Middle-of-post-update: Hahaha, I just watched the video on that site. There is an awesome awkward mustache man dancing with a bunch of younger pony tailed workout girls about three quarters of the way through the video. Wonderful!

I might as well talk about my feelings toward video games requiring any physical effort more than movements of less than an inch by a few fingers.

No thanks.

I’ll admit it’s a genius marketing move. So many non-geeks and baby boomers now own video game consoles that it’s ridiculous. But for me, I have a bowling alley up the street, I own a tennis racket (racquet? nah, this is America!), I have basketball shoes, I can go to a real gym if I so choose, and I enjoy a sweat-free smell to my living room. Now if I want to run around killing zombies and what not, I’ll use one of my various video game consoles. And even if I do want to pretend to do something I already do outside, I’d rather just watch the little dude on TV do whatever it is I tell him to do with my thumbs and fingers.

Something I’ve noticed over the years is how careful you need to be when using your horn while driving. I learned to really appreciate the power of the horn when I lived in New York for a couple of years. People there are very quick to let you know if you are slowing down the flow of traffic.

I figure there are three types of honks: friendly “hello” honks, heads up honks, and straight up rage/anger honks. I drive a 1999 F-150, which has one of the best stock horns in all the automotive world. It’s got about three or four different horn tones at once, and they are all loud and abrasive. That means I can really lay on the rage/anger honk, but need to use some precision on the other honks. There is a fourth “honk” but that doesn’t involve a car, my friends Didi and Dotti would understand.

Friendly “Hello” Honk: This one has to happen in quick little taps. It must be at least two honks, and can be probably no more than four. Any less and you sound like you’re a bit mad or something. More on this in the next part.

Heads Up Honk: This almost has to be two quick little honks. The reason it needs to be two though is something I learned a bit ago.

There was a weird turning lane situation where I was going to turn left, and a car was rolling toward me in the same turning lane waiting to merge with my oncoming traffic. I turned in a bit earlier that I should have I guess, so I tried to give two quick Hey I’m here honks, but I girly-pressed the second honk and it had no sound. I think that sent the wrong message. I ended up going back to my right, into my previous lane and driving around the other car. The large woman in there didn’t look too pleased with me. I was honestly just trying to avoid a crash, and she thought I was mad at her or something. Kinda dumb.

Rage/Anger Honk: This is my favorite, especially with my horn. This one you kind of arch your back, get your shoulders right in there digging into your seat back and fully extend your arm, getting plenty of pressure on the palm of your hand pushing deep into the horn. I prefer to go for at least 3 seconds, sometimes for up to 6 or 7 seconds to really let it set in.

Here’s my best use of this horn. At an intersection years back, I was stopped at a stop sign. I was set to turn left, and there were a few cars lined up across from me at another stop sign wanting to go straight through the intersection. So, the first car had the right of way. I let him go, and in this intersection, we weren’t exactly head on, we were shifted further to each others’ right than usual. So I started rolling out to get my left turn in quickly so the second car at the sign wouldn’t have to wait too long.

Well, that car’s driver didn’t feel it was necessary to stop, and I’m not somebody who likes to be disrespected like that. I had mostly made my turn, so I was nose-to-driver-side of this car. I laid on that horn buddy! The guy gave me a “Hey it’s cool that I just cut you off” wave, and I held the horn, with eye contact, until that wave turned into him showing me his longest finger. Yep, classy move buddy.

That got me to laugh pretty loudly. My horn has the effect of making people feel panic, which I love to watch happen. I don’t know, I’m a nerd and I love to kind of let people know how I feel about them.

This post is kind of lame, yeah, but it had to be put out there. People, use your horns! It’s a lot of fun, but be careful to not make them sound to angry. Even on the small taps, you’ve got to put some muscle into it, or you’ll just be awkwardly pushing on your steering wheel only to have nothing happen.

So get out there and start honking! Oh, also, don’t honk when you’re picking somebody up at their house. Seriously, be a decent human and go knock on their door. Maybe send a text. Just don’t sit out there and lay on your horn, so inconsiderate! OKBYE

I realize that this only represents a small percentage of married couples, so I apologize to the majority of people who would never think to do such a horrible thing. Thank you.

