(Originally posted on Facebook on September 30, 2016)

The following, long-ass posting is not an advertisement for YouTube or anything on it.  This is long because I've got to write these ideas down or be plagued by voices in my head for the rest of the day.  Enjoy.

I was flipping through videos on YouTube (an activity which has become one of favorite ways to relax and kill some time) when I came across this series of "Kissing Pranks".  In these videos, people go up to random strangers and try to kiss them.

Observation 1:  That's not funny!  Pranks are supposed to make you go, "Hey, wait a second! You just pulled a fast one on me, you sly minx."  There was very little funny in any of the videos, though they were fascinating to watch.  They were more like "The Kissing Social Experiment", but that makes for a much less interesting title, I know.

Observation 2:  Guys going up to guys and trying to kiss them are very likely to get a punch in the face.  While, on a visceral level, I totally understand that reaction, I realize that such violence doesn't make much sense. Do we have so much latent homophobia in our society that the first response that makes sense to most men when faced with such a request is to pummel the requester?  How about, "Umm....No, thanks."?  There.  Problem solved.  You didn't pick up any Gay Germs without having to resort to threats of violence.

Observation 3: Guys kissing random girls need to be crafty.  "Hello, impossibly-attractive-female-whom-I-would-never-approach-under-any-other-circumstances, Let's play Rock Paper Scissors.  If you win, you get to slap me, but if I win, I get a kiss."  I understand that a guy just grabbing a girl and planting one on her will probably be maced and then arrested for sexual assault. So, he needed some kind of pretext. Got it. Also, I found it interesting that he had to offer the opportunity to smack the taste out of his mouth in order to get any takers. I wonder if he tried other options first. "If you win, tickle fight!" or "if you win, I buy you an ice cream cone."  Nope!  "If you win, you get to dislocate my jaw," however that gets takers.  And you should have seen these chicks wind up before letting that slap fly!  I'm surprised he did this more than once!  But I guess guys will do anything for the opportunity to kiss a random attractive strange female.

Observation 4:  Guys will do anything for the opportunity to kiss a random attractive strange female.  So, when girls go up to guys and try to kiss them, the guys do not threaten to punch them in the face.  Sounds like a bit of a double standard, doesn't it?  Why can't a guy threaten to cold cock a woman who wants to display a moderate sign of affection, while guys a wanting the same have their physical well-being put in jeopardy?  Again, on a gut level, I get it.  I also get that's kinda stupid.  I'm sure the kissed guys were thinking, "I've got a random woman kissing me......ok!  This is a good day!  This makes up for getting fired!  Why is she kissing me?  It must the be the new musk-scented Axe shower gel I'm using.  I need to get a case of that..."  

Observation 5:  Frequently, when a girl approached another girl and tried to snog her, the reaction was one of "Hey, what the heck.....ummm......ok!"  If the girl didn't immediately duck and dodge, after about a second of lip-locking, she's reciprocating the kiss.  I'm talking caresses and "mmm  mmm"s of pleasure and whatnot.  Some of them went back for seconds!  I think there was at least one exchange of phone numbers following these surprise snuggles.   Soooo, I guess that latent homophobia is only between guys?  Like Aisha Tyler says, "Most straight women are a little gay."  Guys, on the other hand, may draw a weapon to prove their straightness and protect their masculinity.

Observation 6:  Each video was about 5 minutes long and had only 5 or 6 kisses in them.  The reason for so few kisses, however were quite different.  The men who accosted strangers for kisses and succeed only got pecks.  I'm talking "*smooch*thanks,bye!"  The rest of the time was taken up with asinine games of chance and punches that seemed incomplete without a 1960's Batman-ish "WHAM-O" signs in the background.  The guys-kissing-x videos had three hundred attempts to get to the 5 or 6 kisses that each took about a half second.  The women who accosted strangers and succeeded in getting kisses got full-on, tongue-wrestling, lip locks.  In the girls-kissing-x videos, there was time for footage of only 5 or 6 kisses.  The rest of the time was taken up with videos of the kisses in action with accompanying music and dizzying camera work.  Scorsese couldn't have done it better. 

