After succumbing to the inevitable metabolism death, I underwent The Great Diet Switch . Since that fateful day when I swore off regular sodas, I have rarely to drink one. When a diet choice is available, even a particularly nasty one, I always take it.
Such is my commitment. Even though I haven't lost a single pound, I haven't gained any either. Victory or Mexican Stand-Off?
Either way, during my quest, I have learned some very important lessons.
Men can be defined in more ways than having a penis. We like our sports, whether we're playing them or watching them. We fart in our sleep even if we swear up and down that we don't. And we love to give directions.
Men will even compete over who has the best directions. There are two categories for this: The Shortest Route and The Quickest Route. They aren't always the same.
The world is constantly evolving. It is inevitable; all that is now, will be no more. Traditions are but man's futile attempts to preserve a way of life. But traditions are easily corrupted. Such is the disappearance of things.
Remember when dads had shoe polish and shined their shoes? I bought a tin of shoe polish ages ago because I thought I needed it. I found it the other day, cracked and dried out from years of non-use. Shoe polish is quickly becoming a relic.
Does anyone below the age of fifty carry handkerchiefs any more? I don't think so. I can't picture a fifteen year old boy whipping out his hanky for a girl who just sneezed in class. My dad tried to get me to carry one when I was that age, but somehow, carrying around a dried snot rag was unappealing. Handkerchiefs are one of those traditions that thankfully seems to have died.
Dishwater Johnson is a guy everyone knows. We see him everywhere. In a McDonald's drive-thru paying with a hundred. At a construction site with his hat on backwards. In a Wal-Mart parking lot trying to park in the space with the cart corral.
Dishwater Johnson is the guy who drives ten miles down the highway with his left blinker on. He's the guy who walks around all day with a dried one hanging out of a nostril. He's the guy who pushes the PULL door, more than once.
Kids always find ways to rebel against older generations. They do it through music and art and hair styles and more obviously, through clothing fashions. For instance, do you tuck your shirt in or leave it out?
This was a conversation I had with a friend months ago. I wore my shirts tucked in, he wore them out. He told me I was old. I told him he was only six years younger than me, that my head began to shine at his age.
And then I told him the shedding sped up because I made fun of older people.
There are two kinds of toilet paper: the good stuff and the other stuff. The good stuff is fluffy and squeezably soft while the other stuff is scratchy and noticably thin.
The good stuff has commercials where kids cram it under their clothes and suddenly become indestructible. They can run into other kids, play football, fall off buildings - all without a single scratch or bruise.
The other stuff doubles as sandpaper whenever I refinish furniture.
We are the children. We are the ones who make a brighter day so let's start giving. That's how the song goes and even though tons of stars banded together to record it for a good cause, I hate the song with an intense passion.
Why, you may ask? Why would I hate this symbol of world peace and solidarity? Why would I abhor this early Eighties collaboration among some of my favorite artists?
Because assholes sang it, that's why.
