Johnny X's May

This is going to be lame. I only have a few minutes.

I am back in school, but don’t really feel like talking about it. I can sum it up with two words: Broken Air-Conditioning.

You know what bothers me? The phrase “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that.” Like when you tell people something about yourself and they say, “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that.” I hate when people say this to me. I KNOW there is nothing wrong with it, that is why I am that way, or am doing whatever it is I am telling you about. When you say there is nothing wrong with it, you are implying that I need to be reassured that there is nothing wrong with it because there are plenty of people out there who think that there is something wrong with it, and really, most likely, you do think that there is something wrong with it, but are showing that you are an accepting person and don’t judge, so even though there is something wrong with it, you are still okay with it, but when you say that, you are doing the opposite, it seems to me. *Breath* Anyway, it’s annoying.

It it it.

Retro-quote: After the war, I was dateless again. That Viet Cong girl dumped me.
– Mr. Belding, Saved by the Bell

I thought this was pretty interesting. Gas Saving Prius? vs. BMW M3. Not what you drive necessarily, but how you drive.

Everybody Knew but Me

Do you ever have those nights where you lay in bed and you think about one time in your life? Just one. You think about what it means, and what you can or did learn from it? Maybe you didn’t learn anything from it; it just feels like you should have?

I was lying in the room I spent a good deal of growing up in the other night, and I don’t know where it came from, but I had a flashback to a night when I was sixteen. I was in my parent’s basement with a girl I knew from work named Annie. I had never had a girlfriend up to this point and I was really hoping that was going to happen with Annie.

You know Charlie in High Fidelity? Annie was kind of like my Charlie: the kind of girl I thought I wanted to meet (which, honestly, meant to a sixteen year old me that she was hot), and “she liked me, she liked me, she liked me…at least I think she did,” and in hindsight I can see that she was awful. If I had never heard that she thought I was cute, I would have never attempted to humiliate myself, by trying to go out with her, but, as it goes, she did think I was cute, and I did hear about it.

We started hanging out. We spent most of our time with her friends who were like her and were mostly rich preppies, dumb jocks, and cheerleaders. They listened to Limp Bizkit, and Kottenmouth Kings, and drove $60,000 cars their parents bought for them. I had nothing in common with them, and I hated hanging out with them. Eventually, I got her and a couple of her friends to come hang out with my friends. That didn’t quite work, either. Just about everyone in my life could see the kind people they were except me. The one time we hung out with my friends it ended with Annie’s friend, Jessica, crying, and her other friend yelling insults at everyone, and an awkward twenty minutes of me driving them home early.

Despite everyone asking me why I was hanging out with her, I plugged on hoping it would all be okay soon. I never did kiss her, though. I wussed out every night I hung out with her, which was probably my subconscious holding me back more than it was being a wimp. On the last night we hung out I walked her to her car and we just stood there having that awkward moment before a first kiss. I chickened out again and she got in her car. I finally got the balls and asked her to get out of her car for a second, which she wouldn’t do. She said we could do it later. Embarrassed, I said, “Okay, well, I am going to go inside and hang myself now.”

She told all her friends about me trying to get her out of the car, which led to me getting made fun of all day at work. I was too embarrassed to keep trying.

Anyway, the night I was thinking about was when the two of us were laying down in my room. Something was in the air, something heavy, and it could have been romance for all I knew, but I started spouting out some feelings. They had to do with fear mostly, I mean I was sixteen, seventeen, and soon high school would be over and I was getting on in years. I was afraid of the future and that was what I was telling her, and she had no idea what I was talking about. She didn’t understand how someone could be afraid. I didn’t know how to explain fear to her, and I felt a little silly, but mostly I felt confused. How could someone that age not feel at least a little fear? I began to realize that she was not really in touch with reality. Maybe she was too sheltered, or was ignoring it, but I felt kind of sorry for her. At least I knew what fear felt like. At least I knew it was something to be felt, and was real. And I know now that that particular fear has been conquered, and I know how much I have learned while doing it. I know now that since I have moved on to much bigger and scarier fears in my life, that it is necessary, and that I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I wasn’t afraid of certain things. I know that if you are unable to feel fear then you probably aren’t able to feel a lot of the other things life is.

And life is a lot of things.

She got married about three years later. Her husband was an ex-boyfriend of hers at the time I was attempting to date her. I met him a couple of times and they are a match. I wonder how you can get married without a concept of what it is like to be afraid? Of course, now that I write that it seems like a lack of fear would make it pretty easy, and maybe that is better. But maybe it is like the back-up quarter-back syndrome where the first-string guy goes down and the back-up QB does an incredible job for the first few weeks because he doesn’t know how hard it is supposed to be…but it does eventually catch up to him.

I guess what I can get out of that night is that I am glad I am a person who feels. I am glad I have had ups and downs and know that I always will, that at times I will be afraid, but, at others, so happy I could pee. I am glad I don’t blissfully float through a naive life waiting for the human experience to catch up to me.

