The joy of being Matt

Not to be confused with The Joy of Being Aaron, which available in my book on Amazon.

There is a certain freedom in the way I live my life. I went through a series of relationships before I met my current wife. Those relationships more often were measured in days or weeks than in measurements of longer periods. Most of that falls on my shoulders. I was always in a quandry of knowing that I would have a hard time being in a relationship with someone that was in a relationship with me, because people need to set higher goals.

My relationships fell into a few categories:

Random women and random bars who were given random names and random backstories by me. Step one to ensuring a successful relationship is if you've known someone less than a day, maybe their cock shouldn't be in you. "I've never done this before" doesn't hold a lot of weight if you're good at it.

Women I tried to hard to be with. I can think of a couple examples of this where the tables were turned and I had had anything but the upper hand. Once I landed in Ohio I was "successful" enough to let money flow pretty freely. Nothing extravagant, but dinners, drinks, always on me. I think I wanted so desperately to be part of something that had weight that I was willing to give up a big part of me to try to find that. Step two: be true to yourself before all others.

Fuck buddies. I think if you bounce around the dating scene long enough you eventually date someone, or multiple someones who don't work with you on a relationship level, but you have a physical symbiosis with. This generally works for short periods of time, but eventually someone wants to put definition around what you "mean" to each other and a perfectly good situation is ruined.

The ones in the middle. I dated a girl in Columbus (actually on a mile or two from where I now live) for a couple of months, twice. That is two different sets of a couple months. After the second time we remained friends for awhile and would see each other now and then for shits and giggles. After the second time we broke up she said that I was a great person to date because I was fun, but I had no long term potential. I liked her a lot (love was never part of it), but while we were together I had no value beyond the now. Afterwards she actually recanted that thought and raised the possibility of a third go round right around the time I started dating my now-wife. The problem was no matter how comfortable I was with this person, I could never be me. I told the pre-relationship lies before the first go-round so I was forever bound by ties of dishonesty. Plus I was only the third guy she slept with and she was around 40, which meant that everything meant a lot more to her than it did to me...and, well there were some other things.

That's what brings me to today. Before I met my wife I decided that I'm just going to be me, warts (figurative) and all. From day one and date one I'm not going to put on any act, I'm just going to be me. To this day, people will threaten me with, "I'll tell your wife you said that." My response is always, "Go ahead." There's nothing I'll say or do that I wouldn't do if my wife was there. This is a tactic that probably doesn't work well in general, but it worked for me. My wife will be the first person to say that she figured I was a two, three date person at best. Nine plus years later, I'll still here pissing her off and embarrassing her.

I spent so much of my life scared to be who I am that I would pretend to be someone else in nearly every situation. With the exception of work, I pretty much am who I am. I came to the realization that though I may be far from perfect, I like who I am. If people like that, great. If not, they can EABOD. There is a freedom to being who you are. That's why you have to be happy with yourself before you can be happy with anyone else. That's not to say that you can't improve yourself, but everyone is a work in progress.

Walk away

How's this for a story idea. A man is presented with a unique opportunity to walk away from his current life and start fresh somewhere else. Should he take it? What are the repercussions mentally of walking away from everything you've ever known and becoming someone else?

Why women are crazy plus an inventor who should die

I love women. I love looking at women, talking to women, hearing about their hopes and dreams. Okay, so I really just like looking at them, but it is important to remember that before I go on to the topic at hand, so that you don't think I dislike women, because I don't. That leer is one of love, not one of hate.

With introductory explanations out of the way, all women are crazy. Their craziness varies in degrees, but all women have the crazy gene. Some of them are just carriers and the crazy is dormant, but there is a trigger out there for everyone that will make the crazy rise to the surface. Perhaps the crazy gene is carried in the second X chromosome, who knows, but all women have the crazy gene. I love my wife, and I love my mom, but both of them have the crazy gene.