I really don’t know what it is about people, namely married people. And, as a member of a very socially active church, I think things may be even more annoying for me than if I wasn’t religiously active.

I’ll skip really telling any history about set ups I’ve avoided and given in to because that would take too long. I will say that the best thing that has ever come out of any of the “dates” is a good steak dinner and some useless conversation that will never cross my brain again.

See, for some reason, people, mostly church people, feel that they are the ones who know exactly what I am looking for. They have just the girl for me. They often times tell me this immediately following our first introduction. For all they know, I may not even speak English! I’m just a tall, tan single guy (the handsome part is very debatable, the tall and dark part are easily proven) who has a tendency to treat strangers with kindness. These people see a guy like that and jump all over the opportunity to try and add some jewelry to my bare hands.

Now, here’s what baffles me. I would argue that the single most important decision of a person’s life is deciding if they should or should not marry their current boyfriend/girlfriend and spend the rest of their life with that person. So why on Earth would a middle aged married person have any thought at all that they probably know of a girl unlike any that I’ve met before, and will be the one to sweep me off of my feet. Of course there are many variables that lead up to the ultimate decision, but let’s look at the logic of that stranger being right about what my type of girl is.

First, let’s look inside the brain of the schemer, the one trying to set me up with their sweet-spirited girl. What could their reasoning be that could take them so far as to offer to buy me dinner if I but go on a date with this girl? Do they want to feel like a savior to me and have me be forever indebted to them? Do they just thrive off of prodding people into HUGE life decisions on a whim? Do they imagine that I’ve only met horrible girls who eat onions and asparagus, never floss, and haven’t heard of soap? Do I look like a desperate loser who would wet myself if I ever tried to ask a girl out? Do they think I’ve never dated a girl? Do they think I have no taste or horrible vision? Or maybe, just maybe, do they happen to know a 6 foot tall girl with the looks of Kim Kardashian and the personality of Zooey Deschanel’s character in Yes Man who happen to love wakeboarding? (By the way, if you know this woman, please disregard this post and do send her my way.) So far, that last one has never been the case.

Now, I know that none of these schemers actually, deep down, don’t care if I just meet her and say “No thank you.” Nobody goes to that kind of effort for that result, they just don’t. They all want me to date and marry the girl. Think about it. Why would they want anything else? This is the perfect match! I won’t just date her and then leave, get dumped, or dump her, then it wouldn’t be perfect! I will marry her and we will live happily ever after!

Okay, so that’s obviously how I see these people who insist on setting me up with their gentle ogre friends. Now let’s look at some things that seem much more reasonable to me, but never seem to happen.

Strangers never introduce themselves to me and suggest a restaurant to me. They never tell me that they just bought some new socks and they are super comfortable and then tell me where to get them and how much they cost. I’ve never been approached and given directions to a stranger’s favorite place to shop. And nobody has ever hunted me down to share with me their secret to building the perfect grilled hamburger. Why not? Well, in today’s society, that would just be weird!

I’m fine with all those previous things being thought of as a bit too personal to just blurb about to a complete stranger. So, answer me this: Why would ANYBODY EVER think it isn’t strange to suggest to somebody exactly whom they should decide to marry and deeply love the rest of their entire life? I mean really, think about it! All of the things in the previous paragraph would affect a tiny part of my life, and if I didn’t like the pointer, I wouldn’t really be changed too much. I’d either gain from it or just shrug it off. But a relationship affects you for the rest of your life.

I don’t really have a big concluding thought other than if you are one of these people who like to set people up on dates, PLEASE STOP! Tell people about your favorite salad dressing or shampoo or something. STOP TRYING TO RUIN LIVES! When you set two people up on a date, all four people are almost always going to get hurt. You and your spouse are two of those people, the one who got canned obviously will be hurt, and the one who did the canning will have to feel and/or look like a jerk. It’s a lose/lose/lose/lose situation!

Oddly enough, it’s been almost a year since I was talked into going on one of these dates. I ate the food, watched a movie in a theater and took off. I haven’t spoken more than 20 words to anybody involved in that night since, and none of those words were about said night. I’m just constantly baffled at people around me.

