OMG. I randomly caught the end of The Marriage Ref  last night and it was about a husband who labels all his socks as left or right with numbers -  and everyone was freaking out about how brilliant an idea it was.

Well, allow me to reblog my own post from March 19th, 2009.  Sure, that dude and his wife got to go onto a shitty TV show, but I can’t just sit back and let people think he’s got a leg up on me²!

steelopus:

I enjoyed the Seven Things meme so much that I’ve decided to continue sharing my oddities with all of you.

I’ve already covered my hatred of feet¹ in a previous entry.  Today I’m here to talk about socks.  I love socks because their most basic purpose is to keep feet hidden from the world.  I also love them because nothing accentuates a good set of gams better than a nice pair of socks, whether they be low, high, colorful, striped, white, black, fancy, or plain.  But, here is where my OCD kicks in: I label my socks in distinct pairs.

Each pair gets tagged on the bottom of the toes with a sharpie. There’s a pair of 1s, a pair of 2s, a pair of Xs, a pair of Os, etc.  I switched to letters after I tagged my first 6 pair with numbers.  There are benefits to this process beyond keeping my OCD from flaring up.  Keeping specific pairs results in even wear across the sets.  Additionally, it gives me a quick way to identify pairs.  I can tell you quickly that pairs 4 and 5 are currently on their last legs², while pairs 1, T, and X are still in good shape.  If I’m headed someplace where I’ll surely have to remove my shoes (I’m really not a big fan of such places) then I can quickly scan the drawer and find one of the pairs that isn’t going to completely embarrass me³.

I know that I’m insane.  I secretly hope there is a girl out there who has a fetish for guys that are weird enough to keep their socks separated into distinct pairs, and that one day she’ll read this and contact me and we’ll fall madly in love and everything will be smiles and giggles and peaches and sunshine until the day she asks me to lick her feet, at which point I would kick her out of my house and then go sit, sobbing, in a cold shower.

FYI, my default sock is the Hanes® Crew Sock - White. $9.00 at Target.

¹More things - On Feet

²I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.

³What would embarrass me is generally something that most people would consider still a good clean sock. Once there is any general browning or or discoloration, it’s a goner.  Come on now people.  Socks are cheap and I can think of few things better than wearing a brand new pair of socks, so there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t throw out your socks before they get totally nasty.

It’s been 6 months since I originally posted my Seven Things.  This meme was what really got me serious about Tumblr, and more importantly, it’s what really helped me get to know so many of you so very well.  In those 6 months, I’ve become even closer with many more of you than I ever thought possible and I’ve made a whole load of new connections.  Now I have appx 10 times as many followers as I did then, so I’m reposting this to give all the new folks a chance to get to know me even better.

I was tagged by @Jessabelle2o7 and indirectly by @zolora (who tagged, um, everyone in general).  So here it goes.  This turned out longer than expected…  here are (roughly) seven things you don’t know about me.

1) I have been 100% sober for 29 years.
That’s right, my entire life.  I’ve never had more than a sip of beer;  my dad probably gave me a taste of whisky when I was a kid; I’ll sip on a glass of white wine or champagne at a wedding or extra special occasion, but that’s about it.  And nevermind smoking or any sort of illicit drugs.  (Though, surely I’ve spent enough time locked in cars and enclosed rooms while my friends enjoyed any of a large variety of substances.  I know that there must have been times that I unintentionally buzzed a good contact high.  And there was all that post-wisdom-teeth Vicodin that I enjoyed - and missed dearly when it finally ran out.)  I have no explanation for why I never got started, nor for why I haven’t started yet.  In college I considered myself to be straight-edge, but I was never hardcore about it.  I could never imagine myself being a big enough delinquent asshole to go around burning down liquor stores, but there were several years where I felt proud to wear an X on my hands when I would be out at a club rocking out to some band.

I feel as though this has defined much of my life to this point.  It nearly destroyed many of my best friendships in college when I just couldn’t put up with friends who seemed to put getting wasted at the top of their list of priorities.  It did destroy my first serious romantic relationship, as she spiraled into an unhealthy pit of drug and alcohol abuse that would eventually lead to some very dark times in her life (she’s since cleaned up).  Additionally, one of my closest friends recently recovered himself from the depths of opiate addiction.  To see him healthy and clean(enough) now makes me feel incredibly proud of him, not to mention lucky that he made it through without going fully supernova.

I’ve grown past judging other people.  There was a time when I thought I’d keep this up forever.  How wonderful, I thought, to be able to look my teenagers in the eye and not have to lie to them when they’d say “Oh come on dad! You know you used to do it too!”  But, as I now have no intentions to produce children of my own (see bonus, below), that’s no longer a valid reason to not drink.  If anything, my social anxiety (also see below) is what will finally lead me to the bottle, but I’m in no rush.

2) I still live at home, with my parents.
Yup.  I’m 29 years old and I’ve lived in the same house the entire time.  Go ahead, take your best shot.  I’ve heard them all; they don’t even phase me anymore.
How did this happen?  Well, I went to a college that was literally 5 minutes from my house, so living on campus would have been financially retarded.  So, at the time when most kids move away and start their lives away from home, I stayed put.  After graduation, my degree (K-12 Music Education) went to waste as I decided I hated teaching, and so I continued to live home while accruing 10 years of employment at a local golf course.  Then I finally got a “real job”…yet home I stayed.

