yo mama llama

I Have a Family Here on Earth

2012-02-05T23:44:00.004-07:00

My family is pretty much the best, and yes I am willing to fight you on that one. I've written before about how awesome my parents are, and I am definitely still firmly in the camp that they are the best a boy could ask for. Tonight as we were sitting around celebrating Heather and David's birthdays, I was given reason to pause and think about how great my family really is. I began thinking about this as Mom started guiding us through the four levels of conversation that she had recently learned about. As we progressed from chit-chat to gossip to the exchange of ideas and finally to level four, feelings, I realized that I really am not the best at verbally telling people, especially my family, how I feel about them. Frankly, I'm not great at verbal communication in general and tend to function better via the written word; I guess that's why I study rhetoric and composition and love to teach writing so much. Anyway, as I got to thinking about my family I really realized that I needed to tell my family more that I really do love them. Having previously written a post centered on my parents (follow the link above to arrive at said post), I decided I'd focus this one more on my siblings.

My siblings are great. As I was thinking about my family and how wonderful they are and how I don't let them know often enough how much I love them, I started reflecting on how my siblings are honestly some of my best friends. And when I say siblings I use the term to include their spouses as well, as they all have, without fail, chosen their spouses very well. I really look up to and and am appreciative of the wonderful examples they all are to me. In thinking about some of the good times we've had in the distant past, like playing "nobody can get up the stairs" while the parents weren't home, as well as more recent good times, such as the vacation we all took together this last summer to New York, I couldn't help but feel a very keen love for all of them.

While meditating on all of this, I happened to glance up at the wall and saw the painting of my sister Emily that passed away several years before I was born. Despite never having known her personally here upon the Earth, it was instilled in me from a young age that she is still very much a part of our family and that I have another sister that I just don't know yet. In thinking about Emily in conjunction with my other thoughts about how good of friends all of my siblings and I are, I couldn't help but get really excited at the prospect of having yet another best friend that I haven't met yet.

I sat there imagining the larks we'll all have when we're all together yet again, and in doing so was overcome with an overwhelming gratitude for a knowledge of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Plan of Salvation that makes possible hope for family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave. Knowing that the friendship and camaraderie that exists between me and my siblings will continue on after death with the added benefit of Emily's company almost allows for more joy than I can contain.

God be thanked for my wonderful siblings and God be thanked for good and faithful parents that live their religion and provide us with a concrete path to follow via the sterling examples of their lives. And, perhaps most of all, God be thanked for Jesus Christ who makes it all possible.

(p.s. I realize this photo is kinda blurry. If you click on it, it gets bigger and clearer.)

Progress Report and Real Brain Food

2012-01-31T15:33:00.006-07:00

Last night I was up rather late working on a progress report that I had to present to my "Rhetoric and the Poetics" class. As the clock hit 12 I decided I was hungry for cold cereal. Realizing that I had neither milk nor Honey Nut Cheerios, I decided to make a Smiths run.

My mind was obviously still preoccupied with the paper I was writing as opposed to the task of obtaining sustenance, because as I walked out of the store this is what I had in my hands:

1 gallon of milk
1/2 gallon of orange juice
4 avocados
2 sticks of deodorant
1 giant tube of pixi stix

That's right, no Honey Nut Cheerios. I don't know how or why I decided against my original intentions, but for some reason the cosmos had directed me otherwise.

I got home with my purchases, and before I had even made it back down to my room from the kitchen, I had swallowed 3 large mouthfuls of pixi stix, taken several swigs of orange juice and was working on an avocado. I got to my room, finished off my avocado, took another couple swigs of oj and got back to work on my paper. And that's the last I remember of last night.

This morning at around 8:30 I jerked awake as "Take Five" played loudly from my phone which doubles as my alarm clock. In jerking awake, pixi stix was strewn across my bedroom as I instinctively waved the tube clutched in my right hand like a magic wand. Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes to try and make sense of my surroundings, I found myself on the floor. In my immediate vicinity I saw my laptop, four empty avocado peel halves, a half-empty carton of orange juice and my space heater casting an eerie orange glow about the room. As I sleepily pieced together what I was doing there, I realized that I must have fallen asleep while writing my progress report. And I was immediately filled with panic.

I tapped the keyboard of my laptop impatiently waiting for it too to wake up. As the screen lit up I looked at my progress report and found that while I'd gotten quite a bit of it done, I'd fallen asleep before finishing it off. I didn't have much time to before class started, so I grabbed the oj, took several long draws and got back to work. I wrapped it up and made it to class nearly on time.

As class went on around me I read over my progress report to see if I was going to embarrass myself when I presented it to the class. In reading it I thought I had done a fairly good job, but the added pressure of having to present/read it to the class made me self-conscious that I'd totally misread the text I was responding to. After all, this paper was fueled on orange juice, avocados and flavored sugar. That sounded more like a recipe for a stomachache rather than sound scholarship.

Eventually the class turned to look at me as I handed out copies of my progress report and proceeded to read it aloud. It actually didn't sound too bad out loud, and the conversation that ensued after I had read it didn't seem to contradict anything I'd said. So far so good, but I still wasn't quite sure it was good enough. I still had to email it to Greg, my professor, and have him look over it.

Now Greg is notoriously thorough when he reviews our work. He's the thesis chair for one of my friends and she is currently very stressed about her thesis because the revisions that he is suggesting she do are going to require a lot more work than she had anticipated. She's easily one of the brighter students in the program, and working with Greg has caused her to say such things as "sometimes I wonder how I ever even got into graduate school...what the heck am I doing here?" and "I fear I am an idiot and everyone's been hiding it from me." Thankfully Greg allows and encourages (read that "requires") revisions of all work that isn't up to snuff, even short progress report essays. This is the second class I've taken from Greg while in graduate school, and this is the fifth progress report I've written for him. Never have I done a good enough job on the first try and have always had to revise. I say these things not to complain, revision always helps me learn more and sharpen the knowledge that I'm gaining, but rather to illustrate the fact that Greg is a very rigorous grader and that no matter how good my class presentation went, that was no indication of what Greg's personal response to my paper would be.

This afternoon as I woke up from my nap on the 4th floor of the JFSB (incidentally, I had been sleeping in the very same chair I was in when the incidents surrounding the famous "onyx eyes" poem occurred), I opened my laptop and saw in my inbox that Greg had returned my progress report. Assuming that such swift response meant revision, I opened the document and found after a few minor grammar and usage corrections the following words:

"Nicely done, Sam. A"

A. No revision necessary. I attribute it to the pixi stix, avocados and oj.

On Last Night's Game

2012-01-29T18:55:00.004-07:00

Last week when BYU lost to Loyola Marymount I drafted but didn't publish a blog post talking about my love of BYU sports and how I try to not get so wound up in the flow of athletic competition that my emotional well-being is determined by the outcome of the game I'm watching. It's something that I've been trying to get under control for a couple years now, and while I'm not perfectly capable of always keeping things in perspective and I do get frustrated occasionally, I'm doing a lot better. The Loyola Marymount game caused one of those thankfully rare occasions of frustration. For whatever reason I didn't post that little bit of writing. But last night as I watched St. Mary's dismantle my beloved Cougars I found myself frustrated anew, but for a very different reason.

I've been to a lot of BYU games in the now going on 6 years that I've been here. I've been there for some great triumphs and some heart-wrenching defeats. I've seen some bad officiating and bad sportsmanship on the part of the fans on several occasions (Wake Forest '09 comes immediately to mind), but I've never been quite so disgusted with fan behavior as I was last night.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all about a good boo every now and then, and I'm not above a little taunting of both opposing teams and referees. I booed last night at the first few perceived bad calls from the refs and found the chants of "U.S.A., U.S.A." every time St. Marys' Australian point guard came to the line rather funny. But as the game progressed the fans just got worse and worse. With every little thing the refs did everyone was booing and yelling fit to wake the dead. It wasn't so much the booing and yelling that bothered me, but rather the malice and hatred for the refs that did it. It seemed like people were more intent on vilifying the refs than they were on watching and enjoying the game. By focusing so single-mindedly on the officiating, the game was made much more difficult to enjoy for all involved I'm sure. Granted I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it much anyway considering the fact that BYU couldn't hit a 3 if their lives depended on it, but as the game came to a close with a rousing chant of "Worst Refs Ever," I felt sick and admittedly somewhat ashamed to be associated with the BYU student body. I wasn't ashamed to be BYU fan, just ashamed to be a part of the disgusting display that was our student section last night.

Now I realize that I'm painting with overly broad strokes here and that not everyone was so riled up and angry, but fan bases are often referred to, in basketball, as the 6th man. Five men on the floor, the sixth a collective body in the stands. By that logic I'm really not being too dramatic or unfair to lump us all together in this way, myself included.

After a technical foul was called on the crowd and the end result was 5 points for the Gaels, I took a step back and consciously decided that the outcome of the game wasn't going to determine my outlook on life. By making that decision to try and emotionally detach myself from the game I was able to watch the game a little bit differently, and what I saw rather surprised me.

Yes, the refs were bad. Really bad. I'm not sure I'd call them the worst ever, but they were bad. That said, they were equally bad going both ways. They were equally inconsistent on what they did and didn't consider a foul, blind to traveling violations on both ends of the floor, and seemingly unable (or incapable) of figuring out who touched the ball last before it went out of bounds. But like I said, the refs made as many bad calls that went against St. Mary's as they did those aimed at BYU. So if the refs were equally bad at officiating on both ends of the court, why was everyone so angry?

I'll tell you why. Because BYU wasn't playing well. They looked hurried and out of sync the whole game. They couldn't hit a shot from outside if their eternal salvation was hanging in the balance, and all the while St. Mary's went about the business of winning the game. That aspect of the game was, admittedly, very frustrating. But rather than being frustrated with our team and coping as best we could, as a body of fans we took out our ire on the refs. The whole atmosphere in the Marriott Center was sickeningly negative. Even as the boys in blue made a push to make the game competitive the air of negativity wouldn't go away.

I've always loved college basketball, especially BYU basketball, for the emotional ride it puts you through. But usually, at least in Provo, it's clean, good-spirited fun that rides the wave of competition. Last night it was as if everyone's collective mothers, girl/boyfriends and dogs were being insulted with every tweet of the ref's whistle. I shudder to think what might have happened if BYU weren't a stone-cold sober university.

Frankly, I don't care how bad the officiating was. From where I'm standing, there's no call for that kind of behavior ever at a sporting contest. Ever.

All in all, it was a disillusioning night for Cougar basketball, and I hope it's never repeated.

Paddington

2012-01-01T23:33:00.007-07:00

This is Paddington. He's my teddy bear. Yes, he is named after the beloved children's books. If he looks a little bit ratty that's because he's 25 years old.

Whenever I go home to Bluffdale I sleep with Paddington. I got Paddington the Christmas after I was born and have slept with him ever since, with the obvious exception of being on a mission in Ecuador and living in Provo while going to school.

Over the past two weeks I've realized anew how wonderful it is to sleep with Paddington, and I'm a little bit worried that I'll have a hard time adjusting to sleeping without him when I go back to Provo. Kind of like how it took some adjusting when I went into the MTC. But there are greater tragedies and I'm sure I'll get on with life.

Some people might be ashamed to admit such things, but I'm not one of them. I'm proud of the fact that I sleep with my teddy bear. Maybe my doing so illustrates immaturity and juvenile behavior unfitting someone my age and station in life, but I disagree. I think that being able to accept one's true identity for what it is shows remarkable maturity, even if said identity includes sleeping with a teddy bear that you've had your whole life.

And if you disagree with me on that point, well then my dad can beat up your dad, so there.

Samuel James Dunn, Esq.'s Most Listened Albums from 2011

2011-12-30T00:19:00.009-07:00

I realized something this year. I listen to music a lot. Whether I'm driving down the road, sitting in my room doing homework, sitting on campus doing homework, sitting in my room or on campus pretending to do homework, working at Boostability leaving mildly spammy comments on strangers' blogs, going for bike rides on Eliza Stardust (my sky blue little girl bike), or just walking around the streets of Provo, I'm always listening to music of some sort. Having realized that music is such a big part of my life, even if more often than not it's little more than background noise while more important things are happening, I've decided that I'm going write up a list of Samuel James Dunn, Esq.'s most listened albums from 2011.

Now, there are a lot of music-dedicated blogs out there that will probably give you a lot better analysis of music than you'll find here. Such blogs include a lot of well-worded, grandiose music descriptions that I find rather pretentious and off-putting. For example, I once read Kristian Matsson's voice (he's the swede behind the band The Tallest Man On Earth) described as, "incredibly distinctive, projecting a wistful snarl that attentively sways along with hazy acoustical progressions." I don't really know what that means, but I do love the turn of phrase "wistful snarl." This will not be that kind of post. This will be more of a reflection of my year through the lens of the music I've listened to.

So if you're looking for music analysis, you'd do well to stop reading. If you don't care what music I've listened to over the past year, you'd do well to stop reading. If you think Norah Jones sounds like Macy Gray, as did one of my students this past semester, we probably can't be friends and you too would do well to stop reading. However, if after reading that Kristian Matsson has wistful snarl you imagined to yourself a love-sick coyote on the prairie gazing longingly at a waning gibbous moon, read on.

And so, in no particular order, the list:

Beirut - The Rip Tide

Favorite Tracks: Vagabond, Goshen

To be honest, I hadn't ever really gotten into Beirut's music until this album. But The Rip Tide spoke to me like a long lost friend. It was like I was playing with my friend Morgan from my Kindergarten class. I haven't seen Morgan since Kindergarten. In fact, my last memory of Morgan is the time he came over to play at my house, and after playing with Legos for a while, we decided to go explore the old dilapidated chicken coops. While climbing around in the chicken coops we found a can of red spray paint. Naturally we then proceeded to paint most everything in the coops including Uncle Brad's motorcycle license plate. After that afternoon I have no recollection of Morgan whatsoever. In fact, I'm not entirely sure his name was Morgan. Anyway, this album left me feeling like I had run into Morgan after all these years, and we had a nice long chat about good ol' times while sitting at a sidewalk cafe and sipping exotic juice.

Boston - Greatest Hits

Favorite Tracks: Don't Look Back, More Than A Feeling, Peace of Mind

When I wake up in the morning I often have a song stuck in my head that served as the soundtrack to my dreams the night before. For instance, when I woke up Christmas morning this year I had "Christmas in Killarney" by Bing Crosby in my head. I don't know why. The song that is most often in my head in the morning is "King of Pain" by The Police. (what does that mean?) But coming in a close second is "More Than A Feeling" by Boston. As such, I probably listen to Boston's Greatest Hits while getting ready in the morning more than any other album of music. I now associate "More Than A Feeling" with the pain of getting up in the morning, "Peace of Mind" with the smell of Old Spice Showtime shower gel, and "Don't Look Back" with driving to school. On an unrelated note, I associate "Foreplay/Long Time" with Nick Homer...and I wish I knew why that was.

Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

Favorite Tracks - Helplessness Blues, Montezuma, Blue Spotted Tail

In May the whole family went for a trip to western New York to see my brother Dr. David Dunn graduate with his PhD in Pathology from the University of Rochester. We stayed in a lovely little place in Palmyra, NY across from the Sacred Grove. One morning I woke up before nearly everyone else (I don't think it's possible to get up before Mom and Dad) and decided that I would go for a walk. So I grabbed a jacket, my ipod and my camera and set off. The music of Helplessness Blues accompanied me on my walk and I honestly couldn't have asked for a better soundtrack. Walking in damp tennis shoes past endlessly green fields bathed in misty early morning light was, for me, one of the many highlights of the trip.

The Tallest Man On Earth - The Wild Hunt

Favorite Tracks: King of Spain, Troubles Will Be Gone

Yes, Mr. WistfulRaspyness himself. Though I had to endure the derisive comments of one Chad Nielsen as I listened to this album, this was one of my favorite discoveries of 2011. Yes, it came out in 2010, but I didn't come to it until January of this year. One of my proudest moments of the year was converting Smed "Smed" Smedley to the song "King of Spain." This album will forever be the soundtrack to getting up at 5:30 in the morning and walking to the MOA in the freezing cold while wearing Maggie's old blue and red coat over my pajamas. In April I sadly left the MOA after three years of securing it from all potential malefactors. While it was hard to leave working there, I shan't miss the biting cold of those early mornings that came with it. Without the Tallest Man on Earth to accompany me, I'm sure I'd not have been up to it.

Shaun Davey - Waking Ned Devine Soundtrack

Favorite Tracks: All of the them, seriously. But if I had to choose I suppose Let the Draw Begin and Michael's Ride and Lux Eterna, My Eternal Friend and The Tullymore Polka/ The Witch, The Fiddle and The Phonebox and of course The Parting Glass.

Waking Ned Devine very well may be my favorite movie of all time. Even if I'd never seen the movie, I'm fairly certain that the soundtrack would be one of my favorite albums of music of all time. The music embodies all that I imagine Ireland to be. I listened to this soundtrack an awful lot this summer while I was working at Boostability because it offered me some semblance of an escape from sitting at a desk doing search engine optimization. As I followed Carolyn Carter's adventures through Europe via her blog, I became increasingly dissatisfied with my life centered around an 8-5 desk job. This soundtrack, along with the view of the field next to our office from the window by my desk, made life more bearable.

Coldplay - X & Y

Favorite Tracks: Talk, Swallowed In the Sea, Till Kingdom Come

This is possibly my favorite Coldplay album. Possibly. I don't know for sure, but it could be. This album, along with any and all of Sigur Ros' music is what I listen to when I'm writing papers. Given that I often (more often than I'm perfectly comfortable with) end up writing all night long the night before papers are due, this album often gets equated with that feeling of stillness, peace and inspiration that only comes when you're sitting on the floor at 3:30 am. In that moment you know that there is a God and that yes, you are going to get your paper done. On top of being a late-night paper writing soundtrack, when I go down to the lake to throw rocks and think about life, the universe, and everything, this album, especially the song "Till Kingdom Come," gets quite a bit of play time.

Bon Iver - Bon Iver

Favorite Tracks: Again, all of them. This album, to me, it best listened-to as a complete work rather than single tracks. However, Perth, Towers and Beth/Rest would probably be my favorite stand-alones.

This album is the soundtrack of sitting on the porch on a summertime evening with a mild sweatyness hanging over my body as I either wait for Ben and Melinda to come over to play with me or as I lace up my Brooks to go for a run. Also, one morning in July I woke up at 4:30 am (without any alarm I'll have you know) and decided that as long as I was awake I might as well go for a hike. So I grabbed some water, a box of wheat thins and my ipod and made my way up rock canyon with the end goal of pride rock (squaw peak). Being surrounded by mountain trees, graying darkness and the lilting falsetto of Justin Vernon is an experience I would recommend to anyone.

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue

Favorite Tracks: So What, Flamenco Sketches

It seems like whenever I get sick I listen to this album. Maybe that's a little bit melodramatic, but there you go. This isn't my favorite jazz album by any means, but it seems to catch the mood of being sick on the couch really well. Also, I had to include at least one album of jazz because I had my students this last semester convinced that I was a jazz junkie that slapped on the black turtlenecks every weekend and hung out at jazz lounges. Now that I think about it, I kinda wish that was my life. Kinda. Whenever my students were doing rush writes or group work or anything of the sort I would put on some jazz and quiz them about the artists. None of them but one knew anything about jazz and for some reason I found their exasperated ignorance endlessly entertaining.

Honorable Mentions (and when I say honorable mention what I really mean is that I'm tired of doing this and just want to wrap things up.):

U2 - Joshua Tree
Diana Krall - Live in Paris
Norah Jones - Come Away With Me
Mumford and Sons - Sigh No More
The Temper Trap - Conditions
The Head and the Heart - The Head and the Heart
The Avett Brothers - I and Love and You
Amos Lee - Supply and Demand
Youth Lagoon - The Year of Hibernation
Dvorak - Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 95 - "From the New World"

There you go. Feliz Año.

Christmas Spirit

2011-12-29T23:48:00.001-07:00

Ghost of Christmas Present (muppet-style): "Have you ever noticed that everything seems wonderful at Christmas?"

Scrooge (Michael Caine-style): "Uh...In all honesty, Spirit, no. Perhaps I, I've never understood a 'Merry Christmas.'"

At this point the Ghost of Christmas Present, with the help of the other Muppets, goes on to sing one of my favorite Christmas songs. In fact, here's the video straight from the movie (via youtube):

What I'm trying to say with this post isn't a (direct) call for a return to Christianity in the celebration of Christmas, but rather an exploration of something that is taught in Christianity, as well as most other churches, and that the Beatles summed up nicely when they made clear to the world that "all you need is love." And that's why I love this song and video from the Muppets. They make it very clear that Christmas, when experienced to its fullest degree, is all about love.

To quote some of the lines from the song in the video above:

It's true, wherever you find love it feels like Christmas.
In all the places you find love it feels like Christmas.
It is the season of the heart, a special time of caring, the ways of love made clear.
It's all the ways that we show love that feel like Christmas.
Yes, when you do your best for love it feels like Christmas.
It's true, wherever you find love it feels like Christmas

When you line up all of those lyrics one after another it seems like the Muppets are hitting us over the head pretty hard with their message, but their delivery of it doesn't seem quite so heavy-handed. Maybe the member of the band in the street getting punched in the face and the snowman losing its head lend enough slapstick comedy charm to overcome the schmaltz. Then again, maybe it is schmaltzy and that's okay. Anyway, schmaltzy or no, the message bears repeating: Christmas is about love.

I'm not talking about romantic love, though I'm not not talking about it either. I'm talking about taking time out of your own self-interested labours to take a look at the race of men scurrying by and seeing what you can do to help someone out. Anytime we sacrifice something that we want to do or have in order to do something for someone else or give something to someone else, we're expressing our love for that person. That's what Christmas is all about.

