Some thoughts on music. I put three new songs over on the side here for El Veneno. I hope you guys will listen to all three. I love them all. The first (the one you are probably hearing right now) is from the CD that the Neverbird gave me for my birthday. I love the message it contains, about pressing forward when you're not sure about things. The next is War on Drugs by the Barenaked Ladies. It's one of the most moving songs I know of. They said at their concert that they were singing about a bridge in Canada that had the world's second-highest suicide rate (after the Golden Gate). When the city put a net under the bridge, people just moved up to the next bridge and started jumping from there. So that was the basis of the song, and it has helped me to understand people who suffer from depression more than anything else ever has. Finally, we have a song that is simultaneously funny and sad. It's called Jim Henson's Dead and Gone, by Stephen Lynch, the same guy who does Dead Puppies and If I Could Be a Superhero. I love Muppets, and so I present this song as an homage to Jim Henson. What a brilliant man, who really seemed to understand dreams and making them a reality.
In fact, my dinner group has recently been transformed into a dinner/muppets group. I love that. Turns out my buddy Robb is just as big a muppets fan as I am.
Robb and Pinetree both just got jobs at Los Hermanos. I love that job. I made $15/hour in tips again tonight. I have been making more than anyone else lately. It's been a major blessing. Alecia says I've been doing a great job there, which makes me very happy. I'm learning the joy of hard work, which was what I talked about in my testimony at this Sunday's Latter Day Sounds fireside in Ogden, speaking about the song Come Come Ye Saints. We can't fear toil and labor, but we have to wend our way with joy. The media would have us believe that work and joy are antithetical. That we work only so we can have joy later. But I believe that we are to find joy in serving, and not stop until we have finished our work or died trying. And then either way, it will be a happy day, and only THEN can we join the saints in crying "All is well."
Latter Day Sounds is so good for me. On Saturday Rachel stayed late at work and closed for me (I love that girl) and Nick let me off early so I could catch up with the choir in northern Utah. And so I took a bus to Ogden last-minute to go be with the choir. I ended up screaming in pain and cold in the pouring windy snowy rain, as I got drenched. It was super miserable, but we all have to make sacrifices for the things that are important to us, huh?
Like Pinetree has recently done. Wow. Dr. Robinson says that I'll have to get rid of every gay everything if I want to beat this thing. So of course I thought, "No, that is too much." But then I remembered the rich young man, and how he had been told he would have to give up all he had. And then i remembered Naaman, who really only had to give up his pride, but found that to be almost an insurmountable task, and I started thinking, "What wouldn't I be willing to give up in order to be the man that God wants me to be?" And really, there is nothing. So I am doing what I can with the Dr. Robinson suggestion. Cutting off contact with a lot of people. Identifying which parts of my life strengthen those dangerous connections that my brain makes, and cutting them out, as they stand in my way, triggers to the booby traps I've set for myself in years past, now obscured by dust. Time to bust out the pledge and figure out exactly where those triggers are, and dismantle them. Anyway, I had a long conversation with Pinetree about that yesterday, and then today he tells me he up and cut off someone who I know means a TON to him. I really appreciate his example. I feel like I learn so much from that kid. So now it's my turn to do the same. Time for some major spring cleaning.
I might be losing a lot of things in this process. A lot of friends. We will see.
But I will be okay. I have so MANY other friends who are so good for me these days. My friends from my ward, and from my choir, and from work. I love all of these people. On Friday Jessica and Goat and Wiggle and I are all going to go to see Guster. I am very excited. They have such haunting voices, and can sing melodies both happy and sad. Which brings me to what I really want to say tonight, a message inspired by everything in my life, and most recently and noticeably by the Jim Henson Company movie "Mirror Mask," which I recommend whole-heartedly to anyone who reads this. Anyway, on to today's moral:
I love music so much. It's so good for me. I like to listen to sad music best of all, because "sad" isn't easy for me to feel on my own.
I think sadness is beautiful, like rain and strong battered women and fancy melting candles and rooms all done up in red velvet. Like wildflowers growing raggedly from a crack in a barren rock, or like sputtering, flickering stars, fighting to shine their light down through earth's muggy, twinkly atmosphere. I want to cup the stars in my hand, make someone's sadness my own, protect it from the tempestuous winds of life, shade it from the overpowering glare of sunshine. In the summer, I lie in the crunchy golden grass and look at the ghosts of giants and heroes and magical beasts placed in the night sky to remind us that we all must pass on, that we are only visitors here in this strange land. And I love them. I love their stories. And then the sun comes out, and the stories fade to a soothing baby blue and all can be forgotten. The heroes and their tragic tales are lost. Their beauty exists only in the darkness.
Will Heaven be all light all the time? Or will there be shadows dancing from the fireplace onto the cozy earthen walls? Will there be the dark spaces between the stars, or will they all be filled in with such blinding light that there won't be stars any more at all? Will the forest still hold its dark secretive appeal, or will the leaves in the canopies be forced to move aside and let in the light, stripping the woods of all their murky mysteries? Will all music be in major chords, all clouds cumulus, all stories have happy endings? Will we mourn our damned loved ones? Will we have to forget we ever loved them?
In moving closer to God, will I have to be homogenized? Will we all eventually shine the same bright white, or can I shine golden, or spring green, or vivid tangerine? Will my dark desires be the catalysts that make me more like God, or will they keep me different? Do I give off my own wavelength of light just by moving close to God, a cosmic Doppler Effect that somehow allows my movement to shine my own color of beauty to the stationary viewer, even as I draw closer to the center of the Universe, where gods and matter end? Is my individuality burned up beautifully like a meteor as I draw closer to my goals? Is the incredible journey to sameness the thing that sets us apart in the end? Are our scars what make us beautiful?
I am still discovering so much. I love life. I love the light, and the dark, and the moments like these, right before the proverbial sun rises, when the field is still shrouded in mist, and everything is grey and blurry and coming coldly alive.
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Bob Ross Russ Rose
"Gay is the new pink."
A girl said that in my dream last night, regarding the new positive regard (and even trendiness) which popular society holds for homosexuals. I don't know if that's as funny when it's not a dream, but it sure cracked me up.
I got a job. Los Hermanos again. I start Monday or so, I think. I'm really glad I don't have to wait to take the server test. So soon I'll be back serving tables, which I absolutely love.
Seriously, fans of music, check out pandora.com. The folks there did something they call the Music Genome project. They took music and analyzed it for its different attributes, and put all the information into a huge database. Then they created Pandora, which is designed to help you to find new music that you will like because of its similarities to what you already like. You go there and you type in the name of a song or a band that you like and it will begin streaming music like a radio station. It's truly amazing. I love almost everything that comes up. And if you dislike something, you just tell it and it will skip it. On Sunday I typed in Mormon Tabernacle Choir and was delighted when it started playing hymns, spirituals, and folk sings all morning. And the rest of the week I just type in a song that fits my current mood and they will play tons of music in that exact same mood. I know pandora.com is true with all the fiber in my beans.
I talked to the Bish about the Rose sitch. He was surprised to hear an old familiar name. He said that he and Rose and my previous bishop had had a special meeting once and confronted her with her roommates' allegations that she was a man. She was unable to refute the claims, but they were unable to prove it, and as she vehemently denied the charges, they let the matter go. The bishop was most interested in the tangible evidence I'd brought (namely, a photocopy of her driver license and her immigration papers), and asked if he could keep them to bring them to the stake president, who'd reportedly been right in the thick of the whole scandal when Rose was living here. So I don't need to worry about it any more, and Bish said the evidence was exactly what they'd been waiting for. So we'll see what happens next. There will doubtless be a mess, but hopefully I'll be a few steps removed from it. D and Wiggle are afraid that if Rose is confronted with the evidence, she may put two and two together and come blaming them, since it was their basement where the documents were stored when Heather Angela Hawks rifled through the boxes and scanned everything.
N is moving here this week. I am so friggin' excited. Lad is coming in two days as well. Wiggle and I are going to see Guster in Section 6, row 1, seats 17 and 18, when they come to town on March 30. Woo-hoo.
24 was SO good last night. SO good. Jack Bauer is the man.
And my little brother Rusty got photoshop, and this is his new picture, which I think is hilarious. This kid had the Bob Ross painting instruction kit when we were little and LOVED to watch the show. I know he's white, but really, he's my full brother. Promise.
Oh, and happy Valentine's day, I guess. This seems like a non-event to me, more than ever this year. Oh well. I have been invited to do things with two different Connies, which is SUPER weird because that's my mom's name, and I am named after my dad. I don't know if I'd be comfortable with either, so I haven't responded yet. We'll see what happens.
Chaito.
A girl said that in my dream last night, regarding the new positive regard (and even trendiness) which popular society holds for homosexuals. I don't know if that's as funny when it's not a dream, but it sure cracked me up.
I got a job. Los Hermanos again. I start Monday or so, I think. I'm really glad I don't have to wait to take the server test. So soon I'll be back serving tables, which I absolutely love.
Seriously, fans of music, check out pandora.com. The folks there did something they call the Music Genome project. They took music and analyzed it for its different attributes, and put all the information into a huge database. Then they created Pandora, which is designed to help you to find new music that you will like because of its similarities to what you already like. You go there and you type in the name of a song or a band that you like and it will begin streaming music like a radio station. It's truly amazing. I love almost everything that comes up. And if you dislike something, you just tell it and it will skip it. On Sunday I typed in Mormon Tabernacle Choir and was delighted when it started playing hymns, spirituals, and folk sings all morning. And the rest of the week I just type in a song that fits my current mood and they will play tons of music in that exact same mood. I know pandora.com is true with all the fiber in my beans.