“Why the hell didn’t you just move out?!”
Honestly?  There came a point where it made more sense to just stay home, put up with my parents, and save money.  As you can imagine, living at home is significantly more affordable than renting (yes, I’m paying, but it’s not much.)  Needless to say, I’ve saved a significant amount of money that will become a generous down-payment once I finally find a house (yes, I’m shopping… desperately shopping.)

Truthfully though, while there are often days and times when I feel like my life is falling apart due to a lack of personal space and personal time (I basically spend all my time in my tiny bedroom [FLICKR TOUR]), there are plenty of other moments when I feel incredibly grateful that I can be spending (mostly) quality time with my parents as they grow old (example 1, example 2).  When I finally buy a house, it will be bittersweet, for sure.

3) I FUCKING ROCK.
Anyone who really knows me will vouch for the fact that I’m very modest, humble, and reserved.  I rarely am one to make a scene or seek the spotlight, but I have to be honest with you… I fucking rock.
I’ve been playing guitar since I was 11.  I can remember the first day my brother (13 years older than me) stuck a guitar in my hands and told me he was going to teach me to play.  I resisted at first.  I wanted to go watch TMNT or play with my Micro Machines, but he was stubborn, and that’s the thing I appreciate more than anything else in my life.  I remember him playing me Golden Earing’s Radar Love and then passing me the guitar and teaching me how to play that bassline.  Next thing you know we were working on the guitar part for The Lemon Song.  I have no idea when it happened, but at some point it just clicked.  THIS was what I wanted to do with my life.  Playing guitar; making music; rocking the fuck out.  To this day, not a single thing brings me more joy.  Standing on stage and performing your own music for a roomful of strangers can be better than sex.

Most of the best days and nights of my life have revolved around my experience as a musician.  In the grand scheme of things, our band (FMGreen) really only ever enjoyed a modicum of success on the local circuit.  We played about 100 shows over the course of several years early in this decade, we released a full album (Yellow #5) and an EP (3 2 1 Go!).  We weren’t the most polished.  We weren’t the most graceful.  We weren’t the best looking.  But we. fucking. rocked.  I only use the past tense when talking about FMGreen because we haven’t really been much of a band for the past two years since we lost our primary rehearsal space.  Now we wait on me to buy a house, and then the rocking shall commence anew.

Am I the best guitarist in town? Abso-fucking-lutely not.  But I’m very good, and I’m not afraid to admit it.  There is nothing in my life that I am more proud of than the music I’ve written and the music I’ve made, and no one can take that away from me.
Ultimately, I can’t thank my brother enough for the gift that he gave me, and if my dying words are “Thank you, Sam.” then I’ll be dying happy.

4) I collect the little nuts from the ends of guitar strings.
Though I’ve never been diagnosed with OCD or ADHD… well…



I meticulously snip these from the ends of guitar and bass strings when I’m putting a new set on.  Then I drop them into their respective container.  One for colored nibs.  One for bass nibs.  One for silver nibs.  One for gold nibs.

Oh shut up.  You collect weird shit too.

5) I’m pretty self-conscious about the way that I talk.
I don’t know when it started to affect me, but within the past 10 years or so it’s become a major internal conflict.  I’ve never really told anyone.  I can’t really explain how I talk, nor why it’s so awkward.

I remember being shuffled off to speech therapy in elementary school.  They’d bring me into some office and have me practice my “th” sounds and my “ch” sounds.  I have a distinct memory that the speech pathologist had this little dollhouse that had a hole in the top.  The hole had a black cloth bag attached and inside the bag were various cheap toys - you know, the kinds of things you might now find inside plastic bubbles in vending machines.  She’d have me reach in there and pull something out, and then we’d practice saying the name of that which I had removed.  “Chair.  Chhhhaaair”  “Thimble.  Thhhhimbuuul.”

I don’t remember having a complex about talking in social situations in high school, or even in college.  But at some point after college, it has become a problem for me.  It’s not a lisp (for which I’m grateful), it’s like a dull mumble, sometimes a stutter here or there.  It makes me feel a wee-bit retarded, as I’ll try to say something, but it will just come out garbled.  I’m fairly certain this is one of the reasons I’ve become an internet addict.  On the internet, no one has to hear you speak.  I can type till my fingers fall off.  Twitter is 140 characters of pure bliss.

Some words just consistently trip me up - “Saturday” and “literally” come to mind.  My voice isn’t very loud and that just makes things worse, because no one can hear me, so I’m forced to repeat myself, and each repetition makes me more and more self-conscious. Often I just give up and keep my fucking mouth shut.

Worse still, it destroys me socially.  There is severe anxiety involved with me being in a social situation, especially with strangers, and it’s multiplied exponentially if we’re in a loud environment such as a bar, a bowling alley, or a sporting event.  My friends are great because they’ve never mentioned it and they seem to just put up with it.  You can imagine how hard it can be for me to meet new people.  Throw a beautiful girl into the mix and I may as well be a 2 year old drooling and muttering incoherent vowels sounds.
I should seek help, but it’s tough to find the motivation.  A few more months of being painfully single will probably be enough to get me into a therapist.

