This weekend I made my way up to NC to catch some SWA (Southern Wrestling Association) action with our very own Jeff Lewis Neal opening the show with his match against Chris Hamrick.

Before and after the show I hung out with Miles from The Wicked Needle in Rutherfordton, NC, his wife Melissa and some of their friends and family before heading back to Greenville.

On Sunday, I had an old friend from York, SC named Heather come down and see me since we hadn’t seen each other in at least four years.  Outside of that, that was about it!

Right now I am wrestling with something of a different sort….the lusts of the flesh!  I’m 33 and I’ve never been married so, technically, I can do whatever I want with whomever I want.  However, after 11 years in radio and hitting on almost every female caller I’ve ever had, it’s just really sad.  It’s not professional and, no, it’s not moral!  No wonder I’ve never met the right woman!  How can I find Ms. Right when I’m constantly chasing Ms. Right NOW!

Over the years, my frustration has been steadily mounting and I have vowed numerous times to stop but to no avail.  This is why I am writing about this rather personal matter because it helps me to share my problems with others without forcing them upon people.  So, if you’re reading this, feel free to comment with some encouraging words and, by all means, pray if you are one to do so!

Well Valentine’s Day sucked being single and all, but overall I had a pretty good weekend!  Especially considering both my state tax return and my paycheck posted to my bank account on Friday!  So I immediately ordered the Traben Phoenix lefty bass I’ve been wanting for like two years now!

On Saturday I met up with Daniele and her friend Brittany again only this time at the Barnes & Noble up in Spartanburg and then we hit the IHOP close by.  I took a wrong turn on my way home and ended up passing Raisin’ Cains where Matt and Nine were hosting the finale of Big “O” Contest.  So I stopped by and got in just in time to catch all the ladies show off their moves and then some!

Afterwards, I followed Matt, Nine and One-Legged Batman back to Nine’s house which was…..interesting!  LOL!

Sunday morning I actually got up early and went to visit Mauldin First Baptist since I met their worship pastor Pruette Plemens at the Mauldin High Battle of the Bands the week before as he was another one of the judges along with myself and the LIONZ OF ZION.

The people there were really nice and I even had a few people recognize me so I didn’t feel so out of place.

Afterwards, I went to go visit my aunt and that was pretty much it since I had a few different date plans fall through.  I’m not gonna lie, I flirt with numerous women at once simply beacause most women I encounter are extremely flaky!  And, despite having several plans and back-up plans, I ended up alone on Valentine’s Day.  Screw it, I enjoyed the free time!

Yesterday I had part of the day off as the office was closed so I went down to see Eddie “The Monster” Lamb at Monster Ink to get a new tat.  Being I had just ordered a new Traben Phoenix to go along with my Traben Chaos Obsession, I figured I’d get the Traben Bass Company logo on my left forearm.  Since it’s just a big ‘T’, it doubles for Todd and triples for Twisted!

When I got off the air I ran down to Blockbuster to see ‘Reverend’ Jim who always updates me on all good games and movies to check out.  He was playing the demo for the new game God of War III which looked amazing!  Since I don’t like to spend $60 on a brand new game, he recommended getting the God of War Collection which has both God of War and God of War II re-issued and remastered for PS3 and is only $30.  So I went down to Best Buy to pick up a copy and I am hooked!

This morning while I was getting ready for work there was a knock at my door.  I was rather alarmed – and naked since I’d just got out of the shower!  I waited a moment and when they knocked again I yelled for them to wait a minute as I grabbed up the closest pair of fig leaves I had lying aroud and went to the door.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was the FedEx guy with my new bass and case!  It was like Christmas morning – which made up for this past Christmas sucking!  Now I can’t wait to get home and play with my new toy!

With 2009 and the rest of the first decade of the new millenium behind me, I sail into the new year and new decade with fresh ideas and a new outlook on life.  The past ten years of my life weren’t exactly wasted but I spent most of them reaching my career goals and taking any quick fix I could get along the way.  Even after finally acheiving full time status in radio, I have found that I still sought after numerous cheap thrills and instant gratifications which have left me rather empty.  Plus this past year put me through a great number of things I never ever wanted to experience like being arrested, totaling a car, scraping a brand new car and then having it keyed and having my apartment broken into.

