Reverse Beard Jenga

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Today I realized if I stick small objects into my facial hair my beard will hang onto them and I can store stuff in it. Obviously the only logical step from here is to stick a bunch of stuff in there and see how much I can fit before it all starts to fall apart. For science.

Thus a game known as the 'I realized if I stick things into my beard they will get lodged in there and stay put,  I wonder how much stuff I could actually hold with my facial hair at one time?' game was born.

Renamed to 'Reverse Beard Jenga' for brevity.

I decided to use nails, because they have a nice weight to them, are a good size and shape for beard insertion.

Let's begin:

 
 

For this edition of Reverse Beard Jenga I'll be using these double headed nails that we use at my work in the winter because they are a perfect size, shape and weight. Also, because I had a pocket full of them in my coat when I came home today.

 

 
 

Ten nails in. My wife is standing next to me as I do this, judging me. She clearly has no appreciation for science, but I'll not be dissuaded by naysayers to important progress. That's how we got 100 years of Dark Ages.

 
 

20 nails. I'm starting to feel the weight of the nails at this point, but they're still going in there pretty easily.

 
 

40 nails.  It's getting perilous in here y'all. It's starting to feel like if I move my face at all the structural integrity of the nail matrix I've created will fail and I'll start losing 'em.

Apparently impressed by my ability to hold a lot of stuff in my facial hair, Emily seems to have come around on Reverse Beard Jenga. She's gone from telling me I'm stupid for doing this and that I need to wash my beard when I'm done because putting a bunch of dirty ass nails into it is gross, to asking me how many I'm up to now every eight seconds. 

I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I have 40 goddamn nails lodged in my beard and every time I have to answer you I feel like I'm going to shit them out of my face all over the table; so count along or back off lady!

 
 

60 Nails. That look of apprehension real people. At this point shit is getting TENSE. Each new nail has to be inserted with surgical precision for fear of knocking existing nails of out place. Each new nail is the equivalent of that part in doctor shows where the super advanced piece of equipment breaks and the nurses are all "You can't remove that man's brain tumor by freehanding that shit!" and the surgeon is all "Bish, watch me." and then sticks a ten inch needle into a dude's brain by ballparking it, gets the tumor out and somehow doesn't erase the guy's entire memory of 1992 and ability to work zippers. That's the level of precise hand/eye/beard coordination we're dealing with here.

 
 

74 nails. This was where we stopped. There was minute there where I thought I might actually make it to 100, but once I got to this point a couple of nails would fall out every time I tried to put a new one in. Once this happened a few times I decided the limit was reached.

Important work has been done here today. Questions were answered, science was scienced. Since no self respecting researcher would conclude his experiment without properly collecting the required datas; I put all the nails in a bowl and weighed them:

 
 

So there you have it. 74 nails, or nearly a pound can be safely stuck into my facial hair at one time. What a time to be alive.

Taking a Stand

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I don't know that I quite understand those people who who are all "IT'S MERRY CHRISTMAS, NOT HAPPY HOLIDAYS!" while, I presume, putting one hand jauntily on their hip and wagging the pointer finger of their other hand back and forth in front of their face sassily before going back to living under the assumption that nobody who is different from them actually counts ever.

I mean, sure Christmas is -a- holiday in this season, but even if you are Christian and we operate under the assumption that as far as you are concerned any of the other religious holidays celebrated around this time can go fuck themselves, at the very least there is still New Years. Unless you are some sort of weird calendar denier, insisting on only saying 'Merry Christmas" is just incorrect logically.

People act as if saying "Happy Holidays" is the equivalent of looking directly into their eyes whist repeatedly punching a baby Jesus doll in the face with a pair of brass knuckles made out of dildos. 

Meanwhile I'm over here desperately trying to avoid eye contact with strangers and going to the other entrance if I see someone with a little bell and a bucket in front of Wal-mart. I guess some people can "keep muh Jesus", others can wish each other a pleasant non-denominational seasonal greeting, and I'll continue to try not to interact with anyone. And so the world keeps turning.

I'm Named After a Dead Baby

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You know how parents do that adorable married people thing where they argue over the details of some event that took place decades ago? You know, when they both have a different recollection of something they have been debating for so long neither of them are actually upset over it anymore and they don't really even want to settle the argument because it's a fond reminiscence of their lives together? 

We have those in my family too, except instead of being cute and heartwarming, you find out your mother named you after a dead baby she read about in People Magazine in 1988.

Allow me to elaborate.

My parents love to argue over how they came up with the names for my brother and I. My brother, for example, was nearly "Doyle" after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the writer. Thankfully they chose a different name, as to be named Doyle is to be condemned to a life of having to wear high pants and suspenders with no shirt while you challenge people to bouts of fisticuffs and moustache growing fights. Actually, that sounds kind of awesome...

I am 1000% sure this guy was named doyle.

I am 1000% sure this guy was named doyle.

As for me, both of my parents resolutely take credit for having chosen the name Matthew for me. My father, being a great lover of baseball says that his criteria for the name of his firstborn son was that he be named after one of the great ballplayers of the olden days. Thankfully he said he decided naming me something like Honus, Cy, or Tris would have been ridiculous in this century, so he decided on Matthew after famous New York Giant's Pitcher Christy Mathewson.

