Recently I was looking through my traffic log and saw an entry from army.mil. I'm always interested in when the government shows up here; it's just one step away from Chris Hansen showing up and telling me to take an e-seat right over there.

Anyway, upon probing I saw a couple of things. The visitor was from Ft. Meade, which among other things, is home to NSA HQ. Furthermore, the last thing they clicked on was the 'dreamgirl' tag. I don't know if NSA would show up as army.mil. But I like to think so, because it is hilarious to me that some G-man came here and ended up reading a handful of vague posts on my non-adventures with some dumbass girl. Maybe the NSA can help me crack the code there, if you know what I mean.

Page 38 'sup check

OK so what follows somewhere below is an incomplete post that I put together just over a year ago and never put out there. Yeah, I have a real problem putting out. Which is lame because I used to be such a blogging whore. Well, maybe it was only good for me, but fuck you, I was getting laid. Wait, what? No I wasn't, what the fuck is going on here?

Hey, sorry. I'm a bit out of tune. Anyway I was reading over this post that I had in drafts and it struck a chord in so many ways. First off, I'm still struggling with all this shit. Which is sad. I mean a year fucking later, really? And not like I haven't done this before at several points in life.

You know what that makes me? Days of Our Lives. Back in high school, I was fucking hooked on that show. My mom used to take late lunches to pick me up from school and when we got home she would watch it. At first I was like, soaps, fuck that. But then after awhile it just got in my brain and I was all like OMG Sammy is such a bitch when are John and Marlena just going to get back together Jack is hard-core and can't wait for him to take down Peter etc.

Freshman year of college we did not have cable TV in the dorms. Despite the fact that ETP and I bought an antenna that employed secret government technology the reception we got was shit. I recorded Days every day, however (on VHS; Jesus L. Christ I am fucking old now), and would watch it after classes. But the combo of truly awful reception and recording on century old technology finally got to me. Having to watch that shit through so much snow was rehab for me. I was off the drug.

Several years later, ETP and I took in an episode of Days on a whim. And you know what? Everything was exactly the fucking same. Sammy was still a scheming bitch, Bo and Hope were still having problems, so on and so forth. In the intervening several years we missed precisely nothing. Now, if you watch soaps, sorry, your stories, you know this concept to be true. You know that you can drop a show at any given point in time and find an arbitrary point in the future and start watching again and you know precisely what is going on. Seeing this in action though, knowing it from experience instead of merely just knowing it, is astounding.

So anyway, that's me. A year ago I was full of self-doubt. Afraid that what little talent I ever had, if any, was gone or at least severely diminished. But thinking maybe, just maybe, something's still there, and it can be resurrected one more time than Jesus was. A year ago I was stuck on this girl who is truly amazing on paper but maybe not so much in real life but maybe still is for real and so I'm still like come on this could work if the world would just stop being stupid but it's really me who's stupid. And a year later... Le sigh.

You can see that since I've been gone I've totally 'roided out my run-on sentence skills.

I'm a good writer. I enjoy writing. And my shit's funny. But what if it isn't? See there's that crap again. I really need to get back to just writing for the love of writing. Doing it for my own benefit. Who cares if people aren't on board? It's not for them. It's possible I could actually get my shit together.

The reason why I decided to put this post out there, including the old one, ultimately, was because I was going through all this pathetic self-doubt a year ago, saying I'm not funny anymore, blah blah. But then I read some of the stuff I wrote and I was like, dude, that was pretty funny. So if I was thinking that shit back then and was still able to mine some nuggets without realizing it, hey, why not now?

It's sad that I feel the need to clarify but I do: I am completely sober right now. Totally high on life, rah rah and shit. Well not really; I used to get high on life but I built up a tolerance (what is that from? LATER EDIT: It's from the awesome but sadly defunct webcomic Antiwang).

Maybe I'll fail to gain any traction here but I hafta start someplace. So without further ado, here is my mopey-ass shit from a year ago/right now. It's unedited from where I left it, and incomplete. But if we're gonna pick up with Sammy being a bitch, let's look back to when she was also a bitch:

Dammit. Every time I think I'm gonna get back into the swing of things here, I just don't. Laziness is the main culprit but let's do what so many of us tend to do and pretend it's more complicated than that.

