UPDATE-CO!

I got me a job.... Yup. Its true. I'm back home again, and had to resort to manuel labor to finally find someone who would hire me, despite best efforts. I swear online applications are completely useless! but I did them anyways... And shoot, they take forever! I must have spent the better part of a week on 15 or so applications... and... youtube...

But that's all beside the point. I have a job doing some manufaturing up at a steel mill up in Commerce City. By job I mean, moving heavy metal things and trying my best not to die, so far with moderate success. We use what we refer to as an overhead crane (pictured above) to move huge pieces of metal above our heads. Its a more suited change of pace towards my naturally lazy-American-self. I have migrated from moving things by hand, to making machines do the work for me! Its no wonder that this group of non-English-speaking illegals strike me as more intellegent than those at the moving company. (*"Guys, I had a thought... What if... instead of carrying these... we use those giant crane things up there to do it for us?")

Speaking of laziness, if you are wondering if you can match or even exceed my laziness, first you must outperform these measures:

1) Are you so lazy, that you actually loose weight because the cupboards are too far away from the couch, or because Little Ceazer's doesn't deliver, and the store is over a block away? I lost 14 pounds last semester, and I promise you that it wasn't from diet or exercise. (Although it is partly my lack of any money whatsoever, and Taco Bell's refusal to barter tacos for used Text Books. What a bunch of hypocrites...)

2) Are you willing to brave sub-0 degree (in F) weather in a T-shirt because you don't want to run up a flight of stairs to get a jacket. (And that's not even to mention the things I've done to avoid getting shoes)

3) Have items within your vision been too far away to go get? I'm actually not making this up, I was watching TV the other day when a commercial came on advertising this new devise that combines your TV and internet so that, "...now you don't need to get up and walk all the way to your computer to check your Facebook..." I couldn't believe a device this is on the market. I mean really? All the way to the computer? What in your front room? Obviously, America has done something right to receive this great blessing from Heaven!

And final food for thought, Why in the new Captain America trailer... is the chick British. Not the actress, listen to the accent. Why, in the expanded universe, would a British chick be in a Captain America movie? Do I need to emphasize America more? I mean I'm lazy... but I don't want to even meet the guy who did that...

Now I'll leave you with a fitting quote from one of my favorite movies, Fantastic Mr. Fox.

They say all foxes are slightly allergic to linoleum -- but it’s cool to the paw. Try it. They say my tail needs to be dry-cleaned twice a month -- but it’s now fullydetachable. See? They say our tree may never grow back -- but, one day, something will. Yes, these Crackles are made out of synthetic goose, and these Giblets come from artificial squab, and even these apples look fake -- but at least they've got stars on them. I guess my point is -- we'll eat tonight, and we'll eat together, and even in this not particularly flattering light, you are without a doubt, the five-and-a-half most wonderful wild animals I’ve ever met in my life. So let’s raise our boxes to our survival."

Merry Christmas

Happy Christmas to you in Britain.
Feliz Navidad if you hablas espanol.
Frohe Weihnachten - German
Gezuar Krishtlindjet - Albanian
Fete Nwel - Hatain Creole (For Jake)
Bon Nadal - Catalan
Vesale Vanoce - Dutch
Selamat Hari Krismas - Malay

And of course Merry Christmas to all of you in North America that I like!

We gave him an Asian drink

I am here to save nick from over exerting himself and talking too much. I am here. Nick informs me what I write is HIT OR MISS! Wtf. I HAVE A MILLION HITS. Everybody loves me. Okay now that that is cleared up. I have an issue. Nick also said that my best post was the bicycle bob one… for any of you less than perfect fans ill have you know that was A YEAR AGO. That means I’ve had a year of dead… BUT Bicycle Bob was still good so in celebration of Bicycle Bob! Today I will tell you about Bums. Between five and six hundred thousand people are considered homeless at any given time in America. 60% of those are single men. So is a bum just someone who is homeless? No… that would be very stereotypical and would probably offend my friends.

ONE TIME. Me and my friends… (these friends were a few fries short of a happy meal if you know what I mean) threw a TV over an overpass into this tunnel that ran along side a river. Two of my friends were down below and when I yelled can we drop it the river was so loud that I didn’t hear them yell NO DON’T DROP IT. So we dropped it. And we started to run down to see. We thought it might have magic glitter coming out of it. But then my two friends are running back up like no no run run and this crazy guy was chasing them with a piece of the TV. Jk. They were yelling no no theres someone down there. We thought we were in trouble so we peeled out in our pre planned get away car. We went back the next day to clean up the TV and saw that someone was living under the bridge. SO always check for Bums before tossing your TV. They live under bridges.

ANOTHER TIME. We found this very talkative bum who sold us a packet of jokes for like 5 bucks. Jk I wasn’t there but my friend was and the jokes were really funny. SO Bums are funny.

THIS TIME. We talked to this bum who was telling us how sick they were and we gave him an asian drink and said it would make him better. Im telling the truth to you but we might’ve been just kidding to the bum because we aren’t doctors and the drink had no english on it. SO Bums are trusting.

