Holidays (happy or otherwise)

I've been away from the 'ol "blog-a-potamous" for a bit. I'm sure you've all been distraught and wondering where I went... but let's not worry about that now. I've come bearing gifts of un-solicited opinions  in the hopes that the few writings I've compiled this year will provide at least some entertainment for all. ENJOY!

I was reminded of an extremely annoying practice in this country (at least annoying to me). There’s this sign at a booze shop around the corner that encourages folks to turn in their Crown Royal bags (if you know what I’m talking about then you’re an adult); and in exchange for this little purple cotton bag, Crown Royal (or someone) will donate $1 towards “the troops”. This promotion represents two things that rub me so incredibly raw that it causes a rash that can only be calmed by some rare aloe gel from a plant deep in the jungle somewhere in Columbia. First; the idea of providing essentially a “proof of purchase” for a $30 bottle of whiskey in the hopes of getting $1 to a cause is so incredibly callous and almost predatory. “We promise to donate a dollar… but only after we’ve made some money, cause… capitalism!”.  I am all for a profiting business trying to grow, but if you want to support a cause… just give the damn money! Show some real support by taking the change out of your proverbial pocket and dumping it in the red bucket so that (for the love of god!) the man will stop ringing the bell! All this promotion tells me is that Crown Royal wants to APPEAR to care while not actually dropping their bottom line. This appearance to me is more deplorable then just not donating at all. The second part of the annoyance is that once again the “for the troops” is being thrown out as a method to fleece people for some kind of funding. It’s not so much that I believe this money isn’t actually going to our well deserving men and women whom serve this country, but that their name is being used in vain to gain a higher profit margin this holiday season by a corporate entity. At the end of it, this is just a cheap advertising campaign akin to the “groupon type” programs for small business that are fledgling (flailing?). 

Now the heart of this is… “WHY?” Why do these things bother me? Am I just so bored with my life that I can let something so seemingly innocent grate away at my soul like an old rusted kitchen appliance to dry parmesan? I believe I am bothered because like many other people across the world, I am growing exhausted of seeing “the lie” right in front of me everyday. I truly believe that the vast majority of humans on this planet have extraordinarily kind and helpful hearts. I believe that most of us would truly help “the troops” or “the kids” or whomever if we were allowed to believe that there was some real help needed AND being provided following our donation. We have traveled too far down the “public relations tunnel” though and now are forced to play the skeptic. I no longer see a request to donate or fund raise as an opportunity to help, but as some tricksy way for someone to line their pockets with another layer of insulation from being “less rich”. 

How far off base am I?

Best parenting advice EVER

I've probably written and re-written this piece about ten times since I first started thinking about the concept, but I believe I finally have a solid perspective and almost 3 years of Daddy experience to confirm my findings. I was reminded of this amazing piece of advice when a good friend of mine; newly on the precipice of parenthood, had asked me what the best advice I could give him was. I thought for less time than I had imagined I would before answering with gusto and confidence; "the best advice I can give is to not take anyone else's advice".

It seems a little crass, and he actually thought I was joking but I genuinely believe that the best thing any new parent can do is ignore any advice they get from other parents or even their OWN parents for that matter. I learned just about everything I need to know about being a dad to my child from my actual child. "On the job training" some might call it... I prefer to call it "listening". There is a fear that comes with being a new parent that I believe stems from a fear of ruining or some how failing your child by being an inefficient parent. The fear of bad parenting creates uneccessary advice seeking and possibly also influences practices that just don't FIT for your child.

I believe every child is different, and because of that I felt that I (since I'm his closest genetic copy)  was probably the most like my child than any other person on earth save for his Mom. Some of my friends advised us to "make sure he has a strict schedule" or "make his baby food", along with countless other well meaning love filled tidbits of knowledge given with the best intentions. Schedules never worked for me growing up, and by no surprise they just seem to upset my kid. I have however met and even cared for many children that absolutely need a strict schedule or else they may just melt down from stress. We try to have a set meal time each day but if he's not hungry I don't make him sit until he clears his plate, I believe some kids may need to be coaxed more into eating even though my kid is still alive and has a relatively "fleshy" tone to his skin which means he ain't starving... right?

