Random Thought Of The Day #717

Day 717

So, I'm thinking that next weekend will be the Avengers-Athon. Not tomorrow, I mean NEXT Saturday. I am NOT creating an event page. Well, maybe I will. I don't know.

The idea is kinda simple. We will start around 10 or 11 in the morning. There's 6 movies in total, plus 3 Marvel One-Shots (only 4-12 minute long short films) to get through. 7 movies if you count the Ang Lee Hulk movie with Eric Bana, but I think we're skipping it 1) because it's not a Marvel Studios movie; 2) because it's generally ignored in the rest of the series of movies and the only important part (how Bruce becomes Hulk in the first place) is summarized in the opening credits of Incredible Hulk; and 3) it sucks on every conceivable level.

We'll be doing them in order too:

Iron Man
Incredible Hulk
Iron Man 2
The Consultant (One-Shot)
Thor
A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Thor's Hammer (One-Shot)
Captain America
The Avengers
Item 47 (One-Shot)

So in order to make it though about 12-14 hours of movies in 1 day and watch ALL of them, we need to start kinda early or else we're going to be finishing at like 3am.

We're also going to be snacking and drinking all day. We might order some pizzas if people want "real food". So anything people would like to bring with them would, like usual, be quite appreciated.

Also, we're going to be playing a drinking game. @Diotima has been thinking about how that game will work, so she will be the one explaining those rules. I'm just along for the ride on that one. The extent of my movie oriented drinking games ended when I invented the IMDB drinking game about 8 years ago. The damage I did to my body that night from that game is something that I still have phantom pains from occasionally (or maybe that's liver failure?) and I'm not about to invent another game based around the visual medium that forces me to drink at certain times. I'll leave that up to someone else from now on.

So what do you think? If you're interested (even if you've already voiced some interest), please post a reply here.

Random Thought Of The Day #716

Day 716

I got a Groupon offer yesterday for Pole Dancing classes.

Because that seems like something I'd totally have a use for.

I have no intention of putting some girl through stripper school. Though I would be happy to grade them and critique their routine and give pointers where necessary. Because there's always things that can make them better.

Yes, I am the arbiter of good pole dancing.

Actually, this gives me a good idea. I'm taking a stack of scorecards with me the next time I go to the strip club. I'll start grading them on the 10-point scale.

Don't steal that idea. It's mine.

Random Thought Of The Day #715

Day 715

Re-watching the Avengers last night, it dawned on me. Look at the other superhero movies that have been done and look at that one. The rest have all be grounded in some form of reality. The idea of a guy or girl in a brightly colored spandex pervert suit running around and punching people in the face and flying and shooting laser beams out of his ass was too fantastical for the audience. At least that always seemed to be the thoughts of studio heads.

Avengers just said "fuck it, we're making a comic book right into a movie. We're making it in a way that we can't make it in a comic book and we're going to make it look fucking huge."

And you know what happened? About 1.5 billion dollars worth of things. A man in an exosuit that can fly? A norse god? A gigantic green rage monster Jeckyl & Hyde analogue? A walking American Flag? All in one movie?

Jesus, they couldn't even let GI Joe have as much of a leatherman fetish fantasy on screen that it did as a cartoon. They had to dress everyone the same (except Snake Eyes. Because you can't fuck with Snake Eyes) and wear these stupid battle armor suits. There was none of the individuality that made the cartoon and toys fucking awesome.

They couldn't even make Transformers look that distinct other than the 1/3 of them that was painted car colors. How many times could you not figure out who was fighting who in any of the Transformers movies?

But Avengers? They just said "we're going to do everything that people love about the comic book and put that right on a big screen with humans wearing those costumes"... and the general public fucking LOVED it.

Batman had to be grounded in reality. The X-Men had to all wear black leather jumpsuits. Because costumes would have been too "out there" for the general public. At least they finally got that right in First Class, but still... 3 movies of black leather catsuits for people was cool at the time. And then you saw Avengers. You saw how fantastical you could make the costumes and still make it WORK. There wasn't just suspension of disbelief, there was downright dismissal of disbelief.

I don't think people quite realize how ballsy Marvel had to be to make that movie the way they did. If  you would have approached a studio in 1995 with that same idea, they'd throw you out of the office laughing and say the moviegoing audience would never believe it.

