The Worst You Can Be

Imagine a bad hangover, a pretty serious one.

Imagine having a nasty flu, one that knocks you out for like a week.

Now imagine 103 degree heat with clear skies and nary a breeze.

Three great tastes that go shitty together.

Grave Generalization Series #3

1. Greeley Avenue is the best thing since tighty boxers. 

2. Women are man's best friend.

3. Dogs are the best toys for grown-ups.

Rednecks R’ Me

I fish 4 bass. I enjoy shooting guns. I will drink cheap beer when available. I enjoy rock and roll, sometimes classic. I like motorcycles and loud, fast cars and big-rig trucks.

I spent a lot of time in Vermont growing up, and lived there for over 10 years. Those things make me happy and excited.

I just completed fishing unsuccessfully for 4 days in a Father's Day fishing tournament. It was not unsuccessful for not catching anything, but unsuccessful in terms of winning the damn thing. It was successful in terms of spending time thinking about nothing but friends, beer and bass.

There was a split pretty much right down the middle of the rest of the field. Most fisher-people in the tournament on Lake Champlain were either super-bass-rig/ $40k truck/ big time action guys, or rednecks in shitty boats.

I know people who write off all rednecks as dirtbags. It's a stereotype. Think about it, there's dirtbags in every strata of society, in every geographic location. Not all rednecks are dirtbags and not all dirtbags are country-folk.

I find that I respect the simplicity and single-minded bliss with which these dudes with shitty boats, shitty cars and shitty homes live. Their life boils down to pleasures that I can believe in: beer, women, motorsports, the outdoors and blowing stuff up. Life as an eternal teen-ager.

These days, it's popular to act, think, look and pretend to be a redneck. It's always popular to make fun of them types.

But it's not popular to believe in the lifestyle and see the good parts of it. In fact, it's not about the lifestyle, but it's about a style of living that really does not give a shit about what other people think.

Most other lifestyles (including mine) are BUILT around what other people think. That's kinda jacked.

Trust Some One

The vision of a water fountain in the middle of a park popped in my head today. Not sure why, but I realized what an amazing thing it was to concieve, produce and deploy cold drinking water fountains in parks. There they stand, in the middle of wooded recreational areas, ready to provide clean, safe water whenever someone happened by and needed it. I even mentioned it to Jet today.I mean, whoever decided it was a good idea to pump cold, clean, safe water into the parks where I used to play as a kid was a super nice person. It was great to play under tall oak trees, on slides, on spinny things and on springy things and get real thirsty. But it would have sucked bad without a water fountain. I would venture to say I would not have played as much without them. I might not have met my best friends.

I remember riding my mountain bike out in South Mountain Reservation near South Orange with those friends. We knew the location of every fountain in the park, we mapped them out and carried just enough water to get to them. (Carrying too much would mean less SPEEEEEEDDDDD.) I miss riding bikes in that place, I don't think you can any more. I had to trust the person that installed and maintained those fountains. That person had to be a trustworthy person, the water company had to earn and keep my trust, without ever meeting me. It would have been so easy to break that trust, let the pipes go bad, pump shitty water into the system, make sure the water was dirty and warm.

I had to trust the drivers of the cars around me on the way to the office today on I-5. I had to trust that they would drive responsibly enough to keep us all on track. I had to trust that they would act on the signal their car made, a slight change here, speed up there, slow down. They had to trust that I was not a freak on a hell-bent rage to slam into as many cars as I could on the way down here today.

I have to trust everyone, everyone has to trust me. Take that worldwide and take it into your family. Without the important trust thing, life becomes scarier and requires too much mind-wrangling. I just need to trust that things will be where and when I think they'll be. From the soap for my pits to beef kabobs I'll eat later, I just have to trust that people are not going to screw me or my loved people over. And they have to trust me for stuff too.

Live Evil

There was a time not long ago that I became addicted to the news. The bad, Internet news. This was not long after the planes hit the country and numb-nut Bush took the helm.

The internet helped me get worse. I was so interested in daily death and the hunts for the bad guys that CNN became my home page. I feel like I am slowly coming out of the crappy news haze that dominated by back-concious over the past few years. Isn't that crazy?

I remember when I realized CNN.com had poorly affected my existence. In 2003, I realized my general level of anxiousness and mind-set were not calm or positive, even when there were calming, positive things to be aware of.

Lately, the news has been all over the damn place. Everything from 8 heads found on a roadside to men jumping out of weather balloons in space. There is no shortage of just unbelievably striking news that draws my attention and more importantly, MY TIME.

There is a glut of outlets for news, just too many, and I don't need them. There are so many outlets for so many news niches, that the competition is forcing these outlets to report things in even more unbelievable ways. Stronger, bolder stories with grittier headlines that make you stop everything else and skim the story.

Websites are written to be skimmed, no one should read every word of a website. The trick is the hook, a few bold points, a solid finish and some links to related content. Keep sucking me deeper into bad, bad things.

I don't need to read websites. I don't need to know every major story or Iraq shelling within hours of it breaking on the web. But it does make interesting conversation, and I harbor an innate desire to know more that drives me to my bookmarks. I feel like the more I know, the better perspective I may have on people and the way they think and act, which is really my job.

But it's just evil, and the fact that Drudgereport has 3 major headlines that revolve around 6/6/06 prompted me to look at these habits and assess the damage. I did read one story that made sense to me as being truly relevant to today. This was a story that made my life better.

It's the story of Peter Porter, an old man from New Hampshire who turned 66 on 06/06/06. He happens to be 6 foot, 6 inches tall. Lives in Ward 6, has 6 grandchildren, gets off the highway every day at…exit 6. It's real, it's life, it's interesting, it's an everyday person in an extraordinary situation. And best of all, this story negatively affects no one else. The story is just interesting.

Most everything else in the news seems pretty evil. This stuff won't really help me enough and there's nothing I will go and do about it. So tell me, do I remove the bookmarks?

Good Music Generalization

I have a page that gives you some background as to why this stuff matters. But recently some things have occured to me in regard to music that I might as well share.

There's a pretty bad band that practices in the house behind ours. They play bad classic/ jam band covers. And they play them poorly. They practice someone else's jam over and over, week after week with no audible improvement. But they have a hot tub and seem to have fun back there. Meghan calls them out and claims "shitty band practice", I would agree. They suck in terms of good music.

There's another motley crew that I've run into in the lobby of our office building on Thursday nights. The experience usually includes the faint sound of terrible, terrible, rambling noise when I hit the second floor. Then I open the door, and there they are. Somewhere between 6 and 14 older men using (not playing) instruments and other devices of pain in some sort of unison. I believe they'll call it jazz or jazz fusion. My dog, Sirius, usually starts howling at them when we hit the hallway.

They'll probably be there tonight.

My tastes in music differ widely in terms of genre. My favorite music sounds best loud. Regardless, good is good and bad is terrible. People ought to know the difference and be able to judge music correctly, based on what GOOD music was in the past.

Grave Generalization Series #2

• People should not be allowed to play, practice or promote bad music in any public venue.

To me, it's as bad as second-hand smoke and will eventually hurt me.

But I guess even shitty music can be fun and I am glad people are having fun and not using their time to do evil. But when you mix good music and evil, you get Butt Pie.

Look.
Listen and Watch.