I think my SWAG is turned off….

“Pull your damn pants up!!”, “That isn’t real music!”, “They sure don’t make these things like they used to.”, ETC

Sound familiar? Sound like something you as a grown up have said in response to something the generation after us has done? Sound exactly like some shit your folks said to you when you were a spring chicken that you subsequently rolled your eyes and probably scoffed at? Welcome to that stage of life. That stage where you become your parents. That stage where you realize you’re in bed by 9PM and sleeping in is getting up around 7AM. The stage where none of the new dances make sense and you have a hard time doing them all…….but still try.

Cyclical. Most things move in a circle and history repeats itself throughout time. This includes government policy, the Raiders being good (fingers crossed), and of course getting old and hating all the things the youngins are doing. Skinny jeans, snap backs, and flat tops being the pinnacle of this new trend makes me growl loudly and shake my fist with strong voracious intent to mock and remember how things used to be. I remember when my folks used to do the same exact thing when I rocked my overalls with one strap. Or when I had more lines in my head than Lindsey Lohan has on her coffee table. They couldn’t wait to tell me about myself. I fear that I have come to this point of my life and I am weirdly OK with it. I am fine with the understanding that the generation you grew up in is always going to be the best in your eyes. I don’t necessarily believe that Cross Colours was better than today’s fashion, but during the time they were the bees knees. Seems today’s trends want to be a new twist on an old flavor. I guess it is the current time trying to pay homage to the past. When you really look at it our generation isn’t ready to be the past. This is why we poke fun and berate. It has nothing to do with exactly what we deem cool or popular. Its based off of the times changing and holding on to the past. Its not a bad thing but it creates a line between generations. A line drawn in the sand that separates 80’s babies from kids who grew up in the Pokemon time or baby boomers and hippies. I refuse to let go of my 90’s hip hop and my need for being outside. Especially if the replacement is 2 Chainz and wearable computers (Google that shit). Took me a minute to come to terms with not being able to do the Jerk right off the bat. Then I thought; I would rather do the Wop anyway. I am a champion of my time and refuse to subscribe to the SWAG/HIPSTER epidemic. So I will just walk head high into my life as a generation hater. We are all guilty of it.

If Facebook Died Tomorrow (Death of Social Networking)…

How would you react? Would you be glad? Would you be in the minority of people who would see the old ways of communication returned? Would you belong to the small group (in comparison to the contrary) who despise social networking and feel it cheapens human interaction? Or would you be in the vast majority of this pie chart? The ones who will (whether admittedly or not) struggle in its absence. The ones who will find it tough to convey random pontification to whomever is logged in and wading through the non-stop barrage of updates. Where do you stand on this?

Gone are the days where a phone call to a friend was how to find out the evenings plans. No longer do we as people congregate offline with the same intent as it has been replaced with seemingly low risk interactions of code in an endless sea of information. The need for instant gratification and the need to feel important has been such a need as a result of such sites as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr. etc. A single status update that has zero influence on the droves of arbitrary “friends” would cease to exist. How would you respond? How would the shy anti social introvert be able to express his ideas from the safety of a laptop? How would the niche group of knuckle hair enthusiasts be able to find each other? Have we gone that far away from the days before social networking changed the world? It almost seems impossible to fathom not being able to connect with anyone from anywhere at anytime.

I know for me it would be tough. The amount of people I present myself to in social networking differs greatly from the people I choose to speak with personally. Going from having the world at my finger tips to being just privy to only my phones contact list would hinder such an internet self promoter like myself. As someone who benefits from exposure I find social networking to be an invaluable tool. However I have also noticed that it has also become an addiction. To have social networking disappear would be a large issue for me and countless other individuals as well as organizations that count on the reach that social networking provides. We have become so reliant on this tether to other people we don’t know that even a few days without it seems unimaginable. What would you do tomorrow if it died today?

