Poems about my family

Jessica:

Jessica is my sister's name
She's a big shot attorney
She likes to play lots of games
But wouldn't enter a tourney.

She really likes Guitar Hero
Although I can beat her
On a scale of one to ten,
I give her a big ONE ZERO
That's ten.

My mom:

My mom likes to travel all over the world
She leaves behind a puppy all cute and curled
in his bed he waits for her to come
back to him so he can lick her with his tongue.

She lives up north where I live no more.
But often, so often I call her to bore
her with my rants and bitches and whines
She takes it in stride and keeps me in line.

Matt:

Matt's my bro-in-law and I like that
We get along great like the Cat in the Hat
He really likes movies and has rubbed off on me,
Now I watch movies like the movies that watches he.

He has a new job in Salt Lake City
It's great for him but sometimes I pity,
When I go to his house and he's not there,
Because he's riding a bus instead of paying cab fare.

There might be more to come, then again, tomorrow when I'm not so tired, I may delete this post all together.

Me vs. The World

There are several things that have really been annoying me today. I realize that this may become some sort of rant and while I don't want to sound bitchy, I think this is probably the best forum to channel my intense feelings of hate and anger.

Conflict 1

Apparently, NBC and iTunes had a big fight over the cost at which iTunes has been selling their TV shows. Apparently $1.99 per episodes wasn't enough money for NBC and because Apple refused to hike prices, the two simply did not continue their mutual contract. What does this mean for me? A lot of bull crap. Although the NBC contract doesn't end until December, iTunes decided it would be best to make a clean cut and not sell any new episodes from the new seasons of shows like My Name is Earl, The Office, 30 Rock etc. iTunes has decided to sell these episodes on Amazon's 'Unbox.'

Conflict 2

'Unbox' is the dumbest name in the world. It's also very representitive of the quality of the program itself. It's pretty much a cheap knock off of iTunes but it doesn't work as well at all. I had to download the f-ing software four times before it finally worked on my computer. Then I had to tell Amazon I wanted the first episode of The Office twice before it started downloading at a painfully slow rate. I'll be lucky to have it downloaded by the time I go to work tomorrow at 2pm.

Conflict 3

My internet is really crappy. In fact, at this very moment, I'm stealing internet from a neighboring apartment complex. The problem seems to be our wireless router which goes out at the most inopportune times. Like when I'm trying to download the dumb-ass 'Unbox' from dumb-ass Amazon. The problem can usually be fixed by going into the living room, unplugging the router, waiting 5 seconds and plugging it back in.

Conflict 4

As I went into the living room to fix the router (in order to resolve conflicts 1-3) I turn on the living room light to see that my roommate had chosen to sleep on the couch tonight. In a rude twist of fate, the router was right by his head. Now, I like this roommate, in fact I like him a lot, but I don't know him that well yet. I feared that if I had tried to reset the router mere inches from his head and on the off chance he woke up and saw me, things might get awkward. I swore silently in Russian and returned to my room.

Conflict 5

All of this started because my roommates seem to refuse to embrace all that The Office has become to millions of Americans. Tonight, when I should have been watching the long awaited season premier of the office, my roommates were watching reruns of Arrested Development. It's a charming show as well but I only have enough room in my heart for one sitcom. It was hard enough to move on from Friends. I didn't care too much that they weren't watching The Office because I thought I'd be able to download it from iTunes tomorrow morning, but Noooo.

Conflict 6

Somehow, on the 30 foot trek from my front door to my mailbox, I managed to lose the only existing key to my apartment's mailbox. Because I have a subscription to Netflix and I get a lot of mail here, I went to the post office and paid the $15 fee to have a new lock placed on the mailbox.

Good things about today 1

Although I did have to pay $15 at the post office, my American Express Sky Miles Gold card gives me double miles when used for US Postal Services!

Good things about today 2

I had two Slurpees today. One was a mix of Coke and Fanta banana, the other was a mix of Coke and some mysterious blue vanilla. They were both exceptional examples of what a Slurpee should be.

Good things about today 3

I finally got Amazon's gay-ass 'Unbox' working and there's only 6 hours and 24 minutes remaining until I can finally see the season premier of The Office, season 4.

My horrible, horrible dream.

Lately, I’ve been having trouble falling asleep. I’ve been tossing and turning until 4 or 5 in the morning only to drag myself out of bed in time to be only 20 to 25 minutes late to my 10 o’clock class. Last night, I thought I’d be on the offensive. I took two sleeping pills as per indicated on the side of the bottle. I figured this would make getting up a little more difficult, but at least I’d get more sleep.

I took the pills around 1:30am. I waited and waited, wrote a blog and waited. Finally around 2:45 I started to feel a little tired so I shut off the lights and started an audiobook on my laptop. I specifically noticed that I started the first track at 2:55am. I promptly fell asleep and experienced the following dream. The odd thing is, I woke up at 3:04am and apparently experience this whole dream in less than 9 minutes of sleep.

I was driving through a wooded area on my way from Boise to Salt Lake City. Or Salt Lake City to Idaho Falls, or some other 4 hour drive. I fell asleep driving and when I woke up, my car was skidding out of control. I was still so tired that I couldn’t open my eyes. I just braced myself and just hoped that my car didn’t hit anything at the high speeds I was spinning. I never really hit anything at this point.



