My Driving Ability

No this won't be a post extolling the grand exploits of my master stunt driving skills. Anyone who has ever rode in a car with me would call bullshit right away. In the interest of full disclosure I must admit two truths right now, one my balls and taint really itch right now, and two I am a horrible driver. Though I feel that my balls and taint are perhaps one of if not the most important of topics to cover, I am going to save them for a later date and describe my (lack of) driving abilities.

I think we can go all the way back to the day I took my test to get my driver's license to give a good example of why I probably shouldn't be on the road. I barely passed the test, as in if one more point got knocked off I would of failed. The best part was though that after the test was over and I was driving back to the test location I blew a stop sign with an oncoming car barreling towards me and the testing instructor nearly had a heart attack. She wanted to fail me on the spot but technically the test had ended so there was nothing she could do.

This was just the start to many many driving adventures. My first car was an 86 Park Avenue. The car was a piece of shit and broke down constantly but it did not help that it had a madman for an owner. Within an hour of getting the car I nearly rear ended someone. By nearly I mean I locked up the brakes and had to swerve off the road and into a field to miss the car. About a month later in a gas station I took a turn two wide and side swiped a car denting the entire side of the person's car. This person happened to be my mom by the way. I still remember the look of disappointment on her face.

Over the next year I hit two walls, yes walls, backing into them. I ran over multiple curbs and ran an old lady on a bicycle off the road (it was an accident). Since that was over 10 years ago I will admit I didn't stop and kept driving. Hopefully she didn't break a hip. Almost a year after getting my license I rear ended some woman absolutely smashing the front of my car. I forget how much damage it caused my vehicle but it was a substantial amount.

My next car was a 92 tornado. I don't recall any major accidents in that car but I do remember driving home from a girlfriends a bit drunk and woke up as my head hit the roof of my car as I had driven over a curb through a mailbox and into someones front lawn. Luckily I was able to steer the car back onto the street before I took out half the house. About a week later my transmission went out. Also wondered if one had something to do with the other.

I think you get the point by now. The other day my bro said "I notice that your answer to any driving problem you encounter is to mash on the gas." That seems to be the case. Alright I will finish this tomorrow lol there is so many incidents I am skipping over it would be a travesty not to include them. If you are reading this re-read it again tomorrow there will be a lot more.

Sad Man Behind Blue Eyes

So am I resorting to ripping of lyrics from the Who? I guess maybe. Sometimes when you listen to a song the lyrics can speak out to you in a way other forms of writing cannot. This kind of makes sense as songs are essentially poetry set to music. The National Anthem began life as a poem that was eventually put to music.

So why in fact did I chose the song Behind Blue Eyes for the title to this blog entry? I have heard multiple interpretations to the lyrics of the song ranging from it is about a pedophile, to being about a cop, or even being about Pete Townsend and his drug use. I don't really care what some self indulged drugged out rocker meant behind the words though. For me, I take things and apply them as I see fit.

I find more and more that very few people know the true me. This is not without reason since I put on a front or act to nearly everyone around me. Behind my calm but laughing and jovial demeanor hides a lonely and tragic figure who cannot relate to most of the world around him. I don't feel a sense of closeness to most people that others feel.

That is not to say that I do not care about about those around me. If anything I care quite a bit, but even those I care about the most I feel intensely uncomfortable being around them for any length of time. I cannot even pick up the phone and call someone I have been friends with for years without feeling a great sense of anxiety. Even around my own family I feel like an outsider looking in.

Have you ever heard of the story of Atlas? He was a titan of Greek mythology who supported the spheres of the heavens upon his back. That is the way I often feel like, that the weight of the world rests upon my shoulders. It does not make any sense really since I am not a world leader or person of great importance but all the same I feel that stress in my day to day life.

