Freeze

Just. Stop right now.

Please. Just stop everything.

The volume needs to come down, needs to bleed

At exceedingly increasing speed towards its needs

(Wait, scratch that, I meant knees)

Better yet, it needs to freeze

So just freeze

Freeze out the general hum

The hum of the humdrum and the scum and the dumb-dumbs

The ones that bumble and fumble and stumble so humble as they tumble

Inwards, outwards and under the tundra like thunder, blunder after blunder

It’s no wonder that there always remains some other out there

Uncovered, unsmothered, unlov...ered

Scratch that last one

Freeze it out

Freeze out the rush

The undercurrent mush that will not, cannot, shall not just… just shush

The engines in cars, the battery bars,

The cellular, elevator, tele-refrigerator

Energizer enervator relegater

The constant ticking or clicking

That won’t stop picking and keeps on sticking

By the prickling and texting of your thumbs

Everything noisy and vexing, this way comes

And now it’s going out

Freeze it out

Freeze out the walkers and squawkers and knock-knocks,

Cock blockers, beat boxers, punk rockers

All out now

The jockers and boxers and the head-blocks (or something like that) alike

The ones with mop tops or the goldie locks, none of whom know how to stop the

Talk-ta-talk-talk-ta-talk

Per tutte le parole, for all the words, para toda las palabras

Non si dice nulla, nothing is said, no se dice nada

They say nothing and mean even less

The vixens, the fix ems, politicians, smitten and slitherin’

They all stay hidden

Their words stay unwritten, stay fixed on the heads of the pens

Before the ink ever spreads itself thin

But their blabber gets in

Let them never begin

House-leavers and couch-weavers and mouth breathers

Ugh, the mouth breathers!

I mean for god sake, blow your fucking nose!

But that’s not where I wanted to go, so...

Freeze out the silly little gimmicks and limericks and outer inner bits

Among all of the fringes and limits

The frames in space and time within this mind

That tick-tick-tick even when the clock will not wind

The simple sides of the climb that no one else could possibly find

So they stay confined as mine

The intricate plots and photo shops of over-the shoulder shots

The who’s-got-what-from-whiches and witches and switches from each slot

All stored neatly in one spot

The notes and quotes from each boat across each moat that hope to float

The faces in shapes and sizes and spaces

That drapes and rises and chases

All through the escapes and demises and disgraces

All through our scrapes and surprises and faces...

...wait…

What am I even doing right now?

I’m making more noise to describe the noise that I’m trying to escape

Ok, screw it, screw everything I just put down on the plate

I need to escape the… well, I guess the escape

Just let it take flight

And let it have weight

And let it be free

Just let it freeze

And I’ll pay the fee, but let me be free

And let me be me

Just stop everything in one, two,

Two and a half

And three quarters

And three

...ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

I can feel it like a shiver

Like it will almost ring

As the the sound gets drowned out and found out

And not a word of mouth can sing

Not a soul can now bring me back to down from this mountain top

To which I am now the king

No longer an heir, now up in the clear, up into the air where

I

Can’t

Hear

A

Thing

The mouths are moving, but the waves never reach

Like enemies at the gate that never quite breach

They crash and claw at me

But no sand moves from this beach

No puedo oír nada.

The phone rings and no one reaches

No clicks and pings, no dial tone increases

No whispering, no gossiping, no snitching, no speeches

I feel the weight melt away as the pressure releases

Non posso sentire una cosa.

It’s almost like it’s deafening, the weight of not knowing what’s at stake

Not feeling what it takes to be the great break in this muted state

I’m feeling at peace, and I’m feeling awake

It’s like from up here, I don’t just hear things differently, I know them differently

I don’t just hear the peace and quiet, but I feel at peace in quiet

I don’t just hear the faint wind around, I rise and fall with it

I don’t just hear myself breathing, I know that I’m breathing

All in a way that I never knew that I never knew

And never dreamed I'd wanted to

So please

Please just keep it all away today

Just let it freeze

I’ll pay the fee, but let me be free

And let me be me

Driving Them Nikes

Luxury is relative.

I know I could start with something more general, like acknowledge that I haven't posted anything in a few months or talk about stuff I've been doing. But...meh.

Luxury is relative.

Take this phone I used to have. I think it was a Nokia. It got terrible reception, it had a really annoying tone when it rang, and the buttons didn't consistently work on it after the first year. I remember it didn't always turn off when I wanted it to, so I got it taken in class a few times. And the battery was screwed in, so it wasn't like I could just pull the battery pod out like you could with some of the older phones. It was a crappy phone, but it was my first phone and I was in middle school and really didn't even need a phone, so it was awesome. It was the early 2000's, so kids really didn't need phones in the first place, and I figured out at one point I could program my own ringtones, so I actually had a lot of fun doing that. The phone was not great, but it was far and above what I actually needed, so it was luxury to me.Now, that same phone today would be an abomination. It would be archaic to what phones can do now. I would constantly be complaining about it, and showing people how thick it was and pretending to try to give it away so I could get a new one. But, honestly, it would still probably be just fine as a phone. It would still make calls, it would still text, it would...no, that's about it. It would do the things that a cell phone is actually supposed to do, before we decided everyone needed to walk around with super computers in their back pockets. I think it was capable of taking pictures, but not sending them effectively, so yeah, calls and texts.

So having a phone was cool. Having a crappy phone kept things in perspective. If I just didn't have a phone, I doubt I would have really known the difference, but since I know the difference, I do my best to see the positives. It was a luxury, just like it pretty much is today, but I don't think I could ever just go back to not having a smart phone at all times. Do you think you could just go back? I don't. I don't even know for sure who's still reading this, but I know you're probably never cutting social media back out of your life now. It's not a phase, it's not something you're just trying out. This is who you are now, so get past it.

Generally speaking, I think most people take luxury in their life for granted. It’s human nature, whatever you have you end up expecting to be there, rather than being thankful that it’s there. And literally everybody is guilty of it in one way or another. I don’t care who you are. The rich kid that expects his breakfast to be ready for him every morning on a tray. The young business woman who cannot function without her cup of coffee. The old man that reads the newspaper every morning, no matter what. The little things are automatic. And for that matter, so are the big ones. The prisoner who expects to get fed every day in prison. I mean, what if one day, they just decided, “Dude, screw you, you robbed a bank. You don’t get food this week. Deal with it.” Or the homeless guy who suddenly is not even allowed to drink water from the public water fountain.

