********ADDENDUM********

It's been about four months since I wrote anything on here. I kinda forgot all about blogging until I was going through my Facebook friends list recently. I like to sort through it every year or so and delete people that really don't play any part in my life, like that girl that I friended at 2am in the karaoke bar and haven't talked to since, or that guy that I would punch in the face if I ever saw in real life. You know, those peeps. As I was scrolling through my friends list I noticed that someone was missing. Specifically, my old friend Phil. I texted him this morning to see if I could get to the bottom of his social media disappearance, and his response was a little upsetting. Apparently he decided to read my blog (which I used to post on FB) and was a little put off by my "solitary habitation" group of posts. I won't lie, when I was originally writing those little stories it did cross my mind that he might read them and think "dude, wtf?" I get it. It's personal stuff and I'm here publishing it for the world the three or four people who follow me to read.

That being said, I think it's important for me to state, for the record, that Phil is not a bad guy. In fact, I still consider him a great friend. He was there for me numerous times when I needed someone to talk to, especially a couple times when my relationships went down the toilet. Even recently, when my divorce was finalized, he reached out to me on his own and we got together, went to a few punk rock shows, and talked about old times. So Phil, if you are reading this, I love you man. You are good people. We all make mistakes, especially in our teens/early twenties. I sure did. We get a pass because we were still learning how to be responsible, tax-paying, career-having, educated adults.

While these stories are primarily true, I do exaggerate certain aspects. I try to make them as humorous as possible because, in retrospect, some of the shit we went through was downright hilarious. And that's that.

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Please don't tell Allstate Insurance Company that I have a blog

I have been in a few car accidents over the years. 

I have been in my fair share of auto accidents over the years.

I'm going to level with you. I have wrecked the fuck out of just about every car I have ever got behind the wheel of. No joke. I simply excel at taking a shiny, unspoiled marvel of engineering that wants nothing more than to transport me from point A to point B in the most efficient and comfortable way possible, and transforming it into a hulking, multi-ton, mangled cluster of steel and plastic. Then I buy another one and do it all over again. It's the circle of life, or something. What's really interesting here isn't even that I'm good at wrecking cars. In fact, I'm pretty certain that for every time my fifteen minute commute to work ends up taking over an hour and a half, there is some jackass exactly like me to blame for it. No, what impresses me the most is that I have never been the least bit injured in any of those accidents. Well, technically I got an airbag burn on my wrist once, but that doesn't really count. That was the car's fault, not mine. Automobile safety features aren't medications - getting injured shouldn't be a side effect brought on by the device designed to protect you from injury. Just saying.

Anyway, I must have a guardian angel looking out for me. I mean, just think about the level of skill it takes to completely flip an SUV down a cliff (multiple times), or slam a pickup truck into a car hard enough to do three rotations in the middle of the interstate and spew the entire contents of the truck bed into both the northbound AND southbound ditches. Yeah, been there, done that. Unscathed.

Let me tell you about one such event...

I wasn't even driving the first time I experienced the thrill of flipping multiple times in an automobile. I was fourteen, had just started High School, and was hanging out with this twenty-one year old guy I knew from church. He had a Ford Mustang and (for some reason that baffles me when I look back at it) liked to hang out with High School kids such as myself. We were coming back from a movie. (I really hope it was Mortal Kombat, just because that movie came out around the time this story took place, I remember seeing it in the theater, and it sucked so much ass that it's funny to imagine that God was punishing me for spending six actual earth dollars to see it) Regardless, It was raining and Joel was speeding, he took a sharp turn too fast, and bing, bang, boom we're upside down in a ditch. Did I mention it was freezing outside? Like, not "I'm a Floridian so anything under 70 degrees is freezing" freezing. It was actually below 32 degrees outside...and we were upside down...in a ditch full of water...and a few of us were holding sodas left over from the movies. You know those 64 ounce soda cups produced by Satan himself that are so large they don't even fit in your car's shitty little cup holder? Yeah, we had purchased those. Needless to say, sometime between being upright and enjoying life and hanging upside down in a smoking car in the ditch our beverages launched themselves out of their respective cups and spilled all over each and every one of us in the car.