 

I am not crazy nor am I suicidal. I took this picture the other night and it would appear I was either one or the other but I am neither. I am not even sure why I took the picture. I had an extremely stressful weekend filled with so many ups and downs I could fill an entire book. By the time Sunday evening rolled around I was exhausted and had no where left to go but inward. I didn't like what I found there so I searched outward for a means of feeling pain so that I might remember what it felt like to be alive. But I am not one for self inflicting pain so I settled on taking a lame photograph of myself holding an unloaded gun to my head with a semi-crazy look on my face. 

The other day the person I consider closest to me, in every way possible, told me there was something tragic in my eyes. Behind all the laughing and joking there was a look of pain. I tried down playing it at the time but this person seems knows me better than that and saw right through my attempts. 

Certainly the fact that I cannot grow a good mustache does weight heavily upon my mind in this picture but there are far greater implications. Since the person said this, I have looked at this picture often to try and see what they had seen.

I posted a video today on my facebook profile from the 2009 movie Doubt with Meryl Streep. No I am not turning homosexual, I just happened to run across the ending of the movie on youtube and thought it conveyed my own beliefs. I have doubt, such doubts that I will ever be able to be truly happy in life. There are moments in life I begin to feel like I am getting closer to finding a sense of happiness I hear about so often in movies and on television but then it seems like bad news rears its ugly head. Something waiting in the wings to tear it down before it can even grow. In the end I just put on my sunglasses and pretend like nothing bothers me, an indestructible rock devoid of emotions, while inside another piece of me dies. 

What's worse is that I am afraid that I will push away the one person who does understand me. I want to warn them not to go searching further because they will not like what they find. 

With that out of the way and off my chest I will go back to the Jason Act and being the laughing funny person everyone expects. 

---Edited Feb. 2012--- I have for some time debated about whether or not to delete this entry. I have mixed emotions about the post. This was written during one of the most difficult periods of my life. My former marriage had long since crumbled but we were still inhabiting the same apartment. It made for one of the most miserable periods of my life. My ex wife had turned into a very bad alcoholic that was also prone to violence. She had alienated all of her friends and most of her family due to her drunken rages. I was receiving the worst of the lot and had a couple years ago just decided to shut off my emotions completely. 

I had for 2 years or better wandered through life in a daze like a zombie. It was a defense mechanism to deal with a major depression that had set in. I was not happy from the beginning and things just got progressively worse. I did not think there was much chance of any happiness in life and I really just accepted having a miserable life. I think this had a lot to do with my up bringing as I do not think my father was ever really happy in life and I know that my parents marriage strung along for years in unhappiness just for my sake growing up. In hindsight this did me no favors as dealing with a divorce as a child is tough but what kind of harm is dealt seeing a loveless marriage and thinking that is normal. It left a big black mark on my life that followed me into adult hood. 

Then I met someone who changed everything I ever thought about life. I saw things in a completely different light. It is funny how you just don't realize how unhappy you are until someone gives you a reason to be happy. The problem was that we had so many outside our control factors that would work to keep us for being together. When I wrote this entry it was the weekend of my birthday and it just reinforced how helpless I felt. A big part of me wanted to just give up on life and sell off what I owned and just lead the life of a wandering nomad, a ronin with no master. 

That picture of me holding a gun to my head is very controversial to myself. I think it gives the wrong impression that I was suicidal but that was not the case at all. The gun was not loaded and I gave no thoughts to ending my life. Rather it was some sort of expression of how I felt that my life was so far out of my own control at the time. Some people might use that picture against me saying that it shows I am unstable or any number of things. While they have that right it is a distortion of the purpose behind the picture. If that is the best fire power you have against me than that says something about your argument.

Training Updates

Training has been slow the past couple of weeks. Been mixing in more and more boxing/fight training to supplement the lifting which has trailed off considerably. I find it hard to eat lately and even harder to just keep on track. Seems like lately I went from total tunnel vision when I train to my mind wondering to all sorts of things. I know why this is the case and I am fighting hard to counter act it, but I am not sure it is a fight I can win at the moment. So I just grit my teeth and bear with it.

