The Truth Hurts

      Well here we are, ten weeks into this blog writing experiment and it’s been ten weeks of sarcastic, opinionated, belittling, bitter dross. I thought this might be an apropos time for a little change of direction. I don’t have it in me to be any less abrasive, but like Frost’s famous traveler, I thought I might choose the other path this week and try turning the tables on myself. It’s entirely possible that I’m a giant loser. Honestly, my hobbies aren’t exactly what the cool kids are doing these days and looking back on things, I suppose they never were. I’m sure you’re thinking  I must be taking some creative license here, in order to have a little fun at my expense, but I’m afraid what you’re about to read is the whole truth and nothing but. Hopefully, any of you I’ve alienated over the past few months will consider this, my autobiographical comeuppance, as satisfactory recompense. Or, quite frankly, you can go fuck yourselves and say hello to your therapists for me this week, you insecure losers.

Waiting for a match in World of Tanks.

      Hi, my name is Brad, I’m 33 years old and I spend entirely too much time on my computer contributing nothing to society. That’s one of our big imaginary goals in life right, contributing to society? I can’t just be a selfish prick, I have to make sure every dirt farming African villager has clean water and a sack of beans to eat? Unfortunately for starving Africans, I’m more interested in my own little delusional Facebook world, which is ironic because I’m not much of a socialite. Frankly, I don’t give a shit about you, less so if you live someplace I have to spin the globe to find, and you don’t give a shit about me. So why do I do it? I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve become obsessed with playing Facebook games, which has created a compulsion to be online that should have me institutionalized. Sure, I’ll harvest your watermelons, join your mafia, and help you assemble the Vorpal Bastard Sword of Virgin Slaying. I also like to whore out this atrocious blog, which I’m inwardly grateful but outwardly aloof about you reading. I don’t want to seem needy but I like the idea that a few people like reading this garbage I’m churning out. Beyond Facebook games, I find entirely to much pleasure in other computer games, most of which involve me dying endlessly to 13 year old computer hackers from around the world. Anyone better than me is obviously cheating, fucking noob-tubers. I’ve met and been killed by people from places my Social Studies teacher couldn’t find on a map. I’m essentially 33 going on 15 and as much as I know I should be growing up, I’m fighting it with every fiber of my juvenile, irresponsible, lazy being. I’ve wasted an incalculable number of hours of my life accumulating a treasure trove of pixels, with absolutely nothing tangible to show for it. My admittedly thin defense is a quote from T.S. Eliot I fall back on like the French fell back on the Maginot Line, “time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time.”

The big guy in the middle is my Gold Severum, Fred.

      Coupled with my moonlighting as a closet gamer, I’m an avid tropical fish enthusiast. That doesn’t sound so bad until you try using it as an ice breaker at the bar, “So, you wanna come back to my place and check out my sump filtration?”. I have a 150 gallon freshwater reservoir in my living room, which serves as a constant reminder of my wife’s tolerance with my eccentricities. While video gaming puts me in a social bracket with teenagers, keeping a fish tank slides me to the other end of the spectrum; into the early bird special, Sansabelt slacks, buy a Cadillac and retire to Florida crowd. The big problem for me is I have a bit of an obsessive personality. I can’t just throw a few goldfish in a bowl and be satisfied. When the desire to do something arises, like setup and maintain a fish tank, I fully commit myself to the project and set about doing it on a grand scale. Custom Starphire glass tank built in Texas, plumbed and configured in Rhode Island, delivered and installed in Connecticut...check. Anything less than what I feel is the best is not worth the time, effort and money put into doing it. Perfection is a demon I live with everyday, pity me.

Searching for my dignity...

      Lastly, and also chronologically my most recent endeavor, comes the desire to go out and buy a metal detector so I can be a beach bum this summer. This one leaves me scratching my own head and I really have no idea where the impulse to do it came from. I’m certain my inner philanthropist wants to discover a trove of Civil War era relics to donate to some lucky area museum. Honestly, this hobby trumps the other two put together on the scale of lame-assity. There’s been more than one time already where I’ve been down at the beach metal detecting and I’ve noticed some awkward looks from people. Frankly, I can’t blame them. I know full well I look like a giant toolkit with my wannabe DJ headphones on, stumbling up and down the beach with the intensity of Jacques Cousteau probing the seabed 100 meters down for a chest full of Spanish doubloons. If bottle caps were quarters, I’d be rich by now. Actually, if I had a nickel for every girl at the beach who reached into her purse to make sure she had her mace when she saw me coming, I’d really be rich by now. Could the true value of a metal detector be it’s secondary function as a chick magnet? Only time will tell but unless getting tasered is a new form of foreplay, things aren’t going so well.