We crawled out of the car and called a tow truck, which came and delivered our sticky, shivering bodies to the nearest gas station. The tow truck driver dropped us off and promptly left. We kind of just sat there silent for a few minutes. We were all too young to drive, and aside from Joel we didn't know anyone else who was cool enough to leave their home at eleven thirty at night to come pick us up. The unspoken truth was that one of us was going to have to call our parents to pick us up. My friend Bryan ended up drawing the short straw and made the call to his dad for a ride back into town. We grew up in the middle of nowhere, so it was a good hour drive from where we lived to the actual movie theater...and in the meantime we would certainly freeze to death.

I don't know if Joel had previous experience as a hobo, or whether he just had a stroke of ingenuity in this particular situation, but he came up with a solution that, while embarrassing, got the job done. He went over to the newspaper machine, put in a few quarters, and grabbed every single newspaper in the box. We huddled together like little hibernating animals in the dead of winter and spread the newspapers over top of us to shield the cold. It worked, despite a few sneers from the cars passing by. Eventually Bryan's dad showed up, bitched Joel out something fierce, and then took each one of us home. The end.

What was I talking about again? Oh yeah - trashed cars. I've had a lot of those. Check out the ones I can actually remember off hand - 

• Blew the engine by driving too fast with no coolant ('74 Volkswagen Beetle) 
• Rear ended another car in the rain ('91 Honda CRX) 
• Girlfriend angrily jumped into the car on top of me while I was trying to leave her house and caused me to run into her dad's fence ('91 Honda CRX)
• Tried to merge into traffic in the rain and slid into the guardrail ('91 Honda CRX)
• Made a blind turn into traffic and was sideswiped by oncoming traffic - totalled car ('94 Honda Prelude)
• Took the interstate off-ramp too quickly, skid off the side and flipped several times down the embankment - totalled car (2001 Isuzu Rodeo)
• Ran into the driver's side of a car that pulled out in front of me - totalling both cars ('94 Toyota Pickup)
• Rear ended a rental car at a stop light (2004 Isuzu Rodeo)
• Made a left turn into traffic and was hit by another car ('96 Mitsubishi Eclipse)
• Rear-ended the car in front of me while looking at my phone ('2008 Mazda 3)
• Rear-ended the car in front of me while looking at my phone AGAIN, in the same exact intersection ('2008 Mazda 3)

You get the point.
It's actually been four years since my last car accident. Pray for me.

A brief foray into solitary habitation, part 2

.....and that's when things began going to shit.

It was a gradual process, really. Honestly, the first few months of having a roommate weren't that tumultuous at all. Phil spent most of his time either at work, in his room, or at the hotel across the street. Why the hotel across the street you ask? Well he wasn't banging hookers. At least, I don't think so. You see, he walked across the street to call his girlfriend at the hotel because he didn't have a cell phone. In fact, neither did I. We weren't particularly poor or anything, cell phones just weren't as commonplace back in the late 90s. Hard to imagine, right? I mean, these days cell phones are an obligatory purchase for every human being upon learning to walk and consume solid foods, but there was a time when an apartment full of college kids didn't have a cell phone between them. I remember watching Clueless and thinking how fucking spoiled those kids were for having a phone that they could take to school. Nobody I went to high school with had a cell phone. A few kids had pagers, but the school figured they must be drug dealers and banned those right-quick. So yeah.

Things were all fine and dandy until Phil lost his job. He was doing some git-er-dun type of job (washing windows, I believe) and making a shit ton more than I was bringing in at Busch Gardens. I remember him talking about doing some cleaning work for one of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers players, so I assume it was a pretty legit operation. He also had a car, so provided we could decide on something to do on the weekends (which usually involved getting drunk off cheap beer at our shitty apartment and going to a punk rock show), I didn't have to rely too much on my bike for transportation. I didn't realize it at the time, but Phil and his boss had a bit of a rocky relationship, and if you've ever worked in a trade-type environment, you know that developing a thick skin is even more important than knowing what the hell you're doing. Apparently they got in an argument over god-knows-what, Phil mouthed off and got himself fired. Without a job, he no longer had money to spend on essentials such as rent, food, and laundry. This created more than a few problems for me.

issue number one - trust? gone.

