Half Past Awesome

The Wife & My Replacement

Every week on the Springfield Bloggers site they have a Take It & Blog subject that we’re invited to write about. Since my mind is currently more of a muddled mess than usual, I think this is a great opportunity to have someone else come up with the theme and I’ll just fill in the answers. The question this week was “how did you meet your significant other?” Sit back my friends, while I weave a tale of lust, deceit, scandal and the most heavily exercised triceps in three counties.

Back when I hired on the fire department, we were offered a membership at a brand new, city-owned fitness center as an incentive for keeping in decent shape. The year was 2001, I was emerging from a reasonably amicable divorce, lonely as hell and living in a place with no family, no roots and no money. Taco Bell on a Friday night was considered my extravagance.

Being as the membership to Chesterfield Fitness Center was free and thus fit into my budget, I began to devote a considerable amount of time to hanging out there. Having never lifted weights nor ever belonged to a gym, I had no idea under the sun what I was doing, so I just followed other firefighters and moseyed around the machines and flapped my jaws. Somehow in the process I lost 30 pounds, a mystery diet that seems heavily influenced by aforementioned divorce.

Then one day she came in. I’m too cynical to believe in such asinine concepts as “love at first sight”, but I remember well thinking, the very first time I saw her, “man, if I could date someone as beautiful as her…….”. Surrounded by a posse of her friends, she was intimidating, laughing all the time, looking confident and self-assured while I resembled slack-jawed hairy troll, getting all knotted up in the weight machines. I dated quite a bit after becoming single, but nothing of significance. I had to meet her, but I lack any sort of confidence in this arena; I realized that I’d need to plot out this meeting like a good soap opera, coincidentally meeting her, faking a pregnancy and then forcing her to fall in love with me.

I enlisted the help of Shane, a trainer there at the gym. He told me that yes, he knew her, that surprisingly enough she might be single, that yes, she’s very funny, I should just go up and introduce myself. Stupid Shane…you can’t just do such a thing. Clearly he didn’t watch enough soaps. I began trying to catch her eye from the machine closest to where she was working out – the triceps rack. I would work that machine like a man possessed, arching eyebrows, casting glares, anything to snag her attention. She blissfully ignored me, laughing with all the meat-heads who tried talking to her, the rat-bastards. Despite developing some freaky triceps strength, it didn’t take long before I realized I needed to engage Plan B…..actually talking to her. This was going to be painful.

Do you remember those old cartoons where the dumb crow would shake his head and mumble “oh, no,no,no,no, duhhhh, nope” while his mother-crow harangues him in a thick German accent? Do you? Because that is the closest approximation to my attempts to strike up any conversation. She laughed at me. My friends and co-workers laughed at me. And, when no one was looking I laughed at me. Utilizing such brilliant lines as “so……it’s almost tax time, right?”(my brilliant line in April) and “Vegas, huh? Yeah…..Vegas is cool. Yeah….I LOVE Sigfried and Roy, yeah” (another attempt at ironic humor), it was no wonder she regarded me as some sort of illiterate moron with an inability to converse with anything smarter than a concrete curb.

Never mind that she was recently divorced and vigorously ogled by men for miles. Never mind that she had a boyfriend. Never mind that I’m clearly incapable of anything in the neighborhood of “smooth”. Akin to the big cats of the African veldt or the protagonists of daytime television, once something is in my sights, it’s nearly impossible for me to let go of it. I shucked whatever sense of dignity and self-respect I might have been holding on to and jumped headfirst towards the pavement of rejection. Finally, after screwing up the courage to ask her if she’d like to get lunch with me one day, she answered in the affirmative, completely throwing me off my game. I was so taken aback I just said “Great!” and walked away, no number, no plans no nothing but an idiotic grin and probably a stumble over a weight plate and on to my ass. Smooth.

That was nine years and two kids ago. To this day she still tolerates me, much to everyone’s surprise. Mostly mine. I never let her forget that, when done right, you can stalk someone into loving you. Then they panic and marry you out of fear, bear you children and love flourishes. It’s the classic American love story.

And yes…..we got married in Vegas.

