Whenever I get a package of plain M&Ms, I make it my duty to continue the strength and robustness of the candy as a species. To this end, I hold M&M duels.

Taking two candies between my thumb and forefinger, I apply pressure, squeezing them together until one of them cracks and splinters. That is the "loser," and I eat the inferior one immediately. The winner gets to go another round.

I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically inferior. I have hypothesized that the blue M&Ms as a race cannot survive long in the intense theatre of competition that is the modern candy and snack-food world.

Occasionally I will get a mutation, a candy that is misshapen, or pointier, or flatter than the rest. Almost invariably this proves to be a weakness, but on very rare occasions it gives the candy extra strength. In this way, the species continues to adapt to its environment.

When I reach the end of the pack, I am left with one M&M, the strongest of the herd. Since it would make no sense to eat this one as well, I pack it neatly in an envelope and send it to M&M Mars, A Division of Mars, Inc., Hackettstown, NJ 17840-1503 U.S.A., along with a 3x5 card reading, "Please use this M&M for breeding purposes."

This week they wrote back to thank me, and sent me a coupon for a free 1/2 pound bag of plain M&Ms. I consider this "grant money." I have set aside the weekend for a grand tournament. From a field of hundreds, we will discover the True Champion.

There can be only one.

The problem is you're focusing on the things in life that don't really matter. When I was a kid I had hopes and dreams. We all did. But over time, the daily grind gets in the way and you miss the things that really matter, even though they are right in front of you, staring you in the face. I think the next time you should ask yourself "Am I on the right track here?". I don't mean to be rude but people like you I really pity. So maybe you could use the few brain cells you have and take advantage of the knowledge I have given you now. Good luck.

Have you acquired the knowledge thus far that there are people who suffer from conditions beyond their control, and are naturally in that state? My aunty, for instance, happens to be a person of that nature. She is a crane operator that has bad joints and a bad spine from operating the crane but you probably lack empathy for that case also. I do not fall under this category as I am 6'5, 300lbs and every day I make an effort to stimulate myofibrillar hypertrophy by inducing skeletal muscle mircotrauma. I would be most enthusiastic about you saying such a thing of unkind nature to my aunty in the vicinity of my physical presence. This has a low probability of coming to pass however as you are courageous only when your words first travel through an electronic medium to a public display forum. My belief is not strong that you would vocalise these insults when there is little spatial distance between yourself and that person. That is my thought process. I would like to know yours. Oh I do offer my apologies as you lack a frontal lobe with the necessary neurons and synapses which are prerequisites for a sentient being. I myself, however, would be most happy to book you in for a three day cruise to travel to my location and visualise yourself making such taunts to a person of my acquaintance with the removal of an electronic discussion medium.

Has anybody ever tried cooking with their own semen?

About a month ago I got adventurous and decided to fap into the frying pan, using my semen in place of little extra butter I usually put in the pan when I'm grilling grill'd cheese.

I didn't notice much difference in flavor when I tried it, although it definitely didn't taste any worse.

Last night, however, while in the process leading up to grilling two sandwiches for lunch for myself and my sick mother, I noticed my neighbor's 13 year old daughter changing in the yard next door (our window sort of faces out into the neighbor's yard, the suburban layout of our community is somewhat strange), presumably after getting out of the pool. I got the urge to fap and decided to incorporate it into my cooking again in secret.

My mother did seem to notice a difference in flavor for the better - I nonchalantly told her I used a different butter, which in it's essence wasn't entirely a lie, I just didn't specify it was my nut butter. I'm not about to outright lie to my mother.

I consider myself a respectable man of principles, you know.

Are you aware that incest is way more common than anyone would like to believe, and it's extremely underreported. It's also wayyyy too prevalent in my family. My brother used to try to come after me when I was maybe 5-6 years old. I wanted no part of it, but that didn't exactly stop him. I blocked most of it out, but I don't remember any actual penetration at least. Ironic that when I finally got the courage to tell my mom, she called me a liar and smacked me. (You'll see the irony if you keep reading.) Two of my uncles also molested their own daughters, and one (uncle by marriage) used to grab my inner thighs/crotch when we were at his house swimming. Creepy bastard.

My mom and her 3 youngest sisters were all raped on a regular basis for yeeeeears by their older brothers. Started when they were about 4, and went until 12ish.

I was maybe 3 years old when she started telling me the stories, in detail. She started spraying perfume in her vag so their dicks would burn when they penetrated. (Yes, it burned her more than it ever did them.) She'd stick pieces of broken glass and razor blades inside of herself in hopes of cutting them. All sorts of fun ****. The 4 youngest girls shared a bedroom, and all their underwear would be torn or cut off, often bloody, and left in the closet. The mom would find them and beat the girls for it, even though anyone with half a brain would know it wasn't their fault.

