It Could Be Worse

For the record, I am not depressed. 

At least that’s what all of you were thinking after reading my rant about how the L-word is all just a myth. A hoax. A big ball of crap. 

For full effect, download “Needle” by Born Ruffians and play at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post. 

It was shocking to see how many of you came out of the woods this week to tell me how freakishly accurate my predictions were about marriage. And it was also shocking to see when more and more people reaffirmed my half-empty opinions on the subject, the more outraged I became at what my life would end up becoming. Perhaps it may be my male menstrual cycle hitting on all cylinders, but whatever it was, I was mad.

I was angry.

I was bitter.

I was pissed off. 

And then one morning I woke up and realized that things in my life aren’t actually all that bad, and that I in fact do have a great life. 

Now please don’t be confused, this isn’t a self-praising, narcissistic, I’m-just-going-to-stare-at-my-reflection-in-the-river-Styx-for-hours blogpost, this is actually just me reflecting on a series of events that happened this past week when the big man in the sky fed me a piece of humble pie, and backhanded me the authenticity that everything will in fact be alright. 

You see kids, I have a roof over my head, I have clothes on my back, I have food in my belly, and I can DVR the series finale of “Breaking Bad”. I can be a jack of all trades, and there are probably one or two girls out there that might think I’m not too shabby looking if I decide to shave off my 8-day lapse in facial hair. For me to complain that my life is hard because I haven’t been able to find a wife at the disgustingly old age of 28 in Mormon culture, well that’s nothing to complain about at all. Because in all seriousness, I have a great life. 

And that’s the thing. 

So do you.

Life really isn’t that bad at all, now is it? I can sit here and whine and moan all day long about the fact that I’m not married, but you know what, it could be worse. My unwanted bachelorhood is a speck compared to the misery that other people are forced to endure every single day. And likewise you can go and vent about the hardships and trials and calamities that you have been dealt in this poker game that we all call life all you want to. 

But you know what? It’s really not that bad. For a moment things may appear hard, the pressure may feel daunting, the misfortunes we have been shelled out make us want to sob in the fetal position. But sooner or later those things will pass. Life will go on. And somewhere in Albuquerque, or Istanbul, or Provo, there has to be at least one other person out of the 7 billion walking this Earth that perhaps has a slightly tougher road to hoe than you do. Isn’t that right? 

So calm down. Go to church, get on your knees, thank whatever God you believe created you for the fact that your life really isn’t as tough as someone who just walked out of an abortion clinic or was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Remember that life is good, and things will sooner or later get better. Take a deep breathe and go hug your mother.
 

Everything will be alright. 

The Death Of The L-word

I have reached a point in my life where everything I once believed in, or at least everything the Ted Mosby inside of me believed in, has been shoved down the garbage disposal. Of course I’m talking about the death of that big word driving every single one of us. The L-word.   

For full effect, do not go and download anything from iTunes and play at full volume throughout the duration of this post, because honestly, this post is not really deserving of any kind of music whatsoever. All I want you to hear is the emptiness in your front room, and the sound of your own voice reading these blunt words in the front of your head.

By the way do not feel bad, do not turn on your motherly instincts that worry too much, and do not get all sympathetic on me. Do not think this post is deserving of any motivational/lift-up-your-heart-and-rejoice likes or comments that are only worth less than three seconds of your time, or whatever else you think is a gratification of my social media ego. Do not think I am seeking your sorrow with this post. I am great. I am at peace. I am 100% fine and dandy, and have a damn good life to boot. 

However, yesterday I came to the sudden harsh realization that love, or whatever word people often use once they are committed to a serious relationship, is not real. 

Love is in fact a business. 

And here’s why.

A dear friend had a come to Jesus conversation with me yesterday that lasted roughly eight minutes. And no, he wasn’t going all “Intervention” with me or questioning my sexuality, nay, he was calling me out for being too picky in choosing who I hope to settle down with for the rest of my life. He was refuting my claim that I, one day will have a romantic story to sit down and tell my kids over the course of nine seasons recounting to them the heart-pulling drama of how I fell in love with their Mother.   

Him: “That’s the thing Brock, that stuff doesn’t exist. It’s not real. Love stories are great and all, but in reality, your relationship is about being able to co-exist with someone. If you have the same hobbies as another girl, you both enjoy each other’s company, you have the same religious values, you both like each other’s families, and heck, she’s kind of cute, anybody, and I mean absolutely anybody can make a marriage work. If they’re willing to put the time and effort into it.”