What lesson should we take away from all this?  I think it's "Everyone wants to kiss girls.  No one wants to think about kissing guys unless given money (I'm only assuming the girls who approached strange guys were compensated in some manner) or the opportunity to dish out some street justice."  Or, simply put "Girls are awesome, Guys are icky."  We knew that in kindergarten, didn't we?

(Originally posted on Facebook on September 8, 2016)

I met a kid at the YMCA.  What caught my attention was that he stuttered.  I felt the need to talk to him and tell him that I can help him. I'm not even sure why I thought he needed help. I guess it was God talking to me.  I met with him and his family and talked about my experience as a stutterer and how I've learned to be at peace with my stammer and stop fighting with it. This seemed like a totally new idea to them.  They told me about all the therapy the kid had been through and how none of it worked.  No one ever suggested to them that they should not fight against it but accept it because everyone stutters at some point - just that some do it more than others.  

I started thinking this way after meeting the National Stuttering Association.  Before that time, I was always hoping to beat my stutter. Then, I scored a job as a teacher before I realized that it meant I would be regularly talking for almost 4 to 6 hours every work day in front of three to thirty people, depending on enrollment.   So I joined the NSA and hoped to find the magic bullet that would change everything for me and make my stutter stop.

I met Katherine.  She's the first person I ever met that made me think that a stammer can actually be beautiful.  She was so relaxed when she talked. She stuttered, but she didn't tense up and fight with it.  She knew the tricks and techniques to work through the blocks - I watched her do easy onsets enough times that I learned how to do them - but she never seemed to be at war with it.  I also learned that from another beautiful stutterer named Lucy.  They were cool about it. Even kinda casual. Stuttering became as significant an issue to me as if someone spoke with a lisp or a foreign accent.

That was the first time in my life I learned not to fight with this demon. (BTW, I had literally been told by some well-meaning people that stuttering was a sign of having a demon attacking my soul and that I needed a laying on of hands to achieve deliverance.  Even at a young age, I knew to smile and nod politely as I backed away towards the door.)  From the NSA meetings, I learned the saying that "Stuttering is what happens when you try not to stutter".  When I stopped fighting with it, guess what happened?

No, I still stuttered.  But everyone stutters at some point.  It's just that some do it more than others.

What happened was that I relaxed.  If I stuttered, I stuttered.  If I didn't stutter at any one moment, I would at some point later. And it's alright.  It won't kill me. It's not a disability.  It won't hold me back unless I let it.  And now, I've been teaching for almost 10 years and I'm getting better at it every day.  Not one time in any of my days as a teacher has anyone complained to me or my bosses about my stutter.

Maybe that's why I talked to the kid and his family. I remember what it was like to be 15 and stutter around kids who needed to make themselves look and feel better about themselves by picking on the kid who was different.  Kids with stutters make for easy targets. I remember having well-meaning family who didn't know that things they were doing to help me talk was actually making the problem worse.  I also remember that stuttering never stopped me from making friendships with people worth knowing and holding onto for the rest of my life. It never stopped me from telling a joke, though every PWS will tell you that we always block on the punchline.  It did not stop me from having a rich and happy life full of love and good memories, and it wouldn't unless I allowed it to.

I stutter. You do, too. And that's alright, baby.  That's alright.

(Originally ​Posted on February 2, 2016)
(Author’s note: Please don’t take the semi-flip nature of the following piece to mean I don’t take this matter seriously.  Unfortunately, I’ve had too many friends raped and talked to too many men who didn’t recognize the gravity of their actions.  The advice I give is real, though the tone I use is light.  I apologize in advance if this should offend you. – ACN)

I cannot count the number times I’ve been asked about rape etiquette.  Just the other day, an older gentleman asked me when rape is okay.  I responded to him that we would discuss it after church and he needed to finish giving the sermon.  He agreed and returned to the pulpit.  This event confirmed for me that most people don’t know much about rape besides that it’s bad and we shouldn’t do it.  But how can we avoid it if we don’t know what it looks like?