Then I was driving again. I’m not sure if this was after the previous skidding or it’s simply that I have a second chance. Well, I was asleep while driving again at any rate. This time, when I woke up, I was able to open my eyes as I skidded off the highway and landed under an overpass. Under this over pass was a group of bears including a mother and two large cubs which I had frightened. As I left the car, the group of bears charged me. As I was running away, another bear was coming from the direction I was running. The mother bear bit my hand.

I was driving again with no injuries. Of course, I was asleep this time as with the others and when I woke up, I was unable to open my eyes. I had driven into an extremely icy lake and I could feel the freezing water pouring into my car. I grabbed the door handle but I couldn't get the door open. I knew this was it and I was going to die.

Then I woke up.

Things heard around my apartment

At 12:30AM last night, I was sitting in my living room with my three roommates: Ben, Darrin and Mark. Although I was taking part in the sporadic conversations, (everyone was studying so these conversations were separated by silent periods) I took the opportunity to listen to the speech patterns of my three friends.

At one point, I closed my eyes to rest them and for a split second, I thought I was in a Mormon film. The following phrases were used during these conversations at least once:

• 'He was suck a friggin' ace.'
• 'Oh my flippin' heck.'
• 'Fudge!'
• 'Abso-friggin'-lutely
• 'Fetch! Are you serious?'

Welcome to Utah, where even profanity is done in moderation.

Now, I'm a fan of euphemisms just like most Mormons, but it seems to me that these particular displays of self-control weren't so much a sign of devotion to certain principles, but the mark of a society that's forgetting the beauty and power of a four letter word.

It's my belief there are certain times where profanity is not only necessary, but can add a delightful sense of humor to any situation. For example: I stubbed my toe getting out of bed the other morning. At that moment, it wasn't just the pain that was getting to me, it was the overwhelming feeling that this was a sign of things that would come to pass that day. I promptly yelled, 'Shit!' thinking the apartment was empty. At that same moment, my roomie Ben was outside my door and burst out laughing. I couldn't help but laugh myself at my situation as I grabbed my foot and fell back on my bed.

Now if I had chosen a slightly different lexicon, we'll take one from the examples from above, and had yelled, "Fudge!" I believe things would have been different. First, I would have felt oppressed, or repressed, or whatever the correct terminology is. Not allowing myself to express...well...myself should be a sin. It's like placing a big black censorship bar over the breasts of Venus De Milo. Language, like other mediums is art and we all know that censorship is bad in any form. If everyone kept repressing themselves, eventually someone would take it upon themselves to enforce this repression and then we'd have the next Joseph Stalin right here in Provo, sending anyone with the heuvos to drop the B-bomb (bitch) to Siberia (or perhaps Moab in Utah's case). A step like this is one step closer to fascism.

Also, Ben probably wouldn't have laughed at my response to my own pain, I wouldn't have been able to laugh it off myself, and because we all know The Secret works, my negative expectations for that day would have manifested themselves (yeah, thanks universe) and my mood would have become worse and worse--not to mention I probably wouldn't have got any checks in the mail that day.

Blogging is the new movie review.

My sister suggested I started blogging again. I used to do it pretty frequently. It seemed like I had more interesting experiences at that point in my life. Jessica (the sister) says it's all about turning the mundane into something witty and interesting.

Today I had lunch with that sister. She's a lot of fun. When we were both studying at BYU, we'd have lunch twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursday at 11am. We skipped the optional devotionals and forums after being dramatically disappointed after attending a few.

Since those times, she's graduated law school, passed the bar and become a super attorney that's just a little too busy for two lunches a week with a lowly undergrad majoring in a lame emphasis. She still makes time for a good lunch date a week.

Today we went to The Smokehouse. I nice little barbecue restaurant in downtown Provo. The food was delicious and we treated ourselves to a desert named Toughies. After lunch, I went grocery shopping and picked up a few necessities like milk and string cheese. When I arrived home, I promptly put away the perishables, went into the bathroom and emptied my stomach of all it's contents the opposite way they were supposed to come out.

Could this have been food poisoning? The flu? I dare say it was the Toughies which may just have been too tough for my stomach. Does this mean I'll give up The Smokehouse or their delicious fried deserts? I don't think so.

After this, I took a quick nap and now I'm at work where I care for the mentally handicapped. I am only able to rob neighbors' Wi-Fi from the porch so here I am, sitting and typing, trying to be witty and entertaining but fearing I probably failed on this first attempt. This doesn't trouble me however. I now have my own page at blogspot and will continue until I am the Mormon version of David Sedaris.

While writing this blog, I'm chatting with a friend of mine from Kolpino, Russia. We met while I was living in St. Petersburg. A year and a half later, we met up in Samara while I was doing poverty research and she was vacationing. Could this be something? I'm not sure yet. I'm conflicted with the part of my brain that cares what people think. All my life, I've been unpleasantly aware of those returned missionaries who bring back the locals to enjoy wedded bliss for all eternity. I've always hated these former elders. To add to this conundrum, I've become somewhat opposed to and biased against Russians, whom I found generally distasteful. All these things against us. But what if it's true love? Like Romeo and Juliette--The Claire Danes version.