BLOG IN YOUR FACE

Since starting bloginyourface, I am slowly starting to become accustomed with some of the latest in Internet technology. One of the things I had never heard of before were “feeds.” Basically, feeds are pretty much alerts when the content of a site is updated. I’m not going to really get into them because I don’t know much about them, but I need to mention that I did sign up for a service called FEEDBURNER. I have Feedburner synced to my blog and it has thousands of features. One feature is keeping track of just how and where from my traffic is coming into my website. One part of that is keeping track of what people typed into their search engines in order to stumble across my little blog. Some of these are absolutely hilarious and this posting has been a long time coming. Here I present to you some of the absolute strangest things that people have actually typed into search engines word for word, and even more hilarious, those searches have led them to my website. So here are just some of them:

“5 year old kid with six pack”

“Redneck lake woman smoking”

“Marathon runner diarrhea”

“Ass in your face licking”

“Dr. Laura pie face”

“Richard Simmons Congress”

“Shitty Egyptian house”

“King disk for protect chest in war”

“Green little monster from the mucus commercial”

“Fruits that look like penis”

“Reef filter floss Walmart”

“Multiple Sclerosis comic book for kids”

“Army Squirrel”

“Face got swallowed what that means?”

Something tells me that some of the above searches were intending to find some pretty naughty and bizarre stuff…

There is just something disturbingly creepy about a guy reading my blog that was originally looking for a 5 year old kid with a six pack. I kind of wish FEEDBURNER would go as far as to give me the IP address of the person doing the searching, but then again I suppose it isn’t so much my business.

Meh…

As you may know, anyone that visits my blog and leaves a comment, I typically add them to my blogroll. Matt is my newest blogroll addition, an entrepreneur computer expert who has recently entered the blog-o-sphere. Help him get some publicity and visit his blog!

Thanks,

Hubbs

Last week I wrote an article about my attempt to take my neighbor Doug’s good deed that he did for me and “pay it forward” to someone else to show my appreciation for a random act of kindness. My original intention was to buy a whole bunch of bottled water on Monday and take it around to bus stops and hand it out for free. The reason being, it was suppose to get up to 100 degrees here in Nebraska.

Jaci (my bride-to-be) came up with a better idea: Go and volunteer at the 2008 National Veterans Wheelchair Games which are being held here in town at the moment.

The majority of the games are being held at the QWEST Center in downtown Omaha, but Jaci and I were fortunate that one of the preliminary bowling trials was being held at a bowling alley less than 2 miles from our house. We got there about 8 in the morning on Monday and the place was BUZZING! There were paralyzed veterans wheeling around the place this way and that, but more importantly and heartwarming(ly) was that the number of volunteers to the number of competitors was about 9 to 1. That combined with the fact that most of the veterans don’t really want a lot of help made it so that Jaci and I weren’t really put to work very hard and ended up being more of a cheering section than anything.

Also amongst the crowd were several active Army and Air Force servicemen and women in their fatigues and all. It was cool to see the admiration on their faces and the excitement on the veterans’ faces as the two groups bullshitted between frames and rounds.

I couldn’t believe the back and shoulder strength of the competitors. They all had a different style depending on the type of paralysis that they had, but one guy in particular was something else to watch. He would roll up to the lane with his ball on his lap. He would stop right at the edge of the foul line and position his chair at at a 45 degree angle(ish). Then he would reach down and lock up both wheels. Then he would reach back with his left harm and hook it at the elbow around one of the handles that someone would normally hold onto to push him along. With his right arm he grabbed the bowling ball and whipped it down the lane with great speed and exceptional precision. The guy was amazing…there is no other way to put it. Hell, they were all amazing.

It sure is easy to forget that not everyone who gets hit by a road side bomb (or any aspect of combat) gets killed. There are so many that survive and come home minus the use of their legs or with other heartbreaking injuries. If it were me, I would probably want to crawl in a hole and die and you would find me on any given day feeling sorry for myself in a pool of my own misery.

Not these guys.

It just goes to show you that the men and women of our armed forces are not just the bravest people in the world, but that bravery extends far beyond the battlefield. Their courage and their love for competition is remarkable considering their circumstances.

If watching a young veteran with an American flag bandana around his head and another few tied to his wheelchair pump his fist in excitement after executing a perfect strike and then hearing 30-40 people roar and cheer for him doesn’t convince you that 1) God exists and 2) This is the greatest country in the world…well then, you are insane.  

The testosterone was FLOWING this morning at 7:30 A.M.! Not to brag or anything (ok, fine…with every intention OF  bragging), but Jaci and I got up this morning and ran our first 5 miler! We ran it at an incredibly fast pace - 43 minutes - which I would like to attribute to my carb loading last night. By carb loading I mean the beer I drank along with eating an entire bag of salt and vinegar potato chips.

Nonetheless, I couldn’t have felt more like a man, even if I were to take a bath in Tabasco sauce while eating a chili dog, drinking straight whiskey out of a gas can and watching Refrigerator Perry mud wrestle with an alligator on my 89 and 1/2 inch High-Def T.V. No sir, there is nothing more invigorating than a good run to get a man feeling like the Alpha Male.

After coming down from my testosterone high, I decided to bring out my inner estrogen and go outside and take some pictures of my horticulture in the back yard. Here are a few shots that I took:

Yellow Flower

My Marigolds

These Petunias have taken over my garden like pigeon poop on a New York City window sill. They are going to be featured in Jose Canseco’s next book and I will probably have to speak on their behalf at a congressional committee meeting, because their growth is simply NOT…NATURAL.

Here is the fireplace that I built outside last week made entirely out of bricks and boredom. 

Hello all! I just wanted to throw a shout out for my sister’s new blog, the 30 by 30 challenge. She just hit 29 years of age on June 9th and is attempting to shed 30 pounds by the age of thirty! She has already lost 5 pounds with regular exercise and a positive attitude.

2008 has been an incredible year for the health and vitality of my entire family. My father has lost well over 30 pounds and at nearly 58 years old he is doing 4 to 5 miles on the elliptical machine every day. He is probably in the best shape he has been in since his 30s. My mother has been hitting the gym with incredible regularity as well, and I am incredibly proud of her as well. And of course my sister is beginning a complete spiritual, financial and physical transformation.

Me? I have managed to quit smoking and Jaci and I have had 4 solid weeks of half-marathon training. We run the Siouxland Lewis and Clark Marathon on Saturday, October 18th. I am glad that I will be in shape for my wedding and I feel good! I am also working toward my goal of looking good naked.

So, if you have a second, please visit my sister’s blog. I have it over there on the right in my blogroll links. Drop her a word or two of encouragement! Put her in your blogroll!

Later.

 PART I

I absolutely hate working the evening shift because I miss out on so much good TV and I, unfortunately do not have a DVR. This week, CNN is doing their much-hyped series entitled Black In America.  From what I can gather, Black In America  is a long, hard look at what life is like for African Americans these days and what strides their race and culture have made recently. How are blacks perceived these days? The answer would entirely depend on who you asked. And a lot of the answer I think would depend on what part of the country the person doing the perceiving grew up in and the African-American culture that they firsthand witnessed. Our experiences shape our perception.

I have been wanting to write a post like the following for nearly as long as I have had this blog. But, I always get worried that I will come off the wrong way and so I abandon the quest. I was stretching before my run this morning and watching a trailer for Black In America.  I do some of my best thinking while running and today was no exception. I think I have finally figured out the direction I want to go with my thoughts on stereotypes and prejudice.

First, check out one of my favorite blogs: STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE.

It is a celebration of stereotypes. More importantly, it is a recognition that stereotypes do  indeed exist and we can be open and talk about them…even laugh  about them!

To me, a stereotype is simply the result of a repetitive experience or encounter with something that eventually breeds some sort, or many sorts of generalizations. As we grow older and those generalizations go unchanged because our environment (those repetitive experiences and encounters) goes virtually unchanged, we subconsciously begin to accept those generalizations as reality. Your reality is different than mine, your buddy’s reality is different than yours, his mother’s reality is different than your buddy’s and her grandfather’s reality…well, he may have Dementia and be out of touch with any sort of reality, but that’s not my point.

My point is this: Stereotypes are the result of environmental factors,  and Prejudice  is embedded  or  implanted  within us by an outside force (usually another person).

WE CANNOT BE TAUGHT STEREOTYPES. STEREOTYPES ARE INNOCENT, EVEN IF THEY ARE “NEGATIVE” STEREOTYPES. WE DO NOT KNOW ANY BETTER UNLESS WE ARE PROVEN WRONG. STEREOTYPES ARE NOT  CONCSIOUS PHENOMENON. HATE - PREDJUDICE - IS TAUGHT, JUST LIKE ALGEBRA.

I was incredibly fortunate to be raised in a household that did not teach me to hate. Anyone. Period. For that priceless lesson, I must give many thanks to my wonderful parents. I do, however, have stereotypes embedded in my subconscious brain that will always be there until my life’s encounters and experiences blow them out of the water. I can’t help where I was born. I can’t help the people that have surrounded me throughout my life. I can’t go back and un-witness the things I have witnessed, nor do I desire to…

Because this is my blog and I can do whatever I want to do, I am going to take all of my stereotypes and put them right out on the table for everyone to see. The explanation of WHY I am doing this will come after I have laid it all out there. This may seem crude and shocking, but bear with me. First, I will be doing word association as best I can in order to bring out the most from my sub-conconsciousness. In other words, I will be saying the VERY FIRST words or short phrases that come to my mind in order to keep myself as honest and open as possible. Then I will give a short history of my experiences with each subset. Finally, I will attempt to examine the possible root causes of my stereotypical thought processes.

