Brown Dogs Farm: Totally Fruity Hot Sauces

I love spicy food. The spicier the better. Since having Covid in 2020 and losing my senses of taste and smell for over a year, and never having those senses completely return, I took my love of a little spice on my food to the next level.

Over the course of the past few years, I have developed an infatuation with super hot peppers… you know, the ones that break one million on the Scoville scale. Ghost Peppers, Scorpion Peppers, 7-Pot Peppers, Carolina Reapers… these are the things of my food-fueled dreams! And, to be honest, living in Iowa makes satisfying my desires a bit… difficult. Iowa seems to be one of those places where many people feel that black peppercorn is too spicy; this pretty much sums up most (but not all) the Midwest.

When I moved here, I almost instantly researched hot sauces made right here in Iowa. I found three companies that are local to Iowa and give access to an easy way to purchase their products online. I’ve ordered a sampling of sauces from each of them, and I’m going to give a little review of each sauce.

First up, Brown Dogs Farm.

On Brown Dogs Farm’s website, they were selling a set of mini bottles (1.76oz each) that I thought would be a great way to sample all of their sauces. The only regret I ended up having over ordering this set was the fact that I went through the small bottles way too fast!

The folks at Brown Dogs Farm seem to think that spicy sauces need some fruit to complete them… and for them, it seems to work. Even their standard “Hot Sauce” gives off fruity vibes… although the only “fruit” in this sauce is green and hot peppers and tomatoes; maybe it’s the brown sugar and lime juice?

The only two of these sauces that I didn’t love instantly were the mild Jalapeno Green Apple and the hot Cherry Rhubarb Reaper… but my feelings toward those sauces changed by the ends of the bottles. I’m going to give a little breakdown of each sauce.

I’m going to start with the one simply called “Hot Sauce.” This is actually just a really good table sauce – you know, the kind of sauce that kind of goes with anything. It has a nice low-level of heat. One of the things that I really like about the sauces from Brown Dogs Farm is they aren’t overly vinegary. I like vinegary sauce on occasion, like Buffalo or Louisiana sauces (or Tabasco especially the scorpion version); these sauces are great in bloody marys or in red beers or on the occasional wing. For most foods, I prefer a sauce where the taste of the peppers or other ingredients aren’t overpowered by vinegar, and Brown Dog Farm’s Hot Sauce fits that bill. This sauce (like all of BDF’s sauces), leans into being fruity tasting. It’s a slightly sweet sauce with nice tomato accents and a little heat.

The first time I tasted the Jalapeno Green Apple Sauce, I thought it tasted like apple sauce with a little bit of jalapeno blended in. I didn’t really care for it in a hot sauce kind of way. By the time I finished the small bottle, I thought it tasted like apple sauce with a little bit of jalapeno blended in… and I liked it. The flavor combination works, and it works well. When I first tried the sauce, I wondered where the use of this sauce makes sense. At the end of the bottle, I came to the realization that any savory food that goes well with apples is a great thing to use this sauce with. Roasted pork or pork chops, fried potatoes, chicken, sausages… there are a lot of foods out there that would pair well with this lightly sweet, slightly spicy sauce.

I’m pretty sure the next three sauces are what Brown Dogs Farms is hanging its hat on. Habanero Peach was a very pleasant surprise… as were the Ghost Pear and Ghost Pineapple sauces. What I really liked about the Habanero Peach Sauce isn’t just the nice sweetness that comes from the peach, but the incredible savory kick I got from this sauce. The habanero pepper gives this sauce a nice heat… I’d say medium to low-level hot on a typical hot sauce scale. I love habanero sauces when mixed with a nice, sweet fruit, but the savory undertones in this sauce really make it stand out. Scouring the ingredients to see what could make this sauce so good to me, I discovered that mustard is on that ingredients list and may be the reason this sauce makes me so happy.

The Ghost Pear and Ghost Pineapple are quite similar to each other. Although both sauces are pretty sweet, and neither of these sauces really seem significantly hotter that the Peach Habanero, the pineapple version did have a slightly savory component as well… but this sauce doesn’t have the mustard of the habanero sauce, so I’m clueless where that component comes from. I really didn’t get nearly as much pear and pineapple from these two sauces as I got just “sweet”. The Peach Habanero, on the other hand, really did taste like peach. All three sauces are well worth a try.

Finally, we come to the Cherry Rhubarb Reaper Sauce. Here we are at the second sauce in Brown Dogs Farm’s lineup that I was like, “What in the hell would you use this sauce on?!?” This sauce has a really nice heat! Carolina Reaper in just about anything will give a really nice heat. I wouldn’t even consider thinking of this sauce as a “super hot”, but it does have a nice burn that builds with each bite. What kind of threw me off with this sauce wasn’t the heat or the smidge of sweetness. What kind of threw me off with this sauce was the incredible tartness of the cherries and rhubarb. I was really struggling to imagine foods this sauce would go well with. And yet again, by the end of the bottle and after giving this sauce a go with some different foods, this is actually a sauce I’d keep around for regular use. It’s amazing on a burger with cream cheese. It rocks on any fruit-based dessert… think apple pie or peach cobbler. If you can’t imagine adding a nice sweet, tart heat to a dessert, you probably shouldn’t be reading my blog. If a hot sauce you could easily use on desserts (slather some on vanilla ice cream and you won’t be disappointed) is something you are looking for, or can at least imagine, this may be the sauce for you. I’m not saying that Cherry Rhubarb Reaper Sauce is just a dessert hot sauce, though, because this sauce would be amazing in small amounts on grilled cod or as a dip for fried shrimp (or even chicken tenders or nuggets). I added a little to some ranch dressing and went to town on an order of French fries.