Life really changed for me in 8th grade. Prior to that I was just me. I was a dork and I went about my business and that was just that. I think in 8th grade I really became self-aware and maybe that's not such a great thing. Maybe Patrick Swayze was onto something. For the uninitiated, that man simply was not self-aware. If you feel that it is pretty bush to talk this way about the dead, fuck you. I think you should speak the same of someone in death as you did in life. We are such pussies when it comes to that.

Sorry, that was a rant I didn't intend to get off on. And oh did I ever get off. Anyway...

Ever since 8th grade, I have been constantly concerned that I am not as good as I used to be. I always have this feeling that I used to be pretty smart and clever and funny and I'm just not as much so anymore. I'm also always concerned that I'm not good enough at that point in time as well. Basically, I'm just one big inferiority complex.

With regards to this 'blog though, I occasionally read back through old posts, and I find some really, really funny shit. And yeah OK, sure it's funny to me -- I fucking wrote it. But I read stuff and I'm like, yeah, I'm just not that funny anymore. And that's just with the average post; forget about the handful of posts that even I have to admit are just sheer fucking genius. I just can't be funny like that anymore because I have gotten stupider.

I used to have no real justification for my declining abilities but now I can come up with some legit ones. I am on the wrong side of 30 now. Six months sure but hey, the wrong side is the wrong side. It's just fact that we start to go downhill at some point. I am also continually terrified that years of drinking way too much have destroyed enough brain cells that, yeah, I am definitely stupider. Doesn't stop me from drinking anymore though, but well, what do you expect? I'm stupid now. Even stupider than before.

I try to remind myself of days past when I thought I was in trouble and I was just manufacturing nonsense. I also try to think about what Jim Rome used to say about John Daly -- the immensely talented golfer who basically threw all his shit away 'cause he had drinking and gambling and various other personal problems: you never lose the talent.

That of course presumes I ever had any talent. I dunno if I had any talent, but I could make some people laugh. People who I'd never even met before. That was pretty neat. But laziness and apathy and just the kind of atrophy that comes with time kinda killed all that off.

The only way to get back, or, shit, get anywhere, is to just quit whining and work at it.

OK so this is about the eight billionth post that I have made like this over the past year or so. In case if you're wondering, dude, where the fuck are those eight billion posts, well, most of them I wrote and never published. Or, I released them into the wild and then I pulled them not long thereafter. I may have already mentioned this but I am posting so infrequently these days that I can't remember what I did and didn't actually publish and leave out there.

Maybe one of these days I'll publish a compendium of all those phantom posts so that we can all see what my mental state has been like the past year. In case you are saying, um, no thanks, BLM, settle down. Just consider the following:

1. I haven't killed anyone else.
2. I haven't killed anyone else.

So how bad can it be?

Well pretty bad, really. Trite is the best word to describe it, 'cause most of it was about a girl. I wouldn't say it's Stabbing Westward-worthy material, but it was pretty weak. I'm mostly over it that I'm not making the efforts that I was making before, but I haven't totally let it go yet either. Gotta find some new stupid bullshit to focus on before that will happen.

OK so this is hilarious and disturbing at the same time.

So you know how Google knows you almost as well as you or the people in your life know you? Or even better? C'mon, we've all gotten those ads that hit just a liiiitle to close to home. Like, for instance, if you look though my logged chats on Google Talk, they are predominantly with Dreamgirl. If you haven't been paying attention she was this fucking girl I had a major crush on for way too long. And one day the ad at the top of my Gmail was for some program to help me "Talk to pretty girls!" Fuck you, Google.

Anyway, we've all been there. But after I just made my last post, check out what Google decided to tell me:

Depressed?
Bipolar Disorder and Depression affect millions. Know the signs!
Healthline.com

I don't really have anything to ad(d) to that; I just thought it was kinda amusing and decided to share it.

The Undiscovered Country

OK so I just can't figure out what to do with this 'blog anymore.