Here goes nothing.

Part II

For the next 30 seconds, type the first words that come to your mind when you hear of…African-Americans:

n**ger, soul food, rap, gangster, thug, Baptist, family, welfare, projects, baby mama, goofy, athlete, basketball, Willie Mays, chitlins, brutha, fried chicken, barbecue, crack, Dave Chapelle, saggy pants, do rag, corn rows, afro, proud

Wow. I actually surprised myself for a second with that first one. But then I got to thinking: Where I come from (Iowa) that word gets thrown around like its nothing. It always surprises me when I see a public figure get ridiculed for accidentally (or on purpose) letting that word slip. Growing up and to this day when I go back home, people use that word on a regular basis. Blacks and  Whites. To my parents generation and before them, the “n-word” had a lot of hate and prejudice driven behind it. For me, the word doesn’t carry much shock value. Perhaps that is why it was the first word that came to my head in my word association exercise. To me, I don’t feel as if the word carries a negative connotation. It certainly doesn’t carry a positive one. But as a society, I think we should simply let the word evolve as it is meant to evolve. It may die in the next generation or it may become just another common word in our vocabulary. But for now, I don’t think it should be as taboo as people are making it out to be in mainstream news and politics. I feel like if we take away the negative meanings behind words (after all, they are just  words), it will make it a lot harder to spread hate by using them!

But about my other word associations…

I grew up in Northwest Iowa, not exactly dominated my African-Americans, but nonetheless they were a part of my every day life growing up. My first black friends were two sisters on my tee-ball team. My first kiss was a black girl. My first girlfriend was a black girl. I was on an all-male dance team in high school and played sports throughout my entire youth with black team mates.

I became very close to one in particular. They called him “Butter” because when he was born he looked like a white baby! Butter quickly became one of my great friends. Butter was the first person that ever offered to sell me marijuana. Butter was the first person that ever took me into “The Projects,” or, in other words, one of the poorest communities in the entire city. Butter was a great athlete. Butter never graduated high school. Butter was the first kid I ever knew that joined a gang. Butter still sells drugs to this day. Butter was like so many other black kids that I knew.

I have grown up quite a bit by now. The company that I work for is extremely proud of its black employees and they are proud to be here. Many of them comprise the most powerful social organization within the company; a club of black employees that empower each other, help the community and give each other the social network and leadership opportunities to succeed. My boss is black. Most of my favorite co-workers are black. They are so witty and so  hilarious! They are constantly doing one of two things: 1) making me smile and/or 2) bringing me food.

The black people that surround me now appear to be completely different from those that I grew up with. The two groups share a few things in common, however. One is family. It seems like black families are so much larger and so much more connected than my family could ever dream of being. When my black friends would get together with their families for the holidays, they would have to do it at a park shelter because nobody’s home was big enough! Another similarity is faith. The black Baptist churches in the Midwest have the biggest and most active congregations of any church. Black people LOVE to praise the Lord!

Black people are by far the race that I have had the most socialization around. I have seen everything from the lowest of the low in the black community all the way up to the most successful and proud of them all. I have stereotypes that are a result of seeing both extremes with my own eyes. Once again, I am not ashamed of these stereotypes and I won’t deny that any of them are there.

For the next 30 seconds, type the first words that come to your mind when you hear of…Native Americans

Alcohol, drunk, casino, indians Macy, Sioux, War Eagle, meth, paint huffing, “Engines,” sweat ceremonies, Tatanka, Pocahontas, sense of humor

I didn’t have any encounters with Native Americans until junior high, despite growing up in a town called Sioux City. The area where I grew up had a strong history of Native American presence including a famous chief named “War Eagle” of the Sioux tribe. A beautiful monument overlooking the spot where the Big Sioux River meets the Missouri River displays “War Eagle” smoking a peace pipe and proudly looking over his land atop the Loess Hills.

Sadly, the only Native American kids I ever really knew as a kid were named Ike and John, and they rarely showed up to middle school…if they did, they caused a heck of a lot of trouble. I can remember driving through Macy, NE which is a short distance from where I grew up and just being completely flabbergasted as to how people could actually live in filth and shacks like the people there did…and Macy, NE is 95% Native American. The only other time I encountered a Native American is if I saw one stumbling around the streets near the Gospel Mission or Salvation Army, and of course there were some that were fortunate enough to work in the local Indian owned casinos.

To me, it was really hard learning about the legendary stories of Sacajuewa, Pocahontas and Crazy Horse in school, but then see the poverty and shame that those people are living in nowadays.

Once again, it took me leaving my hometown in order to get a different glimpse of the Native American culture. I attended the University of South Dakota where they absolutely GLORIFY Native Americans. Many social and lecture halls are named after the people and there are constantly food festivals and Pow Wows going on throughout the year. Yet, it only takes one trip out to Rosebud - one of the largest Indian reservations in the nation, located in western South Dakota - to bring me back to my old stereotypes. The poverty and alocholism in that area is astounding…I mean absolutely heartbreaking…

Then I moved to Nebraska, and got to know a white guy - a colleague - named Howard. He mentioned that he was taking Lakota language classes at a local community college. I was intrigued and mentioned that I had always wanted to attend an ceremonial sweat. Long story short, I got my opportunity…and it was incredible. It is called “inipi” and it is an experience that everyone should include on their bucket lists. I was a little nervous upon arrival at the sweat lodge, but my fears were quickly eased when I noticed how incredibley funny and goofy Native Americans can act! They tell jokes to ease tension and kid around ALL OF THE TIME. After five minutes of being there, I felt like I had been attending the lodge all of my life. It was easily one of the top 10 best nights of my 25 years on this Earth.

And yet, the sterotypes remain. They are still there because a person cannot just forget  about the things that he sees growing up. Native Americans are by far the most oppressed culture in America, and they have almost ALL resorted to self-destructive behavior in order to cope with that oppression. We are fighting a “War on Terror” right now in a far away country, yet when we came to this land, WE  were the terrorists, and look at the destruction we have caused for an entire race of people that once were so proud of this land.

Yes, I have my stereotypes, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t have empathy for Native Americans.

For the next 30 seconds, type the first words that come to your mind when you hear of…Mexicans/Hispanics

beaner, packing house, La Juanita, dirty, hard working, drugs, Astro Van, gook, gangs, friendly, Quince, soccer, salsa dancing, low rider trucks, homies, ESL, illegal, cocaine, vato, Catholic

Their is a town south of where I grew up that is cleverly called South Sioux City, but more commonly referred to as “Little Mexico.” If I had to take a stab at a guess, I would say that over 65 percent of that town is Hispanic. My hometown? About 30 to 40 percent.

Sadly, I was socialized to believe that the Mexicans in my town were almost solely resposible for the drug problem and mostly responsible for any of the crime. Looking back, I simply don’t think that is the case. I mean, yes, there are some Mexicans that work 18 hours a day on the kill floor of Sioux City’s packing houses, 6 days a week, all year round. How else is this humanly possible without the aid of a little nose candy or meth? Kids at my school would call the Mexican kids “beaners” and make fun of them for their Goodwill clothes or their personal hygiene. They were the brunt of jokes when 6-8 of them would hop out of ONE car coming into the school yard each morning. People in my hometown had the mentality that if you couldn’t speak English well, you basically shouldn’t come out in public. Every week the media would report of yet another illegal alien bust at some large manufacturing plant or packing house and then all I would hear around me is “…those damn Mexicans need to go back where they came from…”

If you blame a kid for developing sterotypes in that kind of atmosphere, then you are insane. And I did  develop sterotypes, a lot of which unfortunately stick with me today.

But the more I think about and get to know Mexican people, the more I really  like them. Mexican people are extremely hard workers and seem to be very  reliable employees. In fact, I am not quite sure that Sioux City’s economy - or a lot of other cities’ economies for that matter - would thrive without them. Mexican people do a lot of behind the scenes work and they are proud to do it. In fact, Mexicans take a lot of pride in being in America, in general. Yes, we see them with Mexican flags in their back windows, but we must understand that that is their heritage; a lot of them left their friends and families behind there. It doesn’t say that they are not proud to be Americans. Afterall, this country has given them freedoms far and beyond the ghettos of Mexico.

The thing we have to remember is that a lot of Mexicans had just one choice: Feed my family or suffer and die. The other thing that we have to remember is that gaining citizenship in America IS…NOT…AN…EASY…PROCESS! Do I agree that every Mexican needs to become a citizen in order to reap the benefits of citizenship? YES! But it simply is not that easy. I think our government should be putting more money into ENCOURAGING citizenship and less money into DISCOURAGING immigration. There are many Mexicans who are eager to work and earn a living while millions of Americans sit on their fat asses and take money from the governement like its nobody’s business.

See? Look! Now I have gotten clear off subject. All I am saying is that yes, I have developed many sterotypes over the years about Mexicans, but at the same time, I have empathy for a lot of them because my my Great-Grandparents (and probably yours) were immigrants at one time too. And it was rough. But all they wanted was a better life. So do many Mexicans. This is the land of the free, we should be helping them and encouraging their children to be better intigrated into school and activities to keep them from going down the wrong path to gangs and drugs.

