I Turn To Movies

To those of you still subscribed to this blog:

As you can tell I don't use it much anymore, but I started a new blog I Turn to Movies which I am doing my best to post on on a bi-weekly basis. Thanks.

What Gets Me Through the Day

Cam: Someone really needs to find a Tailspin clip right now.

Ryan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_cMaGt52QE&feature=related

Cam: what a great show

Ryan: Do you remember when they filled the plane with icecream so the heat seeking missles wouldn't get them?

Cam: hahahaha, no

Tolley: I loved that show

Me: I never got Tale Spin. So the bear from Jungle Book learned to fly?

I was always confused by the characters.

Tolley: there were actually a few characters from Jungle Book that were in Talespin. If it wasnt far fetched that Baloo could talk, why is it far fetched that he learned to fly a plane?

Cam: Was he the actual Jungle Book character though?

me: I didn't say it was far fetched. I just never knew if that was him or not.

Cam: so, mogli grew up and Baloo decided it was time to grow up and start a career as a pilot?

Tolley: yeah, bears live forever...like parrots.

Cam: Alright, all cleared up.

R.A.M.O.N.E.S. (How I Stayed Entertained Today)

Pennywise

Green Day At least watch till 2:07. That guy is awesome.

Bruce Springsteen

Motorhead

And my personal favorite: Pearl Jam

Thanks, Internets.

Texas Update

It has been about a month since we first arrived in Texas. We are liking it so far. Thanks to having some contacts down here that can show us around we have been able to do a lot of fun stuff already. We were introduced to the San Marcos River on our second day which was the 4th of July. We were told that we only had about two weeks to get in the river before before we were banished from the city. We saw the Martindale Parade, which was awesome as you can see from a highlight below:




I went on a day long barbecue trip that started at Snow's and ended with a two hour wait at Franklins.

We saw the world's largest urban bat colony,

and the Alamo.

So far, though, the highlight of our Texas adventure has been the Alamo Drafthouse. This might be my favorite spot on the planet. I know I have some other places to check out still and I have only been to the Alamo Drafthouse once, but it is a pretty solid bet. Take a look at the website and signature events and tell me this place is not awesome.

Firsts and Lasts

Moving day is coming up very quickly. Chelsea and I went to Lake Powell recently, and during the trip someone mentioned that we were leaving in two weeks and it kind of floored me; I honestly didn't realize it was so close. We are now in the midst of having our last get-togethers with friends and family.

Saying goodbye to the young ones of the family is always the hardest part. I will miss the adult members of my family, too, of course, but I guess in those cases I know what I am missing. I have nieces and nephews ranging from eleven to two. For them, interests are beginning to form and solidify. Personalities are either beginning to shine through or are really starting to mature. I will miss a lot of their growing up these next three years.

I recently wrote a couple of paragraphs that are going to allow me to finally finish a story I have been working on for a while (and makes it so I have to change the tense of every single verb). They talk about the importance of firsts in life. Basically, they explore Gordie's assertion in Stand By Me that nobody has friends like the friends they had when they were twelve. You can meet all the people you can in your adult life, and tell them all the stories you want about the experiences that made you you, but no matter how well you tell it, they didn't experience it with you. Your new friends can never be there the first time.

When I say goodbye to the young ones I think about all the firsts I will miss, then I think about all the firsts I have already missed because maybe I wasn't trying to hard enough while I was still here, and so I vow to do better, and then I get angry because now I can't make good on my vow for another three years, and that makes saying goodbye that much harder.

Alumni

I graduated today (May 6^th). I have been so stressed lately with work and moving that I was having a hard time being excited or relieved about finishing my degree. There is something in me that doesn’t let me do excited. I show more emotion about having time to watch a game or go to a movie than I do about something like graduating from college. I was very happy today, although you couldn’t tell from looking at me. I am not sure what that is. The lack of outward emotion about something I accomplished probably comes from my stunted self-esteem which makes it difficult for me to give any credit to myself. Whatever I have done there is always someone that has done something cooler and better than I. This constant stream of thought is a real problem, and I have discussed it here before.

My family was very excited for today. Seeing their excitement was helpful because I could be happy that they were happy, but I still couldn’t share it, so I decided to leave early for campus, park at our now former apartment and walk up through campus for the last time alone. I put my headphones in and walked the path I had so many times before and my emotions started to arrive.