Even though most of these experiences were not my fault, I’ve come to realize that I could use a change in my life.  Granted I am still going to be me and, for the most part, I like who I am.  I may not be the nicest person you will ever meet, but chances are you know where you stand with me because I tell it like it is and I take no crap from anyone.  However, I am open to smoothing out the edges of my personality and learning not to let things get to me as much as they do.  And don’t get me started on all the botched relationships, romances and affairs of the past decade!  I have been wanting to put my love life to rest for some time now and I think now is the best time to make that official and learn to be happy just being myself by myself.

Much of this decision, of course, stems from my beliefs as a Christian, my faith and values which I have all but abandoned.  Don’t worry, I don’t intend on going all holy roller or anything but I would love to devote myself much more to Jesus Christ and His teachings and remain pure in a lot of my ‘extracurricular activities’.  I know it seems like a contradiction in this line of work, but I see it perfectly acceptable to be a gritty rocker and still have a strong sense of values.  And I’m not alone as there are others I work with on the rock floor of the building that are not only believers as well but even attend the same church as I do.

And I still intend on furthering my conquest for world domination as I continue to push my star higher and make it shine brighter so more can experience that which is Twisted Todd.  Exactly what all that entails, I am not entirely sure of yet but, rest assured, it will rock and it will kicketh much ass!  And I would really love for it to involve performing music once again!

Ok, I didn’t realize it was the anniversary of the Day That Will Live in Infamy until a few minutes ago, but I am honoring the tragedy of Pearl Harbor in my own way….by playing video games!

Alright, just hear me out!  Friday when I got off work I decided to go get a new video game for my PS3 since it’s been a few weeks since I beat Lego Batman.  So I went to my favorite toy store, Best Buy and went through all their PS3 games priced under $30 since I can’t justify spending 60 bucks on a damn video game.  I had been longing to play a good flying fighter game and, lo and behold, I found Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII for just $19.99!  Perfect!

So, needless to say, I spent my entire weekend at home watching TV and playing Blazing Angels.  One of the levels I got to play yesterday was called “Day of Infamy” where you are defending the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor from Japanese dive bombers and fighter planes.  The mission is difficult but exhilarating!  I guess I missed the exact date mentioned when the mission started, but was glad to see I had conquered it the day before the anniversary!  Can you say rematch tonight?!

Ok, well we haven’t been sucked into a black hole, so at least science hasn’t killed us all as of yet in the search for answers to the origins of life.  But is this not the biggest bunch of boocrap billing for billions of bucks?  I mean ten billion dollars just to prove and better understand the “Big Bang” Theory?  And, to top it off, at the risk of possibly annihilating life on Earth in the process?  Granted it was only an extremely slim chance and life is about taking risks, but how great of a price is that chance?  Destroying life on Earth in an attempt to understand how it began?

There’s a book in my car right now that I am taking with me to Atlanta for the rest of the week that clearly tells how the world began and it’s called the Bible.  Now I’m not going to start preaching or Bible-thumping here, but, even if you don’t believe in God, this whole overpriced, glorified science project is downright ludicrous!  Isn’t there something better we could do with ten billion dollars than try to play God at the potential expense of the entire human race?  If this were a comic book, wouldn’t these European scientists be the diabolical villains?  For some odd reason I’m thinking of Doc Ock’s little pet project in Spider-Man 2 – just on a much grander scale!  I don’t even think Oscorp could cough up ten billion big ones for the science fair!

This weekend it became painfully clear to me that I am losing touch with the outside world.  Not with what’s going on in the world, but with people in general.  All my life I have always been someone of a loner.  No, I wasn’t the quiet kid everyone was afraid was going to just snap and go on a shooting rampage (remember I went to school before Columbine and related incidents).  I have always been rather outgoing associating with many but getting close to very few.  Even my best friend I am not very close with being he lives in Atlanta and we both lead very busy lives.

Since college, I have really only been close with someone if I was in a (romantic) relationship.  Having just come out of a year-long relationship back in May, I have, until recently, maintained a close friendship with my ex Rebecca.  Now that we are no longer on speaking terms, I feel very isolated from other people.  I even had a lady friend stay with me most of the weekend after meeting up with her and some friends at the PARMALEE show at the Handlebar Friday night.  At first it was great having some female companionship, but, on Saturday, I started withdrawing inward into my own twisted little world.

