inside my mom’s stomach to an actual, breathing human baby, my thoughts and emotions shifted to, “Sweet…I’ve now got another sibling! I’m never going to let anything happen to this little creature.”

And I never did. I’ve always been amazingly protective over each of them, standing up for them whenever the situation arose and feeling no shame in kicking the crap out of a kid half my size who had been picking on one of them. I’ve always tried to pass along any knowledge or tricks of the trade that I’ve picked up along the way and like I’ve said on here a million times, one of my greatest joys in life is watching them each grow up and blossom into their own individual.

But there was one inherent flaw in this grand scheme. No matter how many kids my mom decided to have, none of them could be older than I already was. I know, quite shocking, but it’s true. I was destined forever to be the oldest child, the one kid in the entire family who would never have an older sibling.

To some people that might sound like a great idea, being the oldest child, and I’ll be honest, there are times where I love being the oldest. I can pull rank whenever I need to and delegate duties and chores that otherwise I’d have had no choice but to do. But even despite that, there were quite a few times where I wished I’d had an older brother. Somebody who would have looked out for me, taken me under their wings, and protected me. Somebody who could have been the one teaching me the tricks of the trade and showing me how to get away with things behind mom and dad’s back. In essences, somebody who would have done for me everything I did for my siblings.

The funny thing is, it wasn’t until I was in high school that I realized I’d already had an older brother for the last seven years.

Like I said earlier this month in my post about Jeremy, my family moved right after Year 3. It was summertime and of course normally I would have been out running around the neighborhood with my friends, getting into trouble and causing mayhem. The only problem was that I didn’t know anybody in the new neighborhood and I wasn’t too keen about going out and making new friends. I moped around the house for a few weeks until my mom finally grew tired of my whining and threw me out. She had noticed another little boy across the street, playing basketball in his driveway all alone, and therefore thought he would make a good friend. I remember looking up at her and rolling my eyes when she said this, because, honestly, how would she know that he would made a good friend? She’d never met him or actually talked to him. How did she know he wasn’t weird? How did she know I’d like him? This was my mom telling me he’d be a cool friend, so obviously since she thought he’d be cool, there was no way he could be cool. But of course, despite my screams of protest, I was pushed out the front door one afternoon and told I couldn’t come back inside until I’d gone and talked to him.

So there I was, sent out into foreign territory, scared of this kid across the street who was different than me. I remember looking at him from my front steps and thinking he must be Chinese or something and that he probably didn’t even speak English. It must have taken me ten minutes just to walk across the street over to his house. I kept my head down, looking at the ground as I shuffled my feet on the pavement, and prayed that by some miracle I wouldn’t have to go through with this torturous mission.

Finally I was within talking distance and he had stopped shooting his basketball and was staring at me, sizing me up just like I had been doing him for the past few minutes. After a few awkward moments, I lifted my head, held out my trembling hand, and somehow managed to squeak out a “hi.” He responded with a quick “hi” as well. I was instantly surprised that he even spoke English and before I knew it, I had sat down next to him and we just started to talk. I learned that he was two years older than I was and that he was Malaysian and from there, we just sat around talking. We must have sat outside on that cool, crisp April evening for at least three hours and from then on, we just clicked.

Chong (as I grew to call him) and I spent all summer long together, exploring the forest behind our houses or playing with the scrap wood pieces from construction sites. I remember one particular incident that stands out in my mind as the moment I realized he was a true friend. One afternoon, we got caught red-handed by a neighbor burning some grass clippings. The fire couldn’t even be called a real fire, due to its miniscule size, but we ran like bats out of hell. We must have ran a record time as we flew back to his house and got our “story” worked out. But the main point to this story is that Chong got caught; I didn’t. And Chong never mentioned my name to his parents, not a peep about me being in the incident at all. He had my back the whole way and never once thought about bringing me down with him.

Whenever I had a question about what classes to sign up for, I turned to Chong. The first time I ever sipped a beer or smoked a cigarette (I swear I can still taste the nicotine on my tongue from that damn cig!), Chong was right there by my side watching over me. Chong even seemed to have the answers to any “mature” or “sensitive” questions I had growing up, if you know what I mean. In fact, almost every time I ever had any trouble or qualms, Chong was there for me. The few words he had to offer as pieces of advice invariably turned out to be more helpful than all the speeches I was forced to listen to by my parents. I seriously have no idea what I would have done without him.

As I grew up and moved into high school, I noticed that many “best friends” began to break apart. Guys changed, girls sometimes got between them, and in time they stopped being close friends. But Chong and I had a bond that was far too strong for that. It’s not to say that we weren’t tested though. In Year 10, we both liked the same girl. The only problem was that she kinda liked us both as well. One day while changing for track, I looked over to him and said, “Dude, I don’t want this to turn out bad. I don’t want to end up like some of these guys we hang out with who stab each other in the back just for a girl. We’re better than that.” He turned and looked at me, nodding, and said, “Me too bro. Tell ya what, we’ll let her decide. Whoever she likes more can date her and the other guy will have no hard feelings. Fair enough?” I stuck out my hand to shake his, smiled, and knew that we’d be just fine. It’s not every day that you realize you have a friend of that caliber. And in the end, we proved to the world that we were right. She made her choice, both of us were fine with it, and we moved on like nothing had happened.

But like I said, Chong was and still is two years older than me. Therefore, when I hit Year 11, he was off to uni and that’s when it hit me. Chong had been the older brother I’d so desperately seaked for all these years. And better yet, I had gotten all the perks of having an older brother without having to suffer through the beatings and torturing and general crap that I subjected my brothers to on an almost daily basis. I couldn’t have been more blessed while growing up.

We managed to stay good friends despite going to uni in different states, always talking on-line and meeting up whenever possible. After graduating, he got a job that ultimately shipping him across the country to Seattle. Some might have let that become the beginning of the end of their friendship. Us? Well, tomorrow morning I head out to Seattle for a 5 day spree of drinking, Mariners baseball, and general mayhem with none other than the one and only Chong.

Don’t be alarmed nor surprised if you read in the news that Washington State has called out the National Guard. It’s just their response to a few days of Goob n’ Chong.

Honest to God, could 2005 be any more perfect?

While I was in Charleston, I managed to see some of my best friends from back in the day as well as those I run with more often in the present. It was fantastic seeing each and every one of them. In fact, it’s been amazing seeing all my friends since I’ve arrived back here in the states. It boggles my mind when I think I’ve only been back for three and a half weeks. With all the stuff I’ve done and people I’ve seen, it almost feels as if I never left. But whenever I start to feel like this, I invariably run into somebody I haven’t seen since my pre-Australia days and naturally, one of the first thing each and every one of them does is ask if I enjoyed my trip. I, of course, tell them how much fun I had and how I’m going back this February, which of course leads to a follow up question that I’ve been asked at least 100 times.

“But what’s so amazing about it? Is it the land? Or the people? I don’t see what they could possibly have that America doesn’t that would make you want to move there.”

This question is to be expected. It’s no surprise whatsoever I’m being asked it and so, you would think, I’d be able to formulate a response ahead of time. But ever since I’ve arrived back in the states, I’ve had trouble answering it and it wasn’t until recently that it finally dawned on me. Anybody who would ask that question automatically doesn’t and won’t understand it’s answer.

When I was down in Charleston, I met up with Jessica (my ex-girlfriend) and Elton (the one person I’ve ever been closest friends with). It was fantastic to see them both, since I had not really seen or talked to either one of them in over a year. As the night was winding down, Elton and I decided to go grab some food at a diner and before I knew it, four hours had passed and time was making fools of us yet again. But somewhere in the middle of those four hours, a thought passed through my head. Of all the people I’d seen since I got home, Elton was the only one not to ask that question.

It shouldn’t have really surprised me though. It was Elton who convinced me to follow my heart and get out of South Carolina in the first place. It was Elton who had gone to Chile, and since Brazil, and soon Cuba. It was Elton who I had grown up with, shared my deepest thoughts and desires with, who always knew me better than I seemed to know myself. He had no need to ask such a silly question when he already could see it in my eyes. I was no longer the Goob he had counseled just a short year ago. Sitting across from Elton was the Old Goob, the True Goob, and he could put two and two together.

Somewhere around the third week of my stay in Australia, Sez and I were talking in my room one night and she asked me, “so, is Australia everything you thought it’d be?” During the delayed seconds it took me formulate a response, all the uncertainty and nervousness I felt on my way over there came rushing back. To be honest, I had no idea what to expect and I was only hoping for the best. All I knew was why I was going over there and what I was hoping to gain from the experience, personally. So I responded with, “I don’t know if it’s everything I thought it’d be, but I can certainly tell you it is everything I needed it to be.”

She probably had no idea what in the hell I was talking about, but I knew even as early as week 3 that the five months I was about to spend in Australia was exactly what I needed to finally give re-birth to the Old Goob. And that, my friends, was exactly what I went there to do.

About a week before I left, Emma came to my room with a small piece of poster board. She was leaving the next day to go home, so this was the last night we were going to get to spend together before I left. The poster board in her hand, though, was an ingenious idea she had come up with earlier. There are quite a few International students at Newcastle – some stay for a semester, others for a year. But in the end, we all have to go back home. Well, Emma came up with an idea to get every International friend she had leaving to sign the poster before they took off and that night it was my turn. I came back to my room to sit and think for a minute and eventually the previous conversation I had with Sez came floating through my mind and I thought about how right I’d been, even early on.

Back in middle and high school, I was a happy go lucky guy. Sure, I was serious when the situation called for it, but on any average day, I could be found with a smile on my face and a sarcastic remark on the tip of my tongue. And most importantly, I was happy. Truly happy. But somewhere along the line, and trust me, I’ve thought long and hard about where, I began to change. There were forces in my life, both ones I knew about and ones I never even recognized until many years later, that ultimately seemed to sap the positive energy out of me. By my first year of Uni, I was exhausted and far too serious. Gone were the days of constant sarcastic remarks and random periods of uncontrollable laughter. Instead I was much too moody, judgmental, and serious. Sure, I laughed and joked and had fun, but that spark that I used to have was gone. I no longer would randomly shout out some weird phrase and giggle just for the hell of it. I no longer would act goofy and stupid and completely out of normal just for the hell of it. I no longer was Goob, I was just some average Joe.

But luckily, this only lasted for two years. By my third year at Uni, I knew something was gone, something was missing. I began to search for it and slowly, Goob began to regain his old form. I would send random IMs containing nothing but my favorite recipes. I would call my friends and leave voice messages in my made up language (which only I can speak). I even started creating new alter-egos to entertain people for hours on end.

But the kicker didn’t come until I went to Australia. I needed a fresh new slate, a group of people who had never met or heard of me before. I needed to find them, introduce them to Goob, and see how they reacted. I hoped a few would accept me. Maybe I’d even make a few friends. But I never dreamed I’d fall in love with as many people as I did in such a short amount of time or better yet, that I’d have people actually wanting me to stay instead of come back to the states. And the best part of it all was that I was able to make friends with each and every one of them all while being my true self. Australia proved to me that I could go out and be myself and people would still like me. Australia helped me to remember what it felt like to be the Old Goob and for that, I will forever be grateful.

But that’s just part of the reason why I’m going back. Like I said, if you have to ask the question, you’ll probably never understand. =)

So, right as Year 3 ended, we trekked all of our belongings to the next town over and began our new life in a new house in a new neighborhood in a new town. I was quite angry with the move, promising that I would run away the first at the first chance I got, but every time I only made it down to the road before giving up and trying to set camp under the mailbox. I didn’t want to leave my old friends behind and as much as my parents promised that I’d see them all often, I regrettably had the last laugh by proving them right that I would rarely, if ever, see them again. Later this month I’ll be writing something eerily similar to this about the events that led up to my friendship with Chong, but that was a more after-school, get into trouble in the neighborhood type friendship that we had. This post is about my first friend I made at school. This post is about Jeremy.

To this day, I remember more about Year 4 than I do about Year 5 and 6 combined. Year 4 was a roller coaster of emotions for me. The first few weeks I was in way over my head. At my previous school, division and cursive wasn’t taught until Year 4, but at the new school I was attending, both had been taught already in Year 3. I had no friends whatsoever, I was struggling in all my subjects, and for as nice as my teacher was, I just didn’t really like her that much for some reason that I still can’t explain. So, you can understand why I was thrilled to have found a guy that was nice to me when I finally did around the third week of classes. His name was Josh and he was one of the roughest and stupidest kids in the class. He found more pleasure in skipping class or causing trouble than he did in learning, but I didn’t care because I had finally made a friend. Sort of.

But within a few days of meeting Josh, a kid came up to me on the playground during recess. He very quietly asked if I wanted to come play foursquare with him and being the new kid, I was happy to accept any friendly invitations. He introduced himself as Jeremy and I followed him over to the blacktop and quickly learned the rules to this foreign game I’d never played before. The bell rang only a few minutes later and as we filed back into the classroom, I ran up to talk to Jeremy and thank him for letting me play with him. He said no problem and that I should come play with them again the next day instead of playing with Josh since he was nothing but trouble. 15 years later, I’m still friends with the group of guys Jeremy introduced me to that fateful afternoon.