I really don’t know anything about the folks at Brown Dogs Farm, and I’m definitely got getting anything compensation-wise for doing this review, but if you’re looking for something new in the way of hot sauces and your regular sauces are starting to get a little boring, the sauces from this place are definitely worth a try. There are some Iowans who did right at Brown Dogs Farm. Check out what they have to offer at Brown Dogs Farm. If you do give these sauces a try, I’d love to know what you think. Comments on my posts are always open… except to spambots, which I remove when I can. I may not always respond, but I almost always see them and appreciate the feedback.

Now, on to another hot sauces that I want to try and review. There’s like seven or eight sauces from the next Iowa company I’m going to review. Seven or eight hot sauces that I have to try… yes, sometimes things in life go just a little bit right…

Iowa for Beginners…

So, I’m finally out of Nebraska.

Finally!

Where am I now? Well, I’m going to surmise that you can guess by the title of this post. Yeah… now I’m in Iowa. Not exactly the huge cultural change I was hoping for, but thus far, it’s not too bad. Exchange the beef for pork and the corn for… uh… corn, and it’s pretty similar here in Iowa compared to what it was in Nebraska. Iowa does, however, have a few advantages.

I like the community here a bit better than the Nebraska community I was in. There are bike/walking paths EVERYWHERE! There was one path for biking/walking in the western Nebraskan community where I lived. Here, you can go almost anywhere on a designated bike/walking path. If I so desired, I could ride my bike all over the state of Iowa without having to worry even the slightest about getting hit by a car. I almost feel like I moved from a backwards, dying community to thriving, progressive community with outdoor amenities and hope for the future. It’s almost weird, seeing as how Iowa and Nebraska are similar in so many ways, yet how different the views are here in Iowa regarding bike/walking trails. It’s like Iowa has figured out that a good trail system leads to less vehicular traffic on the roads and better traffic flow (they use a lot of roundabouts here as well), more safety for cyclists and pedestrians, increased visitation to areas of natural beauty that every community has to some degree, and a healthier overall citizen population. Some communities actually want to attract active people, I guess. Advantage, Iowa.

One thing I have an issue with in Iowa (you knew there’d be at least one, right?) is the drivers. Iowa drivers are not fun to be on the road with. In Nebraska, people knew how to use cruise control. I don’t think people in Iowa know how to use cruise control, and they have a severe dislike of anyone passing them. A constant struggle here in Iowa is being able to peacefully pass someone.

So, on my morning commute, most of my time is spent on a four-lane highway. There are not a ton of cars on the highway at 6:30am, but there is some traffic. The speed limit is 65 mph on the highway I take, and I usually set my cruise control somewhere between 65 and 70 mph. Every morning there will be that one pick-up truck or SUV poking along at like 60 mph. So as I approach them, I signal into the passing lane and slowly start to go around them… and then they speed up. Now I’m in the passing lane but they are slowly pulling away from me. I let them get a couple of car lengths ahead of me, and I get out of the passing lane… only to be quickly on their butt again because they are once again going 60 mph. This entire process will happen two or three times before I get pissed off and gun it, passing them at like 90 mph. They still speed up as I’m passing, but they aren’t as willing to get a ticket as I am at that point and I can usually get by.

Now, I honestly don’t know if these other drivers are just clueless as to what they are doing or if they are just asshats. Given my beliefs about other people and my disposition, I’m leaning towards the asshat description. And speaking of asshats, we also have an abundance of the passing-lane-douche-patrol here in Iowa. You know the ones, they get over in the passing lane driving the speed limit and they refuse to move out of that lane. They see themselves as part of some kind of citizen police force whose sole purpose on the road is to prevent anyone from going over the speed limit. For these people, you have to pass them on the right, and every time I pass one of them, my mind hears them screaming at me in Gomer Pyle’s voice, “Citizen’s Arrest… Citizen’s Arrest!”

Look here, Gomer Pyle, your job is never to enforce your concepts of speeding law on others. If you want to enforce laws, quit your day job and go into law enforcement and then maybe you’ll realize the utter waste of time it is for real law enforcement to pull someone over for going five mph over the speed limit. You’ll quickly learn there are bigger fish to fry then the person going 60 in a 55. I know this is a tough concept for you, but the left lane is called the “passing” lane for a reason; it’s to be used for passing. If you are just hanging out in the passing lane and you’re not passing anyone, you are actually breaking the law just as much (if not more so) than someone going slightly over the posted speed. Scoot the hell over and let us by… or we’ll have to pull a Gomer Pyle on you!

“Citizen’s Arrest… Citizen’s Arrest!”

Other than the driving, everything here in Iowa is pretty peachy. Yep, peachy keen!

Well…

… except for the food. The food here in Iowa is slightly bland. I like things a little spicy, and I’m quickly coming to the realization that Iowa may be the state with the least spicy food of any state in the Union. But, alas, the lack of all things spicy is the topic for a future post, because I’m very passionate about all things spicy and I’m going to really want to dive into that bad boy. I’ve even ordered hot sauces from some Iowa hot sauce companies to see how they stack up to some of my favorite sauces. I’m excited (and slightly terrified at the prospect of being severely disappointed) to try some of these Iowa hot sauces… and I will definitely let you know if there are some sauces here that you need to be adding to your bucket list of hot sauces to try. And if you don’t have a bucket list of hot sauces you want to try, maybe you should be moving along to a different blog… I don’t need readers who hog the passing lane and don’t like spicy things!

