Do a dark turn daily

So apparently this blog thing is still here.  

It's been a really long time.  

It always has been a really long time, so nothing new there. Yeah my life has changed pretty damn dramatically since I started this thing. 

To update from previous postings,  I married the beautiful Cindy and we had our second anniversary last fall.  I've never been happier about a decision I've made.  We like to say that nobody's perfect but she's perfect for me.

Last spring I got promoted to Senior Service Manager at Trugreen in Lincoln. Basically that means I'm in charge of the service department(all the people out in the field doing lawn and tree work). It also means that I'm sitting at a desk getting fat. 

Also last year I finally got my name on a mortgage. It's a great house with a sun room and a half finished half unfinished basement(i like having part of it unfinished).  It has enough bedrooms for all the kids to have their own,  and it also has a puppy.  Okay so it didn't come with the puppy but we got Wrigley right after we moved in and he's cute and hilarious. 

I have the life I want.  Probably the life I don't deserve  but I'm keeping it.

Coke Zero is good now. I've blogged in the past about it being terrible but they've changed the taste just in time for the low carb diet we are on,  and it's about 90.

I also haven't shaved for a month, and desperately need a haircut. I have good intentions of doing these things but somehow I find a way to not do them.  I get in these slumps where I don't want to take care of myself and just put it off indefinitely. When I am doing it I continue doing it.  I think this might be a form of depression. I used to call it "anxious laziness". My life runs in cycles of me going into these spirals of not wanting to do anything and not having the ambition to drag myself out of it.  I talk big and then I fail to act.  

I have a wonderful life.  I'm just wired in a way that makes it hard for me to revel in it.  I sometimes feel like I'm detached from the morality of how the rest of humanity works.  A deep part of me wonders if I'm actually a psychopath.  A silly notion. 

Anyway that took a dark turn. 

I'm a strange person,  so don't take it to seriously.  Thanks for watching. 

What is wrong with America?

I realize that I often say that this or that is what is wrong with America, but today I've been working on a theory that I think has serious merit, rather than just random baseless conjecture.

Today a story has popped up on my Facebook feed in multiple locations, about this douche bag "internet prankster" who is getting parents to agree to let him creep on their daughters on Facebook so he can trick them into meeting in person, proceed to have their parents ambush them, sometimes after "mock" kidnapping them with ski masks.

This is it right here. This is what's wrong with America. Living in a state of such constant paranoia that you are willing to let someone mock rape your daughter to prove a point about trust. And that point? Never fucking trust anyone(especially not your parents?).

I immediately thought of Arrested Development where the one armed guy always helps their dad teach them lessons by pretending to get his arm ripped off, but this one is actually way worse and isn't a fictional situation on a comedy show. This is real daughters getting tricked by their parents into thinking they're about to be raped, all out of this paranoid delusion that everyone you meet online is a crazed "sex pervert".

We live in a culture of fear. It starts with indoctrinating "stranger danger" into our children at a young age instead of teaching them how to correctly decide on the right people to trust. We are so inwardly focused and paranoid that it no longer takes a village to raise a child. In fact if anyone in the village even looks sideways at our kid we give them stink eye and drag our kid somewhere else. The idea of other parents helping us is insane to us, and yet we feel the need to force others to parent under our ruleset. Parents getting fined and losing their kids because their 10 year old kid was left in a running car with air conditioning on and why? Well what if the car dies and then it gets hot in the car and the kid is too dumb to get out and the parent also takes an hour longer in the store...

What if.. what if.. this is what we base our entire lives on. We see so many negative news stories that we assume it's going to happen to us if we don't keep our kids in constant eyesight they're gonna die immediately. The vast majority of kidnappers and molesters know the kid, they aren't looking for kids on Facebook. Why? Because they would get caught in five minutes if they were that fucking stupid.

Are there people out there who want to hurt you or your kids? Yes. Is it likely they're gonna proposition them on Facebook? No. Is living in constant paranoia going to prevent bad people from doing bad things? No, but it is allowing them to hurt you without them even having to be there.

Constant fear is in all of politics, in both sides of the news, it's everywhere. It has to stop. Fear is survival, but community is stronger. Human community started around family and growing villages. We put our fear aside to embrace others and come together for common goals. Our village has gotten so damn big that we have begun to fear within it.

We have to stop.

The inverse property of weeds

I could care less about the phrase "couldn't care less." Yes, that is correct. I could actually care less. I keep seeing people get infuriated about people using this phrase the way I use it. I think this is very close to the root of what is wrong with America.

You see just because I am not vehemently opposed to the concept of being capable of caring about something doesn't mean the statement "makes no sense" or is stupid. I don't tend to speak in such absolutes. I don't consider myself to be capable of such a callous attitude about my level of care for any subject.

Why is it I have to either hate something or love it? Everything in the universe doesn't have to be this extreme polarizing event. When I tell you that I could care less about a subject you are talking to me about, I am implying that your continued persistence could be what brings me to that even lower level of caring.

I don't need to imply that I am physically incapable of caring about a subject in order to be apathetic about it. To me being so extremely opposed to caring about it proves that you've invested enough energy in it to know you dislike it, in the least.