If you would have said "I want to make 5 movies to set up a 6th big movie and 4 out of those 5 would have totally different characters in them with nothing more than some ancillary character that kinda shows up for a second or 3 that will connect them. And then I want them to be totally disparate in tone and genre. But the 6th movie will throw them all together into the same movie and then have them team-up to fight aliens and the villian from 1 of those other 5 movies. And we want to have them all released in less than 4 years." ... you know what anyone would have said?  They would have said "you're fucking high" and laughed you out of the room.

And if you had told them you wanted a billion dollars to do them all on? You would have bene put in a straight jacket.

But when you do it... and you make almost 4 billion dollars in box office revenue, that's a fucking achievement.

Nobody has really ever been able to think that BIG in hollywood before now. They always thinking about spinning OFF. They never think about spinning IN. That's what Avengers did. It spun IN 4 different franchises into 1 and then blew the doors off the record books in both quality AND dollars.

To that, I tip my hat. Well played, Marvel. Well played.

Meanwhile, DC and Warner Brothers are sitting there trying to figure out how to do a superhero movie that doesn't have a flying rodent as the star and make it not suck. And IMO, even the 3rd one of those sucked. We'll see how Man of Steel turns out, but even then, they have no coherent plan on how to build to a Justice League of America movie the way Marvel built to Avengers.

Somewhere though, a WB studios exec is getting his balls cut off in a back room of a Thai opium den for letting Joss Whedon go and not letting him make the Wonder Woman movie he wanted to.

Random Thought Of The Day #714

Day 714

Does anyone want to volunteer to archive all of the writing that I've posted here (as in both the blog site and Fet) so that I don't have to?

I was kind of trying to remember all the details of one story and throw down an outline for it when I was left thinking... "Did I already write this story once? When? I feel like I wrote it once and maybe I did, but I just didn't post it... where is it?" and then realized that I couldn't search for it. The search function here won't go into the body of writings to find anything and the search tool on my blog is pretty much useless from what I can tell.

So it left me sitting here and thinking how badly I really need to archive all the shit I've written.

Also... I still need a volunteer model or 2 for the cover. Your face won't be shown. I'll give you a free copy of the book. I just need 2 girls (preferably 1 blond and one brunette) for the cover. I can explain the concept of the cover photo if you're interested. Depending on what you want, I might also be able to pay. I can always dig out an old photo that I might have taken years ago in the aftermath of some party somewhere or with some girl I slept with or something, but I'd prefer not to. I have a concept for a cover that I'd like to do if I can get volunteers, but we'll see.

Race/Age unimportant, but body type is moderately important. Preferably longer hair.

It's a shot in the dark, but we'll see if anyone volunteers.

Random Thought Of The Day #713

Day 713

So... I've been wondering this forever and never think to ask it.

Why do homeless people in the North, stay in the North? Why not take the first $100 or whatever it is that they can scrounge up and catch a bus to the Carolinas? Or Georgia? Or somewhere where it's not fucking cold.

I've always wondered that. It seems like the highest priority for a homeless person would be to eat and the second highest would be to find themselves the best possible environment. With no or limited shelter options, your environment becomes a big concern for self-preservation. So the idea of avoiding the likelihood of freezing to death would be a pretty high priority for me.

So why do people stick in the North when they could go to the mid-South and avoid the super-hot of the far south but also avoid the 2-degree days in February in Pittsburgh at the same time?

This is why I automatically assume that "homeless people" in the North are just grifters and panhandlers that make a living off the pocket change of thousands of people a day. And they go back to their, maybe shitty but still not squatter-quarters, apartments or houses at the end of the day. I don't believe they're ever actually homeless.

Except that dude with the beard that's always wearing 3 pairs of pants or more and a winter coat and a bunch of other clothes and is always going into Ryan's Pub and getting a pitcher of beer. That dude has never changed clothes. Ever. For 2 years now, he's been wearing the exact same clothes everytime I see him. I'll buy it that that dude is homeless. Everyone else though? Fuck it... they're not homeless, they just want my change.

I did that in highschool too. I'd scream for change in the most ridiculously obnoxious voice possible and when I got enough money so I could buy whatever I wanted out of the vending machines, I'd shut up.

So I can totally spot a fake homeless person as a result.