6) I’m sensitive. Perhaps too sensitive.
Old people make me feel so fucking sad.  Fuck you old people!  How dare you?  Now don’t get me wrong - I enjoy a good harmless old people joke - but in-person, they often tear me apart inside.  When I see an old person sitting alone at a restaurant, it just breaks my heart.  I invent scenarios for why they are alone; She’s a widow; He outlived all his children; All her friends have passed away; All his friends are locked up in some cruel nursing home.  It makes me afraid to grow old.  It makes me scared that I’ll be 75 and sitting alone in a McDonald’s drinking free coffee, pooping my pants, and staring at the empty seat across from me.  And when I see kids - or even adults - disrespecting old people, I just want to punch them right in the crotch.

But honestly, they do suck at driving.

And it’s not just old people.  Lots of things make me sad.
I’d surely be offered a healthy dose of meds if I ever went to a psychiatrist.  I’m not sure if I ever want that to happen.

7) I’m superstitious about odd numbers.
In other words, I hate even numbers and I think they are the bringers of evil.
The basis for this comes from my birthday: 9/19/1979. All odd numbers, no matter how you slice it up.  Individually, in pairs, all together.  Odds everywhere.

This superstition isn’t without merit… but there are some glaring exceptions as well:

Good things that have happened on even years:

• 1994 - The Blue Album
• 1996 - Pinkerton

Bad things that have happened on odd years:

• 2001 - The Green Album, 9/11

In support of my hatred for evens:

• A 6 year relationship ended in 2008, on the 28th day of the month (January, not quite perfect.)
• George Bush was elected in 2000 and reelected in 2004.
• I know there’s more.

I’m on the fence regarding the number 2, because it’s a prime number, so it WANTS to be odd…

I hate evens with good reason.  You’ll just have to trust me on this.

A couple short bonuses, because I apparently love talking about myself:
8) I don’t want kids.
Honestly, I think I’m just too selfish.  Does that make me a bad person?  At least I can admit it.  I want to be able to sleep as long as I want, whenever I want.  I want to be able to go out at any time on any day to any where without having to worry about any thing.  I’m really not interested in having something that is entirely dependent on me for survival.  A dog or a cat will be plenty.  Maybe finding the right woman will change my mind… but 5 nieces and nephews have done a very good job of convincing me that my life will be just fine without booger-flingers of my own.

9) I magically make street-lights turn on and off.
You can try to convince me that it’s just coincidence, that it’s all based on timers, and it’s just me being in the right place at the right time - but I won’t believe you.  It happens too frequently and consistently with the same lights at different times of day for it to be coincidence.  My father also has this ability and all three of my siblings - separately and without my prompting - have told me that they notice it too.  It happens in the car and on foot, everywhere I go, even in different towns and cities.  It’s awesome.

Thanks for reading, I hope I haven’t scared you.  Please send me your old guitar strings.

As far as I know, the most complete repository of Seven Things posts is still the one put together by tbmimsthethird, here.  Go find some new friends and get to know your current friends even better.

I enjoyed the Seven Things meme so much that I’ve decided to continue sharing my oddities with all of you.

I’ve already covered my hatred of feet¹ in a previous entry.  Today I’m here to talk about socks.  I love socks because their most basic purpose is to keep feet hidden from the world.  I also love them because nothing accentuates a good set of gams better than a nice pair of socks, whether they be low, high, colorful, striped, white, black, fancy, or plain.  But, here is where my OCD kicks in: I label my socks in distinct pairs.

Each pair gets tagged on the bottom of the toes with a sharpie. There’s a pair of 1s, a pair of 2s, a pair of Xs, a pair of Os, etc.  I switched to letters after I tagged my first 6 pair with numbers.  There are benefits to this process beyond keeping my OCD from flaring up.  Keeping specific pairs results in even wear across the sets.  Additionally, it gives me a quick way to identify pairs.  I can tell you quickly that pairs 4 and 5 are currently on their last legs², while pairs 1, T, and X are still in good shape.  If I’m headed someplace where I’ll surely have to remove my shoes (I’m really not a big fan of such places) then I can quickly scan the drawer and find one of the pairs that isn’t going to completely embarrass me³.

I know that I’m insane.  I secretly hope there is a girl out there who has a fetish for guys that are weird enough to keep their socks separated into distinct pairs, and that one day she’ll read this and contact me and we’ll fall madly in love and everything will be smiles and giggles and peaches and sunshine until the day she asks me to lick her feet, at which point I would kick her out of my house and then go sit, sobbing, in a cold shower.

FYI, my default sock is the Hanes® Crew Sock - White. $9.00 at Target.

¹More things - On Feet

²I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.

³What would embarrass me is generally something that most people would consider still a good clean sock. Once there is any general browning or or discoloration, it’s a goner.  Come on now people.  Socks are cheap and I can think of few things better than wearing a brand new pair of socks, so there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t throw out your socks before they get totally nasty.

I enjoyed the Seven Things meme so much that I’ve decided to continue sharing my oddities with all of you.

I have Restless Leg Syndrome.  It’s not a formal diagnosis, mainly because there is no true diagnosis of RLS, but trust me that it’s very real, it’s very uncomfortable, and sometimes painful.