Awesome family. The reunions are great, everyone always pretends they're a normal loving family, and no one ever mentions it. One year though, my retarded uncle (yes, literally retarded) got drunk and started talking about how the older boys used to rape his ass, and went on about how he knew they raped all the girls as well. Fun times.

Today, I showed a group of men I trust my plastic baggie of 10+year-old M&Ms. (Plain, in case you’re wondering.)

It was a special moment.

And they were special men.

My buddy Snake and I hosted a warrior workshop out of my house this weekend, 13 men sitting around together to learn from each other: what we know about ourselves, what we know as men? How do I heal a relationship with my son? My wife? How do I believe in myself again? Is it possible I could change the world for the better? We all wondered together. Snake and I shared some answers accrued over the years by other men, and said, “If this works for you, use this. And if it doesn’t, well, ignore it.”

In this short time, we learned to trust one another, listen each others’ griefs and joy in a very deep way. I allowed them to see me, and though we didn’t know each other very well at the onset, each of them softened so that I could see them as well. We were cautious at times. Learning to trust other men is a new thing, an unfamiliar, uncharted pleasure.

We sometimes chewed bagels and munched, and sometimes we strained ourselves, listening in rapt attention. We took luxurious breaks on my back porch today, eating watermelon amidts a golden Minnesota day, ocean-like breezes and a sun wearing a damn smiley-face up there. A glorious, victory for Minnesotians everywhere, this miracle day!

Our breaks lasted as long as they lasted, a big difference from my more structured corporate trainings, where I give ten minute breaks and then stick to it. No, our breaks today just kinda ended when the smokers had smoked, the rest of us stretched, and everyone got a chance to nibble from the dining table feast of fruits or coffeecake from Wuollets.Then we ambled towards our chairs and said, “Hey, let’s start up again.” I love that kind of break.

I took an odd pleasure in announcing right away Saturday morning, “My hosting responsibilities are kinda over. If you want something to drink, get it yourself from the fridge.” It pleased me to see guys go to my fridge all weekend, peer around inside, pulling out what they wanted. Mostly they grabbed sodas, but late yesterday afternoon, one guy pulled out lunch’s leftover deep-dish pizza and asked me with his eyes, “This is cool, right?”

Yeah, it was cool.

I feel loved by this odd gesture, men friends in my home who go to my fridge and get what they need. Men got their own plates, cups from the cupboards, and a buddy I haven’t seen in eight months, Hunter, washed my used dishes after today ended. It’s a special kind of intimacy when guys go into your kitchen and just start taking what they need. Means that we’re way beyond being that kind of polite.

Call it Fridge Intimacy.

So, I had Fridge Intimacy this weekend while men showed me their inner faces, the ones that bear grief, and hurt, fear for their own behaviors, sometimes ashamed and sometimes wearing proud, triumphant smiles because these men have already done fucking hard work and realized amazing things about themselves. We met as equals. We all had something to teach, something to learn.

At the end of our time together, I showed these awesome men my baggie of M&Ms, told them the story, why I keep these in my King’s Treasure Box and why I could never eat them (however with the possible exception being Zombie Attack, and I’m trapped in the house, and the M&Ms are the only food remaining).

When I was a kid, our family went to Church every Sunday. If the four of us kids were good (and we were almost always good), Mom and Dad bought us two bags of M&Ms, the original packaging, so, not super-sized. We squirmed in the backseat of the Oldsmobile, worried about Dad leaving them on the dashboard, and sometime after breakfast, Eileen or I might casually ask if we might make ourselves useful to Dad and get those M&Ms out of his suit pocket jacket for him because surely they were bulky and uncomfortable for him. We were willing to help him out with that task.

We counted out the M&Ms on the kitchen table every Sunday morning, separating them first by color, then by quantities, little groupings of 10, until the piles could be merged and The Great Dividing could begin. We worked as diamond distributors must, carefully cataloging each little gem, watching our fellow counters nervously to make sure an orange M&M didn’t suddenly slip off the table and into someone’s hand.

And who are we kidding? If anyone were going to swipe a M&M and pretend nothing happened, that would have been me.

Andrea, our elder sis, could be trusted to be fair in her distribution, so we watched carefully as she administered the treasure. Each pile had the same number of oranges, greens, tans, and dark browns, depending on what you traded. Somedays I craved more orange M&Ms, so I’d trade with Eileen who liked green because her eyes were green. Eileen and I, the middle kids, were good traders.

I day-dreamed fantasies of eating my M&M pile slowly, luxuriously, savoring each one, remembering which ones were especially tasty. That fantasy lasted a half hour before I gobbled them all down, and then went traipsing to find my sisters to see if they wanted any assistance consuming theirs. You never knew, they might want help.

