Cosmo apparently does NOT swing that way

It looks like Cosmo is no longer one of the homosexual students on campus. Wikipedia has been updated. While I'm glad that we're no longer being misrepresented, I'm going to miss that old entry a little bit. It was hilarious.

Teenagers are Ugly

I was recently on vacation on the East Coast, and as we were driving I saw a car with their window rolled down, and a kid who looked to be about 14. Do I actually have to say that he was not an attractive-looking person? It's common among all species, but for your enjoyment, just take a moment and smile to yourself that you are not still in that awkward stage. If you still want to see more, go here, here, here, and most especially here. If you are still in that awkward stage then you have my condolences.

Things I Secretly Wish I Had

So, in general I try to be a decent person. I think I generally do okay at it. But there's this side of me that likes to do things just to shock/annoy/offend the sensibilities of/tick off/bother and otherwise pester my fellow human beings. It's not that I don't like you, it just that you're fun to mess with. So, here are a few things that I kind-of wish that I owned, but would (likely) never be able to use because if I did, TW wouldn't go out in public with me:

T-Shirt

A slightly ironic shirt, an inside joke about something you read on the Internet, and a superhero reference all rolled into one. Unfortunately the slight sacrilege is a bit of a turn off. :^(

Car Thingy

I'll admit it. Even though I often tend to be conservative in my political views, I think it's funny when the wing-nuts on the right (or the left for that matter) get ticked off, and as far as the evolution vs. creation debate goes, I think people who refuse to look at the evidence that science gives because they think it contradicts the bible must live in a very small world. The inability to hold two ideas in your mind that seem contradictory and accept that they could both be true if you had all the information is evidence of an underdeveloped psyche.

Book

Actually you can scroll down and choose from several of these books that TW wouldn't be thrilled with. Of the three things here, one of these books is the thing that I am most likely to actually get. Just wait, we're having a girl right now, but when we have a little boy, I may have to get some of the ones about explosions or things like that.

Google Chrome

So, I was pretty happy when Mozilla Firefox first came out, because it meant that I could stop using Internet Explorer. I feel like Microsoft is really behind as far as innovation is concerned. They're just cautious about what they do. Whenever they do make big changes to the format of their stuff, it's usually because some other company has come out with a better product that they rip off (i.e. Windows Vista, the current iteration of IE, etc.).

Anyway, I've been a fan of Firefox since I started using it, but my brother-in-law is more of computer guy than I am and he said that I should try Google Chrome. I was a little skeptical at first, since I really like Firefox, but he said "it's like it has all the features that you didn't realize that you wanted, and it's faster than Firefox." I figured that it was worth a try, since I can't think of anything that Google has done that wasn't high quality.

Today was the first day I tried it, and I can say that it has my seal of approval. It's got a really nice, clean interface. You can use one bar for both searching and browsing, if something running on one tab and it crashes, it won't kill the whole program, and you can drag tabs into their own separate windows. In short, it's just better. Get it. Install it. Enjoy it. You won't be sorry.

No Feeling Feels as Good as Feeling Smugly Superior

The other day at work (I work at a radio station), a great thing happened. Marcus Smith pronounced a word incorrectly. And I caught it. If you don't know who Marcus Smith is, go here and listen to a few episodes. You'll see what I mean. Marcus is really a nice guy, but when someone is really smart it's always fun to catch them. I was tempted to write a fake snooty letter to the station. I used to answer e-mails that came to the station, so I think that I could probably get the tone down pretty well. Here's how it would go.

To: Mr. Marcus Smith

From: Ms. Ima Prick

Re: Gross error on your show

Dear Mr. Smith,

I was distressed the other day as I was listening to your show. Usually I find your commentary to be if not insightful, at least thought provoking. On this particular day though, you made an almost inexcusable error in the pronunciation of the word "chimeric." While your misplacement of the accent of the word (on the first syllable instead of the second syllable) might be excusable due to the word's Greek origin, and the frequent accentation of the antepenultimate syllable in Greek, your pronunciation of the word using an "sh" sound instead of a "k" is incomprehensible. In an English approximation of Greek, a "ch" should never make an "sh" sound. In the future please be more careful about your pronunciation as poor pronunciation can at best make you harder to understand and at worst be offensive to the more sensitive portion of your listeners.

Humbly,

Ms. Ima Prick

You know, it's sad how close that letter actually comes to sounding like something we might get. Anyway, I'd never send it since Marcus really is such a nice guy, but like I said, it's nice to feel smugly superior sometimes, if only for a minute.

Pioneer Day

Well, it's that time of year where Utahns get a day off and the rest of the country has to work. That's right, it's Pioneer Day. I'm actually on vacation in North Carolina right now, but I thought I'd get a little something down on the blog to celebrate. And so I present to you one of my ancestors: Jane Johnston Black.