Yesterday, I went and had lunch with my mom and aunt (yes, the infamous Aunt Pat!) as I do nearly every Sunday, but it was rather short as I went to meet my friend Robbie at Guitar Center.  I grabbed a couple of guitar stands for ten bucks and we rode over to Jack in the Box so he could grab something to eat and we could catch up being he has been spending a lot of time at home with his wife and kids.  We sat and talked and even in that brief amount of time I started to feel alienated.  I’m not sure what it is exactly.  I think part of it has to do with the fact that I can’t identify with his lifestyle as a family man.  Not that there is anything wrong with it, I just can’t identify with it.  Even my cousin Ray, with whom I have been fairly close with all of our lives, is now married and expecting his firstborn son in less than a month.

I have always made the lighthearted observation that I am like the Muppets character Gonzo in that you really don’t know what he is being he is just some oddball character who loves putting on a show.  Of course, you would later find out he is really an alien in Muppets From Space.  Many people think I am just like Animal with my crazy red hair and even crazier spastic persona, but the truth is that Gonzo truly is the one I relate to the most with my sense of (no pun intended) alienation.

Maybe I just need to continue to draw inward and attempt to really discover myself and keep my public and private self as two different entities.  However, I will not hide my private self because I don’t believe in hiding anything.  Which is why I am writing this.  I am labelling this as another chapter of ‘Words of Twisdom’ even though there really aren’t any words of wisdom here, just an educated observation of myself.  Which is what further confuses me about my lifelong isolation.  I am one of the most open, honest people you will ever meet which are qualities you would think people would flock to.  But, then again, a lot of people can’t handle honesty.  To quote good ol’ Jack Nicholson, “You can’t handle the truth!”  Plus, I do have to be guarded because I meet some ‘interesting’ people being I am broadcasted almost daily over open airwaves with the push of nearly 100,000 watts.  Sadly, as I result, I end up avoiding some potentially valuable relationships.

However, for the time being, I am going to continue my routine of getting the job done then rewarding myself by making time for myself.  And now I have a new incentive to do so being I just got my Marvel and DC Comics encyclopedias from Amazon.com on Friday.  There’s a reason they put a big smile on their boxes!  And they should keep me preoccupied until something else comes along!

Ideally, relationships are meant to bring the best out of two people.  However, in many cases, the opposite is true.  Most, if not all, of us at one point or another, meet someone that brings the worst out of us.  Many of us meet several in our lifetimes.  I am certainly no exception.

In college, I met a girl from Florida named Elena whose parents were from Puerto Rico.  We hit it off immediately and got along great…..for a whole weekend.  She being a college freshman (I being a sophomore at the time) she wanted to date around which was understandable – except for the fact she kept going after my friends and then ran back to me after getting shot down.  This went on for a whole semester with her last pursuit being my first cousin and bandmate Ray.  This was too much for me to handle but still I wanted her.

Christmas break came and we went back home – me to Greenville and Elena to Florida.  She began writing me like every other day (this was just before the internet and email took off) and she’d ask about Ray.  At this time was when Ray and his now wife Erin began dating.  Needless to say Elena was crushed, but bounced back by claiming to have ‘come to her senses’ and realizing that she only wanted me.  Of course, to me at that time, this was wonderful news!

So, when we returned to Winthrop the next semester, we began our hot ‘n’ heavy relationship with the both of us quickly losing our virginities (yes, I was a virgin until I was 19).  However, it wasn’t just our passion that was hot ‘n’ heavy – our fighting became quite notorious as we would sometimes fight clear across campus.  That woman pulled elements out of me that no other woman ever has (and hopefully never will).

After dating for three semesters (roughly a year and a half), Elena broke up with me during summer break while she was taking summer classes at Winthrop to, again, pursue other relationships.  So our relationship had come full circle and my heart was severely broken.  Was she worth my time in the first place?  Surely not, but that didn’t matter because my heart often overrides the functions of my brain.  That and my libido!

The only other person to have ever caused as much grief and heartache would be my most recent ex-girlfriend Rebecca.  When I first met her, she was living in Savannah so I kept my distance because I’ve had enough bad experiences with long distance relationships.  We kept in touch through MySpace although she dodged any proposal of meeting up.  Finally one day she actually called me and we began talking and I learned that she was moving back to Greenville.

