Bring Me That Horizon

My trip to Virginia left me with one more insight to add to my list of Things I've Learned in Life. It's a short list:

Don't be stupid.

Things that suck and are hard are not superior to things which do not suck and are not hard. You don't get bonus happiness points later for being miserable now.

corollary: Things/people which/who regularly grind your self-esteem and sanity to wallpaper paste are things/people you should not continue to do.

The thing I learned over fall break was this: You are from the country, and will always be from the country.

This sounds simpleminded to the point of being incredibly dumb. But I used to entertain notions that I could somehow turn out differently from the way I used to be. I used to think that perhaps I could be a stuffy intellectual type, or wear that really expensive plaid and not have it feel like a costume. I even used to think I could be a hippie, until I realized that I was always going to laugh when people started talking about crystals and energy fields and things like that.

But I am from the country. I will never like mountains. Sure, they're pretty, but what can you do with a mountain? You can look at it and say it's pretty. You can walk on it. You can tear it apart to get to the useful stuff inside. You can't plow it and plant shit on it. You can't put a football or baseball stadium on it. You can't build houses on most of them. Mountains are merely decorative.

(Counterpoint: They are fucking stupid beautiful, though.)

I will always have a near-total inability to enjoy sports that involve crowds behaving decorously. (tennis, golf) If there are not drunken idiots bellowing around me, it's not a sporting event. In addition, I will always have a predisposition to being on my feet yelling at the referee/opposing team/our team at some point during the game, and after that point I will likely continue standing/jumping/screaming. The Buckeye fans flipped cars and set them on fire to celebrate. I expect my teams and their fans to uphold this standard, and let's be honest: when was the last time you celebrated Wimbledon by getting shitfaced and rioting?

(Counterpoint: I don't understand or enjoy NASCAR.)

I like pickup trucks and the people who drive them. I can think of four people off the top of my head who drive trucks in Cleveland, and they all make me extremely happy. When it comes to cars, as long as it a) gets me places without smoking or smelling worrisome and b) has a CD player/radio and working windows, I'm pretty happy. Anything else is nice, but extraneous.

(Counterpoint: I guess I like cars too?)

So that's three things I've learned from life now. I think I'm doing pretty well.