That, in a nutshell, is why the commercial aspect of Christmas is so disheartening. It's not that it detracts from Jesus -- though, from my perspective, anything that detracts from Jesus is a concern -- it's that it distracts people from doing what Jesus taught: "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." The gospel of Christ is all about love. But Christianity doesn't own love and charity. Everyone, from all walks of life, can and should strive for charity towards those around us. Charity is the greatest of all. Charity is a word that we're familiar with at Christmas time, but how often do we really make an effort for true charity?

When people recount their happiest memories of Christmas it often has little to do with the presents they receive or the food and goodies they ate or any of that. Rather it has to do with their memories of the Christmases where they felt love the strongest. This is a big reason why Christmas cheer is so strongly tied to family togetherness. It's in the family that we often feel this love the strongest and with the greatest frequency. However, being in a close-knit family isn't the only path to feeling this love, and families don't have a monopoly on having merry Christmas. Just look at Scrooge. As Scrooge dedicated his life to true charity, he learned what Christmas was all about and became a happy man.

Scrooge had no close family that he could really call his own. No wife, no kids, no parents, no siblings. He did have a nephew who was keen to be close with Scrooge, but Scrooge wasn't interested and tried to cut any tie that might have existed there. That was the extent of it on the family end. As for friends, Scrooge had made every effort to ensure that he had none of those either. He was thoroughly unencumbered by the expectation of showing love for anyone. Scrooge had given himself every reason in the world to be self-interested and closed-up. And he was miserable because of it, though he didn't realize it. But through his associations with the various ghosts, he realized that he had to open himself up to loving and being loved by others if he was to truly understand what it meant to have a "Merry Christmas," and, more broadly, to be happy in general. And so he opened up. He went out and showed the world that he loved Bob Cratchit and his family, that he loved his nephew, that he loved the poor of the city and anyone else within his circle of influence. He went about the cause of true charity, and as Dickens recounted it, "He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world." He made true charity his goal and worked diligently towards it.

The same should be true of us. True charity is a gift that all can give, and that doesn't have to cost so much as a plug nickel. It just requires that we have the drive and the decency to "open [our] shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below [us] as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys." We ought to make it our quest in life.

As I've been writing this I've been thinking about something that I tried to ingrain in the minds of my freshmen writing students this past semester. That is the need to take your audience into account when you write. Being as I'm writing on a blog that is public to any and all who venture upon it, I suppose my audience is fairly broad. But as I look at the arguments for love and against egoistic, self-interest I realize my main audience is myself. I definitely need to be first in line to have true charity in my life.

There's a verse from the Muppets' song that I think is particularly germane to this discussion. In referring to the Christmas season they sing, "It is the season of the heart, a special time of caring, the ways of love made clear. It is the season of the spirit, the message, if we hear it, is make it last all year." Just as The Ghost of Christmas Present makes it clear that there is a special feeling about the Christmas season, living truly charitable lives is easier during Christmas time because it's a higher priority on people's minds. Let it be our goal to make true charity a goal we strive for year-round so that we can always enjoy the wonderful Christmas spirit.

Butter

2011-12-27T00:07:00.007-07:00

"Is there anything better than butter? Think it over, any time you taste something that's delicious beyond imagining and you say 'what's in this?' the answer is always going to be butter. The day there is a meteorite rushing toward Earth and we have thirty days to live, I am going to spend it eating butter. Here is my final word on the subject, you can never have too much butter."
- Julie Powell, Julie and Julia

So I just watched Julie and Julia with my parents and Mauri. I then promptly took some drugs for my cold (you know what they say; it's not the holidays unless you get sick) and came upstairs and got in bed. I quite possibly may fall asleep before actually finishing up this post. But I couldn't get that butter quote out of my head. So here I am, writing away at 12:30 in the am.

There were a lot of things I might have taken away from the film. For example, you need to stick to projects no matter how long or time-intensive they are because the sense of fulfillment you receive upon reaching a goal is indescribable. Or perhaps, no relationship is perfect or easy and neither party is really 100% to blame or 100% innocent in a dispute. Or even, I should probably try to cook more quality meals. These are all great takeaways, and I'm sure there are others as well, but that's not what I left the couch with. I left with a sense of pride and vindication that came encapsulated in the quote up above that started us off this evening.

I love butter. I will readily admit that I usually use margarine instead of real butter, but I refer to the two interchangeably. If you have a problem with that, ~~deal with it~~ my deepest apologies. The quote heretofore referred-to and written out is exactly how I feel about the subject with one slight amendment: I'm not going to wait for a meteorite before I start my butter consumption. I've been on the butter train for as long as I can remember. And I tell you what, no locomotive was ever so slick-down-the-track nor provided such delicious fare as the butter train.

As any of my roommates, or really anyone who has watched me eat spaghetti with butter can testify, when I say I love butter, I really mean it. On more than one occasion I have been told that my buttered noodles are gross, or disgusting. I've been told that I'm going to keel over and die whilst out running, and then, when they perform the autopsy, they will find butter lining not only the arteries in my heart but every vein and vessel in my body. I've found that nearly everyone is a critic and ascribes to the same butter-consumption school of thought whose credo seems to be, "I don't know how much butter is the correct amount, but I do know that Sam uses too much and I must therefore express this to him." I've always acknowledged that I do use a lot of butter, but that "I do what I want" and therefore don't care what anyone says about the subject. But now I have vindication. Julia Child loved butter and she was a famous cook. Julie Powell loved butter as well and a lot of people read her blog and book and saw the movie about her. They're famous so they're right. (that's how it works, right?) Since they're right, and since I agree with them, I too am right.

Not that it really matters. I would have continued my love affair with butter anyway, but now I'm justified in doing so.

But seriously, butter is awesome. I buy butter by the bucket and scoop it onto piles of steaming-hot rice with an ice cream scoop - drooling as I watch the yellow mass melt and run over every grain until it the whole meal glistens with a glorious sheen. Even in my runny-nosed, cough-riddled, sinus-headached state I can't help but smile and crave a heaping mound of mashed potatoes with a nice fat pat of butter (or two...or three) swimming around in the spoon-crafted crater in the middle. Or if not that, then perhaps a few snickerdoodles that have been prepared with liberal amounts of butter.

Butter is a rather unattractive word. Just say it to yourself out loud a few times. Here, I'll even type it out to give you an excuse so that you don't feel so silly talking to yourself.

butter. butter. butter. butter. butter. butter.

weird, right?

But the unattractiveness of the word can't detract from the glory of the substance itself. I'm reasonably certain of the fact that butter is served on most dishes in heaven.

So while it may lead to an untimely, not to mention somewhat slippery, demise, I'm okay with that. The consumption of butter is worth it. And both Julie and Julia agree with me. So there.

Happy Christmas

2011-12-24T14:13:00.003-07:00

"I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that- as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

~Charles Dickens

meh

2011-12-08T08:50:00.004-07:00

First all-nighter of this end-of-semester in the books.

I learned from Alexis, a classmate/colleague/friend of mine, that this genre of photo is called an "awk selfie." Now you know.

Last Minute Panic

2011-12-05T21:18:00.006-07:00

I really need to figure out a way to motivate myself to work harder on big research projects (I'm currently working on three term papers) ahead of time. It's not like I'm just now starting -- I've been doing research for several weeks now -- but it's like I don't actually get serious about bringing all my reading together and figuring out the nuts and bolts of my arguments until I'm facing the looming dread of oncoming deadlines.

Said dread makes me feel entirely inadequate as to the reading and researching I've been doing up 'til now, and so while I really have been at things for a while, I feel like I'm starting fresh. And that brings with it a fresh frustration. (and frankly a hint of terror)

As I "start fresh," the things I love about what I'm doing become mind-numbingly infuriating. Mind-numbing because of the sheer volume of reading and writing that I need to accomplish and infuriating because I'm not able to take the time to go through the process as pausedly and methodically as I'd like.

I really enjoy reading the books and articles that make up the bulk of my current research. Unfortunately, because said reading needs to be done fast, I can't fully enjoy it. The funny thing is, I actually get through the reading at a decent clip. However the hulking shadow of the end of semester deadline makes any pace, no matter how fast, feel like I'm slogging through mud. And it's not just any mud, mind you. It's the smelly, rank, river mud that not only cakes your legs up to your mid-thigh, but is so rancid that the smell causes your eyes to water and your nose hairs to curl up and fall out.

Once the reading is done and I'm fully aware of the academic conversation being had about my topic, there's the actual writing of the paper to deal with. Now, I want to make sure it's understood that I love writing, perhaps even more than I love reading. There are people that need to talk through their ideas and opinions before said ideas and opinions are fully formed and solidified; I'm not one of these people. For me that formation and solidification of my ideas happens through writing. I absolutely adore the writing process. Writing and revising and rewriting and re-revising are "like water for my soul when I get thirsty" (apologies to Matisyahu). This process allows me to really understand concretely what I think and what I want to say. And so it's frustrating when, like the reading, I can't take the time to go through the process as meticulously as I'd like. Instead, I feel so rushed to make a due date, that I can't really enjoy the process.

The worst part of it all is the fact that I've known the due dates since the beginning of the semester. I've known for weeks that if I wanted to avoid the frustration of having to race through sludge the week before finals I would have to get started early. But for some reason I didn't. I can't get myself to really move until I'm at the brink.

What I wouldn't give to be one of those people who is disciplined enough to get to work ahead of time by setting schedules and study plans and such. How nice that must be. *sigh*

But then I wonder how much of my genius is a result of my procrastination-induced, panic-driven writing and research? Maybe the pressure of the situation is requisite for me to come up with the true gems of original thought so highly prized by the world of academia. But if that's the case, is that kind of motivation sustainable? I'm afraid I know the answer to that one. (it's "no" if case you're wondering.) So either way I need to learn how to work on this flaw.

For now, I've just got to keep the end goal in sight. Once I've crossed the finish line and slain the dragon of my first semester in graduate school, I can slip into that blessed two week recuperation filled with blissful, holiday-induced torpor. That time can't come at all too soon.

On a side note, I'm getting to this point of panic-driven terror a full six days ahead of last year. Maybe I'm getting better after all.

Why Does Calvin and Hobbes So Aptly Describe My Life Sometimes?

2011-11-28T08:30:00.003-07:00

I don't really hate school. I actually really love it right now. I just woke up this morning loathe to face the weeks ahead of me.

Crepes

2011-11-05T12:30:00.006-06:00

This morning I woke up and I wanted crepes.

Now I've never been to Europe, and I don't speak French. So when I say I wanted crepes, what I mean is I wanted crapes, pronounced like "grapes" only with a "c." Not "c-phlegmnoise-ehps," "crapes." It's important that I make that distinction. Doubtlessly if some friend or family member of mine who had lived in/worked in/visited crepe-eating Europe were to try the crepes that I'm familiar with, they would laugh with derision, nonchalantly wipe their nose with a silk handkerchief and say, "Sam(my), those are not crepes. Real crepes _________(insert description of real crepes here)." Now that we've made that distinction, we can carry on.

So I got out of bed and was about to go upstairs and make crepes when I saw my basketball under my desk. Seeing that, I decided that I wanted to play basketball instead. So forgetting all about crepes, I pulled on some shorts and a long sleeve shirt, grabbed a stocking cap and my ball, and I headed to the basketball court down by the tracks.

I shot around for a little while, running constantly so as to stay warm. After about 45 minutes of hearing shot after shot after shot swish cleanly through the chain net, I went back home intent on showering and getting after my homework. As I was driving home listening to "What's Up" by 4 Non Blondes and wondering why the song wasn't more appropriately named "What's Going On," my stomach grumbled and I realized that I still wanted crepes. It was weird. Usually when I crave some food item, that craving lasts all of 15-20 minutes and I'm on to something else. But not this morning. The need for crepes had stuck around and had somehow achieved a previously unknown staying power. I took it as a sign that the universe really wanted me to have crepes for breakfast, so I gave in.

I got home and went down to my room to find my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. After searching for a little while I found it, and that's when it hit me: I haven't made crepes since I was a freshman here at BYU.

Flashback to '04 - '05.

Nearly every Saturday morning I would wake up and, having nothing to do, would bust out the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook that my mom had bought for me when I moved to school. I'd flip through it and find something awesome to make for breakfast. It was nothing super fancy, usually crepes or German pancakes or waffles or other fairly simple recipes. Occasionally I did get a little bit more adventurous, but I tended to stick close to the simple stuff. One time I remember I was trying a recipe that called for yeast and I had to call one of my sisters to ask where the yeast is in the store. I don't remember what it was I was cooking, so I'm guessing I blocked out whatever failure happened after I'd bought the yeast. What I mean to say with all this is that I was a cooking machine.

During that year I called my mom and sisters a lot asking them what various cooking terms meant and how to do things in the kitchen that I'd never done before, like cooking spaghetti squash. It was a great year.

Back to the present day.

I pulled my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook out from under a stack of VHS tapes and headed up to the kitchen. As I walked up the stairs thumbing through the cookbook, I saw grease stains on recipes of things that I hadn't tried to make since my freshman year. I ran across coffee cake and buttermilk biscuits and blondies. If stains are any indication of past experiments I'm led to believe that I may have even tried to make fudge at one point. Thinking back to those days I couldn't help but pine for nights and weekends when I didn't have homework or other pressing concerns that took up my time. And by "didn't have homework" I of course mean "didn't do homework." Well nothing wasn't stopping me today.

I found the page with the crepe recipe and realized how easy it really is, even without a crepe maker. So I turned on my Pandora Diana Krall (Christmas) station and set to it.

I won't bore you with details of mixing the ingredients and cooking the batter in a frying pan and all that jazz, but suffice it to say, when all was said and done, the crepes were delicious.

I'd have taken a picture of the crepes as proof of my morning's activities, but my ravishing hunger didn't allow for their prolonged existence. My apologies. Instead here's a stock photo of crepes that very nearly approximates my experience this morning.

Let Me Get What I Want

2011-11-02T20:02:00.004-06:00

There's this song by The Smiths called "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want" that I've always really liked. She and Him covered this song and I like their version of it as well. (I will admit I like most anything Zooey Deschanel does simply because it's her.)

This morning, when I was in the shower, the song from this scene (featured below) in Ferris Bueller's Day Off popped into my head. I didn't know this until I looked it up, but it turns out the band Dream Academy recorded an instrumental cover of "Please, Please, etc.," and that's the song in this video:

I'm not sure why, but I'm absolutely in love with this song, and it's been in my head all day. When I was meeting with my students and talking with them about their research papers I would occasionally start humming or whistling it without realizing it. (I doubt any of them were surprised.) When I went for my run I stepped and breathed to the beat of this song. When I wasn't meeting with my students or running, I probably watched this video 15 or 20 times. I don't know what it is, but I can't get over it.

So now I'm sitting in the library and all I want to do is go to a fine art museum (preferably in Chicago) and spend hours looking at world famous art. Maybe I'd spend a few extra minutes looking at the points in the little girl's mouth in Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

Unfortunately I can't. I can't even go to the MOA to admire the MOA's newest acquisition, Brian Kershisnik's Nativity. Instead I have to sit here in the library and write a paper.

But before I get to that, I'm probably going to watch this video a couple more times first.

How Does One Kill Fear?

2011-10-29T16:11:00.009-06:00

"I sit down religiously every morning. I sit down for eight hours and the sitting down is all. In the course of that working day I write three sentences which I erase before leaving the table in despair. Sometimes it takes all my resolution and power of self-control to refrain from butting my head against the wall. After such cries of despair I doze for hours still conscious that I am unable to write. Then I wake up, try again, and at last go to bed completely done up. In the morning I get up with that horror of the powerlessness...The ideas and words creep about my head and have to be caught and tortured into shape."

Now guess who said that?

No really guess.

Here I'll give you another clue worthy of Halloween:

"One evening coming in with a candle I was startled to hear him say a little tremulously, 'I am lying here in the dark waiting for death.' The light was within a foot of his eyes. I forced myself to murmur, 'Oh, nonsense!' and stood over him as if transfixed.

"Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror -- of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision -- he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:

"'The horror! The horror!'"

That's right. Joseph Conrad.

Conrad, the great British writer -- made greater in my mind by the fact that he didn't speak English fluently until he was in his twenties -- whose writing and language is so beautiful, so meticulously crafted and so magnificently descriptive, if not a bit thick (never try to speed-read Conrad), and who, with Kurtz's breathy cry, incited now over a century of debate about what exactly "the horror" is meant to signify, struggled with writing.

And he didn't just struggle with writing, but it frustrated him to the point he wanted to bash his head against a wall, he couldn't sleep for all the turmoil it caused him, and it was, at times, so frustrating that it was as enjoyable an experience as performing acts of torture. And yet from that torturous exercise comes such exquisite craft as this:

"Nothing easier than to say, Have no fear! Nothing more difficult. How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat? It is an enterprise you rush into while you dream, and are glad to make your escape with wet hair and every limb shaking. The bullet is not run, the blade not forged, the man not born; even the winged words of truth drop at your feet like lumps of lead. You require for such a desperate encounter an enchanted and poisoned shaft dipped in a lie too subtle to be found on earth. An enterprise for a dream, my masters!"

Incredible.

The point is this: knowledge of Conrad's pain is comforting; at least now I know I'm in good company.

The above-quoted words of Conrad come from here here and here respectively.

Kandinsky

2011-10-25T23:49:00.012-06:00

I've realized that most of my blog posts (seriously, is blog not the worst word ever?) tend to be very text heavy. So here's a picture. This hangs just over the foot of my bed and is usually the last thing I see before I go to sleep.

It's a print mounted on foam core of a tapestry done by the Modernist artist Wassily Kandinsky. Y me gusta.

I Wanna Rock

2011-10-25T19:37:00.007-06:00

A couple of weeks ago, as I was gathering my things at the end of my class that I teach, I noticed that one of my students was hanging back. I could tell he wanted to talk to me about something, but that he wanted his peers to not be around while he said what he had to say. Realizing this, I made an effort to drag out my own packing up process so as to ensure that he and I were alone after everyone else had left.

Once we were alone he came up to me and said, "Sam, can I ask you a question? It doesn't have anything to do with class or anything though."

Naturally I responded that of course, he could ask me anything.

He replied, "You want to be a professor someday right?"

I smiled and nodded affirmatively saying, "That's right."

He then asked, "What made you want to study English? I've never liked English before -- I hated my high school English classes -- but I've loved this class so far, and I've been thinking more and more that maybe I'd like to study English. So I thought I'd ask your advice."

He didn't have class to go to, so we sat down in a couple of desks and he told me how he came out of high school thinking he wanted to be a doctor but was never 100% sold on that idea. In short, he was thinking a lot about his future and wasn't coming up with much except for the fact that he loved my class. So I told him my story of how I came to study English and, more importantly, how I came to decide that I want to be a professor someday. (It's a great story, maybe I'll write here about it some time.) He asked me a few questions about the kinds of things English majors study and he asked what kinds of jobs are available for those with English degrees and so on.

Once I'd answered all his questions as well as I could he sat there quietly for a moment looking at his hands. Then he looked up and asked one more question: "Sam, what do you think I should do?"

I just smiled.

The first thing that popped into my head was Mr. Cox, my high school yearbook teacher, raising his fist into the air and yelling to our class, "WHAT DO YOU WANNA DO WITH YOUR LIFE?" before playing Twisted Sister's "I Wanna Rock" so loud that the school newspaper advisor from down the hall came into our classroom, gave Mr. Cox a withering glare and told us to turn it down.

The situation also kind of reminded me of that scene in Joe Vs. the Volcano where Joe asks Marshall the limo driver what kind of clothes to buy and Marshall says:

"Clothes make the man. I believe that. You say to me you want to go shopping, you want to buy clothes, but you don't know what kind. You leave that hanging in the air, like I'm going to fill in the blank, that to me is like asking me who you are, and I don't know who you are, I don't want to know. It's taken me my whole life to find out who I am, and I'm tired now, you hear what I'm saying? "

A part of me wanted to be that blunt with my student. I wanted to say that he had to figure out who he was and once he did that he could answer that question for himself and good luck, let me know how it goes. But I didn't. I just smiled and said, "that's the question, isn't it?"

I told him not to worry about it too much because everyone goes through these kinds of existential crises. Somehow we all seem to make it through them alright and, for the most part, tend to find some niche where we really do fit. Naturally I talked up the English program because he expressed interest in it, but I told him that ultimately he had to decide for himself what was right for him.

I knew I wasn't telling him anything he didn't already know, but sometimes we just have to have someone tell us the things that we already know before we actually believe them, right?

He nodded, grabbed his bag and thanked me for my time. As he was leaving he told me that my class is his favorite. I thanked him and probably blushed.

Aside from being flattered that mine was his favorite class and that he would turn to me for advice on what he should do with his life, this experience proved to be just what I needed. It was nice to have an opportunity to explain verbally why I'm doing what I'm doing and why I've chosen this path for my life. There have been times this semester when school has gotten me down and I've wondered if this really is what I want to do or if it really is what should be doing. Talking about it with my student reminded me that I need to "cast not away therefore [my] confidence" because this is where I am, in fact, supposed to be.

I Can Do Hard Things

2011-10-13T18:14:00.005-06:00

From reading that title you might be thinking to yourself, "oh crap, Sam's gonna go off on one of those stereotypical braggy blog posts." If those are your thoughts then you're right. I am. I usually refrain from doing this because I figure that the few people that actually read my blog are already aware of the fact that I'm awesome, so I don't need to further prove it to them. But in all seriouslyness, I find it hard to strike the right balance between talking about being awesome and the awesome things that happen to me without coming off as a braggart, so I usually just avoid it altogether. Today I'm making an exception.

If that didn't scare you off and you're still reading this, you might be thinking I'm going to talk about how I'm in graduate school now and how it's really hard and how I don't get enough sleep because of it. But that's not what I'm talking about. (Did you see how I did that? I said I wasn't going to talk about graduate school being hard, but by saying that I'm not talking about graduate school being hard, I talked about graduate school being hard. Two birds, one stone.)