What are the symptoms?  For me it’s basically an uncontrollable urge to move, shake, or bounce my legs.  Even as I type this, my leg right leg is bouncing around more than Michael J. Fox on a trampoline.  Many other sufferers describe what they feel as a  “creepy crawly” feeling, like bugs crawling around under their skin; I have never felt that (thank god).  Most often I just notice my leg(s) bouncing uncontrollably at random times.  Frequently, while in meetings at work, someone will question why the table is shaking, and it’s usually because my leg is bouncing on one of the table legs.  It’s often awkward at restaurants when everyone notices ripples on the surface of their drinks.  My RLS starts whenever it wants, and most times I don’t notice the shaking until someone points it out.  Once I’ve noticed the shaking, I can consciously stop it, but I have to concentrate on only that action; once my thoughts transfer back to whatever I was doing, the shaking starts anew.

The other major symptom is a painful tightness in areas of my legs, most commonly in the area surrounding my ankles, but also in my calves and thighs.  This occurs mostly in the evenings and at night.  I don’t know how exactly to explain this pain.  Often, around my achilles and down the outer edge of my chins to the top of my feet, it feels like there is some sort of physical pressure that won’t go away.  Shaking and moving my legs helps to temporarily disperse the pressure, but it returns as soon as I stop shaking.  Sometimes I can do stretches that provide a bit of relief, but it doesn’t last long.  When the pain is in my thighs and calves, I find what works best for me is to gently pound/knead/massage the area that hurts.  It’s not sharp pain - just a constant pressure.  It’s not throbbing; it just shows up, sticks around while I shake and stretch, and then eventually vanishes.

Several nights a week it keeps me from falling asleep.  I’ve tried all sorts of different so-called bedtime remedies: sleeping on my side with a pillow between my legs, sleeping on my back with my legs supported in the air higher than my torso, sleeping on my stomach with my feet pointing down hanging off the end of the bed, or even on my back with my legs, bent at the knee, dangling over the end of the bed.  None of these work very well, mostly because they are so unnatural.  Usually the only thing that works is for me to lay on my back with my legs crossed at the ankles; I then wiggle my feet and rub my ankles together.  I can’t sleep with a lot of covers, as the increased weight only adds to the pressure on my legs and ankles, which only serves to make the symptoms worse.  It goes without saying that I can’t have my covers tucked in anywhere on the bed (this caused annoyances when sharing a bed in past relationships); I used to describe it by saying “my feet need to be free.”

At this point am I very interested in receiving acupuncture.  There have been a few small studies that suggest acupuncture can provide minor relief of symptoms, but nothing is concrete.  One of the major drawbacks to acupuncture is that it can’t be applied while the symptoms are present, both because the shaking would make application impossible, and because the pressure symptom is mostly present near bedtime - when acupuncturists are not available.  Pain relievers are no help, though sleeping aids can be somewhat effective by forcing my body to shut down and fall asleep before the symptoms get out of hand.

The hypochondriac in me worries that there could be a link to Parkinson’s Disease, from which my grandmother suffered for the greater portion of her eldest years before passing away.  However, there has been no direct link between RLS and Parkinson’s, nor has there been any substantial evidence that Parkinson’s is hereditary.

In the meantime, I’ll just keep shaking.  It’s a shame that I hate dancing.

I enjoyed the Seven Things meme so much, I’ve decided to continue sharing my oddities with all of you.

I hate feet.  Even the word itself makes me uncomfortable.  I hate your feet and I hate my feet.  I hate feet in magazines; I hate feet in movies and on TV; I hate cartoon feet.  Mostly I hate bare feet, and it takes one heck of a pair of socks for me to not be completely turned off and distracted.

I’m tolerant of just about any kind of fetish you may have, but foot fetishists freak me out like few other things in this world.  I’m a “leg man*” but I hate feet.  That makes things a bit difficult in certain situations.

Most days I am barefoot for no more than 10 minutes - from the moment I get in the shower to the moment I get dressed.  The other 1,430 minutes are spent wearing socks, sometimes multiple pair.  The only exception to this would be on the rare excruciatingly hot and humid summer night, on which I may sleep barefoot, but this is not often and is a last resort.

If I’m eating at a restaurant in the summer and I see someone nearby wearing sandals or flip-flops, I gag a little bit.  All I can think about is how their nasty toes are out free, mingling in the same air that I am breathing.  Pools, water parks, and the beach: all places that skeeve me out to some extent.  I’m that guy who’s wearing shoes at the beach (Chucks are good beach shoes).

I’d have to REALLY unconditionally love you in order to give you a foot massage, even if you were wearing a sock.  I don’t want to touch your feet.  I’m somewhat OK with touching feet to feet, playing footsie, etc., but you stand on those things all day, often with them stuffed inside poorly ventilated shoes, and you want me to touch them.  With my hands?! You’re insane.  I wouldn’t ask you to massage a llamas taint**, so please don’t ask me to massage your feet.

Please, keep your feet to yourself.

*A nice rack can be faked, but great gams take effort.

**This is, perhaps, the first time in history anyone has ever used the phrase “I wouldn’t ask you to massage a llamas taint.”

I enjoyed the Seven Things meme so much, I’ve decided to continue sharing my oddities with all of you.

You all know about OCD. I’ll probably do a “More things” post about my as-of-yet-undiagnosed OCD at some point in the future, but tonight I’m here to talk to you about something different, yet similar.

I have OTD.  Obsessive Twitter Disorder.

