Skipping Has its Drawbacks

So I saw Ocean's 12 last week. When it was over, I had no idea what had happened. I didn't get the plot at all. Wiggle and the Man on the Oatmeal Box had to explain it all to me. I was disconcerted, mostly because I've never seen a movie without being able to catch the clues and understand the plot at least by the dénouement. There was key factor that I missed: the identity of the Night Fox. They told me it had been given away when he pointed at something. That explains a lot, considering my nonverbal learning disorder. Still, though, I shouldn't have been as confused as I was. I was starting to think maybe the movie was just poorly written and my friends were reading too much into it. Then I had a flashback.

7 hours earlier:

I was at work, and just in one of my unaccounted-for cheery moods. I was humming along with the Christmas music and skipping about the restaurant like some sort of nancy. The problem is that I skipped through a low archway and smashed the top of my head. OOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW. White flash! I was on the ground, blocking the arch with my over-long body. I stood up and felt the swelling on my head, and there was blood on my hand when I pulled it away. I had to run and keep serving my tables, though. Luckily my good mood wasn't at all affected by the concussion. However, my brain seems to have been. When the lump on my head goes away (it's been five days and there's still a scab and everything) I'll go see the movie again. Hopefully nothing permanent happened there. If so, oh, well. I'm still happy!

Toasteroven and L'afro

I have lots of friends. Boatloads of them. Sometimes, though, new people come around that I want to be REAL friends with. Not the kind where we hang out and junk, but the kind where if they needed something I'd want them to think of me. The kind that I can actually relate to and be understood by. I also think I'm good at quickly assessing people and seeing their goodness. And I see that in these two friends I've made recently. I don't know if they like me or if they ever will, but I have a respect for them both. Both are trying to do what's right, and that's really cool. TO is a guy, and I have lots of guy friends, but few that seem to understand the importance of life the way he does. Plus he has great taste in music and stuff. We might be roommates soon, and I think that would be good for me. We'll see what happens. And then there's L'afro. She's a girl. And I have lots of female friends, but not too many that I really think of as intellectually stimulating. L'afro seems like that type. Maybe I shouldn't get my hopes up, you know? On either of these cases. I just feel that a lot of people see me as just the guy who cheers people up, and never really try to learn what I'm about, and these are two people who are introspective, and maybe might be able to get me. They'll probably both read this and be like, "Dang, smurfs. You are obsessed. You hardly know us." But I feel like I do, or at least I want to. Yeah. So I'm nuts. Or at least lonely.

Gravy's Christmas present

I woke up late. I had only a few minutes to get to work. And my bladder was ready to splode!

I dashed down the stairs to the bathroom, but it was locked. Roy was showering. I decided to go in the back yard. No good; we don't have one. The front yard wouldn't do, either, since it was wide daylight. I had only one option. This story is not for the weak or faint of heart.

I ran to the kitchen and grabbed a cup. We're talking a pretty big 16 oz. or so tumbler here. I ran back to my bedroom. I was in a lot of pain. I started to fill the cup. Then I finished filling it! What to do!? I couldn't very well run back to the kitchen! Then I noticed an identical cup on Gravy's desk. I snatched it. Soon it was half-way full (or half empty?) and I was all the way not full. Roy was still taking his saccharine time in the shower, so I started getting ready for work.

I ran around like like a pickpocket at the Worlds' Fair, grabbing my apron, my shoes, my clothes, my nametag, my order book, my glasses.... Crap! My glasses were in the bathroom, where Roy was STILL showering! It was approaching that fatal minute when I would be late for work if I didn't leave right then, so I stepped out into the street blindly and ran to the restaurant.

After I'd been there for a few hours, I remembered those two lone cups of urine, sitting heavily upon Gravy's desk. Dum dum dum dum.

After work, I rushed home, and was delighted to find that he wasn't home yet. I looked in our room, and the cups were still sitting there on Gravy's desk. I grabbed them both, sneaked into the bathroom, and started to dump them into the toilet. It was only at that moment that I realized that something was amiss. The cups had both been marked in permanent marker with my name, the date, the word "urine," and a line to show how full they were. I guess Gravy HAD been home. Merry Christmas, buddy!