I mean, they had their water tainted in Flint, Michigan last year. And it took way longer than it should have to even get attention on it, and then again, I’m not positive that the problem has been fully dealt with even now. Of course, this is a tragedy and will probably have long reaching consequences, but at the same time, it seems unreal. It seems like the exact kind of thing that could not happen anymore in a country like ours, because someone would stop it or it would get enough attention that surely they would fix it right away. And yet, I’m positive that the minute I stopped seeing news stories about Flint, it was an assumption made in my mind (that I later corrected) that this problem was solved and I didn’t need to worry about it, and that it could never happen to me where I live. We take things like this for granted too, and they're the things that allow us to survive. What if someone really decided that you were not entitled to living, just ‘cause? Just walked up to you and took your means for continuing life and thought nothing of it? It would make you realize a whole host of things that really don't mean a damn thing, wouldn't it? And a few of you may even feel tempted to make a Facebook or snapchat post as your last act on this planet just to let people know how upset you were about it. At least a twitter update with some emoticons, because who doesn't love emoticons, right? Ughhh.

I know I’ve gotten materialistic to a degree. I don’t need my phone to have all the apps and shit on it that it does, but I do NEED my phone. What if I need to know what temperature it is in Tokyo? What if the Packers trade someone and no one near me tells me right away? Am I supposed to just wait until the news? What if I lose track of how many steps I took in a given week? Not that I ever cared about my steps before, but if I inexplicably need to review my activity, how else will I be able to answer the questions that matter? What will I do?

Or my car. There’s a great example. My car is a 2002 Ford Taurus, a shitload of miles on it (that’s the actual reading on the odometer) not great underneath the hood but decent enough that I get by, but guess what, I need that damn car. I mean, what if I’m somewhere that I don’t want to be? What if I can’t drive away from the place I don’t like? That sounds awful. I'm glad I have a car. I can control the climate in it, I can use my stereo to drown out the noises that occur outside of my car. Having a car is a good thing. And you know what, I've had worse cars than my current car that make my current car seem like even more of a luxury than it already is.

My first car was a 1989 Toyota Corolla. It’s color was piece-of-shit white. Washing it never helped. It never actually passed inspection at the car garage I had it registered at, but the guy just felt sorry for me that THIS was how much my parents valued my transportation. The parking brake didn’t stop anything, just made a really annoying sound that made me stop to see what was the matter, what I possibly could have done to make the car yell out in such pain. We took it to a mechanic once to see what it would cost to get it updated, and the guy said he couldn't from a moral standpoint. He said there was so much wrong with it, he didn't want to take our money for any one thing and that paying all of it wouldn't be worth it for a car that sucked that much.

The mechanic actually offered to drive it out back and put it down like Old Yeller for us. He said he’d do it for free.

Thing is, for the last year of high school, it was pretty much exactly what I needed it to be. It got me to and from school and track practice, eventually. It was decent on gas, considering at times there was about as much motor oil burning as gasoline. Even though the driver side rear-view mirror always fell out, it was conspicuous enough that other drivers just kind of got the hell out of the way, on instinct. I never got a speeding ticket because I couldn’t speed. The car topped out at a majestic 44 mph, during which the car sputtered like it was maxing out on bench press. Once I left the keys in it for a whole weekend by accident. I’m pretty sure someone stole it and then brought it back. There was more gas in it on Monday.

But when I would complain about it, my track coach put it in great perspective. He said, “You know what I drove when I was in high school? I drove these Nike’s.”

Well played, Coach Harris. Well played.

The Corolla was not even the shitiest car I ever had either. It was beaten out years later by a Lincoln Towncar that lasted around a month, but that’s another story.

Eh, screw it, I’ll tell you now.

And it’s not really even a story. I wanted a car around age 25 because I was sick of walking everywhere. And I found a shitty car that I thought was bad. Like bad meaning good. Bad like Michael Jackson meant it. This Lincoln Towncar had a V8 in it. It had all original Lincoln tires and rims. It also had the front and back seats torn up, the check engine light literally always was on (probably not by accident) the windshield had a crack in it just low enough that it was legal to drive, and the steering wheel was beat up. This car was a death machine, I was sure it would end up killing me. It just so happened that the first month of having it, I didn’t try to drive it anywhere besides home and work, which was right down the street, or around town in small trips like the grocery store or a concert or two. Also, the radio was busted and the speakers were blown out. So I couldn’t even enjoy riding in this car while I was unsure if I was going to survive. But I had not had a car for several years and wanted to be able to get back and forth around the city if I had things going on and didn’t want to wait for the bus to pick me up.

Anyway, finally, I tried to get it out on the highway to see my girlfriend that lived a few hours away, and it took me about 25 miles out of town before dying for good. The radiator was leaking the whole time and finally blew at the distance where no one could just come and pick me up. Axel, a friend of mine (at least we'll call him Axel here) finally got out there about 2 hours later, after I had been towed to a nearby exit from where I said I was with no reception. It was just perfect. Not to mention my girlfriend was relentless in how I never should have purchased the fucking car in the first place. And being stranded far from home (or should I say far enough from home) puts a lot of things in perspective. One of which is the concept of how much we really do have to change our perception when we think of crappy ways to get around. The crappiest, after all, is the way that doesn't actually get you anywhere.I mean, the car straight up failed at the task it needed to accomplish. If I had tried to ride a bike or hitchhike or even just straight up walk there, I would have gotten there faster. It would have taken a long ass time, but I would have gotten there, as opposed to just not ever reaching there with ol’ Wilbur. Yep, I named the Lincoln Wilbur.

So my thinking in all of this, I didn’t need the nicest car for what I was doing at any given point. I actually think it was better to have a car that I could just kind of run into the ground. The Corolla had set expectations low enough that I knew not to do anything stupid with it in the first place, it didn’t even pretend to be capable of traveling to a distant city. And obviously, when I got a new car, I wanted to have it better than the car that I had been used to that was sufficient for high school. The point is, there’s nothing wrong with taking steps forward, as long as you appreciate those steps forward. One of the best ways to appreciate what you’re given is to start out with something humble and have to aspire and yearn for better.

And always remember: No matter what you're driving, there's someone watching you drive it while all they can do is keep driving them Nikes.

Don't panic, don't panic... Why aren't you panicking?!

Everybody panics.