First, let’s be clear on what rape is.  Some would say that having sex is rape.  To them, I would suggest lots of therapy because something is definitely wrong.  Here are the high points of the actual definition:
•    There has to be a victim.  One cannot rape himself or herself.  I don’t know if having multiple personalities complicates the matter.
•    Penetration of the victim’s body, not necessarily with a penis.  Other body parts or foreign implements can be used.  (To be clear, one can still be sexually assaulted without penetration, which is vile and traumatic, but not defined as rape.)
•    Unlawful sex.  If he or she is a minor and you have sex with them, you are now a rapist.  No, it doesn’t matter that you are 18 and your victim was 17.  You can still be arrested, charged, and convicted, followed by a lifetime on the sex offenders registry.  You don’t want to know what that list does to professional and political careers.
•    A lack of consent.  To be discussed in detail.
From here on, I’ll describe an offender as being male and the victim as being female, but this is not part of the definition.  Combine current and future genders in any order and the idea still applies.
Notice a lack of any mention of force or violence.  Not assaulting your victim with your fists or a weapon does not mean that you didn’t rape them.  Threatening to hurt them or someone they love to get them to agree to have sex with you is not the same as getting consent.  Physically restraining or intimidating them to make them agree is not getting consent.  So, keep in mind, Don Juan,  holding down an unwilling or uncooperative “partner” so that they can’t stop you and then having sex with them is rape.

However, if your partner spontaneously requests that you hold them down while doing the deed, congratulations, you are not a rapist.

In general, if your partner is capable of giving consent and gives consent, you are most likely not going to rape them, no matter how much sex you may have.  On  the other hand, if they can’t consent or if they don’t consent and you have just a little bit of sex with them one time, you are now a rapist.

Let’s look at some scenarios.
A man is walking down the street alone or in a group.  A woman is also walking down the same street alone or in a group.  He/They approach her/them, they go some place private or semi-private, and sex ensues.  Is this rape?
Did the “victim(s)” consent?  If she/they did, this is not rape.  It might be kinda freaky, but not rape.
If consent was not given, this is rape.  It does not matter how many guys were involved; they are all rapists.  Giving in to peer pressure is not a legal defense.  It also doesn’t matter how many or how few women are the victims, what they are wearing, how they are walking, what time of day or night it is, or what part of town they are in. They are not asking for it, unless they are literally using a bullhorn to announce their desire to be violated.  Otherwise, men should assume they will not be interested in having “a good time” with them.

Next scenario: a man is walking down the street, through a hall, into a bathroom at a party, in a desert, on the moon, etc., and comes across a woman who is unconscious.  He proceeds to have sex with her.  Is this rape?
Usually, yes, this is will be considered rape.  Since she is not capable of giving consent as she is not awake, the lack of consent and the abundance of sex results in a rapey scenario.  It might not be rape if she agrees in advance that she does not mind, and may even enjoy, being violated when she is in such a state.  I would not recommend attempting to wake her and gain this permission in the moment.  She may make some random sound that you believe to  be consent when she was really just yawning and attempting to roll over.  She may be drunk or drugged and say yes in her stupor and would have said yes to a root canal.  You should wait until she is fully awake, inform her of your desires, and gain her consent for the next time that situation occurs.  This way, she is fully informed of your intentions and will know if it’s safe to take a cat nap when you have a hard-on.  Otherwise, you’re  a rapist.