Losing Weight When You’re Old…

I’ve lost a significant amount of weight over the course of the last couple of years. In August of 2020, I weighed 210 pounds. I’m 5’7″, so I was in the obese category. I’ve been short, fat and ugly for as long as I can remember, so I decided to do something about the one part of that trio that I can actually do something about.

I joined Noom and I started taking what I eat seriously. I’ve dieted before, and I’ve lost weight before, but Noom helped me change the way I think about eating. Although I still am able to eat things that aren’t necessarily good for me, I don’t eat nearly as much as I used to at one sitting, and I don’t crave crap that will put more weight back on.

To be honest, getting COVID helped. I started Noom in August, 2020, and the Rona got me in October, 2020. I completely lost my senses of taste and smell for months, and it’s much easier to eat healthy when you can’t taste or smell anything. By the time my lost senses started to make their pathetic return, I had made my eating practices pretty habitual. There were (and still are) lots of salads if we go out to eat. Lean proteins, vegetables, and rice are pretty common in the dishes I prepare at home. Even the wife tries to cook meals that are healthier, and the one kid we have left at home is usually fairly on board with the healthy eating.

My lowest weight at the end of my Noom program, which hit in April of 2021, was 145 pounds. I hadn’t weighed 145 pounds since grade school (and I’m talking like probably pre-sixth grade). I was around 170 pounds when I entered my freshman year of high school. What the hell was wrong with me?

A short aside on Noom: Noom worked for me, but I took it seriously and was 100% committed to following the program. If I had half-assed it or given up during one of the many plateaus I experienced during my weight loss journey, I know it wouldn’t have worked. Did I ever fall off the wagon and cheat? Hell yeah, I did! But the next day, I was right back on the program and I didn’t beat myself up because of a momentary weakness. I would never recommend any weight loss program to anyone who isn’t committed to making it happen. And diets are stupid, because they create temporary results that stop when the diet ends. You really have to change the way you eat on a daily basis… forever, and that’s not nearly as horrible as it sounds.

So, since my all-time low weight as an adult, I started doing some regular weight lifting. Nothing serious, but I’m consistent. I’m not trying to be a muscle head and I don’t have megarexia. I am by no stretch of the imagination “buff.” I have a little more muscle than I have had through the rest of adulthood. My weight bounces around in the mid-150s, and I’m pretty okay with that. I feel like I’m probably the healthiest I have been since, again, grade school.

Here’s the thing about losing a relatively large amount of weight, much of which you have carried around for most of your adult life: your skin stretches. The large majority of my weight was carried in my stomach. I felt like I looked like a pregnant dude for as long as I can remember. I’m guessing that, if I had considered trying to be less gross earlier in life, my skin would have firmed back up. Young skin is more supple. Seeing as how I was in my 50s before I decided to take my fitness semi-seriously, my skin isn’t very supple or elastic. It’s not tightening; my skin just hangs there. And there’s a lot of skin. And, yes, my hanging-skin cummerbund bothers me!

It’s weird; I wanted to lose weight to be healthier, but I also to be more confident in my body. I’ve always had horrible body image, and that has affected so many things in my life in a negative way. Confidence is the key to success. Lack of confidence will lead to some pretty crappy jobs and a career path that is less than financially rewarding. I had hoped to turn that around somewhat.

Now, although a lot of the fat is gone, I have all the hanging skin in it’s place. I still have to avoid looking at myself in the mirror after a shower until I get a shirt on. If I happen to need to pick something up off the floor and I happen to have my shirt off at the same time, I need to avoid looking in the general region of my mid-section. If I forget about “not looking” and accidentally catch a glance, it’s like The Blob is trying to detach itself from my stomach.

It’s horrifying.

So, the huge gain in self-confidence and positive body image that I was hoping for weren’t found on this journey. But I can tell you this: the small boost in my opinion of my appearance (with shirt on, of course) feels so much better to me than any food on this planet will ever taste. So instead of ordering a Big Mouth Burger and fries at Chili’s, I’ll opt for something off of the Guiltless Grill Menu. Instead of close to 2000 calories for a meal, I’d be looking at closer to 500 calories, and it fills me up without being stuffed.

And as much as the loose-skin blob on my belly bothers me, it’s still better than having that horror-movie abomination filled with fat…

So, My Dad Died…

December 3rd, 2021. Almost December 4th. Right around midnight. He had been in a car accident earlier in the day and his heart couldn’t take it. He was 75 years old.

He was probably the only person who read this blog every time I posted. He was a glutton for boring punishment.

Although it’s been two-and-a-half months, I still am having issues processing it. It’s like his death isn’t real. It’s like I cannot imagine that I will never see him again, or talk to him again. No more twenty-second phone conversations with him when I would call him and my mom.

He had a stroke a few years back and talking on the phone wasn’t something he enjoyed after that. He had trouble hearing and he was hard to understand on the phone. If he answered the phone, he’d ask how I was, tell me briefly about any local people who he thought I would know who had died (he didn’t seem to realize that I haven’t lived back in Montana for almost 30 years and I really didn’t know that many people back then… I almost never knew or remembered any of the deceased he mentioned ), and pass me off to my mom.