I talked to the Bish about the Rose sitch. He was surprised to hear an old familiar name. He said that he and Rose and my previous bishop had had a special meeting once and confronted her with her roommates' allegations that she was a man. She was unable to refute the claims, but they were unable to prove it, and as she vehemently denied the charges, they let the matter go. The bishop was most interested in the tangible evidence I'd brought (namely, a photocopy of her driver license and her immigration papers), and asked if he could keep them to bring them to the stake president, who'd reportedly been right in the thick of the whole scandal when Rose was living here. So I don't need to worry about it any more, and Bish said the evidence was exactly what they'd been waiting for. So we'll see what happens next. There will doubtless be a mess, but hopefully I'll be a few steps removed from it. D and Wiggle are afraid that if Rose is confronted with the evidence, she may put two and two together and come blaming them, since it was their basement where the documents were stored when Heather Angela Hawks rifled through the boxes and scanned everything.
N is moving here this week. I am so friggin' excited. Lad is coming in two days as well. Wiggle and I are going to see Guster in Section 6, row 1, seats 17 and 18, when they come to town on March 30. Woo-hoo.
24 was SO good last night. SO good. Jack Bauer is the man.
And my little brother Rusty got photoshop, and this is his new picture, which I think is hilarious. This kid had the Bob Ross painting instruction kit when we were little and LOVED to watch the show. I know he's white, but really, he's my full brother. Promise.
Oh, and happy Valentine's day, I guess. This seems like a non-event to me, more than ever this year. Oh well. I have been invited to do things with two different Connies, which is SUPER weird because that's my mom's name, and I am named after my dad. I don't know if I'd be comfortable with either, so I haven't responded yet. We'll see what happens.
Chaito.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
A Toast
Well, thanks everyone for that little discussion. And now, back to our regularly scheduled program.
I'd like to propose a toast. Lots of things make me happy, so here's to them.
To n, on her decision to move back to Utah for the sole purpose of being closer to me.
To Wiggle, and to 3:00 a.m. spur-of-the-moment trips to Park City.
To Mario and Silvia, the couple we brought into the church in Chile, upon the recent news that they got sealed in the temple.
To Jonathan and Topsie, whose wedding in fourteen days should prove to be the first happy one I've been affiliated with since my brother's.
To Jessica, for bringing me grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup and chocolate money when I was in the depths of my illness.
To Pandora.com, for being the best music website I have ever seen.
To Hero, on his brand new engagement.
To a certain string-puller who got me eleven straight weeks of efy this summer so I won't have to pay rent. Yeah, that's supposed to remain a secret.
To the Lad, whose visit to Utah grows closer with each passing day.
To an anonymous goat on Myspace who informed me that Guster is coming and that tickets go on sale today.
To my cold, which is a great excuse for having not been out on a date this weekend.
To all the rest of my friends, for good times, lively discussions, and interesting stories.
Love you all.
I leave you with a little game I like to play called Gaydar. See if you can guess which of these two guys is a homosexual. I'll post the answer tomorrow. Enjoy.
I'd like to propose a toast. Lots of things make me happy, so here's to them.
To n, on her decision to move back to Utah for the sole purpose of being closer to me.
To Wiggle, and to 3:00 a.m. spur-of-the-moment trips to Park City.
To Mario and Silvia, the couple we brought into the church in Chile, upon the recent news that they got sealed in the temple.
To Jonathan and Topsie, whose wedding in fourteen days should prove to be the first happy one I've been affiliated with since my brother's.
To Jessica, for bringing me grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup and chocolate money when I was in the depths of my illness.
To Pandora.com, for being the best music website I have ever seen.
To Hero, on his brand new engagement.
To a certain string-puller who got me eleven straight weeks of efy this summer so I won't have to pay rent. Yeah, that's supposed to remain a secret.
To the Lad, whose visit to Utah grows closer with each passing day.
To an anonymous goat on Myspace who informed me that Guster is coming and that tickets go on sale today.
To my cold, which is a great excuse for having not been out on a date this weekend.
To all the rest of my friends, for good times, lively discussions, and interesting stories.
Love you all.
I leave you with a little game I like to play called Gaydar. See if you can guess which of these two guys is a homosexual. I'll post the answer tomorrow. Enjoy.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Looking Up
Ok, so I have not felt like blogging at all lately. So to make up for it, this is going to be the mother of all blog entries, full of anecdotes and philosophy and a road trip and links and pictures. Seriously, this blog entry is going to start giving birth to other blog entries. I hope you can appreciate this.
Some people who call themselves the Provo Late Knights came upon my confessions blog and invited me to join their ranks. My friend Ryan from efy is in the group, and he vouched for me, so they let me in. What they do is make movies, which you can see here if you have Quicktime 7 (which comes with iTunes). They are mockumentaries about life in Provo after midnight. We filmed one last week that introduced me as their nemesis, but you will have to wait a week or so before they get it all edited. I'm excited for the release, and also to start writing the next one.
Ryan also invited me to the Sundance film festival with him and some cool friends from his ward. We saw Gwyneth Paltrow. I was surprised that she is actually a lot more beautiful than normal people. It was weird. I'd always assumed that movie stars would look less glamorous in person, but not so. We saw seven short films (one of which was Gwyneth's directorial debut), and then they had a Q&A session afterward with all the directors. I asked a question about the lighting to one of the other directors, whose film was better than Gwyneth's, and wasn't funded by Vogue Magazine. We also had some delicious pizza. Man, that was some good stuff. Ryan is a really superior person. He has been going through some tough times lately with the passing on of our mutual friend Carly, but in my own times of turmoil I have really appreciated his involving me in his life. He's a good friend.
My choir went to St. George last weekend. It was such a great experience. We went and saw the new Joseph Smith movie that replaced Testaments. That movie is the best the church has ever produced. I cried through the whole thing. I want to go see it again. Anyone who reads this and is close enough to Salt Lake City or St. George to go watch it, please do. It will change you. Also, I became pretty good buddies with my friend Brett, since we roomed together. The two of us had a great time with our car buddies, Shelley (my efy co-worker) and Jessica (went to Wicked with me). Our entire choir was more bonded afterward.
We had auditions after our concert this last week, and my friend Snake from the ward tried out, and he made it in. He won't be able to come to our Wednesday practices, so it's my job to tape record the practices and then do practice with him one-on-one at his house. I'm excited to work with him; he's a really great guy.
I asked a girl on four dates tonight. Her name is Natasha and she's in my ward. She's in a marriage prep class and has an assignment to go on four dates with the same person. She was telling me this while I was playing bartender at my friend Mike's birthday party, mixing her a drink (non-alcoholic, of course). So as I was leaving the party, I suavely said, "Hey, Natasha, if you need any help with your homework, just call me."
"Did you have a specific class in mind?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"OK! I'll call you."Her enthusiasm was accompanied by a warning that this is quite the commitment and might require a lot of work and planning and time. I guess there are some tough stipulations. Meh. She seems like a cool girl, and what the heck else am I going to do with my weekends?
Well, besides the fact that Kelly stopped me at church and asked if it would be all right if we went on the date she accidentally stood me up on before Christmas. So I'm also going to do that next week. I'll probably let you all know how it goes.
I ordered pizza from Little Caesar's today. 25 pizzas. They're for my ward skating party this Saturday. I'm excited for it.
I clipped my nails for like an hour on a bus ride last week. I got them all short and perfect. Now I have an ingrown pinky nail. I always wondered why you can't get an ingrown fingernail, but now I know that you can. It's starting to turn green and I keep bumping it on stuff. OOOOOWWWW!
There's a job fair I'm going to tomorrow. I need a new job. Desperately.
Tomorrow night after choir practice I'm going to go with my new friends Chris and Garrett to watch them film something. They're going to shout in the square on campus, things like "I'm wearing women's underwear" and "I don't wear deodorant." The thing is, they're two of my favorite people in this ward. Very intelligent and aware of people and of current events. I could see myself living with those two. They are really cool. I try to hang with them whenever we have big ward functions. Garrett is the one who wrote about my fireside in his blog. Chris has set up a website similar to the hundred hour board, only where anyone can answer, and he wants me to be the editor. He's going to set up advertisements, and I will get 50% of any profits he makes off of it. That's pretty exciting. Everyone go there and ask or answer questions, ok?
My friend Alex passed this website along. It's my new favorite website, and you all should check it out.
The Mermaid called me up out of the blue to tell me she wanted to go to Costco. We went. I bought cheese, ham and cereal. It was a much more pleasant experience than the time I only bought vinegar and chili. We had a good talk. She had just broken up with a boyfriend, and talked for a substantial amount of time about how she needs a boyfriend who is more concerned with being good than being cool, and someone who is not materialistic but is more free with his things. I just nodded and said yeah, I could see her with someone like that. The girl is beautiful, but I never know what to think with her. One would have to fend off many other guys to really have anything with her.
I doubt I'll ever get around to talking fully about our roadtrip, so here are several of my favorite pictures from that time:
Over here on the left is when I was pretending to be seasick on the ferry. We had lots of fun on that ride.
This is me, Pinetree, Blueshorts, and Keri on our way into Seattle on the ferry. Seattle is the coolest city! I love the puget sound, and even fell into it!
I couldn't stop laughing about this campfire. It took us about an hour to light it. There was so much wind it kept getting blown out. Lad and I had to hold that tarp while Pinetree went through about 100 matches trying to get it lit. It was great.
This was our breakfast the morning of camping. You can't exactly tell, but we're on a cliff facing the ocean. It was a beautiful morning.
And here is my good buddy Pinetree playing on the beach at sunset. I didn't touch up this picture at all. Isn't it beautiful?
This is me being all contemplative at the same sunset a few minutes earlier. That has to be the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen. This was at Ocean Beach in San Francisco.
Pinetree again. This thing just got prettier and prettier.
That's me on the left and Pinetree on the right. I got kinda wet out there, but it was so worth it for these pictures, I think.
I loved how far out one could run on that beach. The tide was very low.
My dad sent me a coherent e-mail. It was the most lucid he's been in months. He said he printed out a copy of the letter I sent him and keeps it on him always. He says this is his new lease on life. I hope he takes full advantage of it. Thanks to those who have been praying for both of us.