She was a Mormon pioneer, a midwife, really short, and an all-around awesome lady. I'm pretty sure that she could beat me up, even though she was less than 5 feet tall. If you follow the link earlier and scroll down, you can find a little biography of her. If you don't want to read the whole thing, I'll just repost my favorite parts below. (On a side note, I'm not closely related to the people who run the site. I'm copying and pasting what they have because I have the same things in my family history records, but mine aren't digitized.)

"My husband being in Canada at the time, I went with the Saints to Montrose before crossing the Mississippi River. A posse of the mob rode up and surrounded our wagons and demanded we give up our fire arms. I had a pistol in my bosom and I drew it out and told them 'Here is my pistol, but I will use it before I give it up.' They did not take it from me but threatened to throw me in the river that night. Then we were ferried across the Mississippi River into Iowa and remained there a short time. I buried what arms I had in a quilt in a hole under the wagon wheel...

"We had nothing to sweeten anything with until the Lord sent honey dew, which we gathered from the bushes until we had all the sweets we wanted. I also boiled maple juice and got cakes of maple sugar. While preparing to leave Montrose, I was engaged in taking up the firearms I had buried under the wagon, when the mob came and asked me what I was doing. I told them the Saints were to have power to resurrect and that was what I was doing. 'Oh,' said one, 'she is crazy,' so I saved our arms..."

One more story which is also in my family record but which I lifted from this site so I didn't have to type it. This time it's written as told to one of one of Jane Black's granddaughters by one of her daughters.

"One morning Grandmother was cooking breakfast on the coals in the fireplace - stoves were not fashionable in Dixie [Utah] in those days. This was probably two or three days before Edward was born. When a large Indian, his face covered with paint, stepped into the little cabin and asked Grandmother for something she did not have, and so informed him, he grunted and walked over to the frying pan of meat and hacked, then bit into it. Grandmother had a hardwood poker standing by the fireplace, sharpened at one end for use in lifting the vessels off the coals. She grabbed that poker and broke it in two across his head. He went down on all fours and scrambled on his hands and knees until he got to the door. He went out head first; she gave him a swift kick in the rear which landed him on his head and face. He finally got to his feet and ran. She ran after him, punching him in the ribs with the sharp end of that stick and he was screaming for help. Mother got to the door and saw the race. He finally got away and grandmother was standing in the road shouting, "You black Devil! If you ever come to my house again, you will get something worse than that!" Grandfather met the Indian a few days later, his head all bandaged up, and the Indian congratulated him on having such a brave squaw."

Puerto Rico: The Game

Lots of people like to play board (or card) games. I am one of those people. Now I should qualify that. Games of the board and card variety come in three types: speed, strategy, and luck. Admittedly, many games use at least some amount of all of those, but you can generally say a game is mainly one or another of those three. TW likes speed games, since she tends to kill me. (Never play SET with TW). I like strategy games, because I like to out-think/out-maneuver an opponent. If you are at all like me, then I have a game for you: Puerto Rico.

I will warn you. Puerto Rico has a lot of rules and takes a little while to learn, but once you get it, you will find that it is one of the most balanced, interesting, strategically dense, and fun games you will ever play. The basic idea is that the players are all plantation owners who are trying to settle Puerto Rico. (It's a little like Settlers of Catan, and I believe it's by the same company so that makes sense). You take turns building, producing goods, shipping them to England, selling them, or getting more settlers (a side note, the "settlers" are little brown chips that come to Puerto Rico on a special ship. Essentially they're slaves, but we're being politically correct, which is probably a good thing in this case, so they're settlers). It's really a fantastic game, so if you're looking for a new game to keep you interested, check it out.

Nationally, Republicans are a Joke

I'm a bit of a news junkie, so I've been following the politcal scene somewhat closely, and I have to vent about something that bothers me with Republicans right now. Flip-flopping. When Bush and the Republicans were in power, they spent money like drunken sailors. The national debt inflated higher than it's ever been, the size and invasiveness of the government increased to unprecedented levels, and yet they continued to slash taxes to keep people complacent. Now that they've been given a good drubbing in the last election, suddenly they're all reformed and talking about how Obama is spending too much money and how raising taxes is going to kill the economy.

First it was with the stimulus bill. After all the years of deficit spending that Bush did, you'd think that they'd be fine with more of the same thing, especially since it makes sense to do it during a recession. Instead they whined and dug in their heels and acted like children. They gutted the bill and now there's concern that it won't be large enough. If the stimulus package doesn't work as intended, don't blame Obama, blame the Republicans in congress.

Now the new fun thing to complain about is health care reform. It's hard to deny that we need a serious overhaul of the health care system, but many Republicans are again making it difficult to get things done. Admittedly, the Democrats' plan isn't perfect, and I'm not saying that we should let the Dems have free reign over policy, especially with Nancy Pelosi pushing an agenda that leans extremely far to the left, but I'd much rather see some unity on a plan that's not perfect, than see puerile Republican congressmen feeding America these lies that they're concerned about spending too much money under a guise of being "loyal opposition."