But you know the ones that I really do feel bad for? The ones with dogs. I don't know why, but that really digs at me everytime. Even if they're frauds, I'll always throw them some money for having a dog. Because I want to make sure their dog gets some food that night. Yeah... shocking... I'm a sucker for dogs. I know, right?

I do have to ask though... how are there homeless women who are even moderately attractive? Unless you've got a massive drug problem or mental problem, if you're in  your 20's or 30's and even slightly attractive and in posession of all of your teeth, you do realize that you've got a walking pink ATM in your pants, right?

Just saying...

Fuck... I just managed to depress myself this morning. Now I just want to go home and hug my dogs. Fuck Fuck Fuck FUCK!

I'm gonna go try to NOT now think about this anymore or let my mind drift to the Sarah McLachlan ASPCA commercials now either. Which is going to fail. And then I'm going to want to go adopt all the dogs and FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK.

I'm going to go cry in a corner now. I just ruined my OWN fucking day.

Random Thought Of The Day #712

Day 712

There's something wrong with the universe. I am the cause of it.

I hate a beer called Arrogant Bastard Ale. 

Sadly, I've tried it on numerous occasions, like an Alzheimer's patient that has a cloudy memory of something but can't remember the details at all, and every single time, I hate it. I get 2 or 3 sips in and it's fucking awful. I don't know what it is about that beer that I can't stand. I think I've even tried it just because I remember that I hated it and I'm too fucking stubborn and need to conquer my hatred of the taste of this beer. I am better than that beer and my palette and I'm going to defeat them both to make the universe right.

I mean, come on... this is me we're talking about here. How perfect would it be for me to be wandering around a bar drinking something called Arrogant Bastard Ale while being my loudmouthed, narcissistic, crude, hateful self? I'll tell you exactly how fitting it would be...

EVERYTHING WOULD BE RIGHT WITH THE UNIVERSE! It would solve all of the paradoxes of science and evolution, and end both endless expansion and entropy. It would cause hungry children in Africa to suddenly have plentiful food, and end child labor in Asia. It would lower the unemployment rate back to about 3% and it would be the catalyst for colonization of the stars. It would simply make everything function better.

And I plan on making the universe right. It is my duty to humanity and all unknown life alike.

I'm better than my tastebuds and I'm better than a bottle of fucking beer. If I say I should like it, even if it's just because of the name, I should fucking like it.

This brings me to thinking about beers though.

I know that most of you think that things made by Anheuser-Busch and Coors and Miller are actually beers. They are not. They are actually, clydesdale urine, the urine of skiers, and deer piss, respectively. Molson is also the collected tears of all Canadians for none of their teams winning a Stanley Cup for the past 2 decades mixed with melted hockey ice. None of them are actually beers.

So for those of you that think any of those, or anything that has the word "lite" or "light" on the bottle, are actually beers... stop. Stop drinking forever. You are an embarassment to the drinkers of the world.

I know this is going to be hard for some of you Southerners. Drinking Budweiser is as normal as watching other hillbillies drive in circles while calling it a "sport",  and screwing your sister/mother/prize cow. But I know you can do it. You Texans can put down  your Mexican Kidney Filtered bullshit that you call Corona and you Carolinians and Georgians and everyone else in the bible belt can put down your horse piss and get a taste for something that your betters know to be real BEER.

Try something like:

Guinness
Belhaven Wee Heavy
Delerium Nocturnum
Magic Hat #9
or something else of equal quality

There's no hope for you hipster fucks that still think it's ironic to drink Pabst Blue Ribbon. You should just kill yourself. There's no hope for you. And you'd be doing the world a favor in the process. It would be the only redeeming thing you ever did.

Once again proving, I'd be making the world a better place.

Where's the Scarlet Witch when you need her to wish away all the hipsters the way she did the Mutants?

Random Thought Of The Day #711

Day 711

I think it's time we all started to play a game. An endless game. A game where you can challenge at any time to anyone holding the belt at the time.

For the World Championship Belt.

I mentioned this a while ago and it seemed to get some traction. So I think we should give it a go.

The rules are simple:

You challenge the current title holder in anything you want. Something you're good at. Something you think you're good at. It could be anything from rope bondage to beer pong to who can run the fastest. You make the challenge in public & have whatever contest it is take place in public too.