That story seems more or less believable, and at least he went with Matthew and not Christy. It would have been an absolute delight growing up if in addition to being a weird, unpopular nerd I also had a girl name.

All in all I'm fine with that as an origin story for my name. Legendary baseball player that your father idolizes is a pretty normal thing to have your namesake based on, I'd say. On a side note, not that this has anything to do with anything, but as it turns out Christy Mathewson was apparently a smokin' hot man-god:

You're welcome ladies, men who are into men, and men who are into women but can appreciate the jawline of goddamn Captain America.

Anyway, in opposition to my father's claim of "famous baseball player" as the source of my name, my mother's version has always been that she came up with the name and picked it because it meant "Gift from God". For the entirety of my life, that has been the only version of that story ever given during the countless debates between my parents over who picked out the names of their two children. No more or less elaboration than that. Just, "I picked it because it meant gift from God". Sort of boring, but fine.

That is until this past weekend when, during a family cookout the debate came up again and my mother dropped this little gem that she has somehow never thought to mention before:

Apparently the full story of where she came up with the name Matthew is that she read an article in People Magazine about some town that came across the dead, frozen body of an unknown baby, collectively took him in as one of their own, buried him, and named him Matthew because it meant "gift from God."

My mother picked my name after reading a story about some people that found a dead baby in the woods.

Skipping over the fact that this town apparently thought "gift from God" was the appropriate way to feel about about a frozen woods-baby, apparently my Mother read this article and the takeaway was "Hmm, the name they picked out for that tiny frost-hardened corpse has a nice ring to it."

Here's the real kicker. Thanks to modern technology and my expert ability to google "People Magazine, town names dead baby Matthew" I actually found the freaking article. My mother has searchable, verifiable evidence of her insane "picked out your name from People Magazine's story about a dead baby" being true. If you want to read something morbid feel free to click here to see it.

The thing is, the point of the article isn't even a tragic yet heartwarming tale of a community coming together to lay a poor lost child to rest. That part is like, a one paragraph intro at the beginning followed by a lengthy and legitimately upsetting article about how they identified the child two years after the fact and think he was killed by his father who somehow keeps having people close to him die suspiciously but has never been convicted of murder. 

How a woman can go nearly three decades and not once during countless rehashings of the same argument think to include the detail that the source of her first born child's name was an article about the murder of a child is an enigma that I, or modern science may never fully unravel.

At the very least, we've got some new details to argue over whenever the discussion of who picked out the kid's names comes up.

If you need me I'll be in Therapy.

The Best Thing About Marriage

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Of all the varied and wonderful joys associated with being married or in a long term relationship, there is one that tops them all in my book. When you are married, you have a built in confidante for life. It is true gift to have someone you can tell anything without fear of judgment or having it repeated to anyone.

Now sure, you could use that liberty to open your inner most thoughts and fears to another person who would understand and continue to love you anyway, but we all know that shit is what Tumblr is for.  If you are doing it right in your marriage, you have complete and uninhibited freedom to indulge in copious of completely unrestrained-no holds barred-if anyone else heard you vocalize the fact that these are your actual thoughts they would never speak to you again... shit-talking.

 
Why is the default facial expression in stock images of "gossip" a mixture of shock and horror? "Psst. I dipped my Bean-bag in your latte"

Why is the default facial expression in stock images of "gossip" a mixture of shock and horror? "Psst. I dipped my Bean-bag in your latte"

 

When you are married, you talk so much smack about everything and everyone with your spouse that it practically becomes a sporting event (I hear they are looking to put inter-spousal gossip in the next winter Olympics). When you've been together long enough, it gets to the point where you can predict exactly what your spouse is about to say as soon as you've wheeled your cart a safe distance away from the worlds slowest and most socially distressing grocery store cashier in history.

I now automatically hold up one finger for silence when ending a phone-call I had on speaker because I can tell my wife is about to start talkin' some smack about whoever was on the line and she doesn't wait to make sure the call is safely disconnected first if I don't stop her. It's happened.

Every single one of us is at least a little bit of a judgmental piece of garbage on the inside, even if we don't vocalize it. When you are married though, you don't have to keep it pent up; You have an outlet for those innocent moments of pettiness and self righteousness that you know are wrong and make you a terrible person but you can't help having for just a second before you wave them off:

Those moments when you just want to yell at your Facebook friend Becky that she isn't fooling anybody with those mirror selfies where she is sticking her hips really far backwards to make it look like she has a thigh gap no longer have die quietly in your soul. You don't have to keep it to yourself that a mutual friend's new boyfriend has the personality of a house plant and you seriously considered getting up and turning his chair towards the sun to see if he would start leaning that way. You have someone to tell when the woman who runs the self check out area at Lowes and always gives you unsolicited, condescending pet care advice makes you want to shoot yourself in the foot with a nail gun just so the foot pain from your new nail wound will distract you from wanting to throttle her.

 Getting those thoughts out safely and harmlessly in an environment where you nobody is going to judge you or spill the beans on what a dumpster-fire of a human you are is absolutely critical to mental health. 

 
A visual representation of my inner personality

A visual representation of my inner personality

 

The alternative is to keep them inside and allowing them to fester and mutate into some sort of freakish calcified lump of petty bullshit that causes your organs to fail. In fact. I'm 98% convinced that, that's what kidney stones are. 

Don't get kidney stones. Trash with your spouse. It's the responsible thing to do.