Well, there's a deep nugget of insight, right? Huge revelation for your Thursday morning. That's right up there with "Everybody poops" and "everybody hurts". Everybody panics? Yuck.

It's true through. Everyone has their own way of not taking things in stride in some way. And when it happens, it's rarely handled well. Any kind of activity, any kind of population, any kind of stakes, you find people panicking in some form. I mean, just look at Reservoir Dogs. For those of you unfamiliar, Reservoir dogs is a movie about a jewelry heist that goes horribly, terribly wrong, from things like the cops showing up to men getting shot to not being sure who has the stolen jewels to undercover cops. The plot itself isn't really all that spectacular, but the dialogue of the movie drives everything else. Anyway, one of the characters, called Mr. Pink (his only name in the movie) has a little soliloquy about panicking when discussing things that are not going right:

"I mean, everybody panics. I don't care what your name is, it's human nature, you f***ing panic. But you panic on the inside, you take a breath, get control of the situation, and deal with it. What you don't do is start shooting of the place and f***ing killing people."

Obviously, only part of that has anything to do with what I'm actually talking about, and I pretty much already made that point, but who doesn't love talking about Reservoir Dogs, right?

Panic has a lot to do with uncertainty, I've found. I mean, people rarely panic when they are familiar with a situation, no matter how absurd the situation is. Being familiar with a situation means you know what to expect, which tends to put us at ease or at least allow us to remain calm. You can know what's coming and still be upset or excited or angry or something else about it. You can even explain to others what's going down, and what's at stake, and how to get your head around it. And as a result, whatever you're dealing with becomes the new normal, and we don't panic about normal.

Ooh, you know who had a good quote about panicking? Heath Ledger did:

"You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow, I tell the press that a gangbanger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics. Because it's all part of the plan. But if I say that one little ole mayor will die, well, then everyone loses their minds!"

Did I say Heath Ledger? I meant Heath Ledger as the Joker, but same thing. Plus, who doesn't love talking about the Dark Knight, right?

So yeah, things stay on plan, everything's fine. Things don't stay on plan, and things might not be fine, because new territory is usually unexpected and misunderstood. And I know that many people actually deal with panic attacks, or anxiety attacks, or a few different forms of something similar. And it can be difficult to grasp at the time. I've had a few times that I felt a large pang of anxiety hit me in the last few years, just thinking about everything I have going on in my daily life and everything that I want to get done in the near future, and it all felt overwhelming when I looked at it all at once and wondered how the hell it would all get done. You could make the case that I felt this way because of the lack of an overall plan for every part of the things I still want to get done. Or you could just say that I let my mind wander and take on too much all at once instead of looking at each individual task, one by one.

Now, I have a few different things that could bring me back down from letting my stress and anxiety pile up like that. I can just take a few deep breaths and let myself resettle. My fiancé, Tara, has always been very helpful when I need to re-center myself and deal with something. I can go work out, shooting hoops or running or lifting or something of that sort. I can play music here in my apartment, or just listen to music really loud and dance around to it like an idiot. I can read a book, cook something, go for a walk, I can call up a friend or a family member, hell, I can sit here and write about it. I always feel better about whatever I'm doing after I write it out on paper. It's almost a way of getting the thought out of my head so I don't have to carry it around as much.

Not to mention, I mean, so many things that we deal with in our daily lives are really not so bad if we can just finish them and get to relax that they are finished and are smaller situations by themselves. Work, chores, bills, school, traffic, groceries, sleep, sports, errands. It's all manageable, even though it might not see it as a single pile. Over time, the stress from little things will invariably have a larger collective effect on your daily life and health than single traumatic events, unless you're one of the few people out there that terrible shit just constantly happens to, in which case all the traumatic stuff will actually seem like regular, mundane stress. But for the rest of us, daily life will be the thing that wears us down and stresses us out, over and over and over again. Finding a way to process and move past that daily stress makes everything that much more easy to deal with.

On the other hand, there are some situations that you don't just write about and stop thinking about. Like, there are moments that you don't just release and forget about, but instead just kind of stick with you, and you actually have to keep thinking about them even though the moments have passed. There are some things that you have happen, and then you literally do everything you can to forget about them for a while, until some time has passed and you can fully process exactly what the hell happened.

And you're probably thinking at this point, "Okay, here's where Victor is going to tell another embarrassing story about himself." Because so far, this blog has featured a lot of my egg-on-face moments. And I really should try to move on to other people's embarrassments at the very least, right?

Well, maybe another time.

One time, I almost choked to death on my friend's blonde hair.

Okay, now that you've got some terrible mental image, I'll tell you what happened. I was at track practice in Texas a while back and it was windy. Most of you that have never lived in Texas might not understand what I mean by 'windy'. I don't mean there was a breeze and the flags were flying in a certain direction. By windy, I mean we were looking up in the sky, making sure Dorothy and her house weren't gonna be moving through the area. Wind is not playing around in Texas and at certain times, it seems to keep changing direction over and over again.

So, like I said, track practice. I'm warming up by jogging and stretching and doing my high-knee circuit, and a friend of mine who I hadn't seen in a year or two showed up. Let's call her Pam. I'm not sure why, but she's Pam in this story. Pam was a little bit younger than me, and she had been working out with the same coach as the one I was currently training with, but she had been gone for a while and it was the first time she was coming back in a while. So I was excited to see her and she was excited to see everyone at practice, me included. Before you ask, no, we were not actually interested in eachother (to my knowledge) but we were very good friends.

Pam was a little bit shorter than me, and she had long flowing blonde hair that she usually tied up to work out. But since she was not actually training that day, her hair was just blowing all over the place. But when she saw me, she ran up to me and gave me this enormous hug that caught me a bit off guard just because I didn't see that it was her until a moment or two before the hug was initiated. And then all at once, I was caught off guard for a completely different reason.

Somehow, a large portion of her long blonde hair blew directly into my mouth. My mouth was open in surprise and it turned to greater surprise when I realized that I was tasting hair all at once. And then it turned to greater surprise/horror when it became clear that some of the hair had actually moved all the way to the back of my throat and was kind of stuck there. In my mind, it became clear all at once that I was actually kind of choking. This provoked a bit of panic in my head. Oh shit, I don't know how I'm going to stop choking, I thought to myself. There's no way for me to reach the hair with my hand, and there's way too much hair. The hair is everywhere. What am I going to do? Am I going to choke to death at track practice? Who dies at track practice?!

