I Got 99 Problems, and the Wine is One. Hit Me.

Every time I head to the local grocery I pass through the beer aisle. Not only because it is Aisle #1, but I still cannot get passed the awesome-ness of being able to buy beer in grocery stores. I hate that about you, Pennsylvania. Each time I move through shining sea of frothy delicacies, I see a sign for $2.99, full-size bottles of wine, in your choice of Chardonnay or Pinot Grigio. I know what you’re thinking, the only thing that could make this more Jersey is White Zinfandel.

Here is my issue. I’m familiar with wine enough to realize that you can get fairly decent wines at low price points if you do your research. You can find $20 wines that taste like $45 wines, etc. My problem is that $2.99 is such a low price. I don’t know how these guys cover operational costs with such a low price. It has to be a terrible wine, right? They don’t make any red wines only refrigerated whites. That should be a clear giveaway, right?

You’re probably saying, “dude, it’s three bucks; just buy a bottle and throw it away when you realize it taste like caramelized man-toes.” To which I would respond, “dude, watch your attitude. First off, Rahm Emmanuel sucks and there’s an almost 12% booze tax in Chicago, so that makes it more like $3.50 a bottle. Secondly, even though it’s such a minimal investment, who buys a $2.99 bottle of wine.”

I’m no snob by my calculations, it is merely a common sense issue. One would assume by the you-get-what-you-pay-for postulate, that a product with such a minuscule asking price would have to be not only lacking in quality, but downright inappropriate to serve to even your least favorite guests.

Then again, what if it is a hidden jewel, waiting to be exposed by a suitor willing to sequester his pride? The diamond in the rough? The Williams sisters in Compton? The Black Jew? It could be the finest wine my palette has ever been introduced to. I may be retarding my happiness by not slurping the ambrosia within. Who knows? This may be the wine that was supposed to be served at my first wedding, or better yet my first divorce (I’m just playing the odds, take it easy you romantics!).

If I breakdown and purchase the aforementioned libation on a future excursion to the market and it happens to be putrid, oral malfeasance, I will feel used and abuse, like Michelle Duggar’s uterus. By the way, Congrats on baby #20. Besides the enormous refund check you must get for having twenty dependents, you now have the peace of mind knowing that even if you have 13 screw-ups, you’ll still have seven kids to take care of you when you need them most. But, on a serious note, 20 children is insanely awesome. I hope TLC pays well, because college tuition is a motherfucker! I hope geniuses don’t run in your family because it’s going to cost you about $8M to put twenty kids through Harvard Law School.

Well, I believe I have gone off on a tangent. Regardless, I don’t know if I will ever buy that $3 bottle of wine that tortures me ever so. If I ever go missing you will know that I bought a bottle and instead of enduring the embarrassment of knowing that I got duped, I will chug it and jump into to Lake Michigan never to be seen again. At least by Americans. I figure if I manage to float to Canada, I can’t come back to America. I’ve talked entirely way too much shit on Canada over the years to admit to going there voluntarily.

Breaking Bad Habits

I often hear people says “if you really want to quit [insert detriment] you would.”

That’s a lie.

People who get hooked on illicit drugs or other harmful behaviors aren’t devoid of common sense. 99% of them know what they are doing is physical and/or mentally toxic, yet for reasons, either chemically or habitually, they cannot break away from it.

The solution is not in whether the individual wants to quit, yet rather if said individual is willing to do whatever it takes to quit, which is substantially more difficult.

On the first page of my journal…

Last week I purchased a Moleskine notebook to begin the next installment in my line of journals, which I’ll use for lack of a better word. More accurately, it’s a scattered anthology of random, unchronicled, indiscriminate thoughts. There’s is no correlation between the first and second, second and third, or even the pages in between each. Even the physical properties of the journals vastly varies in shape, size, color, texture, and so on. The solitary trait that binds all twelve (or so) of my journals is that all of them have empty first pages.

My first journal dates circa 1997, when I moved to Hershey, PA. Neither the relocation (I still miss you, Jersey) nor my prepubescent years were extraordinarily difficult, but I was able to find peace in moments of solitude. Scripting just gave me a pastime. Puzzled over what to include in my first page, I wanted to set the tone for the subsequent the pages. While I never planned on, nor do I today, divulging their content, I always assume that someone, other than I, would eventually read them, if only in my prospective, posthumous state. So, I just skipped the first page and before, I knew it I was on to the next journal, facing the same dilemma.

One would think that I would learn to accept it and just excuse my lack of creativity as a tradition of some sort, but I can’t. For some reason, diminutive, insignificant specks of life annoy the crap out of me. I handle life’s “bigger” problems with relative ease…go figure!