Now I do not by any stretch endorse anyone telling a friend or family member to "butt out" or keep their information to themselves. I think we should continue to accept this data with appreciation and joy with the knowledge that there's a good chance that even though this may be your first child... you actually know what you are doing and you're going to be a great parent. I'm pretty confident that if I forget a change of clothes and my kid has to ride home in my backseat naked across town that he will still love me (theory tested and proven true). I know that my kid's teachers may tell me that he is hitting other kids at school COINCIDENTALLY the day after one of his parents MAY have shown him how to play "slug bug" (it's not his fault there are a BUNCH of toy Volkswagens in the class!).

So I hope you are able to take my advice and NOT take it at all.

-D

Thanksgiving Tacos!!!!!

Alright guys, I'm a little reluctant to share this recipe because it is SOOO amazing, but I love you so lets do this!

What you need:

- left over turkey; a mix of dark a light meat is fine but I prefer light meat (white meat? Who cares?). Chop it/shred it up. I'd suggest having at least half a pound as each taco will take about 1/8 of a pound.

- 1 avocado
- 1/2 cup (or so) red cabbage shredded
- leftover cranberry sauce. Hopefully this is some "from scratch" sauce but if it's canned... Whatever, it's YOU who has to look at yourself in the mirror everyday!

- corn to flour taco size tortillas. 1 per taco... Do some basic math and decide how many tacos you want and you should be able to figure out if you need a whole package or if you just need to go halvesies with a stranger at the grocery store (great time to get digits all you single guys and gals!).

- your favorite taco sauce (I'm using garlic sriracha because I love it!).

- some basic taco seasoning

- about 1 tablespoon of olive oil to sauté up that turkey in.

METHOD:

Chop it up shred it up... All that turkey! Toss it in a pan on medium heat with the olive oil and season it per your personal preference with the taco seasoning you are comfy with. You are just re-heating and slightly crisping up the turkey so it won't take more than five minutes.

While the turkey is cooking... Prep the taco bed aka Tortilla Magnifica (Spanish for super dope tortilla). Warm the tortillas and lay them flat on your serving surface (I use plates... Some of my friends use their hand or their child's head). Spread about 1 tablespoon of avocado on the tortilla, and about 1 dollop of cranberry sauce on top of that. Your turkey will go directly on top of this red and green holiday themed mush. Top the taco with a drizzle of sriracha and a pinch of red cabbage shreds. Now shove that taco in your mouth and send me a message immediately after telling me how f-ing amazing it is!!

Enjoy your holidays and family guys! Love you.

D-Ron

Step 6: Becoming an older kid

Three things I love: 1) my son Fox-Opotomous The great, 2) My guitar (my deepest thoughts coming out in musical form), 3) People that CARE.

I like people that care about what they are doing and how they are perceived. There is a fine line between CARING and living completely for others. You have to live for yourself still, just try to be considerate.

I haven't posted in a while because frankly I've been living. I've been writing music for a solo album that I NEED to make. It's about 3 years in the making and I will have a lot of people to thank when I am ready to release it. Number one "thank you" will be to all of you that have read these posts and that have sent me messages encouraging me and commenting and talking shit. You all kept me going, just like any of you that have come out to shows, hugged me, played with me, given me a high five or just drank a beer with me. You all care and I love that I have been blessed enough to experience you.

Life takes some crazy turns. One minute you are living the dream... everything is going right with the person of your dreams, you have the life you want... then BOOM! All of sudden you're happiest moment is yelling "strap-on!" with some friends during an awkward word game and everything is a little backwards. I've been there and it's a little weird, but all I can do is reassure that feeling sad and weird and a little awkward is something that should be savored. When you are hurting... just hurt. Let those that love you hold you close and just BE. On the flipside... when you are happy just let go and be REALLY FREAKING HAPPY. Just CARE. What ever you do, try to ensure that you care about it and that you want to be doing it. Frankly... life is short and I don't have time for anger and grudges that are un-warranted. I want to spend as much time on this earth living and loving and raising my bad ass kid to do the same.

I'm about to take a really important trip. I've traveled to this destination a thousand times and this time feels a little more important than others in the past. I'm facing my future and also my past. I just know that I care so much that this time I'm going and the activities I encounter on this trip mean almost nothing compared to the people I will see and may see. As vague as this post is... I know the people that I want to reach will see this and know what I'm saying. I usually TRY to be a little more accessible to a wider audience but this post seemed to feel organic an not very forced. I hope some of my regular readers will forgive me and still check out the next more "general" post. For now.. goodnight and love.

-Darren

Why I play.