Some Mysteries Revealed

So I found out some answers to some long standing questions I had.

I found out the answer to the riddle of the man-child. It turns out that the reason why I always see him walking around with a backpack is because he does that for fitness reasons. He fills the backpack up with "weight" and walks around town every day. I have actually noticed that in the time since I have moved here he has dropped a good deal of weight so good for him.

No I take that back. He looks like a damn rapist and chances are if you look like a rapist you probably are. I am sure he just walks around looking for his next victim then hits them over the head with one of those weights and drags them into an alley. Sick fuck.

Next is the mystery of what happened to the black lady who moved into the end unit. JC found out from Megan across the street that while Megan was in jail for crashing into a parked car inbetween taking shots of jack daniels our neighbor was in there as well. Apparently she got arrested almost immediately upon moving in and has been sitting in jail since then. Question? How the fuck is her rent being paid. I miss one paycheck and there is a problem getting rent on time but somehow she can be in jail and still not get evicted. Beats the fuck out of me. Do black people have something hardwired in their DNA on how to work over the system? Wait most my neighbors are white and live off the governments tit. Maybe it is just that I lack said DNA so I just have to do that wild and crazy thing called work hard for my money. Oh well.

Training Log Update

Well I completed my 14 week training cycle. Everything went more or less according to plan  despite some initial set backs as far as the squat goes. Never significantly injured my back deadlifting so that is a good sign. I am going to spend the next couple of weeks doing "off season" training then jump back into another training cycle. Since I have already peaked out I have decided to reintroduce some fight training. I will probably still do some during the next training cycle since the next one will probably be more bodybuilding oriented than powerlifting oriented as I really want to drop some weight. That was my goal during the last cycle but as the strength shot up I kind of lost sight of that and just went for as much strength as possible.

Some yesterday I did some boxing training. Later I am going to try to get in some MMA/Wrestling training. Try to split my time between the two. I haven't trained grappling in a long time and want to get back on the mat. Tomorrow I will go over the modifications to my training as far as weight training goes that I make when doing "off season" training.

Long Overdue Updates

Haven't posted on the blog for some time. No real reason why. Most of my neighbors have moved out or are in jail (more on that later). I was on call for a week meaning I had little free time, and I have just plain lost motivation to write on the blog (long story that I am not going to tell you about). Going to kick start things a bit with a few posts tonight.

I finally finished Chapter 5 of my story. It was  struggle but I plowed through it. Thankfully I will be able to go back over it when I am finished and tidy it up because it is really raw and rambling. Still though it contained a pretty big revelation (that was originally going to happen much later in the story but I decided to move up) hence one reason why I struggled in writing it. I hard time conveying in words just how big of a deal it was. I still think I fell short somewhat and who knows when I am done I may end up taking it out and putting it farther back in the story. Nothing is set in stone.

Clarification on "It's Complicated"

It seems that the ambiguity of my previous entry entitled "It's Complicated" has led to many people making assumptions on just what I meant by that post. Much like the mysterious suitcase in the movie Pulp Fiction, there have been many wild guesses as to what question was asked of me and what my answer was.  It is comical the range of guesses that have been leveled my way on the subject in the past day.

Let me let any readers of this blog in on a deep dark secret. Yes, unlike the movie Pulp Fiction, I am going to reveal the secret nature behind the entry. There was no question nor was their any answer. Remember the whole point of a macguffin is that it is irrelevant to what is trying to be told.

One movie I have always been fond of is the movie The Prophecy. I found the unique take on Angels that coincides much closer to their depiction in the bible rather than what we are presented with in popular culture to be quite interesting. One particular scene early in the movie has a detective encountering a mysterious man in his apartment. The mystery man is actually an Angel but the Detective (formerly a seminary student studying to be a priest before having visions of angels locked in a vicious war) is unaware of this at the time. The Angel, named Simon (portrayed by Eric Stolz), asks the Detective, "Do you believe you are part of God's plan?" To which the Detective responds "That's a complicated Question". Simon then replies, "No it isn't".