You Screw Up Two Little Words and Everything Changes

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/05/15/iraq.oldest.soldier.dies/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

"A Vietnam War veteran killed in an Iraq roadside bombing this week has become the oldest American service member to be killed in both Iraq and Afghan combat, the Pentagon has confirmed."

I mean, you'd think after he died the first time he would have gone the hell home.

Brain Dead

It has been a while. I have been trying to finish up the semester by writing two papers that were kicking my butt. I turned them in on Friday and then was out of town over the weekend.

I don’t really have an April summary other than: Waiting for Godot, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Pedro Páramo, The God of Small Things. Those were the books I was writing my papers on. If you want to read a great contemporary novel, read The God of Small Things, by Arundahti Roy. I think it is amazing. It was the last book we read in my global lit class. It was our reward for getting through the semester. I am no good at doing reviews, so, if you can, just trust me. I think Reena Jana from Salon.com said it best when she said Arundahti Roy is “butt-kicking good.” If you are into literature, read it. If you are the kind of person who doesn’t take suggestions just because they aren't your suggestions, then, if we see each other or you post a comment here, you don’t have to admit to hearing about it through me. You can lie and rub it in my face and say you were way ahead of me, and that you read it ten years ago if you want. I don’t care. Just read it.

I can’t think of anything else to say. School starts again a week from today. I think my brain really is taking this week off.

Johnny X's March 2009

My Newest Book I Have to Wait Two Years to Read


A Devil on One Shoulder and an Angel on the Other: The Story of Shannon Hoon and Blind Melon

Favorite Email

Zach: I have a little snag in our plans for Thursday night. My calling is coaching the young men's basketball teams in my ward. It's region time and the priest team is doing very well and has a game Thursday night at 7 pm, semi finals. The games are an hour, or less. I can be at Cam's at 8. Don't let that stop you guys from going to dinner, or getting together earlier. I'll get there at 8 though. Thoughts?

Cam: My first thought is, Bummer. My second thought is, who the crap made you a basketball coach?

Zach: Jesus, Cam. Jesus.

Favorite Youtube Video: It's Just Like a Mini Mall

I often say that I work with some of the dumbest people in the country. I am not sure if people actually believe me, or if they take it as an exaggeration as I am blowing of steam, but it's true.

Exhibit A: I work for a company that does insurance inspections on homes. Some insurance companies require that the inspector take a photo of the number of the home to confirm the address, so that they know we saw the correct home.

We got a report in the other day where the inspector took a picture of the request the insurance company sent us. So, to confirm that the address was correct he took a picture of a piece of paper, and sent it in labelled "Address confirmation," which of course makes no sense at all. It doesn't confirm that he saw the right house, it just confirms that he could if he wanted to.

How can you possibly think that that is the right thing to do? That you are going to send this to the QC staff, and they will look at it be like "Yep. The number on the request he took a picture of didn't change when he printed it," and send the picture of your clipboard to the insurance company? Awesome. Quite professional.

I was going to post this picture, but I would have to black out most of it (name, address etc.), and it wouldn't be worth it.

A pet peeve of mine that has formed because of my job is the word barbecue being spelled BBQ, bar-b-que (seriously! What is that!), or barbeque.

Whenever an insured has a built-in BARBECUE we need to list that in the report, and the spelling needs to be changed 98% of the time, and it drove me nuts. This doesn't have much to do with my work now, but I could get a well-done (pardon the pun) report, but if they spelled barbecue wrong (which, like i said, was 98% of the time) I would be super upset, and was always sure to let the inspector know.

I don't know why it bothered me so much. It appears that I was the only one in the office correcting it, and that 4% of the English speaking population actually knows how to spell the stupid word. I have gotten emails back from underwriters with it spelled incorrectly, so obviously the people I was fixing it for didn't know the difference, and the pricing tool I am currently working with has it built-in as 'barbeque,' and I can't do anything about it.

Maybe I am just sensitive becuase I was going to get 100% on a spelling test in the fifth grade once, but I didn't, because I spelled barbecue with a 'q.'

Anyway, a friend recently told me to try Jim Beam sunflower seeds, which I did. Although, it gave me pause when I saw that they couldn't spell it either. It is much more offensive to me when you sell barbecue products (flavor, or grills) and don't know how to spell it. You should be able to spell your own product

Really. How did this word get a pass by everyone? How is it that it gets five different spellings when other words have one?

Piece of Lit

Then he heard the weeping. That was what woke him: a soft but penetrating weeping that because it was do delicate was able to slip through the mesh of sleep and reach the place where his fear lived. - Pedro Páramo, Jaun Rulfo

Six Hours of Driving and a Jazz Game

The Freshmaker



Being overly excited, but it's the people in the back that make this a keeper

Some Guy With Bagpipes

I had to pee so bad!