In 5th grade, Jeremy and I were placed in the same class again. We somehow conned our teacher into thinking we were the most trustworthy kids in the class, so she selected us to run the candy business. Basically, what it meant was that Jeremy and I were allowed to leave class 10 minutes early to take candy out to recess to sell for a few minutes each day. Then, after recess, we were allowed to sit in the back closet and “restock” the candy. Of course, we just sat back there and took as much time as humanly possible to move a Snickers bar from one box to the next just so we could skip math every day. But I’ll never forget one day in particular because it was the make or break point in our friendship. We were outside setting up and I decided that I wanted a Reeses’ Cup. But of course, I didn’t want to actually have to PAY for it, so I just grabbed one from the box and started chowing down. Jeremy’s head snapped over towards me and quickly asked me, “Hey, you didn’t pay for that!!” I didn’t really know what to do, so I just reached down into the money jar, picked up a handful of change, and then just dropped it straight back down into the jar. Jeremy’s eyes narrowed for a few seconds, then slowly a grin spread over his face and said, “That’s more like it.” From that day on, every time one of us would take a candy bar, we would make sure we grabbed some money out of the jar and “pay for it.” But more importantly, it was from that day on that I knew I’d always have a partner in crime if I ever needed one.

There was New Years at the Holiday Inn when we were all about 16 or so. That to this day is still the best New Years I’ve ever had, but I can’t go too much into detail because certain people have threatened me with bodily harm if I reveal too much. Apparently I remember far too much incriminating evidence against people that occurred that night! But there was Dave getting drunk off root beer, us stealing the pool sticks, and Jeremy’s ingenious idea to clear our throats so that we wouldn’t make too much noise when we broke the balls. And of course, I don’t think any of us from that night will be able to forget Mary Poppins and her sidekicks, but I think I’ll just leave it there.

And let me just thank whoever bought the Pimp Mobile off him, because that was the biggest heap of rubbish ever to have four wheels stuck on it. Of course, Jeremy just took a little Hawaiian hula doll and stuck it in the dashboard and called it his pimp ride. I think I saw a grand total of one female in that car. Ever. And that was only because the walk back to her house would have taken her three days. Poor girl.

But Jeremy, this is for you bro. Thank you for always being there by my side and I can only hope I’ve been as good a friend to you as you have been to me. I hope you have many, many, many happy and successful years down the road with Katie by your side. You deserve it mate.

See that paragraph above? It was written over 36 hours ago. I just couldn’t go on at the time. It’s funny how that gap represents over 36 hours of emotions and thoughts for me, yet all you see is a few pixels of blank space. It’s been almost 48 hours since my tearful departure from Sydney. I’m now in Minnesota, sitting exhausted in bed, but I can’t sleep. It’s sometime after midnight or 0100…hell if I know. My watch is still set on Newcastle time and I don’t have the heart to change it. I wonder how long it’ll take to do that. I can tell you from looking at my watch, however, that it’s 1400 in the afternoon back home…well, I should say back in Australia. I keep looking at my watch and trying to picture what I’d be doing back there at whatever time it is. Right now I’d probably be standing in the Riddle Tunnel, wracking my brain to solve who killed Mr. Tidy (I still haven’t figured it out!), or I’d be in Hannah/Keeley’s room singing some random song, or looking to see where a certain someone was…And now, that’s all gone. I know I’ll go back, even soon if possible, but will it be the same? We all won’t be living in TEDS anymore, at least I know I won’t be able to. I’ll have to work, people will be spread out across Newcastle if not the rest of Australia, and others won’t be friends with each other anymore and some will be in relationships that take up all their time. I just afraid I’ll be like that guy who refuses to “grow up” and keeps trying to hold onto things, although that’s nothing like who I really am.

I hugged my brother today for the first time in four and a half months and it felt amazing. I hadn’t realized how much I’d actually missed him and the rest of my family. But you know what? I’d get back on a plane tomorrow and head back to Australia for another year or two or even for an indefinite period of time if I had the opportunity. And I wouldn’t even take more than 10 seconds to think and then agree to go back. Does that make me a bad person? Why am I having trouble letting go to friends I’ve only known for a few months than family I’ve known all my life?

I think part of it has to do with the fact that I don’t truly like any place here in America. Before I left, I was pretty sure I disliked South Carolina, but now I wholeheartedly hate South Carolina with a passion. In fact, I’m dreading returning there even for just a few weeks. If there was some way I could see all my friends and family without actually having to go to that fucking state, I’d do it. I just can’t go back to living in SC. I can’t. Virginia isn’t that much better, but it’s better than SC. Plus, my family is there and it’s my only option for free rent so that I can work 50 hours a week and save money non-stop for a few months in hopes that I can somehow make my way back to Australia.

And here we go, round and round this vicious circle again. I only want to be in America long enough to save money for six or eight months to go back to Australia. But I don’t want to go back to Australia and expect things to be the way they were, because I know they won’t be. But I want to go back to Australia so badly, it’s not even funny.

My aunt asked me what it is that I’m so attached to in Australia and I’m still having trouble trying to put it into words. Before I left last February, I always felt out of place here. Sure, I loved my life and I still do, no questions asked. I loved my family more than anything else, I had some of the best friends in the world (as Fellner has shown everybody on Shyzer day in and day out), and I was living life the way I wanted to. Yet, even with all that, I felt out of place. It didn’t feel natural.

Australia felt natural. It felt like home even without any family or lifelong friends being nearby. And yes, I’m talking about the people and the everyday lifestyle, not the partying I did at the end of the semester or the laziness I was able to enjoy. I can do without those anywhere if I have to since I do understand that I have to “grow up” and all…I’d just rather do without them in Australia =) The thought of getting a house with some of my mates in Australia and finding a job sounds amazing and more appealing than any scenario I can come up with that would involve me staying in America.

I don’t think either group is going to understand completely what I’m going through though. All I can say is this. People are different in Australia than they are in America. Life is different. Attitudes are different. Australians see life through a different shade, live life on a different wavelength. I can’t describe it any better and that’s killing me because usually I can at least translate my emotions and thoughts better than “this is how I feel, just trust me about it.” But I can assure you it’s true and as much as I hate to say it, I prefer the Australian way of life over the American any day. And I’d choose that way of life over my family and friends in a heart beat. Does this make me a bad person? Does this make me cold hearted in some way? And I’m not glorifying Australia, am I? I truly don’t think I am, but I worry that I am, which makes me think that I might be. GOD DAMN IT! ALL THIS RATIONALIZING AND ANALYZING IS TEARING ME APART……..

I’m sincerely sorry. I said I deleted the first version of this post because it was just a collection of random thoughts running through my head. Looks like this post was no different in the end. I guess I’m not in any frame of mind right now to be compiling a worthwhile Shyzer post. I’ll be back with something new in a day or two. In the meantime, I’m going to stay busy here with my family and try to give my brain and heart a rest from all this strain. They deserve it. Or maybe I just need it so I don’t suffer a nervous break down. Either way.

But first I’m gonna flip through the Aussie Scrapbook Hannah and Keeley gave me for the 9,000th time…

Hey, big man upstairs, whoever you are. Thanks for such a wonderful life.

And hence, from that day forward, my siblings were officially known amongst my circle of friends as Gooblings.

On my bio page, you can find the following sentence:

We all talk multiple times a week and I can’t wait to see what it’s like when all five of us are adults.

For years, I’ve tried to image where myself and all the Gooblings will turn up along the way on the road of life. It’s easily one of the main things I look forward to in the future and earlier this month, our journey took one more step towards its way of completion. Tonight, I finally edited the cast page to reflect Clay’s correct age. That’s right folks. Clay, the Goobling right smack dab in the middle of all us Gooblings, the kid who for years and years I tormented to no end, the one who I easily would say is the most like me in every little way, turned 13. The big One Three. A teenager.

He’s made the plunge. Long gone are the days or tormenting and ridicule and replacing them are the days of inclusion and embracing. He’s an official member of the Brotherhood Clan, whose membership before hand only included two. Now we just need some cool handshake or knock or tattoo or something. (Don’t worry Mom and Dad, I won’t let my 13 year old brother get a tattoo. I’ll at least wait until he’s 14.) Although, to be honest, he has been an honorary member for a few years. And I’m not talking about the honorary type member that the PGA did with that black dude Cecil in Augusta before Tiger came around. Oh no. I’m talking about the honorary type member who had full voting privileges and was privy to Top Secret information and everything. The only difference now is that since the honorary member status has been removed, he’s now expected not to fall asleep after a midnight meeting just because he’s tried. That’s no longer an excuse! =)

I still can’t believe that the little guy is already in the full blown adolescence stage. I still remember being shocked the day his biological clock rolled over from single to double digits and yet when I think about it, that was over three years ago. Part of me wants to slow it down, to snap my fingers and freeze the Goobling’s lives right where they are. I don’t want to see them ever lose their inherent innocence. I don’t want the day to come where all three no longer latch onto my legs when I walk in the door. And I certainly don’t want to see the day where they are all dating totally hotter women than me (or men in your case Jules!) because that’s just not cool. I’m already sick of watching Orge woo the ladies. Enough of that! Unless of course they have some hot older sisters. Then by all means, continue!

I don’t ever want to stop receiving pictures in the mail from Jules. As I type this, I am glancing up at the two latest ones she sent me. One contains a picture of a Rhinoceros and says “I (heart) U, Rhino!” The other picture is quite possibly one of the greatest and funniest drawings in the history of little sister drawings. On it, there are two people holding hands with a third, much shorter person standing behind them. The short person is of Jules and she is saying, “Ooooh, Ryan likes her.” The two tall people are me and a hot chick. My face is covered in red dots with an arrow being pointed to my head saying “embarrassed” and the top half of the page is filled with the following caption. “Sooo….Ry. Have you met any girls yet?” These are the things that I never want to loose. I don’t know what I’d do without them.

And even Colton, he who runs around reciting Pokemon and video game phrases. He who comes up with some of the most random sayings and repeats them at the most inopportune times. He who will never talk to you on the phone but who will cuddle and lie with you on the couch for hours on end. He’s already 5 and in two months I will be updating the cast page again to reflect his new age of 6. I don’t want him to grow up. I don’t want him to stop cuddling with me and stop playing Mario Kart Double Dash and stop thinking that the game where I pretend to be a monster and chase him around the house isn’t fun anymore. I don’t want any of this to end.

And yet, I still stand by my belief that I can’t wait to see what we’re all like when we grow up. I can’t wait to see what kind of trouble we all get into when we get together for holidays and celebrations. I can’t wait for the day Colton turns 21 and we all get together to celebrate. Jules will already be and a hot young lady whom will never be allowed to date for no man will ever be good enough for her. Clay will be celebrating his final year of the glorious 20s decade before turning 30 while Waynus will already be 32 with a wife. (yeah, you’re getting married first son!) Myself? I’ll be 38, carefree as ever, roaming the countryside in search of new and exciting adventures, reminiscing on Shyzer about the good ‘ole days, and echoing the thoughts I made here today. I can’t believe how fast these Gooblings are growing up.

But Happy Birthday, Clayster. You have no idea how proud I am to be your older brother. I can’t wait to be lounging on the lake in Minnesota with you and Tom in less than a month, talking about just how great life can get.

I just hope you know how large of a roll you and Tom and Jules and Colt play in making mine spectacular.

I’ll never forget what you and almost two thousand other Americans have sacrificed for this nation. I think about, with no exaggeration, each and every day I waken. God, if you’re really up there, I hope you’ll allow me to be half the man that Tillman was.

You know, I take that back. I could die happy with just a quarter.

Thank You.

It’s a tricky conundrum if you actually think about it. My entire reasoning behind coming over here for a semester was to get away, experience something fresh and new, give college another go around if you will. So the question posed itself: Should I go by Goob?

Look, I’ve had the nickname for 9 years now and it’s had a fantastic run. As my trip grew closer and closer, I began to pull a Michael Jordan circa 1993 and wonder if it was time to hang ‘em up. 9 years is a pretty good stretch for a nickname, but there becomes a time when even the best of the best begin to falter and are moved aside for the young prospects to emerge. Since the entire reason I was coming to Aussie was to start over fresh, I wondered “why not introduce myself as Ryan and see if I can get a new nickname by the time I return stateside.”

Unlike Jordan, however, I didn’t take two years to realize that there was still plenty of juice left in the “Goob Tank.” As completely retarded as it may sound, there’s something special about being known as Goob. People love to say it for some reason unbeknownst to me. I introduced myself as Ryan for the first day or two and it didn’t feel natural. It kinda stumbled off my tongue, lingered in the air, and simply waited for the person who I just met to completely forget it. So I switched over to Goob and the results were almost instant. People who I have absolutely no recollection of meeting come up to me and say “Hey Gooooob! How’s it going mate?” The tingle I get when I step onto a bus heading into town and hear the entire back half go “GOOOOOB!” is incomparable to anything else I’ve ever felt. As you can see, everybody I meet remembers my name and hence we become friends just that much quicker.

