Since I got a new piano, I figured I’d try something a little different with this song: Rather than recording and produce it all up, I though it might be a fun little change of pace to do a videotaped performance on the new piano. So, thanks to my (awesome) digital SLR, a nice little shotgun mic, and my rockin’ new piano, here’s the video of Choosing.
This song was inspired by a friend of mine who’s been stuck in a very unhealthy relationship for a couple of years. She knows that she needs to move on, but is terrified of what that means. So, as a result, she’s essentially chosen not to choose. I can relate.
I’ve decided that I wanted to start writing some songs in a little more theatrical of a style. I have such a background in musical theater, it just makes sense. Plus, the emotional, soaring ballads are my favorite anyway. This is very much a rough draft of the song…I may change the structure or melody still, but I like the basic feel of it so far.
Choosing Music & Lyrics by Matt Armstrong
Now that I’ve chosen I can’t decide If, in the choosing, I chose wrong Or I chose right If my decisions Cast me aside Now that the choosing’s done Am I the one Who has to abide The choice left behind
Now that it’s over Now that it’s done I can stand here feeling guilty Or move on. Another decision Step off or postpone Now it’s time to wake life Step forward and taste life
Time to shout it from the rooftops, "I am here. There is something deep inside of me still living." Raise the curtain just in time for my premiere. I’m breaking down walls I’ve built Of all of my anger, guilt, and fear. The choices are clear.
So, this is choosing. Why so resigned? Choosing to choose is, well, not easy But it’s time. Choosing a future Free from my past Wow. I can’t believe I finally chose At last.
I’ve had bad eyes for a long time. I got my first pair of glasses when I was in 6th grade. (I VERY mistakenly thought that getting glasses was cool, and I was proud of them. I have since learned.)
About the time I hit my sophomore year, I decided I was tired of glasses and I wanted to try contacts. So, we went to NuVision in Albion, and I got my very first pair of contact lenses. It was hate at first sight.
See, I’ve got this thing about my eyes. Call me crazy, but the thought of purposely sticking my fingers into my eyes twice a day just doesn’t do it for me. I can’t even put in eye drops. And when I get that stupid glaucoma test where they shoot a puff of air into my eye…forget about it. To the casual observer, it looks like I’m being tased. In my eyeball. By Satan.
On top of that, I’ve got hooded eyelids, which will probably get worse with time. Some members of my family have even had to have corrective cosmetic surgery because their hooded eyelids were beginning to interfere with their vision.
All of this adds up to one major thing: I HATE contacts. I hate putting them in. I hate the itchiness in my eyes when I wear them. I hate it when they fold in half, roll back behind my eyeball, and cause my eyes to water so badly that I appear to be watching Elijah Wood in The War when he finds out his father is dead.
Eventually, I just stopped wearing them. Glasses were so much easier to deal with, and, since my eyebrows are invisible, they gave some definition to my face. I eventually discovered that there was a specific shape of glasses that I should wear that would complement the shape of my (giant) head, and eventually, I grew to like the way that glasses looked on me.
When I was mentally ill performing, contacts became a necessity again. I could either deal with the contacts or I could be blind onstage…so contacts it was. I bought my last pair of contacts just before starting performances of Crazy for You, which turned out to be my very last theatrical performance. After that, there just wasn’t much need for contacts.
I even went so far as to purchase prescription sunglasses. Normally, I would wear my contacts on road trips and when I went to amusement parks and the like, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to wear sunglasses. But once I got my prescription sunglasses, that became a non-issue as well.
Well, this last weekend, I finally broke down and decided to give contact lenses another go. I went to the optometrist’s office, got assaulted in the eye by the air compressor of doom, and walked out with a prescription for contact lenses. And I’ve had a headache ever since. Apparently (I didn’t know this) when you first get contacts, you’re only supposed to wear them for a few hours a day until you get used to them. The first day, I wore them for four hours. The next day, I wore them for 10. And now my eyes are so tired I can’t focus them anymore. I wore them another 10 hours today, and it was all I could do not to snap, and go off like Elvadine in The War when she tells Miss Strapford what’s what.