Next scenario: A man and a woman are on a date.  She agrees to have sex with him.  They have sex.  Is this rape?
Possibly.  The question to answer is if he had her consent for sex during the sex in question.  If she promises to have sex with him when he invites her on the date, when they are discussing what to do on the date, over dinner, during the car ride home, and when she kisses him at the front door, but then conveys to him a change of heart and rescinds the consent before the time that sex occurs, this is now rape.  As a general rule, let’s just say that at any point short of orgasm, if she rescinds consent, assume it’s rape to continue.  This rule may be a smidge extreme, but if you follow it, you are certain to avoid ever being a rapist.  Should she promise sex and withdraw her consent before coupling, remember that she is not obligated to satisfy your carnal urges just because you bought her a steak dinner.  Gentlemen, respect her wishes, leave her unviolated, return to your abode, and rub one out.  You do not have to call her back or talk to her again.  This behavior might make you a bit of a jackass, but it will not make you a rapist.  Ladies, extending and rescinding consent may confuse and frustrate your partner, but you have every right to do it.  He may not call again.  If he doesn’t call you because you wouldn’t have sex with him, consider him to be a jackass, know that you are too good for him, and thank God that you dodged another one.

Right about now, I’m sure most would-be rapists are asking themselves, “How do I get this consent and avoid being a rapist?”  Good question!  We can start with the basics.  For instance, you could say, “Would you like to have sex?”  If you want to be more “hip,” you could phrase it as, “Do you want it, baby?”  If you don’t mind being more formal and want to cover your bases more, consider giving her a form to fill out where you get her contact information, professional affiliations, contact info for her doctor, a list of her former lovers, and three references.  Be sure that the bottom of the form contains text that explicitly details your desire for sex and her consent to it.  Make sure she checks and signs the form with a date, have it notarized, and give her a carbon copy.  Even with these precautions, she may still rescind her consent to sex before the act occurs.  The absolute best means of attain proof that consent has not been rescinded is to be followed by a film crew for the entire night.  Make sure she looks into the camera when agreeing to intercourse.  Also, make sure your film crew has a powerful directional mic on hand and keeps it trained on her to catch any moments she may express a change of heart.  Should she say at a later point that she was raped by you, you can produce video and audio evidence and documentation to the contrary.  Whatever you do, do not rely on flawed attempts to read her body language, “the look in her eyes”, her flirtatious manner, laughing at your jokes, or her touching your bicep while walking arm in arm with you.  For most ladies, these are all indicators of sexual arousal.  On the her hand, she might just be a tease.  Also, silence does not give consent   Simple verbal affirmation will be sufficient to remove all doubt, most of the time.  In general, don’t assume “she wants it” unless she says “I want it.”  Otherwise, assume you haven’t closed the deal and you’re still in negotiations.

In case you are ever not sure if you’re about to rape someone, answer these questions:
•    Am I about to have sex?
o    If no, then you are not going to rape.
o    If yes, proceed to the next question
•    Is my partner capable of giving me consent to have sex?
o    If no and you proceed to have sex, you’re committing rape.
o    If yes, proceed to next question.
•    Do I have consent to have sex right now?
o    If no, then you are committing rape.
o    If yes, then you are not committing rape.
If you can answer yes to all three questions, congratulations, you will not be a rapist. Feel free to copulate without worry.

You might wonder if there is a scenario that rape is not a bad thing.  There is.  Let’s be clear, should you ever be really raping a real person in reality, you are a rapist and this is not good.  But, should any of the “reals” I just listed not be applicable, you should not be too concerned.
•    You can really rape imaginary people since they are not actually people and are not protected by any legal or moral codes.
•    You can really rape a real person if you do it in your fantasies or imagination, and ONLY in your fantasies or imagination.  Get your aggressive urges out of your system  in Fantasy Land, but keep your mitts to yourself when you see them in the real world.
•    You can rape a real person in reality just as long as you have their consent to do so first.  This is called “role playing”.

These three “okay” rape scenarios are only okay because they are not actually rape.  Really raping a real person is really a cause to go to real jail and experience real rape from the other side.