So I took about 10 seconds to recollect myself and then decided to try to get out of this without drawing more attention. Which, by then, was going to be difficult. The hug had been going on for about 10 seconds, and it was a bit awkward, but I couldn't do anything else. I mean, I didn't know how to sit there and deal with someone pulling their own hair out of my mouth, and as far as I could tell, Pam had so much hair that she didn't immediately know what was going on behind her back. So I doubled down on the hug. Just when it felt like we were both letting go and were going to start catching up, I went in for a larger and somewhat more aggressive hug. In fact, for part of it, I picked her up with the hug and started spinning around. I actually started pulling my head back to the side in a certain direction so that the hair started to slide out of my windpipe very slowly, all while trying to keep the focus on the friendly affection that was going in an interesting direction. And I could hear her laughing nervously while this was going on, but I couldn't be sure if she actually knew what was going on, because Pam actually had a nervous laugh on a normal basis. Looking back, she probably didn't know what had gone down right away, but knew it was weird.

So this hair extraction that was masking as a long-lost hug, it lasted a good 30-45 seconds. During which time I wasn't really saying anything, because what can you say while choking in such a ridiculous manner? You can probably guess that I did in fact get the hair out of my throat, since I lived to tell about it. Pam had this uncomfortable smile stuck to her face as she laughed when I finally released her, and I'm pretty sure I had a look of confused terror on mine. When we did start talking, we completely ignored what had just happened and she started asking about practice or school, or whatever the hell else. I don't think we ever fully acknowledged to one another that she almost killed me with her hair.

So yeah, I'm not a fan of choking, especially on a human body part, or out in public, or at track practice. But I must say, if it happened a few more times, I might actually be able to get through it without panicking. And then, I'd be worried for a different reason. Namely, why is something this ridiculous become a norm in my life? What decisions that I make are contributing to this situation occurring over and over again? Every once in a while, I think you have to look at the problems that you're dealing with and ask yourself, is this something that other people have problems with? If not, what are others doing differently to prevent this, and should I be doing them too? Is there a risk that I have just gotten used to taking? Should I be more fearful and respectful of what wind is capable of?

Just saying, don't worry so much if you panic in a new and stressful situation. But maybe review things a bit if these situations are only happening to you.

Bye now.

Write Something, Already...

Taking advice from other people is an acquired skill.

It's not something that comes naturally. Otherwise, pretty much everyone would be doing it at the same level, without any real qualms. So it's obviously a learned trait of most, or maybe just some, of the people in the world. I am fully convinced of that thought, and I use people from all walks of life as evidence. When we're younger, we not only have to learn to listen and communicate with others, but we also have to learn the simple lesson that listening to others is even useful. I want you to think of any toddler, baby, or probably even adolescent you know. How many of them can you recall several times that they heard something that you said, something that you told them to do or something you strongly advised them against, and they did exactly what you warned them against?

Pretty much everyone one of them, right? Every young person has to learn the concept that other's opinions and ideas and thoughts actually matter. It isn't some supernatural occurrence that we all think we know more than we do at some point, and have to be educated to the contrary by our elders, our peers, or just whoever is nearby and is willing to lend their two cents in. And that's fine, that young people think they don't need other people's input into their lives, because they grow up and learn many important lessons throughout their lives. Sadly, not all of them actually do that, which is why there end up being more than a few adults that have never fully evolved out of the mental state of "I must be right and you must be wrong because I'm just smarter than you. No one else could possibly know the things that I think I know right now in my life." There shouldn't be as many people running around out there that are incapable of taking someone else's perspective, and yet many of us deal with them daily. They have small roles in our lives, like when they work near us at the office or they write us tickets and don't care that it sucks. Some of them have bigger roles. We may be electing one of these people president this year.

I'm not going into a serious political rant here, because I kind of did that last entry and would really like to avoid making a habit of that. The point I want to make here is that there is so much that we can learn from other people, just random little tidbits of information that can make a profound impact on us. We likely will even take it for granted when it happens right then and there, but down the road, there are so many little moments that play through us, over and over again. And this can be people's wisdom, their actions, their ideas, he'll even their mistakes. Try to learn from all of it. Eleanor Roosevelt said it best:

Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.

But I was talking more about advice...

The best advice I ever got came from a good friend of mine, who we'll call Charlie for this post, and it was a very simple conversation, but it stuck with me from that moment on, and I think about it over and over. And it's a perfect metaphor for the friendship that he and I have had, because he's always been wiser than I am and he's always been able to pinpoint the right thought, the right needle to pick out of a stack of needles that makes sense and is concise and profoundly deep at the same time. This is how the conversation went:

Me: You know what? I think I want to be a writer.
Charlie: Yeah?
Me: Yeah, I think so.
Charlie: So write something, already.
Me: Huh?
Charlie: Yeah, get going. Go write something.
Me: Uh, ok. What should I write about?
Charlie: What the hell are you asking me for? You're the writer.

To be fair, I think he actually wanted me to leave him alone so he could finish studying, but the fact remains, it was pretty direct advice. Or him being an asshole, but again, I'm choosing to take it as advice. And it always stuck with me. I still picture that exact moment, which seemed to barely even register in his mind, as one of the little moments that make me how I am today.

You want to get started doing something? Get moving, get up and start right now. Go read a book about that thing. Go YouTube other people doing that thing that you want to do. Go buy the stuff you need to do it, or try to make your own thing. Go meet other people that do that thing and see how they do it, and learn from them, or join them as their doing that thing. The operate word here is 'go'. I mean, what are you waiting for? Are you waiting for something, like having enough time or money, or waiting until your skill in that thing is good enough that you won't feel embarrassed? Who gives a shit, go do the thing anyway, whatever it is. I mean, anyone can do something that they're already great at. How about you go and start doing something that you are willing to suck at, at least until you really figure out what the hell you're doing?

You want to be a basketball player? Then you should join a league and learn the game, and watch some other games from people who play at a high level. But you know what else? Go out and play games with some guys that will absolutely destroy you, and learn from it. Get faster, stronger, tougher, get a better jump shot, learn the game. Get going. Start playing and start developing yourself as this thing that you want to be.

You want to be a computer programmer? Take some classes and all, but also get the software you need and start making programs. Do it right now. I know they're going to suck at first. They're going to suck for a while. But you'll keep learning from classes and apps on your iPad and from other programmers making fun of your shitty apps when you try to show them off, and all of that will push you to building something better and better.

