To say that is not to quote Lynyrd Skynyrd or even, for those of my generation, Deftones, but to say that I still have drafts of things I’ve written on ruled notebook paper.  If you’re my age you might remember that as the stuff you used to use in high school.  I believe we called it “loose leaf”.   But those days are behind us, aren’t they?  We’re Men, now; and Women.  We’re part of the Workforce.  The productive backbone of America.

I don’t know why I even referred to “my generation” in the previous paragraph.  I personally am a pariah because I still listen to The Deftones.  I am a resistant hanger-on amongst those in my age group and a reluctant dinosaur amongst those in the next generation or two.  I will be 32 next month and I still haven’t gotten the hang of the concept.  Being old, I mean.  I’m not too keen on the idea of jumping wrists-first into a pile of Peter White smooth jazz tracks just yet.  Yes, the “music” that kids these days listen to is shit, but I can’t hang up my Rage Against the Machine records or put away my Nine Inch Nails CDs.  Or sell them, for fuck’s sake.  I have an iPod.  What’s the hold up?  Why hang on to these Compact Discs, relics of a bygone era?  Heck, I bought a new CD this past Saturday.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, a CD.  I know.  Sue me.

Here I am, a “man” with hardly the knowhow to be such, adding to the choking chemical mass of waste that is sure to conflagrate myself or my children in due time.  And in the shadow of my wife-to-be’s awareness.  We’re to be married this next April and I feel the asinine need to hide all of my superfluous purchases from her until the sacred and expensive date finally reaches us.  As though she doesn’t know.  She’s my wife, for God’s sake!  She knows everything I’m going to do before I’m going to do it.  Everytime I approach her with an idea, she knows full well it’s not a case of “What would you think if I wasted my money on this such-n-such rotten idea?” but rather “Hey, I’m going to waste our money on this such-n-such rotten idea.  Would you like to say I told you so now or later?”

So now I finally signed up for a new blog to rant and rave about our impending nuptials and to give the world the male perspective (’cause face it, Kevin Nealon just gave you his own, and we penis-bearers rarely know where the Hell he’s coming from) and this site confuses the Holy Shit out of me.  I’ve done the blogging thing before, mind you.  In fact, I did it before it was called “blogging”.  Before blogging was the thing to do.  (Not that it is, anymore; now it’s “Twittering”, which is just blogging without all the content, and you can keep that, thank you very much.)  But this site has so many bells and whistles that I just don’t know where to blow.  You all know, of course.  You signed up.  Did it strike you as odd that immediately after you signed up and went to your Dashboard the readout said that you’d already made one post?  And gotten one comment?  And had one category?  And one “about”?  ‘Cause that makes a shit-ton of sense, doesn’t it?  You totally remember pouring your heart out in between verifying your password and clicking “OK”, right?

I’m a simple man.  I still text using the letters allowed to me.  I don’t use T-9, because T-9 has no fucking clue how I talk or what I’ll say.  I’m using a dialect without time, trapped in the ether of who I once was and who I’m supposed to be.  I still send postcards to people I care about.  Sure, I e-mail them to tell them to expect the postcards in the mail, but I send them, nonetheless.  (I’m simple; not unevolved.)  I still ask to speak with the person I’ve called once someone answers the line, knowing full-well that I’ve called a cell phone, because EVERYONE has a cell phone.  I’m a Simple Kind of Man.

Who is getting married, I’ll remind you.  Because that is a theme we will visit time and again.  Because I tell you, I am stoked.  I am very, very excited about this.  In fact, the wife (I’ll call her that; deal with it) and I went to a wedding on Saturday and treated it like a “Coming Attraction” feature.  We viewed each aspect of the event like a sneak peak at a Summer BlockBuster.  Oh, how I can’t wait for the sequel!!

But it won’t stop me from pointing out the weird things she does.  The things that make me love her and stare into the pools of her endless eyes with a questioning “WTF?” beneath circling canaries of love and tiny hearts.  For instance, she told me tonight as I came in at $:@^ in the morning from work “I bought catsup.  We were out of ketchup so I bought catsup.”  Which I thought, “Yes, of course.  That’s terribly important.”  Then I went into the kitchen to make myself some food and saw that she bought the 40oz of catsup, as though between now and the next time we head to the grocery store there may be another World War, and it’s important that we stock up on these peacetime necessities now.  I don’t know about your household, but mine will be diving headlong into the bomb shelter knowing our ketchup needs will be met.  Best of luck to you and yours.

And these are the things that make me love her, that make me cherish her, that make me think to myself, “The rest of my life is going to be awesome, no matter what I decide to do with it.  Though, truth be told, I should really get back into stand-up.”