Instead, today I'm talking about running. Running is awesome. Over the summer I did a decent job of going running fairly regularly. Not great by any means, but I was probably running 3-4 times a week. I wasn't training for anything and I rarely, if ever, ran more than five miles. Lately, though I've been bad. I'm running maybe once a week, if that often. And then, on the rare occasion that I do go for a run, I avoid running around here in East Provo where I live because it's too hilly and, to be honest, I'm not in good enough shape to tackle these hills.

It may seem like that's not really a big deal; I mean, who likes to run on hills anyway? Well, I do. It's true; I like to run on hills. Call me weird but I do. In fact, because I love hills, my favorite run in Provo involves one of the nastiest, beastiest hills I've ever run on. Unfortunately, like I said, I've been avoiding this part of town and its hills for the better part of two months.

Well today in my "Research Methods in Rhetoric and Composition" class I got into a discussion with one of my classmates about running shorts and how awesome they are. Our classmates didn't get why running around in short shorts could be awesome, and though we tried to explain it to them, we decided it's one of those things that you have to experience to really understand. Like the Holy Ghost. Anyway, just talking about running shorts got my heart racing and I wanted nothing more than to go running right then and there. I didn't. But needless to say, when class was out I went straight home, pulled on my running shorts and shoes and took off, determined that today would be an awesome run.

As I ran out the door I thought about how I've been avoiding the hills here in East Provo. For a moment I contemplated continuing in that vein and running down into hill-less Provo yet again. But for some reason though I didn't. Something in the air made me change my mind, and I decided I would see how well I did with the hills. Bear in mind, I'm in terrible shape right now. Fully aware of my shapelessness, my intention was to run just a part of my favorite run. I figured I'd run up the road that leads to the monster hill to the base of the beast where it starts to get steep. There's a road right there that heads down out of the hills, and I figured I'd turn there. That way I could hit a few of the hills along my favorite run, and then cut it short before potentially killing myself on the that Titan.

Well, I didn't get 1/4 mile into my run before my lungs felt like they were on fire. It was awful. Immediately I began adjusting my route in my mind to head down to flat Provo. I felt like if I continued with my previous plan, I might be able to run a mile tops. But for some reason I made no adjustments and just kept putting one foot in front of the other. As I ran up and down some fairly minor hills, my lungs started to feel a bit better which was encouraging, unfortunately as my lungs improved, my legs took a turn for the worse. I could feel my leg muscles straining harder yet getting weaker with each step I took. I hadn't realized how truly out of shape I was; I hadn't been this bad since I got back from my mission. As I approached the turnoff road at the foot of the beast I was glad because I didn't think my increasingly jellified legs were going to be able to take much more incline.

Getting nearer and nearer to the foot of that mother of all hills I kept thinking to myself, "This road is getting kind of steep; I must be getting close to the turnoff...any time now." But it never came. The earth had somehow swallowed the road which was going to be my saving grace; the road had vanished off the face of the planet. Immediately all kinds of things possible reasons for this travesty began popping into my head. Somehow some evil force, maybe aliens, or Satan, or the Taliban, or the Democratic Party, or...I don't know who, but somebody had deliberately taken this away from me. They knew I needed it, and decided they wanted to watch me suffer. That's when I realized these half-cocked conspiracy theories were the least of my worries. I was running straight for it--straight for the one thing I felt least capable of handling at that moment--straight for The Hill. (I hope you shuddered reading that; I shuddered writing it.)

My eyes widened and my pulse quickened. Okay my pulse was already pretty quick so I doubt it got any faster, but what I'm trying to say is I was nervous and intimidated. I can honestly say I was positive that there was no way I'd be able to run up that hill. I contemplated just turning around to go back and looking for that disappeared Amelia Earhart of the tree streets, but something was stopping me. In that moment of vacillating fear I realized Providence had probably swallowed that road for a reason. I was being given an opportunity to prove my mettle and prove my doubters (namely myself) wrong with regards to my ability. I realized that all too often, when faced with giant problems, I'm much too aware of and controlled by my weakness. Instead of facing the issues head on to see what I can make of it, more often than not I turn around and dodge off down the easier road.

So I steeled my nerves (I wish I could have steeled my legs; they seriously felt like jelly) and I just kept taking one step after another.

As I chugged rather slowly up the hill, the chorus to Army of Helaman playing on repeat in my head, my legs burned more than they had since I first started running back in high school. My lungs were actually doing okay, but as I came around the first switchback (yeah, the hill is so steep it has switchbacks) I thought my calves were going to jump off of my legs and collapse on the pavement in protest to what I was doing to them. Despite the pain I continued on, but the farther I got up the hill, the steeper it became. If before I started the climb I doubted that I'd be able to make it to the top without stopping or walking, now I doubted whether I'd be able to make to the top at all. I just wanted to lay myself down on the pavement and give my aching body a rest. But no, I decided that I was going to make it all the way up come hell or high water, so I kept running. As I came around the second switchback onto the home stretch, my lungs fired up again and though I was getting steadily closer, the top never seemed farther away. At that point I started talking aloud, encouraging and cheering myself on.

I grunted and groaned and pushed (I sound like I was in labor) and somehow, against all common sense and against what I'd before considered to be within my realm of possibility, I made it to the top of the hill. It was exhilarating. I don't know how I did it, but I did.

I was about to stop and fall over in a pile of sweaty limbs, when Coach Platis' voice rang in my head, "Run through the top of the hill. Just because you're at the top doesn't mean the race is over." It went against everything I wanted at that moment, but I knew she was right. I'd made it this far, how could I bear to just stop? I had just done something I didn't think I could possibly do just by making it to the top, but that wasn't enough; I hadn't arrived yet. So I kept running. My body was screaming at me, telling me it wanted to stop and walk for a bit, but I didn't. I just kept running. I ran a couple hundred yards beyond the crest of the hill and decided that I would be justified in turning around and heading back. So, without stopping, I turned around and began my descent.

As I was running back down that hulking Goliath of a hill, my legs felt even more weak and wobbly than they had before. I had made it up the hill, but now I began to honestly worry that gravity was going to literally bring me to my knees. Considering my proclivity for breaking limbs, I didn't think it prudent to fall. This wouldn't have been the first time I'd fallen down during a run, heck I've even fallen down during races...multiple times, but never had I fallen down from sheer exhaustion, and I wasn't about to start. Somehow I managed to keep myself together and I made it to the bottom of the hill without incident.

Arriving at the bottom, the thought popped into my head, "Good work Sam. You made it all the way up and back. Go ahead and take a little walk now; you deserve it." The prospect of walking was perhaps even more tempting at that moment than it had been when I was at the top of the hill. Not because I was exhausted, though I was that, but because I felt like I'd earned a walk and that walking could be acceptable. That may have been true, but I felt like it would cheapen everything I'd just achieved if I stopped now. So again, I gathered some strength I didn't know I had and I told myself I wasn't going to walk or rest until I was back on my street in front of my house. Once again, I kept running.

I continued running all the way until I was in front of my house. I looked up at it and without a second thought I stopped and crumpled to the ground in a red-faced, sweaty-backed, sore-legged, breathless heap.

I stayed there on the lawn for quite a while. The grass was a little prickly on my back and legs and I could feel my skin starting to itch, but I wanted to savor the moment as long as I could.

That was a couple of hours ago now and I've been thinking. If I had decided to avoid the hills altogether and just run on the flat streets today, I'm sure I would have had a nice run. If I had turned around to look for the turnoff street and not faced that hill at all, I'm positive I would have have been satisfied with my run. If I had stopped to walk one of the many times that the thought came to me, I would have caught my breath and been on my way content with life. Frankly, if I had done any of those things, I have no doubt that I would have felt pretty good about myself just for having made the effort of going out for a run this afternoon. But I did none of them. Somehow, by sheer force of will I was able to push myself beyond my perceived limits and accomplish something I didn't think possible. And that gave me cause to smile.

I've been smiling ever since.

You're the Voice

2011-10-11T01:33:00.008-06:00

Sometimes I'll be writing a paper and I get stuck or discouraged. That's when I remember that scene from Hot Rod where this song is playing:

To be honest I wasn't a big fan of Hot Rod. Some of my roommates might hate me for saying that, but yeah, not a huge fan. But for all of its faults (and there were enough that I'd be content never seeing this movie again), I do owe it a debt of gratitude for introducing me to "You're the Voice."

This song, however cheesy it may be, has an uncanny ability to refocus my attention and get me back to the task at hand. It makes me realize that yes, I really can be and even already am "the voice." Therefore, I'm not gonna live in silence and I'm not gonna live with fear. I do in fact have the power to be powerful, and ohhhh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh, whoa oh oh oh oh oh oh oh.

Also, it has bagpipes in it. How could I not be inspired?

(This is me resolving to be the voice...in case that wasn't clear.)

On Walking

2011-10-10T00:02:00.004-06:00

Yesterday morning I woke up and, realizing it was Saturday, decided to lay in bed for a bit and read. I reached over and picked up what I'd been reading a couple nights earlier: The Lost Art of Walking by Geoff Nicholson. As I was reading I came to this line wherein Geoff describes walking in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood of L.A.:

"I was one of the few people who ever seemed to walk there. I encountered a few dog walkers, the odd person pushing a pram, the occasional jogger, a Mexican maid who didn't have transport, but I seldom saw anyone who was simply walking for the hell of it, as I was."

He then goes on to talk about the time he went out walking, fell down and broke his arm in three places. Maybe it was because I can relate so well to having medical mishaps caused by seemingly innocuous activity, but as I read about walking, I decided that I wanted to do just what I was reading about; I wanted to go for a walk.

So I did. The sky was a steely gray, and there was just enough chill in the air to warrant donning a sweater over my thermal shirt. I left the house thinking that it would start sprinkling before I got back, so I prepared myself mentally for moisture. My concern proved to be unfounded. I did feel several drops as I walked, but it was never anything more than leftover rain that the trees had kept in reserve for passersby such as myself.

I went at a fairly slow pace, allowing myself time to consider the homes along the "tree streets" where I was walking. I entertained myself looking at the homes and the landscaping and gardens around the homes searching out clues that would tell me a little bit about the people who lived in them. I came up with stories about the families living in the homes that were, I'm sure, much more adventurous and exciting than the truth. But who am I to let the truth get in the way of a good story?

As I was walking along, passing broad, generalizing judgments on every home I came across, an older home that was for sale caught my eye. It was clearly well taken care of and had even had some minor remodeling done on the exterior. Not so much remodeling that it lost its old home character, but enough to make it attractive and livable. It was on a corner so I was able to walk past the yard and peer over the fence into it. (I had to see what I was getting into if I bought the place.) I looked into the yard with an eye of criticism, deciding what would need to be done upon purchasing it. I decided that I'd tear out the juniper bushes next to the house and plant roses in their stead. Along the back property line, where the garden met the fence, I'd run a few grape vines. I'd definitely have to cut down and grind out the stump that was in the middle of the yard. The large, established trees that surrounded the home and property, including and apple and pear tree back by the shed next to the garden, made the whole proposition worthwhile and I decided I was sold. As such, I kept walking.

While the weather was a bit threatening and seemed to be keeping most people indoors, I did see a few people along the way. I walked past an older man, complete with overalls, a straw hat, and a small radio tuned to the KSL Greenhouse Show, out weeding his flower bed. I passed a young mother in a house coat gathering up toys that had been left in the front lawn overnight. There were two little boys riding Razor scooters in wide circles in their driveway talking about how awesome the parade was going to be later on. In each case the individuals looked up as I walked by, whereupon I nodded cheerily and said, "Good morning." (I might normally have waved, but my hands were busy keeping themselves warm in my pockets.) To be honest I was a bit surprised to find that, to a person, they responded in kind and were just as cheerful. It was nice to see that some people haven't lost that unconditional friendliness that seems, at times, to be in short supply. I suppose it didn't hurt that my appearance was far from intimidating or imposing as I was wearing glasses, an old gray sweater with white Cosby-esque designs on it, and smile.

By the time I got back to my place I'd been gone for about an hour and the tip of my nose was a bit chilly. As I walked up the steps to the sliding door that would lead me into the kitchen, I felt more content with life than I'd been in some time.

Stuffed Tomatoes

2011-09-27T23:36:00.005-06:00

So tonight I was at my Intro to Graduate Studies class and I was starving. (Is it just me or does it seem like a lot of my blog posts start off with me being hungry?) The class is held from 5 - 7 pm on Tuesday evenings and if it weren't for the entertainment factor of our professor Trent Hickman I'd probably hate it a lot more than I do.

Anyway, tonight I was hungry and I didn't have any foods with me to appease my stomach. We have a break halfway through the class, and normally I would have used that break to run down to the vending machines and grab a snack of sorts to tide me over until I could get home and eat real food. (and by real food I mean pasta) Well since my ID card is old and the mag strip is pretty well worn off of it the vending machines don't recognize it anymore so vending machine purchases are out. (I don't ever have any cash.) Unfortunately, tonight during our break one of my classmates left and when she came back she had this gorgeous (both in looks and smell) tomato that was stuffed with some kind of white cheese and smelled like garlic, butter and heaven.

I could tell from the looks on the faces of my other classmates that I wasn't the only one who was suffering as a result of her clearly visible gastronomical pleasure. Immediately I opened up my laptop and searched "stuffed tomato recipe." I found one that seemed fairly simple yet elegant and delicious so I decided that rather than my usual pasta dinner, I would break out of the norm and make some roasted tomatoes stuffed with parmesan, garlic and herbs.

After calling Maurianne a couple of times to figure out what exactly it means to "mince" garlic and whether or not I could substitute parchment paper with paper towels I managed to put together 15 fairly delicious looking pre-roasted roma tomatoes. I put them in the oven and waited anxiously.

After 20 minutes at 375 degrees F I pulled them out, fully expecting to see and smell a culinary delight. I was mildly disappointed.

They looked flat, and they smelled...crispy. Yes, crispy. That's the only word I can think of that adequately describes the smell.

I figured that was just the water that had cooked out, and I assumed the less-than-perfect appearance was due to atmospheric pressure or something, so I shoveled them onto a plate, took them down to my room and dug in.

Once again, I was mildly disappointed. They had a very weirdly interesting texture that I don't think I'm a huge fan of. The tomatoes were mushy and kinda slimy, and the ratio of bread crumbs to parmesan cheese was decidedly out of whack, erring on the side of too many bread crumbs, so the top part of the thing was crumbly and crunchy. They tasted alright, nothing to write home about (or write on one's blog about...unless you're trying to put off homework like me), but they weren't awful either.

Ultimately, they weren't nearly as delicious as that masterpiece that I had pined for during my class today, but they were edible and I ate nine of them. Jordan ate one and was done. So here are the five left-overs:

Like I said, they aren't that pretty, and their taste pretty much matched their looks. I guess the important part is that I had dinner and it was mildly healthy. meh.

Vocalise

2011-09-26T22:29:00.005-06:00

Sometimes I'll be sitting in my room doing homework and I'll get restless and feel like if I don't get up and go do something I'll go crazy. When I say that I need to "get up and go do something," I don't know what exactly that means. And that's frustrating. I feel like I can't stay sitting still, but that I need to go...do something.

The something that I need to do is something active, or if not entirely active then at least something that involves getting up from my awesome chair and moving around at least a little bit. It's like my body is getting jealous of the workout I'm giving my mind, and it says to me, "Hey Sam! Hey, hey look down here. Let's go do something fun." But I can't go do something fun because I have things I need to do.

I have to revise a short paper for class in the morning
and I have to read the first 1/3 of First Democracy
and I have to do a historiography-type assignment concerning Well-Bound Words: A Rhetoric
and I have to finish reading Miller's The Evolution of College English: Literacy Studies from the Puritans to the Postmoderns
and if I go do something active and fun I won't get all this work done that I need to get done.

Though I try to ignore it and push it down and away, the need to get up and about won't be ignored and keeps telling me that I have to "go do something."

This internal battle reaches fever-pitch and I'm becoming less and less productive with the homework I'm working on. I feel like if I sit in my chair any longer I'll burst, as much from my need to go be active as from the frustration that, at least tonight, I can't get all my homework done like a responsible student and "go do something."

The struggle intensifies, I'm not getting anything done at all, and I'm sure that before long I'll probably give up, sacrifice doing some of my homework and go for a run or something.

Then my roommate Joseph goes into his room (right next to mine), picks up his cello, and starts playing Vocalise by Rachmaninoff.

The paper-thin walls of our house allow for the beautifully clear tones of this piece to filter into and fill my room.

Inexplicably my internal tension dissipates almost immediately. The need to "go do something" is replaced by a feeling of contentment, joy and focus. Somehow the ineffable beauty of this simple yet elegant Vocalise has calmed my restless spirit.

And I can turn back to my studies in peace.

This Is a Printing Office

2011-09-22T08:44:00.005-06:00

Crossroads of civilisation

uuuuuuuuRefuge of all the arts against the ravages of time

uuuuuuuuArmoury of fearless truth, against whispering rumours

Incessant trumpet of trade

From this place words may fly abroad

uuuuuuuuNot to perish on waves of sound

uuuuuuuuNot to vary with the writer's hand

uuuuuuuuBut fixed in time having been verified in proof

Friend you stand on sacred ground

This is a printing office.

- Beatrice Warde

That Sweet Poitin from Ireland Green

2011-09-19T20:02:00.005-06:00

So the last time I wrote on my blog school hadn't started yet. Well, it's started now. It's hard. For the first time in my life I have to actually buckle down and study. I've always been a decent student, but by no means stellar. I'll be the first to admit I could have worked a lot harder and done a lot more work as an undergraduate, but, as they say, that's neither here nor there.

Now I'm doing homework all the time. Seriously, all the time. There have been a couple of occasions when I've gotten frustrated and thought to myself that I'm not cut out for graduate school and that it's just too hard and that I'm not good enough to be here. But when that has happened I just go to bed, and when I wake up in the morning and go to class I realize I'm not as dumb as I thought and that I can acquit myself fairly well if I put in the time and effort to actually do the work assigned me.

Because of the intensity of my classes I would probably hate school a lot right now if it weren't for the fact that I love my classes. If for the first time in my life I'm actually working hard and being a good student, then I have to say that similarly, for the first time in my life I'm actually really, really enjoying all of my classes. Everyday I go to class and I'm fascinated by the discussion. Maybe the fact that I'm prepared for class and the discussions held therein leads to my interest in the subjects being discussed, but that line of thinking just leads us to a chicken and the egg dilemma, so I'll just leave it be.

As you're reading this you're probably asking yourself, "Sam, so what? Why do I/why should I care about your life in graduate school? In fact, why am I still reading this?" That's something I don't have an answer for and that you'll have to answer for yourself. A better question that you should be asking yourself at this point is this: "That's great Sam, but what does all of this have to do with illegal Irish moonshine?" Now that's a question I can answer.

Tonight I'm skipping FHE because I need to read Hawthorne's The Blithdale Romance for my Leadership in the Humanities class. The whole book. I should have read at least part of it over the weekend, but I was doing the reading for my Composition Pedagogy class instead and I didn't get around to Hawthorne. On top of reading The Blithdale Romance, I have to write a short "progress report" on it discussing my evolving definition of leadership as it relates to the humanities and the ways that Hawthorne's work has helped to shape that definition. I then have to present this short paper to my class tomorrow morning. In short, I have a lot to do tonight. It's going to be enjoyable, but it'll be a lot all the same. You'll notice I still haven't answered the question about "that sweet poitin."

Well, my soundtrack for the evening started out with this:

and has gone on to include this:

this:

this:

and this:

I could continue on in this vein, but you get the idea.

While I've never been to Ireland and therefore my views of the same may be somewhat romanticized, right now I want nothing more than to sit in a pub with some good friends and order myself some bangers and mash and a tall brew. Except I'd probably just order a soda not a brew. Because I don't drink. While I'm really enjoying school, this little scenario that I've just painted sounds a lot more appealing. Unfortunately I can't do any of this.

Instead I'll have to content myself with listening to drinking songs and dreaming of a place where, "at the foot of the hill there's a neat little still where the smoke curls up to the sky. [And where] by the smoke and the smell you can plainly tell that there's poitin brewing nearby."

Maybe in a little while I'll take a break and go off campus to buy myself some Provo poitin: Cherry Coke.

Sláinte!

On Sunset, Music, and Identity. Oh and Also Johnny Cash.

2011-08-22T22:41:00.009-06:00

So on the drive back from Provo to Bluffdale this evening I saw the most incredible sunset. I'd have taken a picture, but I was driving. But really, it was amazing. Luckily the traffic wasn't too heavy so I was able to watch as the sun's rays illuminated the golden clouds against on the darkening blue sky. The scene was made doubly beautiful because the whole scene was reflected over the lake, which reflection was visible even from the freeway. During the drive I watched as the clouds went from gold to orange to pink to purple, each shade and hue blending seamlessly into the next in an endless palate of color. Again, words and language fail to really illuminate the beauty of the scene, but they'll have to suffice for now.

But this post isn't supposed to be about the sunset, it's about music.

While I was enjoying the sunset the following songs (my iPod was set to shuffle through the whole library) played in this order:

Is There A Ghost - Band of Horses (best summertime-drive-fast-down-a-lonely-road song ever)

Rhapsody On a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43: Variation 18: Andante Cantabile - Rachmaninoff (just the 18th variation and just the first 3 minutes of the video below)

Flamenco Sketches - Miles Davis (left me feeling Kind of Blue)

No Cars Go - Arcade Fire (another great summertime song)

I Love You Always Forever - Donna Lewis (I'm a romantic at heart and I secretly love this song. I know it's corny, and think less of me if you will, but there it is. Also, I know the video here is super cheesy, but the youtube machine won't let me embed the official video.)

You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet - BTO (yep)

Over the Rainbow - Eva Cassidy (sweet merciful, that voice)

Strawberry Swing - Coldplay (this song has been coming up a lot lately when my iPod is set to random)

Variations on a Theme of Paganini - Rachmaninoff (yeah, the full thing this time, not just the 18th. Funny coincidence.)

Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini took me to the driveway where I parked and I sat in the car listening until the piece was over. I was sitting there in the driveway for a good 12 minutes after I'd parked, and it was 12 wonderful minutes.

If you listened/watched all of those videos I'm impressed; I didn't expect you to. If you didn't, well, there you go.

Now I don't mean this post to be one of those, "hey look at me and my diverse music collection. I'm awesome!" type of posts. Not at all in fact. Rather, as I was driving down I-15 listening to this music and viewing this amazing sunset I was pondering to myself the question of identity as it relates to music. Identity is something that I've been thinking a lot about lately. I like to think about what aspects of our lives are true markers of who we are at our very core, and what aspects of our lives we think are the true markers of who we are. Sometimes the two coincide, but not as often as I think we might like to believe.

Speaking of this, I was once told by a good friend that this picture of me explained, for her, my character entirely. The very essence of who I am, Samuel James Dunn, Esq., the whole package deal, is here all wrapped up neatly with a bow on top (or rather a small child's stocking cap). I'm not sure what was meant by that statement, nor do I think I agree with it entirely, but it's interesting to think about.

A thorough discussion of identity and what aspects of our lives really make up who we are could be the subject of many, many volumes. That said, it's often told that the music we listen to is one of these defining markers. Now I don't claim to be any kind of expert on philosophical identity as demonstrated by music, far from it, but the idea is an interesting one to play with.

For a long time people only really listened to one genre of music. That's not to say that there weren't different genres, but each person typically would listen to one kind of music and that would suffice. I'm sure there was crossover, but doubt it was ever very drastic. The kind of music that you listened to was a tale-tell sign of who you were. The kinds of interests you had, what you liked to do in your spare time and the kinds of people you liked to associate with could all be surmised if you told someone what kind of music you liked to listen to. This was a true statement until Generation Y -- my generation -- came around.

One of the distinguishing features of Generation Y is its eclectic taste in music. While here above we have just a small sampling of what I listen to, if I had continued with this exercise I'm sure that I'd have gotten a taste of Duran Duran, The Avett Brothers, Diana Krall, Garth Brooks, Neutral Milk Hotel and Shostakovitch, to name a few. My music taste is spread across the map. So what does that say about my character and my identity? I could just say that I'm great because I'm able to appreciate such diversity, but I'm not sure that's an entirely accurate summation. And some of the questions that have arisen on the subject aren't entirely flattering.

If music is a marker of identity, but my taste in music in indefinable, does that mean that, my character is likewise indefinable and I don't have a handle on who I am? Am I easily swayed by every wind of music because I have no firm, anchored sense of identity? Or, on a slightly more positive note, am I just the physical embodiment of the hodge-podge, melting pot America that we always hear so much about? Perhaps something else altogether. Do I yearn for acceptance so badly that I shape my tastes, and thus my identity, to fit into any societal situation in chameleon-like fashion? Is it just that I've been raised in a cultural time period that refuses to see the world as black and white, good and bad in any aspect and so I feel incapable of passing such harsh judgment on any kind of music.

Frankly I'm not sure I can fully support any of these propositions, but I think they might all have at least a hint of truth to them. I think I have a pretty good handle on who I am; like I said the question of identity is one I think about a lot and I've come to some conclusions about myself. But the question remains, how exactly does my musical taste inform my identity? Or perhaps more importantly, does it at all? Has all this contemplation just been an exercise in futility?

This is something I'm probably going to have to keep thinking about, and I welcome any input on the matter. For now, though, there is one thing I do know for sure: the sunset today was phenomenal. Also, despite all the music I've been listening to today, I've had "Ring of Fire" stuck in my head ever since dinner yesterday thanks to Lee and Melanie.

Addendum as of 8:40 a.m. 8/23/11:

I wrote all that about identity and such last night before I fell asleep. This morning as I came back to Provo from Bluffdale, and as my iPod went from "Return to Innocence" by Enigma to "La Donna è Mobile" from Verdi's Rigoletto as performed by Pavarotti, and then to "Stand" by R.E.M., I decided that my basic assumption that music inflects character wasn't entirely accurate, and that I'm just awesome.

Borders

2011-08-04T01:04:00.011-06:00

It's currently one o'clock in the a.m. I'm not feeling super hot...

No, that's not entirely true; let's begin again (pronounced uh-gayne).

It's currently one oh eight in the ɛɚ̯ em (am), and I am simultaneously super hot and not feeling all that well. I came home from work today and 1- drank a quart and a half of gatorade then 2- slept for about three hours. After which time I 3-woke up and 4- ate a package of Ramen. I then 5- turned on a little Thelonious Monk while I 6- read What the Dog Saw on our new and extremely uncomfortable couches. While reading, I 7- fell asleep yet again until I 8- woke up thanks to Seth and co.'s entrance. Shortly thereafter, I 9- watched Danny Kaye in The Court Jestor and 10- laughed myself silly. I felt certain that steps 1-10 would help me feel a bit better, but instead they have merely left me unable to sleep. So I'm lying in bed with a cold, a headache, and a hope that blogging will invite the sandman. (Who gets a cold in August? I mean really.)

But all of this is beside the point that I'm trying to make here. That point is this: Borders is closing.

*moment of silence*

Borders has been one of my sweet havens that I run to when I need an escape. Something about the smell of the coffee and being surrounded by some of the finest written word the English-speaking world has produced fills me with a sense of belonging, of security and warmth that is difficultly found. I won't overly-romanticize the situation by not acknowledging the presence of some of the trashiest and kitschy-est works produced as well (how do people get their Pride and Prejudice fan fictions published?), but you have to take the good with the bad; that's life.

I have spent countless hours in the Provo Borders reading and perusing anything that struck my fancy. One evening a couple summers ago I went there fully intent on not leaving until I understood the hype about Orwell's 1984; I ended up leaving two hours and 50 pages later, bleary-eyed and completely nonplussed; I still don't get it. (Can you use two semicolons in one sentence? Because I just did.) There was the Saturday morning I spent scads of time looking through art books full of everything from mannerism to pointillism to Banksy. Last summer I spent several days on the Percy Jackson and Hunger Games series when I desperately needed something popcorn-y that wasn't too intellectually stimulating. Whenever I needed an emotional release I went and pored over any and all of the poetry I could get my hands on, glorying in the simple beauty of Collins, reveling in the imagery of Hardy, tapping my foot to the rhythm of Hughes and wondering why more people didn't read Cavafy. (While on the topic of Cavafy, sometimes I want to learn Greek to read his original work and not just translations) I went to Borders on numerous occasions to study for the GRE. There was the terrifying evening when I woke up completely disoriented and unaware of where I was; only after taking several deep breaths and finding a copy of Maus in my lap did I realize I had fallen asleep at Borders. I even considered applying for a job there at one point.

I could continue on reminiscing about the time I've spent at Borders (like the afternoon I dedicated to reading a reference book about Yiddish words and phrases that have been adopted into English) but I think this suffices.

People will probably think it's strange that I've grown so attached so some cold, nationwide chain-of-a-bookstore, especially after the thorough criticizing and reviling that such stores received in You've Got Mail, but I will be genuinely sad to see Borders close its doors for the last time.

...I've been laying here in my bed staring at that last sentence I just wrote for several minutes now thinking about its implications, and I've had a bit of a paradigm shift. Yes it's sad, but at the same time I'm now being afforded the opportunity to go find a new shelter from the storm. I'm being given the opportunity to go out and find a new place of comfort and reflection. Hopefully the journey to find it will be an adventure worthy of Ithaca.

I think I'll set off tomorrow, assuming my headache is gone and this cold has run its course by then.

A Smattering of Thoughts From the Last Two Months

2011-07-08T22:10:00.008-06:00

I haven't written on my blog for a while now. At the beginning of this year I was doing really well and writing on it all the time, but after I posted that last bit about the cover letter that eventually helped me land the job I have now, I haven't posted anything. That's not to say I haven't written anything. Actually quite a few times I've started writing something, but I whenever I start writing here I inevitably end up feeling like I'm at work, which of course leads to me feeling disinterested so I stop. In fact, just to prove that I haven't been entirely lackadaisical, I'm going to post the post fragments from the past two months. Here goes:

5/19/11
Flowers

"I love flowers. Unashamedly. We live in a world where there is very specific demarcation between things manly and things girly; flowers and the loving of them falls clearly in the latter. To be frank, I don't care. Flowers have the awe-inspiring ability to brighten the world around them no matter the circumstance. Sometimes the future looks like it's going to suck. Sometimes the storms of our lives (school, work, social obligations, pressures that comes from any and all directions for a multiplicity of reasons) rage to the point that it seems like resistance is futile and we might as well give up and lay down in the ditch to avoid the wind. But when upon these billows of life, if we'll just take a few minutes to stop and contemplate a flower, with its majestic and eternal beauty, I submit that even those who feel like they're in the darkest abyss will find a glimmer of hope..."

I'm not sure what sparked this, but I remain firmly in the flower-lovers' camp.

5/29/11
Memorial Day

"Memorial Day is my favorite holiday...I think. It might be Easter. But that's beside the point right now. Most people, when they think of Memorial Day, think, "Wahoo, day off work/school." They see Memorial Day as late spring's version of Labor Day and little more. But ever since I was a little kid and would go with Mom to Berrett's Blossoms early on Memorial Day morning to pick up the flowers for Emily's and Grandma and Grandpa Turner's graves..."

As you can see I was trying to explicate my affection for Memorial Day. I'm sure it would've been touching had I taken time to finish it.

6/1/11
Untitled

"I pride myself on not being a prescriptivist grammarian. I know the rules of grammar...for the most part. (Comma rules still trip me up every now and again, but they're such a fickle lot that I don't pay them much heed anyway.) I think that prescriptivism would be a dreary lens ~~through which to view life~~ to view life through. Descriptivism is so much more liberating. I know the rules, I follow them when it is altogether fitting and proper that I do so, but I'm not tied down by some pedantic and arbitrary system of rules foisted upon the unsuspecting world by self-indulgent and narcissistic, ivory-tower know-it-alls. Sometimes you just need to say, "Yeah, I might could do that for you." It's not right, it's colloquial, but it's a whole lot more efficient, in terms of words used and breath/life spent than to use the more correct "be able to." I feel like that's a ..."

To be honest, I don't know where I was going with this one. I'm sure it would've been wonderful and witty, but, again, I couldn't be bothered to finish.

6/17/11

"'Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.' -- Henry David Thoreau

Maybe it's because I've been reading Walden on my lunch breaks of late, but I've decided I want to change the world..."

I'm still reading Walden, and while I recognize that not all of what Thoreau said is directly applicable to our lives, I still think we would do well to better espouse some of the ideas he talks about. On a semi-related note, I really want to swim in Walden pond. I recently chatted with a friend of mine and she was telling me about when she went skinny-dipping in Walden. I don't think I'd go quite that far, but hearing her talk about the experience made me want to feel that cool, clear Massachusetts water and take a couple strokes. I've definitely put that one on my 'To Do' list.

6/26/11
Walking

"I never cease to be amazed at what a therapeutic activity walking is...."

Yep, I'm still amazed.

So there you go, the blogging fruits of my last two months. The reason I haven't posted much is my job requires me to work almost entirely with blogs 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. From DUI attorney blogs to gay pride store blogs to wedding photographer blogs to HVAC blogs I am constantly commenting on and writing blog posts. Don't get me wrong I love working there and I love the people I work with (I especially love throwing things at Ryan), but by the time I get home I want nothing to do with computers. Resultingly, I've neglected informing the world as to my exploits. I'll see if I can't do better.

Best Cover Letter Ever

2011-05-02T17:10:00.003-06:00

I graduated about a week and a half ago and am looking for a job. In my many applications and resume submissions I've written quite a few cover letters now and am getting fairly adept at it. Today I wrote one that I'm particularly proud of. Here it is:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I'm writing to inquire about the recently posted Part-time Writer job that I found advertised on Craigslist this morning. My name is Samuel James Dunn, but my friends call me Sam, Sammy, and Esquire. I'm a recent graduate of the Brigham Young University English program. (I flirted with the idea of calling it the "highly regarded Brigham Young University English program" but, let's face it, it isn't that highly regarded) As I'm sure a large number of the other applicants who you will hear from will probably boast a similar accomplishment, here follows a list of my qualifications that make me uniquely suited for this job:

1) I'm daring and courageous. Naturally you'll want me to prove this. First of all, I am a man. I don't want this to come across as sexist by any means, in fact some of the bravest people I know are women and I don't believe that being a man means that courage comes written in your genetic code. Being a man is a significant marker of courage for me because I chose English as a major in college. We all know that being an English major means that you're hopelessly consigned to working in food services for the rest of your life, all the while pinching pennies and barely scraping by. I knew that going into the program, and I did it anyway. I was so confident in my writing and analytical skills that I was sure that I could somehow make a go of it. Though I had no assurance whatsoever of success, I forged on ahead. Bravery.

2) How many of your applicants can say that they've started their own newspaper with a readership of over 10,000 people daily? I'd venture to say that not many can. In fact, I can't. I can, however, say that I have started my own newsletter for people in my local church congregation (i.e. ward), that I personally distribute at my own cost, to over 50 people on a sometimes bi-monthly basis. You might ask, what is treated in the newsletter? Ward gossip of course. Gossip completely of my own creation that has little, if any, basis in fact. The newsletter is called the SUNDAY SLANDeR, you might have heard of it, though it would surprise me if you had.

3) I recently won the "The Glory of God is Intelligence" award in a family poetry contest. How many of your other applicants participate in poetry contests, let alone win awards? There's no way to tell really, but now you know that I do.

4) I think outside the box. When I was in high school two of my friends and I took 3rd place at the Utah State Science Fair with my project that was an anti-gravity craft powered by up to 50,000 volts streaming through a power source of our own creation. When asked what purpose the craft had, I would respond that it was the future of space travel. Looking back it seems foolish that I would even think, let alone say such absurdities, but at the time I believed it. This may seem irrelevant, but I feel like it shows that I dream big. I aimed for the stars and ended up in third place, leaving the box far behind.

4.2) Sometimes I think inside the box as well. The other week I was walking down the street and there was a big refrigerator box on the sidewalk that someone had thrown out. I climbed inside the box and started to think; I can now say that thinking inside the box can be a very rewarding experience. So you see, I am capable of thinking in and outside the box. Both. And I have experience doing it.

5) I'm tall. I currently stand a stately six feet two inches, thank you very much. While 6'2" is hardly giant stature, and is, in fact, a fairly common height, few 6'2"ers play as mean a game of speed scrabble as I do. Or regular scrabble for that matter, I'm equally adept at both. Also crossword puzzles.

6) My dad, now a librarian, used to work at the Utah State Penitentiary. As such, I've been to the prison. To visit of course, but I feel like my familiarity with the State Prison gives me street cred that your other applicants will surely lack. (Just to clarify, I've never been to prison in the sense that I was arrested, convicted, and served a sentence. My record is clean. 100%.)

I could continue in this vein, but I think my point has been made. I would be perfect for this job. As such I anxiously look forward to setting up a time when we might meet in person in an interview to further discuss the boon that I would clearly be to your company as a writer.

Thank you for your consideration.

-Samuel James Dunn

Yes, I really sent that. I figured the normal boring stuff wasn't working, so why not. Now I guess we'll just wait and see if Property Solutions International, Inc. has a sense of humor.

Golf In A Time of War: Precautionary Steps in Making Sure the Nazi's Don't Ruin Your Day at the Course

2011-04-27T17:10:00.008-06:00

I recently came across a set of rules established by England's Richmond Golf Club outlining what to do in case of a German bombing during game play. At first I thought it was a hoax, but after a little research on the Richmond Golf Club's official website I found it to be true.

Temporary Rules, 1940

1. Players are asked to collect Bomb and Shrapnel splinters to save these causing damage to the mowing machines.
2. In competitions, during gunfire, or while bombs are falling, players may take cover without penalty for ceasing play.
3. The positions of known delayed-action bombs are marked by red flags placed at reasonably, but not guaranteed safe distance therefrom.
4. Shrapnel/and/or bomb splinters on the Fairways, or in Bunkers within a club’s length of a ball may be moved without penalty, and no penalty shall be incurred if a ball is thereby caused to move accidentally.
5. A ball moved by enemy action may be replaced, or if lost or destroyed, a ball may be dropped not nearer the hole without penalty.
6. A ball lying in a crater may be lifted and dropped not nearer the hole, preserving the line to the hole without penalty.
7. A player whose stroke is affected by the simultaneous explosion of a bomb may play another ball from the same place. Penalty, one stroke.

All in all, wise and fair regulations. Now the next time war breaks out at the local country club, we all know what to do. And as GI Joe would have us remember, knowing is half the battle.

Breakfast

2011-04-11T11:23:00.004-06:00

Following somewhat in the footsteps of my sister-in-law and nephew, this is what I had for breakfast this morning:
As I was eating it, I thought about how Snickers are Mom's favorite candy bar and how I should call her and tell her so that she could be proud of me. But there's an inherent flaw in that logic that I'm sure most can see. Mom is my mother. She would be proud if I'd eaten oatmeal, or toast, or eggs, or even cereal. But a Snickers bar? Never. So I didn't call her. Instead, I wrote about it on my blog so she can read about it here.

Reed Mark Anderson

2011-04-03T21:35:00.009-06:00

This past week my cousin Reed, who is one of my best friends, passed away after dealing with major health issues. The obituary in the paper was fantastic and I really can't add much to it, but I couldn't help but jot down a few of my own personal reflections of Reed.

Reed was one of my best friends. We didn't see each other all the time, but whenever we did it was as if there had been no lull in the conversation from the last time. I'm not the most social and conversational person in the world and it's not easy for me to talk to people, and there aren't a whole lot of people that I'm comfortable just sitting down with and chatting, but I could always talk to Reed. It didn't matter the situation or the setting, I could sit down with him and talk for hours. We would talk about anything and everything. Sometimes we'd sit and talk about serious issues that we were facing in our lives, sometimes we'd discuss more frivolous things like sports and girls, and sometimes we'd just sit without saying a word and laugh as we watched our little cousins running around hurting themselves and each other. One particularly vivid memory I have of Reed occurred when I'd only been home from my mission for about a week. We were sitting out in the street in Emery looking up at the millions of stars. He and I talked about my mission, about my concerns of being back in real society, about the problems he had been having in school, about the girls he liked, and, frankly, about everything we hadn't talked about for two years. It wasn't an earth-shattering conversation by any means, but it was so comforting for me to know that I had a true friend that I could talk to. Reed's ability to make people feel at ease and comfortable and loved--to feel like they had a true friend--was one of his character traits that I will always remember. There wasn't a person who didn't consider him a true friend and, despite his incessant teasing and joking, everyone knew that Reed loved them and that they could count on him in a time of need.

As I have had opportunity to witness some of the struggles Reed has gone through with his health, I've come to really look up to and admire Reed for his strength and can-do-it attitude. While I was on my mission, Uncle Mark sent me an excerpt of an essay Reed had written about an experience where he passed out during the Pre-National Regional Footlocker Race. Upon waking up, Reed pushed the medics out of the way to finish the race. In his words, "I didn't come this far to quit; I came to finish the race." That story hit me really hard. After receiving that letter there were numerous times on my mission when it seemed like nothing was going right, but I would remember that Reed didn't give up on that race so I could keep plugging along as well. Even now, when life gets difficult and I hit the proverbial wall that seems to prevent my progression in the varied facets of my life, I think of Reed and that race. That race really represents the attitude with which Reed faced life and the myriad challenges therein. Remembering it has provided me with the lift and inspiration I need to keep going despite my struggles.

Reed was a God-send to many people in this world, and I consider myself lucky to have been one close to him. The world is a much better place for having been graced with his presence. If everyone would strive to love and persevere with the intensity of Reed, the world would be a much brighter and hopeful place. I know that I would do well to better live up to the example he has left.

Some Things That Make Me Happy No Matter What

2011-03-27T23:35:00.010-06:00

So lately I've had a few experiences that have made me really ponder on the existence and acquisition of true happiness. More often than not when I think about or discuss this subject I cite Abraham Lincoln's quote, "Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be," and after a brief discussion about deciding to be happy I'm satisfied and can continue on with my life. I definitely agree with Abe's statement, but not in the way I used to. I used to think that you could just make up your mind to be happy and that was all it took, but it's not. The daily decisions we make lead us to true happiness. That's the essence of agency, choosing those things that will make us truly happy. In Abe's words, as we make up our minds to do things that bring happiness, we'll be happy.

That's enough of my soapbox on happiness. Aside from the previous discussion on choosing things that bring deep and abiding happiness, there are little things in life that sprinkle glimpses of joy into my life no matter what. More often than not they aren't big paradigm-shifting decisions, just a little tasty life-spice now and then. Here follows a list (by no means comprehensive) of a few things that have this effect:

-Jesus
-Chasing thunderstorms in the summer time
-Being told that I look or act like my brother David
-Going down to the shore of Utah Lake at night and looking up at the stars. or out across the water, or at the stars reflected in the water, and contemplating life, the universe and everything
-Running to stand still
-Running to stand still
-Writing down choice bits of conversations that I overhear
-Smiling big at little kids in the MOA so that they go tell their parents about the tall, funny looking security guard and then looking all stern and serious when the parents look around at me
-Seeing the reaction when I tell someone I can fit 10 quarters up my nose
-Finishing a crossword puzzle
-Seeing the reaction when I put 10 quarters up my nose
-Daffodils, both the poem and the flower
-Looking up Ecuador on Google Earth
-Waking Ned Devine
-Michael O'Sullivan
-Being able to watch BYU lose and not get upset about it (I've been working hard on this one)
-Sitting in my Spanish class and chatting with Chad via email about how much we hate the class
-Playing the Wikipedia game
-Speed Scrabble
-Hiking mountains, especially early in the morning before the sun comes up
-Rice King
-This talk
-Reading my siblings' facebook statuses
-Waking up in the morning in my bed and realizing that I did in fact make it to my bed the night before
-Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 78 "Organ": IV. Maestoso - Allegro by Camille Saint-Saens
-Shooting hoops down by the train tracks late at night
-Mom's cherry pie (hands down best dessert in the world and yes I will fight you about that one)
-Validation that I made the right decision to drop Physics in favor of English
-My Name is Asher Lev, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Great Expectations, and Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are

That's enough to be getting on with for now.

