"The crickets and the rust-beetles scuttled among the nettles of the sage thicket. "Vámonos, amigos," he whispered, and threw the busted leather flintcraw over the loose weave of the saddlecock. And they rode on in the friscalating dusklight."

  So basically, there has been one phrase that has always been able to sum up my life....."If it CAN happen, it WILL happen to me."  I have to provide a caveat here though; this does not apply to good things even remotely at all.  I have never scratched off a lottery ticket to reveal that I've won $1000.  I have never been invited for free on a friend's family trip to Europe.  And I have most definitely never had a girl see me somewhere and ask my friends about me.  To these things I'm resigned, but WHY do bad (or more accurately awkward) things always seem to happen to me.

  It was suggested by a frind earlier tonight that maybe I should start chronicling all of my stories.  I like this idea.  However, his reasoning behind it did not leave me feeling so confident.  He simply wanted me to archive these just in case, and I quote, "you die or something."  Thanks Tommy.  You know my history.  I don't need any help here buddy.

  Coming soon will be the strories simply known by their names...."The Accidental Girlfriend (aka Tech Girl) Story," "The Jail Story," and a few others I remember along the way.  I would have started with the Accidental Grilfriend but seeing my trend in these Xanga updates to come across as a jerk who is amazingly bad with women, I decided to put that one off for awhile.  Now, I'm not saying that somehow I will make myself look better before that.  I'm pretty much just delaying the inevitable and at least I wont have every girl I know hating me for another few days or so....

  So, when I was in high school, you could ask most of my friends to describe me in one word and 99% of the time you would get the same answer......"Awesome."  Well, it was actually goofy but one time I heard somebody tell my friend Brian that he was awesome and I figured I might be able to sneak in on his complement.  In High School I was also a football player who seemed to be known for one thing on the field as well.  I'd like to tell you that it was being the hardest hitter or having the best arm but no....I had to be the guy who always got injured!  It started freshman offseason with me cutting two of my fingertips off lifting weights and my injuries got earlier in the season and worse every year.  I was almost glad that I couldn't play my senior year because, according to my theory, I was going to die while still being issued my equipment on the first day.

  So its the second game of my junior year.  I had just been converted to a position that I actually liked...tight end.  While I liked to think of myself as a wide receiver who had to occasionally block, my coach always liked to remind me that I was a lineman who occasionally caught a pass.  They way he said the word "occasionally" with a slight laugh made me realize that "occasionally" might just be a synonym for "never."

But, in our second game, I finally got my chance to shine!  It was our first play of the game and the coach called for a play designed for me.  I'm pretty sure there was a miscommunication or something but somehow I was supposed to get the ball.  Well, we line up, the quarterback does whatever those meaningless signals are the Peyton Manning had to popularize, and the ball is snapped.  I run out about 12 yards and the QB throws to me and.....I caught it for a 16 yard reception.  Ha, I bet you thought I was gonna miss it.  Remarkably the next play is also a passing play.  I run out on my route and all of a sudden I feel one of the guys on the other team come and take out my legs and down I went.  On the way down I was screaming for the ref to throw a flag because the guy took out my legs.  It was at this moment that I realized exactly what "confusion" looked like in a man.  He yells something to the effect of "what guy?"  What?  What?  Did I really just go down with NOBODY touching me?

  Well, indeed I did.  While my sister sat in the stands laughing at me and my dad figuring I just had a cramp, I am laying here helpless with a bowl where my knee used to be.  Yes, I broke my leg playing football....with absolutely NO CONTACT.  Later it got me wondering...could this have happened at school one day?  Could I simply have been messing with my locker combination only for my leg to snap and have everybody in the school laugh at me?  At least now it was only the football team who knew what happened.  They wouldn't tell anybody, right?  So as I'm laying here on the the field with pretty much everyone else walking up to me, grimmacing after looking at my leg and forcing out an, "it doesn't look that bad," I was not in the best mood.  At this point I had also just started dating a girl.  And homecoming was the next weekend.  My best friend (and I use that term lightly) comes up to me and proceeds to ask, "Does this mean I can take Kinsye to Homecoming now?"  He's lucky that I had gotten pain medication by this time and was pretty much agreeable to anything at that point.

So, long story short...I may be the first football player ever to have their carreer ended by a broken leg that was pretty much caused by absolutely nothing.  I haven't seen film of the game but I can imagine it looked a little ridiculous when a wide open receiver falls flat on his face while screaming at a ref about a phantom foul. 

