Things I Should be Posting about

1. My dad's suicide attempt and subsequent hospitalization due to alcohol poisoning.
2. The floods that evacuated my hometown.
3. New Years at the Space Needle in Washington.
4. Christmas with a kind but bizarre family from West Valley.
5. The news that my heart chakra swirls the wrong way.
6. Having to play with guns.
7. The vivid nightmares I've had every night since I've been home from California.
8. My search for a new job.
9. What I did with Jenny's car.
10. Camping on the beach.
11. The resulting poison oak: "I'm a monster!"
12. Road trips with Blue Shorts.
13. Getting stuck in SLUT (that stands for Salt Lake, Utah) last night and Wiggle to the rescue.
14. The hole left in my heart because Vero awesome is on Colorado now.
15. My choir trip this week to St. George.

But guess what? I am stressed, and I don't feel like talking about that crap. Which is why I haven't posted for a while. So I'll do what I've done in the past, i.e. post some of my personal favorites of my own responses from the Hundred hour Board. Hope you enjoy the best of Smurfette and Grouchy:


Dear Females of the 100 Hour Board,

I figured this question would be best for girls since guys don't usually care about baby names. Anyway, I'm getting married in three months and I'm hoping to have a little girl first. Any good name suggestions? I've always liked the names Lesley and Isabelle...yeah, I know they're way different from each other, but they both appeal to me. So anyway, I'm just looking for some inspiration. What are your sisters' names? What names do you just like? Thanks a ton! Keep up the awesome work you guys do, cause I love reading this Board.

-Shadow

ADear I had a dog named that!

Here are some ideas:

Polaris Esther. That way you have the star motif going, sice Polaris is the north star and esther is the Hebrew word for star. Plus Polaris is a really awesome X-man. And you could call her Polly for short. Polly Esther. How cool is that?

Mia is a good one. Like that bee. If you name her Mia, her middle name needs to be Pow. Then she'll see flags with her name sometimes.

Aurora Borealis is a good one. It's Latin for "northern dawn." And it's like the name of Sleeping Beauty.

Many girls are named after flowers. You could name her after the pot the flower is in. So how about Tara Cotta? Or if you think "Cotta" is a stupid middle name, then you could use "moto." That way her name is the Spanish word for "earthquake." She'll be a force of nature!

For you Star Wars fans, try Xaveri Cantina. The Xaveri is just so you can have a name that starts with X (plus it's an anagram for Xavier, in case you're into the X-Men).

I'm fond of the name Ember Vertigo. Amber is overdone. Vertigo is a really freaky Hitchcock. I guess if you had triplets you could go with Amber, Ember, and Umber. They would love you forever.

And if you are trying to come up with a name before you know the baby's gender, you can always go with Anne Drogeny. Yes, that one's great.

--Smurfette

Dear 100 Hour Board...specifcally those smurfy types....

are you aware that the smurfs were communists?

- a concerned citizen

ADear paranoid citizen,
You are a fool. The McCarthy era is over, buddy. It's not cool to use the word "communist" to describe everything you don't understand. And if you think we smurfs are actually communist, then you are ignorant as well. Communism is a type of egalitarian society in which nobody owns anything. Smurfs own plenty of things. Smurfette has a whole closet full of the same stupid white dress and shoes. When Farmer found a genie's lamp, he was allowed to keep it for himself, not required to share it with everyone for the greater good (although Papa did end up having to borrow the lamp in a few episodes, but that fits in with a point I'll make in a second). Vanity often refers to his mirror as "my mirror." Greedy is allowed to have more than his fair share of the food. Even Lazy is forced to get up and work if he wants the benefits of living in the Smurf Village. The thing about the smurfs is that we share what we have. When Handy invented automobiles, he made one for everyone in town. That would only be communist if Papa Smurf had forced him to do it. If you buy a pizza and then share it evenly with your roommates, are you communist? No. But if your landlord comes in and takes your pizza and splits it up evenly between you, then the landlord is communist. Sharing is not the same thing as communism. Enough with the paranoia. Next you'll be telling me that Vanity is a metrosexual. Ok, maybe he is. But I didn't say that.
--Grouchy

Dear 100 Hour Board,

So my younger sister is studying Romeo and Juliet in her high school English class. As they read the balcony scene, one of the other students asks "So this is where she lets down her hair, right?" Another student responds with "No, stupid, thats Rapunzel and its a bible story, not Shakespeare." Mind you, this is a junior level english class. So here's the question: What has happened to today's teenagers to make them so ignorant?

- mj

ADear MJ,

MTV?

--Grock

A
Television, plain and simple.

-Benvolio

ADear everyone,

Oh, sure, let's blame television and the other mass media. Sorry, folks, but watching television doesn't magically make people any more ignorant than they were before they turned it on. It doesn't often make them much more knowledgeable, either, I'll admit. But it's not like the student who made the Rapunzel comment at one point knew that that story wasn't in the Bible, but then she went home and read her TeenBeat magazine and pumped some VH1 into her brain and accidentally deleted it. No, the problem isn't what we put into the brains of today's youth; it's what we DON'T put in.