It's like this whole internet news feed trend of every news article having "extreme" buzzwords that "you won't believe until you see," where the story has little to do with the title. Everyone feels the need to be excessive and absolute in everything they say. There is no middle ground. Middle ground is stupid.

The inverse property of weeds is something I thought of while spraying weed service calls today. The more extreme the language used to describe the weeds in the lawn, the less weeds there will be.  If there are "excessive" or "major" weeds in the lawn it might take the better part of an hour just finding one. The ones that are fairly nondescript tend to be the ones with lots of weeds. "some" weeds is one to watch out for because it can go either way.

Man my mind wanders a lot. Have fun living life, kiddos.

I'm going to bed.

Anyone for a saucy puppet show?

Welcome back to the semiregular musings of Joe.

My two to three readers may be interested in an update on the happenings of the previous post. Well it seems that I'm officially in a relationship with this wonderful woman they call Cindy. I tend to call her Cynthia, but that's just splitting hairs.

We've begun setting up meetings of friends and family and in all honesty I haven't been this happy/excited in quite some time. I've actually been leading a very contented single life so this things kind of snuck up on me and caught me by surprise.

Concerns have been stated that we might be taking things too fast and I can't disagree with this. Both of us have been in situations where we should be more cautious with ourselves. In all logical ways we should take it slow, and to be perfectly honest we both said we would and we did set out to do just that. Sometimes that isn't how fate decides things go.

With Ashley there was passion and fire that drove me to do whatever it took to get her to fit into my life. I set aside pieces of my life and compromised things I never thought I would compromise to fit her in a place I crafted for her. Then as she grew and I grew, I came to overlook how she outgrew that place I had made, and I failed to see that I was becoming jaded with her for changing me, when it was I who had made the change.

With Cynthia the passion and fire are the same. I want her touch on my face and her smell intoxicates me. When I sit next to her I feel as though I am with someone I've known my entire life. When we talk everything comes easy and there is never anything I feel I cannot say to her or any secret I would want to keep. She fit perfectly in my life like she was made for me. I don't have to be anyone else or compromise any part of myself. I am who I am and she is who she is and that is everything I could want from her.

We are still careful. Still wary. Not planning to run out and get married or have babies. We are adults who know how to handle a relationship. She lives in seward until she finishes school. I live in lincoln. We have barriers that prevent us from really moving too damn fast like moving in together. But in the mean time I call her for lack of a better term girlfriend. I hate that term because I went out of my way to make sure she was a woman and not a girl, a woman with convictions and a sense of self.

I am happy.

We are happy.

And then there were two.

This just in. Joe is a happy camper this week.

I've recently begun communicating with a female nerd via webs and texting. She picked me out of a lineup and unbeknownst to either of us our daughters are in the same class. As a strong believer in fate I could not ignore this fact and have been dedicating myself to getting to know her.

I won't bore you with the details but as a pair of divorced folk we are taking things slow one step at a time. I have a really good feeling about this one.  So keep your proverbial fingers crossed and throw up a prayer if you'd like while you are at it.

Thanks for your interest.

Until next time this is J Andrew K signing off.

Frosty Nuggets.

Hello and welcome to yet another edition of Joe's blog.

Been playing a lot of video games lately so you will have to forgive me for not updating on a regular basis.

My son is still getting himself into trouble, but at least now its for his jokery and not violence. He's a class clown and I know it's something we will have to be dealing with all the way through. He's got his dad's sense of humor but he's not shy like I was. His real problem is he actually is funny, so he will get a genuine laugh and then he doesn't know when to stop.
Unbeknownst to most he is also learning a lot at school. I take them to the library to get books and he usually just wants to look at pictures or make up stories as he turns pages but he's getting to where he can sound out words if you can catch him doing it. Its weird seeing the kids grow by jumps in weeks. It amazes me how fast it seems they pick things up.

Kait is doing quite well, she's my little achiever. She gets good grades, her teachers love her, and she's getting really good at sports already.

They will both be better than I ever was at sports. Instead of weird games like steal the bacon they play football and things like that in phys ed. Seward trains their sports teams young I guess. Good for them I guess.

As for me I'm doing the same nothing I've always done. It works for now. Started a savings account for the kids when they get older. Its something I've wanted to do since I got married. We went into debt because of all the wedding stuff and I always said id put money away so I could help pay for wedding stuff, or whatever they need I suppose.

Anyhow I best get back to workin. Got Dungeons and Dragons tonight so I wanna get off at a reasonable time.

Good day to you.

Shameless plug?

Just a little mini blog update. I've got a big one brewing for sooner or later here but haven't the time during a lunch break to figure it out.

I am loving the new Volbeat song Still Counting. I crank the radio every time it comes on. I would totally pay for the mp3 if I had a computer. I love the music, as well as the concept that I know you an asshole when I see one because we smell our own(no pun intended?)

Nothing major to report. Kids went swimming in the pool this weekend even though the water was bitch-ass cold. Nights are getting a bit nippy for pool weather IMO.

I haven't rode my bike as much as I would like. Every morning is cold and there's always ominous clouds in the sky when I'm thinking about it. Good times will come. Honestly just stoked I got the thing before next year. It was a bit of a surprise I was able to.

Seriously though major post brewing soonish, if I have the balls for it.