I had a great talk with my bishop on Sunday for an hour and twenty minutes. I went in there to talk to him about my Dad and my hellish nightmares and my general ennui. He told me I might be depressed. I said I'd always been a very happy person. He said, "Well, yesterday I went to a seminar and it had three parts. first, we learned about homosexuality. Second, we learned about pornography. And third, we learned about depression. And the doctor who talked to us told us that there are two types of depression. Chemical depression, and then depression that is brought on by a trauma."
Well, I thought that was an interesting little preface. If you're new to reading my blog and haven't read all the archives, you might want to click here before you keep reading today's post, or you'll be like, WTF?
Anyway, it was interesting because I realized that the bishop was right. I have been suffering from depression. Not any permanent kind, but one I really need to work through. I also talked to him about the unfairness of things, that my dad can make bad decisions and in the end, I understand that he needs to be punished, but how could a loving God allow those of us who live righteously to be deprived of the ones we love because of the bad choices they make? The bishop told me a story that was the flip side of that, about how when he was twenty-nine, he almost left the church, but decided in the end to stick with it. And then recently one of his older children approached him and said that he was so grateful for the decision his dad made to stay in the church, because think of all the progeny that would be affected. And then suddenly I saw how it IS fair. That if we weren't allowed to have a negative impact on other people, we wouldn't be able to have a positive one, either.
I had gone to speak to the bishop with my perennial concerns about failure. I had been afraid to get close to people because I knew the bad choices I might some day make would eventually leave anyone I loved in a lot of pain they didn't deserve. But the bishop helped me to see that on the other hand, my failure to grow close to someone would deprive them of all the joy I could bring, and that in the end it's only a matter of personal choice and application of the atonement of Christ that will determine whether I'll bring more sorrow or joy into others' lives. So my new goal is to do good, to be proactive in helping others and focusing on their needs rather than trying to sort out my own life before I can begin to focus on anyone else. Because it won't happen that way.
Then I got around to that other topic. That whole "same-sex attraction" thing, to borrow the church's euphemism. I really hadn't planned to talk about it, but since he brought it up....
The bishop was incredibly informed. He had done a lot of praying and soul searching in the twenty-four hours since he had been to the seminar. He said that he's recently been dealing with another young man in my situation, and hadn't known what to tell him. He inspired me with his confidence in my ability to make good decisions. He astonished me with his perceptiveness into my character, and his compassion for my plight. And he gave me a paper to read. By a Dr. Jeff Robinson.
Dr. Robinson is a devout Latter-Day Saint psycho-therapist who has counseled innumerable young men and women who struggle with same-sex attraction. The paper the bishop gave me was in actuality a transcript of a discourse he had presented to a similar group of bishops a few years ago. The following is my own summary of that paper. It's not intended to be a condensed version of his work, but rather a showcase of the points I found most relevant to me.
The good doctor has found three characteristics that virtually all of his subjects have in common. First, they are highly emotionally sensitive. Second, they are above average in their intelligence and introspection. And third, they have an acute sense of right and wrong and a compulsion to do right. Check, check check, all of my gay friends who read this just went in their heads.
So, Dr. Robinson has this theory. He asserts that you take a young man with these three qualities, and you stick him in a society that teaches him to avoid sexualizing women, and he will build up protective walls against the future likelihood of that ever happening. Meanwhile, because of his emotional sensitivity, he begins to feel different from other boys. He wants to be rough-and-tumble, to be admired by the other children for his prowess, but begins to realize (and resent) that his strengths lie in other areas. Still, he watches those boys who represent what he wishes he were.
Then puberty strikes. And boys are aroused for the next several years. Pants too tight? Aroused. Pants too loose? Aroused. Bumpy car ride? Aroused. The boy walks around aroused by everything in his environment.
Now, the "normal" boy, because of social messages he's received, and because he is captivated by the differences between them and himself, begins to dwell on the female body, and it becomes directly linked to his sexuality.
For an example of how much the societal influences affect our sexuality, Dr. Robinson points out that in some African cultures, fat women are attractive. In others, women are more sexually attractive to men if they are missing their front teeth, if they have their necks stretched out by rings, or if their earlobes are pulled down to their lips. Obviously, sexuality is influenced a lot more than we like to think by what our society teaches us.
For this exceptional boy, something goes askew at this juncture. Because of the messages he's received from society, he is not letting himself dwell at all on the female body. And because of the differences between himself and other boys, he is fixated on them at this point in his life where things are becoming sexual. His body learns to have sexual responses to males instead of females.
Now, of course, he doesn't want this to happen. But the moment he notices that it's happening and labels it, he's cementing it. "Oh, no. I'm gay. I'm gay. I'm gay."
If this were a wound, contends Dr. Robinson, we would give it time to heal on its own. If it were a disease we could medicate it. If it were a syndrome we would seek treatment. But it's not those things. It's something we've learned. To get rid of it would be like his saying "Rudolph the red-nosed" without your thinking "reindeer." Your brain has learned that and that's what it's going to keep doing.
That doesn't mean it's impossible. If you did want to stop thinking "reindeer," you would have to replace it with something else. So you might try to say "Rudolph the red-nosed buffalo." Repeat five thousand times.
Now here's the problem with these introspective, hyper-sensitive, highly intelligent, perfectionist boys: "buffalo. buffalo. buffalo. buffalo. buffalo. reindeer. Oh, crap! I just said reindeer again! I always say reindeer! I guess I'm just a reindeer person! I'll always be stuck on reindeer!" And now he just said "reindeer" lots of extra times.
What he should say is "buffalo. buffalo. buffalo. reindeer. oh, I used to say that a lot. buffalo. buffalo." The more he kicks against it, the more it has hold over him, like the man struggling to his death in quicksand.
Dr. Robinson says that most of the young men who come to see him approach their homosexual attractions like a knight approaches a dragon. They think they need to charge the dragon, exchange blows, get a bit scorched, but in the end, though they lie bleeding, singed, and muddy, the dragon will be vanquished and they will be alive to tell of it. The reality is that the best way to deal with this dragon is just to fend it off, retreat a step, keep that shield up, step back again, and again, and again, until you're far enough away that you can just turn your back on the dragon and walk away. He'll probably always be a speck on the horizon, but he'll no longer be a nuisance.
The conclusion Dr. Robinson's speech brought tears to my eyes. He says he tells his patients that if he had a pill in his cabinet that would cure them of homosexuality, he wouldn't give it to them. When they invariably ask why not, he tells them that he's sure Heavenly Father has just such a pill, and that he's sure they've asked for it, and that He's always said no. He said that in the end it would be this struggle that would help us to reach exaltation. That these young men are the sort that he feels would fall to pride without this burden to anchor them down, that they would be the very ones to do great things to the point where they wouldn't feel a need to use the atonement, and that Satan targets them precisely because of all the potential they have to do good. And he also asserts that we can still do that good, if we can learn to walk away from the dragon.
The bishop is going to talk to Dr. Robinson to try to arrange for me to meet with him. I am so excited. I feel he really understands these issues, and can really help me in my own quest to do what's right.
I read the paper in the bathroom right before my shower yesterday. Then I had to run out for FHE (Sharkbite was like, "Smurf! Shoes and socks now!" Funny how my FHE dad sounds just like my real parents two decades before) , and I accidentally left the paper on the back of the toilet. I went and watched 24 with Kip and Wiggle and Jessica after that, and half-way through I remembered the paper and could think of nothing else. When I got back, Sharkbite was the only one home. He talked with me about all the normal things (politics, women, why he doesn't fit in), and when I finally found a covert moment to nip into the bathroom to retrieve the discourse, I found that it was gone. Awkward. I have no idea what he would have done with it, what he might have thought of it, or why he would filch it, but oh, well. Maybe it's something he needs more than I do. HA!
Ok, I'm going to finish this beast off with some pictures of my choir trip. Hope you enjoy!
This is Shelley beating me at air hockey. I had to whip off my tie in the middle of the game, and Jessica said it was the sexiest thing she'd ever seen me do, so I did it several times. We got in trouble for taking pictures in here.
Here's me eating chinese food. Did you know I once went several months without using a fork? Chopsticks only for me, thank you. For everything from steak to macaroni and cheese. I love chop sticks. I was posing for the picture, by the way. I don't really eat like that. Embarassing!
<<-----Over here you can see the courtyard of my friend Tara's house. The place was beautiful! This is where all the girls from the choir stayed.
And here----->>
you can see the living room. The view was incredible, but the place didn't really feel like one you could live in.
At the outlet mall, we were really bored, so Shelley and I got some sidewalk chalk and a bouncy ball at KB Toys and started a rockin' game of four square. Shelley kept hitting strangers. This was yet another opportunity to whip my tie off all seductively.
This is me and Shelley pretending we play the piano.
Here's me and Jessica. Shelley took this picture because we looked like an old married couple in it. I'm in the T-shirt because my neck got really terribly painful burns on it from whipping my tie off so many times. TOO sexy! TOO sexy!
Tara's mom had me peel the tomatoes for the guacamole, so I put on a little cooking show for the choir members. They said aloud what they thought I was thinking, as well as the thoughts of the tomatoes. From left to right we have Brett, Lisa, Married Brett, Treanna, and Ryan.
And finally, no, that is not a dead marmot on that woman's head. It is her actual hair, and I hate it. And also I love it. Shelley and Jessica had to take the picture with this woman in the background at the assisted living center just so we would could look at it whenever we want. Thank you, ladies. I hope you all love and hate it as much as I do.
Some people who call themselves the Provo Late Knights came upon my confessions blog and invited me to join their ranks. My friend Ryan from efy is in the group, and he vouched for me, so they let me in. What they do is make movies, which you can see here if you have Quicktime 7 (which comes with iTunes). They are mockumentaries about life in Provo after midnight. We filmed one last week that introduced me as their nemesis, but you will have to wait a week or so before they get it all edited. I'm excited for the release, and also to start writing the next one.