"This? Is my biblical pimp-hand"

There’s little that’s more frustrating than obstacles, especially the ones we lay out in front of ourselves. Think about it: how many opportunities have we squandered based on nothing more than a sense of insecurity? No, I’m not good enough for that job/girl/chance to win the lottery. We idle around in the harbors of our own minds, convinced that the seas are far too stormy for safe passage. We tie up to complacency and pretty soon you find yourself thinking that somehow life has short-changed you. And in the meantime, you are convinced that everyone else out there is hard-charging, getting ahead and chasing these wild dreams and aspirations – it’s the same theory that convinces you to change lanes in gridlocked traffic, just knowing the other lane is somehow screwing you over and moving faster.

I’m as guilty as the rest when it comes to toeing the line of opportunity. I almost joined the Air National Guard when offered an opportunity to go to navigator school – no go. I almost went to school out of state when I was accepted at a small university in Washington State. I almost wasn’t a career fireman here in Springburg when I was turned down after my first application; had someone not washed out of the background checks, I’d never have known this life, since I wasn’t ready to try again after initial rejection. It’s enough to make someone grind their teeth down to nubs when we ponder our almostabilities.

Motivational posters outside of nearly every cubicle farm declare the need to forge onward in the face of adversity, and I suppose these work for the same kind of people that are inspired by daily work cheers that you might encounter in a Sam’s Club or a timeshare sales company. Personally, I found this motivational technique to be ineffective beyond seventh grade, but that’s just the cynicism talking. I’m more interested in seeing how our flawed champions rebound….will Tiger emerge from the shadows of his rampant sexuality to rise to the top again? Can Jim Bakker revive his ability to shake down naive religious followers with the promise of salvation via “love gifts” and tearful sermons? What sort of chance does Milli Vanilli have of ever putting out another hit song?

So I find myself at the same precipice of yet another almostability, and it deals with what you’re reading right now. In a month, you and I are gonna have our first anniversary. I started Half Past Awesome 11 months ago as a way to both find out if I still had the chops to amuse through writing and to function as a creative outlet for my insanity-addled mindset. I now feel like I want to kick it up to the next step, submit some stuff to the print world or at the least, grow the readership of the site. And yet. Yet I seem reluctant to make the next move, because I don’t know what the next move IS. Plus, the abject terror of rejection lingers. The best part of the safe harbor of this site is that there is no boss, no money and little chance of rejecting myself too terribly often. Outside of the one reader/patron of Patton Alley Pub who delighted in telling me the site was “um… a little self-absorbed”, I’ve been very happy with the interactions you and I have had over the past year.

I guess I just don’t want to let the opportunity to write at a higher level become another casualty of my own insecurities. An almostability.

Perhaps I’ll slide on down to Sam’s Club and see if I can muster up some courage after a rousing work-team cheer. Maybe they’re onto something.

What The Pros Supposedly Rode.

I love lying to people, mostly my sons. If I was to be believed, Darth Vader built the Death Star on our 5 acres (right behind my shop), I used to be a Transformer until an accident at the power plant turned me into a human, I have a ninja on speed-dial on my phone who is ready 24/7 to fight crimes I encounter, I invented Legos one rainy Sunday and, coincidentally, I can both speak to and understand all animal life forms. These traits give me great credibility within the home, right up to the point where The Wife betrays me in favor of the truth. I curse her name when she does this. She has to, though, because I come by this capacity naturally, thanks to my father, The Lyin’ Dutchman. I grew up in a household where certain fabrications were spun out that we, his boys, were to take as gospel on pain of ostracization. An example, you say? Here are seven examples for you to consider:

• Pink Floyd , Supertramp and ABBA were Dutch bands (this is because my father is Dutch-Indonesian, hence, all things good in this world are, by default, Dutch. All bad things – well, those are usually Japanese, in his eyes)
• All major BMX stars purchase their bikes at Pep Boys Auto Parts, which is, coincidentally where my Huffy Thunder Road with the banana seat and get-your-ass-kicked fenders was bought.
• He invented the layout of the circuit board
• He got citizenship early from President Kennedy himself
• MIT was “a decent college”…..he’s a graduate, despite any sort of diploma or evidence of this education.
• He served as a tank commander in Korea ~ we’re not sure which country he was serving, none dared to ask.

…………..and most recently (as related by Bones, another of my five brothers):

• He invented the navigational strobe beacon found on aircraft as early as the 1940′s. Quite the achievement for someone under the age of ten.

Now, this might seem rude and crass to utilize this public forum to call out the old man for his fabrications, but I would argue to the contrary. If anything, they made growing up under his roof one constant adventure in fish tales. Yes, confusion reigned, especially when we dared to question the validity of his claims. A sad turn of events has led to the invention of the internet and search engines such as Google, thus making it easier to refute claims such as a long-referenced semi-professional soccer career (“stop being such a smart-ass. I was a pro. End of story.”) No, it was much simpler to weave a fabric of fabrication in the 70′s and 80′s, a fact not lost on me.