I hope this clears up any confusion you may have had on the matter.  If you’re ever in doubt, feel free to contact me, describe your situation, and I will let you know if you are about to rape someone.  I recommend you do not proceed with the activity, just in case you may be about to accidentally scar someone emotionally for life.  Play it safe and wait for a response, which I promise will come as soon as possible.
​
Thanks for reading, and good luck with not raping anyone

(First posted on January 26, 2013.)
​​When I found out the president was talking gun control (a subject near and dear to my heart lately), I felt the need to contact him to say something was missing to the approach. Yes, I just said that I emailed the president to give him some advice. I know, I need help. Anywho, here’s my letter.
​
Hello, Mr. President,
In addressing gun control, you’re tackling a very difficult topic. Emotions are high, especially after the tragedy at Sandy Hook. People get scared of the guns, after such shootings. Personally, I’m scared of the person behind the gun. So often, we hear a witness say, “He was such a quiet man. I never thought he would do something like this.” People assume that this penchant for violence was always there and only expressed itself now. Truth of the matter is that anyone can lose their grip on reality. For instance, I’m the guy next door: college-educated, professional, religious, jocular. I also remember the exact moment in college when I became suicidal. Looking at your life and “logically” concluding that it should end is confusing and scary. It’s like looking at a series of math equations that lead to the answer “1=2″ and not being able to see where it all went wrong. Except if you don’t solve that puzzle, you know you’re going to do irreparable harm.

Under the wrong circumstances, most of us can snap in some way. We must address the issue of improving mental health in America or we will always be hearing about how some “nice, quiet man” killed 30 people at once. Next time, it won’t be with a gun; it will be with a bomb or poison or any number of tools of death. To stop the crazy man from killing with a weapon of choice, you could (and should) try to control the weapon. Eventually, he will choose a new weapon. On the other hand, address his mental state and you’ll remove his desire to kill in such large numbers altogether.

Basic self-preservation will often drive people in mental crisis to seek (or at least desire) help. We must make it easy for them to get that help. Remove the stigma from mental illness and its treatment. Drop the hurdles to mental health care. Encourage people to get into better health, mental and physical. We have sympathy for someone suffering from a broken leg, cancer, or a cold, but if someone mentions depression, schizophrenia, or borderline personality disorder, it’s a reason to be ostracized. Often, the outcast with mental issues feels it won’t matter to him to kill the ones who excluded him. We need to stop the process early. We need to learn to turn that exclusion into inclusion. It’s not perfect and won’t heal all ills, but it will help this particular ill significantly.
​
My family prays for you daily. You’re an inspiration and in a challenging job. Let God lead you and you’ll never go wrong.

​(First Posted on November 17, 2015)
Is anyone else a bit sick and tired of the opinions that oversimplify the topics of terrorism, Muslim, and the Syrian refugees?

“I don’t understand why we don’t just kill everyone in ISIS. Obama is not showing any backbone or leadership.” I don’t know, but my guess is that sending our people into an area to kill at random and hoping we get the bad guys may work for a Rambo movie, but probably makes for pretty shitty foreign policy. I’m not saying I don’t want terrorists whacked. I’m saying that we’re not cowboys and shouldn’t assume that wiping out brown people will fix the problem.

“We should get rid of all the Muslims.” Why? Because some small number of a small percentage of them did something evil? While we’re at it, let’s outlaw Christianity since some Christians think it’s ok to blow up abortion clinics in the name of God.  (The first person to say “But that’s different!” gets a boot to the head, unless they can explain HOW it’s different.  Until I hear a decent argument on that point, I’ll assume that terrorism is terrorism, in all its colors.) Inner city gangs are often predominately Black and Latino, so let’s throw them out too, even though most of us would have nothing to do with the gangs or any connection to them. In fact, Europeans coming to America in the first place led to mass murder, disease, and mayhem. I say it’s time to eject them too.  Some Native Americans fought with other Native Americans before the white man showed up.  Get rid of them! If we really behaved this way, this land would be devoid of all people pretty darn quickly. How about we get our heads out of our asses and seek to punish the people actually responsible for the terrorism and not group everyone with one characteristic together as if they all conspired.  By the way, do you know who the terrorist have killed most often with their violence? Other Muslims! But you don’t hear about that because the media doesn’t tend to consider their deaths to be newsworthy.  There’s no righteous indignation from politicians over that. I guess the victims deserved it by being Middle Eastern, right?