Every single day I talk to the young Mexican man, “Sal” who empties my trash can at work. I use GOOGLE to help me with my translation and we have developed a warm friendship. Sal empties trash cans for a living, but he is also a strict Catholic with a wife and 2 kids. I’ve never seen him without a smile on his face. Sal talks about playing soccer on the weekends. Sal hopes that one day he will only work 8 hours a day instead of 16. Sal wants his kids to go to college. Sal told me that I should run in the Cinco De Mayo 5k, and so I did. Sal is my new friend and it is through him that I am developing new sterotypes about Mexicans. “Good” stereotypes. Sal is a good man. I could care less if Sal has a green card or not…

For the next 30 seconds, type the first words that come to your mind when you hear of…Asians.

quiet, reclusive, chink, skinny, gross food, smart, math, rats, dog meat, egg drop soup, marajuana, bowling alley, unsociable, shy, hard working, non-drinkers, non-smokers

It seemed that in my hometown community there were only a small handful of Asian people, most of which were Vietnamese. Nearly all of the Asian kids I grew up with, as I recall, were EXTREMELY intelligent. I can remember how good they were at math and science, and how they always made honor roll. Most of the Asian people I knew growing up were very nice people, but tended to stick together more than they ventured out. Asian people always seem to be approachable (and friendly), but they never did the approaching. If you smile at an Asian, you will surely get a smile back, but don’t expect them to initiate eye contact, or conversation for that matter.

I don’t know a lot about Asian marriages, but one of my stereotypes of Asian families is that whatever Dad (husband) says, goes. Its as if the men in Asian households run the show and that is the way it is. In Sioux City, IA if you are an Asian and you have been in America for awhile, you probably own a restaurant or you are some type of engineer or doctor. If you are a fairly recent Vietnamese immigrant, you work a one of the packing houses and you are at the bowling alley with at least 30 of your friends every Friday and Saturday. If you are Asian and live in Sioux City, you just LOVE  to bowl.

If you are Asian, I don’t see you out at the bar, or drinking at all for that matter. I don’t ever see you smoking cigarettes either. If you are an Asian teenager with parents that have some money, then you drive a Honda Civic with a ridiculous exhaust system.

There is not a single Asian person that works on the floor of my building (that’s 500 people) and I don’t think I have seen one walking around the rest of the building. I don’t know where they all work. There is an Asian family that lives directly next door to Jaci and I. We have been in the house for 4 months now and we have only seen  the husband one time. I walked over an introduced myself to the wife and she simply smiled and nodded her head to me. If I say hi to the children, they squeal and run inside.

To me, Asians don’t go out of their way to be noticed or recognized, but they are good people with good heads on their shoulders. It seems like they want to mind their own business and are perfectly happy with us minding ours. But I’ll tell you what, I lived with a Chinese gal while I was in Wales and man! did some of the stuff she cooked STINK to high heavens!

Other than an ENORMOUS marajuana bust in Sioux City that was operating out of 6 rental houses and totalled MILLIONS of dollars, I have never had or seen a problem with any Asian people. Sure, just like the rest of the groups above, I have my stereotypes from growing up…I’m not gonna lie. 

For the next 30 seconds, type the first words that come to your mind when you hear of…Indians (from India).

don’t use toilet paper, vegetarian, hard to understand, computers, head covers, dot on forehead, curry, nice, friendly, strict, Hindu, cricket, elephants, caste system, letter “R” sounds funny when they say it, stick together, moustache

The first time I ever encountered anyone from India was in college. Sure, there was one here and there in Sioux City, especially after Gateway (computers) headquarters was built in North Sioux City. But, I really started seeing them in large numbers when I got to the University of South Dakota. It appeared that every single computer programming major at that school was from India. They always walked around campus in groups of 3 or more and the strangest part was that I rarely saw women. That led me to believe that Indian women must not attend university. Is that a cultural thing?

I moved to Wales my senior year of college and very briefly at one point lived with two guys from India. Those two gentelmen were very nice guys, but like many Asians that I know, they kept to themselves quite a bit. They cooked with curry every single meal. And the most peculiar thing of all is that they used a plastic cup filled with water to clean their bottoms instead of toilet paper. I never got the courage to ask them about that one, though. They were both computer enginneering majors (big surprise) and they moved out hastily before the semester was over. I think it was because my other roomate made them feel very uncomfortable and would threaten them on a daily basis. But they never retaliated. They were very cordial, patient and passive people.

At work, our entire IT department consists of people from India. They all eat together and they almost always have a salad and hot tea for lunch. They will talk your ear off if you get them going, but unfortunatley they are a little hard to understand. Again, they are pretty much all men, no women (I don’t think). My favorite Indian person is a security guard at my place of employment named “Mr. Sing.” There are about 5000 people that work here and I am almost positive that he knows all of them by name, and addresses them as so. He has a chair to sit on but he always stands, presumabley so that he does not miss a chance to greet someone. 

I think every Indian person I have ever known has a moustache.

From movies such as Bend it like Becham and books like Ghandi’s biography, I have always assumed that Indian family structure is pretty strict and traditional. I think that every member of the family has their place and their duty and is looked down upon (maybe even shunned) for stepping outside that role.

Indian people are no different. My life experiences have led me to develop stereotypes about them and their way of life, and as with the rest of my stereotypes above, I am not ashamed nor proud of them. They are simply a reflection of my nurturing and experience. Nothing more. Nothing less. 
 

PART III

This, the shortest of these three sections, is simply my attempt to sum up my thoughts about my own stereotypes and how myself and others can be better people once we are aware of our personal stereotypes.

Saying that “…all Indian people are dirty and have poopy butts…” doesn’t make you a bad person. Saying that “…all black people are Baptist…” doesn’t make you right. All of us have stereotypes about other cultures and races and if we have ever done even the slightest bit of self reflection, then we recognize that we have hundreds, if not thousands of them. Why are we so ashamed of our stereotypes?

We need to EMBRACE them! Once we can come out and be honest with ourselves, then we can begin the process of challenging ourselves to break down those stereotypes by living a little:

- Go to a Cinco De Mayo Parade or your locally owned Mexican restaurant. Take a Spanish class. Volunteer at La Casa Latina.

- Go to a Pow Wow or Native American Pride festival. Volunteer at a 12-step program on an Indian reservation.

- Read a book on Hinduism or Ghandi.

- Go to an All-Black church or ask your black co-worker out for a drink. 

- I need to take my own advice and continue to try and intereact with my Asian neighbors. I need to keep telling myself that they are not rude, it is just their culture to be passive and reclusive.

More importantly, we need to recognize our own stereotypes so that we do not pass them on to our children in the form of PREDJUDICE. I wish I could have seen the show Black in America, but I like to think that it celebrated the leaps and bounds that good parenting and upbringing in the last 2 generations has done for race relations amoung Blacks and Whites. But we still have work to do. We will ALWAYS have work to do.

Our country is going through a rough enough time as it is. The last thing we need is racial tension. We live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Freedom means that everyone that is here deserves to be here. Bravery now means that we need to find the courage within ourselves to confront our own  stereotypes, not only to better ourselves, but for the future of America.
 

Ben Franklin once said (in a letter to someone he had borrowed money too):

“I do not pretend to give such a Sum; I only lend it to you. When you […] meet with another honest Man in similar Distress, you must pay me by lending this Sum to him; enjoining him to discharge the Debt by a like operation, when he shall be able, and shall meet with another opportunity. I hope it may thus go thro’ many hands, before it meets with a Knave that will stop its Progress. This is a trick of mine for doing a deal of good with a little money.”

What an incredible concept. If any of you have ever read the book or seen the movie Pay it Forward, then you know what I mean.

I work the 2-10 P.M. shift Monday through Friday. Jaci and I have been extremely busy with wedding planning and entertaining guests and relatives on the weekends. God knows that I am truly blessed in nearly all aspects of my life, however every person on this Earth is in some way, shape or form in need  of something in their life. Everyone will tell you that there is at least one thing in their life that is lacking; something they need more of: Affection, money, sex, religion, hair, love, happiness etc. For me, I need more TIME.  Nobody but Doc Brown and Marty McFly have ever been able to harvest time, so I suppose I will just have to continue my efforts to make the most out of the time that I do  have.

But God Bless my neighbor, Doug. I came home last night at 10:30 P.M. and my entire front lawn was mowed and trimmed. Something I had been putting off for far to long. I  know that he  knew how busy I have been lately. We talked about it over the fence the other day. Doug may have some voids in his life, but I don’t think that time is one of them. And leave it to a good ol’ Midwestern boy to take something that he has an abundance of and give it away to someone who needs it.

For the most part, that is the single biggest reason I absolutely love this part of the country. People are so willing to give and give and give here. At the baseball game Sunday I saw a Dad order his daughter a snow cone from a roaming vendor. The vendor gave it to the little girl and the Dad got a panic look on his face as he realized he left his wallet in the car. The vendor looked at the little girl and whispered under his breath to Dad, “Don’t worry about it.”

I don’t know where I am going with this and I don’t plan on editing it to make it sound like I actually have a point. All I am saying is that the entire world would be a better place with a little Midwestern mentality…with a little bit of “Payitforwardness”…with a little bit of mowing your neighbors lawn for them…by giving something to someone for free when they probably should have paid for it…

Think Globally, Act Locally.

That’s what I’m going to do. Ben Franklin (and Jesus for that matter): I am not going to let you down. Can one good deed by one measly person make a world of difference in one and/or many  lives? It did for me.

Stay tuned to find out how I pay it forward.