So now I’m faced with children who will have the ability to research my claims of leading a zombie army in the overthrow of a hostile military junta in South America way back when. But rather than being intimidated by technology spoiling my animated stories, I relish the challenge of  working around inconvenient truths. After all, part of the reason I became a father was to experience the thrill of lying to my kids in order to look cool. Some may label me a bullshit artist, but I prefer to go by “Dad”.

Station 2 Therapy In Session

I think I’m gonna become a marriage counselor. What with the national average hovering somewhere around 50% and the firefighter rate something like 97%, I’m in what some may consider a “target-rich” environment. Plus, despite being untrained, unlicensed and prone to making up statistics like percentages, I’ve been married more than once and have thus been upgraded from “amateur” to “semi-pro”.

The fire service is prone to an exceedingly high divorce rate and I think this has to do with several factors. When you spend 1/3 of your life away from your family and surrounded by some of the most audacious mo-fos around, it’s hard not to be affected, and harder still to separate life in the firehouse from life at home. As I’ve watched several marriages fall apart around me in the department, I began thinking what any good co-worker might: “I need to compile a list and thus find humor in the misery. It’s the brotherly thing to do.” Here are a couple of things I’ve picked up -

Uli’s Surefire Marriage Salvation Techniques For Firefighters

1. Spouses should not be called by the same name you address your brothers and sisters in the firehouse. Rare is it the marriage partner who finds the term “you one-dog, one-bone motherfu**er” endearing.
2. Your better half is not going to get through life’s trials any easier when you adopt the attitude that all could be solved “with a thicker skin”. It never works in your favor when you tell them to “tough it out”, “get over themselves” or “grow a pair, for chrissakes.”
3. Never, ever, and I mean EVER, take the advice of your crew-mates without a healthy dose of skepticism. There’s a good chance they’re rooting for your relationship to fail if for no other reason than to have something new to gossip about.
4. If you don’t want her/him to know about it, don’t tell a firefighter. Especially me.
5. By the same token, you can’t claim to your spouse that you don’t need professional counseling “because the boys at the station said……” . She will never accept this form of unlicensed therapy as legitimate.
6. Whatever situation you find yourself in within the parameters of marital issues, never try and relate them to any aspect of the fire service. Just because you’re scared shitless of losing her, don’t tell her it feels just like you’re being abandoned by your back-up man (or woman) while you’re on the nozzle. She can’t relate, and nor should she. This only works if your married to a firefighter and that’s another discussion for another day.
7. Drop the nonsense. Strangers on the street may be enthralled by the trucks and lights and sirens and too many viewings of firefighting-stripper calendars, but this is the person who has seen your hairy back, who’s willing to exaggerate your virtues to others and may well have bore your children. They deserve respect, not bullshit bravado. Save that stuff for the station kitchen where, while no one believes you, they’re willing to tolerate it, if for no other reason than they are assigned to that house and thereby stuck with you.
8. It’s hard to instill in your kids table manners if you allow yourself to fart at the table at home. This is an awesome defensive technique when being ganged-up upon at the dinner table at the station, but is a little harder to justify off-duty. And don’t even try to explain it. It just is what it is.
9. The realm of marriage is rarely subject to the laws of seniority. You can’t welch out of house chores in your own home by throwing out an “I’m promoted dammit! I got twenty years in this thing and I ain’t washing the dishes.” While you can earn the title “Grouchy Old Salt” in the firehouse and command a modicum of grudging respect, it just makes your spouse hate you that much more. Thin ice, my friends.
10. Finally, we need to remember that while the crew is forced to spend time with us, our spouse has chosen to of his/her own free will (unless you’ve entered into it like I did, using deceit, trickery and blackmail; it’s no big deal). This is not to be taken lightly and I’ve found the best remedy is to leave the firehouse and it’s culture right where it stands. When shift is over, it’s time to be grown up for 48 hours. That gives you plenty of time to drum up more heinous immaturity for the next shift.