Thoughts on Life That Have Arisen In the Course of Doing a Crossword Puzzle While Procrastinating a Paper at 1:20 am

2011-03-23T01:19:00.007-06:00

Sometimes I wish I'd gone to a fancy, blue-blooded private school where I could have learned to row and had a rowing coach.

What is sugarloaf? I'm imagining meatloaf, only with sugar.

If I could start over again, I might join the quill and sword club. Endless supply of stories to tell at parties.

Et tu, Brute, The Ural Mountains, Etta James, Ode on a Grecian Urn. Know these and crossword puzzle success is at your fingertips.

I've never used nutmeg.

I want to go read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society again.

I want to go to a baseball game and eat a hot dog.

Is the wrecking ball really a viable demolition tool anymore? Where do you go to school to learn to use a wrecking ball? Is it expensive? Could I do it over the summer?

I want a monk's habit to wear. Unless it's all woolly and itchy. In which case I want to make my own monk's habit out of the hides of slain of pillow pets.

Can you imagine doing calculus, or algebra for that matter, if we still used Roman Numerals?

I should really learn the Greek alphabet. I've been meaning to for years now.

I don't know the answer to 26 across, but I think "filthy milieu" is my favorite clue ever.

Anyway, back to work.

Filter

2011-03-12T13:02:00.010-07:00

I have previously, though briefly, discussed how social media (blogs, facebook, twitter, etc) allows us filter our lives so as to portray to those who "follow" us or are "friends" with us just exactly what we want them to see. We construct for them a reality of ourselves that is calculated and, to be candid, not always entirely honest.

*Gasp*

Does little Sammy lie to us? Is he really not the sweet, quick-witted charmer that his gripping and humorously poignant prose would have us believe?

That's for you to decide for yourselves. But over the past week I've had the flu and have spent a good share of that time on the couch doing the following: watching TV (Sportscenter and House mostly), watching (sleeping through?) movies, reading Lake Wobegon Days, reading the good parts version of The Lightning Thief and, of course, spending copious amounts of time on the interwebs.

Being on "the net" so much has caused me to think in facebook status mode for a couple days now. I'm constantly coming up with new facebook statuses...stati. Many of them haven't made the cut. If I were an active ~~twitterer~~ ~~tweeter~~ ~~songbird~~ user of twitter I'd have just tweeted them and been done with it. But I'm not. So I didn't. Thus, in the interest of candor, I've decided in favor of full disclosure here on my blog. (I still hate that word.) Here follows a selection of the sediment from my facebook filter.

"Headed to the bathroom. Any book suggestions?"

"I love rice. rice rice rice."

"I want to live, I want to give, I've been a miner for a heart of gold."

"Sometimes I look at cheese and think, moldy milk. And then I want to throw up."

"I'm glad God invented basketball."

"You know I love you (P. Y. T.) pretty young thing."

"I feel like a steamy pile of horse caca steeped in horseradish sauce and sauerkraut juice."

"Send me on my way."

"I wanna be the King of Spain."

"I think the writers of House are full of malarkey."

"The word malarkey is used far too infrequently."

"Charles Barkley is full of malark...ley. nope."

Ok those last two are recent creations, but there you are, a cross-sectional view of the inner thoughts of an ill Samuel James Dunn, Esq. ranging from inane to musical plagiarism to excessive information. What does a view from the filter tell you about who I am?

The Chalk Circle

2011-03-03T21:03:00.009-07:00

So we've all heard the infamous chalk circle quote by Karl G. Maeser. Well I've recently had an experience that made me reevaluate where I stand on the issue and whether it needs to be strictly adhered to at all times. I know I sound like a heretic in questioning the immortal words of Karl G., but the conundrum which I now present is one that I can't answer easily.

Let's set the scene:

Tuesday evening. I had just gotten out of class which was directly preceded by 6 hours of work. I hadn't had time to eat breakfast and I'd forgotten to bring a lunch to work so it was 5:00 pm and all I'd eaten was a stale granola bar that I had in my locker at work and an apple that Marlee was kind enough to give me. That said, I was leaving class famished. As I thought about what food I might eat in the 30 minutes I had before I had to go back to work for another 4 hours I was hit with a sudden stroke of inspiration: It's Tuesday! Taco Tuesday. 3 tacos for $1.

With renewed enthusiasm for life I walked home, hopped in my car, and headed off to that taco haven Del Taco. (quick side note, I'm currently typing this post while studying in the library. Some dude is walking around whistling The Final Countdown. It's making me happy. now back to the action.) I was hungry. Really hungry. When I got to Del Taco I decided that no fewer than 15 tacos would suffice. By the time I got my tacos, though, I probably only had 10 minutes before I needed to be in my uniform and guarding art. I jumped in my car and began to consume while en route to the MOA. In the 3-4 minutes it took for me to drive to the MOA I downed 6 tacos and was going strong. As I changed my clothes I managed to pound another 4, but after 10 tacos in under 7 minutes I was starting to feel the dull, aching burden of all that fake cheese, old lettuce and grease-ridden fast food style hamburger meat. During the walk from the changing room to the control room I put away two more, but I'd lost quite a bit of steam by this point and I was contemplating leaving the last three for later. My stomach grumbled as though agreeing with that course of action. As I walked into the control room I was met by Kiana who was getting off of work. She saw the Del Taco bag and asked me what was for dinner. I told her that I'd bought 15 tacos but currently only had 3 left. She could see from the way I was walking that I was really feeling the effects of the 12 I'd already put away and so she had the audacity to tell me that there's no way I'd be able to finish off the last three before going out to the galleries. At this point I had maybe 2 minutes before I needed to be on the floor. Well, I've never been one to back down to a challenge when it comes to food consumption, so I blocked her from exiting the room and I proceeded to force down the last three tacos. Flushed with victory and with a glow about me, probably the light reflecting off of smeared taco grease on my face, I bowed Kiana out of the room and proceeded along my merry way...with one slight hiccup: I was not feeling merry. The tacos sat uneasily in my stomach and at the thought of my first position, the Jones-Boshard Gallery, I despaired a little.

In the Jones-Boshard gallery there is currently an exhibit of Dorothea Lange's photography entitled Three Mormon Towns. Just so we're on the same page here, Dorothea Lange took this photo that you all know. It's actually quite a nice exhibit. Several of the photographs in the exhibit are on loan to the MOA from the J. Paul Getty Museum who, as a part of the contract that they drew up outlining the conditions for the loan, demand that there be a security guard in the exhibit with their photographs at all times during operating hours. Which, in honor circle speak, means that the Getty has drawn a chalk line in front of the two entrances to the Three Mormon Towns exhibit and has had the MOA give their word of honor that no security guard will cross those lines unless there is another guard already in the exhibit.

Back to me in the control room. I was really regretting my decision to consume 15 tacos, but the time for concern was past because I was up. I grabbed a radio and a set of keys and headed off to Three Mormon Towns. I replaced Dusty, who upon being replaced all but ran to the bathroom, and began my circuit of the gallery. Unfortunately, the act of walking around disturbed the greasy mixture that was struggling to live peaceably with my stomach juices and I immediately felt ill. Thankfully there weren't any patrons in the gallery so I sat down to consider my miserable existence. As I was sitting down I began to wonder: what do I do if I have to puke?

I could feel the spit in my mouth beginning to pool, a tell-tale sign if ever there was one of an impending flow. My mind, quick as lightning began to consider the options. My first inclination was, of course, to just run to the nearest garbage can and expel the offending substance there. Looking wildly around the gallery I realized with further despair that there was no can. Enter Circle of Honor conundrum.

Now what? I was bound by honor, both mine and that of the MOA as a whole, to stay where I was and not cross the chalk line. Karl G. said that he would rather die than cross the chalk line. Would dying be better or worse than spewing 15 half-digested fast food tacos mixed with a sprinkling of stomach fluids across an exhibit of fine art? I didn't know. I considered the mission statement of the MOA:

“The Museum of Art is a place where the heart and mind are brought together to seek knowledge and values, self affirmation and spiritual understanding.”

“We hope your experience in the Museum will nurture a more reflective mind, a capacity for deeper inquiry, a stronger commitment to excellence and integrity, and heightened appreciation for others and their ideas.”

Now there ain't no way any of that is happening if there's a pile of puke in the gallery, let alone a security guard of all people adding to the pile. So naturally I did as I'd been taught since I was a child and asked, "What would Jesus do?" (You have no idea how tempted I was to write What would Jimmer do, but I felt that that crossed the line into the realm of sacrilege and so I made it a parenthetical note instead. That makes it okay right?) In thinking about this as a theological question I recalled 1 Nephi 4: 37 which, in recounting how Nephi and his brothers were set at ease concerning Zoram, says, "And it came to pass that when Zoram had made an oath unto us, our fears did cease concerning him." They trusted Zoram's oath so completely that their fears ceased. They ceased. Completely. Was my honor such that it could set Nephi's fears aside so completely? I would like to think so.

As I decided that I'd do the honorable thing and stay in the gallery, I began to look around for the most out of the way, discreet place to puke...that is if such a place can exist. I decided under the desk was probably the best place because, while nothing could be done about the stench, at least it would block visibility somewhat. It wasn't a pleasant thought, but it was the best I could come up with. Grimly resolved to do what I had to do, I glanced towards the entrance and saw a happy young family, complete with 4 kids under the age of 8, walk in.

My despair turned to exasperation as I looked at the father and realized it was one of my favorite professors that I've had here at BYU. He was playing the part of a good dad in bringing his family to the MOA. This threw my mind awhirl once again. It's one thing to vomit in a fine art museum with no one watching, but now there was an audience, an audience that knew who I was. Was I really going to puke in front of my professor and his 4 young impressionable children? Not only was there the embarrassment factor to consider, but what if his kids had just eaten and by my throwing up I started a vicious cycle that would result in the entire gallery, artworks included, being covered in vomit? What would the Getty think of my sense of honor then? I was at a loss. I had no direction as to what I should do. Honor or Decorum? Which is more important? As if 15 angry tacos weren't enough, now I had to deal with the nausea of indecision as well.

At that moment of despairing vacillation, at this the true test of my sense of honor when I was being given the chance to either prove my moral mettle or make a royal mess of everything, the need to vomit went away. I just left. Call it dumb luck, divine intervention, or whatever you will, but it went away.

While I was relieved to be spared facing the reality of the situation, the question of honor vs. decorum remained: What would I have done? What should I have done? Truly, I have no idea.

Ruminations on the Brandon Davies debacle

2011-03-02T12:16:00.005-07:00

First of all, I want to say that I agree with what Beky Beaton says on the subject.
Secondly, while this is a hit to the BYU basketball program and to the upcoming NCAA tournament hopes, I have to say that this isn't an entirely bad thing. There will always be detractors that bash on BYU and the honor code and nothing that anyone says or does will ever change their minds. But think of it this way. BYU is currently the number 3 ranked men's basketball team in the country. The play of Jimmer Fredette and the rest of the team has resulted in a veritable media maelstrom hovering over the BYU campus over the past month and a half. 4 out of 5 dentists agree that Jimmer has gotten more air time on ESPN than 99% of all professional athletes...in the course of their entire careers. (Yes that is data that has been painstakingly researched and can be backed up by 6 or 7 trusted sources.) The most respected news sources in America, from the Wall Street Journal, to USA Today, to the New York Times have been running stories on BYU and their March Madness chances. And it has all climaxed this weekend with BYU's victory over San Diego State. What I'm trying to say is this: BYU is a staple in the current American cultural conscious. They're talking about us. (Again with the ethereal they. Who are they?)
Enter the Brandon Davies debacle. (You can't help but to really feel for the kid. He's really got to be beating himself up here. Thank heavens for the doctrine of repentance.) The way I see it, this couldn't have come at a better time. BYU is now, as much as at any other time, on the forefront of public thought. So while everyone is thinking about BYU, the public is being told that BYU has willingly shot themselves in the foot with regards to postseason advancement by suspending one of the three best players on the team. And all that comes as a direct result of something called the honor code. I've found at least two different places on ESPN's website where BYU's honor code is laid out in full. People are asking themselves, "do BYU students really agree to that? more importantly to BYU athletic stars agree to that?" And behind all of it there is the underlying assumption that the Mormon church is the impetus for all of this.
I can't help but to think that some people who before had little or no interest in the church will be curious to know why 30,000+ students would willingly agree to such highly conservative and "unrealistic" ideals. They have to wonder why a school, in the midst of such success and positive press, would take such drastic action rather than just quietly brushing it under the rug or waiting until the off season to act. There have been and there surely will be those who lambaste BYU and the church for their actions, but I am just as sure that there will be a few honest seekers of truth who will take notice of this event and as such will be softened somewhat in their hearts with regards to BYU and the Mormons. As such, some time down the road when two young men knock on their doors and ask to share the message of the restored gospel, these people will more easily entreated to learning about the doctrinal foundation behind what has happened these past couple of days.
Publicity for the moral standards of the church is and always will be a good thing. While in this instance it may perhaps come at the expense of "the season that might have been," it may serve a greater good. I just hope that Davies himself uses this as a learning rather than an embittering experience so that it might serve his own greater eternal good.

The Field

2011-02-28T15:01:00.005-07:00

For my creative writing class I had to turn in an essay that deals with some aspect of my hometown. Having just recently jotted down a few memories of my childhood I decided to take a couple of those and expand them into essay form. What here follows is the result.

I think that every little boy needs a field. I’ve heard people say that every little boy needs a dog, or a BB gun or rocketship pajamas, but I contend that if that little boy doesn’t have a field to call his own they all come to naught. Without a field those necessities are incapable of living up to their billing and the boy’s world will be nothing more than a gaping chasm of unrealized potential. As a boy I was lucky enough to have just such a field.

The field behind my house was the site of innumerable exotic adventures, historical recreations and sporting heroics the likes of which the world has never seen nor imagined. In that field I was Teddy Roosevelt as he stormed San Juan Hill and furthered the imperial ideals of America. It was back there that I along with David acquired the very knowledge about the use of a sling and stone needed in order to defeat Goliath. In that field crushed the longest home runs ever to roaring approval of my adoring fans and the jealous envy of Babe Ruth. That field played host to me, Tarzan’s son, as I became an even better vine-swinger than my father had ever dreamed of being. That field was the jungle scene where Sammy, the fearless explorer, discovered and captured with my bare hands the rare birds and other animals that made me famous as the most respected zoo keeper in the world. That field was the front lines of World War III where I, disregarding self and safety, army-crawled my way behind enemy lines, assassinated the terrifying great-grandson of Hitler, and saved America and the western world from certain destruction. It was there that I became convinced that I was destined for great things.

Though the trials and adventures I faced in that field were many and varied, and while they hold a prominent place in the formation of the man I am today, there was one particular experience in that field that stands out above the rest. And, interestingly, it was neither a daring rescue nor a sporting anomaly. It happened on a chillingly brisk afternoon in the late fall not long after Keesh, the fastest, lovingest, best dog in the history of the world, died.

First a word about Keese. Keesh was a dog. I say that in the way that people say that Steve McQeen was a man, a man who helped define in our cultural consciousness what it means to be a man. Manliness incarnate. If you look up the word “man” in a dictionary, you see a picture of Steve McQueen. If Steve McQueen, then, was a man, Keesh was a dog. He was everything a dog should be. As a small boy I spent hours chasing Keesh up and down the field. Once I’d exhausted both him and me, I would lay down with him in a heap of breathless ecstasy wondering if I'd ever be fast enough to keep up with him. I dreamed of being an Olympic-caliber runner who used the unorthodox training method of chasing my dog Keesh. It would be a world-wide breakthrough in running training and strategy. Other times I would ask Mom if it was okay if I tried to ride him. The answer was always no, but that didn’t stop me from trying. Pet cats came and went like Utah's seasons, but Keesh was a pillar of constancy in my young life. I could always depend on Keesh to be there. Keesh was as much a part of the family as I was. One late summer afternoon I took a bowl full of bones out to him, thrilled to see the look of excitement on his face when he saw the treat that I had for him. I found him lying motionless under the cherry tree. I realized he wasn’t going to wake up and I went back into the house to sob for hours. The world was never so dark, before or since.

As the carefree days of that summer turned to the scholastic doldrums of fall, I often found myself, while in class, daydreaming of the adventures I would have in the field when I got home. With the days growing shorter and colder, Mom wouldn’t let me stay out as long as I wanted. As such I had to make the best of the few hours of late afternoon sunlight that were afforded me. One particular afternoon in late October my sister Heather and I took a break from our regularly scheduled adventure programming and we walked over to the corner of the field where Keesh was buried. The burial site was over next to the Chinese elm tree—whose branches were filled with “those damned magpie nests”—that shaded the unused and somewhat dilapidated pig pen and the compost piles that smelled vaguely of grass clippings and chicken manure. This was the part of the field that bordered on Daryl’s pasture where he kept his cows and sheep. Daryl, the wrinkled and arthritic farmer who kept of a dead cat in his freezer, was always warning us to stay away from that part of our field because his cows might see us and get angry and jump over the fence that separated our property from his and attack us. So it was with some trepidation and full reverence that we approached the hallowed ground of Keesh’s final resting place.

Assured that the cows were far away from us, Heather and I stood there contemplating the fragility of life and the inevitability of death. We decided that Keesh needed a grave marker so we searched high and low for a sufficiently noble marker befitting a dog of Keesh’s character. We decided that a medium-sized piece of weather-worn barn wood that had fallen off of the chicken coop was perfect. We found a sharpish rock and Heather, who assured me that since her handwriting was better than mine it would better withstand the eraser of time, carved Keesh’s name into the bleached woodgrain. We placed the marker over where we guessed Keesh’s head was and, content with the homage we had paid, scrambled up onto the rail fence and sat awhile.

I sat there in my gray Member’s Only jacket next to Heather, my cheeks surely rosy from the biting wind and with a drop of snot clinging to my nose, and looked out over the world in its Bluffdale majesty. From that vantage point we could see across ours and all of our neighbors' pastures. The pasture grass, short and a dull green that in recent weeks was turning more and more brown due to the oncoming winter, stretched on seemingly forever. It was interrupted only by an occasional cow or sheep and the fences that marked property lines. The ditches were long since empty and the whole world was at peace. A flock of starlings with their complex and ever-changing formations flew by like a meticulously choreographed wind-born dance. We sat there for what seemed like hours without saying much to each other. I would say we were lost in our own thoughts, but I frankly don’t remember having any thoughts whatsoever. In that moment I simply was. It was a moment that was purely existential. In the growing dusk I was, more than at any other time in my life, in perfect harmony with everything around me. As the sun set, the sky exploded with color; pinks and oranges and yellows cast by the last rays of sunlight illuminated the few clouds in the sky. It was the most beautiful scene I’d ever witnessed. In that moment, as Mom called us in to dinner and we crawled down off of the fence, racing for home, I was happy.

The Rhetoric of Love

2011-02-26T17:02:00.008-07:00

I'm graduating from college in April with my BA in English. (The Broadway play Avenue Q discusses such an event briefly in song form. The lyrics are here if you're interested in their viewpoint on the usefulness of a BA in English.)
Graduation, of course, brings on the stress of adult life. Turns out the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" isn't rhetorical; they (who are they exactly?) actually want and claim to need an answer. Well I've decided to stave off the particular stress of answering that question straight away by staying in school. (Maybe I just took Mr. T's advice too literally as a child) As a matter of course I've applied to several graduate schools and am currently waiting to hear back from them. I have heard from Arizona State (denied) and BYU (accepted) but am still waiting for news from Iowa State, Arizona, and Penn State.
I wanna study rhetoric.
I've known that I want to study rhetoric for a while now and as a result I see tie-ins to rhetoric all over the place. I could go on about how rhetoric is all around us and we are constant subjects and practitioners of rhetoric whether we recognize it or not, but instead I just want to share recent unexpected find. Today, as I studied my scriptures, I found the Lord's injunction about effective rhetoric:
"no power or influence can or ought to be maintained [except] by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; . . . without hypocrisy, and without guile" (D&C 121:41–42; emphasis added).
The Classical (read that Greek and Roman) and neo-Classical schools of rhetoric taught many specific tricks on being persuasive and they analyzed in depth why some arguments were more persuasive than others in order to emulate them. Even today there are manuals devoted to careful and strategic crafting of rhetorically-sound language. While there is nothing inherently wrong with learning how to communicate more effectively and more persuasively, if there were I would be sinning in my desire to learn and teach rhetoric, the Lord, as per usual, taught how to practice a higher form of rhetoric. That of course is love. Genuine love and care for someone is perhaps the most effective form of persuasion that you can hope for. While he is talking specifically about how to use the priesthood effectively and righteously, the same applies to how to use rhetoric most effectively and righteously.
The ethical use of rhetoric is one of the big issues that faces rhetoric. Rhetoric, when used irresponsibly can be a powerful tool for evil. (See Hitler) In fact, the word itself has a quite negative connotation. Most people are like my roommate Chad who, when he hears the word rhetoric, says, "Damn politicians." This question of the ethicalness of rhetoric would be solved, and rhetoric would be made more effective, if carried out with love. As with most things, charity is the answer. Jesus said so.
How different the world would be if love was the underlying principle and motivation for all that we do.