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.

Thankfulness

here are some things I'm thankful for:

Denny's and how open they are even at midnight on Thanksgiving.
My mom and the courage she showed in leaving my dad and allowing herself to find happiness anyway.
My testimony of the gospel.
That I'm not an Eskimo.
Rudy.
The banana chocolate cream pie that Wiggle made for me for my birthday.
My friends.
My bike.
My awesome job working for honest people.
That I live so close to the grocery store.
That God seems to have faith in me.
The Barenaked Ladies.
That I'm not addicted to video games like my loser 29-year-old roommates.
Whimsy.
Chrisy, and that she bought me dinner tonight, and that we had a good talk.
Bro. Celaya and the Fairfield Institute of religion.
The Hundred Hour Board.
The Redwoods.
My rock collection.
That my prayers are answered.
Little children.
That I've been waking early lately.
Brad, who's always there, though never here.
Mubba Jean, for inviting me to Thanksgiving Dinner.
BamaBeau, for the dark chocolate orange cheesecake. Mmmmm.
My books, and my passion for words.

Life is great.

Brain (and Hair) Wash

I had to use a girls' shower the other day, and I spent a good fifteen minutes just reading all the bottles in there. I don't understand what they are all for. I mean, I do, because they say on them. There is shampoo for dandruff, shampoo for horses, shampoo with vitamins, shampoo with juniper, heat-activated shampoo, orange-scented shampoo, shampoo with aloe, shampoo with conditioner, shampoo for permed or color-treated hair. There's fortifying conditioner, leave-in conditioner, conditioner for body, conditioner for control, conditioner that makes your scalp tingle (and hurts like the dickens if it gets in your eye). There is hand soap, face soap, non-soap, soap with special little snowflakes in it, raspberry scented soap, exfoliating soap, glitter soap, I-can't-believe-it's-not-soap, soap with cucumbers and melons. There is body wash, body scrub, apricot face scrub, facial cleanser, and facial cleanser with special acne-fighting agents, there are oils and oil-removers and bath beads and bath salts and bubble baths and lufas and shaving cremes and shaving gels and shavers themselves in multifarious colors.

The packages are interesting, too. There is a shampoo for every color of the rainbow. There are some in English and some in French and some that seem made up, with words like "ClAriTee" or "cleen". The bottles have a few curved lines that are supposed to represent naked women, as far as I can tell. The backs of the bottles have simplified pictures of bubbles that represent molecules and vitamins and list unpronounceable words like "methylisothiazolinone" and "hydantoin." There are tall bottles and square bottles and round bottles and stumpy bottles and bottles that hang down instead of stand up and there are tubes.

Shampoos have their own vernacular. They don't "clean," they "cleanse." They moisturize, revitalize, rejuvinate, add vigor and sheen and shine. They give a noun called "bounce." They are allowed to add anything that sounds like it was grown in a jungle: "With pineapple husks!" "With ginko!" "With treefrog venom!" they exlamatorily point out.

I hate them.

There is shampoo that says "For silky luxurious hair." I think I can understand what that one does. Then next to it is one that says, "For dry or damaged hair." Now I don't know which one to use. There is shampoo that says "Now with witch hazel!" Are they claiming that it's magic? Next we'll be seeing "Now with eye of newt!" But really, how dirty can three single girls get? I think I'm missing something.

War and Pizza

Was it Roy in the Kitchen with the knife? Was it Jayson in the conservatory with the fork? Perhaps Gravy in the den with the remote control? Whichever way you slice it, somebody ate the rest of my pizza!

Last night while I was hanging out with Uffish Thought and Phoenix, I ordered three large pizzas from Domino's. We really only needed maybe one and a half, but it was cheaper to buy them wholesale, and since I can't cook, I decided to buy the extras and just leave them in the fridge to last me a few days. Tonight, they were all gone. Well, actually, there were two slices of sausage left sitting on the counter, and they had apparently been there all day.