So you beat the belt holder in beer pong? You get the belt. Someone else challenges you in rope work & beats you? They get the belt. Someone else challenges them in how well they can take a beating & wins? They get the belt. They get challenged to a drinking contest by someone else & lose? You can figure out how it goes from there. And so on and so on.

You can challenge in any competition you can think of. And the belt gets transferred to you and you get to carry it or wear it. But you've gotta keep it with you at any public event/party/bar excursion/ etc thing that you go to or you forfeit it.

And in some cases, the audience gets to decide who wins if it's a game without objective winners & losers. Like Olympic judging. Sometimes there's an objective winner/loser and sometimes it's a question of who the audience thinks wins. Depends what the competition is.

But you gotta make the challenge something fun that other people would want to watch. Don't make it a fucking staring contest or something. Make it fun and bring the audience into it. Make a spectacle of it.

So would people be willing to throw in for the first ever Kinky World Championship Belt?  I'm thinking of taking up a collection to get the Championship Belt made. We can do a dirt-cheap one for like $150, but that one just as a sticker on the plate, which kinda makes it lame. There are economy belts that are just painted for like $400. And they have them all the way up to over a grand. So why don't we do a collection and I'll wait a month or 2 to get it made and we can figure out the kind of belt we want based on how much money we get?

Seriously... think about going to the next event you go to and wearing a world title belt because you were a badass at X thing? Your balls grow by a good 50% just from wearing the belt. And girls? Come on... especially you subbie girls... tell me you wouldn't LOVE to be able to say you took the belt off the big, bad, Dom? LOL! You do that and you'll feel 50 feet tall and bulletproof.

Just imagine the look on my face when I lose the belt to some 120 lbs girl in a game of beer pong or cocksucking or something. That should be your motivation. Right there. Making me cry by losing the belt.

Though @Diotima gets the first title run. Because she can't see Unicorns anymore and she is the most recent person to lose their Unicorn-vision.

Or maybe we can get LAR to make the belt and do all the leather work and I can see how much it'll cost to just get a plate made?

Random Thought Of The Day #710

Day 710

Know what's a weird feeling?

Eating a candy bar while you're on the toilet.

Enjoy that initial reaction for the rest of the day. You're welcome.

Random Thought Of The Day #709

Day 709

I have a few topics that I'd really like to write something about, but every time I try to put my fingers to the keyboard, I get about 2 sentences in and hate the topic again. I don't know why. I can normally just use my lyrical wizardry and throw together a few hundred or thousand words together on a whim.

But I've found that these 2 or 3 topics have been giving me problems to actually get something out. And one thing I've learned is "don't force it. It doesn't work. The result ends up sucking". So I don't. I don't write about this thing or that because I really can't get any train of thought going, much less waiting for it to get derailed.

So here's the topics that I've been meaning to talk about but really can't put anything coherent (or as coherent as I get) together about.

1. Thoughts on dating. It's been done to death by other people. I have mentioned it once or twice, but I haven't put together any terribly detailed thoughts on it. I've been contemplating the idea of starting to look for something that has the potential for being serious, but I can't quite put into words the parts of it that I dread as well. Mostly the cesspool that I don't feel like wading back into when you jump back into the dating pool.

2. The Occupy idiots showing back up again yesterday and trying to figure out if they've figured out what they're actually yelling about yet.

3. How sick I am of going onto K&P and needing to actually look at the other pictures by someone before I am willing to "Love" it, because I refuse to give "LOVE" to pictures that are just stolen bullshit by some guy that posts 2000 pictues of "girls I think are hot". It's obnoxious. And I think that it's a stance that more people should take. Hey, I might love a picture, but if it's just someone you think is cool, but didn't make or remix (and removing the credit and saying "well, I edited it, so now it's cooler, so it's mine" isn't remixing) or isn't of you or anything... that's just your fap material. So while hey, that's great that you want to show your fap material off to the world, there's a website out there specifically for that... it's called ImageFap. Go make a gallery there. But leave it the fuck off Fet.

4. I met my mother for dinner last night. While I was there, I ran into a stripper that has tried to get my attention a few times in the past few months when I've ended up at the nudie bar. There are certain people that you can just SEE the crazy in their eyes. This broad is filled to the brim with it. There's some serial killer in there. I saw it clear as day. I had gotten the "complete and utter trainwreck" vibe from her a couple times she'd tried to talk to me before, but I always chalked it up to some substance or another and the neon and blacklights in the nudie bar. When I saw her yesterday, I saw that it was either still a substance or she really is action packed with insanity. I'm leaning towards option #2.