Foul Fathers should GTFO…

For a special Fathers Day edition of GTFO Friday I will be writing about something I have a seriously empathetic spot in my heart for. Something that we all have either experienced directly or indirectly. It affects people throughout their entire lives and some have the damnedest time coping with it. I am talking about terrible fathers.

I have a very diverse set of friends and a large family that spreads across the country. From entrepreneurs to 9 to 5 business folks, from pastors to people who can be considered evil, from the ever positive to the always angry and so on. The one thing that ties that group of people together is that they almost all have some sort of story where a father is not there or the father is in fact not a father to them or their family at all. The fact that this subject comes up so often in my travels as a documentary on life is disconcerting. Way too often is there a story about someone who has not heard from their father or their father is either mentally or physically abusive. As I’ve grown up the stories changed from people having issues with their father, to people having issues making the child’s father be a present and participating party. The consistency in something so damaging is staggering. Now don’t get me wrong, I do hear about the good fathers out there and I won’t say that it isn’t common. In fact the fathers doing what they are supposed to be doing aren’t what you hear about because you shouldn’t be credited or rewarded for doing what you are supposed to be doing. The stories that make their way to the top are the ones that have altered a person’s life and perception on men and what responsibility is. Or the ones that cause deep seeded trust and dependency issues. To watch a person go through life having this burden is like watching a fight video on World Star. You know at some point that it is going to be overwhelming and they will need to be picked up.

As a father myself, it is impossible for me to fathom the life of a man who created a child (or 12 if you’re Antonio Cromartie) and has no intent on them being a priority. I see myself in my kids and my history will not allow anything less than the best for my kids. The thought of never seeing the kids you made and living a happy life escape me as no explanation formed could justify such a thing outside of saving the world.

I really didn’t want this post to be a bashing of fathers. And this is definitely not a topic that needs awareness raised. I think I started this being in pain and since your heart and brain bleed through writing, this is what it has become. I wont go into my issues, but I will say that I am stronger because of it. I actually struggled with trying to write this as an unaffected 3rd party which only led to using backspace more often than actual typing. As I stated earlier, it is something that follows you through life no matter what type of wall you have put up to block out the affecting feelings. No matter the successes that life has brought. No matter the comfort given. And Fathers Day comes around 365 days a year. However since the calendar tells me that this Sunday is Fathers Day any father that feels as though they have been the subject of this blog should…..

The Ramblings of an Insomniac 2

As I write this blog I am nearing the 24th hour of consciousness which probably shouldn’t happen for someone who has to have attention to detail at work. I will take this time to first say that I am making a commitment to my blog as I have had a lot of people who have given me positive feedback and I have not touched it in quite some time. The last time I wrote here it was about my issues sleeping. Well I can say that the issue is still evident and I am a shining example of consistency. I am up when I should be nearing time to wake up. Normally things on my mind never cause me to lose sleep, but tonight is different.

I have a mind that normally moves at the speed of a nervous virgin during his first time with a woman. I am fine with that as it is par for the course for a person that has no rhyme or reason for thinking about the things I think about. Normally I can parry the silliness and just force myself to sleep. Tonight for some reason, my head is a buzz saw of nonsense that I cannot slow enough to even purge from my cerebral stronghold. Any other night I would have a head filled with what can only be described as an acid trip while being water boarded by clowns on the set of a 70’s porn shoot while receiving a Dutch Rudder. Yes….I am fantastically weird and you now have a small glimpse into what makes me the person you all know and hopefully love. However that is not what is going through my head tonight. It seems as though the weird things I can handle with ease but when real dilemmas displace all other ‘regular’ thoughts I am incapable of sleeping until I have devised some sort of game plan to combat the intrusion of normality into my chaotic symphony of a brain.