(I don’t know why I’ve got The War on my mind, but now I need to go watch it again.)
Anyway, suffice it to say, right now, "I’s can’t even see good, so I’m prolly not gunna graduate this year neither." It’s hard enough spending your whole day under flickering fluorescent lights in front of two computer screens. But add evil contact lenses on to that, and I’ve got a headache this big, and it’s got @#$% you @#$%ing @#$%ers written all over it.
And why might you ask, have I decided to torture myself with this miserable horrendousness. Is it masochism? Preparations for a suicide bombing attack? Mormon guilt? No. I’m doing this all for art. On Friday, I’m going to see Toy Story 3 at the nicest theater in the area. And because it’s only playing in 3D, I will need to wear 3D glasses. And Hell will sprout Otter Pops before I sit through that movie with glasses over my glasses. A’int Gunna Happen. Also, my glasses are at the point of falling apart, and it was either this or buy new glasses, and the contacts were cheaper.
So, if I seem crabby (or, more accurately, crabbier than usual) for the next couple of days, it’s probably because I’ve got a headache going behind my eyeballs so severe that it’s making my teeth hurt.
Seems that no matter what I do, I still have to suffer for art.
So, today I started my new job. For those of you just tuning in, I was recently hired as a Program Manager for a company called Datasphere Technologies. They do hyper-localization. That’s okay. I don’t expect you to understand what it means either.
I realized that this job was going to be a step above what I had been doing at Microsoft, and I was right. However, after today, it feels less like a step and more like I need a pole vault pole to reach it. I’m sure I’ll be able to pick it up, but I feel like there’s so much to learn so quickly, trying to pick it up is rather like trying to get a sip of water from a firehose.
Yeah…it’s kindof like that. I really like the folks in the office and the folks I’m working with, but it’s been a big change of environment. I instantly went from being one of the oldest people on the team with the most understanding of what was going on behind the scenes to being one of (if not the) youngest, and completely without a clue in the world.
At one point, I had such a bad headache I thought I was going to pass out…and I couldn’t tell if it was from the tiny screens I was using (it’s hard to go from three 24" widescreen monitors to a 19" non-widescreen monitor), the flourescent lights, or the fact that my brain had effectively been turned into Jello. Plus, now that I’m no longer an hourly employee, I get to stay at work later, which I hadn’t prepared for in terms of edibles.
Right now, things just feel a little unsettled. I get like this every time I experience change, though. I don’t have any doubt that I’m going to pick up everything I need to in a timely manner, and will be able to be quite successful in my work. And I don’t doubt that I will really enjoy what I’m doing. I just always have a few shaky moments as I get on my feet.
On the plus side, I just filled out the paperwork for my very first big-boy insurance today. I’m actually on a group policy! It’s a really good group policy, too. It almost makes me want to get seriously ill just so I can test it out. But not really.
So, after the first day of work, I’m a little wiped. I think that a nice dip in the hot tub will be in order this evening, then maybe the remainder of the pint of ice cream in my freezer. Then bed. Definitely bed.
As I’m sure you’ve noticed (or not noticed, since you’ve probably stopped coming here and probably aren’t even reading this post), I haven’t been posting as frequently on my blog as I have in the past. I usually go through phases throughout the year where I will post or not post for a while. The last couple of months have been relatively light on the posting front. The reason? There are, I believe, several:
There’s not much interesting going on in my life
The weather is starting to turn nice and I’d rather enjoy it than blog
I’ve been busy finishing an audiobook, producing music, watching TV, and playing through a couple of video games.
I’m no longer listening to NPR or podcasts, so I’m having a hard time getting worked up over any hot button issues
I’ve not been taking many photos
I’ve been working on a re-design of my MattArmstrongMusic.com website (it’s nearly ready. The design is done, now I just need to populate it with content.)
I just haven’t had anything that I wanted to / felt I could say on my blog.