5. Vote Bailey 2012. He will be the greatest President of our generation. Fuck President Dumbo and fuck the T-888 Prototype running on the other side. Bailey for President, bitches! I mean... he wouldn't even need Secret Service protection. Who's going to take a shot at a dog? Especially a cute one that just wants you to pet him.

Well... maybe a cat person. But fuck cat people. They shouldn't be allowed to vote. Cats are a sign that you have given up. I mean... really... it's a sign of the type of person you are. Cats hate the people that feed them and yet expect you to cater to them all the fucking time? I guess it shouldn't be a shock. That's how most of the humans are anymore. Ungrateful fucks.

So vote for Bailey. Because you should vote for the one candidate that will appreciate you.

Random Thought Of The Day #708

Day 708

Can someone explain to me the appeal of Fantasy Football?

Hell, fantasy sports in general.

Look, I love me some sports. I watched the Baltimore Rat Birds lose yesterday in a game of "which team of fucks do I hate worse" against an asshole that used to fight dogs. A murderer vs an animal torturer. Great. No matter who won, I wanted to punch the guy they interviewed afterwards as well.

But I happily watched the Patriots lose. I smiled when the Steelers won, even though I don't think they're going to be a very good team this year.

I got pissed that it looks like we're going to have another Hockey lockout. But hey, when you have the guy that ran the Baseball players union for as long as he did and the type of economics he thinks is good for sports, then it was kind of inevitable.

And... well... fuck baseball and basketball. They barely count as activities. Some bullshit where you can't hit the other guy? Fuck that. That's not sports. If you can't beat the other guy in the process of playing the game, it doesn't count. That's why Golf doesn't count either. Or co-ed collegiate badmitten either. They're pretty much all the same.

And don't even bother with Women's sports. It's a way to make girls that are neither attractive or intelligent feel good about themselves. Nobody watches. Nobody cares. Though that one night we got stuck watching a women's football league game at the bar was like a trainwreck that nobody could stop watching. So maybe that's it. It's like like Curling circa 2002 Olympics where nobody knew what the fuck it was but couldn't stop watching it.

"A broom and a bowling ball with a handle and a fucking dart board on the ice? What the fuck is going on here!?!? I can't stop watching it!!"

You're gonna get mad about that, aren't you? Learn to know when something is a joke. And also learn that a joke is only funny if it's also marginally true.

But back on topic. Fantasy sports? I don't quite get it.

You spend hours and hours and hours on end looking over injury logs, situational statistics, ratings and rankings, and schedules to make sure the guy is even playing that week and isn't on a bye-week.

And then... what do you get at the end? You might get a couple hundred bucks? If you're in some massive league, you might get a couple grand. You might get nothing. You get the satisfaction of pretending to be a halfway decent general manager in imaginary world. But you don't even get the fun of playing a video game. It's like if you set rosters and traded for people and then let the video game simulate it for you. Where's the fun in that?

I just don't get it.

I tried it twice in college. Hockey and football. In both cases, I got bored within a month and never even looked at my team again until almost the end of the seasons to go "oh, yeah... I guess I might see if I did any good this year?'. I didn't. And I didn't care.

It's boring, time consuming, and fruitless in the end. And I hope you all fucking die in a freak Buffalo Wild Wings explosion while you're doing you draft or your league is getting together to watch 16 different football games at once.

This is more my idea of fantasy football:

RTOTD #707.1

Day 707.1

Some of you might have been alive for this. Some of you, like me, know our history. And some of you might just not give a fuck.

But I gotta ask... Does anyone else feel the weird parallels between now and the late-70's under Carter?

We look like we might have another embassy thing in Egypt like we did in Iran. It's close to happening & there's a fuckload of violence and revolts in that same region in the same ways as it was under Carter.

We have a fucked up gas situation again. Except while we have supply, it's ungodly expensive, as opposed to still-cheap but no supply.

We have a President that sounds a LOT like Carter in what he's saying.

He doesn't seem to have any idea of how to deal with the middle east either.

No clue how to fix the economy as well.

I'm just seeing a lot of parallels. Except that Romney is no fucking Reagan. He's not even a Bush. Either of them. He's a prototype T-888 that still has the laser eyes.