The next 4 months were great.  Kinsye and I did go to Homecoming.  She got to drive.  And where was I?  The backseat of course, sitting sidewise...because that was the only way I fit in the car.  And as an added bonus, I'm pretty sure that the doctor put my leg back on sidewise.  This has created a distinct walk for me.  While alot of athletes hold their shoulders up or walk with a fake limp to look cool, I simply "waddle " from side to side as I walk away.  Go ahead and picture it and laugh.  I know you already are.  This stroy doesn't quite translate to writing, but stand behind me as I walk away sometime.  I promise, it'll be worth it.

 " I know you can be overwhelmed, and that you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?"

"I think in Europe you can."

So I've got a birthday coming up next week.  I will officially be the big 2-4.  Now I normally wouldn't consider 24 to be that great a milestone...except for the fact that Jessica Simpson taught me something oh so important about this particular birthday.  I believe she said, "24 is almost 25, which is almost mid-twenties."  Now, if that doesn't make you sit back and ponder life then I don't know what will.

  When I turned 19, I came to a huge realization in my life.  I discovered that......EVERYBODY has birthdays.  From my 1st to my 18th, my parents were always there to shower me with gifts and parties and the like.  However, when I went to college and late March of my second semester came around, I full expected expected to be spoiled and for everyone to make a huge deal about my birthday.  I mean, didn't they know that this was my, Brian Perroni's, one and only birthday??

  That 19th birthday was an eye-opener.  Sure, I got a call and the card from my parents and I think my roommate managed to squeeze out a, "hey, thats right...happy birthday" sometime between his morning and afternoon classes.  But. other than that, it turned into pretty much just 1 of the 365 other days in the year.

  This was a pretty big deal at first but then I realized that I didn't make a huge deal out of anyone else's birthdays.  Shoot. I only knew the birthdays of maybe two of my friends.  I would be lucky to know the months of a few others.  If I was not going to make an all-out effort for them, how could I expect anything else in return.  It was then that I decided to make a concerted effort to do the whole take-your-friends-out-and-invite-everyone-over-and-go-in-on-gifts-with-all- the-other-friends routine.  It was genious.  We would all make each other feel special on our so-called special day.  But then I came to another realization.....

I'm a guy!  We pretty much just don't do that.  Sure, I saw all these girl roommates and their annual celebrations but this just wasn't for us.  As guys, we pretty much come to grips with the fact that if you can get a simple "Happy Birthday" from the one of your friends whose own birthday just happens to fall very close to yours, thus making it fairly easy for him to remember, then you are doing just fine.  And that reminds me....Landon, you have a birthday coming up.  Happy early birthday buddy.

So this is not a plea for lots of cards, well-wishes and presents on March 31st (thats NEXT thursday by the way) but simply an explanation for why I may not be as excited next week as I was when I turned 18.  But, this IS a chance for Laura to, once again, remind me of how old I am.  Its okay this time, because at least you will have remembered. 

"We met in a chatroom, now our love can really bloom
Sure the world wide web is great, but you, you make me salivate
Yes I love technology, but not as much as you, you see
But I still love technology
Always and forever"

Well, I am suffering from a little bit of writer's block and I can't think of a so-called "thesis" for this update so I'll just leave you with a few things I have learned in the past week....

1.  There really are "Uncle Rico's" out there-  I met one in real life at Mr. Gatti's the other night.  He said he graduated in '93 and used to be able to kick a 90 yard field goal.  Too bad Texas is flat so he doesn't have any mountains to aim for.  Another lesson leanred from this same guy....DO NOT ask random people if they want to arm wrestle you for 100 bucks.  Although I've got to admit that that is one of the funniest questions I've ever been asked.

2.  Reporters will write about anything-  I read articles the other night about a 99 year old man who celebrated his 7th birthday in a row at Hooters, a man who robbed a bank with a pitchfork, another man who tried to use a banana as a weapon, a third grader in South Dakota who rides a mule to school, a mom who sued a hospital because she "almost" nursed the wrong baby, vampire bats being surprisingly good runners, and a group of people with 400 loaves of bread making the world's largest "toast mosaic."  These all make me ask "What are these things actually doing in the news?' followed by "Why did I actually read these articles?"  I can't actually answer either question but I did find one of my new favorite quotes.  This from an obviuosly irate woman...."I sat down and ate three Mr. Goodbars because I was so angry."  If that's not newsworthy I don't know what is.

3.  I am surprisingly good at shimmying- enough said

That's all I got....for now.