So, to those of you who actually go to my blog address to check whether or not I’ve posted something new, I have to, first, apologize, and second, reprimand you for not using a feed reader like Google Reader. (Seriously, if you read more than a few blogs, you really need to use Google Reader or some other similar feed reader.) You’ve probably stopped even checking to see if there’s been anything new since, well, there hasn’t been.
The past several months have been…interesting. I feel as though, in many ways, I’m turning some sort of corner. There’s nothing major that I can point to and say that my life is better or worse. There’s no inciting incident to say that, somewhere, there’s something big, important, terrible, or life-altering. My day-to-day activities haven’t changed much.
My status in life hasn’t changed much. I’m still middle class. I’m still single. Still balding. Still slightly overweight. Still love to shop. Still have credit card debt and student loans. I still cook. I still have and play with and love my dog. I still go to work.
But despite the similarities of my day-to-day, week-after-week existence, I feel as though my priorities are starting to shift a little. Again, nothing major, but things just seem to be slotting together slightly differently than they did before. For example:
I don’t really enjoy watching TV all that much anymore. Lost has nearly ended it’s run. The Biggest Loser only has two more weeks left in the season. Glee continues to be hit or miss (with far more misses than hits…although tonight’s episode was fantastic. It actually made me a little teary…but that’s nothing new. I’m a crier when it comes to sappy emotionality). I’m not interested in watching any new shows or getting invested in anything new.
I’m eating out way less than I used to, and I’m not missing it all that much. I’m bringing my lunch to work every day, and eating at my desk rather than getting food at the cafeteria. My grocery bill has gone way down through no particular effort put forth on my part. I’ve become a little more okay with eating the same thing for three or four days in a row. I don’t find myself craving foods the way I used to.
My spending has just stopped, again through no major effort on my part. I have practically no desire at all to go shopping. For clothes, for musical instruments, for studio equipment, for electronic gadgets. I’ve saved more money in the last six weeks than I did in the whole of 2009–but I’m not trying. It’s just kind of…happening. I actually had to force myself to go out and buy some new tennis shoes this week because my old ones finally fell apart. I can’t remember I actually let my shoes fall apart before buying a new pair.
I’ve found myself using the things I’ve already bought more thoroughly. I’m making due with what I’ve got more than I ever have before in my life. I’ve been puttering around the house without the TV on as background noise. I’m making my bed.
These are all little things that didn’t used to be part of my repertoire, but have now just settled into my life. The funny thing is that, overall, I’m rather ambivalent toward it all. I don’t really have feelings about these minor differences one way or the other. They’re neither good or bad. They just are.
And I don’t know what to make of it all. I think, if I had to consolidate these disparate thoughts into a single unifying thread it would be this: I find myself wanting less…that is to say that I find myself less-frequently wanting something I don’t have. I don’t know if I’m becoming more contented with my life, or if I have actually gotten what I want. Or maybe, I’m finally starting to come to peace with the fact that getting my wants fulfilled doesn’t necessarily equal happiness any more than not getting my wants fulfilled had to equal unhappiness.
Because of my life detour through the pothole-ridden road of the performing arts, I feel like I got started on my "grown-up" life later than most. Perhaps this routine that I’ve established is what it’s like for "normal" people most of the time. I’m still an emotional person, and hope I always will be. But it feels as though the dynamic range of my emotions has been reduced. I’m becoming accustomed to routine, and am learning not to abhor it. I’m actually rather learning to enjoy it.
I realize this is a strange blog post…but I’ve been in a strange place. It’s not good. It’s not bad. Maybe this is "normal," if such a thing actually exists. I just know that, while I’m in this weird phase of my life, whether it be temporary, transitional, or becomes entrenched in my life, it doesn’t really make for coherent and interesting blog posts.
So, until then, here’s a video that’s so cute it’ll make your ovaries essplode.
I promise I won’t overload this blog with puppy videos, but I had one more I wanted to share. (Apologies to all the folks on Facebook and Twitter who saw this already. This is for those folks who visit my blog, but don’t do the social networking thing. (HI MOM!)
This was Luke at the dog park today. Such a model of grace.
