Things aren't always as they appear.

A neighbor's daughter came to my door today to ask for my daughter. A few months back, I told my daughter to stay away from her. Why? Her father came to my door and accused my daughter of stealing a video game that is the size of a dime from his house.

Maybe I'm one of those assholes that believes my children can do no wrong. I ransacked her room while she was gone, and checked all of her pockets, doubtful that I would find anything, and alas, I didn't. When she got home, I asked her. She said she didn't do it.

If she is a liar, she is the best liar in the world because she shows no signs of lying. She doesn't stumble on her words. She doesn't roll her eyes or avoid eye contact. And, most evident of all (gulp), she sometimes tells me when she has done something wrong and then pleads her case.

Meanwhile, every neighbor on this street besides me has witnessed them beating their child. I lied a lot when I was a kid. I called it "beating prevention."

This is funny to me. They've got the house with the white picket fence; literally. Mine is falling apart for the time being as I've mentioned before on here. If I used the median price of this city per the statistics we're making probably 10 to 15 times our average neighbor. They buy granite countertops and floors and flaunt it to all of their guests. We buy baseball, football, dancing, basketball, soccer and martial arts tuition. We buy Webkinz, and video games in huge quantities.

I really hope I'm not coming off as a snob. If I were superficial like that, we would be living in a palace right now hosting parties with little finger sandwiches to show people all the shit we've got. We've plenty the means to buy them anything they want, and do often. My point is that because they don't SEE money, and I'm not flaunting it, they jumped to the conclusion that because my daughter was at their house the day something the size of a dime went missing, she must have stolen it.

I offered to replace it even though I know she didn't do it. He refused. He must not want to take money from poor people:) It turned out, that the girl had seen that my daughter had taken a spill on her Heelies that might have resulted in a hairline-fracture which put her in a cast, and came over to ask her if she wanted to go swimming in her newly built, built-in pool that she knew she couldn't go in with a cast. She also couldn't go in, because the pool doesn't exist. I laughed.

I attended my uncle's funeral today.

He believed in God, but he didn't believe in organized religion. I say he got it half right. But still, much of what I know in life was learned through him, and since it was learned through him and he didn't believe in organized religion, we didn't have a church ceremony. We instead volunteered one by one, to go up to a podium.

One of my biggest fears in life is speaking when prompted. I just completely screw up and never quite say what I want to say with a shitload of people watching, and waiting, and expecting. In a conversation between myself and another person one on one, you can ask me any question, and I can hang in the conversation, even if the best thing is that I tell you that I have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm just not calculating. I say what's on my mind, but not for everyone to listen. There are no identical situations in life, so each situation will always call for an individual decision.

Anyway, I'm getting off-track. I conjured up the courage to go out naked in front of all of those people. I didn't talk to them. I talked to my uncle.

My mothers family was a good family and contributed a lot to my brain and my soul, but they dropped like flies, all young, except for my grandmother. I only have one living reminder of those people left, and that digs deeper, still.

I did okay on the podium. I cried of course, but I have no shame in that. What I said came from a special connection that I had with a great man. If greatness were measured by material accumulation, he would have had nothing. But since it isn't, he had everything in the world.

Some of the words people used to describe him, I disagreed with. I even disagreed with my two child cousins when they say, "He always agreed."

He didn't always agree with me, and I loved that about him. When I was young like them, he didn't DISAGREE, but he liked that I was thinking, as opposed to not thinking, and definitely didn't agree. He had convictions and he knew where he stood with everything.

Some people mentioned how he was shy, and a loner. He just didn't believe in forcing his own beliefs on people without an invitation. He is a man with whom I've had some of the best conversations of my life.

I hope there is a God to bless you with, and I'm going to miss you a lot Steven Mayne. May you rest in peace. You will forever remain in my soul. I love you.

Some people aren't afraid to die. I'm afraid to die, but I like to think that is the reason I'm alive.

But there can always be someone less sensible than us, and these psycho's are difficult to defend. We can only defend by running head on into our own fears. Fear makes us weak if we let it consume us, rather than guiding us. It's supposed to be a survival mechanism, not a control mechanism.

I'm watching the movie, "Never Back Down," right now. I could relate, because in the path of self-destruction, I took all of that negative energy and turned it into positive energy.

With the positive energy, I have managed to avoid conflict for about 10 years now, for the most part. I have never been close to being an aggressor for at least ten years.  There is nothing wrong with fire and passion. You just have to figure out how to contain it and be righteous.