I walked by the patch of grass where I finished reading The God of Small Things and remembered how I had to hold back the tears while standing in line to pay for my lunch directly after because the book was so beautiful and so sad.

I walked through OSH one last time where most of my classes were held. As I walked through the unevenly air conditioned halls the difficulty of this accomplishment finally hit me. So much frustration and happiness occurred in that ugly building. I thought about the lectures and subjects that went over my head, the fight to understand, and then the attempts to write intelligently about them.

I laughed while thinking about the emails to my professor concerning my first ever twenty page paper. The paper seemed to be going nowhere and my professor compared my writing process to the Nine Circles of Hell. The paper was on Sydney’s Defense of Poesy and Astrophil and Stella. The grade for that class relied solely on that paper and I got an A. After that paper I finally began to feel that my education was coming together and that I actually sort of knew what I was doing.

I walked up the stairs and by the little store where I would stop and get breakfast every morning before my African American Lit class. I would usually end up in line next to my professor, and standing in line with him became a sort of pre-class ritual.

I walked by were I studied The Simpsons and then by the classroom where I wrote another twenty pages about Lord Byron’s Don Juan using Simpsons’ satire.

It finally hit me. I felt good about myself. I missed my college years and this stupid building that couldn’t decide if it wanted to sweat us out or freeze us numb and would spit steam at you if you dared mess with the thermostat. That’s not to say that I wanted to jump into another degree, because I didn’t, and don’t. I think it is healthy to be able to miss something without having the desire to go back, which is not always the case with me, and I enjoyed the feeling.

A Very Specific Part of Kansas

On Turning Twenty-Eight

I celebrated my first anniversary on the seventh. It feels strange to not be a newlywed anymore. Marriage is still relatively new to us of course, but now it no longer feels weird to be married. The first few months of marriage were pretty surreal. Whenever I said, "You are my wife. I am your husband," I couldn't be super confident that it was true. The fact that I am someone's husband still gets me every once in a while, but for the most part I'm used to that fact. What gets me now is how I continue to fall in love. It's shocking, really. Which seems weird to say because I knew I would love her more today, than I did on 1/07/10, but there are these moments where I look at her, or tell my keyboard about her, and I say to myself I just fell more in love and I am amazed all over again.

I will say that my favorite thing about the last year has been our opportunity to comfortably and confidently fall in love.

Another shocking thing is that my life actually seems easier. I expected life to be better, but not easier necessarily. There was going to be more bills, more decisions, more complications, etc., but I didn't realize how complicated my single life was. I mean, there isn't a lot in life that is as complicated as dating; stupid people and geniuses alike struggle with it. I have a great family and group of friends, but being able to talk to someone about your life isn't the same thing as having someone who is going through it with you. Chelsea knows my problems, fears, weaknesses, and so on, but not because I have told her about them (as that is the case most of the time), but because she experiences them with me. That is a huge difference, and having someone like that in your life makes it easier. Not to mention having a person there to take care of you when you are sick, and who doesn't care if you might be embellishing your illness a tad for a little extra attention, because for some damn reason they just like taking care of you. That's much easier than when I got pnuemonia a while ago and stayed in my room all alone for five days.

I now don't have to look for comfort or relief. For the most part both are right next to me; even more so with our tiny apartment.

I don't mean to say that life is a cakewalk now. Life was a kick in the drawers before and continues to be; it just doesn't hurt as much these days.

While we are talking about shocking things: I was worried that my writing would suffer after getting married. You know, the plight of the happy artist. So much of what I am interested in is what it is like to be human, and I suppose my main interest is in love. It seems like it can create more happiness than anything else in life, but also can be more destructive than hate or fear. Not revelation, I know, but that's the basis for my interest in it as a subject.

When I write I like to think about it as acting. I have spent a good portion of life watching my brother on stage. There have been times when I was little where I was scared or nervous about the person on stage because he was doing or saying something horrible and I believed that he meant it. It didn't seem like he was faking it.

I still have these moments. He's currently in Born Yesterday at Hale Center Theater, and he plays an intimidating A-hole. There is a moment where he walks on stage very angry with his girlfriend. He doesn't say anything. He stands there looking at her. It made me, and I'm sure everyone else in the theater, nervous.

