Monday is my day off. I usually don’t use it very well… at all.

Take last Monday, for instance. As I started out the day, I had five things I wanted to get done– all of them for sheer enjoyment’s sake. I wanted to (1) watch a video of my cousin Steve teaching, (2) read part of a couple books, (3) listen to some new music, (4) learn a new song on my guitar, and, most importantly, (5) something else I can’t remember because it’s not that important right now.

Yes, those all sound like wonderful things to do on a lazy day off while my wife is off at school and I’m sitting around the house wearing pajama pants and a funny t-shirt that I am the only one laughing at.

But I didn’t do any of them.

So what did I do instead?!

I played the brand new FIFA 2006 on my Xbox. All day. It was an amazing accomplishment, when I think about it. It’s been a long time since I played video games regularly and it’s been ages since I actually went on a binge.

So, today, instead of frittering away the hours trying to set up the perfect cross from Rooney to Ruud, I am going to work today on finishing what I’ve started, as I have scattered around the house and various “drafts” folders piles of unfinished business.

FIFA 2006 and Man. U can wait a few more Mondays.

I have a theory and it’s probably wrong. Or boring.

But I’m already writing about it, so what the heck…

My theory is this: People who do specific things very well are either normal, stable people who work very hard and practice a great deal or they are rabid, mildly insane and extremely eccentric people who are also phenomenally gifted.

See the diagram below:

This is certainly a very limited diagram. There are, of course, more than four quadrants of people. It’s totally silly to limit the vast number of people out there to just four categories. There’s like five!

I fall into that small, unnamed category of those who are rabid, mildly insane, extremely eccentric people who are not phenomenally gifted, but don’t practice either. Thankfully, I have taken care of the rabies issue. For now.

But seriously, here’s the problem: I am a dabbling jackass of all trades. (All trades except blacksmithery, that is. Bloody anvils!) As soon as something I’m working in or on gets too difficult, I find a new hobby or skill to take up.

There are several things that have haunted me for many years. One is this creepy ghost named Mr. Charlesworth Richenbacher. But he and I have been getting along for some time, so that’s really not a problem. But the other thing that has haunted me for so long has been my inability to practice things once reaching an operating level of proficiency.

For example, after playing guitar long enough, I could play most of the basic chords and all of the uncomplicated barre chords quite easily. At that point, my development as a guitar player choked, wheezed, and sputtered to a stop. When I could hack together a web page designed entirely in notepad without it looking horrible, I stopped working on my html and css skills. Same goes for Photoshop, Premiere, and a huge number of software titles, as well as the Linux and Mac operating systems.

More important to me than any other skill is writing, but I plateaued there as well and stopped practicing.

once I reached the point in college where I could crank out in 24 straight hours a high quality full term paper with research, full citations and multiple revisions, I stopped working on my writing. After I finished college, I didn’t write anything.

Unfortunately, when I was in second grade, after reading Alexander Key’s Sprockets, I determined that I would practice writing every single day of my life. Shortly thereafter, I signed my name in blood on the back inside cover of Beverly Cleary’s Dear Mr. Henshaw. And the blood’s now about as crusty as my un-practiced writing has gotten.

Today, however, I have decided to make good on the committment I put myself to so many years ago. I am going to write something every day. To keep myself accountable, I am going to post something every day. I won’t necessarily post what I write, as a lot of it will probably suck ass. But I will do my best to post something just so I can keep track of my progress.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll be the next Steve Geluso!

If “American Media is Broken” sounds like an extreme title, um, that’s because it is an extreme title. It is also an appropriate one.

The term “broken”, does not mean “never worked” of course, nor does it mean “irreparable”. From an optimistic sense, when something is broken we are provided the best opportunity to fix it, even to make it better. And every good AA chap worth his twelve steps knows that admitting you have a problem is the first step to overcoming it. Thus, I present the problem as I see it. I do not claim to be the first to point any of this out. My aim is to aggregate and parse the truth.

This nation was founded not upon impetuous talking points, but on informed contemplation and authentic debate. Here’s to the hope that is our future and not merely our past.
(more…)

Okay, so here I am just trying to help Adam in his quest to find the perfect motorcycle. I know the guy’s excited to get a motorcycle. Heck, I’m getting excited just helping him out! So I go to look at a bike for him… a 1972 Yamaha 350. What exact model is it, you may ask? The old one. I rode the sucker and, yep, it’s fast. And yep, it has drum brakes! Couple this with Nixon-era rubber, and you’ve got yourself one scary ride! Needless to say, I like Adam, so I “politely” told him to “pass” - “the salt”.

What’s next? Why, my cousin John kindly offers to let Adam borrow his mid-70s CL 350. It also has drum brakes. The difference? It’s not fast. Now we’re getting somewhere (slowly). What’s the rub, you may ask? Funny you should ask, because this bike does not run correctly. After taking the carburator apart at least twice, and removing and adjusting the float at least 4 times, we finally get it back together. The result? Crap. 8 hours later, it’s still sitting in my shop, while my Mustang sits untouched, still awaiting the convertible top removal, which should take me all of another 15 minutes.