Remember how I said Phil would walk across the street to use the payphone? Well it's kinda hard to make daily payphone calls without any quarters, and that little detail brings us to issue number one. I'm not saying Phil was a thief, but I kept a small jar of change on my dresser, didn't have a lock on my bedroom door, and gradually watched my overflowing jar of change shrink to a quarter of the way full. Coincidence? No, he fessed up when I confronted him. He also admitted to eating my food (even fast food leftovers and kool-aid weren't safe), and wearing my clothes and hanging them back in the closet afterwards. Now I'm no Sherlock Holmes, but when someone at least two sizes larger than you wears your t-shirts, it tends to stretch them out just a wee bit. It's noticeable. That's not even mentioning the giant white deodorant stains he left on both the inside and outside of the shirts. Speaking of clothes...

 issue number two - the laundry doesn't wash itself, yo

Another downside to apartment living was the lack of an in-unit washer and dryer, but we made the most of it. It was customary for us to wait a week or two until we almost had to start wearing our underwear inside out, then the four of us (yes, I said four,,,more on that later) would pack up the car and make a communal trip down to the local laundromat. It was an event. We would order pizza from the Hungry Howie's next door and hold Ms. Pac-Man competitions on this really rad little arcade unit. We would throw each other into those big industrial dryers and take rides in the laundry cart. Good times. For a while. When Phil lost his job he barely had money for food (see above), let alone the expense of maintaining an unsoiled wardrobe. He started locking his bedroom door and staying at his girlfriend's apartment for weeks at a time. Mounds of dirty clothes sat in his room until the point in which the smell actually started to creep under his bedroom door and make the entire apartment smell like a dirty jock strap. Something had to be done.

A brief foray into solitary habitation, part 1

My first year living on my own was an interesting one. I grew up in the middle of nowhere so I didn't really have much experience driving in a big city and living near actual things to do (tailgating in the Winn-Dixie parking lot is the most popular Friday night activity where I'm from). My parents used to live in Tampa but at some point in their lives decided that they wanted to be away from the hustle and bustle of (city?) life, and moved to an area where the closest gas station was a half a freaking hour away and I could count the number of stoplights in the entire county on my hands. Growing up in such a rural area, I wasn't really used to being around a lot of like-minded people. Most of the kids I went to high school with spent their free time hunting and riding horses, while I spent most of mine skateboarding and playing video games. They took Ag classes and learned how to castrate bulls. They won rodeo competitions and came to school with these giant trophy belt buckles. Shit like that. Meanwhile here's Steve in his Jnco's, Kurt Cobain haircut and Primus t-shirt, standing in the corner trying not to get noticed by anyone.

I'm partially joking. It wasn't that bad. I had plenty of friends. It's just that, unless you have spent some time in a small southern town, you will never understand just how different it is than almost any other place you could live. Seriously. We moved to Bumfuck Wauchula when I was about seven, so I spent most of my elementary and all of my Middle/High School years there. Upon graduation I wanted nothing more than to get the heck out of there and never look back. I convinced my best friend at the time (we'll call him Phil, because, well that's his name) to go half on an apartment with me, I scored my first adult job at Busch Gardens operating a ride (that reminds me of another story that I'll save for a later post...oh god), and moved to Tampa. Temple Terrace to be exact - directly across from Busch Gardens and walking distance from my college.

Phil was dating some girl in another city at the time so I didn't see him for the first month or so of my little foray into solitary habitation. I had the whole place to myself and developed a really nice little routine that would become the framework for my eventual OCD. Get up, go to work for about six hours or so, come home, eat dinner, ride my bike to school (did I mention I didn't have a car at the time? Yeahhhhh, there was that), draw something stupid like a fruit basket or a wrought iron gate (I was studying graphic design), ride my bike back home, go to sleep. Rinse, repeat. Then Phil moved in and we started venturing out into the great wild open. That's when things began to go to shit.

I have a dick, so I must like staring at balls

Don't worry, this isn't actually a post about my penis.
You're welcome.

Today I'm going to talk a little bit about one of my favorite topics...SPORTS! You can't see my facial expressions or hear the biting sarcasm in my voice, but it's there, trust me. I'll start by saying that I don't hate sports, per se. I'm just extremely indifferent to the subject altogether. I understand the allure for some people. A lot of parents put their kids in little league as soon as they can hold a bat, or slap a pair of cleats on their little feet and teach them how to kick a soccer ball practically from infancy. I would expect those children to grow up to be jersey wearing, smack talking, terrible towel waving horrible sports fan adults. I, however, was not one of those kids. It's not that my parents didn't try to foster my recreational side. They enrolled me in karate (or moe-can-too, as my mom mistakenly called Tae kwon do the other day) when I was six or seven years old. About one year and two or three belts in we moved to a different town in Florida and they never ended up re-enrolling me. Game over. I never played another sport or participated in another after-school activity again.