This weekend I:

1) Went to a new pub in town called “No Dogs Allowed” Friday night. While in the outdoor beer garden my two buddies and I were approached my a woman who informed us of a girl checking out Buddy #1 and liking what she saw. I approached said girl bypassing the middleman (or crazy old middle aged  woman that is) and introduced both myself and Buddy #1. I’m not the fashion police, but I could have made a citizen’s arrest. This girl was wearing a tube top with some sort of “X” shaped bra sticking out the back and around her neck. She had a serious case of “tennis-balls-in-a-tube-sock” syndrome, and I quickly returned to my picnic table and rocked back and forth for a little while trying to come up with some positive words of encouragement for Buddy #1.

2) Went on a 10 mile bike ride. Jaci and I have both decided that our Quadricep muscles could use some work to take the strain off our knees from running and Saturday was a cross-training day. I rode by a sod farm that reminded me of Ireland. It was so green and healthy looking from all of this rain we are getting that I almost wanted to stop and take a bite out of it or make a casserole or something.

3) Bought Jaci’s wedding band.

DISCLAIMER! The following represents my distaste and frustration for wedding consumerism (rip-off) and should not be interpreted as saying that my incredible bride-to-be is not worth the most beautiful ring in the world and then some, but…

The cost of my wedding band? 6o dollars.
The cost of her  wedding band? 400 dollars.

Jeepers…

4) Went disc golfing. If you don’t know what disc golfing is, you can read about it here and here. I took my dog along with me failing to make the connection of it being 97 degrees outside and her being a little black dog. I brought a 32 oz. Nalgene Bottle with me that contained extremely cold and refreshing water in it, along with her water bowl so that we could take pit stops. We did fine for the first 5 holes, but after that is when the trouble began! She had already consumed about 3/4 of the water in the bottle and began acting very sluggish. I assumed - and probably assumed correctly - that it was simply to hot for her to be out tearing around outside. Then tragedy struck…in the form of a bumble bee, unleashing its fury onto (into) Annie’s paw. She stopped in mid run and hit the ground, like in the old war movies when somebody gets shot. I performed emergency surgery (with my thumbnail) to extract the stinger; then I took my shirt off and wrapped it around her hind leg to stop the bleeding until we could get her to the nearest hospital (OK, not really); then I had to clean the wound to prevent Gangrene from setting in by dipping her foot into her water bowl. And finally, I had to carry her to safety through the woods (the row of trees lining the park) to the command center (my pick-up truck) where I could get her the supplies she desperately needed (some old animal crackers lying on the floor in the back seat). I waited there until the rest of my party arrived (when they were done disc golfing) and Annie and I made it back home. She barely made it through the next hour (she had diarrhea for some reason), put she persevered and was back to herself in no time (drinking water out of the toilet and eating used Kleenexes). She truly is  a miracle dog.

5) Had an impromptu camping trip. OK, so it wasn’t actually a trip. You see, Jaci had to work until 11 P.M. on Saturday night and was really bummed out that we couldn’t go camping after all, as we had tentatively planned earlier in the week. So I decided to bring the camping to HER!!! I set up our tent in the backyard and used some old bricks to make a firepit. We had a nice little bonfire and I got 6 Keystone Lights (16 oz.) for 4 dollars and it was a swell ol’ time!

6) Was very proud of my girlfriend. At church on Sunday, Jaci got up in front of the whole congregation (she hardly EVER does things to draw attention to herself) and asked for prayers for her cousin Corey. She was pretty choked up but I was proud of her. An update for anyone interested: Corey has a fever that just won’t break, but other than that he is hanging in there pretty well.

7) RAN 4 MILES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For those of you that say “Woopity Doo” then go fluctuate yourself. For me, this is a huge milestone. I have been running ever since I quit smoking and have never ran more than a 5k (3.1 miles). For those of you that don’t know, Jaci and I are training for a half marathon and this 4 miler was really special for me. I have never ran that far in my life at one time. We even missed a turn and came to a dead end at one point and had to backtrack. So, you could technically say we ran almost 4 and a half  miles! By the end I was running hunched over so much I could almost see Jaci running behind me through my legs, but then I realized she was actually beside me smacking my butt and winking as she blew by me on the last hill as if this was the easiest thing she had ever done in her life.

8 ) Went to an Omaha Royals baseball game.They had canned food day and if you brought one perishable item you got in free. We took in the baseball game for a grand total of about 50 cents worth of creamed corn. SWEET! I applied sunscreen heavily (and by “heavily” I mean I douched my entire body with half the bottle) before we went in and it did not have enough time to soak in my skin before I started sweating profusely. Before I knew it, I was covered in white slimy stuff dripping off of me like I just ran through a wall of bird crap. I had to go out by the concessions stands and wipe myself down with napkins to the tune of appalled looks and curious faces on little kids. It had been awhile since I had been to a baseball game, though, and I really did enjoy myself!

9) Went to Hu Hot. After baking in the hot sun at the baseball game and working up an appetite, we decided to finally use a gift card from one of Jaci’s friends that was from Christmas 2007 for Hu Hot Mongolian Grill. If you aren’t familiar with this chain of restaurants, it is basically a buffet. Only, at this buffet, you are given a bowl and a HUGE  table full of raw ingredients. You walk along that table filling your bowl with meats, vegetables, noodles, tofu and sauces until it is spilling over the sides. At the end of the table you give it to a grill master who is sporting two large metal spatula looking things and he dumps your bowl of stuff on the grill and throws it around and up in the air, etc. and then transplants the whole shebang onto a plate. I ended up devouring 2 bowls of food, a bowl of fried rice, a bowl of salad and a pitcher of Coke (a-cola). It definitely appeared as if I was attempting to counteract my 4 mile run earlier that day by about 400%.

10) Got a marriage license. Surprisingly, in Nebraska the formal, official and legal process of saying you are going spend the rest of your life with somebody only takes a short form (one side of one sheet of paper) and about 15 minutes of sitting there trying to read National Geographic en Espanol while the thing gets typed up by some blond bimbo who calls herself the Register of Deeds (more like Registered D-Cups). It was pretty easy and pretty painless and only took 2 quarters (30 minutes) in the parking meter!

A decade. That’s a lot of time to get something done. Wouldn’t you agree?

Today I had some down time at work and a colleague of mine walked by my office (and by “office” I mean my 4 1/2′ by 6′ cubicle) and made a comment about the article I was reading on the Internet. The headline read:

“Gore wants US to produce all power through Earth-friendly energy sources within 10 years”

After catching a glimpse of the text in bold, my beloved colleague said something along the lines of:  “…I could fart under the covers and it would still smell in 10 years. A decade is hardly any time at all when you want to shut down all the coal plants and run the country on windmills…”  Does he have a point? Maybe a little one. America does indeed have trillions invested in our coal energy grid. But as far as a decade being a short amount of time to make dramatic changes? A quick Google search shows just what America can do when they put their minds to a task. Check these out:

1) Hoover Dam - 4 years
2) First man on the moon - 8 years after JFK promised it to Congress
3) Panama Canal - 9 and 1/2 years after Woodrow Wilson broke ground.
4) American Revolution - 8 years
5) Transcontinental Railroad - 6 years
6) First practical fixed wing aircraft - took only two years after Kitty Hawk to make it happen.
7) Golden Gate Bridge - 4 and 1/2 years
8 ) World Trade Center Towers - 6 years
9) Empire State Building - 1 and 1/2 years
10) Win World War II - 6 years

Nobody can honestly say that America isn’t capable of getting together and doing something about our addiction to fossil fuels after looking at the events above. But, you know what the problem is?

Bipartisan Politics

The state of Texas just approved a plan to pump 4.9 BILLION more dollars into its already booming windmill operation. Remember, Texas is the center of the American oil industry. Where are they getting the money to do this? Consumers. The energy consumers of Texas will pay an additional 3 to 4 dollars on their electricity bill a month for the next 5 or 6 years. That’s it. The upgrade will in-turn be able to power 4 million more Texas homes. If the oil capital of the United States can pull something this extraordinary off, there is no reason - NONE! - that the rest of America cannot follow suit. Can you imagine the money we will save in the long run by spending a total of about 300 dollars per household over the course of 6 years?

Maybe Al Gore is a little bit overly-ambitious, but not much.

In the mean time, the technology is out there to capture carbon emissions from coal powerplants and bury them in the ground instead of pumping them into the atmosphere. Many utility companies evidently think this technology is not cost effective and will cut into their profits *sniffle, sniffle* 

It is amazing how Capitalism and Bipartisan politics can combine forces to make sure that absolutely nothing ever gets accomplished for the good in this country.

Yesterday the California Parole Board denied Susan Atkins compassionate release from prison after her family has begged for the 60 year old, former Charles Manson follower be let go on account of a terminal brain tumor.

Now, here this: I consider myself a good Christian. And I understand that forgiveness is the main principle of Christianity. But I simply must say that I could not agree more with the CA Parole Board’s judgement in this case. That woman slit the throat of a pregnant woman of 8 months and used the woman’s blood to write obscenities on the door of the house! Then, not until years after the murder did she ever even own up to the crimes of Manson and his followers, and has never apologized.

Life in prison should mean LIFE IN PRISON. To have compassion on someone regardless of their lack of compassion for their victims seems very unfair and unjust…and that is unconstitutional.