And now, the girl said it. "You're fighting so you don't have to fight again." Sometimes that's just the way it is.

So, my son got to play in the flag football all stars today at Gillette Stadium. Gillette is the home to the New England Patriots, so he was really excited. Unfortunately, "American Idol" decided to hold auditions at Gillette this weekend and got the games bumped to the practice field behind where they play their games. Regardless, they still had fun.

Today was a big test for him, and even I didn't know how he was going to do.  With all of the bragging I do on here, I knew that alot of the competition he has played against are mediocre, bad, or don't even want to be there alot, so it really isn't any indication at all of what level he's playing at compared to his peers. On this day though, he was playing against the best of the best. Teams came from Florida, New York, and New Hampshire to compete for what he wanted.

The results? He quickly learned that his style of play, which involves a lot of trickery and elusiveness, didn't work against the higher level players. Nope, they too were there because they were the best of the best from their respective areas, and they were not fooled easily.

So what did he do? He made the adjustment to his game and abandoned the style that has served him so well against players in the past, and instead went to his second most deadly weapon behind his juking; speed baby!

You see, he figured out all by himself, and very quickly, that these players were faster than the other competition, and were tougher to trick for that reason. His favorite weapon used to trick entire teams so bad that there wouldn't be anyone within ten yards of him before he'd make off towards the endzone (they'd run to the wrong side of the field thinking he was going in that direction). But against the faster players, he abandoned the split second hesitation required for tricking them, and just turned on the jets.

It worked. He scored seven touchdowns in five games before being knocked out of the tournament, because he ended up playing against a team that was coached by one of his former coaches and they clamped down on him. I even tried to tell his current coach what they were going to do, and he couldn't figure out how to stop it until it was too late; he put his two fastest players at the safety position and blitzed on every single play at my son and the quarterback, so by the time someone got the ball there was already someone right there before they could take one step.

In the future, people are going to know to go after my son anyway, so I'm not making excuses; it's part of the game. The advantage was that they had inside information and we didn't. Oh well. They took third place, he had a lot of fun, and he wasn't mad at all about losing. He knew what the deal was, "Dad, every single play they were all yelling, 'get the kid in the green shorts. I couldn't do anything.'"

He did something! He got them all chasing the kid in the green shorts, and that's all he could do. The rest was the coach's problem, and NO, I won't let my son know that.

Have you ever met someone that always has to show you something they bought? I'm not jealous. It usually just doesn't interest me.

Why all of this fascination with the materialistic crap? Without freedom, you have nothing. You can't even be materialistic without freedom.

The people that are closest to me, I believe, can't take some of the things I say. How could things that are so true come from something so evil, I believe they ask.

I am not and never have been evil. I've just had a lot more chances for the worst in me to come out, and many never take the time to see the best of me come out. Nor is this staged or choreographed, so I have the element of shock and hate working against me at moments.

I always believe there are no excuses. I'm a serious person. I crave not money, but happiness. I don't think that money is an indication of success. I do believe that money gives you the freedom to explore your happiness, however, and happiness is a better measure of success.

I think all people should be judged by their actions. I think there are people in this world that have even judged me by my actions and still have been wrong, and I'm alright with that too.

Our actions are usually our best measures, and they most accurately give us what we deserve.

My truck is a greedy little bitch. She always takes more than she gives. You should see today's problem; it is indeed interesting. She decided that I shouldn't be able to latch the drivers door shut until I take her shopping at the parts store, and so it is.

She bitched at me; "This isn't just something that just happened mother-fucker. If you'd just fuck listen, you'd have known that I've told you this was coming for a long time. Remember when I wouldn't let the door swing, and you gutted my hinge assembly? Alas, you reap what you sow mother-fucker!"

"So the day I signed that bill of sale, that was it to you, huh? What do I owe you? Most guys would have junked you by now, but I keep taking care of you, and the only thing you give back is enough to pay the overhead on you. Sooner or later, you're going to have to start giving back. I miss my Chevy's. They got up for work today, and you're just a lazy bitch that likes to point fingers and start trouble. I hope Dodge goes out of business."

"Ohhhh! You want to start fucking with a mother-fuckers family, do ya? Say bye to your transmission asshole. I tried to take it easy on you, but you fucked me over. I'm going to leave you stranded in a ditch in Rhode Island."