On the flip side, however, I’ve yet to tell anybody of Shyzer. I accidentally let slip that I run a site, but only two people heard me and they didn’t press for any further info. If I had my way, I’d most certainly keep it a secret simply so I can say anything I want on here and not have to worry about the consequences. Most people here are pretty savvy with a computer though and I’m simply waiting for the day when somebody Googles “Goob” and realizes that the second site on the results page has a picture of my mug plastered on it. But until then, I’m runnin’ free over here.

One last thing. I scheduled two other posts to reveal themselves at noon Monday and noon Tuesday. Here’s to hoping MovableType will do what I tell it do this time around.

You might be asking yourself just exactly what in the heck the “Goob Experience” exactly is, so allow me to explain. As my good friend Fellner says, “It’s good to be Goob.” It’s so good, in fact, that I’m going to give one lucky winner the chance to be me. If you win this auction, you get the following items / events:*

(1) A guest authorship on Shyzer.com – That’s right folks. For the entire month of February, you will have full access to my website, Shyzer.com, and all its glory. I will let you post whatever you want, whenever you want, with no restrictions whatsoever. Pimp your own site, explain how “whitey” has kept you down, or even be completely unoriginal and recap your day each and every day with no real substance whatsoever!**

(2) My cell phone number and a personal call from me – Not only will you win my coveted “digits,” I’ll give YOU a call at some random time and strike up a conversation that I guarantee will last a minimum of 20 minutes. What happens if we run out of things to say around minute 5, you ask? 15 minutes of dead silence. You paid for it, you’re getting it! Plus, since you’ll have my number, you’ll be able to call me whenever you want! And I also promise not to change my number within a week of giving it to you or block your number. I’m not dirty like that.

(3) Pizza Breadsticks Recipe – This recipe is quite possibly the only recipe that I have ever learned from a cookbook. Everything else I know how to make comes from first hand teachings from mi madre y mi padre, but I still love this breadstick recipe. I make it every Wednesday around 8:00 just as LOST is coming on and devour the entire plate of breadsticks before it ends. It’s really easy to make, pretty cheap, and is guaranteed to fill you up.

(4) All my Happy Birthday wishes – My birthday is February 7th, which is quickly approaching. I thought about auctioning up my birthday presents themselves, but I’ve got everybody in my life trained not to get me anything, so that would be a pretty lousy thing to sell. So, instead, I’m selling all the Happy Birthday Wishes I get. What that means is that any IM, phone call, e-mail, or personal wish to have a happy birthday will be forwarded to you by the people who give them to me! Think about it, you’ll get TWO birthdays in 2005! All day long Monday, you’ll be getting phone calls and IMs to have a Happy Birthday and let’s be honest here, even if it isn’t your birthday, personal attention puts anybody in a good mood. And we all could use a little pick-me-up on any given Monday. Don’t worry about me, I’m still young, I won’t miss this birthday.

(5) My most favorite T-shirt in the entire world. – Let me warn you first off. It’s big, it’s old, and it’s a Seattle Mariners shirt. It has countless tiny holes all over it and I use it now as a “sitting around the apartment chillin” shirt. I honestly can’t even believe I’m selling it, but if you want a true Goob Experience, then you need some personal items from me.***

(6) Any page out of my journal – Since August of 1996, I’ve kept a journal. For the first year or two, I wrote in it once or twice a week. After that, I began to write in it and then later type and print them out every night. I’m talking every night folks. My journal now fills up an entire box and it’s still going strong. I’ve also never let anybody voluntarily read it. I know of a few people who have snuck a look here and there before I found out, but up until now, I’ve never let anybody read it. So, by winning this auction, you get to pick one date, ONE DATE, to read. Any date my friends. What about July 3, 2000? Or November 14, 1997? I have absolutely no Earthly idea what I wrote on either of those days, but you could soon find out! I must warn you though, there are some days where the only entry is “Nada.” This is for days where absolutely nothing of consequence happened. If you happen to pick a nada day, I will give you the chance to pick another date and this process will continue until you pick a date with something other than nada. Also, my journal tends to lack a certain level of emotion. It’s more of a tool I use to jog my memory instead of a tool used to record exactly everything that happens. Some “big” events will read as follows: “This happened, that happened, man I was pissed” or “this happened, that happened, yea!!” So don’t go expecting some huge revelations here. But regardless, you’ll be able to read any day you want.

(7) Monthly letters from Australia – Growing up, I always saw kids on TV and in movies with pen pals. Maybe my school was the only school in the nation that didn’t have a sister school in Peru, but I always felt gypped that I never had a pen pal growing up. Therefore, when I go to Australia, I want to have a pen pal here in America. So why not make it you! We’ll write each other every month and accompany each letter with photographs of ourselves playing with all the other children in the schoolyard. If you send me a dollar, I’ll send you a picture of the rice I used that dollar to buy and…..wait, this is sounding more like one of those “Adopt a Kid” type things. Okay, scratch the whole rice thing. But you can send me a dollar if you want. That’s what really cool pen pals do. Seriously, I saw it in a movie once. Send me a dollar!!!

(8) Crash course in baseball, more specifically, Seattle Mariners baseball – Well duh, anything based on me is going to have a Mariners section. With this, I will teach you everything you need to know to become an avid Seattle Mariners fan. I’ll tell you all about our glory days pre-1995. Then, once I’m finished with that sentence, I’ll tell a tale of a little team that could, that chugged up that mountain and saved baseball in Seattle. I’ll teach you all the important nicknames, I’ll teach you the proper three ways to call for a beer in any baseball stadium, and I’ll teach you just what in the heck an infield fly really is. By the time I’m through with you, you’ll be as huge a Mariners fan as I am.

(9) I’ll sit down and have a beer with ya or go toss a baseball around with ya – Okay, here’s the deal. When this auction ends, I guarantee that within one (1) year, I will meet you someplace and have a beer. I’ll come to your town, you’ll come to my town, or we’ll meet someplace in the middle. I’m stuck here in South Carolina until I leave for Aussie, but when I get back I’m doing some major traveling and so I’m certain we can come up with something.

(10) Make fun of all my friends – I will teach you how to properly make fun of somebody. Sadly, there are many people today who still don’t know how to properly make fun of somebody. So, in order to show you how, I’ll give you all my ammunition and let you have at it with my friends. In no time, you’ll be calling Fellner a “whoooore” and Waynus an “Oooooogreeeeeeee” like the pro that you should be. And you’ll have the Goob School of Making Fun-of to thank.

(11) Potpourri! – I figured I’d throw in some sort of Wildcard item or something, so I decided to leave it open and let the winner decide! Ask me a question, request an item, whatever you want!****

So there you have it folks, the full “Goob Experience.” Bidding starts at $1.00 and if I get anything over a dollar, I will be quite surprised. So surprise me dang it!

* = This is a serious auction. Do not bid on if you don’t honestly want the “Goob Experience.” I will not just send my favorite T-shirt in the world to some Joe Schmo who won’t care for it the way I do!
** = Note, if you do this, I may hunt you down and make you pay. Shyzer shall not be demeaned like that!
*** = Shipping for the shirt will be $2.00. E-bay demands that you actually sell some sort of “goods,” so I’ve gotta throw the shirt and shipping in there somewhere!
**** = By whatever you want I mean whatever I feel like doing.

Australia.

I’ve felt like Red for the past few months, saying “Zihuatanejo” over and over, reminding himself that there’s hope for seeing his old friend Andy one day. This past summer, a good friend of mine gave me what might turn out to be some of the best advice I’ve ever received. We hadn’t talked in quite some time and we both knew that it was going to be one of our last meetings for quite a while, so we were determined to make the best of it. We discussed every topic imaginable and when I was through pouring my heart and soul out to him late in the evening, he looked me squarely in the eyes and said, “Ryan, you’re not like this place. Get the hell out of here. There is so much more out there and you feel it. I can see it in your eyes. You’re through with this place and it’s through with you.” I remember sitting in the booth for a few minutes mulling over what he had just said before slowly nodding my head in agreement with him. It was something I had needed to be told for quite a while and he somehow sensed that. I guess that’s always why we were such great friends.

The day I moved back to Columbia, I had a little unexpected bad luck fall my way. Of course, it only helped further strengthen my “everything happens for a reason” mentality for it sealed my friend’s advice and the next day I walked into the Study Abroad office, told them I was a senior, and asked what forms I needed to fill out. There was no question about it, I was on the “Australia or bust” bandwagon.

With me being a senior in my final semester, it adds a different twist to the whole equation. When most people go to study abroad, they still have at least another year of two of college remaining. They are able to go away, do their thing, and then come back and assimilate back into their old lifestyle. But that’s not the case with me. College is over for me. The classes in Aussie are “ass/fail,” meaning that it doesn’t matter if I make all D’s or all A’s, I’ll get the same credit regardless. That, in turn, means my GPA is officially locked and done with, I can take whatever classes I want, and when I return I graduate. I’m planning on going to maybe one or two classes a week. The next 5 months will essentially be a long vacation for me and I feel I’ve earned it. When I come home, I’ve already got plans to visit 5 or 6 different places and people across the country, I’ll have a grand sendoff with my bros at Jeremy’s bachelor party, and USC will hand me a diploma. Then it’s off to start chapter 6 of “I Bet My Goob is Bigger Than Yours: A memoir by Ryan Shyzer” or whatever the hell I decide to name it.

I was able to say goodbye to my family over Christmas Break, which was wonderful. Nothing in the world is more important to me than my siblings and my parents and therefore I was extremely thankful to have been able to have such a fantastic extended vacation with them and make sure we created some new memories. Last night, I was given the chance to say goodbye to all my friends here in Columbia as well. A kick ass “Goob Farewell Dinner: Brought To You By Kevin Fellner” was held in my honor and it was fantastic. (Wait, that sentence doesn’t even begin to describe last night. As one of our guests so eloquently phrased it, “Fellner, you went all out!” He started BBQing somewhere around 2 in the afternoon outside in the freezing cold and rain. When it was all said and done, we had ribs, chicken, corn, and beans. We even had a celebrity guest and today I was able to eat many leftovers. All in all, a most memorably night that will never be forgotten. Brought to me by the one and only Fellner.)

I’ve got three choices / job offers for once I get out of college and the closest one to South Carolina is 800 miles away. Color me excited. Of course I’ll miss all my friends and family, but that’s the exciting part. I’m forcing myself to get out there and start from scratch all over again. The level of terror I feel every time I think about the fact that I’m about to travel 10,000 miles to live in another country without knowing a soul is off the charts. But the minute a drop of that terror starts to flow through me, it makes me feel ecstatic. It’s a good terror, hell, a great terror. A few minutes later it has me convinced I can take on the whole world and that feeling doesn’t subside for days.

This isn’t some “the grass is greener on the other side” cry for help either. I know I’m running away from here. There’s so much baggage that I haven’t successfully dealt with that it’s not even funny. I’m not even going to try and hide it and maybe being upfront with that will help in the long run. But for me, it’s time to pick up the check, kiss South Carolina goodbye, and take off for the night. Hell, it’s not even that I’m unhappy here. I honestly haven’t been this content in a long, long time. It’s just that there’s still something missing, something more out there that I need. I can feel it every single day and I’m just irritated that I waited 22 years before going out in search of it. Is it in Australia? Probably not. But at least I’ll have searched there.

I actually only got accepted into the affiliate program, which will end up running me about an extra $1500 compared to what it would have cost had I been accepted into the direct enrollment program. I’ve also been told recently that my housing acceptance letter was never received, meaning I’m now in a heated battle trying to regain my room. But you know what? I don’t even care. At my current rate, I’ll run out of money in Aussie sometime around late April, but I’ll find a way to make the extra money, even if that means pawning off everything I own. And as far as housing, I’m sure that will work out. If not in the dorms, I’ll get an apartment. That’s how bad I want to go and see what’s out there. Besides, everything works out in the end. Everything.

I still don’t know what I’m going to do with Shyzer when the time comes. I can assure you here and now that in no way will I close shop. I’ve invested far too much blood and energy into my baby to just toss it aside for six months. Besides, there’s nothing like this nagging sense of duty I feel to a group of people whom I’ve never met. Of course, I won’t be taking my computer with me and my laptop has no Internet connection available, so the whole “Internet Access” might pose to be a problem. But I’ll make it work. I give you my word that you’ll have weekly updates and they won’t be some half-assed post. I feel I owe it to all those who’ve stuck around here for so long. IM will quickly become a thing of the past (which I am intriguingly interested in anyways) and the thought of no cell phone is actually a little comforting. And surprisingly, I’m debating whether or not to bring the name “Goob” along with me. That is actually one of the hardest decisions I’ve been forced to make in quite a while.

Well, the sun is rising now, which is my signal to hit the sack. But before I do, I’ll leave a few questions that I want some of you to answer. Why are you living where you currently reside? What special grip is holding you to that area and what would it take for you to move on? Seriously, I want to know.

Australia. Australia. Australia.