I have so many questions for him that will never be answered… questions that I didn’t even know existed until now… questions that I would probably never ask if he were alive, but now that he’s gone, I want to ask.

Was he happy with his life? Did the good times outweigh the bad? Was he satisfied with how everything turned out for him? What, if anything, did he wish had gone differently? I don’t think there would have ever been the perfect time to ask him any of those questions, but if I knew that the last time I talked to him was going to be the last time I talked to him, I may have found the courage to ask. He was the husband to my mother and the father to my brother and sister. He was the grandfather to my sons and my nieces and nephews. He was my dad. Was his role in our family one he basked in, or did he view it as more of an obligation? He was my dad, and I will always love him. My hope is that he was happy with his life when he died. I want for that so much…

Was he proud of me?

That’s a big one right there. And like most of the other questions that I have, I’m not sure I really want to know the answer.

I still have the card/money holder that he gave me at my college graduation. He wasn’t much for writing notes or letters, but he wrote a nice note inside my graduation card.

“Congratulations

Rich, you are the first in our family with a degree. Be proud and know that I’m proud of you. You didn’t do bad coming from a couple of poor farm-raised parents, eh? Now life really starts. It’s all up to you from now on. Be happy and enjoy!

Love, Dad”

That was thirty years ago. Was he just as proud after thirty years of choices that have led me to where I am now?

Dad would always brag to me about my brother. My brother has busted his ass for years to become successful running his own business, and he did it without a college degree. Dad was proud of him, without a doubt.

Dad was proud of my sister, too, the way she took classes while working a full-time job and raising kids to get the certifications necessary to advance in her career.

Then there’s me and my four-year degree, changing jobs every few years, never really making that good of a wage, never really advancing. Several years ago, I remember my dad saying to me:

“You should really learn a trade. You’ll never have trouble finding a good job if you know a trade.”

That kind of makes me think that the pride he had for me when I graduated from college was shaded a bit by the fact that I couldn’t get a really good paying job. That kind of makes me think that he might have been disappointed…

Questions I will never really have the answers to are all that I can think of when I think of my dad now. Questions that I may not want to know the truthful answers to…

At some point, my dad being gone is going to hit me… I think? I hope it does, to be quite frank. I’d really like to have a meltdown and sob uncontrollably for a bit… and then say goodbye once and for all. Then I hope I would just be left with the memories, and I hope I could focus mostly on all of the great ones.

Right now, I’m just hoping that there was some kid that called back home to small town Montana a couple of months ago, and that kid got his or her dad on the phone. The dad asks how the kid is doing, the kid says “fine” and the dad proceeds to talk about the locals that the dad thinks the kid knows who have died. I hope my dad was mentioned… and I hope the kid remembered him…

Stuck in the Past…

The wife and I have gone to a couple of high school basketball games recently. Our kids aren’t exactly overly athletic, but our youngest plays a mean trap set in the pep band. “Screw sports, we’re here for the band”… yes, we are those parents. Anywho, being in a high school gymnasium filled with high school kids and obnoxious parents (we sit on the visiting team side, because the view of the band is better, and not many of those parents listen to the whole pre-recorded message about not yelling at the officials and using good sportsmanship and whatnot… because they are assholes living vicariously through their children… did I mention my kid is an awesome drummer… there’s not a lot of yelling at officials and calling other children horrible things when you’re living vicariously through a band kid) made me realize that I hated high school.

I don’t remember always hating high school. In fact, I remember, at certain points as an adult, wishing that I could go back to high school and deal with the lesser stresses of that time. There was a time in my life where I thought that my years in high school were the best years of my life (college SUCKED) and that life was all downhill from there. But being in a gym filled with high school kids and watching how they interact and stuff, I have tried searching my memory banks for positive experiences that happened before I entered the real world. I am drawing an absolute blank. I know I had to have laughed and enjoyed myself in high school… but I can’t think of any specific times that I really had fun. Fully positive experiences, not touched by shades of gray, had to exist, but I can’t remember them. I can’t remember a single time of joy.

I remember people, and I remember liking those people. I can remember doing thing with those people, and I’m pretty sure that fun was had, but I can’t remember the specifics of the fun. There always seems to be darkness associated with every event I can remember; maybe that’s just high school?

I think I remember almost every negative experience that I lived through in high school. School dances ended nightmarishly. Losing my starting middle-linebacker spot on the football team my senior year because I was too small is something that shaped my future drastically. Being teased a lot my freshman year because I had transferred from a small, rural school to the “big city” (population about 3000) for high school and being thought of as a geeky, outsider loser set some precedents that have followed me through life. I started trying to be extremely nice to everyone because I wanted everyone to like me, and I didn’t think liking me was possible if I wasn’t super nice. I focused on being “funny”, and that somewhat seemed to work, but humor turns as bitter as it’s owner and I have probably hurt some feelings with my, at times, deeply sarcastic humor. I remember being depressed, a lot, and kind of hating myself. These few things I’ve mentioned are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I remember not having any confidence in anything about myself. So, why can I remember vividly the negative, but I can’t find any tiny nuggets of the positive that must have been. It’s driving me nuts how my memory seems so selective. I want to remember the good stuff; maybe that would help overshadow the bad.

