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.

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!

Ugh

I just now, just this second, heard someone complaining about winter because "(They) have no clothes for snow." I understand we can't all love winter as much as I do, but if your beef with it is because you have no clothes fit for snow, then that's a you problem. I know you have lived here for at least a few years but I am guessing you have been here all your life, YOU MIGHT WANT TO LOOK INTO GETTING SOME WINTER APPAREL! Winter comes at the same time every year, you know.

That being said, it is really coming down outside and I am very happy.

I Am Not Back

I just want to say real quick that if I get one freaking Jib-Jab video sent to me this campaign season (or ever again) I am going to fire bomb whoever sent it to me.

Just stop it.

Possibly the Longest Single Post in GUAGL History

Holy crap, I am bored. The program my job pretty much revolves around doesn’t work so I have NOTHING to do. I checked my blog and noticed that I only have six posts about roommates, and that those six posts are part of one story, then that reminded me of last night (Thursday) and since I have nothing to do you get to know about last night too.

Rob and I returned home from Lacey’s at about one in the morning and our house smelled like warm feces. I proceeded to complain about the stench as loud as I could hoping to wake our two roommates downstairs so they knew how much I hated when this happened. You see, our two roommates who live downstairs are both from Enterprise, Utah, and they come from farming families. I could write post after post about the friction this simple difference in culture causes; in this case it is that they cook huge dinners for themselves every night, and sometimes breakfast and most of the time they result in a similar smell we had just encountered. Not only does it smell bad but you feel like you need to take a shower just by being in its midst, scratch that, you do have to take a shower just by being in its midst. Also, while cooking these meals of theirs they use more dishes in one day then Rob and I would use in a normal week.

Right before we left Lacey’s we were talking about how Roommate One has horrible aim in the bathroom and doesn’t like to clean up the mis-fired . . . ammo. And how way too often when I wake up in the morning and head to the bathroom to take care of business, I encounter R1’s business (serious business, if you know what I mean). How do you sit on the toilet, do that, and then stand up and totally forget what you have been doing for the past 5 minutes!!!!???? It is hard to think of a worse way to start my day then lifting up the lid and encountering an hour-long stagnant deuce. I mean bloody hell.

Anyway, since we were just talking about them I sent Lacey a text message.

“Words cannot describe the smell our roommates have filled our house with.”

“Sick! What did they do?”

“It smells like they cooked an old man’s diaper.” I sent it and then thought for a second and sent, “Hey, maybe words can describe it.”

By the way, keep in mind that it is now one in the morning, meaning the smell is at least a few hours old and still crazy potent. My last thought before I went to bed was ‘I bet I have weird dreams because of this odor I have to sleep in.’ I usually have freakin weird and very vivid dreams anyway, so I was scared what was going to happen with adding this extra element to the equation. The sum of that equation goes like this:

I was in a co-ed locker room, and I was way confused because I thought there had to be segregated locker rooms somewhere around there. I hated getting dressed in front of other guys let alone gettin nekked in front of a bunch of girls (in the dream that is, heh heh). So, I was getting pretty stressed over it until I finally found the guy’s locker room. I changed into my swimsuit and headed out to the pool. This pool, by the way, is a re-occurring object in my dreams. I don’t remember any dream where I actually swim in it, so if any psych majors read this maybe you could help me out there. This dream was no different; I just walked around it and then went outside to play football. I was fully dressed and back in high school all of the sudden and with some kid who was my friend, I guess. Anyway, Alta’s football team was having practice and we stopped by to see if they needed help. We sat with the team on the grass and listened as their coach told them how pathetic they were. He then started yelling at me, telling me that I’d better play really well being that I had RoboCop shoes on. I did have RoboCop shoes on. They were black and said RoboCop in silver. Even though he had just humiliated me I was still confident my RoboCop shoes were awesome, and that everyone else still thought so. I think that part of the dream comes from Napolean Dynamite. “You think I got to where I am by dressing like Peter Pan over here? Forget about it.”

At this point I started narrating my own dream like a movie. One of those movies where you find out in the end the narrator is actually the main character years after the story. When practice actually got started they realized they didn’t need our help, so my friend and I walked over to this grassy area and started playing baseball by ourselves. I guess we were both really good at baseball. The area we were playing on used to be a pretty popular field back in like the fifties, but now you could hardly tell there was ever a baseball field there. We played until it started getting dark, then we came up with the idea that we should re-build the field so people could play baseball on it again, so we started taking care of the field. While watering it I realized that I would never ever have enough money to make the field into what we thought it deserved to be and I started crying, but like balling and feeling so horribly sad because our dream would never be realized. Now the narration just took over and I just saw everything that it talked about. My friend and I got the field to where games could actually be played on it. We started a team that was called something Broncos, I can’t remember. We were so good that we got Triple A status and became the Bees, and we got a big budget to make the field better. Eventually major league teams played in the stadium we had built there, and it eventually became the “Wrigley of the West.”