OTD is an affliction.  The primary sympton is an inherent need to read every tweet from everyone that I follow.  This proves promblematic on many levels and it stems from a deeply-rooted feeling that I can trace all the way back to junior high.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had a tremendous fear of being left out of “cool” events and “cool” conversations.  When I was growing up, my best friend was David D.  He lived five houses down the street; we were in the same class in grades K, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6; we walked to and from school together, played on the same teams in little league, played tennis together, and built elaborate GI Joe forts in our backyards.  I have vivid memories from that period of my life.  I remember one summer Dave had been given one of those mail-order frogs that arrived as a tadpole and you would drop into a tank of water and feed until they grew into a normal little frog.  He had done all the work to get this little guy, named Froggy, to spout arms and legs and do all the things that frogs do.  One week they went on vacation and asked me to go over to the house every day to feed Froggy.  They gave me a key to their house and carefully explained how many of the little brown food pellets I was to gently drop into the tank every day.  They showed me how to ever so slightly lift the lid of the tank, just leaving enough room to drop in the food, preventing Froggy from jumping out of the water and hopping his way out of the house.  The first few days I diligently walked over to the house, let myself in, and dropped a few pellets into the tank.  I’d talk to Froggy like he was a dog: “Good boy! Eat it up! Yummy!”  Frogs, however, aren’t really great pets.  They rank only slightly higher than fish on the interactivity scale, but really that’s not saying much.  I don’t specifically remember what happened, but I missed two days of feeding.  The following morning, I woke up with terrible knot in my stomach.  I was so uncomfortable.  I just knew I had messed up, big time.  I walked down the street, went in the house, and hesitantly turned the corner into the kitchen where Froggy’s tank was positioned on the counter near the sink (good natural light from the window in that position).  My worst fears were realized when I looked into the tank to see Froggy floating, lifeless, at the surface of the water.  My neglect had killed my best friend’s pet.  I ran out of the house, locked it up, and ran home.  I never told Dave or his parents what happened, and I don’t remember them ever questioning or confronting me about it, but to this this day I still feel guilty (clearly).  In the summer of 1991, before 7th grade, his family moved down to the NYC area where his father accepted a position as the superintendent of a school district in affluent Westchester County.  The friend that I had spent my entire childhood with was suddenly gone from my life.  I remember saying goodbye to him the night before he moved.  Hugging his beagle (Buster, who I loved dearly), hugging Dave, his brother, and his parents, my eyes welling up with tears, we said our goodbyes.  I walked out the door for the last time and walked home in the dark, sobbing.

From the day he moved until several years later - sometime in high school - I truly felt like I had no friends at all.  Kids that I thought were my friends excluded me from their circles and cliques after Dave moved away.  It felt as though the only reason they included me in the first place was because they liked Dave. and I was always just a “tagalong,” so when he left they had no reason to keep me around.  One day in the spring I went to a garage sale at a house neighboring one of these other kids.  There I bought a GI Joe Skystriker (which I still have).  By that point in my life I had my heart set on joining the Air Force to become a pilot, so to me the Skystriker was “The Toy of all Toys,” and to find it in pristine condition at a garage sale, for an amazing price, was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.  I shelled out the cash and carried the big box all the way home.  Returning to school the following Monday, I was incessantly made fun of for my purchase.  Kids mockingly singing the GI Joe theme when I was around became a sad trend throughout the rest of that school year.

By now you’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with Twitter.

Do you know that feeling when you go to dinner, a movie, or a sporting event - any event where a group of friends sit in a long line - that if you’re sitting on the end you always feel like you’re missing out on the conversation that is taking place on the inside of the line?  Or is that just me?  That seed, of feeling excluded, was planted when I was 11 years old, and it has yet to die.  One of its (many) branches extends into Twitter.  I have a fear that if I don’t read every tweet, then I’ll have missed some cool conversation between everyone else, leaving me feeling left out.  As a good example: I would have felt like a complete outcast if I had missed the night of #TWITTERBUS2009.  Now sure, it’s all just jokes and fantasy, and not being a part of it would have had absolutely no effect on my actual life, but if I had logged in the next day, having not read through all of the previous nights excitement, only to find people still buzzing about it, I’d have felt tremendously excluded.  It’s not that I feel like I’m so special that I deserve to be a part of everything.  It’s more so that I just truly care about everyone I follow and I want to be a part of the activities that they are a part of.  As @luckyshirt so wonderfully described with his recent blog post, it’s a wonderful community filled with truly caring people.

So, my fear of being excluded leads me to read every tweet from everyone I follow.  As of this moment I am following 206 people.  Problems arise from this, and it’s only gotten worse since I discovered the joys of Favrd.  On the one hand, I visit Favrd and see dozens of people showing up on the front page and the leaderboard every day, people that I’m not currently following, but who consistently they make me laugh.  I *want* to follow these people, but unfortunately I just don’t have the time for it.  On the other hand, as a result of Favrd, I quickly went from following ~100 to following 200+.  This was beneficial as I’ve started developing good relationships with all of these new people, they consistently make me laugh (I hope that I return the favor now and then) and I feel a part of their community.  Hell, just today we all celebrated the birth of @thedayhascome’s baby girl, in grand fashion.  I’d estimate that between 100 and 150 of the tweets I read today were @replies to both his original emergency c-section tweet and to the subsequent birth of Lucy Kate.  That’s 150 tweets, averaging 100 characters each.  If it takes me 10 seconds to read a tweet and process it… well there’s 25 minutes of my day right there, just spent reading about ONE person.  You can see how this gets very overwhelming, very quickly.  At work I’ve been gently and politely nudged by my boss to spend less time on the site.  He described the fact that when people walk past my office, they can only see one of the many monitors I have, and that monitor tends to always have my Twitter page loaded, front and center.  So regardless of how hard I might be working on actual work on the other monitors, all they ever see is Twitter, which gives the impression that I don’t do any real work.  When out with friends, I’m constantly checking my iPod for wireless signal so I can load up as many tweets as I can to catch up on so I don’t have to read through 300+ when I get home.  I’d estimate that in any average daytime hour, I accumulate 60-100 tweets.  Going out for three or four hours can mean another hour spent awake when I get home, just catching up on the tweets that I missed while I was offline.