Once again reminding everyone...

Vote Bailey 2012

Random Thought Of The Day #707

Day 707

It's a sign I've noticed a few times. And every time, something tickles the back of my brain about a joke being there or some funny mental image, yet I can never quite put it together.

I did last night.

When coming into the city on the parkway from the East area, right before the Oakland exit is a sign for Adopt-A-Highway or some such thing about keeping the litter down on the side of the freeway.

And who adopted that portion of highway to keep clean and beautiful?

Blush strip club. The one in Downtown Pittsburgh (they better appreciate my free advertising here. Next time, I'm demanding payment for my advertising)

I figured out what my mental image was too.

Strippers out on the side of the road cleaning up garbage. And as the day progresses, they end up hotter sweatier, and needing to take off more clothes. And then, just as the highway is almost clean of litter, people start littering again... but this time just throwing dollar bills out the window at the girls as they drive down the road.

And the girls can't decide between getting pissed off that they have to go pick up more paper from the side of the road and happy that they're getting tipped.

That was the joke/funny mental image that was tickling the back of my brain for the past month or 2 since I first noticed it, and not really giving it much thought beyond the next 10 seconds until I got off at the next ramp anyway until I saw it again a few weeks later again. I've seen it like 3 or 4 times now and for some reason, it took me until last night to figure out the progression of mental images and why it was funny.

So there's your mental image for the day... stripper litter picker-upers that take off clothes as they day goes by only to cause more litter in the form of singles coming out the windows of passing cars.

Enjoy that.

Random Thought Of The Day #706

Day 706

I looked at the news this morning and it makes me want to scream. But I'm not going to scream about that. Because it's tilting at fucking windmills at this point. The world is fucked and it's only going to get fucked-er unless we get rid of all of the idiots in charge and replace them with the first 1000 people through the door at a random gas station in a middle class neighborhood.

I actually think that might end up working out better.

But in the meantime, I'm going to talk about monkeys. Because fucking monkeys.

I want a helper monkey. My dog is useful for a lot of things, but he doesn't have opposable thumbs. So unless it's something that fits in his mouth, he can't really carry it for me. And if it involves opening doors, as much as he tries,  he's not that good at it. He also won't let me use him like a pack mule with one of those mule poncho things on his back with all the pockets in the sides. You know what I'm talking about. He won't let me do that. It would be so much easier if I could just load him up with beers and then have him wander around and people can grab a beer whenever they want when we have a party or have people over.

But becuase I can't do that... Monkey Butlers.

Tell me you don't want a monkey butler. I would LOVE a monkey butler.

But he'd also need to learn how to ride a Triceratops. Because I might want one of those instead of a horse. In battle. During the zombie apocalypse.

That's why we need to clone dinosaurs. They can save us from the zombie apocalpyse. We learn how to ride them and unlike a horse, fucking zombies can't bite them and kill them too. I'd love to see someone try to bite a Triceratops. I have a feeling it wouldn't work out very well. And the guy that rides aroud on the back of a Tyrannosaurus Rex is the fucking coolest guy ever.

We need cloned dinosaurs for the war against the zombies. And against Skynet.

Dinosaurs vs Robots. Fuck yes. I want to see this shit. And I think we ALL want to see this shit.

Random Thought Of The Day #705

Day 705

They tell you, "write what you know", and that's what I've been doing. For the past year, I've been writing what I know.

What they don't tell you is that by writing what you know, you get to understand yourself a lot better.

In a way, it's a manner of therapy. And in another, a manner of self-reflection on who you are and who you were. And in another, it's a realization of exactly when certain parts of you changed. For the better or the worse, they changed. And finally, it can tell you exactly when something fundamentally changed in you and who you are.

I've found that point. The point when I changed from being just some guy into being awesomest man alive.

It was during my Myrtle Beach Roadtrip story. The same story that introduced the Bullhorn Story.

Something about that roadtrip changed me. It changed who I was and who I would go on to be.

I wrote a few months ago that I am actually quite painfully shy. And that's true. I also wrote about how I compensate for it and how I work around my shyness. I wrote about how rarely I'll engage a new person 1-on-1 in the first encounter. I won't walk up to a single girl by herself in a bar, but I'll strike up a conversation with an entire group of girls in the same bar and cast a wide net. I jump at the chance for public speaking and I focus on that one person that I find a connection with and move on from there.