I realize that in many set-up type of situations, the schemers are “friends” or acquaintances of the poor target (me). I just see that as a much stronger reason to respect me and let me take care of my own HUGE life decisions.

Now that I got this off of my back, I’m excited to confront the next person who thinks they can waltz in to my life and magically send me spiraling into a storybook tale of everlasting love. This volcano will erupt!

So life is good here in Florida. I’ve noticed that with the weather and my current financial situation, I’ve gradually toned up and my body is in pretty good shape. See, I figure it’s the weather and money I have to credit my shape to because I wakeboard more with nice weather and eat less when I have no money. It’s a pretty sweet deal really.

- Right now, I’ve still got this site hosted in St. George, and something happened a while ago that messed things up. I’m kind of tired of pestering them to fix things, and I feel bad about it because I’m not paying for it, since I used to work for the company. I say this because I can’t upload any images right now, which means you have to wait a bit longer to see the splinters that I took out of my butt last month. They’re pretty awesome.

So yeah, I’m going to move this site to another server I use for my other sites at Bluehost. Yep, that’s an affiliate link right there. If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry about it. If you do know what that means, can ya blame me? They’re good and I could use a buck!

- Anyway, this NBA offseason has been pretty sweet for my teams (yes, I consider Orlando my #2 team these days). Orlando dropped Turkoglu, Lee, and Alston then picked up Vince Carter, Brandon Bass, Matt Barnes, Ryan Anderson, and managed to keep Marcin Gortat, yeah! They’re bigger and badder than before, and I like that.

Portland stayed pretty inactive, although there were lots of talks of moves. They got some young guys I know nothing about, gave away Sergio (no more sweet Spain to Spain alley-oops, bummer) but then got Andre Miller! The dude is the best point guard in the league to never really accomplish anything. He’s a career 14 point, 7 assist, 4 rebound point guard who can post up and has a great knowledge of the game. Word on the world wide web is that Oden is looking pretty good at the moment too. Magic/Blazers finals? Well, maybe in 2011. Shaq might get one more this year.

OK BYE!

We’ll see how that all pans out. I’m driving up there with Cam, my French-Canadian friend in a little, shoot, can’t remember, I think it’s a little Toyota something or other. I’m pretty sure it will be fine, but it’s a 24 hour drive. About the first 20 hours are up the US East coast. I plan on trying out a big ol’ Georgia peach.

Next on the docket is my butt. On Monday this week, I was shooting some hoops in the driveway of work, and I had a run in with the pole that is erecting the backboard and hoop and all that. The story at least starts out kinda cool, because I just recently started getting my legs back and I had a pretty good dunk. On the way down from the dunk, my right butt cheek slid down the wood 6×6 or whatever size pole it is. I took some of the pole with me.

Some good sized splinters made it through my shorts, and I couldn’t quite tell at the time if they made it inside of me too or not. I pulled some out of my shorts and went on with trying to be like Rex Chapman and all was well.

Later that night, after eating dinner, I was brushing my teeth and decided to check out the wound. There was a nice little hole (yes, I just made reference to a butt hole, but not that hole). I picked at it to see if there was anything in there, and a couple minutes later, tweezed out a splinter about twice the thickness of a toothpick and about a half inch long.

That was all fine and dandy, but probably 2 inches past that, I could feel another hard object about the same size deep under my skin. Apparently more wood got crammed way up in there (this is sounding more homo-erotic, not so cool) in my butt. Luckily it’s just the cheek, so no vital organs or veins or anything.

Now it’s a couple days later, and it hurts a bit there. I should probably go to a doctor, but I’ve got weak insurance, and I’m curious to see what my body will do to try to get rid of that thing.

So in a few days I’m off to Canada with some wood in my butt cheek and no passport. Sweet!

Oh, the part that makes this awesome is that today is my birthday.

Anyway, I filled it out honestly, and the software returned one option: coach. I just laughed it off at the time, thinking of a team coach, like basketball. I hate coaching team sports, so I dismissed it and went on with my life. Now, double the years in my life from that point and what do you know…I’m a wakeboard coach and it’s my dream job! Go figure.

The way I’ve got it in my head is:

Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Select Start

Don’t know what I’m talking about? That’s a shame.