I think that forgiving murderers is the Christian thing to do. I hope that the families of the victims in this case have prayed to God for help in forgiving Susan Atkins for what she did. But that doesn’t mean that she shouldn’t serve out her entire sentence. Now that Ms. Atkins reportedly has only 6 months to live, I think that she had better stop worrying about “compassionate release” and pray night and day that the good Lord has compassion for her soul.

Today will be my first review of two different albums in one post! The reason being, I have had these two albums for quite awhile, but I have been a little busy with wedding planning. Also, the new O.A.R. album came out today (Jaci sent me a picture message of her holding it. She went out and bought it for me as soon as I left for work today, God bless her little heart). That being the case, I thought I had better knock out these two reviews before I forget what they sound like considering I will be listening to the new O.A.R. album non-stop for the next fortnight (at least).

So let’s dig in:

Flobots - Fight with ToolsBefore I get into my review, let me just tell a little story: I had some friends in town this past weekend, so Jaci and I took them all out to a dance club. A hip-hop song came on and everyone stampeded to the dance floor. I came to find out that this song is entitled Lollipop and the artist is “Lil’ Wayne.” I want to show you the lyrics to the chorus of this song, unaltered and in all of their glory:

Shawty wanna thug
Bottles in the club
Shawty wanna hump
And ooo I like to touch ya lovely lady lumpsThat’s it. And when they aren’t repeating that same chorus OVER and OVER they are talking about “Shawty” licking some lucky fella like a Lollipop…and then the song is over and everyone is sad. I stood there at the club this weekend wondering just where in the world the talent aspect of the hip-hop music scene has gone. Gone are the days when rappers wrote poetry about growing up on the street and gang violence in Southern California. At the age of 25, I really don’t feel like an old-timer, but then I listen to rap music these days like the songs from this weekend’s club and I simply cannot grasp how incredibly SHITTY hip-hop is nowadays!

Am I weird because I long for the days when rap music made at least somewhat  of a statement about something? Am I weird for thinking that rap music should strive to be an art form like every other genre out there? Tell me, where is the artistic expression in a song about how “Shawty” wants to fu*k a thug in a club with bottles of alcohol around and then then perform oral sex on that said thug resembling the licking of a lollipop? Lil’ Wayne: You are the reason that I rarely purchase hip-hop music anymore (case in point: last hip-hop purchase was back in late March when I bought M.I.A.’s cd).

Excuse me while I dismount from my ramblings…

Ok. I’m Better. My apologies. What I was trying to say was Thank GOD for musical groups like the “Flobots.” They are a sigh of relief to the hip-hop industry in my opinion. Formed in 2000 in Denver, CO, Flobots only hit it big within the last few months after winning a radio station contest and beginning their U.S tour with some pretty big bands and a few late night talk show gigs.

The album Fight With Tools  is more than just 12 tracks. It is a manifesto! The opening track argues that there is a war going on for our minds, with the battleground somewhere in between the media’s overwhelming influence and the government’s lies. The Flobots are the self-proclaimed “insurgents” in this war for our minds. The album art contains pictures of riot police and band members wearing American flag bandannas over their faces in militia-like fashion. The songs of the album demand that Americans take social action in many forms; that we strive for a society free from racism, sexism, political corruption, senseless violence and the like. The cool thing is, Flobots practice what they preach! They have formed several foundations and activist groups of their own. Check out these websites if you are interested:

 http://www.americawillbe.org/
http://www.fightwithtools.org/

Flobots fit into the Rock-Rap genre, but they are far from typical. On top of a 4-piece band, they are also comprised of a trumpet player and viola player. If any of you don’t know, a viola is basically a seriously upgraded violin. It sounds so deep and rugged, yet so sleek and sensitive at the same time…kind of like if you were to get David Hasselhoff and Casanova together to sing you a duet lullaby.

I absolutely cannot wait to see these gentleman (and one girl) live in concert when they come here to Omaha on August 22nd. They are playing at a venue called The Waiting Room which is a pretty intimate little place.

I would suggest going to the Flobots’ MySpace page and checking out a few of their songs to see if you like them. Personally, I think the entire album is incredible. My favorite track is actually their first single off of this album, “Handlebars.” There are tons of ways you could interpret this song, but I tend to think it is about loss of innocence. It begins telling a story about riding bikes with no handle bars for the first time and drawing comic books with our friends, and progresses all the way to witnessing missiles that are guided by satellites and holocausts that are “..end[ing] the planet…” If we all took the creativity that we had as a child and applied it to some of the worlds problems, it would be a breathtaking world to live in.

To sum up the Flobots sound, get a huge kettle and throw equal parts all of the following bands into it:

Cake
311
Phunk Junkies
Papa Roach
Gorillaz
Yellowcard
Eminem

Stir well and add a heaping tablespoon of liberal ideologies and a disgust for the current political arena. Turn down heat and let simmer for hours on end in your CD player or I-Pod. Don’t forget to smile and tell yourself that true hip-hop is not dead!

Jakob Dylan - Seeing Things

I gotta hand it to Jakob Dylan: Unlike so many kids with famous parents - not to mention any names (Myley Cirus, Kelly Osbourne, Lisa Marie Presley, Brook Hogan, Sean Lennon, Nicole Richie, that Judd girl etc.) - he really has done a remarkable job of separating himself from his father and creating a pretty independent sound and name for himself. That is pretty tough to do when your father is the Jesus Christ of folk music and arguably not only the greatest musician of all time, but also the 2nd and 3rd greatest (because nobody even comes close). And if you are absolutely insane  enough to not know who I am referring too, I speak of the one and only Bob Dylan.

Jakob hasn’t ever appeared to have any desire to follow in Dad’s footsteps or even relish in any bit of Dylan Sr.’s fame and glory. No, Jakob seems to have always been pretty content with his band The Wallflowers which he started in 1989 and recorded 7 albums with through 2007 when he finally began to throw around the idea of a solo album. Jakob and Dad have never performed on stage together or recorded anything as a joint venture.

Needless to say, I was pretty excited when my sister informed me that Jakob Dylan had a solo album out. But I must say, I noticed something before I even tore the cellophane wrapper off of the CD. As much as Jakob has tried to distinguish himself from his Dad both in music sound and in the music business, he sure can’t do a damn thing about his genes! At 39 years old and without the rest of The Wallflowers standing behind him on an album covers, he looks more like his Pops than ever before…

But this isn’t about his look. This is a music review for God’s Sake! On with it!

The album Seeing Things  is quite short; only ten tracks long. If any of you have ever heard The Wallflowers  then you know that Jakob does not have the nasal-y voice of his father. His is more of the raspy, rugged and sexy sounding nature…very breathy. If you had never seen his face before you might kind of picture him as having a 5 o’clock shadow by the sound of his voice. Very scruffy,  ya know? So, even though he has gone solo, I still can’t say the man sounds much like his father.

I am going to go out on a limb and say that Seeing Things  kind of sounds like a mix between Tom Petty and Norah Jones. It makes me want to drive down an old country road in a beat up old pick-up truck with the windows down wearing some aviator sunglasses. I really do enjoy the album…very much so. It is not anything extraordinary but I am glad I picked it up. For his first-ever solo venture, I would say he created a very nice sound. Thank You to my sister for recommending it to me. I love ya!!!

I know it is a busy world and there is a lot to pray about, but if anyone has a second I would sure appreciate a quick prayer for Jaci’s (my fiance’s) cousin Corey. Corey is 21 years old and just had to have emergency skull and brain surgery. He lives in a farm in North Dakota and was trying to unload a four-wheeler from a pick-up truck when it rolled backwards on him. The surgery required 18 pieces of skull fragment to be removed from his brain and a big ol’ titanium plate to be attached to hold his skull together.

Now we wait patiently while they have him sedated for the next 96 hours. Apparently his brain pressure cannot go above 20 or that is bad! The doctors also fear meningitis for some reason. And then there is always the possibility of brain damage once he wakes up. But for now, let’s just pray he wakes up, shall we?

 ”For I will restore health to you and heal you of your wounds,” says the Lord. (Jeremiah 30:17)

Thanks,
Andy

A while back I wrote a little article about an ultra marathon runner named Yiannis Kouros. I couldn’t believe how much of an animal this guy was! When The Proclaimers wrote their hit song “I’m Gonna Be,”  Yiannis Kouros was probably like: “So, let me get this straight-you are going to walk 500 miles…and then walk 500 more, just to be the the man who walked a thousand miles to fall down at someone’s door? I don’t get what the big deal is…I run 1000 miles and set world records doing it. It’s not even that hard.”

Well, Yiannis…I’m sorry, but you just don’t seem like as much of a bad-ass as you used to. I have found someone else to take your place. I am soooo  over you. That someone is my new hero and motivation in my quest to complete my half marathon. His name is Dean Karnazes.

I hope this guy donates his body to science when he dies. But to be honest, it doesn’t really seem like he can  die. The feats he has performed are un-human. How a mere mortal could pull off some of the things he has pulled off is far beyond my scope of understanding. Lets look at some of his accomplishments:

1) By age 11 he had hiked the Grand Canyon from rim to rim and had also successfully climbed Mount Whitney which is, ya know, only the HIGHEST FRICKING  mountain in the United States!

2) By age twelve he was cycling 40 miles a day and while still in junior high he went to the California State Long-Distance Championships and WON (as in beat everybody  there) the one-mile competition.

3) In his Freshman year of high school he ran his first marathon.

