And now all competitive football ceases for roughly 6 long and agonizing months.  Oh well, all good things must come to an end.  And it looks like my prediction last week was just a tinge off.  But whatever...anyway...I also mentioned last week about the gig we were playing this week.  Yes, last night the mighty NoiseCult rocked at The End in Nashville.  What a friggin blast that was...jamming for a hardcore twenty minutes on Ramones classics.  The place was packed and I was so wired afterwards I couldn't sleep for hours.  I'm curious...anyone who reads this thing make it out there?  Anyone reading this thing at all?  hahahaha.  Well anyway, if you didn't see it then shame on you...you missed a good gig AND a bunch of money was raised for the Cancer Society.  Yes sportsfans...we rocked!  And now onto other stuff....

Here we are just a few short days before Valentine’s Day…the most truly disgusting day of the year.  Now usually when someone says that, it means they aren’t going out with anyone and are bitter for being alone.  That may be true in a lot of cases, but not this one.  How come?  Because I have made the decision to quit dating…period.  It just isn’t worth the hassle and I end up being miserable usually.  Let me put it this way – the times that I think it would be cool to have someone in my life and all that crap are FAR outweighed by the times I’m doing really cool stuff I enjoy where the presence of a woman would just ruin it.  For instance, let’s say she’s in another room doing something…could be reading, putting clothes away, on the phone, whatever…and you decide to throw a movie in….something YOU want to watch.  What happens?  Her activity in the other room ceases and she enters, looks at the TV, sees a cool movie like “Vampires” or “House of 1,000 Corpses” is about to start and she’ll say “oh, are you planning on watching this?”.  Well guess what…your night is ruined REGARDLESS of how you answer.  If you say “why, was there something you wanted to watch?” or “I thought you were doing something else and figured I’d watch this”, she’ll say “oh no, it’s ok, go ahead and watch it”.  So there you are thinking “wow…she can be really cool sometimes” only to hear her sobbing in another room about 30 minutes later.  You’ll ask what’s wrong and she’ll start saying “nothing”…so you keep on it and then she’ll say “you not knowing what’s wrong is a lot of the problem” or some other riddle-type answer and the next few hours are spent listening to how you only think of yourself and how she’s getting nothing out of this relationship and how your “little” movies are more important then her and blah blah blah.  Ever notice how everything you like is “little”?  That word is added to lessen the importance of it and make everything you like seem so trivial.  There are only two other ways you could answer her question from above.  One would be to act like a complete jerk and say “yes I am going to watch this and I don’t care if you think I shouldn’t”, but we know that only happens when guys are relaying stories to other guy friends…as in it never gets said in real life unless you’re dealing with first class rednecks.  The other answer would be “oh no…I wasn’t planning on watching this at all…all I wanted to do was make sure the lens on the DVD player was still calibrated correctly and now that it is I’ll just cut it off and we can do whatever you want to do”.  Of course a response like this leads to her saying something like “do you think I’m stupid?” which results in her crying and the next few hours are spent listening to how you only think of yourself and how she’s getting nothing out of this relationship and how your “little” movies are more important then her and blah blah blah.  Basically, as a guy, I would never get to do what I wanted to do.

The last date I went on was around early April of last year.  I was sitting there thinking to myself “what the heck am I doing? I don’t want to be here at all” and ended the evening and went home to listen to Pantera and play some boxing on the good ol’ Playstation 2.  Nothing against her, but it just came to me halfway through dinner that I really don’t want the whole “relationship” thing and haven’t even thought about asking out someone that I would meet on the streets of Nashville since.  Its just not gonna happen.  I came to the conclusion a few weeks back that I no longer desire to have a lack of personal freedom, brain being filled with riddles, being forced to sit through some romantic comedy while Texas Chainsaw Massacre collects dust on the shelf, not “allowed” to listen to Black Flag while in the car because it makes her “nervous”, not being able to enjoy a video game because I have to listen to hours of crying about how some woman she works with treats her badly, her asking every Sunday during the Fall “you mean Atlanta is playing another  little game?” when she knows good and well that they play 16 in a season, getting a night to hang out with the guys only to have her call and start crying because she burnt some cookies so I have to drop everything and race over and find out the burnt cookies have led to a waterfall of issues she needs to discuss for about 9 hours, and finally that period of time after the breakup where I look back through rose-colored glasses thinking she was the most wonderful human being God ever created and there will never be another like her so I get back with her and then remember that yes…she is some sort of satanic love child with claws for fingers and daggers for teeth.  I prefer a life of simplicity.  That doesn’t mean I don’t like excitement and adventure because I do…I just don’t like that adventure to be a result of a phone call at 2 in the morning with a crying chick on the other end who answers the question “what’s wrong” with “I don’t know”.  Now granted there may be a few out there who are normal….but I refer to them as “taken”.  I do believe though that a certain episode of Seinfeld said it best when it comes to relationships –

Jerry - "I had a very interesting lunch with George Costanza today."
Kramer - "Really?"
Jerry - "We were talking about our lives, and we both kind of realized we're kids. We're not men."
Kramer - "So then you asked yourselves, 'Isn't there something more to life?'"
Jerry - "Yes, we did."
Kramer - "Yeah, well let me clue you in on something... There isn't."
Jerry - "There isn't?"
Kramer - "Absolutely not. I mean, what are you thinking about, Jerry, marriage? Family? They're prisons! Man-made prisons. You're doing time. You get up in the morning, she's there. You go to sleep at night, she's there. It's like you gotta ask permission to use the bathroom. 'Is it alright if I use the bathroom now?!' And you can forget about watching TV while you're eating."
Jerry - "I can?"
Kramer - "Oh yeah. You know why? Because it's dinnertime, and you know what you do at dinner?"
Jerry - "What?"
Kramer - "You talk about your day. 'How was your day today? Did you have a good day today or a bad day today? Well, what kind of day was it? Well, I don't know, how about you, how was your day?'"
Jerry - "Boy."
Kramer - "It's sad, Jerry. It's a sad state of affairs."
Jerry - "I'm glad we had this talk."
Kramer - "Oh, you have no idea."

Yes, sometimes I need Kramer’s reminder to Jerry to not even bother, it just honestly isn’t worth it.  So, to illustrate my point I have decided to include two highly accurate depictions to illustrate how Valentine’s Day will go for me and also for the dudes who just have to be with someone -

See?  It just isn't worth it...it really isn't.  So while you guys are out there giving up your lives and every dream you ever hoped to accomplish, I'll be doing some really cool stuff that I want to do with no one telling me otherwise.  Oh, and now I'll get the emails from guys saying "oh no, my situation is different....blah blah blah" and I'll reply with "yeah right....stop lying".  Have fun suckers!  Oh...and have a Happy Valentine's Day!