Me: “But what about the way I feel about her? What about when people say they have a rush of butterflies or warmth, or whatever they call it when they see each other’s face? What about falling in love?”

Him: “That stuff is plain horse shit. You’ll feel it for a little while and all, but the bottom line is that you can make a marriage work with absolutely anyone. Because those feelings are not what a good marriage is based on.”

Now I’m not an unintelligent moron who has some cockeyed perspective and makes life-altering decisions based off an emotion, and I’m also not saying that there is only one single person out there for me to be with. But to think that love is just a business decision, and in the long run is not based on any of the twitterpated feelings you get whenever you make eye contact with them from across the room, to think that love is really just about X’s and O’s, well…that’s…that’s just, MADNESS!

And then it hit me. 

We can’t live off a rush of feelings and emotions. If we did, we would fail as a society.  Love really is just a business decision. Those “feelings” you have for a woman will die. But those business principles won’t.   

Me: “So you’re telling me that any of the amazing girls I’ve dated, girls who were jaw-dropping awesome on so many levels, girls like Lacey, Brandi, Nikole, McCall, Jo, girls who have all now found greener pastures with men who are better business decisions than I ever was, any one of those girls would have made a great wife?”

Him: “Exactly.” 

And that’s the depressing truth I’ve been drinking to every hour since this conversation was dropped. 

Now you may disagree and say that I’m a fool, and say that love is more than just a business decision. Love is infatuation, and excitement, and romance, and all of those other emotional rushes that people get from watching “The Notebook” on a Saturday night. But let’s be honest, those emotions will die and our true character won’t. If I’m going to find a girl to spend the rest of my days with, I need to stop looking for someone who makes me happy, and I need to start looking for a good business partner.

Call me immature, call me a jackass, call me whatever curse word you want to, but the absolute, final, Ted Mosby-killing bottom line is this:

Love is dead.  Love is business. 

May Techno Be Damned

I think I’m about to lose my mind.

You can go ahead and thank every single drop of Techno music for my sudden rush to the nearest asylum. 

For full effect, download “The System is Down” by Strongbad and the Burninators and play at full volume throughout the duration of this post.  And if by chance you have already heard “The System is Down” by Strongbad and the Burninators, let us both shed a tear for the passing of that great band. 

As of Thursday night I have new neighbors. And I honestly can’t tell whether or not they are a free-spirited group of Europeans, or if they are a couple of love-making robots, because for some reason there has been a constant bass beat permeating through my walls since the minute they unpacked their furniture. In the Southern words of Chris Thomas, “Dear Lord, I might have to break something.”

I thought one of the rules of buying a house, regardless of whether or not it was a townhome attached to a large unit, was that you were required to stop playing music for 24 hours a day, or at least keep your decibel levels below 55 out of common courtesy. Or wasn’t there a stipulation in their contract that said “I, the assigned tenant will actually grow up and realize that Techno Music is never, ever making a comeback and I will never play this disgusting sound until the day I die, or the government does have the right to seize and destroy my property.”

Seriously, this music is so distracting. In fact, it’s slowing me down as we speak.  Here it is a little after 3 am on what can be classified as Sunday morning, and I can’t finish this blog. I have been trying to pound out this post for over two and a half hours now but that music is being such an interference. Usually I can write a piece in under an hour, but to hear a never ending beat with some high pitched waves and some old school movie phrase like “The System is Down” playing nonstop almost pushes me to go FUBAR on their property. 

At this point I can’t figure out what kind of people are living next to me. Not to be racist, but is there a certain group of people that are born with a natural impulse to listen to bad music? Really though, who listens to Techno music ALL FREAKING DAY LONG?! In my head all I can picture is Quagmire and a group of Swedish women having a Woodstock-like love making session that will never end. That’s gotta be it. My neighbors are having a cartoon orgy.  

What do I do? Do I pound on their wall and tell them to shut off their new school tunes? Do I go and write a scathing letter about how their music is keeping me away from my beauty sleep and that they need to be respectful of their fellow neighbors? Do I call to the Home Owners Association and complain that my neighbors aren’t being courteous and will not stop playing their God-awful music. Do I retaliate their music with some other annoying sounds?

Wait, that’s it! What is the only sound in the entire world that is worse that Techno music? The sound of a baby screaming its face off because its four-hour old diaper hasn’t been changed and it’s giving its tushy a rash! I know that sound! I grew up with that sound! Heck, I used to dance to that sound in my sleep like it was my own Techno music growing up! That sound in itself is a huge reason why I have never “settled down”.