You want to be a surgeon? Study and get into med school and all that jazz, but also get out there and start performing surgery in your spare time. Get out there and cut some people open. A lot of people need surgery and can't afford it, why do you go out and do some pro bono work like law students do? And sure, the first few people may die horrible deaths by your hands and ignorance, but you gotta learn the human body somehow and this is the most direct way to get acquainted with the type of work you'll be doing.

...I'm not as sure about that last one.

Knowing Better vs. Doing Better

I spoke a while ago about weird things becoming a norm in our lives. I mentioned subtle things like traffic, weird sounds that you hear in your house, or how often your boss talks to you at work. I had absolutely no intention of this taking a darker meaning in my own mind (or anyone else's) and yet here I am, admitting that there is yet another type of regular occurrence that is awful and yet seems to be customary to our daily lives now.

Horrific acts of violence are something that we live with and deal with in our society. I write this now, in the wake of the shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, which both included black men being gunned down by white police officers under circumstances that could arguably have been de-escalated. This preceded a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida perpetrated by an individual who had ties to Islamic terrorism. Before that, though, an incidence of violence still never seemed to have been too far from the present. Other names like Freddie Gray, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Walter Scott all come to mind, all of whom had different circumstances with their deaths but all of which sparked moderate to heavy protests. Dylan Roof, a white young adult, shot several church goers in South Carolina (in an event that could also be considered terrorism, but that's not really my point here). The city of Chicago has adopted the nickname 'Chiraq' because it's level of violence has been said to compare to that of an actual war zone, which is a stretch compared to which war zone you want to bring up.

For example, a flurry of violent attacks have occurred this week at the end of the holy month of Ramadan, in Istanbul (Turkey), Baghdad (Iraq), Medina (Saudi Arabia), and Dhaka (Bangladesh). Hundreds of people died at Baghdad alone. Or another example could be the ongoing drug wars that have taken place in Mexico. Or the several wars that are going on in Africa constantly. I'll just name a few: The civil war in Somalia, The Boko Haram insurgency that affects 4 different countries (Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Chad), the Libyan civil war and the civil war in the Sudan and South Sudan. And I consider these events, going on outside of our country, and one theme seemed to remain constant: These events have been largely ignored here in the U.S.

Is it that we don't care? Is it that it doesn't matter to us? Do we really find it that easy to shrug off death and violence in other countries? Maybe it was that several of these conflicts have been ongoing for several years, and they aren't considered newsworthy to our culture. I don't know, I'm throwing out ideas. Or maybe it was that these conflicts get overshadowed by conflicts going on in our own country. Maybe there is so much violence going on in the world as a whole, that caring about all of it is too exhausting and everyone has to ration their empathy for those who live close to them and are most similar to them. Again, I'm not posing an answer here. But it makes sense to me that a lot of it boils down to one particular point: we tend to pay attention the most when the victims remind us of us or the people we love.

So then last night, in Dallas, a city that had nothing to do with the recent situations, another shooting took place, this time at a protest for the two killings by cops, and this time targeting cops as the shooting victims. The protest itself was peaceful, and was apparently ending when the gunfire began. At last count, 5 officers were killed and several more were struck and are now recovering. I watched footage of this event spiral into chaos the morning after, and for the third day in a row, I hardly knew which emotion within me was the strongest. It was like the feelings all overlapped and jumped back and forth over one another. As soon as I started to let myself feel one way towards what has been going on, another side was right there to argue right back against it.

I felt significant anger watching the footage of Alton Sterling getting shot. I mean, it's surreal enough just to say that I watched this in the first place. Do you ever catch yourself feeling how awful it is, that we now can log on to Facebook or twitter or whatever else, and watch human beings die there? That footage was readily available. I was more than just angry at the two officers involved in the video. I was furious, and dismayed, and hurt that they felt they could make the decision to devalue the life of another man on the spot, and try to justify it later. But it felt like it was more than just those two that led to it, the more I tried to shake off that feeling. And then the second shooting happened and again, the same impulse came into my head, that I should not just be mad at the individuals, but the others that are similar to them in the decisions they make and justify, and then their entire profession, the entire system that lets events like this happen without enough consequence, the culture that feeds into that system and doesn't... see, there it goes again, I can feel myself getting worked up about it, no matter how many times it happens.

And then the police officers get shot last night, and obviously that's a terrible tragedy too. And I'm mad for the police and I'm upset at the shooters, and anyone who thinks that killing cops can be justified, and anyone who thinks that responding to violence with more violence is the way to handle a situation like this, in our country that is supposed to be better, is supposed to be stronger.

Look, I KNOW that there are millions of cops that go out there every day and do the right thing. I have friends who are cops, or have cops in their family, or have cops as their close friends. I won't for a moment badmouth what police do for our society. I have encountered many police officers in my life, in several different scenarios, and I can say with confidence that I have never had a negative experience from how I was treated by law enforcement of any kind. I'm not saying I never have received a ticket, because I have. But my treatment, my interactions, my memories of dealing with cops have been overwhelmingly positive. I have been let off with warnings more than once that I could have been given citations, which I would not have been happy about but that I could have been given and it would be justifiable. I know that this is not everyone else's experience with police, but that is my personal set of experiences, so that's what I have to draw from.

But my regard for the majority of police does not erase the fact that there are individuals out there that still betray my trust and expectations that so many others have set. Cops that I have met and that I know and my family knows, these cops do it the right way. And they've set the bar high for cops everywhere, some of whom may not be up to that level. And I have to weigh that balance, that they are not all great people that want to protect everyone and do their jobs right, but that they are also not all monsters that want to shed professionalism and shoot first rather than use proper training and procedure.

That's where I stand here. Right in the middle of all of this, not trying to oppose all police but angry at the individual policemen involved in the shootings. Not trying to call out all protesters, but furious with those that would shoot police in retaliation. And it shouldn't be a hard stance to clarify, to not want anyone to be killed anywhere. And not want people killed out of fear, out of confusion, out of justifying killings elsewhere. That shouldn't be a unique stance to have to take. I wish it didn't have to be "Black Lives Matter" vs "Blue Lives Matter" in times like this, but I have already seen the two hashtags pop up. Honestly, I wish that 'All Lives Matter" was an actual movement, that was actually going out and doing shit rather than just serving as a rebuttal to shout down other movements. But we don't seem to be able to handle that right now as a society.