THIS TIME IN SALT LAKE. We stood in line for like an hour to get this bum a hot dog. SO bums are hungry. And I have a lot of time.

THE BEST TIMES. These previous times were in Utah. But the BEST TIMES were with as you know the famous Bicycle Bob in Latrobe, PA. You’ll have to see The Legend of Bicycle Bob post for that. SO Bums are more popular when they have bikes and nicknames and are one of the few in a town. Oh P town why don’t you give your bums bikes.

So Homeless people spend a lot of time in jail and in the hospital. I feel bad I see them on their good days. Who bails them out of jail? Who visits them in the hospital? Do they have bum friends? Because they are always alone and have issues so I don’t think so. This is depressing. Sorry maybe I’ll get my hit next time. I have to go save the world or something now. I recycle… and sometime I carry my groceries without bags… eh…oh… uh… Nothing will be enough.

The Facebook Project

Among many of my great fears of the internet, spanning from the creation of a Google army, to another website dedicated twilight roleplay, comes my fear of Facebook. Facebook is amazing. It has somehow surpassed everything else in the internet in consuming the average American's life. Now think about that, surpassed everything else! That blows me away!

So of late I have noticed some new disturbing trends on Facebook. That is its uncanny ability to pair two random statuses from people who have never met but happen to be sharing a similar thought, right next to each other on my news feed. It all started with this:

This may look familiar to many of you. Facebook can combine things now. Not that big of a deal right? Well here's one that might catch your scarcly impressed demeanor!These two people have never met each other, I can assure you. One being Sterling's sister, and the other from College. So how does Facebook do it? I'm not sure... I'm only concerned about when Facebook tries editing people's relationship statuses based on similar comments or similar pictures. Facebook : Matchmaker...

Continuing on from here are just fun statuses I've collected, some are funny because they were next to each other, others are ironic, and some are just funny. Enjoy:Glass half full?Irony...

This was in the middle of all the complaints about the naked scene in Harry Potter! As much as I miss Dallin... he was a dirtbag that night...

Does this deserve a "Go America?" You decide.

Clue

I was a weird kid in High school. I'm well aware of that fact, I just had no idea that it would pay off so well! Here's what I did. Scag and I were in the Library one day during lunch when we somehow decided to make a giant set of clues leading to a prize. We put the first clue somewhere where we knew people would find it and then proceeded to spread more clues throughout the library. We would put little pieces of paper saying, "Clue [whatever number] Next clue located [some clever riddle]" We hid them behind library Dewey Decimal signs, below the printer, and usually, on random pages of certain books. We had to put the last clue in a book that people are the least likely to read, so, for no real reason, we chose the book Our Town.

On the final clue, we wrote my phone number (I like to write my name and number on things too, Nicole...) on a small piece of paper and said that if they texted me I would give them a prize. We thought we were incredibly clever and cool. Little did I know that we actually WERE! Guess what I text received today?

"'Rubber wheel thorn winner'" - random (303) number
"Um... what?!" - My response
"I found a paper in a book that said I won... what did I win? Hahha"
"Sounds like you may have stumbled upon a free rubber wheel with a thorn in it! lucky..."
"Hahhhahaha!! Who is this?" (yes... there really were 3 'h's in a row...)
"nick. I meant to ask you the same thing... eventually"
"Did you read Our Town?"
"nope...?"
"That's the book I found it in. Do you go to Grandview?"
"HOLY CRAP! I totally forgot about that! You just made my day! You even texted me! and yes I went to Grandview"
"How long ago?"
"Was I at Grandview? I graduated in '09. Did you have to read our town for a class or just checked it out?"
"I just checked it out. Hahha. I'm a Junior this year."
... conversation becomes boring from here on.

Someone actually found it! Granted they skipped all the clues and just found the ending... but still! And on top of that they actually texted the number! For that, I forgive them for not ever spelling 'haha' right! Despite the great amount of frustration that created.

I forgot how much fun doing dumb stuff like that was! I sure didn't expect anyone to actually contact a random number on a piece of paper in a library book. But for the first day this year, I am not a cynical man! Humans rock (at least until tomorrow)!

Science Fiction

"You've been drinking my milk again, space scum... Draw your lightsaber."

"That seems like a relatively bad reason to kill each other."

"Well sure, but we have have lightsabers. If we do fight it will look and sound ridiculously awesome."

"Your words are wise... but your moves are slow!"

AND THEN THIS HAPPENS:

Why on Earth don't we have a freaking Lightsaber Club at BYU?! We have Medieval club! And people study like, mid-1200's German sword style and ridiculousness like that! So where is the Lightsaber club?! The goals would be so obvious: A. Learn how to fight with plastic lightsabers. 2 or B. Annoy the medieval club. 3. Find a way to travel back in time and fire whoever thought Jar Jar Binx was a good idea. So why hasn't anyone organized it yet?

