Raging Dad

I am trying to improve my attitude. Generally, I am a very positive guy. But there is a dark, mysterious side too. Maybe not so mysterious, but dark. Here is the fact: Too much negativity puts me in a major funk. Being a Negative Nancy doesn’t help any of my family members, that’s for sure. So, I’m pulling off my crabby pants and will walk freely, unashamed.

To remind me of the effort, I got a tattoo. Logical, right? It is my first, but I have wanted to get a tattoo for a long time. Being in Portland has inspired me to embrace my repressed wild side, I guess. There is more ink in this town than in a pen factory. I had been thinking of getting something geeky, like a Batman symbol across the chest, but Raging Mom was dead set against that. Something about being an embarrassment to my kids. Come on, how cool would the bat symbol be? The only problem is that I am trying to convince my kids that I am Spider-Man, so it might distract from the effort. But I’d have been smokin’ hot at the swimming pool, I know it.

A Möbius strip made with a piece of paper and tape. (Wikipedia)

For a couple of years I have had my mind set on a Möbius strip. I’ll never forget the day that my friend Aaron sat in our living room in college and created a Möbius strip out of a cut piece of paper. The simple elegance of a flat piece of paper turning into a single-sided object with only one boundary component is pretty cool.

However, given that I am far from a mathematical wiz (last math class was 11th grade trig), I figured I should stay away from getting a tattoo of something that I couldn’t really explain. But the notion of infinity spoke to me, particularly with regard to how small and insignificant I think humans are in the larger context of the universe. I like to be reminded that we are simply animals, temporarily breathing air, living in a blink on a speck of a speck of a hunk of earth.

The closing track on the new Hold Steady record, Stay Positive, is all about accepting responsibility for your actions and closes with a great line: “Man, we make our own movies.” I love that. Nobody is in charge of me but me. Nobody is going to find the upside of anger for me; I have to step up, strap it on and take care of business. Anyway, there is a logo on the cover that takes the infinity symbol and breaks the center of it into a plus sign. It struck me as a great way to remind me of my place and to keep a positive perspective.

Neat, huh? I got it on my chest, which let me tell you, hurt like a mother fucker. There’s not even room any more for the bat symbol. I guess I’ll save a place for that on my butt. Or maybe my forehead. That would be pretty cool, and not embarrassing at all.

Stop staring at my Raging Nipple.

Song of the day: “Black,” Pearl Jam (with misheard lyrics).