Come on, America. We're better than all of this. We know better than to keep dividing ourselves and letting others push buttons so that we can be so easily divided. The protests are not just black people, but people of all races that care about fighting injustice against everyone. The police that protect us, the people in the armed forces, the emergency services that fight to save lives EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. These are not people of one race or another. We're all working towards the same thing, right? Or we should be, right? We know that we can do better. How many cycles of violence and retaliation do we have to go through before we can do better?

The shitty thing here is that I don't have a solution that I can offer here. I don't know what steps have to take to de-escalate the current situation or to try to prevent the next one. I don't know if this has always been a problem of this level and we're just now paying more attention to it, I don't know if I should be individually worried the next time I have an encounter with someone in law enforcement. I didn't write all of this to try to solve our country's problem. I just needed to breathe all of this out, any way that I can. And hopefully, I'm not alone. Hopefully I'm not the only one that hates what they see going on, but appreciates that this is not a one-sided problem or that a heavy-handed response isn't necessarily the best cause of action.

I could go on, but I'll stop here. We know better. Let's do better.

Gimme Three Steps

I wish I knew how to fight. I mean actually knew.

Not, I wish I had taken a few weeks of Tae Kwon Do as a kid, which I did. Not, I wish I had watched most of the fighting movies made in recent memory, which I have. Not, I wish I knew the first thing about MMA or boxing or any of the combat they show now on TV for sport, which I kind of do... no, see, even then, I'm kind of at a loss. I don't volunteer that I really have no basis of knowledge for this crap, but I don't. I've seen maybe 4 complete boxing matches my entire life. It hasn't stopped me from having conversations about boxing, but it still remains that I, like most people, don't know shit about boxing. If you don't believe me, ask this guy, if you can understand anything that he says:

Most people don't know s*** about boxing

I don't exactly know about fighting in general. I've never been in a real, actual, all out fight. I've been pretty good at actually avoiding it. The reason? Fighting is not what I do, and therefore not where I want any situations to devolve to. I have yet to be in a situation where it was actually worth it. And I'm not trying to say that there are not times that you may actually have to fight in, because there are things in this world worth fighting for. And then there are things that people fight over that are...well, that are pretty goddamn stupid things to fight over.

I once watched a friend of mine and a stranger get into a fist fight over who was first in line to get onto a rooftop bar. As in, we were already in the bar, we had drinks in our hands, and we were waiting to get up to a different part of the bar, and this friend and the dude behind him had to go outside to settle their differences because of who was supposed to be allowed to go upstairs first. I'm serious, they had to finish their drinks in order to fight about who would get to do more drinking first. So they go over to this empty parking lot, and I go with them mostly because I had already drank enough and was broke anyways at the time. And they hit eachother a bunch of times, and then my friend gets the guy pinned and starts pummeling him upside the head, so I stop the fight like an MMA ref, meaning I basically tackle my friend to stop him from giving the other guy brain damage. And then we all walked back across the street and all drank together. It was the dumbest use of 10 minutes I've ever seen outside of a bar. Especially since we had to wait in the same damn line for another 15 minutes anyway. What was the point of all of that?

I should pause to acknowledge something took: most of the fighting I am talking about just happens to involve alcohol. Being drunk just seems to exacerbate what are already bad decisions. I'll bet there are fights that happen that are between two sober individuals, but for our purpose here, I'm going to largely ignore those basically because of how convenient it is for me here.

But yeah, there are things in the world worth fighting for. And there are many other things that do not require it. And unfortunately, many things that do not require being fought over are fought over just the same. People fight about money, about race and religion, people fight over politics. And I don't mean they argue or debate, I mean they break out into fisticuffs over this shit. People move furniture and get shirtless and hurt one another over the weirdest shit, or shit that they can't control, or shit that is personal preference and that a fight would never change for either person.

Or how about reputation? People will fight other people over reputation to this day. I feel like that made sense in the 70's, when you had people hanging out at burger shacks with popped collars and greasy hair and without Instagram. Or maybe it didn't make sense then either, but I'm guessing there was less to do and people were pissed off enough about it to go fight somebody. But I can't imagine fighting anyone today for the purpose of my own rep. It's some cliche, that there's a bar fight over a drink that gets spilled on someone, and words get exchanged and a fight breaks out. I have had drink spilt on me at a bar. Do you know what happened? The bartender saw me spill it on myself and wouldn't give me a free one.

People fight over love too. That's another thing that would probably not make as much sense in the real world as it does in Hollywood. Two women fighting over a man, two men over a women, two men over a man, ect. Does it make sense, the idea that the winner of the fight is the best person for the relationship? Is that really sound logic? My fiancé, Tara, has never once required that I fight someone for her love, and I appreciate that. I am glad that she's not the type that wants me to go out and knock someone in the face just to show that I can. And part of it is that it's not who I am but part of it is also that it's not who she is. So I'm okay with both parts of that. Again, if I had to mix it up with some shady character, I would give it my best shot. But I am more than willing to admit that I would be out of my element.

Some years ago, I was in Alabama. Don't worry about why so much, I was in Alabama though. I know it's not the sunshine state, but that's what we kept calling it during this visit, because we thought it was funny. Anyway, we go out to a wonderful establishment called the Skybar. And most of the night was a great time. They had a front area that was your typical relaxed, open bar area, and then in the back was an enormous dance floor, with three other bar sections, very opened up atmosphere. And the group I was with, we got there early, and had free reign of the dance portion for most of the night, which I believe was a Wednesday. And slowly but surely, more and more people come in, and we get drinks and keep dancing, and more and more people come in, and we get super lit during this time. And one thing about me, I dance more when I get drunk. I have a good time and get even more goofy than I already am naturally. I also get ideas, usually that are not particularly good, and pursue those ideas.

On this particular night, I started dancing with this cute brunette with this blue dress. That's not the bad idea, mind you. She was a nice enough girl, she seemed to not mind how drunk and sweaty I had to have been by this time of the night. We were enjoying ourselves, nothing shady or anything to worry about. And then, for no reason at all, some random dude in a sweatshirt stumbles through the crowd, grabs ahold of the girl I'm dancing with, and falls down. She falls with him, right over top of him, and some others on the other side also go tumbling. It was really weird and embarrassing, but it's also possible I missed something else that was going on. Whatever.