“We need to protect ourselves from the refugees. We should only take the Christians!” Why kind of bullshit is that? We’re going to close our borders from fear that ONE of the terrorists slipped in under the guise of being a refugee once??? I’m not thrilled with America dedicating so much of its resources to helping non-Americans when we have so many who need so much help at home. But, like it or not, that’s how we roll. We like to think that we see people who need help and try to help them. Frequently, we screw that up, but we at least try, damnit! So, we’ve got these refugees that are predominantly women and children, are not all Islamic, are victims of violence and bloodshed, and we want to victimize them again on the basis of what one terrorist did once? That’s insane, racist, paranoid, and a gross overreaction. Do you want to screen refugees according to some criteria (I don’t know what that criteria would be, but “not muslim” seems asinine)? Of course! I’m not saying we should allow everyone in blindly. I’m saying that maybe, just maybe, we should try to not be bigoted in the criteria that we choose to use.

When we behave these ways, we create the problems we’re trying to stop.  Remember GitMo?  Guantanamo “Let’s round up possible muslim terrorists and interrogate them” Bay?  Good ole’ GitMo created more terrorists than it stopped.  Why? Because of our inhumane treatment of the prisoners.  Because so many innocent men were made into prisoners who had nothing to do with terrorism. Because lives were destroyed when we proved that we’re the barbarians we accuse others of being.  It’s a known fact that more than a few men went into GitMo as non-threats, and came out ready to blow some shit up.  I think most ex-prisoners of internment camps can sympathize with that mindset.

I’m also not saying that we should do nothing and be ineffectual. We should be smart and fair, the way we pretend and like to hope we are deep down. I think the politicians have a tough road ahead of them when it comes to working this situation out. But that’s why they get paid the big bucks with the luxury of raising their own pay any time they feel like. They need to learn to apply intelligent solutions to difficult problems like this. They should ALL get to work and be smart. That doesn’t mean sit around and debate for three years what we should do, and that doesn’t mean charge in shooting with the tagline “Defeat them over there so they don’t attack us here.” (I’m looking at you, Dubya.) Luckily, those aren’t our only two options.  I include Obama that “Get to Work!” grouping.  He’s the big man in the big chair. He needs to put on his big boy pants and step up! To be honest, I like Obama and I think he’s doing just that.  He is not overreacting and not hoping the problem will go away if we do nothing. He’s trying to respond intelligently.  If the other politicians behaved the same way, we won’t repeat blatant acts of prejudiced paranoia like GitMo, we’ll make a true coalition of countries, and stamp this problem out.  Let’s jam our Size 1776 boot up ISIS’s ass.  But, in order to do that, we need to get our feet out of our collective mouths and find the right ass to kick.  Kicking at random at everyone that looks different than us isn’t going to solve the problem.  It’s going to result in our isolation and make us even greater targets.
​
These are not simple problems with simple solutions. Let’s stop being simple-minded, platitudinous dipshits who think chanting “U! S! A! U! S! A!” fixes everything.  Let’s get to real work and solve the real problems at hand.

​(First posted on December 15, 2015)
I’m about to confess to something that I don’t think I’ve ever told another living soul.  I’m going to say this because I’m betting either no one else does anything of this nature, will have no idea what I’m talking about, and will enjoy seeing proof of my vanity, or most people do something similar and are equally afraid to tell anyone about it for fear of seeming crazy when it turns out that no one else does it.  Let me say right away that I realize that this confession will most likely confirm my arrogance. I’ve asked people and I get a mixed result on the “Am I arrogant?” poll.  The responses range pretty evenly from “No, you’re just confident,” to “Yep! Definitely! And you need to be taken down a few pegs!”  You can decide for yourself.