I again am at the point of counting the time I will be able to sleep if I just immediately fell asleep right this second. Once that seal has been broken, the downward slide from being in bed to looking forward to work is a descent into hatred and raw frustration. I can already tell that the probability of me having a ‘Nigga Moment‘ at work is amazingly high as of right now due to my lack of patience when I am deprived of literally the easiest thing we as humans have to do which is sleep. As I slouch with the best of the worst posture and contemplate how I will make June 12th not be the day that my stellar 15 year streak of not losing my mind  comes to an end; I can only hope that the coffee is laced with Kool-Aid and Monster. Good night and thanks for reading. I will be making sure I keeps the blogs coming.

The Ramblings of an Insomniac…

I am beginning a blog at the wonderfully late time of 2:30AM on the dot. I will preface it by saying, “shits about to get weird”.

I am a victim. I am suffering and there is no end in sight. I have been clapped in metaphoric chains and as much as I fight it, the wiggle room becomes taught with every tussle. The culprit? Insomnia. I have actually been good about getting some sleep seeing as how I have to wake up at a quarter to 5 every morning just to be late to work. Prior to my early morning job I had the comfort of being at ease with my insomnia as my job required me not being there until the afternoon. For someone like me who is at his most creative and his most free at the wee hours, I don’t know how I have been able to maintain outer sanity. Inner sanity has been compromised but I have an intricate and aggressive plan for keeping my inner mashed potatoes mixed in with my outer macaroni on the dinner plate of my compos mentis. I won’t go into it for fear of being ousted like a witch in Salem. Lets just say that it is a very involved process and requires the mental capacity of a dolphin that learned to walk and speak with a Scottish accent and then stumbled onto the Higgs boson based off of a bet he made to the contrary with a colleague. I see people lose their shit all the time due to insomnia and it is never a pretty site. The funniest part of someone having a breakdown is the minute or 2 after they just realized they just had a full on shit show in public. They collect whatever clothing was thrown in the ordeal and try to maintain a mean  face in the process so no one calls them out for the drama bomb that ensued. I for one have never had a breakdown. And good god have I been tested. I wear my cerebral control as a badge of honor. I look at it as a mini competition and I am seeing how many days in a row I can go without any factory accidents. So far we have a 15 year streak going. I can’t in good faith count my early teenage years as I was an emotional mess.

 
I am at the point now where I am counting how much sleep I could get if I fell asleep right this second and I am not liking the results so far. There is nothing that can be considered 100% normal going on at this hour. I just turned off a documentary about prostitutes on HBO. But only because I have seen it already and it just isn’t as shocking after 9th time seeing it. I don’t know what do with myself at this hour so my brother suggested I write. This is the cosmic slop that came out. Are you not entertained? So for the immediate future I will just fight making a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch (CTC as it is known in some circles), lay in perpetual discomfort, fill my blanket with unpleasant olfactory violations, and check my Facebook from my phone. I love you all and I would love to put confidence in saying good night, but I cannot. So………lates.

In my opinion you should GTFO.

I have very few pet peeves in life. I feel as though I am a pretty ‘go with the flow’ kinda person and I don’t like letting anger overshadow my happiness. But sometimes there are certain human interactions that leave me pondering violent thoughts. One certain thing that people do that causes me wonder how they are able to make it through everyday life without assistance. This would happen to be when people attempt to argue opinion.

Now while I am a very opinionated person (and I stress very), I hold a very strong understanding that everyone is entitled to their own. I encourage people to voice their opinion. I love to hear different sides to a story. I however hold disdain for the people who feel as though the opinion that they have convinced themselves is right is the only option. I call them Hovs (hōhvs). Short for Jehovah’s Witness. I have a severe problem when someone attempts to push their opinion on me as if I am an idiot for not sharing the same thoughts as them. Fact is indisputable. Opinion is a belief  based on views of other people or self comprehension which is in no way in danger of being a fact.