The difference between those moments now and when I was little is that now I know that when I feel discomfort or unease it is a sign as to how succesful he is at acting his part. And although he doesn't say anything in the above mentioned moment, I think it may be his most succesful moment in the play. I don't think I have ever expressed what his acting has taught me about writing and art in general, because I am not a very good talker and I didn't want him to think that I believed it because I actually thought him capable of the things some of his characters do or say. He has taught me that the point to good art is not to provide an escape for the audience/reader/viewer, but it is a study of the real, and what we felt in that moment and so many others while watching him on stage is real. Even though he may be faking it, the result is not. Pretty cool.

There are people who think what I studied for a bachelors degree is awesome, and those who think that studying literature is an irresponsible use of the college years. What the people who don't get it are missing is that I was not studying fanciful fake worlds. I was studying this one.

And I am pleased with my education.

What I am trying to get at with all of this is that if I am writing a character who does or believes things I don't, the idea is not to dismiss them as evil or vulgar or wrong, but to understand them and learn from them because that is what I will want the reader to do. The world is a lot of things, and I don't believe that any of it should simply be escaped from (at least not permanently), but dealt with openly. I want to study what it is like to be that way, and then act that way while I'm writing so that when I type it I mean it. Whether it works or not, I don't know, but that is my desire.

The point is that being in a loving relationship and happy made me worry that I would lose touch with the other aspects of love and life, and be doomed to write gooey stories where dudes just gush about the person they love because that was all I knew. I thought I might lose the ability to act some parts. But it turns out that imagining life without Chelsea brings up all those feelings I was scared I would lose touch with so easily that I needn't have worried.

Writing a character that is lonely while I am in love is so much easier than writing a character that is in love while I am lonely.

I still don't like birthdays much. Hence the focus on my anniversary, probably. Chelsea decided to call it "Jeremy Day" instead to take the emphasis off of getting older and put it on the fact that I can do whatever I want today. It helps. I am not sure if there is a secret to life, but it is possible that it is finding something that makes you want to look forward. While I'd prefer to be celebrating many prior birthdays instead of my twenty-eighth, all I really want in this world is Chelsea. She wasn't there when I turned eighteen or twenty-one, so I tend to look toward the future more often these days. As long as she is with me, I don't care how hold I am.

Quality Control a.k.a. I’m Bored as $#!*

Everything surrounding me is gray:
The outdated wall to wall carpeting
And the glum shut blinds to keep out the day,
The cubicles partitions dividing.
I spend everyday searching for mistakes,
When all is right I begin to worry
If the report, after the time it takes,
Is flawless, then I was “in a hurry.”
No report can be seen without complaint.
They all have in them some imperfection
Like a few black drops dripped into white paint.
The photos don’t match the home description!
Turns out what I am best at, sad to say,
Is QC’ing a high value survey.

Amusement Park

...And when you're really down and out
And you feel like there's no way out
Let go of your tears.
-Angel's Wings, Social Distortion

Dylan only wants to die sometimes.

There are times when he is happy, but he is able to draw so much happiness out of this life that he is bound to find the dark places too.

Dylan has discovered that this world we all live in is a world of opposites. Meaning, the happier he is able to make himself, the higher he is able to go, the bigger drop he has waiting or him.

I dare say that everyone understands the roller coasters of life. We know that passion works both ways, but what we don't understand, and what Dylan gets, is that passion should not be turned off. We know that when highs come to an end they can be dangerous, and when we reach that peak we shut down our passion and we fight gravity. We try to slow down and stay as high as possible.

Dylan doesn't.

What we forget is the lower you go, the more energy you have behind you to help you go higher than before. And so he doesn't fight his descent; he free falls. He descends so spectacularly that any recovery seems out of the question. He speeds toward that darkness, and when he gets there he loses himself as he continues toward the hard rock below.

His thoughts turn to despair, and still he doesn't attempt to pull up. He lets himself feel overwhelmed. What Dylan has learned is that the faster he reaches rock bottom, the sooner he can begin his long ascension, so he puts just as much passion into his sadness as he does his happiness.

At times he feels that death is an option. He says to himself, "Do I want to die?" When he continues to discover that the answer is, " No, I don't," he puts all his energy, all his passion, into being alive, and life is better than it ever was before because he knows he is exactly where he wants to be.