How often is it that your dreams come true in your dreams?

There you have it.

Me at Work

You know what is scary? I am smiling.

ShuuuUUT UP!

So I am at the library working on my final papers. There is a guy sitting right behind me reading the paper, and about every 30 seconds he goes, "Hmm," or "That's interesting." I thought he was on the phone, but no, he is just reading the paper all by himself. He is not exactly using his inside voice either. Does he want me to turn around and ask him what he is reading because he seems to be enjoying it so much? I want to set that paper on fire.

Hannibal

Hannibal is a guy in my Creative Writing class. I forgot what his real name is. Everyone calls him Hannibal.
Today as we were waiting for class to start he picked up a copy of USA Today and mentioned how he forgot that the five year anniversary of 9/11 was coming up.
"The more I think about it the more I think that it was planned, " he said," I mean, think about it. 9/11. Who are they going to call? 9-1-1."
Holy @^#%! Did you come up with that all by yourself? It is funny how nobody thought or mentioned that the day it happened. You should call and let somebody know!

Then during class he taps me on the shoulder and asks what the assignment was the teacher just gave about .2349856204674 seconds ago. I told him it was to read the first section out of the book we are reading.

"The first chapter?"
"The first section," I correct him.

He gives me a look that tells me I am being stupid and repeats, "First Chapter," as he writes it down. I was about to say, "No, numb nuts. The first section. The first section is seventy-seven pages. The first chapter is only like ten," but I stopped. I figure letting him read the first chapter instead of section will be a more valuable lesson.

Jordan Michael EryeHead

In the previous post titled "Week at a Glance" I mentioned a kid named Jordan Michael Air. I was introduced to this person the first day I got back into town for school. He told me his name and stuff and I told him mine. It was a pretty standard intrduction on both ends. A few days later he came up to me while I was waiting in the line in the cafeteria. He asked me stuff about the meal plan and if i was glad I did it, and how the food was and so on. I told him that I was very glad I was on this meal plan thing. He then told me he thought he was going to do it too, and then he introduced himself to me again. I realized he didn't know I was the same person from before. I didn't want to go over all the other stuff again so I just told him my name. I kid you not, the very next day while I was in Staples he came up to me and asked if he could help me find anything, being that he worked there. I told him I found what I was looking for. I asked him if he was going to get the meal plan, since that is what we talked about the day before. He said he thought he was going to. I then went to check out. He came up to me a couple of minutes later and said, "I will probably see you around so I might as well introduce myself. I am--"

"Jordan," I said.

Yeah--"

"I am the one you asked about the meal plan."

"Oh, that was you?" How else would I have known he wanted the meal plan if I had never talked to him before? What kind weird butthead asks random Staples employees if they are going to get the university meal plan? How in the crap did he not put two and two together? And if you think that maybe I could be the one confused I am not. He looks exactly like John Heder, and I know it was the same kid. Anyway, he introduced himself for the third time. That was a Monday. The next Thursday Jordan and one of his friends came over to talk to my roomate. I came out of my room and the three of them were in the front room so I stopped to talk to them. After about 15 seconds of me stadning there he stuck out his hand and said, "I don't think we have met." I just stared at him for a second, trying to make him feel as dumb as possible with his hand stuck out like that before I said, "We have met like nine times."

"We have?"

"Yeah. The first day I got into town in the parking lot, then in the cafeteria when you asked me about the food plan, then in Staples, and just now." He was pretty cinfused.

"Did you trim you beard or something?"
"No, I haven't shaved in like 9 days."

"Maybe it was your glasses."

"No." I always wear my glasses when I drive to and from Cedar, so I know I was wearing them when I first met him, and I am 95% sure I was wearing them in the cafeteria that day. Glasses really don't make you look all that different anyway, he is just an idiot. My roommate and I were going to be hanging out with the people who lived next door, and he had come over to hang out with us, but when my roommate left to to put his shoes on or something his friend and him ended up leaving.

I Hate Kathy Griffin

I Hate Kathy Griffin

Chapter One | The beginning of the start of the first part of my story that I will commence to tell you now

I haven't really talked to my roommate before this night. I had maybe said all of ten words to him, and he had let a few sentences slip out. I am pretty sure they were all about macaroni and cheese, and one time he came into my room without knocking while I was sitting on pot that everyone became so familiar with a few posts back. Trash was supposed to be coming over, so I opened the door expecting to see Trash. Instead I saw my roommate just standing in the doorway. It was freaking creepy. I quickly shut the door.