There are countless examples of craziness coming from the fairer sex, but there is one that always stood out to me. One of the most common nightmares that women have (I'm totally making this part up, but I've hear anecdotal evidence that agrees with me on this) is being seen in public either in their underwear, or heaven forbid, completely nude. This is what makes

The example in question? Swimsuits. As a lover the female form, there is nothing as exciting as accidental nudity (stick with me, this is going somewhere). You know, when a shirt flops open just a little too much. That's why amateur porn rocks. You can imagine yourself in those situations. If a woman is too hot you can't put yourself there, because she wouldn't talk to you. What does this have to do with swimsuits? This:

One of the things that women would find most embarrassing is to be caught in public in their underwear. But go to any pool and women hang out in swimsuits, which often cover up much less than the granny panties so many women wear. I am a firm believer that granny panties should be banned, but they exist, and not only do they exist, they probably have a large percentage of the ass covering market. I could go on and on about why thongs are cool, but that is the subject of another blog for another time. How can less coverage be more acceptable?

Along the whole swimming pool line, whoever invented the tankini should be shot. The tankini, for anyone that doesn't know is the bastard hybrid of a bikini and a one piece swimsuit. The top becomes a top with a skirt that covers everything between the top and the bottom via a make-shift skirt. There's an old saying, "shit or get off the pot." If you're willing to wear a bikini, wear it. If not, wear a one piece, that's fine. This tankini bullshit is for people that aren't willing to commit. It reminds me of women who will cheat on their boyfriends, but won't sleep with you. You can't get "a little pregnant." Commit. Pick a side. Kill the creator of the tankini.

I've had it with these mother f'n snakes in the mother f'n parking lot

Snakes scare me. Like a little boy at Neverland ranch scared. There is construction in the parking lot at work, and what do I see? This. It's at least six feet long.

Big Brother 11

Thoughts on the first episode:

Guessed who was the surprise houseguest before the show started. Didn't guess that there would be 4 possible, but had the right one anyway.

Having only watched one season (10) I don't have a historical knowledge of the show, but the clique thing (in addition to being incredibly dumb) really changes things. First it eliminates the you can't win HOH back to back problem. You win HOH, next week someone else from your clique does, rinse repeat. Question is does everyone except HOH still get to vote, or only people in the non-immune clique?

If I was HOH this week I would target Braden. He is the only non-athlete that should be any physical threat. The best thing they could do is nominate two people from one clique, in essence crippling that group from the start.

The one black girl with the major attitude has to go. The guy from Ohio is an embarassment (the guy in the brains group), and I feel sorry for the older DJ. I think they will be forced to switch the game in a few weeks, because otherwise one clique is going to destroy everyone else.

Lastly the girl who was a karate champ dug herself a big hole. The "I'm 18" and "I don't do sports" were spotted as obvious lies from minute 1.

Yes, the font on this is all fucked up. Copy and paste isn't my friend.

The Michael Jackson fiasco

I don't get people. Michael Jackson couldn't get positive press to save his life two weeks ago. But now...

Why is it that he has somehow become something in death that he wasn't in life? It reminds me of the movie Heathers when the shoplifter's character is talking about how death has given meaning to the people she and low-rent Jack Nicholson boyfriend have killed. How the dad loved his "dead gay son."

I sold almost as many albums as MJ two weeks ago, now he is selling like hotcakes. Did his music become better or more relevant because he died? The need to stock people's ipods with an alleged kid toucher's music escalated in reverse allignment to his core body temp.

There is a saying in religion, Love the sinner, hate the sin. I think the exact opposite should apply here. Love the music, not musician. Michael Jackson was incredibly talented, and whether you liked his music or not, you can't deny that he did some amazing things. That being said, let's be honest. He was a fucked up guy. What is telling is not who attended his latest show, but who didn't. Oprah, Diana Ross, Justin Timberlake, and even Michael Jackson himself found it a little distasteful to be there (he was not in the coffin).

Kind of like Roman Polanski, OJ, Woody Allen, Jerry Lee Lewis, Rob Lowe, these are all talented people at their chosen craft, but that doesn't negate the terrible things they have done. Fame is an absolver of sins, but doesn't have nearly the cleaning power of death.

Lastly, a lot has been made of race in the whole hoopla surrounding his death, but not in the way I feel it should have. If you watched the circus that was his memorial (pause for a moment because I did get choked up when I saw "his" daughter speak about him) he was being hailed as this great example for black people. I don't get this. He did everything he could to distance his appearance from being black. Al Sharpton wouldn't have touched him three weeks ago, but couldn't have been more front and center this week.

Nearly 100 million people can't be wrong, right? It's just me.

So this is my blog

I won't write much in it. Nobody will read it. It is the perfect marriage of lack of effort and lack of caring. Basically I will use this as a place to talk about stuff that pisses me off.

Harumph.