I recently got into an argument with a redneck at a gas station about sports and not Barack Obama which I thought was weird. It started off by me making a low key joke about his 1000 ounce Green Bay jug he just filled with Mountain Dew and Powerade to make what I will refer to a backwoodade. So we both get in line at the same time after I bought some grape drink and Skittles and he filled his above ground swimming pool full of the backwoodade and failure. I see his jug and the fact that it looks like it has been through Alabama and back and I commented about how strong Green Bay looks and how I think Aaron Rodgers has taken over well for Brett Favre. He looked at me as if I told him Toyota makes a better truck than Chevy (which you should never tell a redneck). And he went on about how Brett Favre and god only differ in age and that there will never be a 2 legged 2 armed man birthed out of a vagina that will be better than him at anything in life let alone football.  And I took it in and respected that he was a fan and expressed it in a grand spectacle of statistics and accomplishments. As a football fan the rule is when someone tells you their favorite you have to say yours. So I started to speak about how my favorite QB of all time was Randall Cunningham and he started shaking his head while I was talking and explaining why he was my top. Not the head shake when you hear bad news, but the head shake as if I was wrong for it not being Brett Favre. He literally tried to explain to me why Brett Favre should be my favorite quarterback and gave me websites to go look at and offered to give me the Brett Favre shirt from his driver seat that has been victim of sweaty back fur and swamp ass for who knows how long.

What made me mad about the whole thing was when I denied his claims for Brett Favre supremacy he took it up a notch and started to get frustrated that I didn’t agree with him. Which in turn made me mad because of the fact that an opinion cannot be wrong and he basically shunned mine and put his on top of not just mine but anyone who thought different. And it drug me into an argument at an AM/PM with an intellectual minor leaguer holding a plastic cauldron and buying nudie mags which is NEVER where I want to be.

Maybe I just don’t understand the psyche of a person who feels that their opinion is actually right and the mere opposition of this opinion is blasphemous and should be met with aggression. I feel as though I go into conversations where opinions are thrown around as an objective party. I understand people have stances on all different topics and that no one is going to share the same mindset on everything. But why would you create a frustratingly elevating situation because I feel differently than you? Why attempt to dismiss my way of thinking to adopt yours when they lack similarity? If I like grits and you don’t; you are not right because of your refusal to accept them into your body. Just different. I mean these differences in opinion are things that lead to war, death, and bad reality shows all over the world. Racism and religion being the 2 biggest culprits of this. If you are one of these people that find it hard to accept that people have their own way of thinking and that accepting a persons opinion almost means contributing to terrorism then…….

It’s Friday………..GTFO

Fridays are reserved for days with little to no care. Less work is done, detail is not a priority, and a general laisssez-faire attitude is common across the board. So in celebration for such a day I will be dubbing these installments of my blog GTFO Fridays. The title is my attempt at avoiding alliteration aggressively although actually attaining an adequate amount of alliteration.  So now that introductions are done and I am now sick of words that start with ‘A’, lets move on to this weeks topic……………E-CARDS.

For someone like myself who spends more time on social media sites than nerds spend alone (I am a nerd also) I am someone who is constantly exposed to internet trends. These come and go like today’s rappers; but every now and then there are the ones that stick and refuse to go away. Most I can stomach and am able to just brush them off and move along my timeline but sometimes trends come along that annoy me to the core of my soul. Enter E-Cards.

Now I am not sure what level of hell these were birthed from or what brainstorm of failure caused this but I do know that they need to go directly to jail and not pass GO. They have gotten to the point now that they have completely replaced people even being able to speak for themselves. They have taken over cerebral reality and became a spokesman for the inability to form actual thought. Now I will not deny that they are cleverly written and as a comedian I would love to snag a gig writing these but my point is not to bash the content of them but the idea as a whole. I can understand not being able to put what you feel into words at times. I can comprehend the transitional phase of the thought to word process being halted every now and then. What I can’t understand is having the E-Card people speak for you 100% of the time. When your only contribution to the Facebook/Twitter universe are E-Cards then that is what I have a problem with. I am not sure if they are used because people actually feel the way the cards state or if they enjoy people belonging to a collective thought they posted and someone else actually created. Is it one of those, “I have always thought that” kind of things or do they just agree so haphazardly with a quip on a colorful background with antique people that the thought manifests and they feel it is their own? Since those are questions I don’t have answers to all I am left with is judgement. So in my head the people guilty of only posting a funny statement that was written with no thought of them are promoters. They are advertisers and champions of a movement that garners no rewards. Now if likes and re-tweets are rewards to you then I ask; what do you get out of bed in the morning for? Why post propaganda in the light of continuing mindless updates on your actions? How can someone speak for your life and your life’s events that is not in your life?

