Being a man a wonderful lifestyle

As most of you know, I grew up in a very unique household surrounded by women. I say that meaning that I had 11 sisters, sisters who were very girly, very feminine, very estrogenian. However, I stood my ground and maintained my masculine side. (Once every 7 years.) And I have a few things to say about how I love, being a man.

I love not worrying about whether my toilet seat is up or down. I love getting excited about watching things blow up. I love reciting the storyline of the 2004 NBA finals. I love not worrying about if my pants match my shoes. I love not having to put on makeup before I go out in public.

I love getting out of the shower, stopping, flexing in front of my mirror, and thinking that I'm the sexiest guy in the whole world. Trust me ladies, every guy does that. I love being able to get ready for the day in less than five minutes. I love not worrying about excusing the mess to guests at my apartment, simply because most guys are messy and I have a reason for my messiness.

I love lounging around in nothing but a pair of basketball shorts all day long and not feeling guilty about it at all. I love eating a double cheeseburger at 1 a.m. and not worrying about if any of it is going to my thighs. I love watching the Super Bowl not just for the commercials. I love ogling at a picture of Carmen Electra just because I can. I love not having to worry about the agony of childbearing.

I love discussing the latest car trends with a group of my buddies and not any of us having a clue what we're talking about. I love not asking people for directions when I'm lost. I love watching “Dumb and Dumber” hundreds of times and still laughing at the same jokes over and over. I love talking about hunting stories with my buddies that we've all shared, and exaggerating the details till the story is nearly unbelievable. I love growing a beard and pretending to be the Brawny man or Paul Bunyan.

I love having enough pride to cheer on a football team that hasn't had a winning season in seven years. I love going camping, not showering for five days, and still feeling like a million bucks. I love not asking my buddy if the pair of pants that I'm wearing makes me look fat. I love talking about whose truck could beat up whose. I love having the ability to go to the bathroom wherever I want to. I love having a simple life. I love being able to be pleased easily.

I love understanding how an engine works. I love having the words testosterone and masculinity in my vocabulary, as well as in my body. I love watching movies that have massive explosions and fast car chases, and not ones that have long distance love and romance from beyond the grave. I love not crying at the sight of a deer drinking from a pond at sunrise while classical Mozart music plays in the background.

I love getting excited a good plate of nachos. I love seeing how many gummy bears I can stuff in my mouth on a Saturday night after drinking a 24-pack of Mountain Dew with my buddies. I love watching four hours of SportsCenter a day and being entertained throughout it all. I love pretending to know what I'm talking about when a girl asks me something about cars. I love being a man.

Sure, being a man has its setbacks sometimes, such as… um… well… you know, I can't think of any off hand. And as the years go on, I'm sure there will be other reasons that make me glad I'm a guy, but for now, I'm going to live in the moment and revel in the fact that I am man. Hear me roar.

The Evils of Mathematics

I have had some pretty difficult and sometimes dysfunctional relationships in my life, a few of which have left a sour taste in my mouth and painful memories to bitterly recall. I think if I were to gauge it, probably the most complicated and nasty relationship I have ever been in is the one I went through off and on for four semesters. Enter my significant other, Math 1050.

Math and I have never gotten along. Ever. I think it was back when I was a toddler, learning what numbers were for the first time, that my mind checked out of anything numerically related, especially the concept of basic math. It just never seemed to appeal to me. And to whomever it does, you have my deepest sympathies. I would rather fall through the toilet hole in an outhouse than do math, that’s how much we don’t get along.

Math is a canker sore on your lip while trying to eat a grapefruit. It’s the frustrating agony you have when you are about to sneeze and your reflexes pull it back in. It’s biting your tongue just after a root canal. Math is everything beautiful and serene in the world flushed down the toilet. Math is pain.

If it weren’t so confusing I think I’d be OK. But it’s like a labyrinth that never ends. All the formulas, cosines, inverse functions and theorems are just too much for me. And the difficult thing is the teachers expect me to memorize all of these formulas and equations and stuff that I can’t regurgitate.

For example, X1 minus X2 over Y1 minus Y2 is one. That equals something, whatever that may be I don’t know, but it’s a formula for something. I’m good at telling you what pi is, but that’s pushing me to my limits. To me math is about as sensible as trying to get a sundial to work on an overcast day.

They say math has real-life applications, but I don’t buy it. The only real-life application I have found is counting all the dots in the ceiling and dividing them by the number of panels in the room I’m in, all while waiting for my stupid math class to get over. Now that’s real-world applicability right there.

I don’t ever remember being in a situation where I stopped and said to myself: “You know, this whole mess could be solved if we just plug it into a quadratic equation, complete the square, graph the equation, take the slope of that line, and divide it by our original problem. That would solve everything.”

Did everyone follow me on that last one? Good, ‘cause I got lost just trying to write the sentence.

And then there are the story problems. Oh, those are frustrating. They say you use those in real life, but you never do. For example, have any of you ever been at a restaurant and said: “OK, this piece of carrot cake has 1,560 calories in it. That is three-fourths the average daily requirement for most adults. I wonder what the average daily calorie requirement is for the average adult anyway?”

Yeah, I didn’t think so. And if you say that you did, I’m calling your bluff and raising you 10. It never happens.

To you math buffs reading this and probably plotting my execution at this very moment, please don’t be offended. I apologize in advance. I know deep down inside me that this world needs math, and it wouldn’t survive without it. I just don’t happen to see it. You’re probably shaking your head in dismay wondering how you can get me to understand. It will never happen, trust me. You’ll probably have a better chance of finding the exact square root of two than converting me to the gospel of math. It will just never happen.

All in all, Math and I are never going to see eye-level. It’s been a constant battle between us since I can ever remember, and I don’t foresee a winner any time soon. Maybe I’m just too dense and ignorant to see the point in the field of mathematics. Oh well then. As with most relationships I’ve been involved in, ignorance is bliss.