Zangalewa

2011-01-24T12:50:00.003-07:00

Do you ever get a song in your head
And so you listen to it over and over again
For over an hour
And no matter how many times it plays
It just gets better and better
And even though you’re sitting outside the offices of your professors
You just want to get up and dance like a crazy person
Because you feel like if you don’t do something
You’re going to asplode?
That’s how I feel right now.

early morning ramblings about childhood memories

2011-01-13T01:28:00.006-07:00

I'm currently getting over a cold and my incessant cough is preventing me from sleeping. I'm not sure why, but I've gotten to thinking about memories of my childhood at the old Bluffdale house. Since I've got nothing else to do I've decided to jot a few of them down.

There was the rotten tomato fight that David and I got into when I was at most 6 or 7 and he was 18 or 19. Of course after the smoke cleared I was drenched in smelly red liquid and he just had a few spots of tomato juice on his clothes...probably ricochets from tomatoes he'd hit me with. I was just happy to have played with David.

There were the endless hours spent with Heather and others in the Chinese Elm tree over by the pig pen and the compost pile. There was the time in the tree when Heather got so mad because of something Tawni had done that she broke off Tawni's favorite branch and threw it away. Or the time we finally got up the guts to cross over the long branch that went from the branches where we'd sit to the trunk over by the pig pen. There was that one particular branch that I thought was so comfortable that I used to try to go to sleep while sitting on it. I even took a picture of Heather while she was in that tree that took me through three levels of the Reflections contest. That was the best climbing tree in the world.

There were the times that we would go sit on the rail fence outside of Daryl's pig pens and watch him feed the pigs. He would come over and talk to us and I would be fascinated by the brass bracelet he wore and the worm holes in the wood of the fence I was sitting on. Daryl would tell us about the pigs, offer to give us the brand new rabbits that had just been born, warn us to stay away from the fence that separated his pasture from ours so as to not get his cow angry, and maybe show us the dead cat in his freezer. Coolest old man in the world.

There were the hours spent chasing Keesh up and down the field wondering if I'd ever be fast enough to keep up with him. I used to ask Mom if it was okay if I tried to ride him. The answer was always no. Cats came and went frequently, but Keesh, Keesh was a pillar of constancy in my young life. I could always depend on Keesh to be there. Keesh was as much a part of the family as I was; he was the fastest, lovingest, best dog the world has ever known.

Then there was the day I spent sobbing after I found Keesh motionless under the cherry tree. The world was never so dark.

There was the day I was weeding the garden when the lady reading the meters came up to me and asked what that awful smell was. When I told her I couldn't smell anything she muttered something under her breath about messed up country kids and walked off while I stood there completely nonplussed.

There were the hours spent trying to catch water skeeters out of the ditches and putting them in jars where I kept them til they died. Why did I keep them in jars? I don't know. I'd always wanted to catch a caterpillar and put it in a jar and watch it turn into a cocoon and then a butterfly. But caterpillars were hard to come by and water skeeters were plentiful. While I never said it out loud because I knew it was silly, I always secretly thought that water skeeters probably did the same thing as caterpillars but no one paid enough attention to them to find out. I was going to be the first one to discover it. Turns out they don't cocoonize themselves after all. And they definitely don't become butterflies. They just die.

There was the time I was playing basketball in the driveway and some random person parked their car outside of the Jones' house and just sat there; no one got out of the car for a solid 30 minutes. I imagined that in the car was an NBA scout who was friends with David Jones. The scout had come to visit, but had seen me playing basketball and couldn't help but to watch this child prodigy with the enormous glasses. I knew he saw my glasses and understood that they gave me a competitive advantage because I could see the hoop so much more clearly. I never did so many layups in a row in my life...because it was the only shot I could make with consistency.

There was the summer when I was 10 or so and I read a book about Teddy Roosevelt and the Spanish-American War and how Roosevelt stormed San Juan Hill. For the rest of the summer as I mowed the back pasture with the old yellow lawn mower (the one with tall back wheels and no self-propel feature) I would go to the bottom of the field closest to Daryl's fence and then pretend to be Teddy Roosevelt and charge up the hill, running and pushing the mower with all my might. I did it over and over and over again...until I got to the part of the field that had ground bees. I just went around that part.

There were the summer nights that I'd lay in bed and listen to the sound of the frogs coming from down on Uncle Jack's property, and I'd hear the train horn blowing in the distance, and often I'd catch the faint smell of skunk coming in through the open window.

There was the time I was walking from the chicken coops to the house with a length of PVC pipe in my hand and I got it in my head that the blue spruce tree had done me some unforgivable wrong. I rectified the wrong by beating the tree mercilessly with the pipe. The next day when I heard Dad telling Mom that something had really damaged the tree, I kept quiet, assured of my victory.

There were the times Ashley and I would play in the lilac bushes behind Grandma Turner's house. There was the one branch that we'd stand on and bounce up and down on for hours. How those bushes ever survived us I'll never know.

There was the time it snowed so much that school was canceled so Melanie and Maurianne and Heather and I all went outside and made the coolest snow tunnels and caves and other snow things in the front yard. I think David had already gone to school before the cancellation went into effect so he wasn't around, but I remember being ecstatic that Melanie and Maurianne, who were so much older and cooler than me and Heather, were outside playing with us. I brought one of my Hot Wheels cars out to play with once it all was made. Best winter day ever.

Childhood was awesome. I could probably go on like this for a while, but I think I'm gonna try to go back to bed.

lines composed on the couch at Christmas

2010-12-25T23:37:00.006-07:00

the best part of Christmas
is lounging on the couch
after everyone has gone to bed

when the house is still
and nothing breaks the silence
but the hum of the fridge

then, alone, truly alone
sitting motionless on the couch
there is peace

and chocolate.

Christmas Eve Ruminations

2010-12-24T23:41:00.006-07:00

Ever since I read Great Expectations as a teenager, Charles Dickens has been one of my favorite authors. He has a way of wording things that is just right. Sometimes he waxes a bit verbose and some of his lengthier descriptions wouldn't be harmed by a bit of editing, to be sure; but I feel like many times he speaks (writes) the language of my soul. This was further made clear to me when I had the opportunity to take a class devoted to his novels. That was a happy semester indeed. Today, Christmas Eve, as I was rereading his A Christmas Carol, as per my annual tradition, his authorial preeminence stood out to me yet again as he cut through the fluff and non-essential baggage that comes with Christmas and made clear why we celebrate the holiday and what our Christian duty is as a result of our celebration of the same; for truly there is work to do for all Christians as a result of that which we celebrate this blessed time of year.

The Book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price teaches us that God's work and purpose is "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." God exists to work in our behalf so that we might all have access to that most precious of all gifts: eternal life. He works for mankind and invites us to do the same. Dickens seems to sing the same tune as Marley's ghost, having just been told by Scrooge that he was "a good man of business," bemoans his wasted life by talking about his, and our, true business in life:

"Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!...Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!"

How often do we stop and realize what our life's "business" really ought to be focused on? In the fast-paced, money-oriented economic world in which we live, how often do we slow down to notice the plight of our fellow men? Do we truly see that we ought to work with God in helping our brothers and sisters realize their eternal potential? How often do we have opportunities to bless the lives of those around us, in even the smallest ways, and we pass on by, unaware of lost opportunities? I realize that I can speak for no one but myself, but I know that I personally can do a lot better in following the light of "that blessed Star" in doing the will of Him whom it represents.

My favorite section of the story comes as Scrooge, the ever-shrewd business man who is constantly focused on the bottom-line and on ascertaining whether any activity or event has the potential to increase his net worth, has just called his nephew a fool for going about on Merry Christmas because doing so has never done anyone any financial good. To this the nephew responds with, to me, the finest treatise on the true meaning of Christmas to be found in all of secular literature:

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say, Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

The optimism of the nephew gives hope for humanity. And, indeed, as we take time to look about us during the Christmas season we can see that there is an increase in acts of charity, in the familiar sense of the word, and people do seem to do a better job of taking notice of those "fellow-passengers to the grave." (I love that phrase) Just a week or two ago I was discussing this fact with one of my roommates and we decided that while this tendency to be more charitable and loving during the Christmas season is nice, wouldn't it be even better if that sentiment pervaded our lives year-round. As the Ghost of Christmas Present sings in the Muppets' portrayal of Dickens' classic, "It is the season of the heart, a special time of caring, the ways of love made clear. It is the season of the spirit. The message, if we hear it, is make it last all year." Scrooge himself, a redeemed man, says near the end of the story, "I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year." We need to learn to "open our shut-up hearts freely" all year long and be always ready and willing to help those around us in any way possible.

Jesus Christ's birth is the reason for our celebrations of the season. The fact of Jesus' birth, while miraculous in its own right, merely points to the purpose of his life. He lived to serve others. To help the downtrodden. To give hope to those who had none. Ultimately, with His atoning sacrifice He personally created the path that we must all take if we are to obtain to eternal life. Christmas is a celebration of Christ's triumph over death and hell. Christ's triumph gives us all hope for eternal happiness together with Him and His Father as well as with our families and loved ones. Knowledge of Christ's plan of salvation brings such incredible joy and hope. Would we not do well to be ever ready and willing to actively share that hope, "to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you"? Christ is the reason. Let's share His light with those poor homes in darkness. I feel like that is what it means to live Christmas well.

Rant

2010-12-17T03:41:00.012-07:00

I think literary theorists hate students. The feeling is mututal. Take Althusser for example:

"All ideology is centred, that the Absolute Subject occupies the unique place of the Centre, and interpellates around it the infinity of individuals into subjects in a double mirror-connexion such that it subjects the subjects to the Subject, while giving them in the Subject in which each subject can contemplate its own image (future and present) and guaratee that this really concerns them and Him."

I just read that sentence (yeah, it was just one sentence) over and over again for the last 5-10 minutes trying to glean some kind of meaning from it. I failed.

I can imagine the scene. Here's Althusser, sitting at a table late at night in a dimly-lit, underground Parisian pub (do they have pubs in France?) surrounded by his beady-eyed Marxist buddies. While brainstorming ways that he might obfuscate any possible meaning in his writings because he knew that generations of students living under a capitalist regime would attempt to study his writings, he decides that a particularly effective strategy would be to use the word "subject" as many times as possible and with as many different usages as possible in one sentence, thereby frustrating the hell out of the previously-mentioned capitalist student scum and making them pay for adhering to such an awfully incorrect economic and political ideology.

Anyway, I'd better get back to estudying. I just needed to vent about how much I hate theory and how much I'm not going to miss these ivory tower scumbags and their overly narcissistic and often atheistic views of the world. I think that every time a theorist dies, Lucifer gleefully stokes the flames of purgatory in anticipation of said theorist's arrival. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Extremely Loud

2010-12-15T01:58:00.005-07:00

I'm not talking about how I like to listen to Battle Without Honor Or Humanity as loud as I can when walking across campus while pausing and stepping dramatically at all the right times to match the score...but I do that too. I'm talking about the first in a series of two phrases that makes up the title of one of my favorite books. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. This is one of the three books that I recommend when requested for a recommendation. (The other two are My Name Is Asher Lev and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society). I wouldn't say they are my absolute favorite three books (they've gotta fight with Dickens and Twain to make that list), but they certainly are up there. I think that they are three books that everybody can relate to and from whose pages everyone can glean valuable insight about life. Coincidentally two of them were written by Jews. If I weren't Mormon I think I'd be Jewish. But I digress.

I recently lent my copy of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close to a friend. She finished it and she brought it back last week. Having it in my hands once again I flipped through it, remembering some of my favorite parts.

Do you ever have that experience where there's some aspect of your life that you struggle to wrap your head around for a long time and never can quite get the hang of--something that every time you try to explain it to someone, or write about it yourself, you just get frustrated at your inability to bend the language to your will and accurately describe what you're feeling? And then you read some book that you've heard is a decent read, and you find that some author, someone you have never met and don't know from Adam, has taken a good long look into your soul and phrased that ambiguous something perfectly?

For some reason when this happens to me I experience equal parts euphoria and rage. I always imagine it to be a faceless bohemian author sitting at a street cafe in Europe. He's just jotting down these little nuggets of literary gold on a napkin as if it were some little ditty that he can't get out of his head. He does it so quickly and so simply that it would seem as if the turn of phrase that he's just composed, and that I've been searching for endlessly, was a commonly held piece of knowledge and that he was merely transcribing it from the great ethereal nothingness as easy as tying his shoe. How does he do it? It's infuriating. But at the same time it's comforting to know that there are people out there that do this. But, again, I've digressed.

Back to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. There's a section of this book that made me experience what I've just described. I'd forgotten it until this weekend, but thankfully Foer, through the voice of a remarkable little boy named Oskar, brought it back.

Here 'tis:

"What if the water that came out of the shower was treated with a chemical that responded to a combination of things, like your heart beat, and your body temperature, and your brain waves, so that your skin changed color according to your mood?...Everyone could know what everyone else felt, and we could be more careful with each other, because you'd never want to tell a person whose skin was purple that you're angry at her for being late, just like you would want to pat a pink person on the back and tell him, 'Congratulations!' ...there are so many times when you know you're feeling a lot of something, but you don't know what the something is. Am I frustrated? Am I actually just panicky? And that confusion changes your mood, it becomes your mood, and you become a confused, gray person. But with the special water, you could look at your orange hands and think, I'm happy! That whole time I was actually happy! What a relief!"

I'd try to elaborate on this one but I can't. I'd fall short and in doing so would just muddy the waters. Suffice it to say, I've been there. I know what he's saying.

Sometimes I want that water.

My Life Through the Lens of Calvin and Hobbes

2010-12-11T15:34:00.005-07:00

Reasons Why Special Collections is the Best Place to Study

2010-12-10T15:21:00.012-07:00

1) The chairs around the tables have arm rests.
2) There are cool looking old books all over the place.
3) There are cool looking old people all over the place.
4) There are sculptures and other cool art works all over the place.
5) I'm studying next to a griffin.
6) There's a grandfather clock in the corner that chimes ever 15 minutes.
7) This quote is sitting on the table, "Reading makes immigrants of us all -- it takes us away from home, but more important, if finds homes for us everywhere." - Hazel Rochman.
8) The kid sitting at the table next door has a cell phone that keeps making noises that make me feel like I'm in an early 90s video game.
9) Airplane mode for the cell phone. Which of course means airplane mode for Sam. Airplane mode for Sam means I pretend I'm a little boy laying on my stomach on the swings who is pretending to fly an airplane. Airplane mode makes life more exciting. Especially when Maggie shakes the table to simulate turbulence.

pressing questions that have arisen as I've been writing (procrastinating) a term paper

2010-12-08T12:55:00.003-07:00

How do we know that elephants never forget?
How do we know that elephants are afraid of mice?
Who is doing these fascinating elephant studies?
How did this researcher get his or her findings to take such a prominent place in collective American knowledge?
Why is it so hard to focus on writing a term paper even though it is due tomorrow and I'm still far from the finish line?

Sleeping

2010-12-03T01:23:00.003-07:00

I just woke up. It's 1:23 am. I'm in the library. I know it's time to come home from the library when I get to that point where, if I were home on the couch I'd just nestle in and be done for the night. I would totally climb up on this table right now, shut my eyes again and sleep on the 5th floor all night if they would let me. But they won't...Just fell asleep again. Now it's 1:43 am. I'm going home. I don't wanna go to class tomorrow.

Alarm Clocks

2010-12-01T11:00:00.005-07:00

Last night I set the alarm on my phone for 7:08 AM, 7:15 AM, and 7:39 AM. I set three alarms for a reason. The first alarm is just a warning. It's saying, "alright Sam, you're gonna be gettin up soon." The second alarm is the real sign for me to throw back the covers and grace the new morning with my presence. The third alarm is a safety net in case alarms 1 and 2 fail. If I'm up by 7:40 AM, I still have time to get up, dress, brush my teeth and be to class on time. All of this careful preparation is done with the intention of waking up in time for my 8:00 AM class on American literary modernism. Even though this has become a bit of a bored routine, I was actually really excited to go to class this morning for several reasons: 1) I had actually completed all of the reading, 2) I had found the reading fascinating, and 3) I really enjoy this class, as much for the professor teaching it as for the subject material.
So this morning at 7:08 in the AM the dulcet tones of Dave Brubeck's Take Five gently roused me from sleep. As I woke up I ran my daily diagnostic analysis and decided I wasn't hungry. Thus I made the decision to skip breakfast in order to enjoy a few extra minutes of sweet repose. So I grabbed my phone reset alarm 2 from 7:15 AM to 7:23 AM and nestled back into the comfort my pillow and blanket. I instantly fell back asleep assured that my phone would do its duty and bring me back 'round at the appropriate hour. But my phone betrayed me.
I don't know what I'd done to offend it. Maybe considering I've allowed it to die a time or two it had so hardened its affections towards me that it felt the need to exact revenge. Maybe it's seen me giving more attention to other electronic devices such as my laptop and ipod and it's gotten jealous. Maybe it was tired of me taking it for granted and sleeping through its daily reminders to wake up. Or maybe 8 human months equates adolescence in phone years and it's just going through a rebellious phase. Whatever the case may be, it decided not to carry out its assignments with regards to alarms 2 and 3, and I slept on unperturbed.
A while later I came out of deep sleep into semi-consciousness with the thought, "Man this has been a long 15 min." I blindly reached for my phone and my sleepy eyes struggled to focus on the leering face of this self-important Benedict Arnold. As the blurs merged into one, I read 8:02 AM and immediately jumped out of bed, adrenalin coursing through my body. Thinking a series of unmentionable evils towards the world of electronics in general, I pulled on my pants and shoes, grabbed a notebook and a pen and raced to class, arriving at 8:10 AM.
Later during class, as I sat with my classmates discussing Richard Wright's visit to Indonesia, I pulled my phone out and looked at it. How could it have betrayed me? How had I missed the warning signs that our relationship had grown cold? What might I have done to prevent this travesty? More importantly, was the trust gone forever? Would I ever be able to sleep well at night knowing that such an occurrence might repeat itself? I reviewed the alarm settings in despair and was inspired to vow two things: 1) I will never again take for granted a properly functioning alarm clock. 2) I will always make sure alarms 2 and 3 are, in fact, set to AM and not PM.

On Being Old and Reading all the Time.

2010-11-08T11:24:00.003-07:00

Sometimes I want to fast forward to this stage of life.

Sonograms and Love Jones

2010-10-06T23:11:00.003-06:00

So recently I've been thinking about the different personal filters that people employ when deciding which aspects of their life they deem appropriate for posting on social networking sites like facebook and twitter. I don't believe that there are any hard and fast rules about this, and more often than not I can jive with pretty much anything, but there are times when I read things that make it through the filter and can't help but to marvel.
The example that most recently brought up this question: "Just got back from my first sonogram. No baby yet." I just want to go up to this girl who had a love jones for my freshman year roommate and ask her why she thought sharing that information was a good idea. Does she realize the many implications of what she is saying? The undesired insights into her life to which we are now privy?
...I could go to greater lengths about the different ways in which this phrase could be understood, and I had originally intended to discuss the subject of the need of stricter filters at greater length, but something else has caught my attention. I just decided that this post would do better to be dedicated to talking about the phrase "love jones." Rather than explaining this phenomenon myself, I'll let "The Brighter Side of Darkness" do it for me. Take it away gentlemen.

Can we please bring back Soul Train?

Belated Father's Day Musings

2010-09-30T19:53:00.004-06:00

So I haven't blogged for a while. I decided today that I would, so I sat down to my computer and pulled up my blog. Now while I haven't actually posted anything, there have been several times when I've jotted down a few thoughts. I decided that I'd look over old unpublished blog entries for a creative spark. There I found this post that was completely finished, but which for some reason I'd never posted. It seems all the more appropriate that I post it now since my parents recently celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary. So here it is, my thoughts about my parents written about 3 1/2 months ago.

Yesterday was Father's Day. Maybe it's the curse of being an English Major but I feel like I am much more capable at expressing myself through the written word as opposed to the spoken. Such being the case I feel like today, as was the case with Mother's Day a few weeks ago, I didn't adequately express the love and gratitude that I have for my parents. I am therefore going to do my best to do so right now.
I have the best parents in the world. I know that that kind of thing gets said a lot, and I know that it all comes down to how you define the word best. I'm not trying to discount the greatness of anyone else's parents, but I guess what I'm saying is I have the best parents in the world, for me. They have taught and continue to teach me some of life's greatest lessons, and they usually do it with seemingly innocuous actions and words rather than well-rehearsed sermons or carefully crafted set-ups. Their their daily walk and talk is all it takes.
I'll give an example from the recent past. A little under a month ago Mom and Dad and Maurianne and I were making the annual Memorial Day trek up to Bear Lake, Idaho to decorate the graves of our Dunn family members. While on the way back we stopped in Montpelier to fill up on gas. Mom filled up the car's tank while Dad, Maurie and myself emptied our own. We all piled back into the car and headed on out of town, past Ovid and up Emigration Canyon. As we got to about the summit of the canyon, a good 45 minutes to an hour outside of Montpelier, Mom exclaimed that she hadn't paid for the gas and that we had left without paying for it. My immediate reaction was first to think, "well, we made it this far without anyone realizing, might as well continue on." Then, realizing that such a course of action would be dishonest I thought, "maybe we could stop at the next Chevron down the road and pay for it there." Dad, however, had a different idea. Without saying a word he pulled the car over and began to turn around. There wasn't a second's hesitation. A debt was owed and it would was to be paid, as soon as humanly possible, to the wronged party. I could tell that he wasn't thinking things over like I was. He didn't have to. The reaction was immediate. Personal integrity was being called into question, and I could see that, for Dad, integrity wasn't in fact a question, it was a way of life. Whereas I was personally hemming and hawing, Mom and Dad acted immediately to right the wrong. The course of action was clear and unanimous; we were headed back to Montpelier. Upon turning around Mom remembered that she had in fact paid for the gas and that all was indeed well. So we pulled back onto the road and continued onward. While everyone acted as though nothing significant had happened, I learned a great lesson that day. I came to a better understanding of the fact that my parents do indeed live by Shakespeare's words, delivered via Julius Caesar, which say, "I love the name of honour more than I fear death." They do. I, apparently, would do well to make improvements in that area.
This is just one example of the many that might be given of times when Mom and Dad, unbeknownst to them, have taught, through the way they live their lives, the characteristics of a life well lived. I'm positive that anyone who has interacted with either of them to any extent has stories to share about a lesson learned from them.
Mom and Dad have always been supportive of me and the things that I decide to do in my life, even if such decisions include choosing to be a major which, as we all know, at very best leads to life under a freeway overpass with naught but limp and somewhat damp refrigerator box as shelter. When I make stupid mistakes they're there to help me figure out ways to right the ship. When I dress or act in ways that would embarrass a large majority of the human population, they might shake their heads with a bit of disapproval, but I always know that their love is undiminished.