I help my dance partner to her feet, whose name I feel like was something rather generic, like Kelly. Let's call her Kelly. Kelly is very upset about this, but she does her best not to show it as we walk over to the side where some small table is, and she tries to straighten up her dress and her hair, and just shaking her head, fuming. So of course, I ask if she's okay, and she's trying to keep from going on some rant about this guy that just caused a dance floor disturbance. So I make a suggestion. Here is the plan that I laid out:

Kelly and I will dance over towards where this same sweatshirt guy is standing, with his two friends. We will wait until he is not looking our direction, and she will give him a really good punch to the armpit, and then we will just keep dancing like nothing happened. My thinking was that this guy was so absolutely smashed, it wouldn't make sense to him, and we'd have a big laugh about it. Easy plan. Foolproof. Right?

Well, Kelly and I dance over, aloof. And the dude looks away, and she gives him a really good shot to the side of the arm instead of the armpit. Which I get, because the armpit was not going to be easy to go for. But she punches his arm, and he doesn't even seem to notice. So what does she do? Kelly punches him again. Like three times in a row. Well, it got his attention. Somehow, he managed to still not turn around while she was in the process of punching, he just missed it, but made the announcement that someone was hitting him and what the hell was that about and some other stuff, not particularly clear. And of course, he zeroes in on me.

So I tell him the truth: I didn't hit him, I don't know why he would think that I would have a reason to hit him. And then I lie right after that and say it must have been some waiter that had just walked past. And I point to a couple of girls in overalls nearby, and he looks for some reason. And the moment that he looks, Kelly hits him AGAIN. Now he turns his head back and his mood is instantly very different. He locks eyes with me and says, suddenly very coherent, "Alright, now I know that was you." I got a slight chill down my spine, but I think I actually kept a straight enough face. "Wasn't me that time either." And I'm somewhat shielding Kelly while we're having this interaction. So for whatever reason, he gets pulled to one side by his friends, and Kelly tugs me back the other way, and I'm still staring whatever-his-name down, trying to stay bold. But then I quickly turn to her and say, as smoothly as I can, "You're gonna get me killed in here!"

So she tried to keep it calm and light, and we laugh about it, but I'm actually a bit concerned because of how soon the guy flipped to a new demeanor. I didn't like that part of it at all. I was way more comfortable with him being a drunken buffoon. Kelly and I talked more as I glanced over, and realized that sweatshirt guy and his two friends were posted up at another table, sitting very still, and all are watching me. Like, watching me very carefully. Now I really don't like this. So Kelly says she has to go for a cigarette, and I say cool, I'm going to grab a drink. And as I leave the dance floor, I happen to notice out the side of my eye, that the three at the other table are also getting up and walking over to the bar, at a parallel position to me.

While I'm considering my options, I'm also looking around for the rest of the group that I came in with. And I don't see any of them anywhere, which is of further concern. I am alone, I am intoxicated (not severely but enough that it's a factor that I am aware of), I am in unfamiliar territory, my phone is about to die, and I might be about to die. Or at least get my ass beaten. I mean, I hate to genralize, but it is the south. I know that rednecks are basically everywhere if you look hard enough, but there are definitely rednecks in the south too. Now I could try to reason with the guy, but the explanation further implicates that it was my plan to hit him and then treat him like a moron. I could try to buy them drinks if I had money. And then as I look over once more, starting to really understand how much trouble I might be in, the song comes on...

I was cuttin a rug down at a place called the jug
With a girl named Linda Lou
When in walked a man, with a gun in his hand
And he was looking for a-you know who

Classic song, Gimme Three Steps by Lynyrd Skynyrd comes on. A song about a guy that has to leave a bar abruptly after having screwed up for not understanding the situation he has walked into. And I kind of look up, noticing the song, and then I look over at sweatshirt dude, and I kind of point up, to where the song is coming from more or less, trying to say, "You want to give me a head start at least?" And I assume he understood what I meant, because he gave me a very slight but distinct nod. Still locking eyes with me. Still with his two henchmen looking dudes.

So yeah, I walked calmly to the entrance of the bar portion, and then did my best to slink through that section to the front door of the place, and I ran back to the hotel, a few blocks away. I did not fight, I did not try to reason, I didn't even clarify that I understood all that had occurred. Don't care, really. I could be considered a complete coward by whoever reads this. I'll take my chances leaving a dumb situation when I see it unfolding. I have no idea what happened to Kelly or the sweaty guy. Maybe they knew eachother. Maybe it was some set up, and they were going to rob me later together, I don't know how these things go down. My point is, even if I knew how to fight, what would I even have been fighting over? Getting into it with these guys, even if I had backup, would have accomplished literally nothing. And if I did win the fight, was Kelly even worth fighting someone for? She was cute, but she wasn't 'get punched in the face' cute. She wasn't 'get duct taped and abducted and have Deliverance-level shit happen to me' attractive. And I will assume the worst is going to happen if I've gotten that drunk. Don't make me out to be some warrior. I ran track and field, I'm fine with fleeing the scene on foot. Don't give me the beatings. Just give me, sorry, I'll say it right.

Oh won't you gimme three steps
Gimme three steps, mister
Gimme three steps towards the door
Gimme three steps
Gimme three steps, mister
And you'll never see-a me no more

For sure.

Smooth Move

Be yourself. If you're a painter, then be a painter. If you're a fire fighter, be a fighter of fire. Even if you're an actor, be yourself while you're pretending to be other people, I guess. Hopefully you're not a drug dealer, though. Or a murderer. Do you best not to be a murderer, if that's what's actually going on in your head.

But for most people, be yourself.

As in be true to yourself. Be comfortable in your own skin. It's probably the only skin you're going to feel comfortable in. I mean, there's a whole host of things going on if you feel more comfortable in any other pair of skin than your own. But skin aside, being comfortable with what you are doing and not doing is a good lesson to learn. I feel like I've touched on this concept before, of doing you, not trying to do something just because somebody else is doing it.

Because that's the part that has occurred to me more lately. Not trying to emulate something just because others have it going. Staying within what you got at the moment, which by the way is very different than just accepting being a loser. At no point am I saying that you shouldn't work hard for what you want and aspire and dream. But dreaming does not mean hallucinating. Understand the hand you've been dealt before you try to play the hand. How you project yourself and act in general, be it long term or short term, should not seem forced. It should always feel natural, like you're not trying too hard. And I know that I have had many a time that I've tried too hard. In fact, there are times that I know I should not have tried, and did.