Ryan also invited me to the Sundance film festival with him and some cool friends from his ward. We saw Gwyneth Paltrow. I was surprised that she is actually a lot more beautiful than normal people. It was weird. I'd always assumed that movie stars would look less glamorous in person, but not so. We saw seven short films (one of which was Gwyneth's directorial debut), and then they had a Q&A session afterward with all the directors. I asked a question about the lighting to one of the other directors, whose film was better than Gwyneth's, and wasn't funded by Vogue Magazine. We also had some delicious pizza. Man, that was some good stuff. Ryan is a really superior person. He has been going through some tough times lately with the passing on of our mutual friend Carly, but in my own times of turmoil I have really appreciated his involving me in his life. He's a good friend.
My choir went to St. George last weekend. It was such a great experience. We went and saw the new Joseph Smith movie that replaced Testaments. That movie is the best the church has ever produced. I cried through the whole thing. I want to go see it again. Anyone who reads this and is close enough to Salt Lake City or St. George to go watch it, please do. It will change you. Also, I became pretty good buddies with my friend Brett, since we roomed together. The two of us had a great time with our car buddies, Shelley (my efy co-worker) and Jessica (went to Wicked with me). Our entire choir was more bonded afterward.
We had auditions after our concert this last week, and my friend Snake from the ward tried out, and he made it in. He won't be able to come to our Wednesday practices, so it's my job to tape record the practices and then do practice with him one-on-one at his house. I'm excited to work with him; he's a really great guy.
I asked a girl on four dates tonight. Her name is Natasha and she's in my ward. She's in a marriage prep class and has an assignment to go on four dates with the same person. She was telling me this while I was playing bartender at my friend Mike's birthday party, mixing her a drink (non-alcoholic, of course). So as I was leaving the party, I suavely said, "Hey, Natasha, if you need any help with your homework, just call me."
"Did you have a specific class in mind?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"OK! I'll call you."Her enthusiasm was accompanied by a warning that this is quite the commitment and might require a lot of work and planning and time. I guess there are some tough stipulations. Meh. She seems like a cool girl, and what the heck else am I going to do with my weekends?
Well, besides the fact that Kelly stopped me at church and asked if it would be all right if we went on the date she accidentally stood me up on before Christmas. So I'm also going to do that next week. I'll probably let you all know how it goes.
I ordered pizza from Little Caesar's today. 25 pizzas. They're for my ward skating party this Saturday. I'm excited for it.
I clipped my nails for like an hour on a bus ride last week. I got them all short and perfect. Now I have an ingrown pinky nail. I always wondered why you can't get an ingrown fingernail, but now I know that you can. It's starting to turn green and I keep bumping it on stuff. OOOOOWWWW!
There's a job fair I'm going to tomorrow. I need a new job. Desperately.
Tomorrow night after choir practice I'm going to go with my new friends Chris and Garrett to watch them film something. They're going to shout in the square on campus, things like "I'm wearing women's underwear" and "I don't wear deodorant." The thing is, they're two of my favorite people in this ward. Very intelligent and aware of people and of current events. I could see myself living with those two. They are really cool. I try to hang with them whenever we have big ward functions. Garrett is the one who wrote about my fireside in his blog. Chris has set up a website similar to the hundred hour board, only where anyone can answer, and he wants me to be the editor. He's going to set up advertisements, and I will get 50% of any profits he makes off of it. That's pretty exciting. Everyone go there and ask or answer questions, ok?
My friend Alex passed this website along. It's my new favorite website, and you all should check it out.
The Mermaid called me up out of the blue to tell me she wanted to go to Costco. We went. I bought cheese, ham and cereal. It was a much more pleasant experience than the time I only bought vinegar and chili. We had a good talk. She had just broken up with a boyfriend, and talked for a substantial amount of time about how she needs a boyfriend who is more concerned with being good than being cool, and someone who is not materialistic but is more free with his things. I just nodded and said yeah, I could see her with someone like that. The girl is beautiful, but I never know what to think with her. One would have to fend off many other guys to really have anything with her.
I doubt I'll ever get around to talking fully about our roadtrip, so here are several of my favorite pictures from that time:
Over here on the left is when I was pretending to be seasick on the ferry. We had lots of fun on that ride.
This is me, Pinetree, Blueshorts, and Keri on our way into Seattle on the ferry. Seattle is the coolest city! I love the puget sound, and even fell into it!
I couldn't stop laughing about this campfire. It took us about an hour to light it. There was so much wind it kept getting blown out. Lad and I had to hold that tarp while Pinetree went through about 100 matches trying to get it lit. It was great.
This was our breakfast the morning of camping. You can't exactly tell, but we're on a cliff facing the ocean. It was a beautiful morning.
And here is my good buddy Pinetree playing on the beach at sunset. I didn't touch up this picture at all. Isn't it beautiful?
This is me being all contemplative at the same sunset a few minutes earlier. That has to be the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen. This was at Ocean Beach in San Francisco.
Pinetree again. This thing just got prettier and prettier.
That's me on the left and Pinetree on the right. I got kinda wet out there, but it was so worth it for these pictures, I think.
I loved how far out one could run on that beach. The tide was very low.
My dad sent me a coherent e-mail. It was the most lucid he's been in months. He said he printed out a copy of the letter I sent him and keeps it on him always. He says this is his new lease on life. I hope he takes full advantage of it. Thanks to those who have been praying for both of us.
I had a great talk with my bishop on Sunday for an hour and twenty minutes. I went in there to talk to him about my Dad and my hellish nightmares and my general ennui. He told me I might be depressed. I said I'd always been a very happy person. He said, "Well, yesterday I went to a seminar and it had three parts. first, we learned about homosexuality. Second, we learned about pornography. And third, we learned about depression. And the doctor who talked to us told us that there are two types of depression. Chemical depression, and then depression that is brought on by a trauma."
Well, I thought that was an interesting little preface. If you're new to reading my blog and haven't read all the archives, you might want to click here before you keep reading today's post, or you'll be like, WTF?
Anyway, it was interesting because I realized that the bishop was right. I have been suffering from depression. Not any permanent kind, but one I really need to work through. I also talked to him about the unfairness of things, that my dad can make bad decisions and in the end, I understand that he needs to be punished, but how could a loving God allow those of us who live righteously to be deprived of the ones we love because of the bad choices they make? The bishop told me a story that was the flip side of that, about how when he was twenty-nine, he almost left the church, but decided in the end to stick with it. And then recently one of his older children approached him and said that he was so grateful for the decision his dad made to stay in the church, because think of all the progeny that would be affected. And then suddenly I saw how it IS fair. That if we weren't allowed to have a negative impact on other people, we wouldn't be able to have a positive one, either.
I had gone to speak to the bishop with my perennial concerns about failure. I had been afraid to get close to people because I knew the bad choices I might some day make would eventually leave anyone I loved in a lot of pain they didn't deserve. But the bishop helped me to see that on the other hand, my failure to grow close to someone would deprive them of all the joy I could bring, and that in the end it's only a matter of personal choice and application of the atonement of Christ that will determine whether I'll bring more sorrow or joy into others' lives. So my new goal is to do good, to be proactive in helping others and focusing on their needs rather than trying to sort out my own life before I can begin to focus on anyone else. Because it won't happen that way.
Then I got around to that other topic. That whole "same-sex attraction" thing, to borrow the church's euphemism. I really hadn't planned to talk about it, but since he brought it up....
The bishop was incredibly informed. He had done a lot of praying and soul searching in the twenty-four hours since he had been to the seminar. He said that he's recently been dealing with another young man in my situation, and hadn't known what to tell him. He inspired me with his confidence in my ability to make good decisions. He astonished me with his perceptiveness into my character, and his compassion for my plight. And he gave me a paper to read. By a Dr. Jeff Robinson.
Dr. Robinson is a devout Latter-Day Saint psycho-therapist who has counseled innumerable young men and women who struggle with same-sex attraction. The paper the bishop gave me was in actuality a transcript of a discourse he had presented to a similar group of bishops a few years ago. The following is my own summary of that paper. It's not intended to be a condensed version of his work, but rather a showcase of the points I found most relevant to me.
The good doctor has found three characteristics that virtually all of his subjects have in common. First, they are highly emotionally sensitive. Second, they are above average in their intelligence and introspection. And third, they have an acute sense of right and wrong and a compulsion to do right. Check, check check, all of my gay friends who read this just went in their heads.
So, Dr. Robinson has this theory. He asserts that you take a young man with these three qualities, and you stick him in a society that teaches him to avoid sexualizing women, and he will build up protective walls against the future likelihood of that ever happening. Meanwhile, because of his emotional sensitivity, he begins to feel different from other boys. He wants to be rough-and-tumble, to be admired by the other children for his prowess, but begins to realize (and resent) that his strengths lie in other areas. Still, he watches those boys who represent what he wishes he were.
Then puberty strikes. And boys are aroused for the next several years. Pants too tight? Aroused. Pants too loose? Aroused. Bumpy car ride? Aroused. The boy walks around aroused by everything in his environment.
Now, the "normal" boy, because of social messages he's received, and because he is captivated by the differences between them and himself, begins to dwell on the female body, and it becomes directly linked to his sexuality.
For an example of how much the societal influences affect our sexuality, Dr. Robinson points out that in some African cultures, fat women are attractive. In others, women are more sexually attractive to men if they are missing their front teeth, if they have their necks stretched out by rings, or if their earlobes are pulled down to their lips. Obviously, sexuality is influenced a lot more than we like to think by what our society teaches us.
For this exceptional boy, something goes askew at this juncture. Because of the messages he's received from society, he is not letting himself dwell at all on the female body. And because of the differences between himself and other boys, he is fixated on them at this point in his life where things are becoming sexual. His body learns to have sexual responses to males instead of females.