But wait, I’m not. About four weeks ago, my truck took me the entire 600 miles up to Virginia to see my family. Last night, it only allowed me to retrace 570 of them. About a half an hour outside of town, the engine gave a soft whine and started to gradually slow down. Clay thought I was messing around when I let flow of a steady, loud stream of expletives. I managed to pull the truck over to the side of the road, get AAA to town me to a mechanics, and my dad picked us up and finished the journey for us. Surprisingly enough, the mechanics were able to start working on my baby around 9 this morning. Unsurprisingly enough, they have absolutely no idea what is wrong with it. No belts are broken, the engine’s getting gas just fine, and not a damn thing appears to be wrong. But I can assure you, when you turn the key, all you get is the classic “Uhuhuhuhuhuh”. If they can’t fix it tomorrow, I’m stuck here until Monday night at the earliest and Andy leaves Tuesday.

Sometimes I seriously hate Fate.

There’s just something about me and trying to drive home from Virginia. Last year I was forced to do so on New Years night and was able to witness a tractor trailer exploding in front of me, sit still from 2AM until 5:30AM, and then watch my battery quickly died. I don’t know what the hell I did to anger the Gods this year, but it must have been a doozie.

But you know what the funny / not-so much funny, but more ironic thing is? My truck died within 3 miles of the exact same spot last year. Next time, I’m taking another route home.

Some people have asked me how I don’t fret and worry over my grades and it’s quite simple. Beyond studying, there’s nothing I can do. There’s no reason to pretend any test is life and death and if you studied the material, you should feel confident. Even if you feel like you bombed the test as you walked out of the class, why worry? Is ruining your night over worrying about a test you’ve already taken going to help your grade any? I think not. Yet sometimes there are times when I do grow nervous as I’m handed a test and so a few years ago I started doing what I do throughout the rest of my life whenever things get rough. I made myself laugh and forced myself to have fun with the tests. (Just ask Fellner what I did / wrote about during our Psychology AP exam. The story gets even funnier when you learn of the grade I received.) I started writing jokes or drawing funny pictures in the margins and this, therefore, always made the teachers get to know me and remember me a little quicker. They felt more comfortable calling on and joking around with me, often leading me to be mislabeled as a Teacher’s Pet. And Latin was no different.

As the semester grew older, the tests grew harder, and my study time for the class diminished, I found myself knowing fewer and fewer answers. But I hate leaving a question blank. Hate it. Despise it. Refuse to do it. I’ll answer “Um….Penis” before I leave a question blank. And so, whenever a question was given to me in Latin that I had absolutely no idea what the answer was, I would respond with “Dorkus Malorkus,” which is a quote from Simpsons. By quiz 8, my teacher was writing in the margins “what in the heck does this mean?!” and “for the love of God, NOOOOOOOO! THIS ISN’T A REAL LATIN PHRASE!!” I found it hilarious and I knew that she did too, even if she wouldn’t admit it. In fact, even though she felt at ease with me throughout the entire semester, she never once cracked a joke back at me. She always laughed when I or someone else did, but her response to them all were always just a smile and slight shake of the head before moving onto the next problem.

As my class and I were preparing to take the final today, I commissioned a Goob Poll and asked if there was anybody else in the class taking it simply as an elective. Not a one. So, when our teacher walked in the door and asked if there were any questions, I raised my hand. As a smile spread across her face and her eyes rolled, she called on me knowing damn well that I had never asked a serious question throughout the entire semester and that I wasn’t about to start now. I proceeded to lay out what I felt was a strong case for the curving by 50 points for all students who took Latin as an elective. Shouldn’t she help encourage students to take advantage of college and stimulate their minds?! Wouldn’t it be a kind gesture on her part if she could just curve my final average?!

She laughed and nodded as I went on until I finally reached my closing arguments. As I sat there awaiting her response, wondering how she was going to play off my question, she looked me square in the eye and said, “Ryan, you are a true Dorkus Malorkus.”

I don’t think I’ve ever smiled throughout an entire exam like I did today.

Life right now, honestly, is as close to perfect as it’s been in a long time. There is one key component missing that I’ve been reminded of many times over this past week, especially at dinner the other night, but overall things are going great. And it’s not just the big stuff (such as, say, a major thesis!), but it’s as if even the small, insignificant things have been falling my way lately. I guess I’m finally cashing in on some of that good karma I’ve been saving up lately. Hell, even the future looks amazingly bright. I got to see my family and friends over Thanksgiving break and am about to see them all over again later this month. By this time next week, I’ll be finished with school for two months. In a little over three weeks, I’ll be snowmobiling in the mountains around Lake Tahoe and January has nothing in store for me but relaxing and trying to get all my old high school friends together one last time before I…..well, I’m saving that for another post =)

And to top that all off, Shyzer’s daily readership is at an all-time high. Have I mentioned lately how much y’all kick ass? Because you really do.

I’ve been e-mailing a lot of people lately, especially people I haven’t talked to in months or years. Y’know, sort of in an attempt to see where they all ended up and what all they’re doing now. It just kind of came to me after surfing Facebook a few days ago and seeing so many people from my past. (Yes, I joined over a month ago and am totally addicted. My favorite feature? “Poking” all the hot girls I see. =) So I just started e-mailing not only people I saw on there, but other people as well. Old teachers, old professors, old neighbors. I tracked down one of my old professors and waited outside his classroom the other day simply to see how he was doing and let him know how much of an impact he had on me. I’ve already made plans to have lunch or dinner in the near future with a handful of old friends I haven’t seen in years. It didn’t dawn on me until just the other day why I was doing it all. I just want to make sure we all have a proper goodbye. I hate that unresolved feeling I have with some people, that feeling of “do they really how I feel about them?” I just want to make sure that everybody in my past who I’ve drifted away from knows they had an impact on me. And I guess this is just the best time to make sure they know, before they all scatter out even more than they have and before I…well, I promised I’d save that for another post.

Okay, my time is up. So now do you see why it takes me a long time to write posts for Shyzer? When I try to throw something together in an hour or two, this is what I get. When I take a few more hours to polish it and then sleep on it and polish it some more, I actually get something decent. Fellner, you have no idea how much I envy your speed writing abilities.

And with that, I’m off to finish a new subsection for Shyzer. Look for it over there on the left hand side of the site by the end of tonight!

Goob: Look, Professor Gregg, I just want to apologize for the poor quality of my paper, especially near the end. I simply ran out of time editing it! You yourself saw me run into class 30 minutes late since I was trying to edit as much as humanly possible and I just want…
The Best Grader Ever: Uh, Mr. Shyzer, what are you talking about? You received the highest grade in the class.
Goob: If you’d be willing to just let me…wait, what?
Goob grabs the paper and takes a look at it.
Goob: I…I…I MADE AN A!?!?! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! YEEEEEEEES!!!! DAMN, I LOVE THIS SHIT AND I MAY MOVE TO ENGLAND, AHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I think I may have dry humped the pencil sharpener on my way out, but honestly my memory is a little hazy around that time period. I remember sprinting back to my apartment, literally high-fiving random strangers as I went. The janitor wearing a Christmas Santa Hat on her head yelled something to me as I hugged her, but I didn’t quite catch it.

An A. Holy Damn… I have no idea how I pulled this off. None. I’m about to go punch holes into the corners and hang it around my neck for the rest of this week. And you think I’m kidding. Man, sometimes, it’s nice being smart. I’ll be honest, I try to be a modest person. I’ve yet to bring up the A with anybody on my own. But the minute somebody’s asked me how it turned out, I’ve let go.

I guess I’m just proud of myself.

Anyways, I want to alert everybody to a new site that just opened up last night. In case you haven’t heard, my good buddy Neal has opened up a site over at Nealsmack. He brought it back from the dead last night and the forums are already bustling with activity. He apparently had the site a few years ago, but it died due to complications even the doctors couldn’t foresee. But now it’s back and so, you need to go check it out. Now.

And hey, while you’re at it, GO AND VOTE in the final round of the Best of Shyzer. Voting will probably be closed after this week, and therefore, you only have a few days left. Seriously, it takes a maximum of 60 seconds to vote. So none of you have excuses not to. Especially those of you I know in real life and who will be bitched out by me personally if you fail to vote =) And just in case anybody need a memory refresher on what the heck I’m talking about, you can read all about it in this previous post of mine.

And yet onto another random topic. Everybody do me a second favor. See the Tagboard? Look beneath it. See the Radio Blog? Good. Click on a song and tell me if it plays. I’ve got it playing on my computer, but I want to make sure it works on everybody else’s. And yes, this is kind of important, because it’s going to come into play here very soon on Shyzer. I’ve currently uploaded seven songs that I’ve been playing over and over for the past few days. My two favorites easily are Perfect To Stay and Since U Been Gone. I’m not really a Kelly Clarkson fan other than the fact that she’s hot, but for some reason, I love her voice when she screams. And she does quite a bit of screaming in her new song, meaning therefore I love her new song. The chorus is pretty damn good too. As far as the Collective Soul songs go, well, everybody knows they are one of my all-time favorite bands. They released a brand new CD a week or so ago and those are the best songs off it. I think Perfect To Stay is the best of them all, but my brother thinks Satellite is. Anybody care to set us straight and help us decide? =)

And while we’re on the topic of Shyzer, how about a mini-update? The achieve is a mess right now due to some of the new MovableType code that I don’t understand. One day it looks completely wrong, then the next it magically fixes itself, only to reverse the following day. I hope to fix that sometime this week. The gallery is down as well and I have no idea why. I actually have a ton of new pictures I took over Thanksgiving to upload, so that has suddenly jumped to the top of my List of Things to Fix. Shlyrics (a new subpage) is coming along nicely, as is a bunch of the half-completed posts I talked about earlier. Hell, don’t look now, but ever since November rolled around, I’ve been making a good 5 posts a week or so. This is a trend I plan to maintain.

But for this week, I’m floating on cloud nine. That A on my thesis was an unbelievable way to start the week. The Packers won tonight, tomorrow is Pizza Night, Wednesday is all new Lost and West Wing, Thursday my apartment will host the second Swagger Party of the semester, and Friday…well, I can’t think too far ahead. Honestly, life couldn’t be treating me any better right now. And that’s without even considering the fact that I only have a week and a half left of school before I get two months of vacation and a trip to Australia.

As Fellner says, “It’s Good to be Goob.”

If my teacher came up to me right now and said, “Goob, I won’t even read your paper if you agree to take a B-,” I’d shake his hand in a heartbeat. Anything below that and, well, I guess I’d just roll the dice and tell him to read it. C’s don’t please me. I’ve never been average.

However, right now, I am going to crawl into bed and take what might be the most deserving nap in the history of man kind. I’ve been up for 30 straight hours and since Thursday, I’ve amassed a total of 15 hours of sleep.

Okay, my bed just called my name. Literally. When I wake up around midnight or so, I plan on spending all night typing posts, responding to comments, and just working on Shyzer. Until then….

Anyways, school is slowly settling back down. I’ve only got one more exam to go (In Latin. On Monday. Wish me luck), which means that the waters have once again become calm and smooth. I know this is just a ruse; that in only a week or two things will go all ape-shit as Mid-Terms rear their ugly heads, but I’m gonna enjoy this easy sailing while it lasts.

My Senior Seminar class frankly is one of the most pathetic classes I have to take. The professor is well meaning and I understand why the school requires History students to take one, but my main qualm with the whole class is over the subject matters offered. Here is the short list of classes I was given to choose from.

Race and Cultural Diversity
Civil War in Film
History of American Women
Residential Colonial America
Britain 1660-1760

Wow. Nice selection there, old chaps. And don’t be fooled by the cool Civil War class, because that one is a given. We have to offer that class seeing as Clyde Wilson teaches here. I guarantee, if you ever watch a documentary on the History Channel about anything relating to the Civil War, old Clydy and his stomach-curling raspy voice from years of chain smoking will be on there. So the department has to offer a class for him to teach. It’s so kind of them to let a whole 13 of us sign up for that class! Wow! Thirteen! That means one out of every 94 students who wants to take it will be able to sign up! I like my odds already!

IT’S A MOVIE CLASS! THIRTEEN?!? Could we not get a bigger room to show the video and let a few more students in? I understand the department doesn’t want to bog Wilson down with hundreds upon hundreds of term papers to read and grades, but if you aren’t going to let but just a few of us in the class, the least you could do is offer us something worthwhile as a backup.

History of American Women? I don’t care. I stopped by and looked in on that class. Not a male in sight. Big surprise. The teacher was also talking about “those chauvinistic bastards in the office that won’t let her teach the class the way she wants to.” Yeah, a whole semester of being bashed on by the teacher? Not my cup of tea. Race and Cultural Diversity? I just don’t relate to it. I can at least understand why this one is being offered, but it’s just not for me. Residential Colonial America? That just sounded like trouble. I mean, what is that? An essay on the female skirt patterns over on Dover Street during 1753 or what men’s favorite dinner in the mountain area during the not-so-famous famine of 1722 was? Honestly, what the hell kind of class is this? Does anybody even care about the Revolutionary War anymore? The more I study it, the more I’m irritated with the Americans. They had the best style and expectations of life then anybody in the world had ever had and they were pissed off because they had to pay an extra cent on every crate of tea. Boo fucking hoo.

Which meant I was stuck in Britain 1660-1760. I figured there had to be something I could find in there relating to war and diplomatic history. I was right…well, sort of. Even though I had never heard of it, apparently the first Prime Minister resignation in Britain’s history came from some war with Spain that he got the country into. So what happened? A few newspapers said nasty things about him and he resigned.