Sick and Worthless…

Holy shit! The flu is no joke. I was reduced to literally laying down and doing nothing all weekend. Which is kinda terrible when you have hungry kids. Thank Thor it was raining outside this weekend so the sugar they curiously had in their systems wasn’t requested to be de-fueled outdoors. I was an absolutely worthless father ALL weekend. I did nothing for my kids outside of sandwiches and putting  Puss ‘n’ Boots in the Blu-Ray player. And I am sure they will also be sick as I handled their food with the care of  a 3rd world meat kiosk without access to electricity. But what it lacked in care, it made up with in love. And by love I mean I gave them 4 different sandwiches and a bag of chips to buy myself some sleep time. I trust my daughter enough to know that some Disney XD and Cheetos is a day well spent. Its my son who I feared waking up to a re-enactment of any movie where everything was destroyed and there are no survivors. I am glad that my preemptive DVR training for my kids has paid off. They handled On-Demand like some pre-teen champs in my absence.

I am also glad that at this time I am single. No woman would respect a man after the smell of being sick all day has hit the olfactories. I smelled like what I am positive the inside of Wendy Williams’ female body suit smells like. I have since showered, but the length of time betwixt cleansings was unbearably lengthy. I am not ashamed to admit this only because I would like offer my kudo’s to any woman or any man who sticks through next to someone while they are incapable to being able to function due to illness. I mean I can’t say I was at the point where a sponge bath was necessary. But I am sure if someone was there I would have taken way too many liberties with their kindness.

The entire time I was laying in bed sick all I could think about was Jordan put up 38 against the Jazz with the flu. Why can’t I get out of the effing bed? At the very least I feel as though I should have at least been able to sit and watch TV with my kids this weekend. But I felt like an innkeeper for 2 small travelers. Just showed them where to poop and how easy it was to use the ice maker. I am glad that my annual sickness has come and gone. I have no use for being useless. I will make it up to my kids this weekend by buying them something Bieber’esque to destroy (they hate Bieber) and following it up with Icees. I love my youngins.

Had To Start Somewhere…

I would like to say I am new to blogging. But countless forms of social media have been running blogs for me for quite some time now.  I guess a small rant into my history and what got me into blogging would be the norm. But I really don’t think anyone cares about my back story. I feel that in order to post a back story, enough people outside of your own family have to actually give a shit. So until I become a famous blogger or create an embarrassing but famous sex tape (I’m not picky), I will just try to captivate with my writing style and quippy remarks.

The thing that seems to be the opening topic when people see the name Bad Advice Man is, “what the hell does that mean”. I used to be happy to explain the origins of how I garnered such a moniker. That is until I saw that simplicity of it and how it should be common sense to figure out what it means. It is because of responses like that, people would say I come off as a smart ass. And I actually take that as a compliment. The antithesis of me being a smart ass is much less appealing. So I take the greater of the pair and I wear it as a badge of honor. The dumb ass club is a lot easier to get into than the smart ass club (brutal application process).

This blog is hopefully showing one of the main things that I hold dear, which is my randomness. This post is going nowhere fast and I applaud those still reading and hoping for some sort of substance this deep into a first post about nothing on a blog. I will however end the suffering by graciously bowing out. I may at some point have to get some work done since I am in fact at work.