So what's this blog about? Bitching is pretty much the focus here. Oh, and if you're not a big fan of sarcasm, this place probably isn't for you. Not like any of this matters... I'm sure no one is going to read this crap, anyway.

That's how we got started here. Originally, the main purpose of this 'blog was to give me something to do. I was bored, working in a cube, and pretty much going nowhere in a dead-end internship that ended very embarrassingly for me, and this place was a great diversion even if I was just talking into a void.

I wasn't quite talking into a void though as the secondary purpose of this 'blog was to communicate with ETP. We lived pretty close to one another and hung out regularly, but this place was a good way to quickly share interesting links and ideas and shit. This was before we had things as retarded as Twitter. And you can see what I've done with that.

Blogging took on a whole new life however when I found out that a handful of people besides ETP and BOETP actually read this crap. That was pretty nice. Sure, it was part ego, but it was cool interacting with people I didn't even know who enjoyed the ramblings I vomited out here. Also, Google pedophiles.

Discussion of politics was big here back in the day. I was a self-proclaimed bleeding-ass liberal and I was proud of it. As time went on though I got a BMW and a gun. I still like queers and baby killing, so those penalties offset, as I covered in a recent post. But anyway, what ultimately reigns is boredom and disillusionment.

Other things have changed. ETP and BOETP have moved off to the deep South. To keep in touch we have things like Facebook. Arguably more retarded than blogging, but hey not any dumber than acid wash and it comes in handy. If I want to share something with them, that's the easiest way. Plus, Blogger doesn't have FarmVille. God, how retarded is that crap?

Retarded, but addicting. I have been trying real hard today to not plant anything new so my entire farm will be fresh and I can get all my crops in sync so I'm not harvesting a million times a day. Yeah, I know I don't have to harvest fully grown stuff immediately, but A) I have OCD and B) I can't (and really don't wanna) concentrate on anything else for more than like a minute, minute-and-a-half.

Also, I really really need to find at least an 8th neighbor. I still have just the basic 12.5x12.5 farm and as such my shit is packed tighter than a 12-year-old girl. I can't expand my growing operations and barely have room for my animals and trees and all the other things I'm gifted every day. What I'm talking about is Lebensraum, people.

You know what I find kinda interesting? Firefox's built-in spell-checker does not flag the word "Lebensraum" as some kinda misspelling. Fuckin' Open Source fascists.

Okay, so back to WTF to do here. There are current events that I've always got an opinion on, or more importantly, are pissed off about. But I never really think to blog about it at the time. Or I'm just lazy. I may break something off here in a moment though.

Quick intermission: here's a good summary of blogging in general.

Typically the only time I feel like blogging is late at night, after some drinking, and all I have on my mind is this girl my dumb ass is chasing after. That's no good, and there's no way that can end well. In fact, I have proof that it doesn't end well in the form of many a rambling draft dating back nearly a year that I either never posted or posted and then pulled when I came to my senses.

(Just FYI, I am completely sober right now and it is about 6 in the evening. Well, in the interests of full disclosure, I wrote a good deal of the stuff prior to the previous paragraph during one of those late night sessions, but A) that shit's not too horrifying and B) be glad for the nonsense I cut out that came after. And you wanna know what's really fucked up? I just added in the FarmVille rant right now, again, when I'm completely sober.)

I'll try and keep the talk of the Dreamgirl saga to a minimum. There's not a whole lot to tell on that front at the moment because there's pretty much nothing substantial going on, just our weird, mostly online pseudo-friendship. But, I am gonna see her for the first time in nearly two years this coming week. Despite my excitement over this I'm pretty sure I'm only gonna end the week more confused than I started and as such am not gonna solve her just yet. Once I finally do manage to win with her though you will all know because fire and brimstone will rain down from the fucking sky. And you can say thanks BLM, thanks for ending our lame-ass existence. But either way I am fighting the good fight. I am running the race. I am keeping the faith. Haha yeah, everyone's fucked if I'm paraphrasing the Bible. May as well just start chanting in Latin.

Alright, that's enough of that. We all know how posts go when BLM gets too personal.