For Dylan, wanting to die sometimes is just part of life, and life should be embraced, not ignored. Feeling failure, fear, and despair just means he is trying.

After all, a level roller coaster would be boring as hell.

On Turning Twenty-Seven Years One Month and Fourteen Days Old (I'm Back!)

The last time I blogged was in October and before that, August. Honestly, I shouldn't be blogging right now, either. I had planned in my head a triumphant return to the blog, but it turns out all I want to do is make the background white...

As you would expect, a lot has happened since my last post: an engagement, the holidays, like eight birthdays including my own and Chelsea's, the end of a semester, a wedding, the beginning of a new semester, moving etc.

First things first: Engagement/Marriage/Wedding

An interesting phenomena occurred when we were engaged. It seems about 93% of the people we told about the engagement (excluding friends and family) had nothing positive to say about marriage. Usually they just mentioned that they felt sorry for us, or talked about giving up our freedom and joy. I was told to run on several occasions. Many times these conversations happened in front of the spouse of the marriage basher (oh yes, forgot to mention that a lot of these people were married). Yes, they were joking, but a lot of times it was hard to tell, and hearing a husband tell us, in front of his wife, that he wishes he wasn't married, and we shouldn't make the same mistake he did, usually turned into words that we shouldn't have been present for.

We should have given them the finger for making us feel so awkward, but what can I say, we're nice people. I would like to give that overdue finger right now, however. Odds are if you are reading this you either fall into the friends and family category, or the 7%, but if not, just take it, you know you deserve it.

I would also like to thank the two stand-out acquaintances that were positive. An older gentleman from Chelsea's work responded "I love my wife." That guy kicks ass. A guy from my work who congratulated me when we passed in the stairwell said, "Marriage is a good thing. I dig it." To you two, I say thank you. Your change of pace made our days.

The lesson: When an acquaintance announces getting married try not to let your first words, or any subsequent words, be about how he or she is making a huge mistake. If the urge is too much, say congrats (or, if you can muster it, a congrats!) and walk away.

Because we wanted a ceremony focused on family we had my brother perform our ceremony. He doesn't have a marriage license, but, since having the state recognize the fact that Chelsea and I wanted to be together was secondary, that didn't matter to us. In order to fulfill said secondary objective, though, we needed to get married in the fancy state clerk's office the morning of our wedding day.

I know most people wouldn't consider getting married in the clerk's office as being a fulfillment of the best of two worlds, but for us it really was, and we did not expect it to be. We got to have the super private ceremony that we had originally planned for and then realized was not realistic, and a more public get together afterwards; we got to give traditional wedding vows, and say the "I do" which we weren't planning on and was pretty cool; we were legally married by a woman, which made my wife so very happy.

We had a great experience inside that office, and it just proves that, as my brother would tell us later on that night, All You Need Is Love. There was so much of it in that little room.

The wedding was amazing. It went off almost without a hitch; we got about as close to 100% success as can be expected, I think. It was a great day. I don't think I have or ever will feel that loved in one particular moment in time again. There were so many of our loved ones in one spot, and they were there just for Chelsea and I.

Our families worked so hard getting the place prepared before the wedding. So THANKFUL for all them. We later saw in our unedited video footage our families taking care of things the people from Noah's (reception center where the wedding took place) said they would take of, like setting up the tables, taking care of messes etc. The employees mysteriously disappeared after the ceremony. The playlist that I spent like 12 hours on, then deleted and re-did, and was so excited to listen to on my wedding day, couldn't be played because the system got screwed up and we couldn't find anyone to help fix it, and for that same reason Scene-It couldn't be played.

In the time I haven't been blogging I think I have done more growing up than I have in the past five years. My life is very different now, and so much better than what it used to be.

Speaking of growing up, I am twenty-seven years old now. Tony Kornheiser made a joke on PTI the other day, and Wilbon said that 18-24 year olds around the country are laughing hysterically. It is still weird to not be a part of that demo anymore. I didn't get the joke either. It was stranger than it should have been probably.

All right, I better get going, but stay tuned because I have a lot more I was planning to put in this post. I will do my best to get it up here ASAP.

I'm Getting Married!

Yep, it's true. I will be marrying Chelsea Lane Campbell on January 7th, 2010.

I will probably post some wedding stuff here, but go here for all the info, including an introduction to both of us, FAQ's, and a blog.