Ladies and Gentelmen (and Barack Obama if you’re tuning in), I decided to waste your time this afternoon to tell you that this morning, I finally put something on the first page of my journal. Oh, the anticipation!!! I simply drew a smiley face. No words. No famous quotes. Not a cut-out photo of Megan Fox (this may be up for renegotiation). Just a big, unattractive smiley face that laughs at my EVERY time I open the damn book. IF I was rolling on acid, it would probably jump off the page, do a backflip, and shout, “10 years and 10 journals later and all you came up with is a freakin’ smiley face! What a joke!”

I’m glad I don’t drop Acid. That experience would be horrifying.

So, what am I in the process of doing? I’m at Borders buying another Moleskine journal. This smiley face is going into the first bonfire I see, Fahrenheit 451 style.

“You and I are America”

“You and I are America. Unless we change, America will not change. Unless we are willing to experiment boldly with the application of absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love in our lives and in our relationships and responsibilities, America, the land of the free, may lose her freedom because she no longer has the moral and spiritual values to maintain it.”

- J. Herbet Smith

Space Cowboys

Yesterday, President Obama spoke to NASA officials about his cancellation of the Constellation Program. He urged NASA to forgot about the moon and shoot for landing on asteroids and Mars. My initial reaction was of disapproval because I think it is important that we continue to be pioneers in this area, but after a little bit of thinking, I have come to the conclusion that if we start chasing asteroids, we could witness the real-life ARMAGGEDON!

I know what you’re thinking. Is he really going to rant about how great the movie Armageddon is again? Damn right I am. Bear, Rockhound, AJ, Sharpe, and the crazy-ass Cosmonaut, get ready! It’s round 2!

Look, people thought landing on the moon would be impossible, yet we did. So, I got to thinking. Ugh, I hate when reality sets in. The moon and an asteroid are apples and oranges. Let’s evaluate. For all intents and purposes the moon is relatively stationary. It takes 28 days for the moon to orbit the earth. Speaking of 28, an asteroid can travel at a rate of more than 28,000 mph (400x the speed of sound). Seems a little impractical, Mr. Obama.

But wait! After a brief fact check, I found that the Helios I and II can travel over 100,000 mph! THE DREAM IS ALIVE! I can hear Steven Tyler warming up his vocal cords. “I could stay awake, just to hear you breathing…” Sorry, I got a little wrapped up in the moment.

All I’m saying is, if the U.S. is going to be gallivanting around the Milky Way playing space cowboy, we should get Michael Bay to film this and Truman should be directing the mission from Houston, just for cinematic effect. Hey Jesus, could you do me a solid and bring Harry Stamper back to life. I just don’t trust AJ with all this responsibility.

LEAVING ON A JET PLANE…I DON’T KNOW WHEN I’LL BE BACK AGAIN…

Quitting is Contagious

“I’m not retreating, I’m reloading.” - Sarah Palin

The act of quitting is contagious. Last month, I went for a run, which lasted for about 6 miles before I yielded to fatigue. To date, this was the longest distance that I have ever run. When I pulled up, I was only about one mile from my home. I walked the rest of the way back and even though I was stoked about running such a distance, I, much to my chagrin, had given up on myself.

The following morning I was cramped for time, so I decided to just run a couple miles so I would have time to shower and get out the door for work. Around the one mile mark, I became unusually indolent. Although I finished the 2.5 mile run, the last mile was a complete pain in the butt. I wondered how I could run for 6 miles one day, yet I wanted to quit a mile into a two-mile run.

I realized when I quit on that six-mile run; I triggered something in my brain which allowed me to sympathize with surrendering. Giving up that one time conditioned my brain to accept quitting, so even when I chose a short distance to run, my body was willing to succumb to the pressure because I had allowed it to do so before.

So, from then on, I vowed never to pull up on a run again. If I felt like crap, I would shorten the run to a distance where I knew I can make it back. I was going to finish every run, no matter the distance.

I am writing this weblog today, after completing a ten-mile run. With that said, I did not set out to run that far. In fact, I wasn’t paying attention and got myself further out than I wanted to. After I righted myself and began to head back to my target end, there wasn’t one time that I considered quitting. Had I ever ran ten miles before? Nope. What I had done is made it a point to run everyday and trained myself to accept nothing other than completion.

Anyone that knows me knows that Armageddon is my favorite movie of all time. There is no debate. Avatar gave it a run, but fell short in the end. There’s a line towards the end when the crew is worried that Harry will fail to detonate the nuclear warhead before zero-barrier. Calming the crew, AJ utters, “He doesn’t know how to fail.”

Thomas Edison said, I haven’t failed, I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work. These lessons can be applied to life. These characters trained themselves to believe that failure was not an option. And even in times when they came up short, they were able to absorb the bigger picture and use setbacks as motivation. If we condition ourselves in such fashion, we will perpetually reach for our dreams.