Now, of course, he doesn't want this to happen. But the moment he notices that it's happening and labels it, he's cementing it. "Oh, no. I'm gay. I'm gay. I'm gay."
If this were a wound, contends Dr. Robinson, we would give it time to heal on its own. If it were a disease we could medicate it. If it were a syndrome we would seek treatment. But it's not those things. It's something we've learned. To get rid of it would be like his saying "Rudolph the red-nosed" without your thinking "reindeer." Your brain has learned that and that's what it's going to keep doing.
That doesn't mean it's impossible. If you did want to stop thinking "reindeer," you would have to replace it with something else. So you might try to say "Rudolph the red-nosed buffalo." Repeat five thousand times.
Now here's the problem with these introspective, hyper-sensitive, highly intelligent, perfectionist boys: "buffalo. buffalo. buffalo. buffalo. buffalo. reindeer. Oh, crap! I just said reindeer again! I always say reindeer! I guess I'm just a reindeer person! I'll always be stuck on reindeer!" And now he just said "reindeer" lots of extra times.
What he should say is "buffalo. buffalo. buffalo. reindeer. oh, I used to say that a lot. buffalo. buffalo." The more he kicks against it, the more it has hold over him, like the man struggling to his death in quicksand.
Dr. Robinson says that most of the young men who come to see him approach their homosexual attractions like a knight approaches a dragon. They think they need to charge the dragon, exchange blows, get a bit scorched, but in the end, though they lie bleeding, singed, and muddy, the dragon will be vanquished and they will be alive to tell of it. The reality is that the best way to deal with this dragon is just to fend it off, retreat a step, keep that shield up, step back again, and again, and again, until you're far enough away that you can just turn your back on the dragon and walk away. He'll probably always be a speck on the horizon, but he'll no longer be a nuisance.
The conclusion Dr. Robinson's speech brought tears to my eyes. He says he tells his patients that if he had a pill in his cabinet that would cure them of homosexuality, he wouldn't give it to them. When they invariably ask why not, he tells them that he's sure Heavenly Father has just such a pill, and that he's sure they've asked for it, and that He's always said no. He said that in the end it would be this struggle that would help us to reach exaltation. That these young men are the sort that he feels would fall to pride without this burden to anchor them down, that they would be the very ones to do great things to the point where they wouldn't feel a need to use the atonement, and that Satan targets them precisely because of all the potential they have to do good. And he also asserts that we can still do that good, if we can learn to walk away from the dragon.
The bishop is going to talk to Dr. Robinson to try to arrange for me to meet with him. I am so excited. I feel he really understands these issues, and can really help me in my own quest to do what's right.
I read the paper in the bathroom right before my shower yesterday. Then I had to run out for FHE (Sharkbite was like, "Smurf! Shoes and socks now!" Funny how my FHE dad sounds just like my real parents two decades before) , and I accidentally left the paper on the back of the toilet. I went and watched 24 with Kip and Wiggle and Jessica after that, and half-way through I remembered the paper and could think of nothing else. When I got back, Sharkbite was the only one home. He talked with me about all the normal things (politics, women, why he doesn't fit in), and when I finally found a covert moment to nip into the bathroom to retrieve the discourse, I found that it was gone. Awkward. I have no idea what he would have done with it, what he might have thought of it, or why he would filch it, but oh, well. Maybe it's something he needs more than I do. HA!
Ok, I'm going to finish this beast off with some pictures of my choir trip. Hope you enjoy!
This is Shelley beating me at air hockey. I had to whip off my tie in the middle of the game, and Jessica said it was the sexiest thing she'd ever seen me do, so I did it several times. We got in trouble for taking pictures in here.
Here's me eating chinese food. Did you know I once went several months without using a fork? Chopsticks only for me, thank you. For everything from steak to macaroni and cheese. I love chop sticks. I was posing for the picture, by the way. I don't really eat like that. Embarassing!
<<-----Over here you can see the courtyard of my friend Tara's house. The place was beautiful! This is where all the girls from the choir stayed.
And here----->>
you can see the living room. The view was incredible, but the place didn't really feel like one you could live in.
At the outlet mall, we were really bored, so Shelley and I got some sidewalk chalk and a bouncy ball at KB Toys and started a rockin' game of four square. Shelley kept hitting strangers. This was yet another opportunity to whip my tie off all seductively.
This is me and Shelley pretending we play the piano.
Here's me and Jessica. Shelley took this picture because we looked like an old married couple in it. I'm in the T-shirt because my neck got really terribly painful burns on it from whipping my tie off so many times. TOO sexy! TOO sexy!
Tara's mom had me peel the tomatoes for the guacamole, so I put on a little cooking show for the choir members. They said aloud what they thought I was thinking, as well as the thoughts of the tomatoes. From left to right we have Brett, Lisa, Married Brett, Treanna, and Ryan.
And finally, no, that is not a dead marmot on that woman's head. It is her actual hair, and I hate it. And also I love it. Shelley and Jessica had to take the picture with this woman in the background at the assisted living center just so we would could look at it whenever we want. Thank you, ladies. I hope you all love and hate it as much as I do.
Monday, September 26, 2005
Happy Birthday to Me!
Ok, so it's not my birthday. But it is my blog's birthday. So I felt I should do something special for today. But I couldn't think of anything, so instead you get a report of my last few days, which have been incredible.
I saw the Corpsebride on Friday night with Wiggle, Pinetree, Blushorts, and a bunch of librarians and a roommate and a few random friends. I thought the movie was amusing, but it had a huge dearth of actual conflict. The threatened death of several characters didn't phase me at all, since half the ensemble was already dead, and nobody seemed to mind. Death was made completely moot. I also found it difficult to care which girl the protagonist ended up with, since he himself seemed pretty apathetic about it throughout the movie. There wasn't enough motivation given for his decision when he learns about the impending wedding of his betrothed. The piano music was haunting and beautiful, the puns and gags were enjoyable, but the conflict and suspense were as flat as yesterday's Pepsi. Even if we hadn't been able to predict what was going to happen in the end, we wouldn't have cared, since none of the characters seemed to.
Afterwards we picked up Asmond and Rock Flower and played Cranium. My team won, though I blew two turns just by making stupid mistakes.
Friday evening I went to watch "Into the Woods" on video and have dessert with Jessica and Kip, the people with whom I went to "Wicked." The desserts were excellent, and I love the play, but I had to leave early to go watch Stealth with Hero. Which was fun. We got there a bit late, but as Hero said, "I can't believe we got front-row seats!" The movie didn't suck even half as much as I expected. The plot was inane, but more politically conscious than I had expected, and characters actually ended up in interesting predicaments. The dialogue wasn't your standard pre-packaged blockbuster fare, which helped a lot. The main problem was that for most of the movie, there was no villain. The hero finds a ridiculous way to brainwash the evil plane and somehow turn it good. By splashing water on it. No joke. Like the Wicked Witch of the West, Bawb points out. They spend the rest of the movie just cleaning up the mess that was made. I guess you could count North Korea as the antagonist after that. In the end, the sentient plane pulls a Jesus and sacrifices himself to save the main characters. We are meant to feel bad for it, I think. After the movie, Hero and I went back to his place and ate banana pudding and talked about girls. I almost wonder if he wanted to hang out just so he'd get another mention in my blog. He wanted a nickname on here, so I went back and edited the previous references to him. Anyway, Hero's one of my favorite people. We understand each other, I think. As I've told him, I have a rule about arrogant people, and it's only OK to be as arrogant as he is if you're as cool as he is to back it up.
We tried to track down Chris and the Los Hermanos crew at Vermillion Skies, but there were only a bunch of people that made Hero nervous because they were all wearing Vans, and they made me nervous bcause they were all dancing. Ran into a vampire-like kid I know from Fairfield, and asked abouit his wife, but it turns out he had not gotten married after all. Whoops. I ALWAYS do that.
Yesterday was the best day I've had in a long, long time. I awoke early and got all ready for church. It was fast-and-testimony meeting, and it seemed that half the ward got up right at the beginning of the meting to bear its testimony. I was among them. In the end, the bishop allowed everyone who had gone up to the front to get up and speak. It was really a good meeting. It also had the unintended result that people seemed to instantly be my friend after that. People were just clapping me on the back as they passed me in the hall, or saying hi to me and addressing me by name. It made me happy. I also got sustained as a member of the activities committee, which is going to be awesome. We had a meeting after church, and the rest of the members of the committee are hilarious and good to work with. They told us that our main goal as members of the committee is to be best friends with the ward, and be aware of people and what they're doing. I think that sounds like the perfect calling for me, since I love meeting people.
My home teaching companion and I went and did our home teaching after that. We have the same name. We home teach two girls and my companion's best friend, who lives downstairs from him. They are all really great and amusing, and we had nice spiritual experiences with all of them.
Then it was off to ward "break-the-fast," which I think is a Utah invention and an excuse to have a potluck once a month. While there, I worked hard on memorizing people's names. After that I took a brief nap and then went to practice for "Joseph Smith the Prophet."
You guys, this music is amazing. It goes through Joseph Smith's life, which is great because of this being the year of his two-hundredth birthday and general conference coming up this weekend. Our performances are this Thursday and Friday at 7:30 p.m., and I can think of no better way to get oneself prepared for Conference than by attending this concert. We have a 160-person choir and a 40-piece orchestra. The soloists are astounding. This is the best music I've ever been affiliated with. I hope everyone who can come, will. Tickets are $5.50 and will be available at the door. It's at the Abravenel Hall in Salt Lake city, right across from Temple Square.
I was offered a ride home by a married guy in our group. He joined our group only last Wednesday, and he sat next to me then. Last night he sat next to other people. On the way home last night he told me that he wanted to sit next to me from now on, since I have such a strong voice and read the music so well. That was a really nice compliment, since I had been thinking I was just good enough to have made the choir. I am in charge of the carpool to get us all up to SLC, and it was a good thing I was organized with that information, because I kept getting complimented. Seriously, I got so many compliments yesterday my enormous head kept knocking my pillow off the bed last night. Really.