I have never gone to any of my high school class reunions, and there have been three (one every ten years since we graduated). I always kind of think about it, but the negative thoughts just overwhelm any desire I have to be back around people and things from that time in my life (even though I know some of those people are really good people). A former female classmate, before the most recent reunion, told me I needed to go because some my female classmates were interested in meeting my wife. Apparently, there was a group of females in my class who thought I was gay, and they couldn’t believe that I had actually married a woman. Because I didn’t date or have girlfriends or seem to express any interest in the opposite sex, I apparently came off as gay. So, it appears that having absolutely no self-confidence in one’s desirability, or in having anything to offer to those he is attracted to, puts off a very gay vibe. Nothing against those who are gay, but that is definitely not the vibe I was gunning for in high school. Maybe I would have had a more positive experience in high school if I were gay, but I kind of doubt that being a gay teenager in the late 80’s in small-town Montana would have been a joyride. Plus, dudes are just disgusting and gross… I could never be attracted to that.

So, now I have all of my negative memories plus I have the confidence-draining knowledge that a segment of my female peers thought I was gay. Not surprisingly, as a straight dude who was terrified of the opposite sex through my youth and young-adult life, this knowledge doesn’t make me feel any better about my past.

Every now and then, I have a glimmer of a positive memory, but then, it’s like, “Oh, I remember how that ended… that wasn’t good.” My high school memories are just clusters of stuff not ending well. I feel like being able to recover some of the positive memories might help to push the negative memories (that constantly interrupt my thoughts) out of my way. Maybe I need to find my old high school yearbooks and look through the writings in those… but I’m going to guess that they will be filled with old buddies jokingly calling me names and making fun of me before letting me know that we were going to have the “BEST SENIOR YEAR EVER!”. Or maybe there will be some handwritten gems from female classmates alluding to a homosexual future that I didn’t understand or even know that others were expecting from me?

Yeah, maybe I should just let sleeping yearbooks lie. Besides, college was way worse…

How to Become a Man…

I’m not a man. I’m a human male, but I am not now, nor have I ever considered myself to be, a man. Not being a man really used to bother me, but the older I get, the less it matters to me. Of course, I’m lying when I write that it matters less to me, but lying to ourselves about things we realize we are getting too old to change is part of getting old.

Oxford Languages defines a man as: “an adult male human being.” Yeah, that’s almost my definition of what I am too, but Oxford Languages and I have different definitions of what it takes to be a man. I think the definition of “manhood” maybe has something to do with it. Oxford Languages defines “manhood” as: “the state or period of being a man rather than a child.” Ahh… now I see it. I never truly passed on from childhood, so I don’t consider myself to be a man.

In order to become a man, in my opinion, you have to physically do something to pass from childhood to manhood. The journey is filled with the passing of a ritual or ritual-like way of life that converts a boy into a man. By passing through this ritual, the confidence necessary to hold the title of man can be achieved. There are many ways to achieve the status of “man”… I just never found a way to (or lacked a strong desire to) accomplish any of them.

Some guys are able to pass into manhood by serving in the military. In the military, some guys are broken down from their positions as children and then built back up into men. Other guys are just screwed up for life by joining the military; it messes up who they were and creates someone new that isn’t necessarily a man but is nothing like the person they were before (often not for the better).

My only attempt at the military was applying to get into either the Army or Navy ROTC program at the college I ended up attending (per my dad’s strong suggestion). I interviewed for both and was accepted by neither. They didn’t see me as military material, and so neither did I; that ended any interest I had in anything military.

Some boys are able to earn their way into manhood by the training they do for their future career field. Trade schools, apprenticeships, college, dedicated self-teaching – all of these potentially can serve as the ritual needed to gain manhood… depending on the career field that follows. The career field is just as important as the training. The career field must involve creating, fixing or maintaining something of value to other individuals or to society in general. Scientists, farmers, engineers, tradesmen, doctors, mechanics, craftsmen – men who can create or repair things with their hands or minds – these are real men. These men have specialized skills that they have developed through their training and experience, and these skills are necessary for a functioning society.

I got my college training in business. Nobody becomes a man because he got a business degree.

Some boys are able to find other rituals to pass through to gain the confidence necessary to become a man. Some do it through developing skills through hobbies or activities like sports or music where they have a passion (or a natural inclination), and they become masters of those skills to the point that they have confidence in their abilities and find themselves in a state of manhood.

I was too small to be successful at sports, and the only real hobby I have is Pokémon Go. Pokémon Go may actually steal traces of masculinity from a dude, but I can’t just give it up because… you know… you gotta catch ’em all!

Some boys are able to build their self-confidence through dating rituals with romantic partners. Guy approaches prospective partner, guy is rejected by prospective partner, guy remains calm and moves along to the next prospective partner, not taking the rejection personally. This process continues until the guy turns a prospective partner into a partner. This, I have heard, builds confidence. This process continues until the man finds the partner he intends to spend his life with. This is a way to manhood.

I tried, like, a couple of times to approach a prospective partner, but was quickly rejected each time. I took the rejections very personally, I attributed them to the fact that was an unattractive little boy, and they in no way helped me build my self-confidence. In fact, they had the opposite affect and caused me to give up on any sort of romance in my life for years. Luckily, I was set-up with the woman who would become my wife. She was my first and only girlfriend. And even with her, I didn’t gain confidence. We were, after all, set-up, and I would have never asked her out if not for that initial effort made on the part of others.