My confession is that I have been giving interviews in my head for years.  I’m always imagining what I’m going to be saying to some “Barbara Walters” type interviewer when I’m a celebrity and they want to know what I think about every topic.

WHY do we care what celebrities think about things that have nothing to do with whatever brought them fame.  We start with questions like, “Why did you choose that role?”, “How awesome does it feel to have won that award?”, and “What kind of projects do you want to explore next?”, but then we want to know more.  We start to see them as role models and icons, and eventually, we’re listening to them talk to us about the deep wisdom of Scientology, how vaccines cause autism, and about whatever was bothering Randy Quaid about Rupert Murdoch.

I listen to these jackasses and think about how I’m not going to be that kind of jackass when I’m rich and famous for whatever talent I have not yet perfected enough to be paid or known for it.  I’m sure I’ve got something money- and fame-worthy in me and when it comes out, look out, World!  My sock puppet skills are epic.  I can hambone like a champ. My Papier-mâché… well, I don’t want to brag. So, there’s hope!  And when I break out of obscurity and into the spotlight, I will be ready to be interviewed and asked about my opinions because I have been mentally sharpening my interviewing skills for years.

I give comedy routines in my head, too. Twice in college, I did actual stand-up routines.  I’m always cuttin’ up and and acting like a goof and I’ve never been too shy to share smart ass remarks in all occasions.   But there were two times I actually got the heart to stand in front of a group of people, mic in hand, and tried to make them laugh.  I remember both occasions being at faith-based gatherings.  Because….you know…that’s where all the great comics get started.  It’s a natural progression from “Don’t be gay! Don’t Drink! Don’t have sex! Don’t lie! You’re a sinner and you’re going to Hell – HELL!! – if you don’t repent! REPENT!” to “So, here to make us laugh: Craig Newman!”

In my mental interviews and in my comedy routines, I say all the profoundly wise, exceptionally stupid, or highly offensive thoughts and philosophies I have. I feel these ideas bouncing around in my brain have merit and truth and just may make someone go, “Hey…you know something?  He might be right.”

Here’s my most recent profound thought: “I’m 41 and no one has yet to give a damn what I have to say about anything.”  I’ve had different doctors talk to me about how my life is changing now that I’m in my forties.  I can sum up all their advice into “You’re closer to death than birth, you old fat bastard.” I’m passing (or have passed, depending on what life expectancy numbers you go with) the middle of my life and all that is left is a decline into the grave.  I can even think of a few people who don’t think that decline could happen rapidly enough.  I’m making some choices to hopefully reduce the speed of my impending doom (By the way, to any friends and loved ones reading this, I’m not announcing that I’ve got anything terminal. I’m just recognizing the fact that Death is stalking us all at all times.  That’s all. Don’t let this spoil you’re enjoyment of the rich offerings of the Internet.  Check out some lovely videos of cats snuggling in slippers and pay no mind to the shadow of the Grim Reaper looming over your shoulder, scythe in hand, and waiting for that special moment to harvest your soul.)  I’m trying to eat healthier and exercise more.  Gotta manage that stress better and get my weight under control.   Also got to cut back on the sugar, alcohol, and most other things that make life enjoyable.  I don’t know if I’ll live longer, but it’ll sure feel that way. (rimshot)

But, still, I know I’ll probably be in the ground before most people give a damn that I was on the earth. That means that I would be taking all my dumbassity with me, since the videos of me beatboxing have not blown up on YouTube like I had hoped. Well, I can’t let that happen. I need to share with the world what I think about stuff I don’t really know that much about and add my voice to the many of others who don’t have a clue.  I thought about where I can share my uninformed opinions. I wondered how I could add my voice to the voices of billions all shouting asinine POVs.

And then I started this blog.
​
That’s what’s important to know about me. Pleased to meet you. Feel free to come back.