So I went to Ward Prayer, and it was really cool. We ended up teaching the elderly bishopric members and their wives about the game Seven Minutes in Heaven during a raucous discussion. After that I went to the Alamo, which is the house near mine where my hometeachee and my companion live. We had a huge group of various members of the ward, all of who'm I'd met earlier during the day. We played a game called "Buzzword." My team won, and they declared that next time it was Smurf versus everyone else. I've said it before, but if I have one super power it's mad wicked board game skills. This one was almost as ridiculous as Mad Gab. Afterward my namesake companion gave us all ice cream and we told stories. Then I came home, and talked online to Merry, my old mission companion who's now fighting in Iraq, and to Topsie, and found out that things are moving forward with Jonathan, "according to plan." Then it was midnight, so Wiggle and Bekachu and I went to Beto's and got big honking nasty burritos and ate them. Then I went to bed.
Autumn rolls on, and I am feeling more and more blissfully, sanguinely happy. Happiness is in my blood, like hemoglobins. I start my job at the library tomorrow. I'm a page. I imagine that means I'll be following around a knight and handing him his sword or his lance, depending on which is right for the conflict at that moment.
Anyway, once again I ask you to pardon my effusiveness, but things are just so great for me lately.
Finally, in honor of my blog's birthday, I've added a new subtitle to my blog: "The Brainy Poet Corner." Brainy and Poet are two of the smurfs who make contributions here on my blog, and the whole subtitle is an anagram for my full name. As is "Horny-brain erect poet," but I pretty much hate that.
I saw the Corpsebride on Friday night with Wiggle, Pinetree, Blushorts, and a bunch of librarians and a roommate and a few random friends. I thought the movie was amusing, but it had a huge dearth of actual conflict. The threatened death of several characters didn't phase me at all, since half the ensemble was already dead, and nobody seemed to mind. Death was made completely moot. I also found it difficult to care which girl the protagonist ended up with, since he himself seemed pretty apathetic about it throughout the movie. There wasn't enough motivation given for his decision when he learns about the impending wedding of his betrothed. The piano music was haunting and beautiful, the puns and gags were enjoyable, but the conflict and suspense were as flat as yesterday's Pepsi. Even if we hadn't been able to predict what was going to happen in the end, we wouldn't have cared, since none of the characters seemed to.
Afterwards we picked up Asmond and Rock Flower and played Cranium. My team won, though I blew two turns just by making stupid mistakes.
Friday evening I went to watch "Into the Woods" on video and have dessert with Jessica and Kip, the people with whom I went to "Wicked." The desserts were excellent, and I love the play, but I had to leave early to go watch Stealth with Hero. Which was fun. We got there a bit late, but as Hero said, "I can't believe we got front-row seats!" The movie didn't suck even half as much as I expected. The plot was inane, but more politically conscious than I had expected, and characters actually ended up in interesting predicaments. The dialogue wasn't your standard pre-packaged blockbuster fare, which helped a lot. The main problem was that for most of the movie, there was no villain. The hero finds a ridiculous way to brainwash the evil plane and somehow turn it good. By splashing water on it. No joke. Like the Wicked Witch of the West, Bawb points out. They spend the rest of the movie just cleaning up the mess that was made. I guess you could count North Korea as the antagonist after that. In the end, the sentient plane pulls a Jesus and sacrifices himself to save the main characters. We are meant to feel bad for it, I think. After the movie, Hero and I went back to his place and ate banana pudding and talked about girls. I almost wonder if he wanted to hang out just so he'd get another mention in my blog. He wanted a nickname on here, so I went back and edited the previous references to him. Anyway, Hero's one of my favorite people. We understand each other, I think. As I've told him, I have a rule about arrogant people, and it's only OK to be as arrogant as he is if you're as cool as he is to back it up.
We tried to track down Chris and the Los Hermanos crew at Vermillion Skies, but there were only a bunch of people that made Hero nervous because they were all wearing Vans, and they made me nervous bcause they were all dancing. Ran into a vampire-like kid I know from Fairfield, and asked abouit his wife, but it turns out he had not gotten married after all. Whoops. I ALWAYS do that.
Yesterday was the best day I've had in a long, long time. I awoke early and got all ready for church. It was fast-and-testimony meeting, and it seemed that half the ward got up right at the beginning of the meting to bear its testimony. I was among them. In the end, the bishop allowed everyone who had gone up to the front to get up and speak. It was really a good meeting. It also had the unintended result that people seemed to instantly be my friend after that. People were just clapping me on the back as they passed me in the hall, or saying hi to me and addressing me by name. It made me happy. I also got sustained as a member of the activities committee, which is going to be awesome. We had a meeting after church, and the rest of the members of the committee are hilarious and good to work with. They told us that our main goal as members of the committee is to be best friends with the ward, and be aware of people and what they're doing. I think that sounds like the perfect calling for me, since I love meeting people.
My home teaching companion and I went and did our home teaching after that. We have the same name. We home teach two girls and my companion's best friend, who lives downstairs from him. They are all really great and amusing, and we had nice spiritual experiences with all of them.
Then it was off to ward "break-the-fast," which I think is a Utah invention and an excuse to have a potluck once a month. While there, I worked hard on memorizing people's names. After that I took a brief nap and then went to practice for "Joseph Smith the Prophet."
You guys, this music is amazing. It goes through Joseph Smith's life, which is great because of this being the year of his two-hundredth birthday and general conference coming up this weekend. Our performances are this Thursday and Friday at 7:30 p.m., and I can think of no better way to get oneself prepared for Conference than by attending this concert. We have a 160-person choir and a 40-piece orchestra. The soloists are astounding. This is the best music I've ever been affiliated with. I hope everyone who can come, will. Tickets are $5.50 and will be available at the door. It's at the Abravenel Hall in Salt Lake city, right across from Temple Square.
I was offered a ride home by a married guy in our group. He joined our group only last Wednesday, and he sat next to me then. Last night he sat next to other people. On the way home last night he told me that he wanted to sit next to me from now on, since I have such a strong voice and read the music so well. That was a really nice compliment, since I had been thinking I was just good enough to have made the choir. I am in charge of the carpool to get us all up to SLC, and it was a good thing I was organized with that information, because I kept getting complimented. Seriously, I got so many compliments yesterday my enormous head kept knocking my pillow off the bed last night. Really.
So I went to Ward Prayer, and it was really cool. We ended up teaching the elderly bishopric members and their wives about the game Seven Minutes in Heaven during a raucous discussion. After that I went to the Alamo, which is the house near mine where my hometeachee and my companion live. We had a huge group of various members of the ward, all of who'm I'd met earlier during the day. We played a game called "Buzzword." My team won, and they declared that next time it was Smurf versus everyone else. I've said it before, but if I have one super power it's mad wicked board game skills. This one was almost as ridiculous as Mad Gab. Afterward my namesake companion gave us all ice cream and we told stories. Then I came home, and talked online to Merry, my old mission companion who's now fighting in Iraq, and to Topsie, and found out that things are moving forward with Jonathan, "according to plan." Then it was midnight, so Wiggle and Bekachu and I went to Beto's and got big honking nasty burritos and ate them. Then I went to bed.
Autumn rolls on, and I am feeling more and more blissfully, sanguinely happy. Happiness is in my blood, like hemoglobins. I start my job at the library tomorrow. I'm a page. I imagine that means I'll be following around a knight and handing him his sword or his lance, depending on which is right for the conflict at that moment.
Anyway, once again I ask you to pardon my effusiveness, but things are just so great for me lately.
Finally, in honor of my blog's birthday, I've added a new subtitle to my blog: "The Brainy Poet Corner." Brainy and Poet are two of the smurfs who make contributions here on my blog, and the whole subtitle is an anagram for my full name. As is "Horny-brain erect poet," but I pretty much hate that.
Friday, September 09, 2005
Total Eclipse
I'm going to see Eclipse tonight. They're my favorite a capella group. They're so good. If anyone else wants to come, he should. Tickets are available at SmithsTix. You should go to Smith's and buy one. They're $7-10, and that's totally worth it. You will gain a testimony of them as I have.
In other news, I'm going to see Wicked next week for $45. Such a steal. It's in Colorado. I hope you're all terribly jealous.
In other news, I'm going to see Wicked next week for $45. Such a steal. It's in Colorado. I hope you're all terribly jealous.
Sunday, September 04, 2005
An Audition and an Epiphany
Shelley (BC I worked with all summer) and I auditioned for a musical fireside group called Latter-Day Sounds yesterday and this morning. And we both got in! I'm so excited to be a part of this group. It looks like it's a time commitment of large proportions. We'll be singing and bearing testimony. I really enjoyed the auditions, mostly because they had us sight-read some music and I was able to do it without any mistakes. All this singing at efy has really paid off, I guess. I don't even really remember learning to do that. We'll go on two tours, which sounds really great. It'll be good for me to be surrounded by good people and to use my talents to bear my testmony.
At this morning's audition, there was a question on a slip of paper that I saw that read, "How have you gained a testimony?" I've been thinking about that lately. Why me? It's not like I was this extra-righteous youth. It's not like I even had a constant strong desire for the church to be true. Daily life would be easier if it weren't true, I can easily believe. So what's the answer?
I could say that I gained my testimony by delving into my scriptures and looking for answers to my real problems in there. I could also say that it came because I prayed so earnestly and desperately to know if God was there. Or maybe because I repented of my sins when I was a young man, and was able to see the difference in my life.
But yeah, right. That would be like the farmer taking credit for the miracle of a sprouting seed. My testimony of the gospel is a gift of the spirit. Alma says that we are blessed when we are compelled to be humble. That's totally me. I guess those of you who are humble without being compelled are even more blessed. But I'm not in that camp.