Mom and Dad, I may not say it enough, but I love you. Thank you for all that you do and are.

3:35 a.m.

2010-04-13T02:44:00.007-06:00

In David's words, as written upon my facebook wall, it is the Devil's own hour. I'm not exactly sure what that means but it fills me with a feeling of hopeless abandon and dread. I don't plan to sleep tonight. I didn't sleep much last night. I don't know when sleep became an option rather than a requirement, but I'm rather put-off by its demotion to such a status. I love to sleep. I do so every chance I get irregardless of location. (yes I intentionally used that word widely regarded as a heinous abomination to the English language. It is after 3 am after all)
My objective tonight is to finish a paper on the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and Nuyorican Poetry in general as well as write a 4 page personal statement intended for a graduate school admissions board. These are interesting subjects to be sure, but I'll be glad when this is all over and I can sleep. Which sleep will allow me to dream the sweet dreams of a man unburdened of scholastic care. Were it not for Powerade and Cheetos I'd be a lost cause right now.
Sometimes I try to envision myself in the future looking back on these sleepless nights. I can't help but to think I'll look back on them fondly as a formative part of my past. Perhaps I'll look back at them and laugh at my folly for being such a prodigious procrastinator.
My late-night counterpart Jordan just gave up and went to bed, intent on awakening early to finish up the last of his paper. I'm just going to power on through and finish up as best I can.
Woot.

Contents of my backpack. April 5, 2010; 11:24 a.m.

2010-04-05T11:23:00.003-06:00

What I have:
1 toothbrush
1 pair of binoculars
1 handful of pecans
1 Spanish Hymnbook
2 books of Nuyorican poetry
1 USB Drive
4 trapper keeper folders
1 legal pad
1 Daily Uni-farce
1 Indesign install cd
1 pamphlet entitled "Foreign Policy Challenges Facing the Obama Administration"
3 peanut M&Ms
1 Brochure for Aspen Therapy
2 pairs of dirty clothes

What I need:
1 pen OR
1 highlighter

I feel like I belong in an Alanis Morissette song or something.

Things I've learned through the first month of the semester

2010-02-04T09:06:00.000-07:00

1. Grammar is cool and interesting. I subscribe to the e e cummings school of thought when it comes to grammar; it can be used however you darn well please. However, the study of grammar in a rhetorical setting is fascinating. Grammar is an integral part to making your argument clearly and effectively.
2. There is little that is as relaxing and thought-clearing as going to a beat-up basketball court by the train tracks and shooting around for an hour or so. This is best achieved after 9:00 PM but can be beneficial during daylight hours as well.
3. Chicano is derogatory, Latino is better, but hyphen-American is best. (I dislike this one. I think we should all consider ourselves as one cohesive unit of Americans without any title or distinction based on race. Lamentably such is the status quo.)
4. The illegal immigration debate isn't as black and white as I'd once thought.
5. Eva Cassidy has joined Ella Fitzgerald, Norah Jones, Diana Krall and Enya (yes Enya) in the ranks of women with dreamy voices.
6. Audrey Hepburn is the American dream woman. (I already knew this one, but it has hit home with greater force of late.)
7. The Law of Consecration is difficult and we often don't live up to its standards as well as we're capable.
8. The planting of tulip and hyacinth bulbs, while best to be taken care of in the fall, is an extremely enjoyable task when undertaken surreptitiously in the dead of night in snow covered dirt.
9. Banana chairs rock my world.
10. Despite having hundreds of pages of homework reading to do, one can always find time to read for personal enjoyment. Even if it's just flipping through seed catalogs whilst on the commode.
11. People like my hair long. I do sometimes, but I'm getting the urge to cut it super short, like a dog shedding its winter coat.
12. Being the activities committee co-chair isn't actually so bad.
13. It is not actually possible to suck your own eyes out of your head using only your hands and your mouth. (No this was not learned by experience)
14. Fresh foods taste better than canned and packaged ones.
14a. There is such a thing as too much macaroni and cheese, which thing I never had supposed.
15. I still dream in Spanish.
16. Seeing tulips and daffodils poking their little heads out of the ground brings hope and joy difficult to equal.

The Witch Is Not To Be Blamed

2010-01-29T11:07:00.004-07:00

So for my Rhetoric of Grammar class read a piece by the Ancient Greek sophist Gorgias in which he defended Helen (of Troy) and claimed that she wasn't at all to blame for the bad things that she is usually associated with. Well my Professor assigned us to try and copy his style, in all of its florid grandeur, to do the same with a persona of our choosing. The person we were to defend was supposed to be someone who is traditionally looked down upon for some seemingly unforgivable crime or flaw. My classmates all chose actual figures from history or pop culture such as Britney Spears, Napoleon, and Michael Jackson. I took a somewhat different route, I chose to defend the witch from Grimm's Hansel and Gretel. Here follows a copy of that defense. (Bear in mind this was written late at night/early in the morning and, at some points, lacks clarity. I apologize for this.)...(Also I realize some of the rhetorical tropes such as alliteration are very over top. Such was Gorgias' style.)

Encomium of the Witch from Grimm’s Hansel and Gretel

Prooemion

[1] Perhaps the clearest of all evils that we have been taught to avoid is the old woman living alone in the woods. These old women have, western cultural and artistic expression, been treated with a harshness that is hardly deserved. From Aesop to Anderson, Mother Goose to Grimm, Disney to Dreamworks these poor women, who merely strive to live their lives as best they know, are vilified and demonized, denigrated and victimized time and again. Ultimately they are denounced, denunciated and damned to the life (if they are lucky) or death (if they are luckier) of those unlucky enough to be labeled with that most hideous title, witch. While many share this sad fate, the kindly old grandmotherly “witch” from Grimm’s Hansel and Gretel stands out for the unfair denouncement she receives at the hands of society in being labeled a witch and being forced to suffer the consequences thereof, namely death by fire. My wish with this piece, though I have but little time to bring this wish to full fruition, is to set forth the innocence of Grimm’s witch with respect to the charge of maliciously cooking and eating children and show her to be as free from guilt as the innocents she purports to have born ill will.

Narration

[2] We know not anything about this witch. Her hopes, her fears, that which she enjoys and that which brings her tears all remain a mystery to us. We but know the overly biased and propagandistic viewpoint perpetuated unashamedly by the fairy tale teller. We know only that she lives in a home constructed of all the good foods that could possibly be imagined, she has, in the past, been known to consume children, and that she has threatened to do the same with Hansel and Gretel. But as for her character, the woman inside, she could have been anyone. We can’t know with certainty who she is. However, in Grimm’s writing there is still evidence enough to exonerate the witch, and show that she deserved not the fiery end to which she was condemned. While her actions are known well the world around, it is the motives driving her actions that tell the true story. While motives can only be inferred, there is evidence of those motives, which I will present, that prove conclusively that she is worthy of vindication.

Proposition

[3] The eating of children is a heinous offense which is not easily overlooked, but the witch of the tale cannot be held responsible without first accounting for her circumstances and motives. Whether it was result of the economic hard time, that she was aged far past her prime, or that she had a fantastic recipe featuring children and a hint of thyme, clearly, she was not guilty of any crime.

Proof

[4] Hard times bring out the savage inner beast in all of mankind. When food is scarce and the little that there is doesn’t come close to making it all the way around the table, the world, as with one common consent, divides up into two parties, the strong and the weak. The strong make a show of looking out for the weak, but in the end, the weak fall victim to the strong. It’s survival of the fittest. Lamentable though the fact may be, children are not the fittest and often do not survive. Hansel and Gretel had been abandoned to the mercy of the barbarian beasts of the forest by their parents. The children, having little chance of survival, were actually shown mercy by the old witch, for she adopted these young abandoned and gave them all they could eat. It matters not that she was just taking care that that fresh "meat" not go to waste. In such hungry times, she could hardly be blamed. In the end, the witch was merely doing that which was necessary for her to ensure her place among the fittest. She is far from the first to take to this course of action. The Jews during the Roman’s siege of Jerusalem resorted to a resembling course of action. The Irish were instigated to the same by Swift. If, then, the witch was but ensuring prolongation of her life, and in doing so following a previously established pattern for life in hard times, she must surely be acquitted of these supposed crimes.

[5] But if it was age that had driven the witch to be a bit touched in the head, she surely should not be shamed by facing the fate of a fiend blessed with all Earthly faculties. We dedicate great buildings and give much monetary support to institutions that immure the elderly so as to prevent them from being a danger to themselves and the community. If the witch was such a hazard to children, why was she left on her own? Clearly, then, the fault for the near death by baking of Hansel and Gretel lies directly with the witch’s own children. They faulted in allowing her to live alone and on her own at such an advanced age. Therefore, if unaware of what she’d done due to an aged lack of rational thought, the witch’s guilt ought clearly be set at naught.

[6] But the blame may reside in the fact that the witch owned a particularly tasty recipe for baked children. If this be true, then fault for her homicidally cannibalistic tendencies is surely not her own, but nature’s, for making her subject to her own appetites. While the capable cook is a tender young child’s best friend, a tender young child is a capable cook’s main course. A good dish is, in the best of times, hard to pass up. Passing up a great one, at times such as these, would be nigh unto impossible, especially if the main ingredient happened to wander to your house and take up residence with little to no persuasion.

Epilogue

[7] Clearly the Grimm’s witch of Hansel and Gretel fame has been undeservedly on the receiving end of much bad press. I have shown unequivocally that she was not at fault for her misdeeds. I have achieved what I set out to do and derive much pleasure in having done so.

Social Stigmas and Fruit Snacks

2010-01-08T21:24:00.006-07:00

Last year around this time I often joked that I was going to give up social inhibitions for Lent. This came about because our culture deems unacceptable many activities with no obvious rational. Take skipping for example. Skipping is an activity that is considered thoroughly unmasculine and unacceptable for anyone over the age of 8. The only exception being if you find yourself in a field with daisies stretching out as far as the eye can see with a rainbow overhead and a jovial-faced sun looking on with a twinkle in its eye. I disagree with this social stigma. Anyone who has actually ever used skipping as a means of getting from here to there will tell you that it is quite physically demanding once you get past the first 7 or 8 skips. While on the topic of skipping I'd like to take this opportunity to challenge any and all interested to a skip race. Just know that I will dominate you. Skipping is just an example of many societal stigmas that are completely unfounded. While there are some such unjustified social norms, there are others that are, in fact, well-founded and are completely understandable. I submit the screaming of obscenities in public as an example. However, there is yet another category of social faux pas, those that aren't quite unacceptable, but not quite justifiable. I was recently brought face to face with one such enigma.This social stigma is one whose rationale I understand, but I'm not quite sure I accept as valid.
The societal standard in question? One must not eat food off of the ground.
To better understand the following events it must be understood that I, Samuel James Dunn, Esq., love fruit snacks. No matter the flavor, the brand, or the form they take I love them all. If ever I decide to treat myself and buy a box of fruit snack pouches, there is little chance of their lasting more than 48 hours. With that in mind, I present the following situation.
It was Monday afternoon. I had gotten up early that morning to go running before I had to be at work at 7:30 am. Having somewhat mismanaged my time in the morning I didn't eat breakfast nor pack a lunch for myself before leaving. (I was distracted by watching three of my roommates do P90X, two of whom nearly threw up from the physical exertion required of them. With some shame I admit that I found the situation somewhat humorous.) What with working for two hours, class for three hours and having returned again to work it was 3:00 pm and I had eaten naught but an apple that day. I guess what I'm trying to say is I was hungry. Quite hungry. As I was making my rounds through the art galleries, watching closely for anything out of place, my eyes lit upon a small green object on the ground up ahead. As I got closer my eyes grew larger as I saw what it was. It was a fruit snack. A small green candified portrayal of Goofy's face. It being a part of our job to pick up that which has been carelessly strewn aside by patrons I bent down to retrieve the offending object with the intent of tossing it in the rubbish bin. But as I held it in my hand and I gazed down at it, my stomach churned quietly and my famished condition was brought sharply to my recollection. I turned the fruit snack over in my hand and saw that it was clean and free from any obvious evidence of previous attempted consumption. However, as I was about to pop it in my mouth and think nothing more of it I remembered the famed 10 second rule and the fact that I had no idea how long that fruit snack had been sitting there on the gallery floor. As I thought about this, I thought about the numerous conversations I've had over the years about the validity of that same rule. I pondered the various health "risks" that might be associated with consuming this fruity piece of heaven. I decided to take it up to the info desk and ascertain my co-workers' thoughts on the subject. Kaitie was vehemently opposed to my eating it while Garrett was ambivalent and thought it'd be funny if I did. So basically they canceled each other out and I was left to decide for myself. I struggled with this dilemma for a couple of seconds and decided that the pleasure and satisfaction that is derived from eating fruit snacks far outweighed any possible risks. And I ate it.
Now before you go off judging and condemning me for this action I ask you to consider the following. I found the fruit snack in front of two different paintings of Christ, I have been vaccinated against the swine, and it was delicious. Was I in the wrong? Frankly my dear....you know the rest.

Thanksgiving

2009-11-24T12:10:00.003-07:00

I love holidays. Especially THE holidays. But lately I've noticed more and more that people don't recognize holidays for the purpose intended. Memorial Day is seen by most as a day that we're given off so that we can have a barbeque. Easter is a day for eating chocolate and hunting for eggs. Christmas is a day that a fat man breaks into our homes and leaves toys. I realize that these are hyperbolic generalizations and many people do remember the source of these holidays, but I feel like Thanksgiving is one that's source really isn't remembered. Yes we remember the Pilgrims coming to town and getting together for a big feast with the Indians to celebrate the first harvest, but that isn't the source that I'm after. If that were the source it be would be called Feast Day or Pilgrim Day or something similar. In today's society we make the mistake of calling it Turkey Day altogether too often. But that isn't the name of the holiday. It's name is Thanksgiving.
Let's take a look at the word thanksgiving and break it down. Thanks and giving. The giving of thanks. Thankfulness is important and often people get together and express gratitude. But expressing gratitude and giving thanks are different. The verb to express differs from to give. One can express things alone, to a wall, and the action is complete, but in order to give something there has to be another party involved. So the question is, to whom do we give our thanks? The turkey? Unfortunately the poor bird is lifelessly incapable of the reception of such. I think it is clear what I'm getting at. There is but one source from which all blessings in our lives flow. There is but one fount of all the things in our lives for which we can be grateful. Do we sufficiently think to give Him thanks? Even if we say thankyou is saying it enough? I don't think so.
The holiday which we celebrate this week incites us to give thanks. In Spanish the name of this holiday is Día de Acción de Gracias. The Day of the Action of Thanks. I like that. Thanks as an action, thanks as something that is acted out is a way of thinking about this holiday that I think needs to be more prevalent. So how is this done? How do we, through our actions, give thanks to the Lord? There are many answers to this question. I have a few that are pertinent to me in my life, but I think the answers can be different for everybody and that everybody needs to come to their own conclusion.
Amulek summed things up well when he said, "That ye contend no more against the Holy Ghost, but that ye receive it, and take upon you the name of Christ; that ye humble yourselves even to the dust, and worship God, in whatsoever place ye may be in, in spirit and in truth; and that ye live in thanksgiving daily, for the many mercies and blessings which he doth bestow upon you."

Starlings

2009-11-13T16:24:00.007-07:00

All throughout my life I've disliked starlings. They are loud and obnoxious birds that commit a host of sins including preying on the eggs of other smaller and prettier birds. In the formative years of my youth I heard many stories about the pestilent nature of starlings and the various efforts made to get rid of them. I think my favorite of such stories is that told of Grandpa Dunn feeding hundreds of starlings plaster of paris and the ensuing weeks filled with dead starlings as far as the eye could see. I even recall reading a small excerpt in the New Era wherein President Monson briefly discussed (without giving any doctrinal conclusion) the ethics of shooting starlings.
I personally remember many a happy afternoon spent alone in the field behind our house chasing starlings and trying to catch them. You may ask what I planned to do with them once I'd caught them, but I didn't think that far ahead. I just knew that it was absolutely necessary that they be caught. I never did succeed despite my diving lunges.
In the fall it seemed that all the starlings in the valley would congregate in Bluffdale and fly around en masse. It was always a fascinating sight to see their complex and ever-changing formations. It was almost like a dance the way they would shift completely in sync with the thousands of others all around them.
To me starlings are linked inextricably to Bluffdale and my childhood there. So while they are a vile creature, I can't help but to think of them fondly.
I recently ran across this video that glosses over the baser aspects of starlings' existence, but shows them for the beauty they are capable of creating. While I've never seen anything of this magnitude, this rekindled that begrudging fondness I have for starlings.

Baseball

2009-10-16T12:41:00.005-06:00

In the months during which I haven't posted anything here I have, several times, contemplated and even started writing posts dedicated to the great American pastime. Yes that's right, baseball. The problem I have in discussing baseball is that I'm never able to adequately portray the beauty, majesty and magic of the game through words. Though the use of words can be a mode of communication that is both powerful and delightful, I find it lacking with respect to this subject.
It being October and with the baseball postseason in full swing I've decided that a post about baseball is necessary. Due to the fact that I lack the eloquence to fully capture this staple of American culture I've decided to post a few videos that portray that which I feel about baseball.

We start off with America's team:

Next let's see what Fred from I Love Lucy has to say:

How could I post clips about baseball and leave off The Sandlot

What says baseball better than cornflakes...and Babe Ruth?

And finally we have Terrence Mann (James Earl Jones) delivering perhaps the finest treatise on baseball and its importance in America today ever written. If you watch no other clips watch this one.

"This field, this game: it's a part of our past...It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again."

ahem

2009-10-15T17:52:00.004-06:00

So I haven't posted anything for several months. Sorry about that. This one won't be too long either but I've got something that I need to get off my chest. I don't understand why people say they "may or may not" be doing something. Do they realize that they are merely wasting our time and their breath by saying absolutely nothing? I mean I realize that they are saying that they are doing whatever it is that they are doing, but why the may or may not garbage. Why not just come out and say "I'm looking to buy a house" or "I just got a certain satisfaction out of stepping on a very crunchy leaf." But no, people have to say, "I may or may not be looking to buy a house" or "I may or may not have just gotten a certain satisfaction out of stepping on a very crunchy leaf." Are people ashamed of what's happening in their lives? I always find myself asking, well did that really happen or not? And so I've decided to start using this phrase opposite its current usage and tell people that I may or may not be doing things that are absolutely ridiculous.
I may or may not be eating whole cloves of garlic right now. I may or may not have just watched a small furry animal be eaten by an alligator. I may or may not sleep on a pile of live coals every second Thursday of the month. May or may not, you decide which because I'm not going to tell you.

Tu Amor Me Hace Bien.

2009-05-06T00:47:00.007-06:00

It is well known that I often sing to myself when I am at work. Often, when I am completely absorbed in what I'm doing, someone comes up behind me and enjoys the show which I am providing free of charge. There was the famous incident the summer before my mission when I was weeding the wild strawberries south of the Student Athlete Building. As I was doing so, and singing to myself "Play That Funky Music White Boy," Bronco Mendenhall stopped behind me to enjoy my dulcet tones. How long he was there I'll never know. Once I became aware of his presence he asked me with a wry grin what the plants were that I was weeding. I told him and he continued on. For some reason I didn't learn my lesson that day, for today it happened again.
Today's incident however did not take place while I was working on the grounds crew, rather it occurred as I was roving the Museum of Art. Now usually I am very careful to not sing aloud or do any other such actions unfit for a man in uniform. I have been known, on occasion, to conduct with sweeping motions the unseen symphonies that serenade the museum from on high...the PA system. But as for singing aloud, I have, until today, managed to keep such actions to a minimum.
I'm not sure what it was that incited my behavior today. The best I can guess is that the emptiness of the museum, when mixed with the Spanish music that was running through my head all day due to it being Cinco de Mayo, caused a chemical (yes chemical) reaction within my being that inspired me to serenade the world around me.
At around three o'clock as I was on the third floor roaming the galleries that play host to the Southwest American Art exhibition, the religious art, and the American Dreams exhibit. At this time these three galleries were completely empty. As such I, having already finished the NY Times Crossword for the day, was in desperate need of something to entertain my mind while pacing the galleries. As I'm sure you've guessed, I began to sing. Not loudly by any means, just kind of a low hum that only I could hear. But as the minutes passed I began to sing more and more loudly. Now I never got to the point where I was singing full voice, but I was definitely within hearing range of anyone who happened to venture into the galleries. As I was doing this, a piece of art in the Southwest Art exhibit caught my eye and I stopped to examine it. (It was a painting of some Russians. Why it's hanging there with all the Indian portraits and desert landscapes I've yet to understand.) My distraction caused that I left the American Dreams gallery vacant for several minutes, and those several minutes were all it took.
As I revived from my Russian-peasant-painting induced torpor and continued my circuit, I struck up a lively Salsa tune that was wildly popular in Guayaquil during the Christmas of '06. As I was thus engaged serenading what might as well have been a street full of drunk Ecuadorians, I turned the corner into the American Dreams gallery, and there stood a stately older gentleman and his proper little wife beside him, beaming fervently at me. Taken aback at their unexpected presence I quickly ceased my singing. There ensued an awkward moment of silence as I looked at them, unsure of how to act, and they at me with obvious pleasure. The woman broke this silence by saying to me kindly, "You have a lovely voice. Was that Spanish?" I thanked her and replied in the affirmative. They nodded to me knowingly and continued their perusal of the art grinning broadly.
Many a lesser man may have been ashamed at this point. Now I am under no delusions of the quality of my voice. I can carry a tune and read music, but the quality of the sound produced by my lungs is average at best. Having given up social inhibitions for Lent, I suppose I've hardened myself to the point where little that I do causes me shame. I wasn't, at this moment, at all ashamed to have been caught singing, "Ay como te quiero, ay como te adoro, ay lolita linda, tu eres mi tesoro." Heart warming I know. It was my pleasure to have been the means of brightening the day of a couple of older folks out on their date night...afternoon.