So I have a few confessions to make...

First of all, since it was noticed and I was called out for it by someone, the Dante quote that I used in my last update was indeed used on that very night's episode of "One Tree Hill."  I really liked it and I wrote it down to remember.  But even though it was a quote from a famous author like Dante Alighieri, the fact still remains that my inspiration for using it was a WB show aimed at high schoolers that is a blatant ripoff of a former WB show aimed at high schoolers (Dawson's Creek).

My second confession stems from the first.  As most of you know, I have a great affinity for teen movies and shows as well as "chick flicks", although I prefer to refer to the latter as "romantic comedies."  Somehow it seems less embarassing that way.  It's not, but it seems to be, so this genre will continue to be labeled as such.  I think that most guys really do enjoy these movies.  I mean, we can relate to them just as much as girls do.  The one common theme in all of the storylines seems to lie in the fact that the underachieving lovable loser male ALWAYS ends up with the girl who is so obviously above him.  I must confess that this rarely (read: never) happens in real life but its still fun to imagine the possibilities.  We all see ourselves in the character of the lovable loser and it allows us to hold out hope, albeit a false one, that one day we too will overachieve and date UP on the ladder.

When I was in high school, some of us went to see "Can't Hardly Wait" in the theater (yes Laura, I know that makes me old).  This movie follows the exact same plotline as I have layed out above.  Poor nerdy Preston ends up with Jennifer Love Hewitt in the end.  I was feeling satisfyingly upbeat and ready to conquer my own Jennifer Love Hewitt when a buddy of mine remarked that he thought Preston was exactly like me.  At the time, it added hope to an already hopeful soul.  (As an aside, when I look back on it, maybe he was just calling me a loser and had missed the clearly obvious theme of the movie).  So, it was most likely on that day that I was hopelessly addicted to this romantic comedy genre.  I really don't have any other option, though.  From reading my previous post, you know that I have to grab onto the slightest hint of optimism that I find...or else I got NOTHING.

I know that I just spent a lot of space just trying to defend the fact that my favorite movie just happens to be "10 Things I Hate About You."  I know when people get defensive of certain behaviors, it usually means that they are ashamed of themselves.  I tell you now, I AM NOT ashamed to like this movie so much.  But do me a favor, if anybody asks, please tell them my favorite movie is "Braveheart!"

"Remember tonight, for it is the beginning of always."   -Dante

So basically, I do not understand the obvious qualities of the opposite sex, yet alone the subtle nuances of the fairer gender.  I'm as clueless today as I was in first grade when I would kick my female-of-choice in the shin and then quickly run away thinking somehow that this would cause her to be suddenly enamored with me.  They say that men never really outgrow this phase...its just that we run away slower and slower as we get older.  Well, I'm here to tell you, its like I am still competing in a track meet.

I have also come to the conclusion that, NO MATTER WHAT, things will end awkwardly with any girl that I will ever come into contact with.  In fact, I have decided that when I meet a new girl, instead of the usual "Hi, I'm Brian" or some other witty saying,  I am just going to start things off with, "Hey, have you gained weight?"  Its not that I'm a mean person, its just that I know that somewhere down the line, this girl will get mad at me for something I clearly never meant to say and our relationship will end up as a funny story that I will tell when I'm 50 and people wonder why I never did "settle down."  By using this greeting I will pretty much end the relationship before it starts, therefore saving everyone involved the time and effort it takes before I eventually screw it up.

I know you must be asking yourself, "Did Brian just recently get rejected or something?"  The answer is a resounding no, but this is only because of a lack of effort on my part.  I'm sure if I tried I could get rejected by one or two girls.  This rant is just a culmination of things and I decided since people don't really want to read my day-to-day schedule peppered with such intriguing details such as "I went to school today" and "Today was awesome!" that I would at least provide some insight into the depths of my soul.  Well, not really, but if I can make you even read this far, it seems like I've accomplished more than the average journal writer.

I also need you to realize that this is not a cry for attention by pointing out my shortcomings.  I am quite happy with my current status.  And besides, my mom used to tell me that I was a catch.  She also used to tell me that once you get out of high school, girls start looking for different things in guys.  I don't know if she was trying to give me hope by saying that girls would be willing to settle once they hit their twenties or so, but remind me to ask her what they start looking for when they hit their post graduate years.

Hey, leave some sort of comment so that I know that I'm not just writing this for myself.  And if you are female, then I apologize for any wrongs that I have or will soon commit against you.