Alma himself, you'll remember wasn't one of those guys, either. Here's an interesting thought I was sharing with my roommate the other day. Look at the greatest missionaries in the scriptures. We have Alma, Paul, and the sons of Mosiah. All of those men were compelled to be humble. Why is it that the Lord sent angels to them all when they were zealously working against the church? Did they deserve it? Obviously not. There is a great deal of grace involved there, it would seem. So is it because they had the ability to effect a lot of good in the world? That's my roommate's theory. It seems a bit unfair, though.
Still, an angelic visitation is not a guarantee that someone will follow the path of righteousness. We always have Laman and Lemuel. So maybe there is still something inside a person that sets him apart. Maybe there are plenty of wicked men out there who see angels and ignore them.
Anyway, I feel that these men all seem to have worked for the rest of their lives like men trying to dig their way out of debt. They seem spurred by the knowledge that the Lord blessed them and called them when they didn't deserve it. That's the way I feel. Maybe the Lord blessed me with a testimony because he has confidence in my ability or at least willingness to bring others to him. I'm not sure. But whatever the reason, I need to work as though that's why he did it.
At this morning's audition, there was a question on a slip of paper that I saw that read, "How have you gained a testimony?" I've been thinking about that lately. Why me? It's not like I was this extra-righteous youth. It's not like I even had a constant strong desire for the church to be true. Daily life would be easier if it weren't true, I can easily believe. So what's the answer?
I could say that I gained my testimony by delving into my scriptures and looking for answers to my real problems in there. I could also say that it came because I prayed so earnestly and desperately to know if God was there. Or maybe because I repented of my sins when I was a young man, and was able to see the difference in my life.
But yeah, right. That would be like the farmer taking credit for the miracle of a sprouting seed. My testimony of the gospel is a gift of the spirit. Alma says that we are blessed when we are compelled to be humble. That's totally me. I guess those of you who are humble without being compelled are even more blessed. But I'm not in that camp.
Alma himself, you'll remember wasn't one of those guys, either. Here's an interesting thought I was sharing with my roommate the other day. Look at the greatest missionaries in the scriptures. We have Alma, Paul, and the sons of Mosiah. All of those men were compelled to be humble. Why is it that the Lord sent angels to them all when they were zealously working against the church? Did they deserve it? Obviously not. There is a great deal of grace involved there, it would seem. So is it because they had the ability to effect a lot of good in the world? That's my roommate's theory. It seems a bit unfair, though.
Still, an angelic visitation is not a guarantee that someone will follow the path of righteousness. We always have Laman and Lemuel. So maybe there is still something inside a person that sets him apart. Maybe there are plenty of wicked men out there who see angels and ignore them.
Anyway, I feel that these men all seem to have worked for the rest of their lives like men trying to dig their way out of debt. They seem spurred by the knowledge that the Lord blessed them and called them when they didn't deserve it. That's the way I feel. Maybe the Lord blessed me with a testimony because he has confidence in my ability or at least willingness to bring others to him. I'm not sure. But whatever the reason, I need to work as though that's why he did it.
Saturday, August 27, 2005
My Personal Naked Ladies
Just so you know, I do intend to finish up the summer. BUT I started typing up the next week and the computer crashed, and I haven't yet been able to muster up the energy to redo it. For now, though, I am going to do a little thing I found on a friend's website. It goes like this: you pick a band, and then you answer questions about yourself using only the titles of songs by the band. And I bet you can guess which band I chose.
My Personal Spree
Choose a band / artist and answer ONLY in titles of their songs:
1. Barenaked Ladies
2. Are you male or female: Good Boy
3. Describe yourself: Shoebox of Lies
4. How do some people feel about you: Just a Toy
5. How do you feel about yourself: The Wrong Man was Convicted; Am I the Only One?
6. Describe your ex boyfriend / girlfriend: Maybe Katie
7. Describe current boyfriend / girlfriend: Have you Seen my Love?
8. Describe where you want to be: Off the Hook
9. Describe how you live: Life in a Nutshell: Testing, 1,2,3
10. Describe how you love: Never Do Anything; Too Little, Too Late; Never is Enough
11. What would you ask for if you had just one wish: If I had $1,000,000
12. Share a few words of Wisdom: Who Needs Sleep?
13. Now say goodbye: Leave; Go Home
Saturday, August 20, 2005
Latest and Greatest
I started to talk about my next two weeks of efy, but then the window closed and I lost all I had typed. So I will get to it, but it may be a bit. Meanwhile, the incomparable BAWB has somehow made a terrific change to my blog that you've probably already noticed: there's music now! Over there on the side you will see the controls where you can stop the music if you'd like. There are three songs in the little playlist, so you can change it if you'd like. I thought I'd start out with one of my favorite Barenaked Ladies songs, followed by a Portuguese/English hybrid by Nelly Furtado that just makes me happy, and finally, a cover by my favorite a capella group, the Brown Derbies. I'll be changing these songs every time I update, so hopefully you can all get some exposure to music I think is great. Enjoy!
Monday, April 18, 2005
Appliance Healers
Pinetree made me a cool cd. I love it. I was trying to show Wiggle the Twelve Girl Band cover of "Clocks," so I popped the cd into Toasteroven's laptop. It played for a bit, but then it went all crazy. The cd got stuck in the computer and wouldn't play. When Toasteroven tried to open it, the face of the disk drive popped off. It made me really sad. Primarily, I was sad because the computer was broken and it was my awesome cd that had done it. Secondarily, I was sad that my cd was still in there, because it was such an awesome cd, and this meant I couldn't listen anymore.
I told Pinetree how mad I was at the computer for breaking. He told me I should kick it. You shouldn't tell me these things. So, without even getting up from my chair, I reached my foot up (I'm ridiculously, freakishly limber) and gave the computer a light tap with my foot. The cd ejected right away. Pinetree, you're a freaking genius. Toasteroven, sorry I kicked your computer. Pinetree made me.
I told Pinetree how mad I was at the computer for breaking. He told me I should kick it. You shouldn't tell me these things. So, without even getting up from my chair, I reached my foot up (I'm ridiculously, freakishly limber) and gave the computer a light tap with my foot. The cd ejected right away. Pinetree, you're a freaking genius. Toasteroven, sorry I kicked your computer. Pinetree made me.
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
There is Beauty All Around
Here are some beautiful things I've read or heard lately:
"I crack a window. I feel the cool air clean my every pore/As I pour my poor heart out/To a radio song that's patient and willing to listen/ My volume drowns it out."
--Eve 6, "Open Road Song"
"It wasn’t salad at all!! In fact, all it contained was wilted leaves with plain vinegar!! Puke! Bluah! So there I sat practically on the ground with a plate full of foul food while Smurf and BamaBeau tell me that the hippies don’t like others to waste food. "
--Wiggle, from her blog.
"HARARE, Zimbabwe - A prize-winning track athlete who competed in women's events was actually a man, a court in Zimbabwe has been told.
"Samukaliso Sithole, who competed in domestic and regional competitions, faced charges of crimen injuria, or psychological offense, in the Zimbabwean city of Bulawayo, the state-run Herald newspaper reported Wednesday. Prosecutors alleged Sithole offended the dignity and sexuality of a woman who befriended him, confided in him, and felt comfortable being naked around him, all the while believing him to be a woman, the newspaper said.
"Sithole was identified as a man to the complainant by an acquaintance, as he and a group of women were preparing to travel by train to a track meet in Bulawayo, the court heard Tuesday. Sithole tried to sprint away from the train station but was caught. Police then supervised a
medical examination.
"Sithole told the court he was born congenitally deformed. A tribal healer, known in the West as a witchdoctor, gave him 'female status,' but the spell didn't work properly because his family didn't pay the healer's full fee, Sithole said."
--From msnbc
"In the quiet moments... I have seen doctors who have spent all day in surgery, or seeing too many patients quietly find a conference room, lay their heads down upon their arms and cry. Because they couldn't help that person. Or perhaps because they've missed their sons soccer game again. Perhaps just because they're bone tired. Whatever the reason, I have seen some real dedication. And it has inspired me. Even in this world of malpractice, managed care and health insurance claims, I still see people that want to help people. Who drive themselves towards excellence because they see that pursuit as virtuous in and of itself. They really do want to help people. They want to expand themselves."
--Venerableryo
"Ducking into confession with a turkey in his arms, Brian said, 'Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I stole this turkey to feed my family. Would you take it and settle my guilt?' 'Certainly not,' said the Priest. 'As penance, you must return it to the one from whom you stole it.' I tried,' Brian sobbed, 'but he refused. Oh, Father, what should I do?' 'If what you say is true, then it is all right for you to keep it for your family.' Thanking the Priest, Brian hurried off. When confession was over, the Priest returned to his residence. When he walked into the kitchen, he found that someone had stolen his turkey. "
--Discovered on Bawb's website
"As I kept walking I came to several other grave sites that caught my attention. One, was a 14 year old boy, with a caption similar to this: Think of me, when there is snow in big cottonwood canyon, and the sun rests on the slopes of Rock Canyon. And know this, that I am free. Another, on two girls who shared the same gravestone. July 1982 - June 1983, her sister, August 1983 - August 1983. Imagine how those parents felt... The last, was a military grave. He was 20 when he died. A sargent in the 7th infantry, he died in World War II.
"As I saw these people, young men and women that could have been my friends, or people who gave their life defending the right I had to have friends. I wondered what I was doing with my life? Why was it so hard for me to give twenty minutes a day to the Lord? Is the time he is giving me really worth it? Shouldn't one of these have had that chance to live? Wouldn't they have done more with it? And the tears came, I'm not sure what I did to deserve it, but I need to make the most of what I've been given."