Alright people, send me your kids. If you have an annoying child who can drown out Techno music, I want to hear them. Their cries in the night for a feeding that you’re dreading more than a dinner with your in-laws are exactly what I need to hear. Your child’s screams are what I would now call “music to my ears”. Renting out your kid for a few days may be the only thing that will help me win this war. 

Otherwise, I might be breaking into their house in the next five minutes and going ballistic on their sound system with my cricket bat. 

You've Got Balls

Keith Tronic: “You need to grow up Brock, seriously. Why are you going out and tossing money around left and right buying things like new snowboards? When in all reality you need to go buy something that an adult would purchase, like, a couch. Then you’ll be respected.”

Said one of my best friends three years ago…

For full effect, download “Hero” by Regina Spektor and play at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post.

I don’t buy couches because, well, I just don’t buy couches.  But remember that one time when Life Insurance policies and HOA fees grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and said that I needed to finally grow a pair and start being a big kid? Well, that was last Tuesday and so far I haven’t had the best track record at making big kid decisions.  Especially when it comes to leather-bound pieces of Espresso-colored furniture that come with a matching Ottoman.

For the record, I would like to state that for the majority of my post-pubescent life I have been living with the reputation of someone who has no soul, someone who is cruel and harsh. People presume that I am a man that shows no pity for a three-legged puppy that hasn’t been fed since February. Well let me tell you something.

You’re wrong. 

I’m a six-foot stuffed teddy bear with a big red ribbon from Costco smothered in sugar, spice, and everything else nice. That is of course when you compare me to Keith.

Ladies and gentlemen, Keith has no soul. And I mean that in the highest of regards. In comparison to the Grinch, or Genghis Khan, or any other fictional character out there, Keith would put them to shame. I mean this in all sincerity and absolute respect for the man when I say that Keith Tronic, the businessman who is my polar opposite, is pure blackness. 

Take for instance the infamous couch-purchasing incident of ’13.  And yes, my life is a historical account that kids will read about in years to come therefore I refer to the events in the same tone as though they were natural disasters that killed hundreds on a washed up beach. Since living in my new townhome I decided to put on a pair of big boy undies and begin purchasing furniture to decorate the manscape that will be seen as the inside of my home. 

And yes, I just referred to my interior decorating attempts as my manscape.  Shut your face and keep reading.

I’ll cut to the chase to save you from an abundantly long list of pointless details that don’t add anything to the moral behind this entire story. I bought a couch, I got screwed. Plain and simple. That seems to be the perfect way to describe what happens when you purchase a sectional from a furniture store back in mid-July, and Tracie, the interior decorator decides to tell you your piece is being put on backorder again, this time until November and that you’re not actually going to be getting the matching checkered Ottoman like she said you would be getting originally.

Tracie: “I’m sorry sir, now would you please bend over at a 45-degree angle, this curtain rod is only going to hurt just a little bit.”

This is the part where as I began to shamefully move to my submissive stance, awaiting the violent curtain rod’s insertion, when Keith Tronic took over and let the black plague be unleashed with his cold-hearted businessman tactics of negotiation. 

Keith: “NO! That’s not what’s going to happen! Here’s the deal Missy, either you give my client a bigger, softer, and more expensive couch for the exact same price as he paid for the piece of crap you sold him back in July that STILL hasn’t been delivered, or I’m calling Child Protective Services and the DEA on your butt and taking down your entire business right here on the spot! YOU HEAR ME?!”

For a little bit of clarification, yes Keith suddenly did endorse himself as my agent, i.e. I was his client despite the fact that I was sobbing in the corner trying to hide my suddenly soaking wet panties underneath a plastic end table, and yes he did use both an adoption and drug agency as threats to get a furniture store to budge from the unheard of price they were asking me to pay. True story.  

I thought I was screwed.  I thought I was dead.  I thought I would have to live the remainder of my life watching college football laying on dirty carpet every Saturday morning and I would never be held in the arms of a modern-day leather sectional with an extended chaise lounge. #firstworldproblems

Tracie: “You’re absolutely right sir, we owe your client that much. And would you like our storeowner’s testicles giftwrapped in paper or plastic?”

Yes kids, Keith’s no-nonsense, cut the bull crap, my-way-or-no-way attitude got me what I wanted, what I needed. Never mind the fact that the word compassion has yet to enter his bloodstream since his inception, and that Tracie has a trail of DEA hounds sniffing out the possibility of an underground drug trafficking operation in her basement, in the world of business Keith gets what he wants. And he doesn’t care who, or what gets in his way.