I'm not generally the type of individual whom finds this inherit joy in "acting youthful" or trying to avoid growing older, I just happen to try and enjoy as much as possible and for me that sometimes means acting a bit immature. I will make juvenile jokes in the work place or high five perfect strangers at the mall because they wore some SWEET ASS SNEAKERS. These activities are things I consider "playing". I find that if I walk through life as though it is a much more tame version of Grand Theft Auto (unless I really need a car in pinch) that I am constantly trying to "win" or score more points. Here are the general rules to my "Life Game" that I play daily:

1) Friends and family are kind of like "booster packs" or "character mods". You can score in different ways and at different rates based on the grouping of people you surround yourself with and whom is actually with you. IE: Shopping alone fore jeans may be worth 10 points based on how many people you know that would care about your purchase, but you can add 5 points for each of those people that ACTUALLY COME with you for the shopping adventure. HOWEVER, you will lose points for each person that is with you that keeps saying "are you done yet?".

2) Interactions with strangers are kind of like going into an unknown house or building in "Zelda"... you can learn something, or you might just lose some strength or money. You could certainly win big in the case of my "high five scenario" from earlier, in that you could actually make a new friend. Bear in mind that you will lose a significant amount of points if you talk to a stranger and they knock you out and throw you in the back of their van.

3) Food can both help you or hurt you. Eat too much or too little or the wrong thing and you could end up weakening yourself. You must take care to nourish yourself for the long journey ahead of you and in the case of a feeding "mis-hap" be ready to take a nap. The same rule applies to alcohol consumption. There is a parabolic arch that shows an increase to your strength as you consume while consuming too much will cripple you to defending against dark forces like crazy girls that just want to "check out your place and grab a burrito" and... STAY FOREVER!!! Be careful ranger.

4) You make your own soundtrack. The music you listen to can change your mood and the functional ability of your character. Don't drive to meet friends for a fun night out while listening to "August and Everything After" from the Counting Crows... your mood will become morose and you may end up bringing down more people based on your introspective comments on how sad everyone in the world truly is. In short, don't be a debbie downer because you will LITERALLY bring DOWN everyone's scoring potential.

5) Hobbies and extra curricular activities add strength and experience. Join a band, an intramural team or maybe an exercise group and your scoring chances increase exponentially. Isolate your self and you'll have limited add-on capability while being less likely to experience and learn. Remember to be careful though (rule 2).

6) Having children is kind of like adding a "life heart" to your total life gauge, though the more life capacity you have the quicker it actually drains. Your overall strength quotient is also severely affected by the addition of your personal spawn to the playing field; however, upon said offspring's 18th birthday you will actually experience a 15% gain in overall strength and the ability to replenish your cash stores.

Those are just my main guidelines. You can purchase my complete Life strategy guide with maps and secret area reveals for 3 easy payments of $24.95 and one REALLY HARD Payment of a sock, two pounds of cooked spaghetti and a wooden nickel.

Have fun!

love ya.

Earn Your Happy

DISCLAIMER: The following post will most likely contain profanity, abstract analogy and at least one reference to a midget. I will say things like "do this" or "do that" and I am in no way trying to boss you around; this is my opinions 'n junk and you don't HAVE to read it. I mean no offense and I love all of the Earth's creatures... so get your salt shaker out and lets do this.

For about 6-8 months I've been wrestling with understanding this weird "entitlement" that seems to have infiltrated the American psyche. Somewhere we all started believing that we "deserved" happiness and that we just need to keep on putting one foot in front of the other and not settle; Meanwhile the depression rate keeps rising and there seems to be more and more negative press saturating our media outlets. I have an alternate view that I believe proves to be much more constructive and WAY less "ya ya sisterhood"... being that I've essentially shared this same view with 3 close friends today I figured a higher power was telling me to share it with you too.

YOU DO NOT DESERVE ANYTHING. The boomerang theory applies here; you don't simply deserve happiness because you are alive but you will get what you give and it comes back around. Accept that you need to actually put in some work to be happy and quit expecting happy to happen to you. Step one of working at happy is to recognize and OWN your baggage. You have baggage, sorry honey but we all do. Where we start believing that we DON'T have baggage is when we end up around someone else that has different baggage and we say "whoa! that dude has some BAGGAGE!". Listen sweetheart; families travel with baggage and if the baggage looks all different it just causes confusion... so we just need to build our family with people whom have SIMILAR baggage so it's easier to keep it all organized. If you THINK you don't have any issues or baggage... you probably have the most of anyone you know and the refusal to accept it will poison you and keep you bouncing from experience to experience trying to find that perfect fit and always finding something you just can't deal with. Look inside, you know it to be true (Luke).

