2009 Buh-Buy...

It was certainly a turning point year for me. I will always remember 2009 as the year that pointed me in new directions. There were awesome moments. There were tough moments. So, with this post... because I have no original topic to think of right now and I opt to take the easy way out in filling blog space... I look back at 2009.

• I continued to rage against the cultural machine and avoided getting a Facebook account. At this point, it's just a game with me. It really has become the predominant modality to keep up with people, replacing email, letters, phone calls, and actual face-to-face contact (what a ridiculous concept). I'm just trying to see how long I can hold out until I am kicked into social obscurity. It stinks that I have to engage this war between society's decline into communicative mediocrity vs. my massive ego. I'll probably have to cave in at some point in 2010... just not now.
• I bought an unbelievably awesome new guitar at the very start of 2009... a sunburst, maple-neck Fender Custom Classic Stratocaster. If heaven had a band, the guitar player (hopefully me someday) would be playing this baby. It set me back a pretty penny... or two hundred thousand pennies.
• I forayed into playing online games with my Playstation for the first time. And, likewise for the first time, I had to deal with the turmoil of choice between gaming and real socializing... gaming and reading a book... gaming and sleeping... gaming and going to work... gaming and showering, shaving, clipping my toenails, tying my shoes, eating..........
• I discovered that turning the age of 29 isn't easy. 29 is not in the "mid 20s". It is mid nothing. I couldn't bring myself to say "late 20s" because it sounds pathetic and I'd get yelled at by someone in their 50s for being distressed about getting older. So I coined the term "within 20s"... it didn't catch on, not by a long shot.
• I'm a workout fiend, I love lifting weights. My bench press plateaued badly, and I started to lose strength and size in my chest muscles. I haven't resorted to anything drastic, but I researched a LOT to find help. I looked up supplements, lifting techniques, diet strategies, everything except using shady stuff at GNC and steroids. Right now, I'm choosing between genetically engineering additional Y chromosomes into my DNA, and injecting myself with totipotent stem cells from the bone marrow of an orangutan.
• This year, I tried entering into both the baseball (the Cubs) and football (the Bears) seasons with a level head, as opposed to brimming confidence. I wondered if God would bless temperance on my part. He didn't. In previous years, my enthusiastic support ended with massive letdown. This year, God spent most of his resources on east coast teams.
• This year, for the first time since I was 16, I retired my "schizophrenic theory of women". In case you're wondering what that theory is, let's just say that the theory is exactly what it says it is. Come 2009, I had ranked right up there with George Costanza in terms of guys most confounded by the female mind, so I figured my theory was creating some bad vibes. Now at the end of 2009... I'm trying to read between the lines of the Genesis account of the Bible, hoping that maybe God snuck a third gender in there somewhere as a secondary option.


• I caught a few nasty computer viruses on my PC. These things will apparently infect your computer if you just hover over a certain pop-up, maybe not even clicking on it. In my rage, I spent actual time psychoanalyzing the little twerps that create these beasts. My current profile of this depraved little loser has me sending watchdog groups to basements in suburbia all over the world, in search of a nappy-haired grown man living in his parents' basement, coke-bottle glasses, wearing formal-looking Dockers at times when I'd wear sweat pants, and a MASSIVE Star Trek collection. If I ever meet this guy face to face, he's my lunch.


• The family dog of over 14 years died early in 2009. We got Raider when I was 14, still in 8th grade. My family's dog-less rut stopped when my grad school brother brought home his new dog, a bulldog named Winston. I recently blogged on Winston. This pooch thinks the world is his water bed. I'm so amazingly jealous of Winston's luxurious lifestyle and stunned by the odd magnetic effect he has on girls. He is short, fat, round, and not very long. I swear, if he didn't drool and beg with increased belligerence every time I sat down with food, I'd mistake him for a basketball.
• My sushi intake decreased in the second half of 2009. My buddy Mac first introduced me to sushi several years ago. This was tantamount to a dude introducing his buddy to a royal pain in the butt girl that is blessed with great genetics, and cursed with no personality but all drama. You can't get away completely from this girl, but dang, you are always left worse off than you were. Sushi? I can't get enough, but I always overeat, and I'm always left heavier than I was. Anyway... Mac tried making his own sushi one day, and I had some. It was good. But he caught some kind of bug right around that time and threw up after the homemade sushi. It set off a Pavlovian effect of distaste for sushi for him, so my sushi wingman is no more. I have a hard time justifying going to the sushi buffet alone. If you go with a guy friend, it's an intense competition. If you go alone, it's one of the seven deadly sins.

That's a few lighthearted highlights of 2009. Honestly, there was a lot of serious and profound details of 2009 worth reviewing as well, so I may do that next...