I’ve been thinking introspectively lately, doing some self-evaluation.  Much like Siggie Freud, I too like to psycho-analyze.  Coupled with my knowledge of Dr. Phil and Oprah, I feel only partially equipped to make a realistic conclusion on my personality.  Let me explain – I’ve compiled a list of things that I worry may make me a bad person or, at the very worst, a sociopath.  Maybe I’m being a tad neurotic … or maybe I’m not worried enough.

I know that a lot of people have quirks and foibles, but do the following things make me a dick?

Should I feel bad about …

1. The Vacuum Cleaner: I take sadistic joy chasing my dog around the house with the vacuum cleaner.  For my dog, our bagless Dyson is like a roaring, mechanical Satan just waiting to suck down his soul.  I’m sure that he blames the Dyson for waking up one day without his nuts, wearing a plastic cone around his head.  It is, daresay, the root of all evil.
   
2. Alcohol: I think my wife gets more excited buying a bottle of Bailey’s than any amount of time spent with me.  Any activity, as well.  She gets a giddy, rosie-eyed glee when she puts the bottle in our shopping basket.
3. Highway Driving: When some hoon cuts me off in traffic … or speeds up to +150% their speed when I try to pass … or wanders all over the road while they text on their mobile phone, I secretly pray that they drive off the road into a ditch in a fiery crash.
4. Water: When I brush my teeth or shave, I leave the water running the entire time.  I know that the planet is dying a slow Liz Taylor sort of death as we collectively force Mother Earth into hacksaw plastic surgery, but I’m too lazy to pause in my bathroom routine to turn back on the faucets and adjust them back to the preferred temperature.  It’s just easier for me to let them run at the ideal temperature.
5. Stinkiness: I do not air out my soccer equipment after I play.  They stay in the muggy confines of my equipment bag until the very next time I play.  Even if it rains.  Sometimes it even smells like unwashed asshole.  The last time it happened, the entire house of Vietnamese people were cursing my dog, thinking that he had secretly shit under one of the couches.  Turns out it was my shinguards.  Oops.
6. Farting: Maybe this is a sad commentary on me, but I think farts are funny.  To this day.  When I first started dating my future wife, I’d hold it in until I stomach cramps and then sneak off into the bathroom and drop bombs.  That was my willingness to be polite at the genesis of our relationship.  Now?  I fill up the room at a whim even when we’re cuddling right before falling asleep.  Sometimes even on her leg.
7. Profanity: I have a long history with cursing, particularly the F-word and not the “Forsooth” or “Fiddlesticks” F-word.  Since I’ve been married … and added a little guy, I’ve seriously cut down my propensity for profanity.  Turns out my sub-consciousness does not appreciate my conservative cussing and now I swear in my sleep.  Swear to God.  My wife is horribly stunned when I start saying “motherfucking bastard shitface” during my dreams.  I can only guess that most of my dreams involve being on Def Comedy Jam.
8. Toenails: Um.  I think this one is self-explanatory.
9. Superheroes: I still spend copious amounts of time in an internal debate on what I would do with various superpowers.  Clearly, being invisible reaps the biggest reward, but what to do with superhearing?  Magnetic control?  Density manipulation?  No one wants to be a true blood superhero crime fighter.  Nah, I want to use my powers to get rich and to make people I don’t like look like jackasses in public forums.
10. Midgets: I really, really want to have a midget friend.
11. Mice: I have a girlish fear of mice.  If I saw one run across my floor, I’d shit myself as a I squealed like Janet Reno at a Harley-Davidson convention.  I killed one once in college as it fled for its little mousy-life out of my dining room, but I felt immediately awash in sobering guilt.  Damn this Catholicism.
12. Uni-lingual: I only speak one language and even that one I don’t speak good.
13. Pretentiousness: When I post a status update on Twitter, I feel like each one has to be uniquely funny and witty, like a perfectly crafted haiku of dick jokes.
14. Hero Worship: I mean really – he’s THE Brian Boitano.