Now, normally I'm all about sharing what I have. However, in recent times I have become shriveled and envious of the cooking abilities of others (particularly my roommates). I don't even have an assigned cupboard or fridge-shelf, because I don't ever have any food here. It's become cheaper to buy food ready-to-eat at the store than to keep burning and ruining my groceries. I have a spot atop the fridge for some cereal and Doritos. That's really all, though. Every night I get home and there are three or four individual dinners being cooked on the stove. My roommates sit there and feast on the most sumptuous meals while I pathetically scrape Doritos dust off my fingertips with my teeth.

So tonight I am excited because I'm going to have a real meal (Well, cold pizza is a real meal to me. Oh, and it's cold because apparently our microwave broke yesterday. Hopefully that'll get fixed if and when the landlord comes to repair the toilet), but I get home to find the carrion that is three empty pizza boxes and some crusts and flies. Okay, maybe the flies were thrown in for dramatic measure. Anyway, you can imagine my despair.

And the worst part of it is, I go over to the referigerator, and I open it up, and all that's in there is my roommates' food. And that consists of ingredients, and not actual food. Like some kind of special flour, and raw meats, and vegetables that I don't think grow in the U.S. And the only bit of food I still have in the house is a single bottle of black horrid Noni Juice.

I don't know what I'm going to do, but I've considered just downing a whole little baggy of that special yellowish flour. Maybe that will cause in them the same kind of empty helpless longing that the missing pizza caused in me. First I need to make sure that stuff is really flour. I am suddenly reminded of yeast. I wonder what happens if a person eats that much yeast. Maybe this war will have to be a cold war.

Rugged or Overrated?

I know a guy who labels everything either "rugged" or "overrated." Rugged is good. Overrated is bad, but not necessarily overrated. So, in the spirit of James Evans, who recently did not get married, here's my own list of all things rugged and overrated complete with defenses for the ones that might need it.

Wedding receptions: overrated. I'll go to my own, if I have one. That's about it.
Cats (the animals): overrated. Scary, too.
Into the Woods: rugged! That play has so many great morals to it. It's better than some books of scripture.
Corn: rugged! Especially fresh off the stalk, and raw.
My psychology textbook: rugged! I read it for fun.
Calvin and Hobbes: rugged!
Remedial basketball: rugged! (close call, though, but I think I love it)
Capital I's: overrated. Most of the time i forget to do it and have to go back and fix it.
Grandpa Joe: overrated. That's a scary, crotchety old man who dispenses bad advice and a worse example.
Logan: rugged. Prettier than provo, but also freezing in the winter, I've heard.
The Marx Brothers: rugged!
Banjo Kazooie: rugged! I wish I lived in that game sometimes.
Bagpipes: overrated. What's with the constant buzzing noise? The instrumet clashes with itself.
Africa: overrated. Well, that was kinda arbitrary.
Stripes: rugged! But they have to be horizontal. I'm pretty skinny.
Conrad: rugged!
SunChips: overrated.
Saturday Night Live: Rugged! Probably nothing I do in this life could make my parents prouder than my being on that show.
Shawn James: rugged! If you know him, you already agree.
The word "scuttling": overrated. Kinda creeps me out, whatever it means.
Mulan: overrated. And offensive.

That's about it for today. Thanks, James, for the idea, and may your next attempt at marriage be much more rugged.

Noni Nomore

I got a new job! But allow me to tell you why I hated Tahitian Noni International.

First off, let me just say that the actual product was horrible. It tastes like what I imagine poop would taste like. It also gave me the runs, and a headache. I can't say for sure that there's causality on the runs and the headache, but I'm at least as certain as the people who claim it's cured theirs.