How would these pupils know what the Bible contains? That's forbidden from classroom discussion. Sure, teach them we evolved from rats. Teach them how to put on condoms and to accept alternative lifestyles and that no knowledge is certain. Let them glean their own "morals" from a rather corrupt Shakespeare, and from Hemingway and Judy Blume.

While you're at it, make sure you don't let any of the kids exceed their peers. Hold the brilliant kids back to the pace of the class, and hold the class back to the pace of the slow kids.

Then we can invent new math classes that don't focus on math--please, who needs to know math anymore now that we have calculators and computers?--but rather focus on group unity and feelings about mathematical concepts.

Then we can take the classics and strip them down and put our own agendas into them. "Shakespeare? Well, the language is beyond you, but trust me, it's about sex." Or feminism. Or capitalism.

Then we can prescribe what the students learn even further by making required reading lists and curricula that make sure each little automoton learns the exact same things. Independent thought will come naturally in college, as we've all been taught it should.

The students seem to be communicating okay, so we can also throw out the ideas of grammar and phonetics, since most teachers don't understand those things anyway. the kids'll prolly be fine since we're moving towards internet language which has no rulez anyways lol:)

In fact, the whole concept of right and wrong is outdated (probably came from the Bible or something!). As long as the student shows her work/has good intentions/has put forth an effort, she'll receive full marks. Who are we to judge? Imagine if the Catholic church had given Galileo a grade. Except don't because you have no need to know who that even is.

In short, our students aren't learning anything. They aren't passing their standardized tests. They aren't even interested or trying. Let's do the logical thing: make it even easier. Students can get A's in two ways: we can make them work harder or we can make it easier. Well, that seems an obvious choice!

Oh, and let's cut funding way back. We don't want to be forking over the big bucks for teachers who know too much more than their students, lest they seem inaccessible. After all, a teacher's primary concern is preparing the students for the "real world" by getting them to get along and by being a listening ear when the students need to talk. "Street smarts" in the end prove much more valuable than "book smarts," right?

Oh, and happy New Year, Mubba.

--Grouchy, who actually never watches television as a rule, lest it happen to make him dumber.

QDear 100 Hour Board,

Why does everyone hate (starwars) Episode 1 and 2 so much? I happened to like them very much and it spoils my joy the same way it does when I finish watching a movie and some jerk in the crowd says loudly, 'that was the worst movie I've ever seen.'

- Hurt, broken, bleeding, scarred, tortured, and losing a pulse.

ADear Hurt,

I guess this is my opportunity to defend the movies. But I'll pass on that, because they were awful. Episode one contained inappropriate jokes, for goodness' sake! Jake and Hayden both in turn put in dismal performances as the character who is central to the entire series. The dialogue seemed to be written directly to the audience. "Now that's pod-racing!" Do you remember that? He might as well have turned to the camera and said, "Don't think it weird that a young boy is instantly such a good pilot. Remember, folks, at the beginning of the movie when I was pod-racing?" Padme and Amidala were more obviously the same person than Superman and Clark Kent. This whole business with the metychloridians or whatever was asinine, like trying to find a scientific explanation for faith. Not to mention the immaculate conception of Darth Vader, or his emasculation vis-a-vis the nickname "Ani." Then there's the muddled plot, the killing off of the coolest character before he's said four lines, Jar-Jar, the fleeting glimpses of cities you'd like to spend at least a few seconds admiring, the creepy relationship between Anakin and Padme, etc. I mean, it's not like the original trilogy had the best acting, either. But it had heart. Even Yoda's wisdom is diminished. In episode II, he never says a single thing we don't already know. More like Jedi Master of the Obvious, I say. Seriously, watch it with that in mind, and you'll notice.

The problem is that Lucas obviously has no sense of what's sacred. Remember the extended version of the Max Rebo Band? Disgusting! It's like a cartoon. And now the newest version has a new over-expository conversation between Vader and Palpatine, a new ghost Anakin at the end of Jedi, a third version of Greedo's death, and a new score in place of the Ewok's yub-yub song. George should really just hand his movies over to someone who doesn't live by the motto "more is more."

Let someone else try to defend those movies.

--Grouchy

QDear 100 Hour Board,

If you won a bunch of money gambling and you wanted to pay tithing on it, would the Church accept your tithe?

- Senor Cardgage

ADear creepy comb-over guy,
The church has a special scanner that they run all checks and currency through to see if they were earned by gambling. If they were, the money will be returned not to you, but to the Lotto or casino or racetrack where you won it. They also contact your Bishop, spouse, parents, and college professors and tell them to encourage you to return the other 90%. This story is made up. They have no way of knowing. Just don't gamble, people. And come up with your own questions, not just the ones on the fliers we handed out today. Sheesh.
--Grouchy