I need to go one step further. It would seem that my great grandmother that married my namesake was a frisky critter. I've chased her though her changing hers and all of her childrens surnames; hers many times. I've managed to piece together the frameworks towards an official record with this, but tracing 4 different names for one person is a bit much and not easy.

The lineage of my namesake that I chased, I believe is wrong. Screw it. I'll just build tons of records. The one thing about my great grandmother is that she tended to be with men close to her age, and the guy I chased first was way older. Many of the other pieces fit, but I'm not so sure. I looked up guys her age with the last name Severance in my hometown, and I think I found a couple of REAL possibilities. It would seem that there are two different Severance families that left bloodlines around here and made an impact. Perhaps it was even just one that came here, that had two that left many... semantics.

When I work alot, I have a ton more energy. I'm better at working, and more sociable when I'm not working if I keep busy. I'd bet most people are like this. I've been rebuilding my metabolism for a long-ass time now.

I also love to learn alot. Unfortunately, it's not history learning season for me. I'll check back on that come winter time again. It's get busy time. My hands are getting dirty, and I'm thankfully learning less lessons now. For example; the pool needed an $80 part as predicted. I installed the new filter correctly in no longer than 10 minutes, dropped a hose in it, and walked away.

After painting the top, front, gable trim, I went back to the pool to check it out, and sure enough as I expected, an $80 part leaking.

My partner in business has a huge ego. Over the years, I've managed to take some chunks out of it at no cost to him, but still he is a person that way over-assesses himself. I assess him very well, and he's an awesome roofer. At the same time, he doesn't bring out the best in people other than myself...

He's too aggressive for others to deal with him, but I always stand as a buffer/mediator to try to get the job done, and he doesn't see how that time figures in. I just let people do as they're going to, and if they don't do their job, I cut their part out and make a new plan, and then I fire them. He's a screamer.

I think many of the people he has tried to push in the past were unpushable, and he just made himself angry trying to teach them. I have no desire to teach a person with a lack of ambition, and I'm not going to waste my time yelling at people.

He recently attended anger management, and I think he may have let it help a little. I'm trying to push HIM towards never asking anyone for anything. I've been ready to challenge him with an expensive bet that I will beat him 1 on 1 with equal sides. If you kill the ego too much though, you could also put out the fire...

By the way, I never lost a bet except on my honeymoon in Mohegan Sun, but I would win that bet. I'm more efficient and I don't let the little things get in my brain. He even fucks me up sometimes because he takes a LOT of risks that I wouldn't take. Then he expects me to help him. When I feel safe, I will do the more work a lot faster through efficiency, and that's what I've always focused on.

I CAN do the work of 4 Guatemalans usually, even if they work harder. So can my partner and all the people that work with me for equal pay. It's something special. I'm a die-hard capitalist executing a form of socialism.

Stop the bleeding
Sew me up and throw me back
To the cruel harsh world
I need not your mercy

Just stop the bleeding
Spare me my limbs
I'm only at your mercy
To stop the bleeding

Leave me a giant scar
A symbolic reminder
Of where I'd be
Without your skillful generosity

Just stop the bleeding
I need nothing for the pain
As a matter of fact I insist
You can keep all of that shit

Just stop the bleeding
And let me see another day

For some reason, there are always things that my brain always makes me put off. Today, it was opening the pool. I know why I put it off; last year, the pool filter was finished. I spent three days trying to get it to work with my broken hand and neighbors writing anonymous notes about calling the board of health.

Mother-fuckers! I had a broken hand, a broken pool, and a broken bank account, and they jumped down my throat for it in an obvious effort to make themselves feel better at another's failure. I'd considered doing what I COULD do one-handed to spite them; if the board of health did indeed come to my house, I would have painted every single clapboard on my house a different color!

Anyway, this year has been a great year for me and my family and my neighbors are about to feel their judgements smack them right back in the face. I have the means, I'm in excellent health again, and I'm going to make this house as beautiful as I saw it being when I bought it.

The pool though... why procrastinate? We shelled out the dough for a new filter, but I just know how it's going to be when I switch it out. I just have this feeling that I'm going to keep discovering more and more cracked PVC plumbing when I get into it. That's the way it always goes and it just seems so unproductive. I've been tempted to solve the problem once and for all with a sledge hammer, but the fact is that I love to swim and so do my kids. Nothing beats hopping off of a hot-ass roof on a scorching summer day and going home to a pool and some beers...

We were in a Memorial Day parade today with my son's football team and my daughters cheerleading team. As I said last night, just the deduction in cigarettes has left me with a surplus of energy that I barely remember, and the parade was probably more walking than I've done in years.