So yes I basically based the entry off an obscure movie scene reference. I found it to be an interesting exchange that often pops in my head. As I skimmed through facebook I noticed someone on my friends list in the matter of only a couple hours relationship status went from "In a relationship" to "It's Complicated" and back again several times. I think this back and forth lasted no less than 5 turnabouts before settling on It's Complicated. I found this quite ironic and only guessed that the person and their significant other were going through some kind of squabble and the person was using their facebook profile to fuel the fire.

Does that mean the entry is insignificant? Not at all. There were certainly aspects that related back to my current life but so far it has complete defied any ones attempts to dissect it. This is understandable though as I flipped back and forth several times throughout the entry. I purposely left things very vague to keep people guessing just what the hell I meant. Add in that I was not even sure where I was going with it. I only had a vague idea of what I was talking about when I began it.

Is my life a Shakespearean tragedy? I certainly hope not, because quite frankly many of his plays did not end on a particularly high note. That does not mean I was just pulling words out of my ass, as certainly I could draw many parallels but probably not in the way most of you would guess. One secret I will reveal, there is only one person who knows just what the fuck half the shit I say really even means, besides myself.

I find a certain amusement drawing people in and then confusing them by back tracking on what I say. Who knows maybe there really was a question and an answer. Maybe the movie the Prophecy never even entered into my head when I wrote the blog and only later used that movie quote to justify the post. Maybe it is not meant for you to know.

In life not everything has a simple answer. The whole story does not always make sense at the end. This is no after school tv special. Next time you read an entry and wonder if I meant something behind the post, chances are I did. Chances are though you are wrong about what I meant. I only really explain myself to one person. Why is that? I have a strong urge for at least one person to understand me. For everyone else I'd just like for you to read on...

I have some more funny stories on the horizon, so don't worry if you are tired of all the self reflection.

Halloween and Lack of Ads

This are going to be brief.

Last weekend, in Columbus, during trick or treat night somebody robbed a kid at gun point for their bag of candy... seriously. Didn't even ask for money, just the candy.

You'll notice there are not more ads on my blog. No I didn't have some moral conflict with making some small change for the ads people would click. In fact I was up to about 35 dollars over the past month which didn't seem too bad considering I never really expected to make any money off of it.

Well if it is too good to be true it probably is. This was the case in this example. I was kicked off the google adsense program for fraudulent activity. Apparently if someone from one IP clicks on more than one ad they assume you are using people to drive up your clicked ads total. Truth is they probably just look for any excuse not to pay you. I did some google searches on the program and it seems many many people report a similar issue of being kicked off the program once they started to make some money.

Oh yeah the blog post I made threatening to murder bunnies if people didn't click on my ads probably didn't help. Either way it was fun while it lasted but I never entertained any delusions of actually making money off the program.

It's Complicated

Somebody asked me a question recently and all I could reply is that "it's complicated." That may have been a bit of an understatement though. It's so complicated that it could be the plot of an interesting movie. However, when people ask you a question they general want to either A. hear a simple one word answer B. hear some juicy gossip. Since I am not one to gossip (funny stories about neighbors aside) I selected A. and gave a simple one word answer. "It's complicated."

What was the question that was asked of me? It doesn't matter. The point of this is not the question or the real answer, the point was the response I gave. Much like the suitcase in the movie Ronin, knowing the true content was nonessential to the story being told. In the movie and story business they call this the "macguffin".

Wikipedia describes a macguffin as-- A MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin or maguffin) is "a plot element that catches the viewers' attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction".^[1] The defining aspect of a MacGuffin is that the major players in the story are (at least initially) willing to do and sacrifice almost anything to obtain it, regardless of what the MacGuffin actually is. In fact, the specific nature of the MacGuffin may be ambiguous, undefined, generic, left open to interpretation or otherwise completely unimportant to the plot. Common examples are money, victory, glory, survival, a source of power, or a potential threat, or it may simply be something entirely unexplained.