Matt, the youngest, would outlast us all, appearing suddenly in the TV room Sunday night with a plastic bowl containing 14-17 M&Ms, an impressive display of day-long will power. We wondered how he could do it, how he could endure the chocolate temptation so much better than the rest of us. Enjoying Walt Disney each Sunday night was sometimes especially difficult with Matt gingerly crunching M&Ms nearby and a person had devoured his (or her) M&Ms a half hour after the distribution.

About ten years ago, as part of a Christmas gift to my siblings, I bought two bags of M&Ms, original packaging, and divided them into four piles on my kitchen table. We all got the same number, the same color, and if that meant I had to eat two orange ones to even out the piles, so be it.

I wrote a note about how we are these M&Ms, we four Manning children, and we will always be linked by our shared past, our M&Ms, our amazement at Matt’s willpower, and how our big sister did right by us on Sunday mornings, respectful counting on the kitchen table. I have learned in intervening years that not every big sister is fair and kind. I have learned that not everyone likes their siblings, miss them, wish it were sometimes possible to live in the same house again and this time figure out how not to drive each other crazy.

I have met amazing people in my life, and none of them will understand the Sunday morning M&M ritual, not like these three other people in my life. Eileen will always get me in a way the rest of the world cannot.

As part of today’s Warrior Show-N-Tell, I pulled out the my 1/4 of the booty I gave as Christmas presents 10 years ago. I explained about my family and how much I love my siblings.

Other men shared their treasures, their trinkets, photos and rings, feathers and one man showed art made by his son. We listened to each other with loving curiosity, acknowledging that we may know a lot about each other, yet there’s much we do not understand. We men remain mysteries to each other. In fact, those words might go together naturally, Men & Mystery.

After our warrior gathering had ended, I wandered around the neighborhood with my iPod, sucking in ocean-breezy air and watching the sunlight dance out of the sky. I thought about my siblings and how I miss them. They’re having lives and adventures in another state. By living here in Minnesota, I’m missing out on these day-to-day adventures, though we still manage a few hilarious adventures as adults. I chose to live here. I love Minnesota. But there are consequences that go with this choice, and I miss them.

On my iPod journey, I kept thinking, why the M&Ms?

I have all kinds of cool stuff in my King’s Treasure Box, a finger-puppet named Franco, a wishbone from Thanksgiving, my pocketwatch with one side scarred and damaged, which I’m keeping in case I ever want to become a Batman villain. Precious rocks I acquired somewhere, a gold coin from a friend, my bank deposit key, a symbol that even banks recognize what I still find hard to believe: I Am An Adult.

With so many cool treasures, why did I share the M&Ms?

Suddenly, I remembered that I moved to Minneapolis 13 years ago this weekend. This very weekend!

Oh.

And then it was clear: I wanted my warrior family to meet my M&M family.

I’ve been blessed with a couple different families in this lifetime, and I can scarcely believe my good fortune, to have Fridge Intimacy with new warrior buddies, and an extended Minnesota family that I couldn’t imagine when I showed up thirteen years ago. I have goddaughters here, and decade-old friendships. I have men who love me, women who love me, and a list of people to call back. I go into other friends’ house sometimes and grab a Diet Coke. In fact, Mary and Heather keep Diet Coke in their fridge for times when I come over.

I have Fridge Intimacy.

And I have another family, I am blessed to own a bag of magic M&Ms which I will never eat (unless under Zombie Attack).

Ha. Take that, little bro.

It’s Sunday night, more than 10 years after I distributed our four baggies, and I’ve still got my M&Ms.

How’s that for will power?

Fuk the hard way go the ez way.

NO Xplode.

Suppliments like this increase your concentration and make you think about working out.

W/out No Xplode in me, i just walk around the gym and hit on girls / chat w/ my boyz. With NO Xplode in me, i actually focus on strength training, i notice an increase agression towards lifting and training. I preform better all around, while weight lifting, and hitting the heavy bag / speed bags.