In short, "Tax and Spend" Democrats are better than "Cut and Spend" Republicans.

I Have a Dream

I mentioned in an earlier post a thing called "auto tune the news." In my opinion it's a fascinating mixture of fun and playfulness with legitimate satire, and musically there are actually some really good moments. The artists who produce those short videos (the Gregory Brothers) also produced an interesting tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. They auto tune his famous "I have a dream" speech and produce a sort of postmodern anthem. Whether or not you like it, I think it's incredibly relevant given events in the last few years, as well as the current political climate. Should this replace the original speech? Obviously not. Does the original speech even need help to reach people today? I doubt it. It's incredibly powerful on its own. But does this take on it present an enjoyable and compelling tribute to the man? Absolutely.

Cosmo is Gay?

As I have mentioned before, I go to BYU, and our beloved mascot is Cosmo the Cougar. For some reason I searched him on wikipedia the other day, and I came across this line:

"Cosmo is usually one of the homosexual students on campus..."

I have no idea if it's true or not, but I'm not inclined to believe it. Wikipedia, I love you, but sometimes you make me wonder how much I should trust you.

Working Out

I like to joke that I'm fat. I'm not really, but I do have slightly more of a gut than I'd like. I also have a long history of back problems, so TW ("The Wife") and I have started working out. I'm really bad at it. I designed a fairly simple/moderately effective program for myself. Its main advantage is that it's easy to follow, you don't kill yourself, and you don't spend forever at the gym.

There are ten exercises/weight machines/muscle groups that I think are important. If you do some exercises with these then you've pretty much got a total body workout that most people would be happy with (assuming you're not big into sports or physical fitness). This is basically a program for beginners, but it works pretty well. Here's the ten, in no particular order:

1. Chest (bench press, flys)
2. Upper Back (rowing, reverse flys or whatever)
3. Abs (crunches, resistance crunches)
4. Lower Back (any of those exercises where your body sticks out at an angle and you bend up and down at the waist...I don't remember what they're called)
5. Biceps (curls)
6. Triceps (Tricep press, or some variation on that)
7. All around legs (squats, leg press)
8. Quads (That one where you sit with your knees bent and put weight on them and straighten your legs)
9. Hamstrings (That one that's the opposite of the quad exercise)
10. Shoulders (Most any thing where you lift weights above your head, or even up to your neck or so)
Bonus: Lats (Any pull-up type motion)

Now here's how I actually do things. I go to the gym 3 times a week and choose 7 of the exercises. Then I do 3 sets of 8-12 (basically until failure, except on abs and back exercises to prevent injury). If you're careful on how you do the exercises, you can get all of them in twice a week, and if you want you can throw in a few extra exercises if you're feeling good. On off days, I just do yoga or pilates (they both help my back). Other than that, just make sure and do 15 minutes of cardio a day and you'll be on your way. Maybe not on your way to underwear-model fitness, but at least on your way to general good health.

(P.S. Don't actually listen to anything I say unless you've talked to a doctor or someone who actually has a license to say things about health)

The New Addition

Well, TW ("The Wife") and I are expecting right now, and yesterday was the big appointment where we have a chance to find out the gender of the child. So not to keep anyone in suspense, it's a girl. We're not discussing names with other people right now, but we're really excited since that's what TW was hoping for. Huzzah!

Youtube

So, I attend BYU, and recently there was a huge change that happened: BYU unblocked Youtube from their servers, citing the educational content that could be accessed. For the last week, I've basically become a Youtube junkie as I try to catch up on all the things that I've missed. In case you've missed anything in the last several years, I have a few of my favorites from the last week:

Tranquilized bear and trampoline
Gay referee
Treadmill dance from ok go
George Lucas in Love
Matrix ping pong
Katana sword infomercial
Butterfly lovers dance
Best man trips
Look at that horse
The Nothing Box
Take on me "literal version"
Gay mount everest
Auto tune the news
Mentos and diet coke
Pet of the week
Grape stomp
Boom goes the dynamite
Maze prank
Brian Regan

I'm sure all of this has been very educational. That is all.

Good Day

Well, I've decided to start blogging. At this moment, no one knows about this, and therefore no one cares, but at some point I may have a readership (even if it is just my family), so I guess I'm supposed to write a "welcome" post, or a "here's me introducing myself" post. Well, this is it. And I don't really want to give you a big rundown of who I am and stuff, because that will come out as I blog. So rather that give you some cliche saying like "this is where I'm going to write all of my random musings" (doesn't the phrase "random musings" just seem like it's used too much? Props to whichever blogger used it first, but you've created monster), I'm just going to say that I'll write about what I'm thinking and feeling, and whatever else is going on in my life. Also, I like to put links in my blog that I think are funny but have only a tenuous connection to what I'm talking about.