In 2003, shortly after I graduated from college (for the first time), I was hired to work at a theatre in southern Utah called Tuacahn. I was hired to be a mud person in the production of The Wizard of Oz, and as third half-naked priest from the left in The King and I. Because I’m so very Asian.
It’s a beautiful outdoor amphitheater that seats over 2,000 people. Being set in the southwest, Tuacahn plays up its cowboy old-west heritage. In order to help turn this massive theatre in the middle of nowhere into more of a destination experience, they also offer a chuck wagon dinner each night, where folks who have bought their tickets to see the show can get a meal and enjoy the scenery. One of my other jobs at Tuacahn was to perform in the little Preshow performance that took place on a small stage up in the plaza outside the theatre during the chuck wagon dinner.
The show was extremely hokey, and not a whole lot of fun to do (which could sum up about 80% of my career as a performer, if I’m being honest), and so, after about a month of doing the show, I decided that I wanted to make a Christopher Guest-style mocumentary about the whole preshow experience. Of course, I didn’t have any filmmaking resources, so I bought a small consumer DV camera, and pirated a copy of Adobe Premiere, (which I had never used before in my life) and I started interviewing the cast of the Preshow each night after the Preshow performance, but before the main stage show started.
It wasn’t long before word got around, and folks were clambering to take part. You know how it is with performers. As soon as they get a whiff of attention, they start cycling around overhead like vultures over so much carrion. I was interviewing costumers, stage managers, and friends who were in town to watch the show as audience members. About two weeks before the end of the summer season, during which I would be leaving Tuacahn to drive to Tennessee to work at the Black Bear Jamboree, I took the hours and hours of footage, cut it all together in about three days of work, fitting it in before or after the show.
My biggest challenge is that I had only interviewed the 40 people in the casts. I hadn’t really asked a lot of leading questions, nor had I staged most of what happened. Everyone there knew it wasn’t serious, and they fed me with a lot of great material, but there just wasn’t a unifying thread to the whole thing. I cut together most of what I needed, shot a bit of B-Roll, and asked the "assistant director" who did a lot of the interviewing to do a bit of voiceover work. I was then able to craft a rough story out of the footage I had.
I wasn’t perfect. I didn’t have good audio equipment, so the audio is noisy. It wasn’t a controlled set, so people were always walking into the frame. I wasn’t familiar with the editing software, and there are a couple of continuity errors or incorrect B-Roll, but when it was done, I was pretty proud of it. More surprisingly, someone (not me) convinced the theater management to let us show the finished product during the closing night cast party.
I was one of the proudest moments of my life. There were probably 100 folks at this party who watched it, and the film got a standing ovation at the end. I decided then and there that I wanted to be a filmmaker. And like all of my big, life-changing decisions, I stuck with it for the 20 minutes it took me to drive from the theatre back to the hotel I was staying in for the night. But I’ve always looked back on this little project with fondness. It’s not perfect. It’s full of inside jokes that most folks wouldn’t get. But it was something I accomplished that was well-received. And as an artist, that’s always a great thing.
I decided it was time to put the thing up on the interwebs for posterity. I still have a DVD master of the thing, but the source tapes and files have long since disappeared over the years. I just wanted to make sure that, if I ever had my house burn down, that I wouldn’t forever lose this thing. So, I am proud to present, Preshow: The Mocumentary.
So, as many of you probably know, just recently, a group of popular singers got together to remake the old Michael Jackson & Lionel Richie song "We Are the World" in an effort to raise money for Haiti…a laudable goal. However, the resulting product was…well…judge for yourself.
First, for reference sake, the original:
Then, by comparison, the remake. (You’ll have to fast forward to about 1:30 to get into the actual video and past the telemarketing)
Wow. Just wow.
Both casts had groups of people who could actually sing well, and some who couldn’t. (Bob Dylan? Really?) But at least the ones who couldn’t sing were actually talented musicians and songwriters. But the balance between the two is way off.