Riveting!

I see no reason why I should be forced to go through old newspapers from the 1740s and dig through countless numbers of books just to find out who the 3rd Count Duke of Wellington was. I didn’t even know there were Dukes in Wellington. I didn’t even know there were three of them. In fact, I didn’t care then and I still don’t care. I don’t care. I DON’T CARE!!!!

I’m sorry, I just had to vent about this class. I honestly don’t “hate” it per say. In the end, I actually find it funny that I have to take it and it’s fun complaining about it with the hot chick in class since she too thinks it’s a waste of time. But I promise another post will be up soon that won’t be full of bitching and moaning.

My War

The link above is to a fellow blogger’s site and one of the posts he made a month or so ago. He’s currently stationed in Mosul, calls himself a “skater with a gun” who holds no political affiliation, and who simply brings to life the accounts we here back home read and see in the news.

He’s also been having some trouble with the military, specifically with their censorship rules. Apparently they don’t look kindly upon a soldier who likes to report back home how life really is for the soldiers serving in Iraq. Even though he has never given away any detailed information regarding military tactics, troop strengths or weaknesses, patrol patterns, etc., he has begun to show some irregularities on his site that suggest he is struggling to keep it alive. One day it will be up in full, the next it will only have one or two posts, the next it will have some cryptic message in which the only thing available to read are the exact words from the 1st Amendment, and the next it’s back up in full.

And it all started after he posted “Men In Black.”

Over the past few months, his readership has grown from 50 to 100 to 1,000 to well over 5,000 a day. He’s gone from being just another person trapped in the clusterfuck we call Operation Iraqi Freedom to somebody that thousands upon thousands turn to for a voice of truth. The many people out there who have no real direct connection to anybody serving in Iraq have dubbed him “Our Soldier” and pray for his safety as if he was one of their own. I’ve even found myself strangely fixated on this man whom I’ve never even met. Every time CNN has a story located in Mosul, my stomach knots up inside as I silently pray that CB’s name isn’t mentioned in the report. No, he is not the only soldier out there blogging about his experiences in the military. But he does seem to be the most “real” of all the bloggers; a man who knows that all people really crave is to know the truth.

He now currently has posted his “greatest hits.” There are roughly ten or so detailed, personal accounts of his experiences in Iraq and they are some of the most interesting posts of any blog I have ever read. However, since he seems to be having trouble with keeping his site up and running, I decided to duplicate his “Men In Black” post here so that if he ever is forced to take it off his site again, it will never die.

This is what CNN wrote on their website about what happened yesterday here in Mosul:

Mosul clashes leave 12 dead

Clashes between police and insurgents in the northern city of Mosul left 12 Iraqis dead and 26 wounded, hospital and police sources said Wednesday.

Rifle and rocket-propelled grenade fire as well as explosions were heard in the streets of the city.

The provincial governor imposed a curfew that began at 3 p.m. local time (7 a.m. EDT), and two hours later, provincial forces, police and Iraqi National Guard took control, according to Hazem Gelawi, head of the governor’s press office in the Nineveh province.

Gelawi said the city is stable and expects the curfew to be lifted Thursday.

Now here’s what really happened:

I was in my room reading a book (Thin Red Line) when the mortars started coming down. Usually when we get mortared it’ll only one, maybe two mortars. But this mortar attack went on for almost 20 minutes. Each one impacting the FOB every couple minutes. Something was up. My roommate ripped open the door and yelled “Get your guys, Go to the motor pool! The whole BATTALION is rolling out!” Holy shit, the whole Battalion? This must be big. So I ran over and woke my guys up, yelled, “Get your fuckin shit on and head down to the motor pool! Time: Now!” I grabbed my shit and started running to the motor pool, hearing small arms fire off in the back ground. By now everybody was running to motor pool. Putting their cloths on while they were running. At the motor pool, everybody was strapping on there shit and getting ready. One by one a Stryker was rolling out of the motor pool ready to hunt down whoever was fucking with us. People were hooting and hollering, yelling their war cries and doing the Indian yell thing as they drove off and locked and loaded their weapons. These guys that are attacking us just fucked with the bee’s nest, and now they’re getting the swarm. As I got the vehicle ready to go I overheard on our radio that shit was hitting the fan all over Mosul, large amounts of people attacking us with small arms, RPG attacks, burned vehicles, and there was a bunch of people in all black armed with AK’s over Mosul. Fuck. I overheard one of our iraqi interpreter say in broken English, “Give me gun, I want to kill these motherfuckers!” As we rolled out the main gate, our FOB was getting attacked, we had soldiers laying down in the prone up on the outer perimeter of the FOB firing there weapons out. We rolled down the main exit out and drove down a busy two way street. I was the T.C. for our vehicle, my job is to be behind the .50 cal, and operate the system, which allows me to fire it. This was only my second day as a T.C. Sitting right next to me out the hatch was my Plt Sgt.. Shortly as we were driving down the main street leaving our FOB, a man, dressed in all black, jumped out from the side corner of a building, pointed his AK47 right at me. Right at my fucking head and all I saw was the fire from his muzzle flash leaving the end of his barrel and brass shell casings exiting the side of his AK as he was shooting directly at me. I heard and felt the bullets whiz literally inches from my head, hitting all around my hatch and 50 cal mount making a “Ping” “Ping” “Ping” sound. I ducked the fucked down in the hatch. I yelled “We’re taking fire! 3 O’clock!!! Turned the gun around towards where the guy was and fired a burst. I fired a burst right over our back air guard hatch where our First Sgt was sticking out of and shooting. He yelled “Tell him to stop fucking shooting over my head!!!” Shit. My bad. I looked over and my PLT Sgt who was sticking out the hatch next to me a couple seconds ago was now dropped down from the hatch and now on his back. He was yelling, “I’m Hit! I’m hit!” I looked at his helmet and a bullet went right through his helmet and exited through the other side. Holy shit! I didn’t see any blood on him. He looked completely dazed though. He took his Helmet off and observed the holes in his helmet. No fucking shit, the bullet entered his helmet, and exited through the other side, missing his upper forehead by like 1-100th of an inch. A fuckin miricale. He was standing right next to me, that’s how close the bullets were from hitting us. We continued driving. We had to drive to the Mosul Bridge that was right next to the Mosul hotel about a couple miles away. There was reports of a buncha people, wearing all black armed with AK’s hanging out there. Our job was to locate and kill them. We were driving there on that main street, when all of the sudden all hell came down all around on us, all these guys wearing all black (Black pants, and a black t-shirts tucked in), a couple dozen on each side of the street, on rooftops, alleys, edge of buildings, out of windows, everywhere just came out of fucking nowhere and started firing RPG’s and AK47′s at us. I freaked the fuck out and ducked down in the hatch. I yelled “WE GOT FUCKIN HAJI’S ALL OVER THE FUCKIN PLACE!!! THERE ALL OVER GOD DAMNIT!!!” Bullets were pinging off our armor all over our vehicle, and you could hear multiple RPG’s being fired and flying through the air and impacting all around us. All sorts of crazy insane Hollywood explosions bullshit going on all around us. I’ve never felt fear like this. I was like, this is it, I’m going to die. I cannot put into words how scared I was. The vehicle in front of us got hit 3 times by RPG’s. I kind of lost it and I was yelling and screaming all sorts of things. (mostly cuss words) I fired the .50 cal over the place, shooting everything. My driver was helping me out and pointing out targets to me over the radio. He helped me a lot that day. They were all over shooting at us. My PLT was stuck right smack dab in the middle of the ambush and we were in the kill zone. We shot our way out of it and drove right through the ambush. The street we were driving down to escape, had 3 to 4 story high buildings all along each side, as we were driving away all you could see were 100′s and 100′s of bullets impacting all over these buildings. Finally we went over to the area we were supposed to be at. We parked the vehicles there, and dismounted the guys. The Pepsi bottling building across the street was all up in flames. Then after a couple minutes, we were told to load up and go back to where we got ambushed. I’m not going to lie, I didn’t want to go back. Fuck that shit, I don’t want to get killed. That was the last place on earth I wanted to be. I was scared to death. But we had to go back, and we did. On the way back I was up out of the hatch, scanning , I saw people running down steets that we passed with AK47′s, I didn’t have a shot at them with the 50, cuz we were going way to fast and how the gun was positioned. We past several men with a AK’s running down a street, I pulled out my Berretta and fired a several shots at them. We rolled back to the area where we all just dodged death, and we were taking fire from all over again. Again, I fired and fired and fired and fired and fired. At everything. We were taking fire from all over. I was just 360ing the 50 cal and shooting at everything. We were taking fire from all over, and every single one of us had our guns blazing. At one time I saw a dog try to run across the street, and somebody shot it. Again, at one time I had the 50 cal traversed and pointing all the way back of the vehicle and I was firing at some guys who were shooting at us up on a rooftop, and I didn’t know I was shooting right above the guys heads who were in the back airguard hatchs on our vehicle. My roommate (Sgt from Idaho) tapped my arm, which startled the hell out of me and I quickly jerked back and looked at him and he yelled, “Hey!! Get that gun to the 12!!! Let that one go!! Your doing good!!!” He later told me, when he tapped me on the shoulder, and I jerked back to look at him, I had this crazed look in my eyes that kind of freaked him out. Hovering up above we had Army Kiowa and Apache helicopters flying around. At one time I had to grad something from outside, and on top of the vehicle. So with my hands I did the sign of the cross thing on my chest, said a prayer (Please god, I don’t want to fucking die) and as my Plt Sgt layed down some suppressive fire, I got up out of the hatch, got my whole body completely outside of the vehicle and went over, got what I needed and went back to the hatch, as fast as possible. Scared out of my fuckin mind as I did this. RPG’s were still whizzing by and non-stop gun shots were being fired all over. We had our guys in 3rd Sqd dismounted, they had both 240′s with them and they were in heavy contact with the enemy, firing AT4′s and everything they had at them. Strykers were also launching missiles back at them. I got down in the hatch and started scanning my sector with the 50. Suddenly about 300 meters away I saw 2 guys creeping around this corner, they were hunched down sneaking around hiding behind a stack of truck tires. I could tell by their body language something was up. I placed the cross hairs right on them, but I didn’t fire, because I didn’t see a weapon on them and I wanted to wait. Next thing you know, I saw another guy come out of that corner with an RPG in his hands. I freaked the fuck out and yelled “RRRPPPPGGGGGGG!!!” My hands was shaking like crazy, my cross hairs were bouncing all over the screen. I gathered my composure as fast as I could, put the cross hairs on them and engaged them with a good 10 round burst of some 50 cal, right at them. Get Some. My Plt Sgt said “good job!”. I didn’t see anybody move from behind those tires after that. Shortly after that the vehicle parked directly in front of us took an RPG. This gunfight went on for 4 1/2 hours. A Stryker got fucked up with three RPG’s, and their TC (The guy who wrote SOF magazine that letter) took shrapnel to the face, and had to go back for medical attention. So 3nd squad was now going to roll in our vehicle because there vehicle was all fucked up and had go back to the FOB to be repaired. The ING’s showed up, and they were clearing the buildings on the street. 3nd squad was helping them, and I was providing over watch for them with the 50. Then all the sudden mortars started impacting around us. These bastards were now firing mortars at us. Time passed and we were extremely low on ammunition and all out of water. My entire DCU uniform was completely wet from sweat and filth. So we all mounted up and drove back to the FOB to get more ammo, water and re-fuel. On the way to the FOB we passed a watermelon stand, all the watermelons had bullet holes in them. In fact, everything on that street had bullet holes in it. The cars, the buildings, everything. There were thousands and thousands of brass shell casings littered all over the streets. Our vehicle was also covered inside and out with brass shell casings and links. Once we got to the FOB, and parked near the motor pool to re-supply, a Sgt ran up to us holding all his gear and his kit and asked, “Hey you guys rolling back out? Do you have room for one more?” This guy who asked us if he could ride with us back out, was in that vehicle that was right in front of us earlier that got RPG’d. They had to drive back to the FOB because the LT was seriously hurt. And now he was now asking us if he could come with, to go give em some more hell. We had no room for him in our vehicle, we were jam packed because we had the guys from third squad with us because there vehicle was out of commission from multiple RPG hits. Since there was no room for him, he gave us all the ammo and his water he had on him, and told us “Go get em.” By now it was night, and we were now fully stocked and ready to roll back out. I didn’t want to go back out, but you don’t have a choice, you have to. Right when we were about to leave the gate, they told us to go back to the motor poll and stand by. So we drove back packed the vehicles, and waited. I was chain smoking right now, one right after another. My nerves were completely shot and I was emotionally drained and physically exhausted. My hands were still kinda shaking. I was sitting up against the tires by myself on the side of the vehicle smoking a cigarette. I’ve never been through anything like that. I’ve never felt fear like that. And I’ve never seen anything like that. Usually these guys do this hit and run bullshit, but these guys today were on the offensive and showed no fear of us. My friend from San Diego, came over and sat next to me. Asked if I was O.K., and I told him “I don’t know.” We discussed everything that happened today, how it went down, what he did, what I did, what they did. Then the Battalion Commander came by the motor pool to check up on us and told us all we all did a great job today. Finally they told us to go back to our rooms. I went back to my room, thanked god, and passed out on my bed.