Of course, there are many false ways to manhood that boys think will get them there – but they won’t. Revving the engine of your jacked-up pick-em-up truck while your parked beside the fifty-one-year-old dude in his Hyundai Veloster and then burning your tires when the light turns green isn’t the way to manhood. In fact, I’m pretty sure this is the way to a future of low-paying jobs and alcoholism… and maybe even a brief stint in county lock-up for roughing up your girlfriend or wife and a guaranteed spot on the Sex Offender Registry. I don’t have any proof of this, but it’s what I think of the douchbag behind the pick-up’s wheel every time it happens to me. Nebraska… it’s not for everyone…

Some people will say that being a man is being a good father, or a good husband, or some other thing that you really don’t have to be a man to do. I’m not going to tell a woman what it means to be a woman, because it’s up to each woman to decide what being a woman is to her. Same with dudes, my definition of manhood doesn’t have to agree with yours. I have my definition of being a man, and I don’t fit that definition. Someone else’s definition is meaningless to me.

So, it’s getting kind of late in the game for me to find my way to manhood, but I’m not too worried about it. Real men are usually kind of assholes, with their stupid self-confidence, high-earning ability and satisfaction with their careers. Who wants to enjoy life that much? Pffft… not me, that’s for sure! I’m perfectly almost semi-content being a 13-year-old boy trapped in a deteriorating 51-year-old body. The meek shall inherit the earth, and I personally feel that this especially applies to human dudes who never reached manhood. We’re the meekest of the meek. Besides, if you really look at the ways that a male can become a man in my writing above, females seem to be surpassing males in many of the areas I discussed. Many women are more of a man than I am, according to my definition of being a man. I know that this may be offensive to women, but real men are closer to being a woman than guys like me. I think women are often amazing, but I like being different than them. I may not be a real man, but real men are more like women, and I sleep pretty soundly holding this little nugget of wisdom…

Covid… of Course I Got It…

So, if we’re going to have a worldwide pandemic, the guy who can’t stop bitching about everything is going to get it. And of course it’s not going to kill me, it’s just going to make my life slightly more difficult and considerably less enjoyable.

I work at a community college in rural Nebraska. There is no significant amount of importance associated with my job. I’m not shaping young minds. I’m not helping people decide on fulfilling career paths. I sell overpriced textbooks to poor community college students. One thing about working at an institute of higher learning during a pandemic is we are very careful. Masks are required by everyone on campus. Sanitizing is a constant, and we all take our responsibilities seriously. We have a campus full of students and we do not want to be responsible for any of those students getting sick, or worse yet, taking sickness home to families and loved ones. You can call us snowflakes or whatever makes you feel more like an American…

Anywho, so we were all very careful and we seemed to have our crap under control at the community college. My coworker in the bookstore and I were using caution with everything we did in the bookstore to keep our students, staff and faculty safe from the virus. The problem starts with my coworker’s second job.

On the weekends, my coworker tends bar in rural Nebraska. Now, yes, I’m already in rural Nebraska, but this bar is even more rural. Like, think Mayberry from the Andy Griffith show, full of Gomers and Barneys. These people aren’t going to take much of anything serious about a global pandemic, especially if it interferes with their boozing on the weekend… or on a weeknight… or on a Tuesday morning. Masks are unheard of in locations such as this, and sanitizing is something reserved for a young bull’s balls before turning him into a steer. So, around mid-October, my coworker caught the Covid on a weekend night, and a couple of days later, she gave it to me.

The first thing that clued both of us in to the fact that we had the virus was the loss taste and smell. My coworker let me know on a Monday that she had lost hers. We sent her home and sanitized the crap out of the bookstore. Three days later, I lost mine. They sent me home, where I proceeded to give it to the wife.

Now, all of the people who had our strain of the Covid lost smell and taste. Some had headaches, some had body aches, some had fatigue. None of us had serious respiratory issues. Everyone involved with our particular strain of the Covid regained the senses after a few days. For me, fatigue and brain fog were the worst part of it. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t remember how to log into my portal for work to check my work email. I got frustrated easily, and the more frustrated I got, the less clearly I could think, so I’d just end up sitting in my recliner and falling asleep. When I would try to wake up, it would take me five to ten minutes to come out of the fog of sleep and be able to somewhat function. But I didn’t die, and this thing is killing a lot of people, so some would say I’m pretty lucky.

I still get a bit brain foggy when I get stressed, and my ever-present anxieties seem to be noticeably more prevalent in my day-to-day thoughts, which kind of sucks. But other than that, I feel pretty much back to my negative old self. Oh, except I still can’t taste or smell things right. Every once in awhile, I get a whiff of something familiar, or I can momentarily taste the smokiness in a piece of bacon, but overall, yeah, nothing tastes or smells. Going on three months, and two of my five senses seem to be on sabbatical with no known return-to-work date. That made Thanksgiving and Christmas a little disappointing. One of the few pleasures I get out of life is enjoying good food.

You might think that my senses taking a vacation would make me a little bitter. You would be so wrong! Even if I never fully get my senses back, even if my anxieties reach a point of completely crippling me socially, I will feel that I have made a sacrifice for America! And I’d make this sacrifice again if it meant that a brave Nebraska patriot could go express his God-given right to get shit-faced at a bar with his buddies on a Friday night…

Literally Coming Apart…

So I think I have a hernia. When I lay on my back, there’s this little poof of something under the surface that kind of sticks up in the middle of my abdomen. And I have been having pain right under the ribs on my right side. I figured they were related.