YOU CAN'T MAKE ANYONE HAPPY. Your "job" if you want to even call it that is to simply let the people you care about go out there and earn their own happiness. Everyone has to do the work and if you try to do it for them you are just creating a little temporary happy version of you in someone else (which is kind of like a midget version of you crawling into a mechanical suit of the other person... which is really creepy). When you look at someone and think "I wish they would just do this so they could be happy..." what you are really saying is: "it would make me happy if this person did this because I THINK it would make them happy". Let go and let the ones you love earn their happiness and celebrate it when they do.

QUIT DREAMING AND DO IT. We've all had that moment when we are like "I wish I could..." or "If only I had...". If you want to change jobs (don't quit right now and start hunting... especially if you have kids) then you need to DO WORK. Research your options, update your resume' and network or whatever it is that you need to do to get out there. Eventually you'll have to take a leap but you should probably do work to make it an educated leap. Quit waiting around for someone to hand you a plate of happy and say "would you like me to cut that up for you?". Some of the happiest people I know don't have a glamorous life, but they take every day and try to make that day amazing. Some of the saddest people I know are constantly trying to figure out how the next few weeks, months, years are going to play out based on the decision they make NOW (I've been this person a lot). I'm sure there's a balance in there but I do know that if you just take on the responsibility of being happy upon yourself... then you are almost 100% guaranteed success. OH! You will also be happier if you make a mint chip ice cream float... I'm pretty much addicted to these and tacos right now.

Have fun out their and give the world the middle tiger!

-D

Here's a picture I took while playing laser tag:

11,379

I've been trying to maintain this running tally of exactly how many days I've been alive. It started out as just a way to seem older, then I realized it was a little more exact than the traditional calendar. Now I've found that I really like the idea of the number of sunrises and sunsets I've been on this earth to "experience". Granted; my eyes may not have been completely open for some of the first 400-500 of them... but it's kind of the IDEA of it all. Today will mark my 11,379th day on planet Earth (allegedly). In this time I have probably experienced more things than some and less than still others on this planet. My experiences make me who I am and I cannot be anyone else because of these experiences. Scratch that... I have the potential to be someone else that is impersonating me in an extremely accurate way; but now we are stepping dangerously close to "multiple personalities" and frankly I won't put up with that from myself. So lets go over the big things I've garnered of myself and others (much of this was recent) over the last chunk of my life:

1) Loving yourself does NOT mean to think you are the greatest thing going with no room for improvement. I like who I am and whom I've become, but I do recognize that I am human and I have weakness and flaw which I struggle with every day (just like EVERYONE). This is that whole "be kind to a stranger because they are going through a struggle TOO" idea. We don't have the same problems (except collar stains... we all fight that battle and we can win with some lemon juice and vinegar), but we are all humans and we probably deserve a bit of understanding towards one another right?

2) Parenting is pretty freaking amazing. I LOVE teaching my kid how to love his life (I taught him how to lick a gummy bear and stick it to the wall the other day!). If you seriously can't hang out with a kid for an hour and not smile or laugh once, you MAY need a hug and a lollipop (I have both).

3) You make your own family. Most of us are pretty lucky to be born into a group of people that care for and love us UNCONDITIONALLY. Still more of us are even luckier to have found people outside of our bloodline that we also have those feelings for. I nurture these relationships as best as possible because I never know when I'm gonna need help transporting a miniature goat in the middle of the night across Colorado state lines (you know nothing).

4) WE ARE ALL WRONG. I actually didn't start working on this theory until about a year ago. I basically assume I am wrong in almost every instance now (when I can slow down and process... I'm not perfect). When I'm wrong I can more adequately see other points of view or facts to figure out where I went wrong and how I can be better. This does not work with the "how to mount the toilet paper" argument. If you hang your TP so that is feeds from underneath... YOU are wrong.

5) The Baltimore Orioles and Boston Red Sox were created by some supreme being to make me uncomfortable in public. I don't really have any facts on this but I've been working with a palm reader and a guy that works at a fortune cookie factory to figure out why.

6) I don't know. Almost everything I've ever said I was certain about has ended up flipping and changing and morphing into something different almost daily. I have started to accept that I just don't know what's going to happen in the next chunk of time and I try to just enjoy what ever that is if possible. Smile and take another step and eat a cookie.

How badly do you want to figure out how many days old you are now? here:  http://www.timeanddate.com/date/duration.html