In college once, I borrowed my roommate's car to go to the store. Should have been straight forward, get some groceries, come back. Nice and easy. Nothing embarrassing gonna happen today.

And the world said under its breath: We'll see.

I looked forward to joyriding in his car in those days. It was sophomore year, which had been kind of rough for me up to this point. I had to work while going to school and running track, and was taking a larger class load than before, and was discovering how much it costs to take on all of my expenses at once, and was just stressed the hell out all of the time. One of the few reprieves I had was any time that the house was empty or I had a moment of silence somewhere that I could think out loud. Usually, this occurred while singing along to something at the top of my lungs.

I discovered the summer before my sophomore year that I really liked rock music. So every chance that I got, I would download some new rock music recommended by classmates and learn the song to where I could yell the lyrics and not be judged. Which wasn't even a big deal to get caught doing it, but I still preferred to be alone if I was going to blast my jams. So that's what I was doing in the car as I pulled out of the parking lot behind our house. Things are good.

I won't sit here and say that I remember everything about the drive, but I do remember that it was sometime with snow on the ground. I know it was noticeably cold and that I had trouble seeing early on. I stopped at a stoplight and had to wipe the windows of the car, because I had apparently forgotten how defrost worked. Things are less good.

I notice the car next to me has one of the windows cracked with smoke coming out. The guy in the driver seat has the gangsta lean going on, with a joint in his mouth. No bullshit, he is just smoking weed, driving down the street with the window down. It must have been just that cold, that if cops saw him, that who even cares? He looks over at me and gives me the nod, and then takes his joint of of his mouth, as his spits onto the ground just before pulling off. Things are different.

After a few minutes more of driving, I park, hop out of the car and go inside the grocery store. I have just gotten paid and can afford to get a large amount of food. Food that both tastes good and holds any kind of nutritional value. And when you're broke but get to fill up the gas tank or the shopping cart or  your stomach or something that was empty, it's a good feeling. I feel like I was dancing in the aisles as I picked the groceries that were coming home with me. Beans and Franks, spaghetti, chicken strips, chips and dip, you know, stuff that athletes should be eating. But I was so stoked to get to fill up my part of the pantry. Things are good again.

I pile all of my food into the car and take off, feeling awesome about getting to ride back and jam some more. I couldn't use the trunk because it was full of something that I couldn't move, so my groceries are in the back seat and one bag is next to me, on the passenger seat. I decide to take a different way back, onto one of the main streets in campus, which will take a little longer but will still get me back before too long. Things are going great.

I pull up to a stoplight on Regent street, near Park street, which is down the street from our house and is very busy at the time. There is a lot of people on the street and a car with three very attractive girls that pull up next to the car I'm in, with a few blocks back to the house. And I just so happened to have to spit, but I was also smiling at the girl in the passenger seat, and trying to be smooth, for whatever reason, I try to imitate the dude smoking the blunt earlier. Not even that I wanted to be some dude with the balls to smoke weed on the street in front of people. The nod and then the spitting thing, for whatever reason, made some sort of impact. So I go for it. Things are going smooth.

I give her the same smooth guy nod, and then I let my spit fly. I did not roll the window down very far, because of how cold it was, and I just wanted to get it back up as soon as possible. Sadly, the window did not go down far enough for my spit wad to leave the car safely. Half of my spit catches the side of the window and hangs onto the outside of the window and the inside at the same time. The girl I was smiling back at, rightfully so, starts laughing and pointing. Things are going un-smooth.

In my panic, I reach for napkins or something that can help clean this off of the window as quick as possible. Nothing seems to be a good choice, or really even a viable choice. I hear honks behind me and realize that the light is now green and I need to drive again. I start moving cautiously down the street while still fumbling for some kind of paper that can help remove the saliva on the window beside my face. I very much could have just stopped the car and parked before dealing with this. I did not. The only thing I find that I think could help the situation is the receipt from my groceries, which I find in the bag that's in the front seat. While glancing to the street ahead, I wipe the receipt onto the outside of the cars windshield as quickly as possible but without looking, it feels rough, and I quickly realize that the saliva has already frozen on the outside of the car window. Things are even less smooth than before.

Looking away from the road, briefly, I now also realize that the receipt is partially stuck to the window. I now struggle to remove the receipt instead of worrying about the spit, only to remember that I was driving and that I should check and make sure that I don't have to stop again. Which I did. I avoided crashing into the car in front of me. Of course, I accomplished this by skidding to a helpless stop and drifting part of the way into the next lane, which had the same car full of attractive girls. I am essentially blocking their path and the crosswalk at the same time, and look like a complete jackass that almost rammed into oncoming traffic. Things have never been this far from smooth. Things are jagged. Yes, I said jagged.

As I sat there, at another red light, diagnolly pointing into their lane, I could see that their entire car was now laughing and, I thought at the time, videotaping me on their camera phones, which was not as big a thing at this time as now. I also realized at this time that the bag of groceries in the front seat was completely spilled across the floor, mostly eggs and bananas and bread. I shrug, wave to the girls, and pull off as best I can when the green light comes. Ignoring the receipt, I just roll the window up and resolve to get home before doing anything else. Things are... Well, things are pretty normal for me.

I pull into the lot behind our house. I bring everything in from the back seat and go back to figure out the stuff that spilled. It turns out I only lost a few eggs, as the bananas and bread are fine. I pick up the eggs, and use a rag from the kitchen to wipe up the spilled yolk, which really wasn't even spilled that much into the car itself. Then I come back and use an ice scraper to remove the spit and attached receipt from the driver side window. I go inside and make a sandwich and get a mound of potato salad to go with it. And things are good again.

Now, big deal in general, right? I took a pseudo joy ride and almost wrecked my roommates car while looking like I had maybe never driven a car before, but it all worked out, right? Well, yeah. But I'm just saying, this could have been just about me enjoying singing in the car, and that would have been something goofy that everyone could relate to. And I'd have been fine with that. Instead, we took it to trying to be smooth for basically no reason and having it definitely not work. If I learned anything that night, it was a reaffirmation that I am not smooth. Or at least not that kind of smooth. You can be cool in different ways at a lot of different times. Riding in the snow, not my moment.

So yeah, stay you, stay cool in your own way, and stay alert when it's snowing. Buckle up out there. And in case you had not been told, receipts are not good napkins.

Not sure why I needed to reiterate that. Bye now.