So, I went to see my Dr.

My Dr. takes a look at me and tells me he doesn’t think it’s a hernia, it’s just my abdominal muscles thinning (’cause I’m FAT). You know, like pregnant women sometimes experience (’cause I’m FAT like a pregnant woman… but without the whole “you’re-still-beautiful-because-you-have-a-life-inside of-you-thing… it’s just FAT… I gotta FAT baby of nothing but FAT). I ask the Dr. what I can do, and he tells me to lose weight.

But I got something else going on around my belly button that I’m pretty sure is at least the start of a small hernia, so the Dr. tells me he’s going to order a CT scan. So I wait for the imaging place to call me.

A couple of days later, the imaging place calls me. The lady told me she was calling to schedule my imaging appointment and she needed to let me know that my out-of-pocket cost was going to be eight hundred and something something something dollars. I asked her to repeat that, thinking maybe I had misunderstood. And she repeated that it’s going to cost eight hundred and something something something dollars.

I said, “Well… cancel that then.”

She then informed me that I get like a 10% discount if I pay it all upfront.

“No,” I said, “we’re not going to be doing any imaging for me. Thank you, though.”

The lady then said, “Would you like to talk to our financing department? “

… financing department?

I informed the lady that I wasn’t buying a f&$%ing car and I most definitely did not want to talk to the financing department. I said it very politely, and she told me to have a nice day and called me “sweetie” 😊

Do I have a hernia? Is my abdominal muscle just thinning with age and FAT? The world may never know, because I’m never going to pay eight hundred and something something something dollars for a f&$%ing picture of my stomach!

Oh yeah, and remember how I said I was having pain right below my ribs on the right side? The Dr. thinks that’s unrelated to my FAT stomach with thin walls… he thinks that’s probably my gallbladder. Hahaha. I asked him what we could do about that, and he said, “Take it out.” Hahaha.

Oh my… good times after fifty. And I’ll KEEP my gallbladder, Mr. Dr., thank you very much! I am coming to the realization that getting old means you need to appreciate pain. Pain is, after all, the spice of life, right? And when the physical pain is less than the monetary pain required to fix the physical pain, LIFE IS GOLDEN.

Is this what they mean by the “golden years?”

50 Sucks…

Alright, here it is. This is the post I was hoping to avoid. I started this stupid blog a few months before I turned 40 in an attempt to… I don’t know… find meaning in crap and avoid a mid-life crisis and find some direction or level of success in early mid-life. I started this blog to avoid this post. Here I am, 10 years later, and the blog hasn’t helped one bit. I’m not quite 50 yet, but I know it’s going to suck. I turn 50 in a few days. I will officially be old.

I’m in a different job now than I was 10 years ago, but I’m making about the same money. It seems that my prime-income earning years are meant to be a slap in the face. Career-wise, I have accomplished nothing. I never was, nor will I ever be, upwardly-mobile. When I graduated high school, I thought that I would go to college, get a good job, get raises and promotions, and retire making a six-figure income. I’m not even close. And not only am I not even close, when you take into account inflation, I’m a horrible failure. $100,000 in 1988 money (the year I graduated from high school… and the money I thought I would be making) is about $217,536 in today’s money. In 1988 money, I’m making less than $23,000/year… with a bachelors degree and almost 30 years in the workforce. My first crappy-paying job out of college with Sherwin-Williams was salaried at $18,000 per year in 1992 money. In 1992 money, I’m making about $9,000 more per year than I did at that crappy-paying job. And what I’m making now is the most I will ever make. The average college graduate makes more money in his or her first year out of college than I am making after what feels like a lifetime of work.

I like my current job, or at least I like the people I work around, but there is not a single thing I can do in my current position to increase my wealth. There is no promotion waiting for the guy running the bookstore. The business of education is one of the few institutions in the US where more education is the only way to more money. And education is too expensive for me. And I can’t seem to win the Powerball. And my basement isn’t conducive to a meth lab… I don’t think… maybe I need to research that more…

People say you’re only as old as you feel. If that’s true, I’m screwed… but don’t worry, it’s not true. You can lie to yourself, but a lie is a lie and your aging body won’t listen to your lies.

There are those who say 50 isn’t old. These people are deluded… and usually over 50. Maybe 50 isn’t as old as the people who say 50 isn’t old, but it’s still old.

At 50, the vast majority of people are well over half-way through with their lives. If they are lucky (if you think of it as lucky), they have another 20 to 30 years to watch their health decline , their earning power disappear, their friends and family start to die off, and their bodies and minds wither away to the point of being unrecognizable. With a few exceptions, most people start to look old once they hit 50. I don’t want to look 50… but really, I’m already there, and it sucks. The dude who looks back at me from the mirror makes me want to remove all mirrors from my house in between bouts of crying hysterically. Being younger and unsightly is bad enough… add in looking old and you’ve got a look that would score screams in a horror movie.

My birthday falls around the festive family holiday of Thanksgiving. I’d really love to just spend the entire day in bed, but my wife won’t go for that. However, knowing how much I am dreading this day, my wife has scheduled a trip to Denver in lieu of the more traditional surrounded-by-family, stress-filled extravaganza that is typically the Thanksgiving weekend. When my house is filled with people, I get uber-stressed, and this year it would have been more than I could handle. My side of the family wanted us to visit Montana, and they would have promised not to do crap for my birthday, but they would have been lying. I spent my 40th birthday with my family and they had a cake and presents wrapped in black (hahaha, “over-the-hill”, that’s hilarious) even though they promised they wouldn’t. Fool me once, shame on you… So, just me and my wife and my sons will be spending a quality couple of days quietly enjoying a Thanksgiving from afar and me officially becoming old.