She was in town for a couple of weeks prior to her actual move and we went out and hit it off…..for about a month.  Hey, I admit, that was longer than Elena!  We started dating officially after only a week and then she was back in Savannah.  Almost immediately after our first date, her ‘best friend’ which also happened to be her ex-boyfriend, started in trying to sabotage the relationship by pulling various stunts.  Rebecca, of course, just tried to dismiss his actions because she valued him as a friend even to the point of it jeopardizing our relationship.

At first, I rolled with it as best I could because I really felt Rebecca and I had real potential.  However, their relationship obviously made me very insecure in our relationship and, after about a month, it started to take its toll.  Over the next six months, she broke up with me at least half a dozen times.

To make matters worse, when she returned to Greenville and bought her first house, I would drop by to see her to find her ex there – and sometimes at late hours!  I would walk in and nothing would be going on, but Rebecca would be visibly startled to see me and then be quick to get defensive when I made my accusatory conclusions.  Do I think there was anything going on?  Actually no, I really do believe that Rebecca is just too nice a person to see the harm in certain things and certain people.  To this day I don’t believe she sees her ex for who he really is.

Late last year, I did some probing and found some inappropriate things, not necessarily physical, about their relationship and brought it to her attention.  That encounter did not go well at all, but I think it actually sobered the girl up just a bit.  Over the holidays we slowly patched things up and took our last run of the relationship after the new year.  She put her friendship with her ex aside and we had a fairly decent run for a few months.

Back in March, we took our first (and consequently only) vacation together as we went to Savannah for St. Patty’s Day weekend and then went down to Orlando.  During that time, it became painfully obvious to me that I was growing tired of the relationship largely due to our lack of communication.  I still loved her very much, but, despite all the time we were spending together, we never really talked.  Obviously I am open about EVERYTHING!  Rebecca, on the other hand, is not.  She is content with letting things slide instead of addressing them.  I am much more confrontational.  I love to talk.  She prefers to just sit quietly with her significant other and say very little.

Granted, there is nothing wrong with either trait, but those traits make our personalities almost irreversibly incompatible.  So, at Spring Fling this year, we had our final fight as a couple.  She had a friend pick her up in Spartanburg and we officially ended the relationship that night.  After being together off and on for right at a year, neither of us wanted to just say goodbye.  Of course, Rebecca is obviously used to being friends with her exes in the first place.

So, we tried seeing each other as friends.  Well, I probably wouldn’t be writing this blog right now had that plan worked out.  As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure Rebecca is not going to be happy that this blog is being written as I am sure she will be reading it.  However, I am actually not doing this for the sheer intent of upsetting her in any way though I’d be lying if I said I had not the slightest bit of ill will.

The fact is that Rebecca has a good heart and I truly believe that.  However, my friend Mikey summed it very well in saying that she has her priorities straight when it comes to her job and finances but tends to let her friends come at a distant second.  This consequently makes her somewhat unreliable as she rarely does what she says she will do – well at least in the time frame she says she will.  Me, I am punctual and prompt in nearly every way – at least when it counts considering I am late to the office almost every day but, hey, I get the job done!

Again, this difference in traits has made it virtually impossible for us to coexist as friends.  At least as close as we had been until recently.  Her inability to do as she promises to had finally reached the breaking point for me.  So I demanded the key to my apartment back after telling her off.

Instead of giving it to me in person, she took it upon herself to enter my apartment yesterday while I was making my weekly visit to see my mom and aunt, took her bridesmaid dress she had left after a wedding and slid the key back under the door after locking up.  Needless to say, I was furious when I got home at the fact that she had entered my apartment after I had told her to return my key.  Being an assistant manager at an apartment community, she knew that there was nothing I could do legally, but how does reflect upon her especially considering her profession?

I am honestly baffled by her recent actions as they do not seem to come from the same person I have cared about for so long.  Ultimately, that is the inspiration for writing this blog as it makes me reflect upon not only this relationship which was doomed from the beginning, but all of my doomed relationships in the past, only one of which I spotlighted for relevance.  It is also the reason I have made a new blog category called “Words of Twisdom” as I am hoping to share the lessons I have learned in the past.  Hell, who am I kidding, I just hope I learn from my past mistakes!  If you gained any insight from this or have something to share yourself, feel free to leave your own thoughts – granted they’re not as ‘twisted’ as mine!

And since I’m talking about doomed relationships, you can see just how ‘bad’ your girlfriend is by taking the “Bad Girlfriend” survey here.