Note: I dont think CNN’s report of only 12 dead is accurate.

Quote of the day: “I just want this day to end.”

If you get a chance, do check out the other posts he has left up. And I know this might seem a little out of place here on Shyzer, but I promise it will all make sense in due time kiddos.

“Are you serious?”

“Enjoy Australia!”

Needless to say, I’m more giddy then a schoolgirl right now.

Which is where things have gone wrong. My mind wandering like it used to seems more of a liability now then an asset. It always leads me to places I don’t want to be and to thoughts I don’t want to think right now. It did nothing but agitate and foment these feelings inside of me, so I started doing the only thing I could think of to stop it. I made sure that I stayed busy.

It’s crazy how busy I am now. Before, somebody would ask me what I was doing next weekend and I would laugh at them and let them know that anything over 10 minutes away was too far in the future for me to plan. Now I have virtually every weekend for the next month slammed with things I agreed to do. I think I’m looking most forward to next weekend when the famously dubbed “Swagger Party” is being held in our building. Maybe, just maybe, Shyzer might get its first drunken post in its history that night. I said maybe.

Chong is coming down this Friday for the Jackson Crossing show (Friday night, 9:00 PM, @ Delaney’s folks. Be there.) and then in just 10 short days after that we are heading up to Charlotte to see the Packers take on the Panthers. The game might not be exactly how I envisioned it happening, but at least this way I still get to go and Alex and I get to make good on that age-old promise we’ve always had with each other: Seeing Brett Favre play in person. I honestly couldn’t be more excited about the game and trust me, there will be plenty of words spent on that evening in a future post.

I’ve been carrying on with my training as well. Living with Fellner means I have a partner to go running with every night and that brand new gym down the road, which is free, has just been screaming my name lately. I’ve played more games of pickup football during the past month then I think I have in my entire life and Softball season is just around the corner. I had forgotten how far I could push my body physically and now that I’ve reminded myself, it feels great.

Tomorrow I find out a good chunk of information about whether or not I’ll be able to do what it is I want to do next semester. I seriously pray that everything will work out like I want it to because frankly, I need it. If all is well, expect a post in the near future about it.

But in the end, I still feel as if there is more I should do. I keep pushing myself further and harder to try and accomplish things and I can already hear that little voice in my head slowly saying “Just keep this up you idiot. Sooner or later it’s going to catch back up with you and you’ll come crashing down in a flaming heap.” Maybe he’s right. But until then, I’m sticking with what works.

I moved back to Columbia yesterday. After I finished moving into my loft, I drove down to Charleston in a vain attempt to see a few people. Nobody answered their phone, so I ended up just turning around and driving straight into rush-hour traffic on my way back to Columbia, At least there was some humor involved as I watched somebody try to mark his territory.

Classes start this Thursday and for some reason I am not looking forward to this semester at all. I know this is just a funky mood I am in, but I still wish I could somehow fast-forward to next semester and leave South Carolina behind. There’s nothing left for me here and I need to start over fresh, clean, and new someplace else. I do find some small comfort as I remind myself “Only four more months…only four more months…”

Oh yeah, I finally got my phone turned back on. About damn time, huh?

I’ve finally completed the process of whittling down my possessions to the bare minimum. I have a few boxes of keepsake items in my dad’s attic, but for the majority of everything else, I either sold, threw away, donated to Good Will, or burned, which means that I now have the capability to pack up everything I own in my truck and take it with me to wherever I please in just one trip.

The finale of 2004 will bring with it the ending of my chapters in South Carolina. I know I’ve always swore I would leave this place once I graduated, but it wasn’t until recently that I figured out where I would go and what I might do. Well lately I’ve put those two questions to rest, but who knew such an epiphany could be this nerve wracking?

I’m keeping my future close to me for the next few months. Not until everything is finalized legally will I be talking about it on Shyzer, but rest assured, as soon as I’m prepared to talk about it, I’ll post about it. Wish me luck.

1) Besides manipulation, why would you REALLY want to know what people were thinking?

Information is the key to everything. It’s why I’ve always wanted to learn, why I’ve never really been bothered by and actually enjoyed school, and why if I could, I’d spend my entire life just taking classes. Any change, any power, any control is all based on information. I’ve never had any desire for massive power and domination, but I like knowing that if I need to bring out the big guns, I can….and the best way to build those is through information.

Whenever I play board or video games, I’m always the kid who sits in the corner and just stockpiles weapons and men. I never attack anybody first and I’m quite content in just sitting throughout the game with little / no action whatsoever, just as long as I can do what I want to do in my own little corner of the world. I’m the same way in life. I have no intention of attacking anybody, but when push comes to shove, I find pleasure in totally and utterly annihilating my competition. I enjoy the look on their face when they realize I am a hundred times stronger and smarter then they gave me credit for and that spilt second in their eyes where they realize they are fucked is priceless.

As long as people let me be, I don’t bother a soul. But I’m up for a fight just as much as the next guy if you really want it. And to win, I need information, which is why I’d pick reading people’s minds over those other powers.

2) Do you think it’s possible to be TOO honest for your own good? why?

Hell yes. Without a doubt. But I think the most dangerous type of honesty is voluntary honesty. When you start giving extra bits of truth to people when they never asked you about that in the first place, you are playing with fire. When somebody asks you if you went to the party last night, all you need to answer is the question. “No” will suffice. You don’t need to add “I was out with your girlfriend.”

People don’t realize that most people who “don’t talk that much” or “keep to themselves” are just not giving you extra information that most people give you. I can have a conversation with somebody I’ve never met and be given the answer to 30 questions when I only asked 4. It’s times like these that you get yourself into trouble. If a question with an unpleasant answer is actually directly asked, then you deal with it then. It means that person is ready to deal with the actual truth. Now whether or not you are willing to tell the truth is another story, albeit a more important one.

3) How do you think “your one true love” works?

I’m guessing you’re talking about those conversations we had a few years ago. Well, as with everything else in my life, I tend to see things as complicated as possible. I don’t see the world in black and white. I don’t even see the world in gray. My eyes are filtered through one of those jumbo boxes of 256 Crayola crayons that all the rich kids had in kindergarten. So if the following makes little to no sense to you, don’t feel bad, you’re in the norm Okay, we all know how “odd” my sense of religion is. There’s not a single organized religion out there (except for maybe Taoism) that I could follow, so first we need to get to the base of how I believe in things. I’ve always been a gut vs. mind type person. My heart and brain battle it out over which brand of milk to buy, much less how the concepts of love and religion work. My head, mind, and sense of reasoning usually wins out in most contests, but when the dust finally settles in the love, religion, and other such categories, my gut pulls out the upset. I have no data except for my own observations and realizations to back my theories, which sometimes can be stronger then anything anybody will ever try to tell me otherwise. So my views on love to many seem far reaching, speculative, and just down right foolish. It also raises the nature vs. nurture argument, but I don’t feel like going into a long essay here as to how I answer that part, so you’ve got to look over that. Here goes:

Somewhere along the line, before birth, our soul’s are assigned a specific, quantitative, precise property. The easiest way for me to express this property is in the form of numbers. You must think of the numbers in a circular fashion, not a linear line. How many numbers are in this circle? I have no idea. I don’t pretend to know. I have absolutely no method or thoughts on how to calculate the amount of numbers. Yet. But seeing as how there are around 6 billion people on the planet, let’s go with 50 million for argument’s sake just so I can prove my thinkings clearly. So here we have a large circle of numbers with 0 and 50,000,000 connecting to finalize the loop. Now, we need to understand the properties of these numbers. Each person, as complex as we are, can be summed up in a few pages of basic sentences. Our tendencies, our habits, our reactions…they are all wrapped up in this assigned property that we were given. So now these properties can be translated into a number, ie: the number you are branded with. But you might be saying to yourself, “But Goob, that means there are 120 other people out there with the same number as myself!” Well nice observation Sherlock. Is it really that hard to believe that there are 120 other people out there who are basically the same as you? What makes you all different, you ask? Life experiences. They warp and mold each person differently so that at first glance, you wouldn’t notice one of the other 119 people like you if they came up and kneed you in the groin. So where the hell am I going with this? Hang with me here.

For the rest of this argument, we’re going to pretend my number is 1000. Now, according to our calculations, there are 59 other 1000’s out there. We’re going to assume that the breakdown comes to an even 60 males and 60 females, at least for the rest of this argument. Now we need to define our “one true love” property. Is this somebody you can fall in love with? Somebody you marry? Your “soul mate?” I’m gonna go ahead and go with the latter and say you’re referring to soul mates and proceed from there.

It should be obvious what I’m doing with the numbers by now, but like I said, there is still just a little more to be dealt with. You might be asking “So can I only fall in love with people of my same number?” Not quite. Those 60 people of the opposite sex (or 59 of the same sex) are your most ideal matches. Yes, they are interchangeable. There is no such thing as a “One True Soul Mate.” There are “60 True Soul Mates,” but it’s not quite as loose as it seems. Let’s pretend that I met another girl whose number is 1000. We hit it off, start dating, fall in love, get married, etc. etc. I have found one of my soul mates and that is that. There is no other girl out there who can match any better with me and even if by some stroke of pure luck I meet another girl whose number is 1000, I wouldn’t leave my wife. There is nothing more to gain because I am perfectly happy with where I am. This is where the emotion variable comes into play. I’ve sat here for a good few hours trying to think of a decent way to explain it, but I can’t. You’re just gonna have to realize it for yourself. When you are in love, true love, you’ve found one of those matches. Not fools love, not temporary love: true love. Only you can tell us whether or not it’s true love. But we’ve still got just a little more work with these numbers: Defining the ranges.

Alright, so now you are saying “Yeah, but what if I never find my significant other with the same number as me? There’s only 0.00000001% of people that I can fall in love with! I’ll grow old alone and bitch, bitch, bitch….” Shut it. There are still acceptable ranges that people can be happy within. 50,000,000 numbers is a lot. That’s like fifty million different numbers. So what about the different ranges out there. Some people can easily get married, live happily for many years, divorce, repeat. Or some people’s spouses die and they are able to find others who they are happy with and spend the rest of their lives with. So how do we calculate these? Well they fall in the “200 category.” The 200 Category is the range of numbers two people can be apart and still live happy, content, enjoyable lives together. Which means that anybody 1200 through 800 fits that criteria for me. That’s 24,000 people folks, or 0.000004% of the population. Hey, those odds are looking better! But what about “love?” People fall in love all the time, only to eventually fall out of it. Well those situations are reserved for the “1000 Category,” which says that I can be happy with people within the 2000-0 number range for a time, but that it probably won’t last. That means there are 120,000 people, or 0.00002% of the population, that you can fall in love with. Obviously these “Categories” aren’t completely defined. Maybe it’s a 1000 and 10,000 Categories. I have no idea. But I just used 200 and 1000 to illustrate my point.

I know there are a lot of buts and ifs in this calculations, but I really don’t want to keep going on and on unless people have actually read, understand, and are interested in this. Besides, when I have to explain this, it comes out much, MUCH more scientific and thought out then it is in my head. This is just the way I think folks. If I was way too confusing, let me know and I’ll dedicate an entire post to it and break it down even more complexly, but I really don’t want to have to do that because it takes all the emotion and variables out of it, which is where my gut triumphed. But if you really want to know anything else, just ask and I’ll answer them. Jesus, I’ve only answer 3 fucking questions so far?!

1) Describe ideally (and yet somewhat realistically) where in life you’d like to be in five years?

Hmm…well, let’s start at today. This summer and next semester are kind of like the end of my college years. This summer I’m going home to spend my last summer there. It will be nice to have a final summer together with Alex, Nook, David & Suzie, Dad & Tom, etc. Then we’ve got next semester and (hopefully) next Spring I’m off to Australia. I want to end my “college life” here in the states before I leave and start on my next leg in life over in Australia. Then we’ve got me coming back home, going through the graduation process, grabbing a few essential things in my truck, and taking off. I’ve said it since day one: I can’t stay here. I don’t regret at all going to college here at USC, but I honestly should have gone somewhere else. I needed to get away 3 years ago and I still need to. Where will I go? Who knows. Maybe Seattle. Maybe New York. Maybe Australia. But not here. I don’t like plans. In fact, I hate them. I hate being ruled by an itinerary. I hate my life being dictated by deadlines and schedules. I like having goals and sticking to them rigorously once I’ve set them, but other then that, I want to be as loose and free as possible.

Once I graduate, I think I might get a job for a year or two to save up some money and then move on to something that actually makes me happy. I can’t pull the 9 to 5. I refuse to have my soul sucked out by fluorescent lighting. I refuse to spend the better part of my day surrounded by people who aspire to “climb the ladder” and join middle management. I refuse to be happy by the thought of casual Friday when all it means is the same outfit minus a tie. I refuse to operate in a cubicle smaller then most jail cells. You know me better then anybody else Jess: money has and never will be an important part of my life. So getting a corporate job is just out of the question. Maybe I’ll become a cop. Maybe I’ll go to the local elementary school and ask if they need any subs. Maybe I’ll join a bunch of Mexicans doing some yard work in the fresh air. We’ll just have to see what kind of mood I’m in the day I go looking for a job. As long as I’m happy with what I’m doing and I am not starving, I’m content. But, I know one day I’ll return home to these Blue Ridge Mountain Skies. The older I get, the stronger that feeling grows. Yet the need to get away for a decade or two grows with it and I can’t return if I never leave.