I’m constantly fighting with trying to keep the number that I follow somewhere below 200, in an attempt to eliminate Twitter overload.  I’ve had to make some painful cuts in recent weeks by unfollowing people that I really like, but who post with far too great a volume.  I essentially break down my followees into three categories: 1) real life friends, coworkers, acquaintances, 2) companies, blogs, news, information, and 3) Favrd folk.  The first category never decreases, it only grows - I’m not going to unfollow someone that I hang out with all the time, especially if I like their tweets (@shotcopter, @carhaulspicklaw, @doppelgang3r, etc.).  The second category generally fluctuates, but it suffers a lot from my fear of exclusion.  Tweeters like @TweetBomb and @TweetContest post absolute rubbish, in high volume, but they offer the opportunity to gain a load of new followers (if you’re bombed) or win prizes (and I don’t believe for a second that you don’t care about gaining more followers. We all have a voice and we all want to be heard, otherwise we wouldn’t be using Twitter in the first place.)  It also includes people that I think are generally awesome or that consistently link to great content (@garyvee, @veronica, @MarsRovers).  The final category includes the bulk of the people that I follow, and also the VAST majority of the tweets I read on a daily basis.  Every time I visit Favrd, I’m tempted to follow everyone there because they’re all hilarious, but unfortunately I just can’t afford to do that.

People have talked about “the Favrd effect” on your follower count - that once you start making your way into the Favrd community you notice your follower count start to grow, but at some point it tends to level off, and then maybe you see it decrease.  The decrease is often the result of people deciding to unfollow these Favrd folk with the rationale that they don’t need to see them in their Twitter feed if they are just going to go back and read them on Favrd.  Why should I follow @hotdogsladies if I know all his tweets are going to end up at the top of the leaderboard, where I’ll inevitably see them anyway?  And while I’m on the topic of Merlin, let’s be honest now: sure he’s moderately funny, but he’s not any more funny that @aedison, @sween, @abigvictory, @InsoOutso, @zolora, or anyone else that I follow.  You all know who you are, and I love you all.  I’m  sick of people getting recognized not for the content of their tweets, but for the name of the person posting them.

I know why I continue to follow these people; OTD.  I don’t want to miss out, I don’t want to feel excluded, and I don’t want to be left behind, because I sincerely and earnestly care about these people.

I enjoyed the Seven Things meme so much, I’ve decided to continue sharing my oddities with all of you.  They’ll probably come one at a time instead of all together.

So, for today, I give you:

I never use the top ketchup cup.

You know when you go to a fast food place and they’ve got those giant ketchup pumps that are always empty - and there’s those giant towers of ridiculously tiny paper cups?  You gently push the plunger, hoping for a thick and steady stream of ketchup, but instead you get a farting sound and what appears to be heavy flow from the PMSing badger that’s trapped inside the pump.  Frustrated, you furiously jam on the plunger until you’ve managed to coat the inner walls of the ketchup cup with hardly enough condiment to paint your finger nails, let alone dip two pounds of fried potatoes into.

Yeah, you know.

In keeping with my strange OCD tendencies, I always stack up the cups that have been abandoned around the “cup castle.”  (You like that name?  I made it up)  But then, when it’s time for me to choose a cup to use (or 9… I like ketchup), I always remove the top cup from the lowest tower, place it on top of an adjacent tower, and select the next cup down on the tower from which I originally removed a cup.  Are you confused?  You should be.

Basically, my inner-rationale goes something like this: if the person who was at the station before me also stacked up a bunch of abandoned cups, then it’s possible he or she stuck their grimy little booger fingers inside some of these cups, and if that were the case and they did stack up a bunch of extra cups, odds are that whichever tower was the highest is the tower that was the beneficiary of said extraneous cups.  Therefore, the lowest tower should always have the cleanest cups.  I always remove the top cup from that tower, just in case.

@CarHaulsPickLaw once pointed out the fatal flaw in my theory - that what if I had it backwards and the tallest tower was always the cleanest - and I’ll never forgive him for bringing it up.

Really though, what is up with those tiny cups? Can’t we just get cups that are three times the size?  I understand the logic that not everyone wants a potfull of ketchup so they put small cups out, but couldn’t those people just use big cups but not fill them up all the way?

Go ahead, tell me I’m crazy.

I was tagged by @Jessabelle2o7 and indirectly by @zolora (who tagged, um, everyone in general).  So here it goes.  This turned out longer than expected…  here are (roughly) seven things you don’t know about me.