So if the question and true answer does not matter than why does the response "it's complicated" matter. I think it is the concept what just what is complicated. I mean we throw the term it's complicated around all the time. On facebook it is a response for whether you are in a relationship. Someone asks you what your religious beliefs are and you might respond it's complicated. Someone asks you what your thoughts are on calculus and you might say "it's complicated."

But are any of these things really complicated? Let's go with my first example, your relationship status. Either you are in one or you are not. How do you know if you are in a relationship? I have a simple litmus test. Take the person you are closest too of the opposite sex (this could be your wife, girlfriend, room mate, or whatever)  and have sex with someone in front of them. If you cannot do this then you are in a relationship. If you can do this you are not in a relationship (or a swinger but that changes everything so forget for a moment those people exist).   I don't see how that is complicated. You might not like the person you are with or be in the process of splitting up, or whatever, but that does not mean you are not in a relationship.

I understand that in the real world people grow apart, one hurts another, or any of the other myriad of reasons people end up falling out with each other. This is not a knock on those who are in these situations as almost everyone has been there a time or two (and some many many times lol). If anything as I get older I have a much better understanding on the complexity of human relationships. The black and white statements people make from a moral high ground have no place in a rational mind. If anything it shows a lack of maturity to assume you can make a blanket statement that will cover every eventuality.

Now what about the other examples of things being complicated? Well again it is all relative to the situation. Let's take calculus for example, sure it might seem complicated if you barely passed algebra. On the other hand if you have went to college for engineering you might find calculus to be no more complicated than tying you shoes. Does it really matter. Maybe it does to someone cramming for a test in college but I really don't give a fuck about that.

Honestly I don't even know where the hell I am going with this post. I had a vague idea when I started but grew disinterested after while.

Oh yeah I remember now what the fuck I am on about. This post was about fat chicks playing hide and go seek. No, wait, it was not about fat chicks playing hide and go seek. I don't even know what the hell made me say that.

So if nothing is truly complicated than why did I answer "it's complicated" other than not wanting to talk about it? Well maybe because it is complicated. At its core it is actually rather simple but at the same time complicated enough to fill the plot of a Shakespearean play. I am contradicting myself left and right. So what? It is my blog and I can write whatever the hell I want to. No one can tell me different. I am my own person and always will be.

I write many funny and witty things but I can also be quite serene and thoughtful. Lately all I do is think about things. This is not a bad thing though. I find that I enjoy writing serious things more than I even do funny things. I suppose that the majority of people who read my blog enjoy reading the funny posts more than the serious ones. That is why I try to keep things with a lighter tone, but all the same it is the serious things I write that consume most of my thoughts.

I haven't been able to sleep much lately. Maybe a few hours here and there. When I do sleep I often wake up constantly. The remainder of the time I spend it in a daze trapped in my own mind. This is not me complaining, rather I am in perhaps the best mental state I have been in for as long as I can remember. I am in a great mood and absolutely nothing can break this.

---Edited--- The funny thing about this post was that a certain person latched on to this post thinking I was talking about his failed relationship with his long time girlfriend at the time. Their relationship was long over with by this point but he kept trying to string it along like a boxer past his prime trying to make a paycheck. He even wrote me an email entitled "The Complicated Relationship". The funniest part about all of that was I wasn't talking about his relationship with her, I was talking about my relationship with her. 

Execellent Party

I'd like to thank all my brothers for making the trek to attend my party last night. I had a hell of a time. Also Congratulations to our three new brothers who got made last night. Welcome to the family.

Updates have been a bit slow lately in preparation for the party. I am beginning my rotational on call week starting Monday evening so updates may be slow for the following week. The good news is that my mustang is now officially paid off. I have been paying on that car for 6 years now. It will be nice to have close to 400 additional dollars a month of disposable income.