4) Won the Badwater Ultramarathon: As my friend AxsDeny from The Vax Cave suggested in a previous thread, anyone who is interested in supreme athleticism should watch the documentary Running on the Sun which is about this particular race. Its a 135 mile foot race starting at 282 feet below sea level in Badwater Basin, CA and ends at Whitney Portal; a incredible 8360 feet above sea level! On top of this 135 mile run you have temperatures of 120 or more!

5) Won  the Vermont 100, a race in Vermont that covers nearly 15,000 feet of elevation changes when it is all said and done.

6) Ran 148 miles on a treadmill in 24 hours.

7) Ran 350 miles in 80 hours. Without stopping…

8 ) Has ran the 1000 mile/10-day “Buckleholder Run” 11 times!

9) He has swam across the San Francisco Bay.

10) Ran the 1st annual (inaugural) South Pole run, a marathon in one of the coldest places on Earth, in tennis shoes while all others wore snow shoes.

11) And the most bad-ass of all…in my opinion anyway: He completed the North Face Endurance 50.  Never heard of it? Let me explain: 50 marathons in 50 consecutive days!!! The final marathon was the New York City marathon and when he was finished he decided that instead of hopping on a plane back to San Francisco, he would simply run ALL…THE…WAY…BACK. But maybe he is human afterall: He stopped in St. Charles, MO because he missed his family and flew the rest of the way home.

I don’t have too many regrets in my life. In fact, if I had a time machine I would probably hang my towels on it or throw a sheet over it and make it into a coffee table. I think the only thing I would go back in time for would be this past Sunday morning where I would promptly walk up to myself, kick myself in the junk and use a staple gun to staple a picture of Dean Karnazes to my forehead and tell myself to shut the hell up and quit whining about the measly 3 miles I just ran.

I would like to announce to the world - or the 4 people that occasionally read my blog - that as of today, July 10th, 2008, I am officially credit card debt-free. I made the last payment of 308 dollars today and abruptly cancelled my one and only Visa card. When I say abruptly I mean I called Capital One, gave my information to a lady, answered a bunch of security questions, told her what I wanted, got transferred, sat on hold, got some other lady, answered the same questions, got told I would be transferred to an account specialist to complete my cancellation, sat on hold for 10 minutes while my cell phone got really hot against my ear, went through hell with the account specialist and was treated like it was a deadly sin to cancel a credit card after I hadn’t even used it in over 4 years and finally was told that the official cancelling of my credit card would take place sometime in the next 30 to 60 days but that if I used my credit card between now and then (after telling her repeatedly that it is in 4 pieces in a landfill somewhere) it would automatically activate my account again and something about accidental death and dismemberment.

PHEW!

Guinness Book of World Records? Longest run-on sentence ever???

But anyway, enough about my experience just trying to cancel the dang thing, my point of this celebratory blog is that I finally have the sucker out of my life. I am soooo  moved on. Seriously, I began racking up debt on that thing my senior year of college - 2003 and 2004 - and eventually got to the point where I was literally almost maxed out. My balance at one time was $1999.16 with a credit limit of $2000 dollars. I graduated in June of 2004 and began making payments on it…minimum payments.

My taking so long to pay it off was a result of two things. Number one, I was just plain irresponsible. I didn’t care how long it would take me with the minimum payment to pay it off. Number two, I never looked at my statement. I would simply go online whenever I remembered and make the minimum payment with the click of a mouse.

What I did not know is that with the minimum payment and my APR, it would have taken me 97 months (8 years, 1 month) to get to a zero balance. I also would have ended up paying $1208 dollars in interest. But it was worse than that…

Because I never looked at my statements, I forgot that I had signed up for some sort of payment protection program that was charging my card 13 bucks or so a month and also I forgot that I was donating 15 bucks a month to Green Peace out of that credit card. That meant that with my minimum payment, minus finance charges and the two charges above, I was only paying about 10 dollars a month in principle. That means that it would have taken me 200 months (over 16 years) to pay off my balance in full.

 So needless to say, when I met the love of my life who just happens to be the most responsible manager of money in the whole world, she motivated me to get this thing paid off. And by “motivated” I mean she raised one eyebrow and gave me a stern look last September and pretty much demanded that I pay the thing off before we got married.

So I did. And I took George’s stimulus check and put it toward my credit card debt, too. Which brings me to another point: My buddy said something along the lines of “…that check was suppose to stimulate the economy…you were suppose to go out and spend it on a ridiculous feat of electronic engineering, not paying down debt…” My response to that is this: By paying off credit card debt, we make it so the banks can loan that much money to some other schmuck who is going to go off spending way over his head and make the banks a heck of a lot of money on interest, and God knows they need that money with the housing crisis and all. The same goes with student loans. If I would have used my entire stimulus check on paying my student loans, that would have freed up 600 dollars for my lender to borrow to somebody else like an incoming freshman who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford college tuition. Now, in four years he is going to graduate college and buy a shiny new car with his college graduate career income. It’s all a cycle to me. No matter how you spend your stimulus check weather it be on a flat screen TV or investing it into a mutual fund, it is now or eventually going to stimulate the economy in one form or another.

But anyway, thanks to Uncle George’s stimulus check and me knuckling down to the grindstone, I have kissed credit card debt’s ass goodbye and it feels good. Debt is slavery. Plain and simple. Now I move on to the next debt mountain…my stupid truck loan…WHO THE HELL PUTS NO DOWN PAYMENT ON A 6 YEAR TRUCK LOAN RIGHT OUT OF COLLEGE LIKE A FRICKING IDIOT?!?!?!?

Oh yeah…me…woops.

Well, as I mentioned last week (I think), Jaci and I are training for a half marathon (13.1 miles). Throughout the course of that training we are required to do a series of “Cross Training” activities on our running off-days. The other night I suggested that we do sit-ups.

Now, Jaci went to college on a softball scholarship. She is a fricking hard body (she won’t ever admit it, but what girl does, right?) and she has done her fair share of sit-ups in her lifetime. I on the other hand may not have a pregnant looking man-belly, but my tummy is not exactly what you would call “washboard abs.” In fact, it is more like a can of Crisco  that has been left out in the sun. The only sit-ups I have ever done are sitting up out of bed, and that isn’t very often considering I usually employ the less urgent method of rolling onto the floor, army crawling to the bathroom and lifting myself up by the toilet seat so that I can have my morning pee. Jaci’s abs? You could bounce a quarter off those puppies.

So she agreed to do sit-ups with me. I could hardly believe  the arsenal of sit-up exercises Jaci utilizes. She must know at least 50 different ways to work out the stomach muscles. In asking her to help me, I soon realized I was way over my head. But the worst came when she suggested that we do a workout called “throw downs.” What you do is this:

Lay on your back and lift your legs in the air so that your body forms an “L” shape. Have a buddy - or in my case a really intense bootcampish girlfriend - stand behind you at your head. Then your buddy pushes your feet toward the floor as hard as they can and you have to not frickin’  let them touch the ground. Lift them back up and repeat until you are whining like a sissy and begging for the torture to stop (for yours truly it was after only six  throw downs).

Let me just tell you: I spent the next few days walking around hunched over, insisting that I had multiple hernias. My stomach muscles hurt so incredibly bad that it felt like I was going to have diarrhea…constantly. If the cramps in my abs were anything like what it feels like to have “that time of the month,” then ladies: never…ever…ever…ever…will I underestimate what you go through. In fact, I considered buying some Midol  to see if it could suppress my agony, but then I realized I wasn’t really feeling bloated or moody so I stuck with Ibuprofen.

Besides the torture of getting my flabby abdominals in shape, the half-marathon training is going really well. We are into our second week and we are going strong. We motivate each other. We encourage each other. We drive each other. I am having a lot of fun running with my best friend. I have more energy during the day and I sleep better at night. And, of course, I just want to look good naked.

It was 2 in the morning. It started off as a “Reverse Mohawk.” I am glad I have grown up and matured in my mid-twenties…

If any of you are into literature, then you are familiar with the writing technique called “Stream of Consciousness” (S.O.C.) writing. It is basically when a writer puts to paper the first thoughts that come to his mind, not stopping much to include punctuation or worry about sentence structure. One example that I can think of comes from James Joyce’s book Ulysses  where S.O.C writing is all over the fricking place. The last words of the book come to mind when a character named Molly Bloom is talking about Leopold and the very first moment that she finds out she is in love with him:

“…I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

So, instead of just writing a post about my Fourth of July weekend, which I was going to do, I thought I would give S.O.C. writing a shot. So here you go:

Thursday evening WORK! will it ever be 10 o’clock? Tick tock take a break, try to stay awake…only 8 P.M come ON! Too excited for work, too excited for 3 day weekend to get here…been sober too long just want to go have a beer to kick things off HOORAY! I read an old Sports Illustrated  to pass the time and now it’s 10 P.M…actually 9:50 but who’s counting? Get on elevator SORRY security guard guy, no time to talk, I am outta here I’ve got drinking to do. Get home. My buddy is in town, other buddy comes over and we are off to the Sean O’Casey’s pub…MMmmm 15 beers on tap…corn beef and cabbage sounds good…no, on second thought, just beer, I have hot dogs at home. Black and Tan? No, straight Guinness will do. 7 dollar pitchers are you fu*king kidding me? Oh well, no work tomorrow. Special occasion. Drink until closing time hanging out in an over sized booth with my best friends. Bartender has a handlebar moustache. I want one. He gives us free beers at closing time if we promise to chug them with him while he does the Charleston  dance outside the booth. Time to go after chugging. Evidently it is time to puke up the beer I just chugged all over the parking lot. No worries, at least I feel less bloated. Tony drives home. Probably shouldn’t have. Oh well. Only 5 blocks. Got home HEY! I’VE GOT AN IDEA! Reverse Mohawk. That looks funny. Take a picture with your camera phone. OK, now shave my head so that I only have a ring on the outside and bald on top. OK, take more pictures. I’m close to passing out. Brandon takes more pictures of me. HAHA, funny guy in underwear with self-inflicted male pattern baldness. Harms leaves. Tony sleeps in backyard. 4:30 A.M. 13 year olds setting off fireworks across the street. Not happy. Get up. Walk over. SHUT UP! Doesn’t do any good. Call cops. Go back to bed. Rise and shine!!! It’s 8 A.M. and I need to mow the lawn. Neighbor Doug is outside. I am hung over and my hair looks funny. He laughs. We bullshit. I mow. Clean the house. Expecting future in-laws later in the day. Why? Because it is 4th of July! Happy Independence Day! Almost forgot all about the Hot Dog eating contest. Tony wake up! Brandon, come back over here STAT! Joey Chesnut I heart you. Mustard Belt stays in America for another year. OK, its a great day for disc golfing. 5 under par for me…a personal best on this course. Back to the house. Future in-laws show up. Quick! Shave off the rest of my hair so that it looks normal! Help me clean the house! Hi, in-laws, how are you? I am sweaty and I smell like grass clippings and last night’s beer. Better go shower. Make yourselves at home. Out of the shower. Watching T.V. You brought how many coolers full of Busch Light??? Oh my! I had better start drinking! Future Mother-In-Law brought me a present. A Twin’s jersey. I scream like a girl. I am happy with that gift. I’ll start thawing out the frozen hot dog buns and cutting up the watermelon. You fire up the grill and put on the Jalapeno/Cheddar Deer Brats. MMmmm…cookouts. Anybody up for playing some horseshoe golf in the back yard? Tree branch hanging in the way. Tony, don’t hang on it…I told you not to hang on it. Now it is broken off and laying in the middle of the yard…get the tree saw out even though I am a little drunk at this point. FIREWORKS! We forgot to buy fireworks! Go to the tent down the street. Tony, don’t by the 371 shot artillery box…not worth it…don’t be an idiot…it’s 80 fricking dollars, dude. Note to self: never going to a fireworks store drunk again. Primal urge to blow stuff up and start things on fire along with alcohol consumption makes for an overwhelming urge to buy WAY…TOO…MANY fireworks. OK, we made it out of there spending less than 100 dollars. Nice work. Go to Ralston, NE’s fireworks display on their golf course. Tailgated. Drank some more. Peed in some bushes. Back at my place sitting in driveway. Drinking. Blow stuff up. Where did the rest of the fireworks go? Dude…I told you, we seriously set them all off already. OK, but I swear we bought way more than that. Maybe it was because I was setting off 5 Roman Candles at a time. Better go to bed. Gotta get up early and drive. I get up early and drive to Sioux City (hometown). Go for a run with Tim (insane guy who convinced me to run half marathon). 1.5 miles…through Stone Park…almost all uphill. Ugh. Go to parents’ house. Hi Mom. Shower. Talk with Mom about my anxiety…as usual. Feel better about it after I do. As usual. Finally go to Tony’s. He bought a keg. He lives5 blocks from Grandview Park. It is the first Saturday of July which means it is Saturday in the Park day (huge, I mean HUGE music festival…personal favorite day of the year). Drinking and eating at Tony’s house. More people keep showing up. Even more people keep showing up. Now there is like 50. Keg stand? Sure, why not. Take shots off of kitchen counter until I lose track? Sure, why not. Shove a hot dog in my mouth, then pour ketchup straight out of the bottle into my mouth, then eat a spoon full of minced onions. Real classy, Andy. Go back outside. Talk with man about prostate exams. All I remember from that conversation is the phrase “…puckered up like sour candy…” OK lets walk to the park. Fall down a couple of times. No big deal. Get to the park. Head straight for the beer garden…NO! Head straight for the ATM machine first. Hold up line for 5 minutes because I can’t see straight. OK, now for the beer garden. See some gay guys I know. Hey gay dudes! See some other friends I know. HEY! How have you been??? YADDA YADDA, you haven’t changed a bit. Pass out a couple times in the grass. Having a lot of fun, though. OK, fireworks are going off…that must mean the show is over. Lets take the bus downtown. I think I will take my shirt off and helicopter it around my head. Embarrass my girlfriend. Go downtown. Fall into some bushes. HAHA. Take pictures of that. Finally at the bar. Dancing. Drinking. DAMN! I am a good dancer. If I am such a good dancer, then why am I getting so many dirty looks? Closing time. Call a cab. Stand out in middle of street. Girlfriend yelling at me: “…[get] the hell out of the road before you get hurt…” Somehow we make it back to my parents house. UH OH! We are missing somebody! I call my buddy: Where are you man? Why do I hear train whistles? Hello? Hello? Lost call. Kind of worried about him and hoping he gets home OK. Pass out. Wake up Sunday morning. Call my buddy. Find out he made it home. Got a ride with two shady dudes that found him sitting on the curb in the middle of nowhere. There is more to the story but this blog is PG-13. Mom made brunch for all the hungover people. God bless her heart. Time to drive back to Omaha. Get back to Omaha, go for a 2.3 mile run with Jaci. Take her out to eat Mexican food. Damn it feels good to be alone with her. Seems like we never were alone over the weekend. Go to bed early. One of the best 4th of July’s a guy could ask for. Sad to go back to work after that much fun. Gonna go feel sorry for myself and eat some Doritos.

Jaci and I have reached the 3 month mark of owning a house. I have learned a lot of things over the last quarter of a year, but I would say that the most valuable of all lessons is this: Fixing stuff is hard.

Seriously, I am about as much of a handy man as Richard Simmons is masculine. I have just been overwhelmed  at the amount of time and energy that goes into home ownership. I wonder if it is always like this or if someday we will hit a plateau where virtually everything in the house is working well and I am happy with the cosmetic appearance in every nook and cranny of my abode.

Here are just some of the things that I have been working on/screwing up/breaking/getting pissed off at/actually learning from:

Pink Toilet Ring
There is a toilet in the laundry room that the previous owners never touched so the same water has been sitting in there for probably 8 years. I tried toilet cleaner, Scrubbin’ Bubbles,  bleach, dish soap and counter top cleaner. Finally I literally used a flat head screwdriver and scraped away the calcium deposits or whatever the hell that pink ring was.

Mudjacking
The dipsticks…I mean FAMILY…before us had the downspout aimed right at the garage door. So, years worth of rain made the right side concrete slab sink nearly 4 inches. Jaci and I had to hire a contractor to “Mudjack” it, or pump a bunch of concrete type stuff underneath it to raise it back up, because it felt like I was going over a speed bump every time I entered my side of the garage. The day my dog almost fell out of the passenger side of my truck when we hit that bump was the day I decided to take action.

Gutters
One day I saw that the water from the heavy rain was just spilling over onto the ground from the gutters. I climb up there that weekend and the gutter was so full of dead, decomposing material that it smelled like a rotting hot dog and literally the gutters had little trees growing in them. I spent the majority of that afternoon cleaning poopy-smelling mud and dead leaves out of them.

Dryer
We bought a dryer off Craigslist (I know, real reputable for quality, right?) and it would annoyingly turn off mid-cycle. Over the course of two weekends I tore that dryer apart and checked the wiring, the thermostat, heating element, the lint filter, every single hose and belt and NOTHING! Do you realize how many little screws and bolts make up a dryer?!?!?!?!? Finally I realized that the door simply wasn’t shutting tight enough…that was it; the only thing wrong with it…ugh…

Floor Stains
That same dryer left a whole bunch of weird black marks on the utility room floor so I tried Ammonia to clean them up. Nope. Then I tried bleach. Nope. Mr. Clean?  Nope. Comet? Nope. Then I tried our “Soft and Gentle” hand soap. The damn black marks came up like THAT! That’s kind of like War of the Worlds when they attack the Tripods with all the heavy artillery and in the end it takes something simple to kill them.

Blinds
Jaci whipped the vertical blinds open one day and one of them broke off. I ended up fixing it with a yellow twist tie which isn’t exactly an accent color to the putrid white blinds, but oh well.

Unclog Drain
Our drain was literally taking an overnight to drain in the master bathroom sink. So I got the baddest of the bad drain unclogger and although it called for dumping 1/5th of the bottle down the drain at a time, I dumped the entire gallon. I got results! Now it only take 4 fricking hours to drain!!! I am going to try the Girl Robot technique next.

Mowing
Nebraska (or at least Omaha) has gotten rain every day except for 5 in the last 90 days if my calculations are correct. That being the case, my grass is growing faster than an 18 year old guy chugging a RedBull/Viagra Martini. I have to mow twice a week and it still makes my poor lawn mower cough and hack like a 19th-stage emphysema patient trying to expel a tar ball.

Weeding
“Wouldn’t it be cute to plant some Marigolds and some Petunias, honey?” I thought the same thing when both my Mother and girlfriend suggested it. Then I thought if I laid down a whole bunch of wood mulch it would be like a force field against any weeds trying to grow all up in my flowers’ business. WRONG. I am constantly  pulling weeds. My neighbors probably think I have a back problem for as much as I am bent over in awkward positions around the yard grunting and groaning all the time.