The world we live in is a sad, cruel, overly dangerous place, with deceptive furniture salesman littering the streets left and right looking to take advantage of big tall oafs such as myself who show a scarred monster on the surface but are giant teddy bears of fluff underneath. If there is one thing I can take from this though, one moral lesson I learned in my week and a half long adventure of being a man, it’s this:

Don’t screw with Keith.

Diagram Of A Dad

Apparently if I become a Father this is what I will turn into. 

Not gonna lie, but this isn't something I'm looking forward to becoming. 

Can Somebody Get Me Some Drugs?

Me: “M! Help me! I need to think of something to blog about! What would make people laugh?!”

M: “Is that why you blog? Do you just write for other people?”

Shut the curse word up M, OF COURSE that’s why I blog! Isn’t that why most people blog in the first place?

For a good time, download “We Can’t Stop” by Miley Cyrus and play on repeat for a solid 17 minutes. Am I a sinner to say that I really like that song? Just because she’s a Lindsay Lohan/Madonna preemie, and that her music video looks like pure sin captured on camera does not mean that her music is low quality. I’m sure Billy Ray is shaking his head somewhere.

I also find it hysterical to see how many of you clicked on this post because a supplemental pic of Hannah Montana was attached to the link. Great tactic right? After all, how many 6'5"single white males comfortable in their own sexuality would post a picture of a now wrecked career of a former child star. 

This guy would.  

I’m sick. Don’t judge my lackluster writing because of the fact that my eyes are being propped open by shots of Nyquil, Carbamazepine, and Sudafed. Drug cocktails like that will make anyone’s writing look a little less quality than normal. Especially if my perspective is being altered by repressed memories of having my parents checking to see if I had a fever by shoving a thermometer up my ass. Don’t ask me where 80’s parenting got their ideas.

But seriously people, why am I pissing my panties in a panic trying to think of a topic to splurge over for around 800 words or so? Why does it matter that much? Is this really a priority in my life?

Dang straight it is. And for the record, I would have used a much more harsh word in that last sentence, but I’m trying to lower my volume of curse words used per paragraph, therefore reverting to Utah culture cursing. Plus who knows, I might have a junior high student or two out there reading this post. 

In all reality, and this is as honest as I am ever going to be with you, I do blog for your sake. I do care what you think. I do want to please you. My motivation is sadly sparked by how many likes and comments I’m going to attract with every single post I advertise on Facebook twice a week. And if I break double digits on a Wednesday night blog I can sleep soundly at night. Yes, my life is governed by the pathetically low self-esteem standards set by social media. 

Is that wrong? We all have some kind of motivation don’t we? Something that drives us, that makes us tick. Whether it’s the satisfaction of knowing that someone appreciates us digitally, or a double decker taco smothered in chocolate, every single person out there has some kind of motivation. And not to sound sexist, I didn’t use that last motivation to stereotype every woman carrying an unborn child, even though the majority of pregnant ladies love some type of outlandish edible concoction.

On the flip side of M’s question, am I writing for other people? In all reality, yes, I am. I write for you. And please, if you don’t like narcissistic statements made by egotistical bastards, just stop reading this paragraph put together by your very own home grown egotistical bastard right here. I write because I don’t want to let you down. I know that nearly all of us are byproducts of the cookie-cutter 9-to-5 mediocre lifestyle; which have highlights that include water cooler breaks to talk about fantasy football and the season finale of “Dancing With The Stars.”

But from my skewed perspective I get the feeling that my blog is a four-and-a-half minute break from the monotony that every single one of us classify as “life”.  Life is raw. It is dull. It can be viewed as a rerun of the same mundane events over and over again until our heads pop open with boredom. But this blog isn’t. And I don’t say that to pat myself on the back, but in all reality, this blog makes you laugh. It makes you think. It makes you question your own motivation, and even brings a tear to your eye every now and then. I write to escape the dullness that defines each and every one of our lives. I do in fact write for you.

So to answer M’s question, I am writing for you. No only to for the chance to have people personally inflate my ego and digitally compliment my eh…just above average way of telling a story, but also so I can get you to chuckle at the comical Mark Twain-ish way I describe having a thermometer stick out of my six-year old bum.  

Cause it’s my blog and I can say what I want.

Thank you Miley, now for the love of Mickey Mouse please go back to being Hannah Montana.