Be sure to sign the guest book, post comments, and check back there for updates, pics, and videos.

I love you, Chelsea.

Just Because Other People Do Doesn't Mean I Can't

So, I came to grips with this whole blogging thing when I realized that as long as I was trying to make it worth the few minutes friends and family spend here I was okay. I remembered through the comments that I am in charge of what I put on here, and that maybe I should just lighten up a little. Of course, school started today and I didn't write on this thing while I was on a break.

In the latest Twitter news, Michael Beasley was checked into rehab after taking a picture of his new back tattoo while forgetting to take the weed of the counter, and then posting suicidal thoughts on Twitter. I don't think it is a great idea for someone that high profile to have a Twitter or Facebook, because something like this is bound to happen sooner or later. It seems that fines in the big three sports have tripled since Twitter came about, and that all these athletes seem to think they are now on reality TV, but I am debating here whether Twitter actually helped Beasley in this case. Who knows what would have happened with the drugs as far as the league is concerned, but thanks to his very public thoughts on suicide he is now in a rehab clinic.

So there you go.

Just Because You Can, Doesn't Mean You Should

So, nobody really blogs anymore, which leads to nobody commenting (no comments on this entire page), which leads again to no one blogging because nobody is reading them. I blame Twitter for all of this. Everyone is now getting their thoughts out too quickly, and there is nothing to write a more than 160 character message. I was on Twitter for like a week, but I'm sorry, I have a hard time not getting angry when someone thinks that where they are eating lunch is interesting information, or that I want to know how many hours of sleep they got, or that they aren't doing anything (but should be). At least with blogs the narcissism built up enough to hopefully create an interesting human experience when it was typed out.

I have often wondered if having a blog is a good thing for someone who likes to write. Sometimes energy that could be used for writing in my notebook is spent here instead, and maybe sometimes those thoughts and ideas should ferment before being shared. Not that it wouldn't be alright to use ideas in a story that have been blogged about before, but you would just be re-hashing old ideas, and I have noticed that when I write about something and it is read, those ideas leave my brain and no longer evolve. Maybe they should just be kept inside until the right time. After seeing the world of Twitter, I am seeing more clearly the merit of someone who doesn't say anything unless it's worth saying.

I was actually planning on this being a June and July recap, but I think I talked myself out of it.

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!

SO BORED

. . .so it is time for another play by play post.

4:29 – Decide to write this post.

4:30 – Debate with myself if I should mention things like “Took a drink of water.” Still not sure, but, either way, I just took a drink of water.

4:31 – Received this IM from Cam explaining why we couldn’t IM each other this afternoon: I begged Bill to sabotage the system. So to play a joke on me he shut down my internet, that's what was wrong

4:35 – T.O. to Buffalo? Haha, that is going to be awesome to watch.

4:37 – This was earlier, but is noteworthy. I got this in one of the reports I was working on today: The insured was there, they let out the dog, the dog wents nuts, they got upset with me, and asked me to leave. Therefore I did not do a interview.

4:56 – You know what really bothers me? Lists that give you five or ten tips on something that is difficult. The idea behind these lists are good, but they hardly ever have any tips that actually help. Take this one I have in front of me that is Five Tips for Job Hunting during a Recession. The first tip is “Stay Positive.” Really? That is your number one? Number five is “Be Persistent.” So I shouldn’t give up? EVERYONE ALREADY KNOWS THESE THINGS! It is like reading a dating tips list, and it tells you to “Be Nice.” Oh, okay. So, I should NOT headbutt them in the nose, tell them they are ugly and have an unpleasant smell, and then ask for a second date? Hmm, thank goodness they are getting the word out.

You don’t have any programs or websites or. . .SOMETHING that the lay person might not already know simply by the fact that they are alive? By the look of these shoddy lists, you need just as much help as the rest of us, but apparently writing shat that everyone already knows is recession proof.

5:06 – Calming down.

5:12 – Came home from my mission five years ago today. . .wow.

5:49 – Just asked my friend, Lacey, how Spain was, but she is in the Philippines. Whoops.


5:54 – Off to Harmons.

6:17 – Back. Some old Pennywise came on my ipod and I thought about when I went to California with my buddy Clay when I was fourteen. I could talk about this trip for a very long time, but I want to save it for later.
7:32 - Shuttin it down.