15. Wikipediism: Every major event, whether its a political speech, a historical anniversary, a new movie, whatever … I immediately race back and read about it on wikipedia.  I know that its a community-driven encyclopedia, which means that Lady Gaga has x10 the amount of content as the inventor of the artificial heart (Forest Dewey Dodrill FYI).  But who cares!  I mean its WIKIPEDIA for Chrissakes!
16. Metrosexual: I shave my chest.  In fact, I think hairy chests are absolutely disgusting.  You know what … take this one off the list.  I don’t care if it makes me a sociopath.  I’ll be a beautifully shorn sociopath.
17. Dreams: I have dreams of beating up my dad.  About one every two weeks or so.  In fact, if I could face off against anyone in a sanctioned, no holds barred, no weight class restrictions, cage match … and Ricki Lake was otherwise engaged … my dad would be the first person that I would want to kick the shit out of.  Maybe that’s why I curse in my sleep, go figure.
18. Kisses: I kiss my dog on the snout.  He’s a house dog which means that he doesn’t eat his own poop or eat squirrel carcasses, but I’m pretty sure that it wouldn’t really matter to me if he did.  I’m not tongue kissing my dog to Earth, Wind, & Fire mind you, but when he gets his cuddles, he gets kisses and he kisses me as well!  Bingo is a very sweet little doggy.
19. Donuts: Good God, has a finer food ever been invented?!
20. Vengeance: I have a mental tally of everyone that I dislike.  In fact, its on a gradient scale of hatred from 1 to 100, constantly fluctuating as each days’ events and moods unfold.  In coordination with this list, I have a deep hope that a karmic backlash will strike the members of this list with ferocity and intensity equal to my hatred score.  For example, if said asshole ranks #100 on my dislike list (the lowest) then I just want them wait a little too long going to the rest room and dribble a teaspoon of piss down their pantleg.  It gets worse from there.
21. Young People: I know I was the biggest dumbass and dickhead when I was growing up, starting with 5th grade.  I talked back, smoked, cursed, incited Mr. Cockran to body slam me into the science cabinets, and more, but when I see teenagers these days, I just want to punch them in the mouth.  Its a combination of their dumb music, bad hair, stupid fashion, and lack of accountability.  I have become a curmudgeon.  You damn kids and your rock-n-roll!
22. Republicans: Listening to the rhetoric coming from the KKK … er … I mean GOP, over the last ten years … I can’t help but think it WOULD have been better if the Civil War had ended differently.  Of course, slavery had to end.  Here’s what I would have proposed, send all of the freed slaves north and then you guys can just go piss off in your inbred, family values, backwater finger pointing.
23. Cats: Creatures of the devil.  I hate them.  I hate them.  I hate them.  And they hate me.  They seek me out to steal my soul or spawn on my leg.  I can only regard cat owners with the cold suspicion of a HUAC investigator.
24. Skunks: Even worse than cats, these are felines that squirt out funky death.  During my first year of grad school at OSU, there was a population explosion of skunks near the university.  I even saw one slinking out from behind the stairs leading to my second floor apartment on Miller.  Ever since that moment, I leapt the first four steps and broke into a sprint to escape anything that might still be lingering there.  I was so deathly afraid of being pelted with noxious skunk piss that I even had vivid, terrifying nightmares like the ones in the movies.  I woke with my sheets held in clenched fists, coated in sweat, my heart pounding like a jackhammer, telling myself with hollow confidence, “it was only a dream, it was only a dream.”  Thank God, there are no skunks in Australia.  Yet.
25. Flip Flopper: I guess #22 is a perfect segue into this one, but when I watch football or really just sports in general, I find myself doing a very un-American thing.  I start internally cheering for the winner.  This can happen several times during a single game, completely based on the score.  Most Americans go for the underdog, which is funny, because the USA has not been an underdog since the War of 1812.  Not so with me, I want to see excellence.  Maybe that’s why I like the Yankees or Manchester United or Brazil or THE Brian Boitano.

Well, that’s my 25 confessions.  I feel better, but should I feel bad?