Let’s look at the list of really talented singers…whether or not you like their work, you can’t deny that they can really sing:
Old Cast:
Lionel Richie Stevie Wonder Kenny Rogers James Ingram Billy Joel Dionne Warwick Michael Jackson Kenny Loggins Steve Perry Huey Lewis Cyndi Lauper Ray Charles
New Cast:
Celine Dion Jennifer Hudson Pink Josh Groban Jamie Foxx Usher Adam Levine (Maroon 5)…kinda
I was going to list the really bad singers, from each one, but I realized that I don’t know 80% of the bad singers from the newer version.
But to really tell the quality of the productions apart, look at what happens when everyone is singing. 1984′s Quincy Jones was able to wrangle a room full of egos into singing together, blending, and not trampling all over the song. 2010′s Quincy Jones is apparently too old and enfeebled to wrangle a room full of far-less-talented, but far larger egos into any sort of cohesive unit. It’s like everyone in the room decided that they were going to sing a solo, dammit, even if it didn’t fit, stepped on someone else, or just plain sounded bad.
And then look at the folks in the chorus of the new version who didn’t get to sing solos: Brandy, Natalie Cole, Harry Connick Jr., India Arie, Gladys Knight, Katharine McPhee, Jordin Sparks, Robin Thicke, Rob Thomas, Ann, Brian, and Nancy Wilson.
Also, the 1985 version didn’t need autotune. Can someone please explain to me why, in the name of all that’s good and holy, they let Lil’ Wayne and T-Pain "sing?" If you can’t sing without autotune, then don’t sing. Don’t even come to the studio. It was just painful. And what’s with that moron, Wyclef Jean, who doesn’t even try to sing, but just scream-yodels the sustain of every single note. Or was that Akon? I can’t tell. (I didn’t mind the "rap" in the middle of the new version, but the rest of it…disaster.)
25 years later, and I was able to watch the original version of this song and recognize almost every single one of the performers, despite the fact that the original was recorded when I was only seven years old. I didn’t know who most of these people were then. But nearly every single one of them went on to have long, successful careers. Many of them still have decent careers…those who aren’t dead, anyway. Many could easily be considered musical legends. I don’t even know who 2/3rds of the performers are in the new version, but I’m fairly certain that Miley Cyrus, Julio Iglacias, Lil-Wayne, or Nicole Scherizingeramalamadingdong McTrashyPants from the Pussycat Dolls won’t still be performing 20 years from now the next time they remake this song.
Musically, there’s just no comparison. It’s amazing. 25 years of absolutely stunning development in studio technology, and instead of getting better, we’ve just flushed an entire generation of musical talent down the drain thanks to Autotune.
Hey 2010 cast of "We Are the World," I appreciate your intent, I really do. But that craptastic version of a not-particularly-great song to begin with isn’t going to get me to open up my wallet for Haiti. I think I’ll just go and download Jennifer Hudson’s performance from the telethon instead. At least girlfriend actually knows how to sing.
So, remember when I moved into my new apartment three weeks ago? (Man, it seems like about a year ago). Well, things are all put away, wired, hung (mostly) and set up correctly in the apartment now. So, I decided that, rather than using my Overly Expensive Camera™ to take pictures which I would then have to sort through, develop, and edit before uploading and captioning, I would use said Overly Expensive Camera™ to take a video which I could narrate and then post. Plus, I wanted to experiment with the video portion of my camera a bit. (It actually makes me want to film another mockumentary like the one I did when I was at Tuacahn in the summer of 2003 that is perhaps one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever done artistically in my life even if I say so myself.
Anyway, below is my short virtual tour of the new apartment. Please excuse some of the minor clutter and remember, I am a single man who lives alone. When company comes, I don’t leave the toilet seat up. I swear.
In November 2003, Shawn, Emily, and I had Thanksgiving dinner at my apartment in Sevierville, Tennessee. Shawn and I had gone shopping a couple of nights before, I had done most of the cooking, and we ate ourselves sick. We had to have our dinner before Thanksgiving, since we had to perform shows all day on Thanksgiving day proper. In mid-meal, there was a knock on the door, and I got to learn, first hand, what Brown could do for me. It was the UPS man with a box for me. (I’m really fighting the urge to put a tasteless joke about a big package from the UPS man…and I’m failing.) Anyway, inside this large package (ahem) was a little invention that changed my life forever. The ever-blessed TiVo Series 2.