Lawnmower
We came across a free lawnmower. When I asked the lady why it was free, she told me that she had bought a new one. Fair Enough. One problem: the starter cord was ripped in half. Why? Because the carburetor was clogged and some Schmuck somewhere along the line tried his damnedest to start the thing even though the carb was as plugged up as I am after a large plate of nachos, thus ripping the cord in half. So I had to replace those two parts before I could even mow my grass, which desperately needed it.

Tarp Hammock
There was moisture in the attic and it was coming from one of the exhaust fans. When it would rain or snow at a certain angle, water would get in and soak the insulation between the rafters. The first step in resolving this problem was to actually  get in the attic.  Now…where, of all places, do you think the only access to the attic is? How about a little tiny door in the ceiling above the pantry, that’s where. So I had to take almost everything out of the pantry and climb up the rickety old shelves. I finally made it into the musty attic. My first mistake was to dig my hand in the insulation so that I could have leverage to lift myself up. Burying your hand in insulation is like burying your hand in birthday cake. Birthday cake with little shards of glass in it. I am still apologizing to God for some of the things that came out of my mouth that day. Anyway, I ended up having to hang a tarp up like a hammock underneath that exhaust fan in order to catch the water coming in and let it evaporate. Boy am I glad I am going to heaven because I am pretty sure Hell probably feels like one giant attic.

Look out below!
Then I thought I had better clean the inside window sills. The things had dirt and dust caked on then half an inch thick! I swear they had NEVER  been cleaned. Some kid had wrote their name in the dust a long time ago and it was still there. I think it said “George Burns Was Here” or something like that. Anyway, so I open the window and not 10 seconds after I began cleaning the sill I hit the screen and it pops completely out and goes falling two stories to the ground below. I had to lug it back up and then spent over an hour figuring out how to put the damn thing back in again.

Lawn Fertilizer
You would think that if we can land a man on the moon, we could at least make lawn fertilizer that only takes one application per year. But, NOOooOOOOooOOooOO! I came to figure out that most fertilizing programs (including the one I foolishly decided on) require 4 applications throughout the year! And the stuff is expensive! To make matters worse, the first application that I put down I broke the wheel on the cheap ass push spreader that came with the system. Now when I fertilize the grass, not only do I bend over and grab my ankles trying to buy the stuff (metephorically speaking that is), I then have to push around a whack spreader on one wheel! Next year I think I might go all natural when it comes to lawn fertilizer and by “all natural” I mean my dog’s poop.

U.F.O landing pad
There is this spot in the front yard that I really do think is the International..wait…interGALACTICAL  hub for all extraterrestrial aircraft. It is a circular bare spot of grass that I cannot get anything to grow on! I have tried grass seed. Nope. Then I tried the stuff made out of old newspaper that is dyed aqua-blue. Nope. Finally I tried transplanting grass from the back yard. Nope. Nothing will grow there! I don’t even think my Grandpa’s ear hair would grow in that spot and trust me, I think that stuff could grow almost ANYWHERE.

Must…Have…Tee…Vee
When Jaci and I moved in there was one, count them, ONE  cable outlet. There was cable virtually throughout the house in the form of wires ran through holes in the wall and through ceiling tiles…but only one actual outlet. So, I had to install a whole bunch of cable outlets so that [Jaci and] I could watch Sportscenter anywhere [we] I wanted without it feeling like [we] I [were] was stealing cable from somewhere else with a 500 foot cable cord spliced 18 times.

And then, of course, I go and break something
I was hooking up the T.V. in the basement, or “The ManCave” as I like to call it, and I couldn’t get the old cable cord off of the back of my T.V. So, I did what any man in my situation would do: I tried forcing it. Ugh, I ended up snapping the “male” end off of the back of my T.V. rendering it useless. So, I had to figure out how to hook up a VCR that we have (that is literally from the late 1980s) to my modern day T.V. through the RCA inputs (ya know, the Red, Yellow and White cords). Luckily Jaci knows her electronics because I really think quadruple bypass would have been easier…

Tree Limbs on Roof
The big old Hackberry tree in my back yard is spreading like Herpes onto the roof. The branches are putting scratches into the shingles and even growing into the chimney! I gotta climb up there and cut them away ASAP.

A/C
And that brings us to yesterday. I came home from work and Jaci, God bless her heart…she knows me and my tendency to FREAK OUT very well, told me to sit down on the stairs before she told me what she had to tell me. I did. Then I was informed that while I was at work, the air conditioner stopped working. I went storming outside to see if it was a fuse. Jaci came screaming after me telling me not to touch the thing because Miranda (a veterinarian intern at the Omaha Zoo who is staying with us for 6 weeks) tried to pull the fuse out earlier and was given one hell of an electric shock in protest by the air conditioner. Needless to say we went to bed in an 83 degree house and I don’t have a clue how to fix the dang thing and a technician is coming tomorrow morning who will probably charge me 50 dollars just for introducing himself and asking if he can use my restroom. Just what we needed in time for the wedding, since weddings are so cheap these days and all.

Ya know? There are a lot of hassles and headaches that come with owning a house. Its not easy, but one thing that I failed to mention is that there are trade-offs. And I’ve got to admit, those trade-offs trump all of the stuff above. I get to share something with the love of my life; my best friend. I get something to call my own and be proud of. I have something that is worth going to work everyday to keep it. Having a house makes me want a family. Also, we have had over 20 different guests come to see us and stay the night. People that may not have come to Nebraska had they not had a place to stay with Jaci and I. Having a house means having great neighbors to lean over the fence and bullshit with and having random garage parties. It is a primal feeling: I am the Alpha Male, protecting my cave; maintaining it. It is where I keep my mate. It is where I start a fire (microwave) and cook the meat from the hunt (meat counter at Bag and Save). I am man! ME FIX STUFF!!!

Pheidippides was, in fact, a Greek messenger and, as most of you have probably heard the story, was the man that ran 26.2 miles from the town of Marathon, Greece all the way to Athens. When he arrived he supposedly burst into the Senate and screamed “Νενικήκαμεν!” which, when translated into Ebonics means “Yo, da Persians was all up on our turf, but we be down-ass Greeks and we was all like ‘Yo Persians! Why you gotta be all up in our set like dat? You know we be rollin’ all up in here wit deeze chariots and Homie don’t play like dat!’ and we busted a [arrow] all up in they asses and told dem bunk muh-fuggas to get on back to Persia, ya heard?” which when translated into English simply means “We have won!”

Supposedly after that he collapsed and died from exhaustion…

Anyway, in honor of Pheidippides, Jaci and I have began a 16-week training program in preparation for the Lewis and Clark Half Marathon in Sioux City, IA (my hometown) on Oct. 19th. As if wedding planning wasn’t taking up a ton of our time already, we are now gradually working our way up to running 20 or so miles a week. What wedding planning?

I must admit, me running this half marathon is not simply in honor of Pheidippides. In fact, it has nothing to do with the man at all. You want the real reason?

THE WIZ

“The what?” you ask? The Wiz is a good friend of mine from way WAY back in the day. In fact, he is a groomsman at my wedding. His nickname derives from a shortening and misspelling of his last name. My friend Tim called me the other evening and informed me that The Wiz was going to run the Lewis and Clark half marathon and that I should do it. The Wiz is a cocky little pipsqueak and I immediately agreed to torture myself for 13.1 miles just so that I would not have to listen to The Wiz for the rest of my life about how he completed a half marathon and I didn’t. If you knew The Wiz and knew how much he likes to brag about himself, you would do the same.

But anyway, I was reading an article in The Wall Street Journal  the other day about whom they consider to be the world’s top 10 athletes right now. I was surprised to see that no long distance runners were listed. I could not think of too many things in the world of sports that could possibly be harder than running 26.1 miles at at time!!!

Then I stumbled across a story about a man named Yiannis Kouros.

And HOLY BLEEPITY BLEEP!!!

This guy goes above and beyond the capacity of the human body. This guy is insane…a NUTCASE! Why his heart hasn’t exploded by now I have no idea. I would love to find out what kind of running shoe this guy wears and then ask the company that makes that shoe why the hell  they aren’t paying this guy a billion dollars in endorsements! What makes Mr. Kouros such an animal?

He is what is known as an “Ultramarathon” runner. He laughs in the face of inferior marathon runners who run a measly 26.2 miles. Pphft! Pansies! Then he makes a joke about their Mom and gives them a swirly. Then he throws their backpack in a tree. Then he steals a bike lock from some other kid and locks their bike up with it so they have to walk home…wait a sec…somehow I got to talking about my middle school years…

Anyway, check out some of the races that Yiannis runs and the world records he holds. These are absolutely atrocious!

DISTANCE (some of these I converted to miles from kilometers)
100 miles - 11 hours 46 minutes
621 miles - 5 days 16 hours
1000 miles - 10 days 10 hours

TIMED RACES (see how far you can run in “X” amount of time)
12 hours - 100.9 miles
24 hours - 188 miles
48 hours - 294.3 miles
6 days - 643 miles

You know that feeling you get when you say “I’m hungry” and then you see a commercial for starving children and you feel really awkward and weird? I am kind of getting that same feeling when I think about how nervous I am to run 13.1 miles. Then I think about this guy who has probably ran more miles in his life thus far than most cars have on them. Why the heck this guy wasn’t on the 10 Greatest Athletes list, I will never be able to understand. Oh yeah…I forgot to mention his wicked moustache.