I am controlled demolition.

A friend has asked me to write five good things about myself before I go to sleep. They could be about anything, or nothing. They could be ironic. They could be hard to accept. One thing they cannot be, however, is made-up. I have to tell the truth, which can be a little scary this time of night. This time of night, good things are hard to come by. But, in the words of OK Go, here it goes again...

Five good things about Matt Titus:
1. He never wants to sing what is written, but invents his own descant instead.
2. He finds life's answers in the proper mixture of an amaretto sour.
3. He knows when to cheer and when to boo, and to never, NEVER, do the wave.
4. He is 2-2 against Brian Nelson at Madden, and 4-1 against Mark Wegener.
5. There is nothing he won't do for a friend.

Yeah, but...

For me, the "Yeah, but..." is always the kicker. There's a "Yeah, but..." for all five items listed above:

Yeah, but...
1. Nobody likes his descants but him.
2. Alcohol is a pretty lonely place to be finding life's answers.
3. There really is no "Yeah, but..." here. The wave is purely, absolutely evil.
4. It's Madden.
5. Friends don't ask for much.

It's a mental exercise, one that requires years of practice before it can be perfected. The "Yeah, but..." is a device meant to undermine, destroy, and demolish any good that came before it. It's very effective, when done correctly. The trick is to never miss a beat. The moment you betray even the slightest bit of good, you have to quash it the very next instant. If you don't, then you allow the good to win. You allow it to grow. And, eventually, you may even convince yourself that you, yes, YOU, truly are a good person.

But you know better. I know better. If you or I truly were good people, our friends would come to us more often. They would come to us and say things like, "Matt, I have a problem. What do you think?" or, "Matt, don't tell anybody, but there's something you should know about me," or, "Matt, you're really being a horse's ass, but let's go have a drink anyway." These are things a friend says to the good people they know, and the way you know whether you're a good person or not is whether your friends say these kinds of things to you.

There are a lot of things I don't like about me. Maybe I could make them go away if I had the will power, but it's going to take a lot more will power than I've demonstrated so far.