Since that day, I have never been without a TiVo in my life…except for that truly painful four months after I left hell Tennessee where I lived at home with my mom in Michigan. It wasn’t the living with my mom that was painful, it’s that a) my parents to this day still don’t have a DVR, and b) my mother is incapable of correctly channel surfing when commercials are on. She’s like a little kid who sees a bright shiny–she just flips to another channel and gets engrossed until a commercial comes on on that channel, then she’ll flip to a third channel, etc. The woman has never watched an entire television show from beginning to end in her whole adult life. It’s enough to drive me up the wall. (HI MOM!)
Anyway, since that wonderful day 6 1/2 (!) years ago when I waltzed from the world of the commercial watchers into the much more sophisticated and urbane world of the television time shifters, I nearly never watch commercials. If I can’t generate that satisfying little "bloop, bloop, bloop" sound and fast forward though 5 minutes of mind-meltingly stupid television advertising, then as far as I’m concerned, I’d rather not watch TV at all.
Every great once in a while, though, I run out of things to watch on my TiVo. It doesn’t happen that often, but with the truly abysmal quality of most of the primetime television on this season, I will often find myself flipping the channel to Food Network or HGTV and just letting it play in the background while I cook, eat, or pack up my life for the 5,000th time into boxes and prepare to move once again not that I’m bitter.
It was during one of these times of television background noise that a certain commercial was brought to my attention. And, my fellow Americans, It. Was. NOT. Okay.
Perhaps you have seen this commercial. It contains a couple of little animated bears hocking Charmin toilet paper. They’ve, apparently, been in a whole series of commercials, and they look like this:
Cute, right? Except in this particular commercial, a mother bear catches her young cub looking through a telescope at the ass of another bear who is sitting up in a tree and who, apparently , has toilet paper remnants stuck to said ass. There are many, many things wrong with this commercial. First, a voyeuristic child is using a telescope to spy on an adult going to the bathroom. And apparently, is getting so up close and personal that he can notice mini TP dingleberries in the adult’s butt hair. Secondly, the kid’s mother is RIGHT THERE. Wake up, mama bear! I don’t know about you, but if I had a kid who was so fascinated with watching the bathroom habits of the neighbors with a telescope, I’d have that kid in front of either a psychotherapist or priest so fast it would make his head spin. But no, you just sit there and think it’s cute. "Ah look honey. Little cubby’s got a sick fascination with the neighbor’s toilet time. Better call Dr. Freud!"
Apparently, this is not the only commercial where Charmin thinks it’s okay to go probing (ahem) through the annals (AHEM) of toilet paper posterior problems. Thanks to YouTube, I have since seen a mother chasing her cub (who, by the way, has the most annoying giggle ever recorded) around the forest with a dustpan and broom to remove "leftover pieces of toilet paper." Call me kooky, but somehow, I think that a hand broom and a dustpan aren’t really the best tools to take care of the problem of left over toilet paper.
And then there’s the commercial that spawned this screen capture, which I found by typing in the words "Charmin Bears":
Yikes. I don’t exactly know what’s going on in this picture, I’m pretty sure this is probably how most gay porn films start. "Hey coach, do I look like I have any extra toilet paper on my butt?"
Here’s my question, though: Is this really a problem? I mean, let’s be honest here. I’ve got a very screwed up digestive system. I visit the bathroom more times a day than anyone I know. I can manage to go through a truly heroic amount of toilet paper in a week. I’ve never had problems with leftover toilet paper sticking where it doesn’t belong. And I don’t use Charmin. I use Cottonelle. Exclusively. And I have for a long time. And I got to thinking: who, exactly, are these commercials trying to reach. What’s the intended audience? I’m set in my toilet paper ways. And I’m certainly not being swayed into switching by watching animated ursine fetishists.