Do you remember, when we were kids, that thirty years old was considered early-onset senior citizen status? Who wanted to live that long? Then, as a pre-teen, sixteen years old was as far ahead as you could plot. At sixteen, you started thinking that life really began and ended between the ages of 18-22. By 18, you were salivating at the thought of being 21 and no longer flirting with that underage drinking stigma that the filthy cops were forever slapping on “innocent” kids looking for fun.  By 21, you start looking forward to lower discounts on insurance when you hit 25. By 25 you don’t want to be “that guy” at college parties, and yet no one takes you seriously in terms of life experience. And when you hit 30, people start bringing Viagra and penis-barbell gag-gifts to your birthday parties.

What the hell happened?

Thirty five years has gone by, that’s what. In my continued struggle against a set of Johnathan Winters-style jowls and a Mr. Belvedere gut, I try and embrace different physical fitness activities, and said activities kick me square in the grapes. Look, I’m even calling them “physical fitness activities” as opposed to playing sports. Cripes, I’m getting old. As I sit here in my office, the hoodie pulled up tight against this wicked 69 degree temp indoors, I shudder a little at the thought. I have now switched from an offensive mode of aging into a defensive posture, whereby I’m forced to defend the 30′s much the way I’m forced to defend the music of the 80′s. This is how old men earn the title “crotchety”. It’s a little bit of a relief that it’s not just me, though. When describing to my mom this couple who were in their 70′s as “elderly”, there was an audible clearing of her throat, followed by what I can only imagine was an arched eyebrow (mind you this is on the phone) and an “Excuse me, young man? Old, you say?”

I didn’t even feel bad at this point telling her that, yes, society does tend to refer to people in that age bracket as “older”. Listen, I’m in my thirties and already The Wife’s teenage clients roll their eyes at the thought of someone my age being useful as anything more than a walking relic.

And that pain in my back that pops up at weird times? Like when I’m pulling up my turnout pants and boots to make a fire run? That one? It’s f—-ing debilitating and embarrassing as well.

It’s really just another reminder. Another reminder that the fight against going downhill is an uphill battle, one that requires twice as much effort, inhuman amounts of willpower (why CAN’T I eat two pounds of bacon and drink nine Guinnesses?) and a healthy dose of Ibuprofen.

A sense of humor helps, too.

Old People Rule. I should know….I’m one of them now.

I’ve always been terrible at chemistry. From Chem 101 taught by Doug “I am not a moose” Clark in high school to attempts at a firefighters grasp of Organic Chemistry, there’s never been an moment where the concepts have clicked beyond rote memorization. I am honestly baffled by the gall of local cooks who utilize street chemistry to batch up meth in mobile labs; as if the whole she-bang weren’t nutty enough, these Mensa rejects give it a go while rolling down the road in a beat up Dodge Predator-Model van. In a word….chemistry is terrible, mostly because I don’t get it. And even that’s not entirely true – but I’m getting ahead of myself. Indulge me for a minute, here.

First off the facts: our station, Firehouse Number 2, is home to one engine (pumper) company, one truck (ladder) company. We have three shifts, each comprised of two captains, two engineers and four firefighters on an ideal day. This brings us to a total of 24 guys living out of three refrigerators, two urinals, three showers (two for the captains, one for the other eighteen enlisted-types), and seven recliners. Citizens regularly ask “why is there always a firetruck at the grocery store? My tax dollars are paying for what kind of meal tonight?” I stand by my earlier statement of fact – 8 guys gotta eat every day. And, no, contrary to crotchety old men in grocery store parking lots all over the city, we pay for each and every meal out of our own pockets. And if you want to avoid merciless ridicule that can last for years, you better be able to feed all eight guys two meals, plus enough for coffee and some sort dessert for no more than $8/man. The pressure can kill a man, assuming the boys on the crew don’t get to him first.

Consequently, interpersonal relationships within the firehouse are built upon factors that cause psychologists to have sleepless nights and mental breakdowns. We don’t worry about issues like “validation” and “empowerment”; we focus on such timely concepts as “when’s dinner gonna be ready, you filthy rat-bastard?” and “what’s that? Homophobic, you say? Well, you’re in luck, we all sleep naked. In one bunk.” Most fire department spouses interested in keeping a healthy marriage learn to ignore their lesser half every third day while they’re at the station occupying downtime by destroying any self-esteem they encounter in a co-worker. It’s a weird system, and, most importantly, it works.  We don’t trust sunshine that is blown up the backdoor. It keeps you grounded. Not coincidentally, that’s why we can never have any respect for Sean Penn (it’s sorta hard to take the guy who played Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times At Ridgemont High seriously, especially when he’s out trying to command “respect” because he’s an “actor” and is thereby qualified to know lots of things that you and I don’t.)