It didn't help that neither my mom nor my dad had any interest in sports in any way, shape, or form. My dad would occasionally watch Nascar or golf on some Sundays, but even that wasn't often enough to really foster any long-term interest in my budding, youthful mind. He was also a little older than the fathers of most kids my age, and had his share of health problems. I can count the number of times he played catch with me on one hand. It wasn't his fault, really. He is an amazing father and I learned an incomprehensible number of life skills from him. Shit, the man taught me how to build a house from scratch before I was even in high school. He just wasn't a sports fan and didn't raise me to be one.

All this brings me to the point of this entire rant. Brace yourself -  I am a thirty-something heterosexual male who isn't a sports fan. Go ahead - let it soak in. Shocking, I know. I work in an office building where all anyone ever wants to talk about is sports. It's always time for another season of one sport or another to start up. I sit at my desk and listen to my co-workers talk about their fantasy football picks. I endure those two guys discussing the highlights of last night's hockey game at the urinals while I take a shit in the stall next door. Sometimes those people try to start up a conversation with me about stats or whatnot. I'm a fellow male, of course I'm a sports fan, right? What a nightmare. 

In all honesty, I actually kinda enjoy the dumbfounded looks on the faces of new friends/acquaintances/co-workers when they ask me who my team is. I usually just answer somewhat sarcastically, like "I don't play on a team." Then they're all like "Yeah, but are you a Bucs fan?" Fan? As in, am I fanatical about this rotating bunch of dudes in tight outfits running around the field and smashing into each other, trying to get their hands on the other team's balls? Am I a fan of that? Nope. Can't say that I am. Sounds kinda gay.

Blogs are for pretentious douchebags.

Alright. First post, what to say.....

I like writing. A lot. I don't consider myself very good at it, particularly, but I find it uniquely therapeutic. I also have a lot of free time on my hands to ponder the absurdities of life. This can be positive or negative, depending on the situation. My love of writing has got me into trouble numerous times before - usually because I end up sending messages to friends/girlfriends with way more information than I should ever share with anyone, and end up pissing them off with my honesty and candor (or what I see to be honesty at the time, which upon further examination was really just the way I felt for a fleeting moment, before jumping back to reality and realizing I misspoke in the worst way imaginable). Come to think of it, this is probably going to end up being yet another outlet for me to stick my foot in my mouth. Oh well, it is what it is. 

Writing is one of the few talents that I have actually honed somewhat throughout the years, unlike my drawing/sketching abilities, which seem to get worse every time I put pen to paper. Maybe it's because as I get older my vocabulary is expanding organically. There really isn't an equivalent of that in the art world. I mean, I can't simply look at art all day and expect to be a better artist. I can, however, read a shit ton at work instead of actually accomplishing work-related tasks, and expose myself to a lot of varied writing styles in my daily web-surfing. Actually, that's a poor example, because using that logic, I should be able to go to art galleries or look at comics and expose myself to different artists. Just look at me, contradicting myself already and I'm only 300 words in. Yikes. Whatever the reason, I know I could break out the 'ol sketchbook and sharpie, or colored-pencils, or even boot up photoshop, and create a reasonable looking facsimile of that fruit bowl in the corner. I mean, I did go to art school. I have been drawing ever since I could hold a pencil. I just don't have the desire to anymore. When I get bit by the creativity bug lately I tend to gravitate toward something more tangible and concrete, like building a custom shower in my house or making a poker table from scratch. I still have a lot of artist friends who regularly read comic books and go to art shows and stuff. That type of routine helps them keep their skills fresh. At this point I just feel stale, and I'm ok with it.

Wow, that got depressing quick. So much for being therapeutic. Shit. I'm just a failure and should probably go slit my wrists now. 

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, my writings. I feel like a douche just for having a blog. Just for thinking I'm cool enough to have a blog.

This may not stick. We'll see....I hope it does. I do have a lot of really interesting stories to tell.