1) I have been 100% sober for 29 years.
That’s right, my entire life.  I’ve never had more than a sip of beer;  my dad probably gave me a taste of whisky when I was a kid; I’ll sip on a glass of white wine or champagne at a wedding or extra special occasion, but that’s about it.  And nevermind smoking or any sort of illicit drugs.  (Though, surely I’ve spent enough time locked in cars and enclosed rooms while my friends enjoyed any of a large variety of substances.  I know that there must have been times that I unintentionally buzzed a good contact high.  And there was all that post-wisdom-teeth Vicodin that I enjoyed - and missed dearly when it finally ran out.)  I have no explanation for why I never got started, nor for why I haven’t started yet.  In college I considered myself to be straight-edge, but I was never hardcore about it.  I could never imagine myself being a big enough delinquent asshole to go around burning down liquor stores, but there were several years where I felt proud to wear an X on my hands when I would be out at a club rocking out to some band.

I feel as though this has defined much of my life to this point.  It nearly destroyed many of my best friendships in college when I just couldn’t put up with friends who seemed to put getting wasted at the top of their list of priorities.  It did destroy my first serious romantic relationship, as she spiraled into an unhealthy pit of drug and alcohol abuse that would eventually lead to some very dark times in her life (she’s since cleaned up).  Additionally, one of my closest friends recently recovered himself from the depths of opiate addiction.  To see him healthy and clean(enough) now makes me feel incredibly proud of him, not to mention lucky that he made it through without going fully supernova.

I’ve grown past judging other people.  There was a time when I thought I’d keep this up forever.  How wonderful, I thought, to be able to look my teenagers in the eye and not have to lie to them when they’d say “Oh come on dad! You know you used to do it too!”  But, as I now have no intentions to produce children of my own (see bonus, below), that’s no longer a valid reason to not drink.  If anything, my social anxiety (also see below) is what will finally lead me to the bottle, but I’m in no rush.

2) I still live at home, with my parents.
Yup.  I’m 29 years old and I’ve lived in the same house the entire time.  Go ahead, take your best shot.  I’ve heard them all; they don’t even phase me anymore.
How did this happen?  Well, I went to a college that was literally 5 minutes from my house, so living on campus would have been financially retarded.  So, at the time when most kids move away and start their lives away from home, I stayed put.  After graduation, my degree (K-12 Music Education) went to waste as I decided I hated teaching, and so I continued to live home while accruing 10 years of employment at a local golf course.  Then I finally got a “real job”…yet home I stayed.

“Why the hell didn’t you just move out?!”
Honestly?  There came a point where it made more sense to just stay home, put up with my parents, and save money.  As you can imagine, living at home is significantly more affordable than renting (yes, I’m paying, but it’s not much.)  Needless to say, I’ve saved a significant amount of money that will become a generous down-payment once I finally find a house (yes, I’m shopping… desperately shopping.)

Truthfully though, while there are often days and times when I feel like my life is falling apart due to a lack of personal space and personal time (I basically spend all my time in my tiny bedroom [FLICKR TOUR]), there are plenty of other moments when I feel incredibly grateful that I can be spending (mostly) quality time with my parents as they grow old (example 1, example 2).  When I finally buy a house, it will be bittersweet, for sure.

3) I FUCKING ROCK.
Anyone who really knows me will vouch for the fact that I’m very modest, humble, and reserved.  I rarely am one to make a scene or seek the spotlight, but I have to be honest with you… I fucking rock.
I’ve been playing guitar since I was 11.  I can remember the first day my brother (13 years older than me) stuck a guitar in my hands and told me he was going to teach me to play.  I resisted at first.  I wanted to go watch TMNT or play with my Micro Machines, but he was stubborn, and that’s the thing I appreciate more than anything else in my life.  I remember him playing me Golden Earing’s Radar Love and then passing me the guitar and teaching me how to play that bassline.  Next thing you know we were working on the guitar part for The Lemon Song.  I have no idea when it happened, but at some point it just clicked.  THIS was what I wanted to do with my life.  Playing guitar; making music; rocking the fuck out.  To this day, not a single thing brings me more joy.  Standing on stage and performing your own music for a roomful of strangers can be better than sex.

Most of the best days and nights of my life have revolved around my experience as a musician.  In the grand scheme of things, our band (FMGreen) really only ever enjoyed a modicum of success on the local circuit.  We played about 100 shows over the course of several years early in this decade, we released a full album (Yellow #5) and an EP (3 2 1 Go!).  We weren’t the most polished.  We weren’t the most graceful.  We weren’t the best looking.  But we. fucking. rocked.  I only use the past tense when talking about FMGreen because we haven’t really been much of a band for the past two years since we lost our primary rehearsal space.  Now we wait on me to buy a house, and then the rocking shall commence anew.

Am I the best guitarist in town? Abso-fucking-lutely not.  But I’m very good, and I’m not afraid to admit it.  There is nothing in my life that I am more proud of than the music I’ve written and the music I’ve made, and no one can take that away from me.
Ultimately, I can’t thank my brother enough for the gift that he gave me, and if my dying words are “Thank you, Sam.” then I’ll be dying happy.

4) I collect the little nuts from the ends of guitar strings.
Though I’ve never been diagnosed with OCD or ADHD… well…



I meticulously snip these from the ends of guitar and bass strings when I’m putting a new set on.  Then I drop them into their respective container.  One for colored nibs.  One for bass nibs.  One for silver nibs.  One for gold nibs.