Next up, John’s dad suggests that Adam borrow their 49cc scooter, aptly nicknamed “deadbeat dad”. Actually I just made that part up, but I WAS just reading the newspaper. Actually, I just made that part up too. Anyway, we think, “Hey! this will be easy! This actually runs!” Wrong. 2 hours later and still no farther along than a dusty little scooter with a dead battery and a penchant for starving itself of fuel.

Inhale.

Now, back to the CL 350. I told Adam to put new spark plugs in it, which didn’t seem to help one bit. However, it’s always nice to have new plugs in a bike. It makes you feel like your engine is so fresh, so clean. I still have one more idea, but it’s now 10:00PM and my gumption-meter has reached 1/8 of a tank, and it is famous for leaving me stranded more than once!

Thus, we are back at the beginning. My project is no closer to being completed than it was this weekend, and Adam is no closer to having a bona fide set of wheels to ride to work.

Now if I could only figure out how to post cool pictures on my sidebar like Adam and Steve do, then this would look more professional and journalistic. In fact, you would probably pay more attention because “credible sources” were telling you about motorcycles. And “won ton soup”.

I am the dumbest man alive.

I somehow think that I can “tough out” (read: ignore) a severe allergy to hay combined with asthma. And so here I am, sitting on a medicated breathing machine at 2:40 in the morning because I woke up gasping for breath.

And what am I going to do in less than six hours?

“Tough out” the same circumstances that led to my panicked and strangled asthmatic awakening just a few minutes ago.

I have had asthma all my life, and all my life I have tried to fake that I didn’t when in groups of people. I ran a mile in high school P.E. twice without being able to breathe, just because I didn’t have my inhaler and didn’t want to have to make a big deal about not being able to breathe in front of the other kids in my class. I was seeing stars when I started the next to the last lap, but I would have rather passed out running than stop and go tell the teacher that I forgot my inhaler in my locker.

It’s weird. I usually don’t care what people think of me. But the one thing I seem to care about is one of the things I can’t do anything about. Even odder? I don’t care if people know I have asthsma when I’m not struggling with it.

It’s just in that moment that I can’t breathe, I want to disappear from sight.

And air. I also want air.

I couldn’t agree more with Steve’s comments regarding Garfield. I could have addressed them in the comments, but I want to make my confession public.

I used to love Garfield.

For some weird reason when I was a third grader, I really liked that stupid orange cat. I had Garfield comic books and even a plush Garfield doll! But the entire reason that I liked him was that I drew comics that featured eyes that happened to look just like Garfield’s. Now, the content of those comics was entirely a Sci-Fi/Fantasy cross between a galactic version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and my own bizarre imagination. But there was no lasagna. At all.

And this is where Jim Davis’s comic suffers immensely. It actually has Lasagna.

But in all seriousness: Why read Garfield when it only takes American reality and adds an anthropomorphic twist badly lacking any sense of irony? The cartoon is all about obesity, gluttony, boredom, Monday-hating, TV-watching, and laziness. Add to all of that a cat and you have a typical American home. Really, it’s no surprise the American people eat it up just like everything else. But as Bill Murray once said, “People are morons. People eat blood sausage.”

Could it be true? Is Jim Davis un-American? Perhaps the Unamerican Activities Committee should be notified of his suspicious behavior. I mean, Is it absolutely neccessary that he broadcast worldwide our entire culture’s convicting identification with sloth incarnate? C’mon, Jim! For dignity’s sake, you could at least add an ounce of humorous self-deprecation so we can mock ourselves in a sophisticated way!

Drive with a Garfield stick-on in your window and you’re riding with bin Laden!

And seriously, how often can Jon tip his head back and unhinge his jaw, yelling, “GARRRRFIIIIEEEELLLLD!”

Doesn’t this guy have TMJ by now?

I just realized that I am getting dumber. And it’s bothering me. I have drawn up a small graph to illustrate the path of my intelligence over the past decade. My findings in drawing this graph startled me terribly.

It used to be that I did not make spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, punctuation mistakes, or typos. That’s just who I was. But recently, I have noticed that I have made some serious errors on mathcaddy.com.

Take the posts regarding mathcaddy radio sessions one and two, for example:

Here, I wrote “addition” instead of “edition”. Whew. How horrible is THAT?

And here I actually misspelled the word “welcome.” Ouch.

Will someone please put my keyboard out of its misery?

Let me show you two pictures. That’s all I will show you. And then you can guess why I hate IE.

First, the right way:

And now, the IE way:

Arrrgh!!

My wife (Kristi) says I’m a really trendy guy. She doesn’t mean this to say I’m really “hip” or “with it.” She means that I follow little personal trends. And she’s right. I wish I could think of the correct phrase to describe this personality quirk now that I’ve actually come to agree with her.