This story ended up being a quite defining moment for me. A week that changed who I was. I had never really found my way to compensate for my shyness before this trip. I wasn't the funniest of my friends. I didn't want the whole room looking at me before this. I was even pretty shitty about getting girls before this point. I was wildly self-conscious and never wanted to be "that guy". But something during this week changed me.

I think that it might have been the first time I was truly honest with myself about who I was and what I wanted and had reached a critical level mixture of apathy and frustration with life. I wasn't entirely sure who I was quite yet, and I had pretty much reached the bottom of my bucket of give-a-fuck about much of anything.

Sure, I had gotten my share of girls before this, and I'd built a lot of friendships, and I'd even been considered charming and funny from time to time. But this week changed me once I became brutally honest with myself about who I was. There's something to be said about a convergence of life experiences all occurring in a short period of time and how it can impact you.

If you read back a while, I had one story that I wrote about my previous best friend who got up and walked out on me without saying a word after I told her that I had feelings for her beyond just friendship. I don't remember how long ago I wrote that one, but it was a little while back. This roadtrip happened 3 or 4 days later. In the span of about 2 weeks, I got the worst rejection I had ever experienced up until that point, I was moving to a new city where I had no friends or family the week after I got back, and I generally had no clue what I was going to do with my life. My ability to give a fuck about much at all other than that exact moment was entirely gone.

I needed to be in a wholly foreign environment and I needed a couple friends for that little bit of confidence for that first effort of letting everything out without them feeling compelled to really out-do me. And I absolutely didn't give any fucks. It was a perfect storm for me.

The 2 friends that I had with me were the types that would already kind of defer to me on a lot of things, but were funny and fun guys to hang out with. And I had an audience of thousands that I didn't know and would never see again most likely. I was 20 and it was a form of a last-hurrah for me. I was going to make it one for the ages.

I did.

I changed. I realized that I could give a fuck less about what anyone thinks of me. I would be as ridiculous or as charming as I felt at that exact moment and fuck the consequences. I also realized that I was looking at girls differently than I had before. When I wanted nothing more than a 1-night thing or just wanted to get laid, I could. Getting laid before this week was a chore. I'm pretty sure that the girls whose attention I'd attracted before this moment were attracted in spite of myself.

But I stopped caring. There were a million beautiful women out there. And while I might not sleep with THAT girl, I was going to sleep with one of them that night if I really wanted to. I didn't care to tell girls what I thought they wanted to hear. I just told them the truth. And I told myself the truth too. Did I want to just nail her like a 2x4 for the night? Did I want to actually see her and get to know her more? Granted, it was the beach, but it was an attitude that I knew was not going back. And I told her exactly what I was thinking. Fuck sugar-coating it or saying that thing that you think girls want to hear you say. Just say exactly what you're thinking.

That didn't just apply to women either. It applied to everything and everyone. I became more intellectually honest with myself during this trip than I'd ever been before. And it was liberating.

I stopped caring if people thought I was funny. I thought I was funny. And I had fun doing it. You'd be shocked how contagious your own opinion of yourself can become. You won't be shocked to find out that; as your opinion of yourself spreads to other people, a handful have the opposite reaction and just instinctively hate you. So if you can't stand people disliking you? This is probably not the best thing.

You can't believe how much confidence you have in yourself when you actually don't care about the opinion of the masses or even any particular person but yourself. And you know what they say about confidence being attractive. Even arrogance is attractive so many. Arrogance mixed with a degree of self-deprecation and irreverence? Even more-so.

When you don't care about the results of what you do and just have fun, the whole equation changes for you.

It didn't happen all at once during this trip. The first ball that dropped that started it was with a girl on the beach the first full day there. I through caution to the wind and just did whatever I felt like and it worked tremendously. The second was when I scared the shit out of the biggest stereotypical cowboy I'd ever met. And the final ball that knocked all the rest of them down was the Bullhorn Story. That night, the world changed for me. And nothing has ever been the same.

I've lost track of who I am from time to time in the interim decade since this revelation, but I've always come back to it. My moments of forgetting this lesson have been minimal and short-lived, but they've still been there.

I have no idea what prompted this. I think I'm going to gut this and mix pieces of this into the book to explain some of the "why" alongside the "what happened?" of the story.