Oh shut up.  You collect weird shit too.

5) I’m pretty self-conscious about the way that I talk.
I don’t know when it started to affect me, but within the past 10 years or so it’s become a major internal conflict.  I’ve never really told anyone.  I can’t really explain how I talk, nor why it’s so awkward.

I remember being shuffled off to speech therapy in elementary school.  They’d bring me into some office and have me practice my “th” sounds and my “ch” sounds.  I have a distinct memory that the speech pathologist had this little dollhouse that had a hole in the top.  The hole had a black cloth bag attached and inside the bag were various cheap toys - you know, the kinds of things you might now find inside plastic bubbles in vending machines.  She’d have me reach in there and pull something out, and then we’d practice saying the name of that which I had removed.  “Chair.  Chhhhaaair”  “Thimble.  Thhhhimbuuul.”

I don’t remember having a complex about talking in social situations in high school, or even in college.  But at some point after college, it has become a problem for me.  It’s not a lisp (for which I’m grateful), it’s like a dull mumble, sometimes a stutter here or there.  It makes me feel a wee-bit retarded, as I’ll try to say something, but it will just come out garbled.  I’m fairly certain this is one of the reasons I’ve become an internet addict.  On the internet, no one has to hear you speak.  I can type till my fingers fall off.  Twitter is 140 characters of pure bliss.

Some words just consistently trip me up - “Saturday” and “literally” come to mind.  My voice isn’t very loud and that just makes things worse, because no one can hear me, so I’m forced to repeat myself, and each repetition makes me more and more self-conscious. Often I just give up and keep my fucking mouth shut.

Worse still, it destroys me socially.  There is severe anxiety involved with me being in a social situation, especially with strangers, and it’s multiplied exponentially if we’re in a loud environment such as a bar, a bowling alley, or a sporting event.  My friends are great because they’ve never mentioned it and they seem to just put up with it.  You can imagine how hard it can be for me to meet new people.  Throw a beautiful girl into the mix and I may as well be a 2 year old drooling and muttering incoherent vowels sounds.
I should seek help, but it’s tough to find the motivation.  A few more months of being painfully single will probably be enough to get me into a therapist.

6) I’m sensitive. Perhaps too sensitive.
Old people make me feel so fucking sad.  Fuck you old people!  How dare you?  Now don’t get me wrong - I enjoy a good harmless old people joke - but in-person, they often tear me apart inside.  When I see an old person sitting alone at a restaurant, it just breaks my heart.  I invent scenarios for why they are alone; She’s a widow; He outlived all his children; All her friends have passed away; All his friends are locked up in some cruel nursing home.  It makes me afraid to grow old.  It makes me scared that I’ll be 75 and sitting alone in a McDonald’s drinking free coffee, pooping my pants, and staring at the empty seat across from me.  And when I see kids - or even adults - disrespecting old people, I just want to punch them right in the crotch.

But honestly, they do suck at driving.

And it’s not just old people.  Lots of things make me sad.
I’d surely be offered a healthy dose of meds if I ever went to a psychiatrist.  I’m not sure if I ever want that to happen.

7) I’m superstitious about odd numbers.
In other words, I hate even numbers and I think they are the bringers of evil.
The basis for this comes from my birthday: 9/19/1979. All odd numbers, no matter how you slice it up.  Individually, in pairs, all together.  Odds everywhere.

This superstition isn’t without merit… but there are some glaring exceptions as well:

Good things that have happened on even years:

• 1994 - The Blue Album
• 1996 - Pinkerton

Bad things that have happened on odd years:

• 2001 - The Green Album, 9/11

In support of my hatred for evens:

• A 6 year relationship ended in 2008, on the 28th day of the month (January, not quite perfect.)
• George Bush was elected in 2000 and reelected in 2004.
• I know there’s more.

I’m on the fence regarding the number 2, because it’s a prime number, so it WANTS to be odd…

I hate evens with good reason.  You’ll just have to trust me on this.

A couple short bonuses, because I apparently love talking about myself:
8) I don’t want kids.
Honestly, I think I’m just too selfish.  Does that make me a bad person?  At least I can admit it.  I want to be able to sleep as long as I want, whenever I want.  I want to be able to go out at any time on any day to any where without having to worry about any thing.  I’m really not interested in having something that is entirely dependent on me for survival.  A dog or a cat will be plenty.  Maybe finding the right woman will change my mind… but 5 nieces and nephews have done a very good job of convincing me that my life will be just fine without booger-flingers of my own.

9) I magically make street-lights turn on and off.
You can try to convince me that it’s just coincidence, that it’s all based on timers, and it’s just me being in the right place at the right time - but I won’t believe you.  It happens too frequently and consistently with the same lights at different times of day for it to be coincidence.  My father also has this ability and all three of my siblings - separately and without my prompting - have told me that they notice it too.  It happens in the car and on foot, everywhere I go, even in different towns and cities.  It’s awesome.

Thanks for reading, I hope I haven’t scared you.  Please send me your old guitar strings.

I hereby tag:
@shotcopter (Done!)
@ashleychasse (Done!)
@Kalli (Bork bork. Not interested.)
@tdavenport (Done!)
@aedison (Done!)
@MsHiss (Done!)
@ttseco (Done!)