2) What would your perfect significant other be like?

Forgiving. Must love baseball (bonus points for Mariners fans). Can’t get jealous easily. Must appreciate my sense of humor. Liberal. Needs to have one of her own as well. Can’t be quick tempered. Athleticism is a plus. Intelligence is an even bigger plus. Physically attractive (in my eyes). Must know who she is. I expect her to know myself better then I do. Supportive. Comforting. Has got to realize the difference when I talk with my head and with my gut. Can go days without talking about herself. Isn’t afraid to take initiative. Can’t be needy. Straightforward. Oh yeah, and she’s got to love me for who I am. Forgiving.

I would have added the trustworthy, honest, etc. crap that everybody says. But honestly, whose picture of an ideal significant other is NOT trustworthy, honest, etc? Who goes, “You know, I want a bitch who will lie to my face and sleep around!” Those are all a given! I’ve been slowly adding and pruning away at that list above since you gave it to me and that’s the best I could come up with so far.

3) What is the most cruel thing you have ever done to anyone?

November-March of 11th grade.

1) Out of all the things in life, what has inspired you the most?

Instead of wussing out with a weak answer, I’m holding off on this one. I’ll come back and edit this once I’ve had a little more time to think about it.

2) Consider the worst possible day ever. Who would be the ideal person to comfort you?

What the hell’s with these serious questions coming from Stan? I didn’t expect anything of this magnitude from you. Alright, well if I were to actually consider the worst day possible, my most ideal person to comfort me would be dead. But that’s a cop out of an answer, so I’ll pretend that I had the second worst day possible. In times of crisis, I’ve always turned to myself. I implode, I break down, and I become a wreck for a few days. Then I force myself to get it together, drag myself out of bed, and take that first painful step to recovering from whatever it is that beat me down in the first place. I do this not because I comfort myself better then others can, but because I hate to put my burdens on those I love. I feel needy, whiny, and most of all weak. I feel as though I’ve failed and need someone else to rescue me and I’ve been like that for as long as I can remember. But the most painful thing is that most of the time, I am holding myself back from reaching out for help. I want to be comforted. I want to be reassured. I want to be helped. But I refuse to allow myself to ask for it and most of the time will even refuse any help offered to me from those who know me well enough to realize I need it. It’s a self destructive tendency that might one day ruin me…but I like doing things my own way.

Now, with that all being said, there is one person who throughout my entire life has been the most comforting person to be there for me. We might have some trust issues now and our history might be a little rockier then I would like, but my mom has always been there to comfort me. She has that motherly touch that no other will be able to replace and even as she tells me things that I know she’s saying just to make me feel better, I believe them and it works.

3) Several nuclear bombs have been strategically set off throughout the world. You are the only Democrat left. Do you realize your error in thinking or continue on being a dumb ass?

Ahhhh….so you were saving your best for last. Well, since several nuclear bombs have been set off throughout the world, there must have been a Republican in the Presidential position at the time. Therefore, all the Republicans who were left would realize how horrible and backward their way of thinking is and begin to convert to the Democrat’s side. And since I would be the only true Democrat remaining, they would elect me President over you. =) So now I’m kind of hoping this happens!

1) That you can remember, what is the best day of your life?

That’s like asking which kid is your favorite (even though mom and dad would easily say me). It wouldn’t be anything like graduation or my first day of college or any of that crap. I don’t know…I mean, there have been some really good days in my past. You know those type of days where everything just falls into place and for 24 hours not a thing goes wrong and everything turns out for the absolute best? They never last longer then a day, but I can remember feeling that some days have been the best days of my life, so I know I’ve experienced some. I just can’t think of any now =)

2) That you can remember, what was the worst day of your life?

I don’t know. There are quite a few events that pop up in my mind, but they all span out over the course of a few days, weeks, or even months. All the times Jess and I broke up were hard. The day Lorraine was killed was horrible, because I lost my best friend over the next few months, as shallow as that sounds. You know me, I am far too much of a perfectionist to be able to say which day has honestly been the worst day of my life without pouring through my journal and actually calculating all the bad days I’ve had.

3) If you could be anything. Career wise. What would it be? And why

First, I need to make fun of your use of punctuation. Instead of using commas, you broke it up into 3 fragments and 1 sentence. Your last fragment didn’t even warrant any punctuation….I like it little bro =) Now, I’m glad you asked me this question. Jess’ question forced me to be realistic and now I can be as idealist as I want. I honestly don’t know if I have 1 dream job. I can’t narrow it down from the 3 I have in my head. So here goes.

1. Professional Baseball Player: Do you even need an explanation for this? Ever since I was little, I’ve dreamt of playing major league ball. I dread the day when I’m 40 and suddenly realize that I have absolutely no chance to ever play. Right now I’m looking at a 0.0001% chance, but I’ll take that any day over zero. I don’t even care what team I played for. I don’t even care if I was viewed as the team’s worst signing in history and every single fan despised me as much as they do Bill Buckner. None of that would matter. I would have been able to play baseball on a major league field. I would have been able to patrol and own centerfield and have the opportunity to climb walls, lay out, and care little for my body’s protection as I attempted to catch fly balls. I’d have the opportunity to hit a 98 MPH fastball and an 80 MPH change up. God that would just be amazing.
2. Secret Service Agent for President’s Child: I don’t want to be protecting some old man or doing advance scout work for the First Lady’s trip to Orlando. I want to be the lead agent for the President’s kid. Call it the older brother side of me going as far as possible, but I’ve always relished situations where I was able to protect those weaker and younger then myself, especially children.
3. Delta Force Member: If I were disengaged from the world enough to not have or not care about my family and friends, I’d want to be in Delta Force. I’d want to drop off the face of this Earth, go across the globe in complete secrecy, go behind enemy lines in covert operations, etc. It’d be like real life RS6 Tom =) And then quit it all once I turned 50 or so, start a new life, and people would have no idea.

1) Which character from The Simpsons do you most identify with and why?

I’d have to say Maggie. She’s always the quiet one of the group and likes to keep to herself, yet at the same time is brilliantly smart, as we saw in the episodes where she saved Bart and Lisa from the Babysitter Bandit and then later on when she led a revolution and helped all of her fellow kids escape out of the daycare. Yeah, gotta go with Maggie on this one.

2) If you were given $10,000 to have plastic surgery, what would you have done?

The only thing I would want to change on my body would be my eyes. I’m sick of glasses and contacts, so I’d love to one day have the lasic eye surgery and rid myself from these vision problems. I’d then spend the rest of the money on a new computer =)

3) How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Having not known the answer when I first read this, I felt the sudden urge to go find it out. So I went and found a woodchuck who agreed to chuck as much wood as woodchuckingly possible. He went a remarkable 18 hours straight (with one short break for sweet tea and Ritz crackers. I felt this was reasonable) and the final tally came up to 3 desks, 12 chairs, 2 kitchen tables, and 1 grandfather clock.

1) What does Trademarked mean?

Trademarked, ™, is a word, name, symbol or device which is used in trade with goods to indicate the source of the goods and to distinguish them from the goods of others. Trademark rights may be used to prevent others from using a confusingly similar mark, but not to prevent others from making the same goods or from selling the same goods or services under a clearly different mark.

2) What does Registered mean?

Registered, ®, actually is short for “Registered Trademark,” so it is essentially the same thing as Trademarked!

3) What does Copyrighted mean?

Copyrighted, ©, is a form of protection provided to the authors of “original works of authorship.” It generally gives the owner of the copyright the exclusive right to reproduce the copyrighted work. The copyright protects the form of expression rather than the subject matter of the writing. For example, a description of a machine could be copyrighted, but this would only prevent others from copying the description; it would not prevent others from writing a description of their own or from making and using the machine.

4) What does Patented mean?

Lee didn’t ask this one, but I’m answering it anyways. A patent is granted for a brand new or unique idea. If you were to patent a machine, nobody else could build that machine without your permission. It does not, however, prevent people from taking your machine and changing it to create a whole new machine.

1) if you could have anyone living or dead give the eulogy at your funeral, who would it be and what would be the most sentimental thing they would say?

Winston Churchill – He lit that damn candle and never gave in.

2) if you write a book about your whole life, what would be the most interesting chapter title?

Goob’s Goob

3) and my favorite, would you rather be 8 feet tall with a 3 inch penis or 3 feet tall with an 8 inch penis?

Okay. Think of it this way. When you are 8 or 3 feet tall, you are going to be famous. So now, we have to look at HOW you are going to be famous. If I’m 8 feet tall, I’m the first pick in the NBA draft and dominate in a major sport here in America. If I’m 3 feet tall, that means I have to use my 8 inch penis to make my money…which means porn. So it boils down to being a porn star or an NBA Hall of Famer. I don’t care how short my dick is, if I’m in the NBA, women are throwing themselves at me and I’m having no trouble finding new ladies. So 8 feet tall with a 3 inch penis it is. =)

1) When a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound?

Trees never fall. They just trip and have trouble getting back up. Which is why I am creating a revolutionary new device that will make me millions. Remember the old commercials where the granny falls down in the bathroom only to find that she can’t stand up? She then pulls out her trusty box with red button on it, mashes it with her wrinkled fingers, and screams “Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” I’m not sure what happens next, but there’s a picture of an ambulance siren and a guy sitting at a desk in a 1970s uniform and before we know it, she’s up and kicking! Well I plan on implementing the same system for helpless trees. First, I’m going out and hiring three thousand squirrels to eat, sleep, and possibly procreate in the woods amongst the trees. They will be my eyes and ears and will alert me within moments of any tree that happens to come tumbling down. See, when the trees fall, they will just squash the squirrels and my trusty satellite tracking will pick up the exploding collar from the squirrel and send the coordinates to some lumberjacks. That way, we get rid of one more squirrel AND we’ll have plenty of notebook paper for years to come. So to answer your question, who cares, I just want some money.

2) From personal experience, is it necessary to change the oil in your car or is it just a waste of time and money?

Alright asshole =) I guess I’ll tell the story for all of those out there who have yet to hear it. My first car was given to me by my grandmother when she reached the point where she could no longer drive. It was already an old beater, but only had around 17,000 miles on it when she handed it over to me. It wasn’t in the best condition and my excellent reckless driving didn’t help matters any, but that is beside the point. Around 20,000 miles, I remembered that you were supposed to get an oil change on cars after 3,000 miles. But I didn’t understand why they charged $25 at a mechanic when I could buy the oil myself for $4 at Advanced Auto Parts. So I went, got some oil, poured it in my car, and was on my way. I waited until around 24,000 miles before I repeated the process and then as my car was just a few hundred miles over 27,000, it exploded. I was driving down the highway, blue smoke started pouring out, a cool looking fire kinda started up for a second but quickly died out, and that was that. My dad and I thought about repairing it and spent a day taking the engine apart. When we got to the pistons, we saw the main problem. The first piston had a hole in it the size of a fist and the second piston had one about the size of a pea.

I still think the whole theory of an oil change is a conspiracy. I’m convinced sabotage caused my car to explode. But until I can prove this theory, I change my oil every few thousand miles =)

3) And we really can’t figure this one out, where do babies come from?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I really couldn’t stop laughing for a good 5 minutes after reading this one. But my answer is quite simple:

Baby-In-A-Can (sorta like cookie dough) + 30 minutes in microwave = baby
Or you can go to the Anne Geddes factory across town.

Thanks everybody for the questions. I spent way too much time answering them, but it was fun. I’m working on getting my Music Meanings page back up and I’m still working on my Mariners subsection. I’ve got my baseball and playoff predictions for this year ready to go ( I made them back in March…I just had to build the page) and now that school is just about wrapped up, I have more time for senseless posts like that of the Objective Christian Science Fair and such, so keep coming back.

Last summer, my mom handed me a small business card with that passage written on the back of it. I was going through a rough period in my life and she was just trying to help in any motherly way possible. I stuck it in my wallet, where it slowly faded into an illegible, crumpling piece of paper, but recently I’ve committed it to memory since I’ve needed something to help me move on.

We had plenty of similarities and common grounds, but we couldn’t have been more different. Our relationship was plagued by communication, or lack thereof. We never really discovered how to talk to each other. Even after 5 years of being around each other, we spoke in code. It was the only way we knew how to say what we wanted to say. We spoke at each other, not to each other. So it’s no surprise to see how we gradually fell apart, how she was unable to tell me why she wanted to go in another direction, and how I didn’t understand why she was going that way. It’s clear to me now, as I’m sure it is to her, why we broke up, but at this stage, it’s a moot point.

She’s now moved forward and found somebody else who makes her truly happy. Is it weird seeing her gush over another guy? I’d be lying if I only said “a little.” Does it make me remember what we used to have? In vivid detail. Was it hard seeing her block me out? Excruciating. But even after all of this, how do I feel?

