I love MTV. They'll let the camera linger on macaque monkeys fucking, but they censor the word "macaque" with a bleep.

I have something to say about September 11th. This isn't a post about THE 9/11, but rather a sequence of events this past September 11th that have finally and truly spawned the Andy, version 2.0, that's been hanging over this blog for quite a while now. I think that's why I haven't written very much lately. While having anticipated the new Andy at the name changing of this blog, even with my then-new Concerta and fresh set of wits about me, I still didn't feel like I'd properly made the psychic upgrade to warrant the new label.

But on this past, my own 9/11, I finally was able to hold the proverbial mirror of reality up to my own face, and with my eyes cut through the fog of denial and other self-preservative bullshit into the soul of a person I'd gradually come to resent and even despise at times. And what resulted was a wave of shame so strong as to knock me off the foundation and pillars I'd carefully been constructing since my early teens.

We all have an ideal self... a set of concrete rules and regulations within which we define ourselves. Our self-paradigm. Our own personal dogma. It's the set-in-stone standard self to which we refer in the third person, and to which we adhere with dogged Pavlovian automation:

Andy despises all shades and hues of country music, and shall wretch at the sound of a pedal steel.

Andy will only ever drive compact cars.

Andy is a white collar, despite frequent past (and some not too hateful) forays into the blue.

Andy shall, at all costs, refuse to conform in any way.

Andy is WAY too good for that job.

Andy is not a menial laborer.

Andy shall staunchly deny the environment and culture into which he was born and raised.

Andy is smarter than you.

Andy doesn't like any element of popular culture, even if he secretly does.

Andy shall eschew any and all trends and fashions about him.

Andy uses tacky words like 'eschew'.

Andy hates sentences ending with prepositions.
(ok, that one will always bug the crap out of me. OCD.)

Andy is never at fault. There are always external factors working against him.

Andy can't afford proper Christmas gifts for people this year. Again.

... the list goes on. You get the point: despite the primary and overwhelming genuinely genuine "nice guy" base personality, Andy can be kind of a prick.

Shame is a funny thing. Stand-alone, it's a pretty vague and nebulous spiritual nausea. Pair it with guilt and you've got yourself some serious soul napalm, disablingly sticky and searing and nearly impossible to remove, popular with churches and pundits the world over. But hold the guilt and season it with some "mea culpa" self awareness, a sprinkle of self forgiveness, a cup of self reflection, and a five pound bag of determination... well, you've got yourself a crackerjack batch of "Man up and grow a pair!"

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You wouldn't know, but those three hyphens above represent a decent while's passage of time. So here's the skinny: I'm typing this from a hotel room in Roanoke, Virginia, on a business trip for a job whose gaining has been the culmination of pretty intense efforts spawned by the above mentioned happening.

In the mean time, Dark Haired Girl and I decided to put the kibosh on the whole "committed relationship" thing. Basically, we've stopped calling ourselves boyfriend/girlfriend, stopped acting like an old married couple, and have resumed having sex hot enough to melt sand into glass. Aside from that, nothing else changed. It wasn't a "breakup" in the traditional sense. Just a step back to what we used to be, when our relationship was simpler.

So I can't help but feel like I've truly (finally!) started down the path to my second shot at adulthood. I saw a need for change. I made it happen. I'm bringing in some nicer paychecks, righting a few past wrongs, and I'm breathing new momentum and life into an existence which had pretty much stalled dead in its tracks. I am hopefully, this time, truly becoming Andy, version 2.0.

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On a completely unrelated note, am I the only one who thinks the girl I call the "chubby office chick" from the Call of Duty video game commercial is just cute as hell?

I'm such a chubby chaser. :-)