And every once in a while you’ll get a moment in time, when all the gears are clicking, the crew is busting each others chops in perfect succession and you can just feel it. Kind of like when you figure out, during some point in your senior year at high school, that you’re living in a moment, and that moment will be gone all too soon, but right now, it’s perfect. You want to hold on to that moment, because you’ve never laughed harder, felt more alive, more in sync than in that micro-second of time.

Last night, I was lucky enough to experience such a moment. As chance would have it, I was covering another engineer’s shift at the station, and we were enjoying some fresh-brewed coffee at 9:30pm, sitting in aforementioned recliners and waxing brilliant about such intellectual fare as UFC fights and martial arts in general. And at some point, while the Truck Captain was vividly recreating some fight scene, his limbs flailing in every direction, all of us laughing uproariously to the point of choking, it hit me. Five or six guys, one furniture fire barely worth mentioning recently quenched, splashing coffee around a firehouse day-room, more amused in this moment than they’ve been all day, and all feels right in that very moment.

That right there?

That’s chemistry.

It just took me a while to figure it out.

"Ryan" getting deep into it

A few nights ago I experienced a first. While awaiting our turn “in the box” at the CrossFit gym, three guys who are varsity-caliber athletes were in a training evolution that mandated taking their shirts off and tossing heavy weights around as casually as I might flick away a sweaty towel. Of course, “Ryan” was a part of this group. It turns out that these boys are competing in CrossFit regional feats of manliness in St. Louis over the weekend (see here) and are shoveling in last minute workouts to fine tune their grunts and wheezes.

MEANWHILE, the working class mortals (the rest of us) were getting our warmups in before another session of torture, when, out of nowhere, I start hearing some cat-calls. And, no, it wasn’t callous dudes whistling at the women in the gym – rather, out of nowhere, a couple of the ladies were verbally swooning over these muscle-y he-men as they pounded out one lift after another. And, out of the corner of my eye, I caught the Wife, who was NOT there for a workout (but to pick up the boys), hanging around, just to, in her words, “check it all out”. Her version of “checking it all out” involves her jaw hanging slack with a little drool coming out of the corner while these taut bastards are hefting the iron.

From the far side of the group my buddy’s MOM Beth says “Hey, how can I concentrate with all this Man Candy happening?” This was answered by a bunch of agreement in the form of cackles and hoots by the ladies and none of which was noticed by the lifters; it went over like a turd in a punchbowl to the rest of us boys in the group.

“Sorry Beth, I’ll try to reign it in!” I shouted back at her, as though she were referring to my self-perceived manliness. This at least earned a chuckle from the rest of us emasculated-types. I feel a need to stick up for us, the muscle-challenged. The workout continued in earnest, with the guys focusing on strength and form and the ladies focusing on the bodies of the bad-asses working out behind us. Inspiration through envy I suppose.

After the class, I caught up with Beth as she was describing her feelings about either the workout or tax laws, I couldn’t really tell. Nonetheless, I apologized for distracting her with my distinct lack of muscles and excess body hair. I can’t help it if I toss manly pheromones out like so much candy at a parade. It’s not my fault. She just laughed at me, dismissively. She said to her conversational partner, “Oh yeah, this is Uli, you should read his stuff, it’s really funny.” Although thankful for the compliment, when I step into the gym, it’s all about making my body look less like melting wax and more like chiseled cheese.

It must be time to come to terms with reality.

So I looked her right in the eye, and I said, I says, “those boys may be Man-Candy, but I’m Intellectual Man-Candy, and you can’t find that in any old gym. Take a moment and drink it all in”. I then attempted to flex my giant hair as if to prove how big my brains are. It ended up looking more like I was suffering an aneurysm, which in turn led to more laughter.

I just can’t win.

Hey.

I had a funny essay started earlier.

It was entitled “Intellectual Man Candy”, and I swear, it’ll make you laugh.

But I can’t finish it right now.

Know how I know?

I mis-spelled the word “jet” and “stalker” earlier. (Let’s not get into the hows and whys with regards to my use of both words, okay?)

How for the love of all things good in this world can you not spell “jet”?

I’ve slept for 13 hours, and still look and feel like I’ve gone three rounds with “Ryan” the Sadist at CrossFit.

I think it’s a cross between swine-flu, TB, hypochondria and a touch of imagined herpes.

But I’m not a doctor.