Lots of pain that I'd been experiencing for some years now has also gone away. A "sciatic nerve" pain? Gone almost instantaneous. I understand the way the body works in general and I know I have to quit cigarettes completely. The reason I'm now without pain, is because I'm able to get more oxygen into my blood, and it helps in the recuperation of muscles in the body.

My wife said to me one night, "You're just staying with the idea of quitting to keep me happy, aren't you?"

I hate to be an asshole, but you can't quit an addiction to anything because of another person. I want to quit, because I miss the athlete I used to be. I want to run and run and run again without feeling the consequences for doing so the next day. I'm only 32 for heavens sake, I'm not ready to be old yet. I had children young so I could actually enjoy their lives while I still had good enough health to play games with them and stuff, but cigarettes are reversing those precautions.

Anyway, after the parade, we brought my daughter to one of her friends houses for a cookout. We didn't plan on staying, but were invited and hungry after the long walk. We've known the parents for years, but we'd never gone to their home before. Their friends were all fun people to be around, and all of them took turns on the grill and on the bar as they're all cooks and bartenders at upscale restaurants. It really was a bunch of fun, and I didn't have to deal with the inevitability of opening my pool for one more day.

I only celebrate Independence day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. The first two days of my Memorial Day weekend included 20 hours of home improvement on my own home. Tomorrow I'll give another ten, while participating in a parade in the middle of the day.

I recently got hypnotized to quit smoking. I haven't quit, but I haven't smoked more than 10 in a day for 6 days, and I used to smoke two packs (40).

I feel really ambitious right now. My neighbors all came up to me and said, "Holy shit, you're a fast and clean painter!" I HATE PAINTING! Since I bought this house of mine, I've become a very good painer because it never ends, especially when you do it wrong.

As we speak, I banged out an entire gallon of trim clean and straight. I don't have one drop of paint on me. There is not a drop of paint on the ground or floors where they shouldn't be.

I'm going to paint this entire house myself. My neighbors had theirs done by professionals and it took them a week with 4 guys. I'm going to paint the whole thing in 2 weeks worth of work by myself.

This time, I went the extra mile on everything. I scraped down all of the surfaces after washing them down. Then I sanded them, and took a tack cloth to them, to take off the dust.

The paint adhered very well, I observed. Only one coat and some touchups, and this paint job will last as long as anyones.

Writing intimately in front of the world is not easy.

I read a blog tonight by someone that I wasn't friends with (on Myspace), but Myspace suggested that I be. What is more, I did know the person in real life, and upon reading the blog, I decided that there are many out there that may very well perceive me to be the person she described, even though it wasn't about me, and I know I'm not like that.

Basically, it's about know-it-alls that are better than everyone at everything.

When I tell people things matter-of-factly, I'm truly flirting with this boundary, and I know this. I try to counter-balance this with the other parts; the parts of the story where I fail. Those are the best parts. Those are the parts that give you the credibility. Greatness doesn't come from success. George W. Bush was born successful, but he's as dumb as a doorknob. Greatness comes from our persistence and our ability to learn as we go, while some people accept a single failure as their eternal fate.

Persistence is an incredible strength that anyone can have if they choose it. If you hang yourself tomorrow, I promise you that you will never succeed. All we can do is live and learn, and the emphasis is on living.

Some people don't learn, because they're afraid to live. Some people are afraid to learn, because they're afraid to fail, and those are the type of people that I try to reach. If you're an everyday person, you're successful, because you're at least not afraid to try (and inevitably, fail SOMETIMES).

I don't believe in small talk. Everything is serious to me.  I don't care if it's serious to you. I'm not you.

I guess that posturing might be PC to some people, but I wasn't born to kiss ass. If I say something, I mean it. I might not even have elaborate details, but I stand for something, and that something that I stand for isn't sparing misguided feelings that you may hold.

I've always called things as I see them, and while I never censor, I will never be censored. I would stand in prison for an eternity for my right to express what I believe.

I grant others that same right. Sometimes I'm just goofing around, and you could find things that I say to be heinous. It's just sarcasm that is driving me in many cases. I don't think anyone can call me a liar.

Do you know what is the only thing that makes me butt heads with people? Different opinions, and different ways of expressing my opinions. I don't condemn people that have different opinions, but I will stick to mine with malice until I see otherwise. Some people just can't handle and will not listen to that approach.