I’ve read different writings from different people who say that “mid-life” is a great transitional period. You come to the realization that all of those hopes and dreams you had in your youth aren’t going to happen and you become okay with that. It’s a great release of stress not having to worry about accomplishing anything anymore. I suppose there may be some truth in that. I’ve given up on a lot of stuff because I didn’t have the skills to accomplish it, and I can see how being okay with being a quitter would lead to less stress… I’m just not there yet. Maybe that’s what I have to look forward to in the years to come: coming to terms with and accepting my lack of accomplishment and menial lot in life and finding a way to be okay with it.. Sounds fun, right? OK, Boomer…

Was I Almost an Incel?!?

I think I was. I think I was almost an incel, and I was almost an incel before “incel” was even a thing! I was almost an incel before “online communities” really even existed. I am, after all, old.

For those not in the know, Wikipedia defines “incels” as: members of an online subculture who define themselves as unable to find a romantic partner despite desiring one, a state they describe as inceldom.

I had never even heard the term “incel” until a few weeks ago. I came across an article mentioning that military leaders had issued a warning to members of the military about the opening of the movie Joker. Apparently the online incel community had issued a series of threats in relation to the opening of Joker. In fact, some of the recent mass killings have been tied to men with ties to these incel communities.

Okay, so, no, I never had any plans of committing egregeous crimes against humanity. People who commit those crimes are monsters. I know I was never a full-on incel, because it wasn’t even a thing thirty years ago. I can’t imagine that, had I not met my wife, I would have ever turned into the kind of violent incel whose self-imposed misery leads to a total disregard for human life. What I could relate to when reading about incels is the mindset that leads to inceldom, and it’s not all about sex. It’s about feeling desirable to someone you find desirable. It’s about the fear of growing old alone because you will never meet the expectations of a desirable mate.

I always viewed myself as a social inept (and, really, I still do). People seemed, for the most part, to like me (or at least tolerate me). I was relatively nice to everyone, and I was funny, but I never felt like I really fit in. I didn’t date in high school. I didn’t date in college. The small handful of times I found the courage to ask a female I was attracted to out, I was rejected. When you have no confidence in yourself, and you find nothing but rejection in your earliest attempts at those things that are extremely difficult in the first place, one of two things will happen:

You let the rejection make you stronger and more determined, you will work to improve yourself, and you continue on until you find success…

… or…

… you give up.

I’m guessing anyone who has read this blog before knows how I responded.

By the age of twenty-two, I had completely given up on the thought of ever having a romantic relationship. I had completely given up on the idea of even going on a date. “Love” was a foreign concept meant for other people better than myself. Looking back, I remember thinking that I had “given up on women”, but in reality, I had given up on myself. “Women,” in my head, were just a construct that I could blame for my misery. “Women” only liked physically attractive men, and I was not one. “Women” only liked tall men, and I was not one. “Women” only liked men with money, and I was scraping by on a crappy assistant manager salary at Sherwin-Williams.

I was even to the point of blaming other guys for my misery. Guys who were taller than me (which was most of them) were not my friends. Guys who were better looking than me (which, in my head, was almost all of them) were genetically blessed creatures that weren’t of the same species as me; I couldn’t be friends with them.

In my day-to-day life, I was still just as friendly and funny as I had always been with coworkers, customers, and the general public, but I really built up a resentment toward people and was building internal walls between myself and… well… everyone else. Trump would have been proud. I was “Making Rich Great Again” with walls.

The first incel community was created online in 1993. It was a much milder, less full-of-hate version of the current communities (it was started by a woman… in Canada… how mean could it really be?), but I was only an Internet connection away (which were just starting to become common through dial-up) from discovering a world of other socially-inept people like myself and letting the anger build. I was extremely lucky that, after dozens of interviews failed and mailed-resumes not responded to, I found a job after college. Were it not for that crappy, low-paying job with Sherwin-Williams, I would have literally been living in my parents’ basement… which I’ve come to discover isn’t exactly a good place for a borderline incel to be.

And then I met my wife. Actually, we were “set-up” by mutual acquaintances. I would never have asked her out on my own. I had, after all, given up on “women.” Over twenty-six years later, and we’re still together. I don’t really have much more self-confidence than I did twenty-six years ago… but I have someone to lovingly tell me to stop complaining all the time.

I still carry many of the negative thoughts and attitudes toward my fellow man and woman (and self) that were developed during that time when I was in that dark place. I wish I had never allowed myself to go there. I wish I could have seen some sort of light. I believed that God was out there and had a plan for me, I just believed that I was going to hate His plan.

I’m sure there are people who go through long periods of self-doubt, self-hate and depression and they emerge better from the experience. I emerged, for the most part and with only slight relapses, but I emerged kind of broken. I’m full of mistrust, I take offense at the stupidest things, I often feel completely incompetent in areas where I’m not, I can’t let go of things from the past that still try to crush me, and, to this day, I have a hard time liking people in general.

And I turn fifty this month…

… but at least I’m not an incel…

… so, yay me?