Well you know what they say, if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself. Here's what I want: A Lightsaber training club that can practice right next to "The Quill and the Sword" medieval club! Here they are:

But that's only half the giant lawn in front of the Wilk, right? So here's what we need on the other half of the lawn:
And yes, the instructor does have to be both Asian and bald, or Yoda. I think the most entertainment will come when the other club is angry and say that we aren't taking martial arts seriously, which of course will be 100% true (sorry random martial artist out there who specializes in 1200's medieval German swordsmanship and also reads this blog... maybe).

The instructors will have to wear full Jedi costumes, which, conveniently, there is an entire website dedicated to sale of Star Wars costumes: http://www.buystarwarscostumes.com/ . Its real too! Only $38.99!!

This will have to wait til after the mission of course. So it falls into my PriorityQueue of other clubs in progress:

1) Hot Tub Club - meets in random apartments' Hot Tubs every Wednesday. Never mind, meets everyday.

2) Lightsaber Club - Discussed above.

3) The Club Club - A club designed for making ideas for clubs, but never actually doing it. Probably only one meeting... Then again... BYUSA has already been doing this for years...

4) Turtle Racing Club - BYU has a need of it.

5) The Flaming Mustache Club! - Its only lowered to #5 because the flaming mustache is gone, and we'd be on hiatus. It would have been an easy #1 last year. We could sacrifice facial hair to the mustache. Or all grow mustaches that we would then burn off. Oh wow... I just realized that I would be great at making a cult...

Anyways, who am I to make fun of sci-fi? I have a man-crush on Doctor Who right now. Not to mention, I actually think that Youtube video up there is super cool. If I ever make a movie with my Lightsaber Club I'm totally starting a fight with that script up top. But it will probably be a somewhat low quality film...

Now I leave you with a quote by some guys arguing behind LeBron James: "Why, in the expanded universe, would Luke fly something as archaic as a T-wing?!"

Oh, I just died in your arms D-Bone!

Oh yes. Its time to let the world view my incredibly patient and epically long attempt to annoy my roommate. I know I haven't lived with Daniel for over a year but nonetheless, this must never be forgotten! Now we all know what the 80's were: bad hair, bad fashion, horrible CD cover art, and not amazingly impressive music, but endlessly and undyingly (immortally? unstoppably? resurrectedably?) catchy music. One of the most amazingly catchy yet pretty awful song of this era is none other than Cutting Crew's "(I just) Died in Your Arms Tonight". (Music video is kinda disturbing... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dOwHzCHfgA . I didn't even want to post the video on my blog because I would be scared to come back... Its so tempting to click on! Look! Its... its blue!) So I must admit, I kinda like the song, I think its pretty catchy, so I started to play it a little bit. Then I decided to learn it on guitar. Then the idea hit me! I don't need to use this song to unfairly capture any more helpless girls hearts, I need to use it for good! (or perhaps... evil...)

(Happy Halloween... Not really, this is really the album cover... Happy 80's! But Happy Halloween anyway. I sorta missed it with my 3 week celebration of the day-that-car-drove-into-Grandview celebration)

D-bone quickly was exposed to its undyingly catchy-ness and began to sing it as I would play it on guitar. This is when it hit me, "I know a way to be annoying!" (Its probably bad that that's my number 1 goal but....) So it began. Since that day, every time Daniel and I have been together, that song has been playing. It's kinda a psychology experiment really: "How long until D-bone snaps and starts shooting people?" That's what I want to know. It took about two weeks of this before he said anything at all. That something was just like, 'wow this song is on a lot'... That was all I needed! All the emotion packed behind those monotone words told me what I wanted to hear, it had truly turned into his 'annoying, endlessly playing song'....

So I knew I had to be a bit sneakier... and, admittedly, the song was already getting on my, and LeBron James', nerves before D-bone's.... So I stopped playing the song directly. Instead I would search on YouTube for a clip that 'just so happened' to have that song as a background or in some remix. Or I would just play the song right before he left for class and pause it as soon as he left, then if he'd come back singing the song still, that would mean I had succeeded.

Daniel claims to never have noticed that I did this to him. There's probably an undying part of him that screams out for forgiveness after lying to me. I know it had to have driven him nuts! It drove the rest of us crazy after all!

But what's a good experiment without a multiple test subjects? Therefore, I have found myself a random collection of new roommates! Ones I did not know and, although they are all BYU students, Mormon, white, and male, I believe account for a random sampling of your normal everyday Americans and can be applied to anywhere in the USA. So my main test subject will be the kid who sleeps above me, who I will refer to as Skittles. Minor results may be collected from the Naysayer, Facial-hair, or anyone who lives in the Michael-Chamber. Game on!

I'm not sure how long this experiment will last but I'm not gonna stop until one of them either loses it, or says "Dakota" like the old charging horses in the Old West.... Because I'm a stallion.... Anyway I will have to check back in here when something awesome happens and account the story. So please don't tell any of my roommates you don't know about "Dakota"... If they read the blog, that's one thing, but.... still.... I'm looking forward to it... even though I already fear the power of that song...

My experiment on Skittles begins tomorrow. My own sanity is on the line, but it is the name of science! Has man ever embarked in so great a cause? Yes. But not often!