Back in early November, I wrote about an Epiphany that I experienced. (okay, so I didn’t actually elaborate on it – but trust me, it was huge for me). Jess and I had finally agreed that we wanted each other to be happy, that we no longer really knew each other, and that we should move on. The following day, I experienced some things that were quite divine. Below is an excerpt from an IM conversation that I had trying to sum up what it felt like.

All of the hate, anger, uncertainty – all of it – it just vanished. Each and every ounce of it was replaced with this feeling of peace and calmness, the feeling that I’ve known all along is what I was going for, but never understood how to obtain it. It feels amazing. Everything that used to make me angry no longer does. Nothing stirs that rage inside of me anymore and I’ve sat here and tried.

I’ve yet to waiver in my belief that what I went though was supernatural, but as with everything else in life, the passage of time seemed to slowly erode the memories and feelings of that afternoon.

The past few weeks have been especially rough for me. March 31st was exceptionally odd, as were the few nights leading up to and after it. It would have been our 4-year anniversary and it just felt weird seeing the turn of events that had taken place instead. I had quite a few events and surprises planned for that week, but it quickly became obvious that they couldn’t happen and I was left trying to figure out what in the world had just occurred.

As I desperately tried to recreate what I’d been through in the past year or so to a friend, the first thing out of his mouth was “Why aren’t you angry? If I were you, I’d be pissed. I’d also go find me another girl to get my mind off her.” Which brings me to my inherent flaw – er, quality if you must. I’m not like most people. Yeah, yeah, everybody says that so much that the phrase carries with it no significance anymore. But it’s true. Ask anybody who knows me. I can’t run to another person to try and fill that void. I have to move on, be patient, and slowly over the years build back up what I had. So while the statement about getting another girl might not have applied to me, the one about anger most certainly did…or at least, it used to. Before, I would have collected all the emotions I had, converted them into anger, and struck back. It’s what I did whenever I got pissed with anybody. I did what I could to make them go through the hell I’d just gone through and when I felt we were even, I’d drop all the anger and move on.

So what was the point in reminding you about a post that I made last November? Well, like I said, I know that had the past few weeks happened before my said Epiphany, I would have done some things that I would have later regretted. I would have let my emotions take over and get the best of me while trying to justify my actions to myself. So in turn, I must be grateful for the trials of these past few weeks, because the glass is always half full, right? They have helped remind me of my evolution and strengthen my devotion to life. Before, I would have been angry for quite some time until I extracted my revenge and I would have been hurt for many months thereafter. Yet this time around, the anger lasted for maybe 1 minute. The hurt is ever so slowly subsiding.

But the final piece to this whole puzzle? I’m happy for her, an emotion that would have never run through my body before. I truly am happy to see her happy. Not angry, not vengeful, not spiteful. Maybe depressed that I don’t have something like what she has found, but an emotion which I can overcome and fade away. It’s strange sitting here and typing that I’m happy she is with another guy, but I can’t lie. I care so much for her that it truly does make me smile to see how joyful she is.

Every time I go through one of these periods in my life, I run back to music. It’s the one thing in my life that has never let me down and frankly, I find more solace in it then anything else in the world. David Gray, a true genius, sings my favorite song of all time, Please Forgive Me. Every time I listen to it, I am reminded of that feeling of love I once shared and how wonderful it felt. And yet Fate seems to find pleasure in Irony, so it is only natural that Gray also sings the song that I recently discovered. I have listened to repeatedly over the past few weeks and it could not sum up my feelings any better. “Shine” is the perfect song for me right now and I’m providing it to you free of charge, so why wouldn’t you download it?

I don’t believe in Coincidence, but instead in Fate and Providence. So despite how much I might miss her, I took and used the events from the past few weeks to finally close the 2nd chapter of my life. It’s something I’ve put off and told myself would never have to actually occur, but I’ve finally done it. Yet it’s hard figuring out how to start a new chapter. You sit down and start scribbling opening lines that always end up being furiously crossed out. Before you know it, your trashcan is overflowing with crumpled sheets of notebook paper while you are still left searching for that perfect string of words that will capture the essence and emotion you so desperately want to convey. Which is why I’m sticking with Reunion. Short, sweet, and to the point.

The morale of the story? Even though She blocks you out of her new life, yours still moves forward. So this is my Good-Bye, my Farewell, my Retreat into the night. I wish you all the best of luck Jessica and I hope that you are truly Happy.

And now, I’ll be returning to the main reason why most of you are here – to read the random shit I come up with. I know I vowed long ago to not bitch and moan on here, but I thought you all might like a glimpse into my life every now and then.

For years, I always decided not to do something and blamed it on something else. In most of those situations, I wasn’t really lying to myself. I held back or quit because I had other obligations that I wished to attend to first. My family, my relationship, or just plainly myself always seemed to be used as an excuse more then anything else and I knew that something was awry. I soon realized that I was afraid. I’m not one to scare easily. Besides Laura Bush’s face, I can’t think of anything that really scares the bejesus out of me. Roaches gross me out and yellow teeth are kind of freakish, but I can’t say I’m scared of them. Some people, however, are scared of words. Love, Hate, Defeat, Unrest. The list could go on and on, but you see what I mean. I never thought of myself as one of those people, but over time I’ve grown to realize that I guess you could say mine would be Rejection.

Call it the perfectionist in me. I hate being told I’m not good enough for something. I’ve never been one to desire Mastery in subjects. Instead, I’ve always wanted to be that Jack-of-all-trades type guy. The kind of guy who could install your air conditioner and cook up a souffle without breaking a sweat. I’ve also never really cared about being accepted in 99% of the things I do, which seems to backfire when I finally find something that I actually do want to do. By only leaving myself that small sliver of activities I wish to be accepted in, I force myself to master those areas just to avoid the rejection. And the 99% is no exaggeration. Hell, I’ve never even asked a girl out until recently. Not from the fear of rejection straight up, but from the fact that when I finally find a girl that I am completely compatible with and interested in, I put myself in the position to where I don’t even have to ask, it just happens. I try and perfect that art of asking her out to the point where no just isn’t an option and quite frankly, all of this perfection has begun to annoy the living hell out of me.

So as I was laying in bed the other day, I began to grasp the fact that I do have some regrets. My hesitation and laziness in the past only seemed to add to my regrets, and therefore, I set out to remedy as many of them as I could. I was fully aware that some of my past mistakes couldn’t be fixed, but damned if I wasn’t going to try.

One of the biggest bonuses with hanging out with Lee, Tucker, Fitz, Phil, and all the other guys is that there is always enough to play a full game of baseball every Saturday afternoon. I don’t think I can convey to you the amount of joy I find from jogging out into the outfield and catching anything hit my way. The feeling of slapping a ball just over the head of the shortstop or crushing the ball into the gap to score the tying run are feelings that can’t be forced. God, I miss playing baseball. After playing last fall, I finally reminded myself of how much I enjoyed it and I’ve gotten to the point now where I’ll go out during the late hours in the afternoon just to try and find a game going on somewhere. Usually I can get in on them, but I want more. I found an almost semi-pro league (18+, fast pitch, actual baseball rules, pitchers throw around 70 MPH) down in Charleston that runs through the summer. I had a slot wide open for me, but with no job or housing set up for me, I had to turn ‘em down. Wherever I go this summer, I have got to find a league to play in. I don’t see how I can be happy without it.

My best friend from high school Elton studied abroad in Chile last semester and after talking to him about his trip, I couldn’t believe that I had yet to take advantage of the opportunities I have. I always wanted to go somewhere, but I either missed the deadlines, or decided against it because of where I was in my life. So it feels good to say that I’ve been accepted to study abroad next year. Seeing as how it’s going to be my senior year, I had to ask for a few favor and exceptions to be made, but it looks like all that is left is picking the country and forking over the money. I’ve been debating over it for the past week or so, and I think the finalists are Australia (how could I not want to go back?), Italy (The culture, the climate, the location – what’s more to ask for?), and England (Can’t really go wrong with England. Plus I’m a sucker for British accents.) I’ve still got to make up my mind, get the loans approved, etc. But I have no intentions of backing down and quite frankly, I couldn’t be more excited.

And finally, I reversed yet another factor in my life today. Two Valentines Days ago, I decided to grow my hair out since Jess loved long hair. So it has been over 14 months since I cut my hair. And as you all know, the last time I shaved my face was on Halloween, so I had collected a nice sized beard. Yet I was tired of waking up in a pile of my own hair. I was tired of pulling out a clump of hair whenever I ran my hands through it and I was tired of never being able to see my face. So, that all changed today…

The finale to this series will be posted within a day or two, and then we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled ramblings that aren’t personal, since I know this has to be boring most of you to death. I have quite a few topics to post about (My now infamous nil with the ace of spades, The Brothers venture down here, The Dark Side of The Moon coupled with The Wizard of Oz, and much much more) so don’t give up on me just yet.

Growing up, In the house we listened to The Allman Brothers, ZZ Top, Lynard Skynard, The Charlie Daniels Band…and Luther Vandrose. Don’t ask. My mom loved him. I never understood. And we listened to his band. A lot. Hell, I liked it. It was all knew. Nothing’s cooler then being able to tell your friends that “yeah, that’s my dad on the radio” when you’re just 8 years old.

But things changed, as they tend to do. My teenage years were full of rebellion, just like any pubescent child. I hated my dad. With a passion. When I was going into the 7th grade, he finally “retired” from touring. He was tired of having a relationship with his family over the phone and by this point, Clay was already born and frankly, he wanted to see his children grow up. Fair enough. The only problem was we had never spent 6 straight months together in quite some time, much less 6 straight years. We didn’t know how to act around each other. Whenever I was dragged in by the neighbors for setting their back yard on fire or filling the road with a giant snowball (which was the size of a full car. I’m still quite proud of that accomplishment), my dad just did what came naturally to him. He became a hard ass.

He became the man who would get angry with you over not making your bed properly. He became the man who would ground you for making a B+ when you could have made an A. He became the man who would shut off the electricity to your room when you talked back to him. He never beat me physically, aside from the few smacks upside my head that I received from running my mouth. But he just didn’t know what else to do. I can’t really say that I helped the situation. I thrived on pissing him off. Some of the acting I did in front of my mom should have garnered an Emmy. I made sure to never let up and never let him win.

Which explains why I absorbed every type of music except for his. Alex listened to Guns & Roses, Beastie Boys, Aerosmith, Smashing Pumpkins, MXPX, Blink 182, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, NIN, and other bands along those lines. It was like a whole new dimension to me. I wanted nothing more to do with Dad’s music. His music was stale, bland, and stood for everything I hated about him. I soon found the likes of Collective Soul, David Gray, Dave Mathews, and countless other bands who quickly filled the void in my musical life.

My final act of rebellion finally took place at the close of my freshman year of high school. Playing in the band wasn’t cool anymore. All of my friends had quit, I had no desire to go march around on the football field during half time, and even though I practically had the teacher begging me to go play for the Jazz Band, I shrugged it off like it was nothing more then a birthday invitation to some kid I didn’t even like. He just wanted a free present and the cake wasn’t even chocolate. So I quit playing the saxophone.

I tell you this not to brag or gloat. Far from it. I tell you this because I have finally begun to remember where I’ve come from. Over the years, my dad has matured into a parent as I have grown into an adult. The comparison between him now versus 9 years ago is astounding. He is mellow, calm, smooth. He’s learned how to deal with his children and in turn, I’ve begun to learn more about him. We’ve finally reached that point where we respect each other. We might have total opposite political views or differ on how we approach women, but we still get along like a father and son should. He always told me that if I ever needed anything or to talk to somebody, I could come to him. But it wasn’t until now that I finally felt comfortable enough with him to actually do so.

But after being out of music for 6 years, my dad had had enough. He couldn’t take it anymore. He needed an outlet to pour all of his talent into and so he started a band. Again, it was a good band. A band full of guys who had been around the block a few times and had no desire to start touring the country and letting the record labels dictate how they should make their CD. So they all used their connections, pooled their money together, and made their own CD. They started coming down here to Columbia a few months ago and so me and the guys would go out every time, grab some food and drinks, and sit back and relax. And each and every time I watch him play up there on stage, I think about how much in common me and my dad really are.

People should be warned before going to concerts. I’ve learned that the “itch” is apparently contagious. I went down to the local music store a few days ago. I hesitantly walked in, slowly browsed around, gazed at all the familiar equipment which brought back a flood of memories, and found what I was searching for. She was no virgin, but she was just begging me to pick her up. As I cradled her in my arms, my fingers went straight to the keys and she was a perfect fit. She was coming home with me and I had no intentions of making this a one-night stand. It took me a little while to re-learn all the keys but a few days later I was playing my favorite song – Louie Louie. Hey, it sure did pick up the chicks in middle school. I know I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me, but who knows. Maybe one day he’ll get sick and need somebody to fill in for him.

And with the completion of this circle, I can finally say that my dad and I are at peace with each other now. He’s not just my dad; he’s my friend. And god can he play the sax. I just wish I could figure out how in the world he plays the flute.