Then there’s this:
Seriously, Charmin? SERIOUSLY? I’m sorry, but I’ve been using dry toilet paper for nearly 30 years now. I’m not going to start buying what are, in essence, baby wipes, even if the moron you’ve got doing your product demo is so mentally challenged he can’t get toothpaste off his hand with toilet tissue. For experimentation’s sake, I was able to get it off my hand in a single swipe, and my skin didn’t even taste like toothpaste afterwards. What’s your problem, dimwit?
All of this contemplation about toilet paper got my mind going. First, I needed to gather some information. Then, I needed to parse and mull on said information. Then I needed to take a good long look at why the subject of toilet paper preferences fascinates me so deeply and investigate the myriad of other things I could have spent my mental currency on that would have made a positive difference to the world or my personal life. But instead, I wrote a quick post in the middle last week to get some information about toilet paper. And I learned some interesting things:
When it comes to toilet paper, there are generally two kinds of people: Those who have a single brand that they stand behind with a religious furvor, and those who buy whatever happens to be cheapest.
Those people who buy specific toilet papers only because they’re cheap are horrible, horrible people, and we can no longer be friends.
Surprisingly, Angel Soft seems to be the most popular brand. I don’t get it. Compared to Cottonelle or the TP of the creepy bears, Angel soft just doesn’t compare.
One ply toilet paper is universally loathed, and the only people who think it is appropriate to buy, even despite it’s very low cost, are the people responsible for purchasing supplies for companies who obviously don’t give a rat’s ass (no pun intended) about the physical well-being of their employees. In fact, my employer, whose name rhymes with Nicroloft, buys toilet paper that is simultaneously so thin that you can see your own fingerprints through it and so roughly processed that it will give you splinters. I’m sorry, but if I wanted to rub wood pulp across my sphincter, I’d go outside, pull down my pants, and rub my butt up against a pine tree. For someone who has to go to the restroom as often as I do, (warning: overshare ahead) I have actually had the toilet paper at work make me bleed. Now, when someone says, "that really chaps my ass," I know first hand what they means.
Toilet paper should always be hung with the leading squares coming up over the top of the roll. ALWAYS. If you do it any other way you’re wrong. If you ever come into my house and turn the toilet paper over so it’s coming out of the bottom of the roll, you’re forever uninvited from my house. Overhand only.
And finally, for the service of those readers who mentioned this in their comments, I would like to provide you a few rules about toilet paper etiquette which you must follow, at the risk of having your toilet paper privileges taken away forever.
If you finish a roll of toilet paper, it is your responsibility to replace the roll of toilet paper. Failure to do so means that there will be no place in heaven for you in the next life. Fail to replace the roll and go to Hell. It’s that simple.
Replacing the roll means taking off the old paper tube, and replacing the roll completely on the dispenser. It does not mean setting it on the counter. It does not mean placing it on the floor. It, under no circumstance, means simply placing it on top of the empty tube which your lazy rear end left in the dispenser. Failure to fully replace the empty roll will result in severe beatings.
Please, for the love of all things good an holy, PLEASE leave at least one extra roll in the bathroom at all times. Do NOT keep all your extra toilet paper out in the hallway closet. Because if I run out TP in your house, and there’s not an extra roll in the bathroom, I will walk out of your bathroom with my pants around my ankles doing that bent-knee wide stance waddle so as not to cause any smearing. Then I will waddle into your living room, sit down, and start dragging my butt across the carpet like a dog with worms. You have been warned.
Now you know.
So, what did my mental foray into the world of toilet tissue teach me? First, that toilet tissue is very personal, and that the way I do it is right, and the way everyone else does it is wrong unless they do it just like me. That being cheap when it comes to toilet paper will only end in heartache. That it’s really hard to find a decent way to refer to your own anus as a "Brown-Eyed Susan" without making it sound forced. That the Charmin bears are freaky, and more than a little creepy, and most of all…
Since that day, I have never been without a TiVo in my life…except for that truly painful four months after I left 
![[charmin+bears.png]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_p1OBNr1Hz14/SfkkD1tbRLI/AAAAAAAAAPA/g70TSljeK6A/s1600/charmin%2Bbears.png)
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