Now that I made it through the party I can continue working on my book. Chapter five has been a bit slow as I slightly changed the direction the chapter went in on top of preparing for the party. With those things out of the way I should be done with chapter 5 tonight or tomorrow at the latest.

Bench Press training last night

Last night was my last training session before Saturday. JC and I training in the fortress of solitude (my basement) and decided to work up to a max single. Things went really well and I ended up setting a new personal record. I did miss the weight I had set for a goal for that day, but I did not feel bad. I kind of burnt myself out on the first max attempt. The second one I know that I easily had it in me, but as I raised the weight off my chest I stalled about 3 inches off my chest. Then the bar dipped about 1 inch (which would of disqualified the lift in a competition) and somehow I reversed it and brought the bar back up to about 5 inches off my chest but stalled out again. The amazing thing is I actually moved the bar from a dead stop and almost had it. Very hard to make a lift once the bar stops moving let alone dipping back down but through brute strength I got the bar  moving again. I think I just didn't stay tight enough as I brought the bar down. When you get to max weights very small things can be the difference between a good lift and a bad lift.

After benching I did a max single with close grip bench press and max single with incline presses. Nothing special here.

Then I finished up with dumbell bench presses.

Seriously People?

Alright, in a previous post I put up pictures of the "treasures" left behind by my former neighbors. I use that word very generously as they left behind a pile of shit. Seriously, two fucked up pieces of furniture and some bags of trash. Actually they added quite a bit of trash since the pictures I took. Imagine an area of roughly 20 feet by 10 feet filled about 4 feet high of trash bags. That is not an exaggeration either. They had enough trash in their house to fill up my living room. That is really sad as I have a fairly roomy living room. Baffles me how people can live like that. Maybe they were hoarders who knows.

Any ways it just wouldn't  be my neighborhood if something retarded didn't happen. Sure enough I was not disappointed. A day after they left I noticed two people standing outside one of my windows. Turns out it was extra chromosome lady and her adult son (who moved in a week ago). They were going through the trash bags and had a trash bag of their own shoving things inside. Yes, the trashy people I know's trash is my other neighbor's treasure. I snapped a shitty pic with a cell phone and it just wouldn't be me if I didn't post it up.

 

The son is on the left and the extra chromosome lady is on the right. You can barely make out the white trash bag in the son's left hand. I wonder what brilliant things they found. 

A day later I saw another women feverishly going through the trash pile. I am sure if I was home more I would of seen many more people going through the trash. Now don't get me wrong, if someone had a nice piece of furniture they did not want and put it out I could understand grabbing that. Hell my sofas are second hand from my sister. However at some point you have to draw a line, and that point for me is going through trash bags. Are you fucking kidding me? What the fuck could possibly be put inside a trash bag and left by a curb that would be worth losing any sense of dignity and pride. Congratulations my neighbors, you just wrote a new chapter in Suckology.

Chapter 5

Still working on Chapter 5. I decided to add in a significant addition that takes the story slightly away from the two main characters. As a result I had to shorten some of their role in the chapter (instead that moves to the next chapter) and began writing the addition. Been really hard to focus on writing the last couple of days. A lot on my mind. Good things of course but still on my mind.

Spelling and Grammar

I have to apologize for the poor standard of spelling and grammar throughout this blog. Well not so much spelling but the grammar aspect mostly. I usually type these entries out fairly quickly and hit send without even proof reading them. Big mistake. I just read through my last entry and saw how appalling it was. I made some quick edits to tidy it up a bit. Nothing too dramatic, as this is not an English class, but a few small small changes for things here and there to make the entry more readable. I am going to make a better effort to proof read my posts before hitting send. I am not going to be a grammar nazi, but at least to make sure I do not leave out entire words in a sentence.


Edit-- Funny thing is I went and hit send on this post missing several words in a sentence making it unreadable. Dumbass.