"Yeah?"

"I just paid the power bill. It was 58 dollars."

"So I owe you 20 dollars."

"Yeah."

What the dump? (Pardon the pun) That was one of the weirdest experiences I have ever had. I recognize that now as a foreshadowing of the adventures I was going to embark on with Ryan, my roommate.

I just got home and was about to start work on a paper, when he knocked on my door.

"Do you know anyone with a four wheel drive?"

"Phil in #4 has one," I said thinking that that was the end of the conversation. He wanted info and I gave it to him. But the conversation continued after about thirty seconds of the most awkard silence. I wished I was back sitting on the toilet with the door shut.

"I think he is home."

"Could you ask him if I could borrow it?"

"Why?"

"I got my truck stuck up in the mountains."

"Where at?"

"Duck Creek."S

o I mosied on over to #4 and asked Phil if we could borrow his Jeep. Phil came over to my apartment to talk with Ryan. We walked in the dark living room. I walked into the kitchen to turn on the light. When I turned it on Ryan was there standing in front of the fridge. What was he doing just standing there in the dark? And why didn't he say anything? This dude is creepy. Phil needed his car, so we asked some kid if we could use his truck. He told us we could take it but he couldn't come with us. At this point I realized I was going up the mountain with Ryan, and I didn't feel comfortable taking this kids truck because it was stinking nice, and I didn't know where we were headed. I tried to ask my roommate several times how his truck was stuck and how it was situated on the road only to get so frustrated by the inability to answer the question that I wanted to punch him in the throat. I did know it was in the snow. After about a half hour it was decided that I would take Phil's Jeep and he could borrow my truck. We borrowed a shovel from the hick with the truck just in case. We didn't, however, take his tow strap with us because Ryan had one in his truck.

Chapter Two | Time, a waste of

You see, I am new around here. I had no idea where Duck Creek was. Duck Creek is about 55 miles east of Cedar City up and down and up the canyon. Two miles past Duck Creek is a dirt road. Three miles down the dirt road, it turns into a pure snow road. Five miles up the pure snow road is where our new friend got his truck stuck.

I knew making conversation was going to be difficult, but I had a long ride ahead of me and got started.

"So what were you doing up there?""I don't know anybody in our apartment. You know more people than I do. I know Elle, but I don't really go over there to see her. I don't really know anyone in our apartments."

I was going to re-phrase the question, but from what I had experienced already I knew it would be to no avail, so I just took that to mean, "I had nothing to do, so I took my truck up the mountain."

"I only really know the guys in #4 and the girls in #3." I knew that was a dumb thing to say because that was still like 9 times the amount of people he knew.

"What about Stefanie?"

"Oh, well yeah I know her too."

"And Elle?"

"Yeah, I know her too I guess." That's what I get for trying to make him feel better about not knowing anyone. He continued to ask me what Elle was up to, and to tell me about how much he cared for her. Apparantly, he had waited too long to ask her out. By the time he did, she said that some guy had just asked her to be his girlfriend. I knew she didn't have a boyfriend, or want one, but I knew I better keep my mouth closed tight about that. I did think about how awkard that conversation must have been. He later told me of an experience he had that had to do with Elle, and I don't feel comfortable talking about it here, so if you want to know, ask me in person, and depending on who you are, I will tell you.

This was also my first dose of how he talked. He has a tendency to repeat the same phrase over and over again. It is quite entertaining to listen too actually. "It's my grandpa's truck. I have taken it everywhere. It's my grandpa's truck and he his dead now. I will never get rid of it because it is the only thing I have left from my grandpa, so I will never get rid of. It is like the only memory I have left of my grandpa. That's why I won't ever get rid of it. Even when the engine is shot and there is no way it will ever work again, I still won't get rid of it." And to those of you who think I am exaggerating, I am making a considerable effort not to exaggerate any of this story. It doesn't need it.

Eventually we made it to his truck. He was completely sideways on the road and his front end was buried. I have no idea what he was thinking. His truck isn't even four-wheel drive. There was no way we were getting it out with the Jeep. We would bury right in the snow. That is why I tried to get this information out of him earlier. Plus, I guess when he got stuck, some guy tried to help him and ended up getting his car stuck, and that guy came back earlier this day and got his car unstuck and took Ryan's tow strap and come along with him. So we turned around and drove back down the canyon.

On the way home I said I didn't think that we would be able to pull the truck out with the Jeep. He said he agreed. Agreed!! Couldn't you tell that it would have been impossible without dragging me up the mountain!?