It was my job (this was in my very job description) to "increase consumerism." I hate consumerism. When I was down in Chile, they used a couple of rocks to prepare entire meals. When I'm in Walmart, I see electric garage door openers, bagel slicers, and colored glue sticks for your hot glue gun. Who needs this crap!? It's only there because people will buy it, and people only buy it because it's there, and the whole system is set up to get someone rich at the expense of others (the customers and the orphans that could benefit from their money if it were more frugally spent).

The corporation seemed a bit too infused with religion. The video we watched during orientation did everything but come out and say that the Nephites in French Polynesia discovered this medicinal plant and passed it down through the generations to us. We were also told on the first day that Pres. Hinckley drinks Noni juice. As though I care about that! One of the "founding principles" of the company is this: "Gratitude--We understand that the product we offer was made by God, not us. We gratefully approach the task of bringing this product to people everywhere." Does that creep out anyone else?

My final complaint has to do with the clients. Tahitian Noni Juice is allegedly marketed with a strategy that presents it as a healthful drink for the elite, along the same lines as day spas and oxygen bars. The horrid elixer is $42/bottle, after all. I suppose if the rich were the only ones buying this product, I would be okay with that. However, most of our calls were from trailer park residents and new immigrants who were trying to sell the juice (did I mention that it's pyramid marketing?). The sad thing is that we were getting calls from all these people who didn't have enough money to see a doctor, so they were calling in to buy the juice as some sort of substitute. Now, we were never allowed to make medical claims about the juice's properties, but Tahitian Noni International had set up a few websites that made medical claims without being officially affiliated with the company. The websites claimed that among other things, the juice could help with obesity, smoking, diabetes, cancer, memory loss, heart disease, migraines, rashes, burns, etc. Basically, the potion would target whichever cells were weakest in a person's body, and heal them. An anecdote was shared about how one woman was told by her doctor not to drink Noni Juice after a liver transplant, since it would strengthen the cells that fight off invaders and would make her reject the new liver. Eventually, I just couldn't do it any more. I couldn't bring myself to upsell the product to another poverty-stricken person.

I had a dream one night that I hated my job. The next morning it was true. After that long day at work, I never went back in again.

I resigned. I know I did because they called to tell me. Actually they told my roommate, "tell him that he's resigned his position here at TNI." And actually it was really me pretending to be my roommate because I didn't feel like talking to them. I still haven't delivered the message to myself that I quit.

Random Reviews

I found out today that Orson Scott Card reviews all sorts of things. I figured I would do something similar. Here goes:

My computer: Ok, it's not even mine. It's just a dumb extra one my roommate set up for me so I would help with the internet bills. The monitor shows everything in black or green only. it makes me really cynical. But then when I'm done, if I look at anything else, it's as though I'm seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. Score:2

Raintree Apartments: Okay, I've never lived there, but I've gotten all kinds of free meals there from the innocent little tenants. I also got tons of clothes out of this big bin in the laundry room. That's the best place to take advantage of in all of Provo. Score: 9

My name is Asher Lev: The language in this book is beautiful. The story is compelling and very relavent to life for a cursed humanities major at BYU. The ending shocked me. I'm not sure if I liked that it led me there. Score: 7.8

Ice cream: I love ice cream. I would probably trade my wife for her weight in ice cream. Good thing I don't have one. It's always been a dream of mine to drive a car that was filled up to my neck in ice cream. I hate that dream. Sometimes if I have too much, I get diarrhea. I guess I'm lactose intolerant, but not lactose close-minded. Score: 9

Isometric dot paper: I don't really understand 3d images. My brain works in words. Isometric dot paper helps me to be able to wrap my brain around space. I just can't stop looking at it. I want to have some right now, and to draw on it. Score: 8

Ballet: I don't get dance. It's an art form that's completely lost on me. It just looks so stupid. I mean, yeah, it's really hard and I can't do it, but that doesn't mean that I have to think it's cool. Some people can tell you the names of every gueat star ever to appear on Star Trek. I can't do that, but I never want to. I hate it. Plus, There's no words in ballet. How boring is that? Score: 0

Blogs: So much time is required for these things. I like being able to rant, but I think the Board is where I get most of that out. Score: 6 3/4