For example, right now I’m way into web design. In two months, who knows?

Or… take every time I’ve set out to “Konquer Linux!” I mess around with several distros for a few weeks, start tweaking stuff, rememember a little bit of whatever it was I had forgotten, and then move on to something else.

Or… I can get completely into playing my guitar and learning new songs. I will literally play until I can’t play because it hurts.

Or… I will get a new album or a specific song and play it until I love it and then continue to listen to it until I cannot stand it.

Or… every year whenever Madden NFL comes out for the PS2, all I can think about when I come home is trying to turn my peice of crap Bears into “Champion Calibur Champions!” And I’ll stick with that for a few weeks, maybe a month.

Or… I can get thrilled to death about playing MLB Showdown (baseball card strategy game) to the point where I keep stats and play with several different people… and then one day, it’s just not as fun.

Or… for weeks on end, I am obsessed with reading new books. Or reading old books. Or writing. Or organizing everything in my room, my office, and my life. Or waking up very early and staying up very late. Or going to bed early and getting up late. Or drinking coffee forty times a week. Or eating at Bruchi’s. Or whatever.

Maybe I should just label myself something neat and sound authoritative about it. Then I can just be confident about this oddity in me.

I think I’ll call it MADD. (”Macro” ADD) But MADD isn’t that badd. It’s more just odd. And it drives my wife crazy, which may be its most useful attribute.

…Kidding! (Ow!)

“Uhh…. I’ll be… um, 25 in June.”

It’s a standard question asked of most people. “How old are you?” I always thought that it was when you were about 39 that you started freaking out about answering that question.

Nope. It apparently starts at 24. At least for me it did.

At first, I was freaking out because I couldn’t remember how old I was.

But then I was freaking out because I remembered.

And what I discovered later today didn’t make me feel any younger. While I was sorting through and trying to organize the mass of Word documents I’ve accumulated in my “My Documents” folder, I came across a 21 kb file called “A Prepared Speech Upon Weirdness.”

It was something I remember very well. I even remember the day I wrote it. I was 12 years old. My dad had just brought home a new computer - a 386 with a beautiful 15 inch monitor and running Windows 3.11 with Microsoft Word pre-installed. Well, I was so thrilled to move up from our 286 that I fired up Word and wrote the following, which appears (based on the title) that I thought I would be giving as a keynote speaker at an Amway conference. I’m simultaneously proud, embarassed, and convicted by this little peice. And in a strange and sad way, it still seems like the best idea I ever had. Here it is. (It’s painful to watch, by the way.)

A Prepared Speech Upon Weirdness by Adam Brault
The biggest problem today is that not enough people indulge in insanity. Has it become almost unheard of to be weird? I have looked deeply into this subject and concluded upon the fact that nobody has any fun any more. To be weird is not a curse it is more of a gift….a talent if you may. After injected with the “miricale” medicine of fun, you can truly experience life without having to worry about what others think of you. You can look at things nobody else could EVER see. If you just daydream and let your mind run through the field where Kevin Costner is you just may find the answer to a problem. Once loosened up, you can then go about solving your problems in a more enjoyable fashion. If people in this world were to lighten up and see through the media’s negative poison and goof off a couple hours day, do you know how many people’s lives would be saved?…how many wars would be stopped?…how many starving people could be saved? How can you know unless you allow yourself to kick back and relax an act like a total moron, but not worry about it.

By the way, the whole field where Kevin Costner is came from having just watched “Field of Dreams” eight times the previous week.

Yeah. I misspelled “miracle” (”miricale?” sheesh!)… but to me today, those are actually some powerful thoughts and I really like the fact that I wrote them when I was 12. But they just kill me today.

Why? Because I am not the person who wrote that anymore. I’m so boring in most situations that if I happened to stumble across myself at that age from some parallel dimension, I would probably kick me in the shins. Hard. No kidding. Well, maybe not kick me in the shins… but I’d certainly throw tic tacs at myself, perhaps from under a table.

Yup, I’m still a weird guy to those who know me very closely. But I realized recently how much that’s not me anymore when I heard two people in one day say to me, “Man, Adam, you’re always so serious.”

Crap. What do I say to that?

I don’t want to be serious. I wish to death I could be 15 again and just hang out and do the craziest stuff with guys like my cousin Steve, my ultimate hero in more ways than one. (He’s not only the most brilliant, creative and weird guy I’ve ever known, he’s also amazing at Flash animation! Okay, I made that part up. Sorry, Steve.)

Anyway, sometimes I get these bursts that just run through me from my socks up to the tips of my ears and I feel like I’m 14 or 15 again. And at a creaky-jointed 24 and three quarters, I long for the days of my youth when the most exciting things in life came out of spontaneous explosions of creativity that were about as weird as they come.

But that’s just fiddle faddle! I’m going back to my newspaper. Harrumph.