--Asmond, in his blog
"I've just found a new word! Before I actually ask you my question let me explain this word. It is PROVOCITY. It comes from that big smokestack thing near campus. Someone asked one day, 'What is Provocity?' Reading together the words 'Provo City' which as you know are emblazened on the smokestack (if it really is a smokestack). The word, which I and some others have since begun using means something like the phrase 'only in Provo' which we all hear at least occasionally. It can be used in this context: 'He had the provocity to propose after dating her for only two months.' And 'It is so provocious to have 3 dates in one Saturday.' Anyway, I love this new word."
--Someone named "Websters Newest Edition" on the 100 Hour Board
"If I'm expected to be a rule breaker, and treated as if I will disregard all requests no matter what I actually do, I might as well break the rules and reap the benefits. This is why I now want to know the reasons behind rules, and the attitudes of those who enforce them. Because I don't mind being the one who does right and has to do it alone, but if what's 'right' is a lie to get at a different result, I'd rather have the freedom of knowing what the real objective is."
--Uffish Thought
"Q: How do you make a cat go 'woof'?
"A: Soak it in gasoline and throw it on the fire."
--From Eleka Nahmen's Blog
"RICHMOND, Va. - Virginia lawmakers dropped their droopy-pants bill Thursday after the whole thing became just too embarrassing.The bill, which would have slapped a $50 fine on people who wear their pants so low that their underwear is visible in 'a lewd or indecent manner,' passed the state House on Tuesday but was killed by a Senate committee two days later in a unanimous vote."
--From msnbc
"incestuous amplification n.
"The reinforcement of set beliefs among like-minded people, leading to miscalculations and errors in judgment."
--The WordSpy
"Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe and the biran fguiers it out aynawy!"
--e-mail from Merry
"Produce
As I walk down the Isle
I think all along
If an Orange could smile
Could it sing a song?
Would the song be quite Happy
or would it be Mellow
Would it be sad and Sappy
Or about orange Jello
If an orange could sing as loud as could be
would a lime join in with the harmony
would the squash stand up for all to see
And the cucumbers play us a symphony
Would the prices raise, If they sang today
Fruits that sing with voice just like mine
Would we be so careless to eat them you say?
We might, if they sang all the time."
--My friend Brad Senatore
Do you see why I love language so much?
"I crack a window. I feel the cool air clean my every pore/As I pour my poor heart out/To a radio song that's patient and willing to listen/ My volume drowns it out."
--Eve 6, "Open Road Song"
"It wasn’t salad at all!! In fact, all it contained was wilted leaves with plain vinegar!! Puke! Bluah! So there I sat practically on the ground with a plate full of foul food while Smurf and BamaBeau tell me that the hippies don’t like others to waste food. "
--Wiggle, from her blog.
"HARARE, Zimbabwe - A prize-winning track athlete who competed in women's events was actually a man, a court in Zimbabwe has been told.
"Samukaliso Sithole, who competed in domestic and regional competitions, faced charges of crimen injuria, or psychological offense, in the Zimbabwean city of Bulawayo, the state-run Herald newspaper reported Wednesday. Prosecutors alleged Sithole offended the dignity and sexuality of a woman who befriended him, confided in him, and felt comfortable being naked around him, all the while believing him to be a woman, the newspaper said.
"Sithole was identified as a man to the complainant by an acquaintance, as he and a group of women were preparing to travel by train to a track meet in Bulawayo, the court heard Tuesday. Sithole tried to sprint away from the train station but was caught. Police then supervised a
medical examination.
"Sithole told the court he was born congenitally deformed. A tribal healer, known in the West as a witchdoctor, gave him 'female status,' but the spell didn't work properly because his family didn't pay the healer's full fee, Sithole said."
--From msnbc
"In the quiet moments... I have seen doctors who have spent all day in surgery, or seeing too many patients quietly find a conference room, lay their heads down upon their arms and cry. Because they couldn't help that person. Or perhaps because they've missed their sons soccer game again. Perhaps just because they're bone tired. Whatever the reason, I have seen some real dedication. And it has inspired me. Even in this world of malpractice, managed care and health insurance claims, I still see people that want to help people. Who drive themselves towards excellence because they see that pursuit as virtuous in and of itself. They really do want to help people. They want to expand themselves."
--Venerableryo
"Ducking into confession with a turkey in his arms, Brian said, 'Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I stole this turkey to feed my family. Would you take it and settle my guilt?' 'Certainly not,' said the Priest. 'As penance, you must return it to the one from whom you stole it.' I tried,' Brian sobbed, 'but he refused. Oh, Father, what should I do?' 'If what you say is true, then it is all right for you to keep it for your family.' Thanking the Priest, Brian hurried off. When confession was over, the Priest returned to his residence. When he walked into the kitchen, he found that someone had stolen his turkey. "
--Discovered on Bawb's website
"As I kept walking I came to several other grave sites that caught my attention. One, was a 14 year old boy, with a caption similar to this: Think of me, when there is snow in big cottonwood canyon, and the sun rests on the slopes of Rock Canyon. And know this, that I am free. Another, on two girls who shared the same gravestone. July 1982 - June 1983, her sister, August 1983 - August 1983. Imagine how those parents felt... The last, was a military grave. He was 20 when he died. A sargent in the 7th infantry, he died in World War II.
"As I saw these people, young men and women that could have been my friends, or people who gave their life defending the right I had to have friends. I wondered what I was doing with my life? Why was it so hard for me to give twenty minutes a day to the Lord? Is the time he is giving me really worth it? Shouldn't one of these have had that chance to live? Wouldn't they have done more with it? And the tears came, I'm not sure what I did to deserve it, but I need to make the most of what I've been given."
--Asmond, in his blog
"I've just found a new word! Before I actually ask you my question let me explain this word. It is PROVOCITY. It comes from that big smokestack thing near campus. Someone asked one day, 'What is Provocity?' Reading together the words 'Provo City' which as you know are emblazened on the smokestack (if it really is a smokestack). The word, which I and some others have since begun using means something like the phrase 'only in Provo' which we all hear at least occasionally. It can be used in this context: 'He had the provocity to propose after dating her for only two months.' And 'It is so provocious to have 3 dates in one Saturday.' Anyway, I love this new word."
--Someone named "Websters Newest Edition" on the 100 Hour Board
"If I'm expected to be a rule breaker, and treated as if I will disregard all requests no matter what I actually do, I might as well break the rules and reap the benefits. This is why I now want to know the reasons behind rules, and the attitudes of those who enforce them. Because I don't mind being the one who does right and has to do it alone, but if what's 'right' is a lie to get at a different result, I'd rather have the freedom of knowing what the real objective is."
--Uffish Thought
"Q: How do you make a cat go 'woof'?
"A: Soak it in gasoline and throw it on the fire."
--From Eleka Nahmen's Blog
"RICHMOND, Va. - Virginia lawmakers dropped their droopy-pants bill Thursday after the whole thing became just too embarrassing.The bill, which would have slapped a $50 fine on people who wear their pants so low that their underwear is visible in 'a lewd or indecent manner,' passed the state House on Tuesday but was killed by a Senate committee two days later in a unanimous vote."
--From msnbc
"incestuous amplification n.
"The reinforcement of set beliefs among like-minded people, leading to miscalculations and errors in judgment."
--The WordSpy
"Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe and the biran fguiers it out aynawy!"
--e-mail from Merry
"Produce
As I walk down the Isle
I think all along
If an Orange could smile
Could it sing a song?
Would the song be quite Happy
or would it be Mellow
Would it be sad and Sappy
Or about orange Jello
If an orange could sing as loud as could be
would a lime join in with the harmony
would the squash stand up for all to see
And the cucumbers play us a symphony
Would the prices raise, If they sang today
Fruits that sing with voice just like mine
Would we be so careless to eat them you say?
We might, if they sang all the time."
--My friend Brad Senatore
Do you see why I love language so much?
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Stone Moon Fro
When I was a boy at scout camp, my friend Don and I came across a cassette tape in the woods. When we played it and listened to it, we found that it was an odd amalgam of Oasis, some ghetto rap, classical music, and what we later learned was a Cheech & Chong album. It seems the tape had been recorded over so many times that all the sounds were coming through at once. We would sit there in a trance and listen to it. It seriously would keep our brains so busy trying to process the different noises and pitches and rhythms that we would go into a stupor. It was fascinating to listen as the different arcs of music came into the foreground and then faded back. We called it Stone Moon Fro.
Sadly, it was lost shortly after camp. It's been years now, and we still pine for it.
Well, until this week, that is. My best friend Brad reproduced it for me for my birthday. It's amazing. He made a very professional-looking cd with a case and everything. It's the most creative and thoughtful gift I've ever received. He even had to buy the Cheech & Chong cd. It has some of my favorite Oasis and Bone Thugs songs, too. It sounds clearer than ever, and it's really great. I love to be able to listen to MoMurda, Wonderwall, The Nutcracker, and Bassetball Jones all at the exact same moment!
I popped it in Sunday evening around six. The next thing I knew, it was 9:00 Monday morning, and I was lying amid an entire box-worth of Twinkie wrappers on a bare mattress, still in my church clothes.
Man, that is some good music. I think I might get another hit of that tonight. Thanks, Brad.
Sadly, it was lost shortly after camp. It's been years now, and we still pine for it.
Well, until this week, that is. My best friend Brad reproduced it for me for my birthday. It's amazing. He made a very professional-looking cd with a case and everything. It's the most creative and thoughtful gift I've ever received. He even had to buy the Cheech & Chong cd. It has some of my favorite Oasis and Bone Thugs songs, too. It sounds clearer than ever, and it's really great. I love to be able to listen to MoMurda, Wonderwall, The Nutcracker, and Bassetball Jones all at the exact same moment!
I popped it in Sunday evening around six. The next thing I knew, it was 9:00 Monday morning, and I was lying amid an entire box-worth of Twinkie wrappers on a bare mattress, still in my church clothes.
Man, that is some good music. I think I might get another hit of that tonight. Thanks, Brad.
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