On the random bullshit front it looks like I still have a tendency to overuse the words "anyway" and "though," and also to completely violate good grammar conventions by frequently starting sentences with "and" or "but."

Oh, and hey, it looks like BOETP may start blogging again and this can only be described as a good thing. Maybe that will help motivate me to start blogging at least somewhat regularly again? I guess we'll see. Buckle up. Or not; whatever.

Maudlin

Man I totally gotta use that word more often. Anyway, here is a scarrily accurate list of dos and don'ts for guys with an unrequited crush. That's... Seriously that's just kinda disturbing how apropos that is. Anyway, another good list of advice here. About the only thing missing from the dos and don'ts list is DO make whiny blog posts about her. Speaking of which, I can tell you that it is extra nice to get that link from your own unrequited crush. Man, what a fuckin' racket that is.

Final Fantasy Football

Son of a fuck. You know how I feel about the Pats, so it must be something pretty serious if I'm pissed about an epic fail for them.

Well, how about my fantasy football season being blown up, for starters? Wait -- you probably figured that from the title of this post. No, the post has nothing to do with the videogame, unless Square-Enix has something up their sleeves that I'm unwittingly prognosticating. I just got that phrase in my head one day and it stuck.

But yeah, I'm fucked now. My draft strategy? Draft Tom Brady. After having Steven Jackson (one of the highest rated players at draft time) last season and Ronnie Brown (was leading the league in rushing several weeks in) after Jackson got injured, I was like, fuck the stud running back theory for fantasy football. I'm gonna go with a solid quarterback for my first pick and watch as everyone else sees their star running backs either disappoint or go down in injury later on in the year. I was kinda nervous about that foot of Brady's for awhile. Aside from it potentially being a lingering issue from the end of last season, as a foot fetishist I'm not pleased at having to be overly concerned about another dude's foot. I figured it would be fine; the guy's a veteran and he's a fucking horse. He's not gonna be setting records like last year, but he'll be fine.

So what happens? Before I even fucking got out of bed today, my season was pretty much hosed. The guy's started 128 straight games, but he had to pick today to (probably) shred his ACL and miss the rest of the season. Well, I was right about one thing -- the foot wasn't a big deal after all.

But, what did I expect to happen? Well, this, actually. Even during the draft I was already pessimistic. I even got called out for being such a whiny douche, by a potential dreamgirl nonetheless. So afterward, I had a bit of an epiphany. I was like, yeah, I do complain way too fucking much. Is it any wonder no one likes me? Stop that. Of course, I've had this epiphany before in my life, and then...

And then it turns out I was fucking right. I love how people have the gall to ask why I'm so pessimistic realistic about shit. I mean c'mon. This is all just learned behavior; it's not my fault, it's Pavlov's fault. There is no danger of me becoming a "happy person" anytime soon (happy people don't say "fuck" just so you know... long story).

I know what some of you are saying. "Well, that's what you get." Karma or some shit. Whatever. Either that is A) dumb or B) if I can actually influence peoples' lives just with my shitty attitude then I am clearly in the wrong line of work.

So, fantasy football gets me waxing existential. How sad is that?

Anyway, it's not all that bad. I'm having fun with it; I already changed my team logo picture to be a shot of Brady on the turf clutching his knee. And it is fucking fantasy football after all, which for many years I referred to aficionados of as quote losers. So yes, it's highly hypocritical flexible of me to be playing fantasy football, for the second straight year no less, but who cares. It's entertaining when you're in it with friends and co-workers; it's one more thing to BS about and talk shit about. And as long as I'm not one of those guys who spends all of Saturday setting my lineup (definite losers) then it's not all bad. But what am I gonna do if I can't impress Dreamgirl (hereafter referred to as Unlimited Candy Shopping Spree for reasons known only to me) with my fantasy football skills? Good thing I have so many others to fall back on.

"Once again Negative Z is kicking the hell out of Positive Z as the arguments rage."
- Line from Dr. Z, SI columnist and one of the most entertaining out there, in one of his NFL Power Rankings columns from last season