I think it would be best if I held off on posting until I’m not under the influence of cut-rate Day-Quil and bad coffee.

At least I should be able to spell by then.

The topic sent out by the Springfield Blogger’s Association for discussion was “Taking Time To Blog”; I guess we’re supposed to wax idiotic on the hows and whens of filling our sites with our ramblings. Half Past Awesome is, without a doubt, the number one consumer of my misfiring synapses in terms of idling away free moments. In order to come up with something humorous, I pore over miles of internet detritus and hours of wasted conversations around the firehouse. Since I’m a firm believer that truth is funnier than fiction, I try and limit my reality-bending to a bare minimum, and this takes a huge amount of my time. Once the idea has been hatched, the usual time frame from first sentence to final edit is anywhere from 20min. to an hour. Weird, right?

Given that writing is something I actually really, really like doing, I’m able to waste ridiculous amounts of time cranking out one worthless essay after another. The edit and unpublished section on my dashboard always has about a dozen screeds on it, waiting for the right moment to be dropped at the opportune moment. And truth be told, a good chunk of the time on an essay is spent perusing Google images for just the right pic to fit the essay. Except for today, as you can tell.

Having the attention span of a fly doesn’t help, either, but once in a while I’m able to snag one of the dozens of wild thoughts crashing around my head and get it down on virtual paper. And, once in a while, I hope it makes you laugh.

Motivation. Where do we find it? Some people say it has to come from within. I’d like to hit those people with a brick pillow. Of course, that’s just the jealousy talking, but I stand by that statement. Somewhat like hearing how my brothers et al are enduring “horrible” weather in Southern California when it drops to 50 degrees, I tend to discount motivational philosophy that comes from the fabulously successful; although this seems counter intuitive,  when you see people who are already wealthy talk about how motivated they are to earn more wealth, this just comes across as hoarding behavior to me.

I think we find motivation in the most unlikely of places.

• Observe the fellow on the highway off-ramp who glares at you with the intensity of a thousand white hot suns while holding out a can and demanding you help him. This guy has a 999% failure rate, rejected by the masses and dismissed by most as a lazy bum, but really, he is the penultimate salesman. If he can convince you to give him money and said money really is helping towards filling a mysteriously absent gas tank, he could easily sell ketchup popsicles to women in white gloves.

• The meteorologists here in the Midwest take a near-Biblical level beating every time they predict the next maelstrom of death and destruction. But yet, there they are, weather system after weather system, driven by unseen forces to work you into a lather over the coming apocalypse. They’re playing the odds, and they always get screwed by the house, and still, they keep plugging away with little more than a shrug of the shoulders each time the storm misses by just that much.

• I have a neighbor who is literally living in his shop with approximately 1.4 million 45 records. That’s not an exaggeration I’m employing here, that’s the real number by his own exhaustive count. I’ve seen it. Coupled with 13 jukeboxes (six of which are functional), Wild Bill spends his “free time” (of which there is no limit) sorting and organizing his albums and is the closest thing I know to a uber-rural millionaire. Yes, he eats expired food from vending machines and wears softball cleats as casual footwear, but he is motivated by the belief that there is intrinsic value in 45′s. He is also motivated to bang metal off of wood while sporting a butchers’ hard hat; as well he collects old election posters and empty pop cans , but that is beside the point.

• Year after year Eddie Murphy takes part in some sort of cinematic train wreck that we’re supposed to buy into due to it’s rating as “family friendly”. Gone are the days of “Raw” and “Trading Places” and instead we’re treated to “The Nutty Professor 7: Revenge Of The Flubber”. I think it all began with “Coming To America” or his foray into pop radio with “(My Girl Wants To) Party All The Time”, but nonetheless he has gone from being the funniest son of a gun in comedy to a guy who’s next step will be doing local ads for ambulance-chasing lawyers. And he’s still out there, churning out one flaming turd of a movie after another. One word: motivated.

• And for the last word in motivation? One need look no further than the zealots of this world. No matter their cause, be it proving that the President is a Kansas-born terrorist without a birth certificate or that dinosaurs are the creation of the liberal-media sponsored devil himself, few are as passionate and driven to launch out of bed each day as those residents of the lunatic fringe. We could all learn a lesson from the maniacal despots and nut-job conspiracy theorists of the world. And that lesson would be to never, ever give up, even in the face of logic and fact.

Something to think about the next time you’re not so inclined to do what needs to be done. Now go carpe the crap outta that diem.