Birthday

Memorial Day will be my birthday. I will be spending it by wearing a wool uniform and marching down some street in a parade, but that is beside the point. I guess this is a milestone birthday for me, I will be turning 40. I kind of go back and forth between being really bothered by this and thinking that it is not a big deal. I mean, I feel good, I doubt that everything is going to just come crashing down on that Monday. But still, turning 40 will make me firmly ensconced in middle age. The most depressing thing about turning 40 is that I am now going to be in a completely different marketing demographic. This shocking revelation came to me last week. I was reading an article in an online magazine called "The Art of Manliness". Anyway, the article was rating different magazines marketed towards men, and they were discussing one men's health magazine geared towards guys in their 20's and 30's. Suddenly, I had the wind knocked out of me, in a little over a week this magazine will no longer be for me. I will no longer be welcome to read this publication. I have never read this particular magazine, or really ever even heard of it until last week, but now that I know I am excluded from their target audience I am kind of bothered. What this really means is that now I am going to be lumped in with the 40 and 50 year old group, and I am way too immature for that shit. Really, it's not fair to either me, or the whole 40 to 50 year old demographic.

So anyway, the online magazine "The Art of Manliness" is a really cool online magazine, that and "Modern Drunkard Magazine" are probably my two favorite online mags. The problem with "The Art of Manliness" is that it sounds like a gay porn site, but its not. Its just one of those things in life that sounds problematic, but isn't. Kind of like when you have plumbing problems. Did you know that the mechanics inside of a toilet tank are called the 'ballcock assembly? Now, if you are talking to someone who does not know anything about home repair and you say to them "Hey, could you do me a favor and come on over and give me a hand with my ballcock assembly? It's been acting up lately". It sounds really bad, and more than a little dirty and homoerotic. But it's not. I guess life is full of stuff like that.