Your mother is a whore and the daughter of a whore. Your father was likely her brother, but could have been any of her cousins. I'd have a second deliver a card on a silver platter, but your kind generally wouldn't understand it, and doesn't deserve much more than a dog-whipping anyway. You havn't got a clue. You couldn't get a clue if you smeared yourself with clue musk and danced the clue mating dance in a field full of horny clues in clue mating season. Your eyebrows meet in the middle, your forehead slopes, your pet gerbil wants you dead. Your mother would dress you funny if she could afford clothes. You're the primary reason bigots hate your ethnic group. You were obviously not toilet-trained correctly, which explains the stains on the floor of your cardboard box. Your webbed feet go well with the pointy forehead. Your manners are hideous, your brain minute, and your body odor could fell an ox. You would fit in on a short bus to a convention of Fundies. You are a living, breathing poster-child for birth-control and abortion. You swine. You vulgar little maggot. You worthless bag of filth. As they say in Texas, I'll bet you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. You are a canker. A sore that won't go away. I would rather kiss a lawyer than be seen with you. You're a putrescent mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon. You are a bleating foal, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth into this world. An insensate, blinking calf, meaningful to nobody, abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and then killed themselves in recognition of what they had done. I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf at the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention you smell? Try to edit your responses of unnecessary material before attempting to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able to access it more rapidly. You snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up, drive its beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set you loose to fly briefly before spattering the ocean rocks with the frothy pink shame of your ignoble blood. May you choke on the queasy, convulsing nausea of your own trite, foolish beliefs. You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid, nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You're a fool, an ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won't have sex with you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that reality forgot. And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self-important statements of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us? What fantasy do you hold that you would believe that your tiny-fisted tantrums would have more weight than that of a leprous desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle, waiting for the bite of the snake? You are a waste of flesh, food and air. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a disease, you puerile one-handed slack-jawed drooling meatslapper. On a good day you're a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go. You smarmy lagerlout git. You bloody woofter sod. Bugger off, pillock. You grotty wanking oik artless base-court apple-john. You clouted boggish foot-licking twit. You dankish clack-dish plonker. You gormless crook-pated tosser. You churlish boil-brained clotpole ponce. You cockered bum-bailey poofter. You craven dewberry pisshead cockup pratting naff. You gob-kissing gleeking flap-mouthed coxcomb. You dread-bolted fobbing beef-witted clapper-clawed flirt-gill. You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise everything about you, and I wish you would go away. I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Your writing has to be a troll. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know. I'm sorry. I can't go on. This is an epiphany of stupid for me. After this, you may not hear from me again for a while. I don't have enough strength left to deride your ignorant questions and half baked comments about unimportant trivia, or any of the rest of this drivel. Duh. The only thing worse than your logic is your manners. I have snipped away most of what you wrote, because, well... it didn't really say anything. Your attempt at constructing a creative flame was pitiful. I mean, really, stringing together a bunch of insults among a load of babbling was hardly effective... Maybe later in life, after you have learned to read, write, spell, and count, you will have more success. True, these are rudimentary skills that many of us "normal" people take for granted that everyone has an easy time of mastering. But we sometimes forget that there are "challenged" persons in this world who find these things more difficult. If I had known, that this was your case then I would have never read your post. It just wouldn't have been "right". Sort of like parking in a handicap space. I wish you the best of luck in the emotional, and social struggles that seem to be placing such a demand on you. P.S.: You are hypocritical, greedy, violent, malevolent, vengeful, cowardly, deadly, mendacious, meretricious, loathsome, despicable, belligerent, opportunistic, barratrous, contemptible, criminal, fascistic, bigoted, racist, sexist, avaricious, tasteless, idiotic, brain-damaged, imbecilic, insane, arrogant, deceitful, demented, lame, self-righteous, conspiratorial, satanic, fraudulent, libelous, bilious, splenetic, spastic, ignorant, clueless, illegitimate, harmful, destructive, dumb, evasive, double-talking, devious, revisionist, narrow, manipulative, paternalistic, fundamentalist, dogmatic, idolatrous, unethical, cultic, diseased, suppressive, controlling, restrictive, malignant, deceptive, dim, crazy, weird, dystopic, stifling, uncaring, plantigrade, grim, unsympathetic, jargon-spouting, censorious, secretive, aggressive, mind-numbing, arassive, poisonous, flagrant, self-destructive, abusive, abrasive, socially-retarded, puerile, clueless, and generally Not Good. Go pee in an electrical outlet.

I am an uncommonly intelligent and witty individual who has utter contempt for the mainstream stupidity of the common man. My opinions are always correct and I am completely impossible to defeat in a debate. No matter who you are, you are a lesser being than I and given the chance, I will prove it to you with incontrovertible proof. Whether or not you have enough intelligence to decipher the glaring trail of evidence that leads to the fact of my greatness, is entirely at the mercy of your own unavoidable failings.

Are you aware that you can get brain damage without completely destroying your brain and making you a vegetable? My grandmother for instance is one of those people. She was a high school teacher who got pushed down the stairs by a student and suffered brain injury that left her with memory and concentration problems for years. Oh well I am not one of those people I am 5'9" 185lbs and I exercise every day. I am glad you've never suffered brain damage. I on the other hand am happy to tell you that my grandmother's recovered well, and is now mentally healthy again, though for years it was immediately apparent that she had suffered some brain damage.