Snow

2009-04-01T10:05:00.003-06:00

It being the first day of April, 2009, and my post bearing the title snow, one might think that that which here follows will be a diatribe bemoaning the wintry evidences present all around me. Honestly that was my original intent. But I've experienced somewhat of a paradigm shift with respect to the snow and the influence it has over my life right now. In talking about this new point of view I have four thoughts.
First of all, as I was walking from my American literature class to the library not 15 minutes ago, as the snow was descending gently, I couldn't help but to notice the looks of dismay and outright disgust on the faces of my classmates. They seemed to view the snow as an affront and a hinderance to their happiness. Seeing such an overwhelming preponderance of sulleness about campus I, in spite of the weather, found myself amused. What good is complaining about something over which you have no power? These people are letting something that is completely out of their control determine their outlook on today. (Insert comment here about not letting anything or anybody outside of your dominion determine who you are and how you view and live life.)
My second thought is that we, living here in the great state of Utah, are in a desert. Such being the case we don't have the luxury of complaining about moisture falling from the heavens, no matter the form in which it descends. I would much rather have the tip of my nose be cold and have rosy cheeks now, than suffer the agonizing effects of a parched summer.
This lead me to think about a passage from the Book of Mormon where Nephi, the son of Helaman, tells of the great nothingness of man in saying that we are less than the dust of the earth, "For behold, the dust of the earth moveth hither and thither, to the dividing asunder, at the command of our great and everlasting God" (Helaman 12:8). The snow is as the dust of the earth for it merely does what our great and everlasting God tells it to do. The elements are a product of his hands and act according to his will. If we see fit to complain about the snow, we are really complaining about the will of God and saying that we know better than God what the world needs. A truly prideful mindset and one worthy of the rebuke given Paul "it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks" (Acts 9:5). (There are probably many other scriptures that would be more apropos in this situation, but I like "kick against the pricks." It's imagery strikes me as humorous, as well as poignant.) If it's snowing in April, it's because God wants it to snow in April. That's good enough for me.
Lastly, I find the fact that it is snowing on April 1 to be a further boon to my testimony of the fact that God has a sense of humor. I can hear it now, a tremendous thundering voice echoing across the vast expanse of eternity, "APRIL FOOLS!!!" Followed by raucous laughter.

Oh Boy

2009-03-03T22:09:00.000-07:00

This one is for all you Jane Austen fans out there.

http://www.chroniclebooks.com/index/main,book-info/store,books/products_id,7847/path,1-10-66/title,Pride-and-Prejudice-and-Zombies/

Professor Wood cracked

2009-02-19T20:44:00.004-07:00

This post comes in relation to the last. In my previous post I mentioned how stoic professors are in the face of incredible temptation to laugh. Yesterday I was witness as one of my professors folded under the pressure to remain aloof. Yes, she laughed...kind of.
It happened in my Dickins class. (Yes I'm in a class devoted entirely to Charles Dickins.) There's a girl in my class that makes this funky noise every single time class is held. At first you think she's just hiccuping, but then the hiccup increases in volume as well as duration until she's shrieking. The noise that she makes sounds like a mixture of a corpse, post-mortem, gasping for air and the sound that Shiz surely made as he, after he had had his head cut off, "raised up on his hands and fell; and after that he had struggled for breath, he died." (Ether 15:31) Only imagine that sound increased in volume and occuring in the middle of a discussion about the societal criticism made by the masterful pen of Dickins. It's distracting sometimes and hilarious...always. As for what causes this regularly occuring death-rattle, Will, one of my classmates, and I have several theories, but due to their superfluous nature in relation to this story, I shan't share them, unless asked.
Anyway, the first couple of times this happened in class, I grinned broadly and looked at the young lady to see her reaction. She always just sat back in her chair and pretended that nothing had happened. (Be it known that this class is held in a classroom where we students sit in groups around tables. I'm not straining my neck or anything to look around at this girl, she just happens to sit right in my line of sight.) After a while I grew accustomed to this rather noisy ritual, and have more recently been able to keep any visual evidences of my mirth within. This has been one of the occurences of which I spoke in my last post which, to my consternation, has never caused the slightest interruption in my professor's flow of speech; until yesterday.
After making some profound statement about the significance of the bells in Dickins' The Chimes, Professor Wood paused dramatically. Right as this pause was gaining steam and increasing the gravity of what had just been said, the great shrieking gasp was set loose upon the class. It was a virtuosic production. Caught off guard, Professor Wood let out a loud guffaw. I was stunned. She quickly swallowed the guffaw, but by interupting it before it had run its full course she caused a kind of loud thumping noise within her chest. This only increased the hilarity of the situation. She looked horrified. After a lightning-quick glance around the room, Professor Wood gathered herself and continued on with the class discussion. Everyone but Will and myself sat attentively as if nothing had happened. It was astounding. Why was not everyone rolling around on the floor unable to contain their mirth? I was amusedly perplexed. I caught Will's eye and was forced to look away rapidly to avoid a sudden outburst of raucous laughter.
After class had ended Will and I discussed this experience and we came to the conclusion that the rest of our class is peopled with zombies. It's the only possible explanation. How else could they fail to see the humor in the situation? As for Professor Wood, she's given me hope. Perhaps it is permissable for a professor to have a sense of humor; as long as they're willing to fight off the undead.

A Deterrent

2009-02-14T14:24:00.004-07:00

I'm an English major. I love seeing people's reactions when I tell them that. They go from kind of confused to overly supportive every time. It's hilarious. Anyway the most common question people ask me upon finding out what I study is, "So...uh...what are you gonna do with that? Teach?" People can't fathom being able to live off of amazing abilities to critically analyze life and synthesize such criticism into real life situations. Anyway, I usually tell them that I'm leaning towards getting an advanced degree and, yes, teaching as a professor. However, this tentative goal hit a speed bump this week. As a result, I'm not sure I could teach.
This speed bump came as I was in my Spanish Literature class on Thursday. We were doing a kind of group presentation on a play called La Casa de Bernarda Alba. Everything was going along fine. I explained my part about how the little lamb that the crazy grandma carries around is actually a symbol of Christ and how it, when juxtaposed with what the Grandma says, is a scathing denunciation of Franco's fascist rule in Spain and categorized it as being un-Christian. Then it happened.
First, be it known that this class is 90 minutes long and starts at 4 pm so, lamentably, many of the students, exhausted from their extensive studious endeavors, fall asleep in class. I would be lying to say that I did not find myself in their company.
Anyway, after I finished my little analysis, our professor began explaining something to the class while my group and I continued to stand up in front. It was then that a slumbering young man, who was sitting in the desk directly in front of me, nearly fell out of his chair and jerked himself violently awake. The professor was talking about something fairly serious and to smile, not to mention laugh, would have been totally inappropriate. As such I struggled mightily with myself to not laugh aloud. I succeeded in making no noise, but being a mirthful fellow inclined to laugh given the slightest prompting, my efforts to conceal my laughter caused slight, yet plainly visible, twitches of the body, while a smile of epic proportions spread itself quickly across my face. There was nothing I could do. For the life of me I know not how my classmates were able to keep straight faces during these events. As I caught the eye of one of my friends in the class Steve, I could see that he too was laughing silently. But being hidden from view of the professor (he wasn't up front with me) he could do so unabashedly.
Anyway, after class I approached the professor and apologized for my gaiety. He just looked at me funny and said he hadn't noticed anything. I didn't explain.
As I was mulling this over in my mind I began to remember times that I have done just exactly what this young man had done. I remembered the time the girl sitting next to me in my astronomy class nudged me awake because my loud breathing was distracting. A plethora of such occurrences flooded my mind, and I set myself to thinking about the professors witnessing them. How had they kept straight faces? And more importantly, how would I ever be able to so? I honestly don't know.
Maybe I should watch CNN more often, that would definitely somber me right up.

One Final Left, and Gerard

2008-12-18T19:11:00.006-07:00

That is correct I have one final left. Why then, you may ask yourself, am I writing a new post on my blog? The answer is simple and I will endeavor to explain.
The only final I have left is my Spanish grammar class. It's not that I am a Spanish genius that needn't study at all for his tests, and I'm definitely not so completely overcome with disillusionment that I can't bear the thought of studying but one minute more. I merely have no desire to study for Spanish. That's all. I certainly don't have memorized the seven different uses for se nor the accompanying flechitas, but it really isn't necessary. Just moment ago (I'm in the library having just come here from work to study for this final before going to the testing center) as I was looking over my grades for my Spanish class I found that I had an A-. As I did some simple math to figure out what kind of grade I could end up with depending on the outcome of the final I found that even if I don't miss one of the 150 questions, I have no hope of raising that A- to an A. Secondly, I need only get 102 of the 150 questions right, a mere 68%, to keep that A-. While I'm not a Spanish whiz, I'd like to think that I'm at least 68% fluent, and as such I shan't worry too much about studying. Don't get me wrong, study I shall, and with very earnestness, but not to the point of worrying myself and causing myself nightmares. (Those lucky souls that are lucky enough to know me well know that there is very little in life that worries me to that extent...at the moment the only thing that comes to mind is having a T-REX chasing me and Suzy and Ashley and Heather and Scotty down Redwood Road as we try frantically to get to the safe and friendly confines of the chicken coops behind Grandma Turner's house. Yeah, that would have me a bit nervous.)...(That was a recurring dream I had as a wee tike...and in case you didn't know, dinosaurs aren't real.)
Anyway, the point of this blog...oh how I hate that word...post is to relate an experience I had earlier today. As I was being introduced to a most incredible sandwich (steak and cheese...really quite good) this afternoon by a girl with whom I work named Kimi, I happened to reach my hand into the pocket of my hooded sweatshirt. The hooded sweatshirt in question happens to be the one that I received when Heather and I traded years ago because mine was much to small. The one Heather gave me then, is now much too small as well and I rarely wear it.
Anyway, as I thrust my hand into the pocket seeking a warm refuge for my hands, I happened upon a small object that I didn't recognized by mere tactile investigation. As I pulled it out under visual scrutiny, with much wonder and a bit of trepidation, what should emerge but a small plastic frog. How long that frog has resided within the confines of that pocket I know not, but I got to thinking about it a little bit.Lately I've pondered the fact that everyone around me has a story to tell. That story, in reality, is a cumulation of many many stories. Among those stories I imagine that absolutely everyone has a few stories that will incite raucous laughter, a few that will cause the most hard-hearted of us to shed a few tears, and a few that will cause a least a moment's introspection. And so my question now was, What was this frog's story? If he had little plastic vocal cords and a little plastic hinge on his jaw, what wonderful yarns would he spin? How is the world perceived by a small frog? How is the world perceived by a small, plastic, frog? I don't know. But I would imagine that in this little guy's case, we'll call him Gerald to simplify matters, it would start off a little something like this:

The world hated Gerard. He didn't know why but it did. He did his best to do that which was expected of him, but how much can you do when you have no muscles, no skeleton, no nervous or respiratory systems but a large heart...

or maybe:

Gerald was created in the laboratory of a child-hating old man. Why this old man hated children is not that which is important, rather one must only know that he hated them. And this was no everyday hatred. It was a burning, loathing, white hot hatred…

or perhaps:

*blank stare* (plastic frogs are inanimate.)

Anyway, I think I'll keep thinking about Gerard. Questions such as Where has he come from and where will he go from here?, Why has he happened to end up in my hands?, What can I learn from him? are worthy of my musings.

...I had contemplated inserting some kind of deep comment about how we could all ask ourselves the same questions about our friends, family, and acquaintances, but I don't think that's necessary. There's much more to be learned from a small quarter-sized plastic frog.

SCHOOL ROCKS!!!

2008-12-10T22:45:00.002-07:00

I love learning.
Peace.

A Day of Thanks

2008-11-23T18:26:00.010-07:00

Thanksgiving has long been one of my favorite holidays. Now that the whole extended family is growing up and lots of the cousins have their own families and don't live nearby, we don't get together as often as we once did. Yet Thanksgiving is still one of the few times a year when we all get together. (I'm not sure how long that last statement will hold accurate, but for the time being such is the case.) I've always loved getting together with the family on Thanksgiving and partaking of the wonderful foods that the women in the Anderson Family have such an awe-inspiring talent for preparing.
However, though I love the food and the camaraderie of the family, there is a higher reason for the celebration of this great holiday.
On Oct 3, 1863, when the United States of America was in the midst of a great civil war, Abraham Lincoln made a proclamation that declared the last Thursday of November to be celebrated universally to give thanks. If you've never read this proclamation I highly recommend it. Here's a link.
In this proclamation, after listing off the many and varied ways in which the nation had been blessed, despite war, President Lincoln says the following:

"No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great (blessings). They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens."

Would that our current President would/could make such proclamations today.
And so this week of Thanksgiving, let us, in our merry-making, remember the fount from which our many blessings flow, and let us strive to do that which we are able to do to show in our daily lives how grateful we really are for the merciful blessings of heaven in our lives.

The Holy War

2008-11-21T23:22:00.004-07:00

I would like to make sure that all readers know that this post was written before the game was played. I don't know how things will have turned out 20 hours from now. I want that understood so that this post won't sound pridefully magnanimous in case of victory or bitter excuse making in case of defeat.
As is well known, I'm a hard core dyed in the wool true blue through and through BYU fan. That's how I was raised and I would have it no other way. Growing up the color red made me sick to my stomach, and so on and so forth.
This week I've been doing some thinking as a result of something my roommate Sterling said. He said that in the time we've lived together, nearly three months now, he's only seen me angry once. When he said that I felt pretty good because I try to be an agreeable bloke. But the incident he cited as me being angry caused me to reflect a bit. He was talking about last Saturday when, as I was making a cake, I was listening to the BYU-Air Force game streaming over the internet because it wasn't on any channels that we had. I assume he was referring to the moment when Max Hall threw an interception to end the first half and I threw my green playground foursquare ball at the cupboards in the kitchen and stormed away in a huff.
As I've contemplated this over the past few days I've really come to wonder if football, even BYU football, is worth getting so worked up over that it changes my attitude and demeanor. These thoughts have been especially poignant as we are gearing up for yet another "Holy War" in but a few short hours.
The media has been having a field day with this game since this is the first time that these two teams have come into the game so highly ranked and with so much on the line. Even national news outlets (The New York Times will be running a feature on the Holy War on the front page of their sports page later on today) are running stories on this rivalry. As the The New York Times article says, The Wall Street Journal has this rivalry listed as the fourth best in the country.
As I've read over these articles, that which tends to be focused on more than anything else is the hatred and animosity that is shared between these two schools and their fan bases. Just as a way of illustrating this hatred, this quote came from a Utah fan and was published in The Denver Post, "I want to see Austin Collie's head go rolling off in his helmet down the field." By no means do I intend to target Ute fans and say that they are the only ones taking part in this hatred, because to do so would be entirely off base. I have heard, and lamentably even been known to say, things that are filled with animosity towards the Utes. For example I had an editorial published in the Deseret News back in 2004 which read,
"As I have walked around BYU campus this previous week, I have heard countless students/"BYU fans" say that they would be pleased to see Utah win this Saturday. I cringe to hear such blasphemy. I was born and raised a true blue cougar fan. As good as a Ute win would be for the downfall of the BCS, as well as provide a monetary boost for the conference, I can not bring myself to cheer for the school to the north. In fact, to do so would grind against my very soul and be contrary to my upbringing. I can't think of a better way to end the season, than a victory over the crimson heathens. When such happens I will call the season a success. I would therefore urge all BYU fans to get off the bandwagon, grab hold of all that you know to
be true, and cheer your cougars on to victory."
While those words still tend to ring true with something deep within me, I am now somewhat ashamed of them. Nothing really merits my calling someone a heathen. Such profiling is uncalled for and, frankly, un-Christlike.
There is really nothing that anyone can say, do, or be that truly merits hatred towards them. While this is a hard thing to actually put into practice (Can anyone really say that they truly love Osama bin Laden after all that he has done and is?) it should be what we strive for right?
These things that I've said may come across as blasphemy to some of my friends and family members, and I may well be ostracized for saying them, but these are some of my musings from this week.
Don't get me wrong, I'll still be cheering heartily for a Cougar victory tomorrow, but I'm going to try to not get so absolutely emotionally attached to the game that my happiness is dependant on the outcome. I'm going to try and sit back and have my attitude reflect the words, "Come What May, and Love It."

Cecil is my Homeboy

2008-10-19T09:50:00.004-06:00

While I was on my mission a group of students created t-shirts, buttons, stickers, etc with the following logo:With this, the phrase "Cecil is my Homeboy" became wildly popular, and by the time I got home and down to BYU it was still being said once in a while.
While everyone would like to say that Cecil is indeed their homeboy, I have a greater right to believe that such is the case for me because of an incident that happened about a week ago.
It was Saturday the 11th of October. A frigid morning which brought with it the prospect of free blue pancakes that were being served across the street from the house in which I live by the BYUSSR...I mean BYUSA.
Anyway, after the pancakes and the 5k race (in case you haven't guessed it yet it was Homecoming) there was to be a parade. Now quite a few of the people in our ward live right along street where passed the parade, and so as I settled in to watch the parade I was surrounded by a great many of my friends and acquaintances from the ward.
We were whooping and hollering and generally having a gay ol' time when along came President and Sister Samuelson sitting in a convertible with the top down.
Let's back up for a second and say that earlier that morning when my roommates Nick and Chad and I had gone to get pancakes I was wearing gym shorts and a flannel shirt and my cheap ecuadorian canvas shoes without socks, and my legs and feet got cold. So before the parade I had gone home to put some socks on.
Back to the action,
As President Samuelson drove by, hosts of students, all of whom seemed to be vying for Cecil's attention with the obvious intent of showing to their peers that Cecil truly was their homeboy. I didn't feel the need to do as they were doing and merely sat in my chair and smiled and waved as he and his wife passed by.
As I did so, President Cecil O. Samuelson looked at me in the eyes, and over the din of the other students shouted to me, "Nice Socks." After which he gave me a big smile and a thumbs up."
It was then decided that Cecil truly is my homeboy.
This picture was taken shortly thereafter:

The Family is Ordained of God

2008-10-10T14:33:00.004-06:00

I am sick and tired of hearing and reading about people, especially members of the church, saying they aren't in favor of the legal definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman. Or to put this into context of this week, I don't see how they can raise their arm to the square saying they sustain and support the leaders of the church, and then the very next week say that they don't think that Proposition 8 should be passed as law.
This all came to a head for me as I've heard several of my classmates from California talking disparagingly about the broadcast that went out this week from Elders Ballard and Cook from the Quorum of the Twelve and Elder Clayton of the Seventy in which not only did they speak of endorsing this proposition, but talked of specific ways in which church members can get involved in spreading to those around them the necessity of passing this proposition. These classmates have been saying that the church is overstepping its bounds in telling us what we should do on political issues. I say that such statements are apostasy.
These men are called of God and have the authority to speak the mind and will of God to the people. Whenever they say something that is calling us to action, we follow. We don't follow because we're blind and can't think for ourselves, we follow because of an inward conviction and testimony that these men are men of God. More than one nation has been destroyed for refusing to follow the prophets that God has sent. And while we know that the true church will never be taken again from the Earth, personal apostasy begins with little things such as taking exception to the teachings of the church when they go against our beliefs.
Harold B. Lee said it best when he said, “Now the only safety we have as members of this church is to do exactly what the Lord said to the Church in that day when the Church was organized. We must learn to give heed to the words and commandments that the Lord shall give through his prophet, ‘as he receiveth them, walking in all holiness before me; … as if from mine own mouth, in all patience and faith.’ (D&C 21:4–5.) There will be some things that take patience and faith. You may not like what comes from the authority of the Church. It may contradict your political views. It may contradict your social views. It may interfere with some of your social life. But if you listen to these things, as if from the mouth of the Lord himself, with patience and faith, the promise is that ‘the gates of hell shall not prevail against you; yea, and the Lord God will disperse the powers of darkness from before you, and cause the heavens to shake for your good, and his name’s glory.’ (D&C 21:6.)” (in Conference Report, Oct. 1970, 152; or Improvement Era, Dec. 1970, 126).
Amen.
I think that which irks me most about this subject is when people bring up the tolerance and equal rights arguments, or in other words saying that they don't want anyone to be offended or get their feelings hurt by telling them it's illegal to sin. The gospel isn't open to be changed according to the whim of popular opinion. That's why so many prophets have been killed and so many saints persecuted for speaking out against sin. God hasn't sent us here to maintain the status quo so as to not rock the boat. If the boat is heading towards apostasy and sin we have a duty to stand up and rock away. The inhabitants of the great and spacious building may mock and scorn and even persecute, but that's the price of discipleship. We are supposed to stand firm with Christ and his servants in all things.
The family is sacred and composed of a man, wife and children. That's how God wants it. That's the only way the family can be eternal, and that's the only way true happiness can be achieved.
That's not to say that we can't love those who practice homosexuality. I have several very good friends who openly live this lifestyle and I maintain friendship with them. They are my brothers and sisters and are every bit as loved by God as I am. That said, they know where I stand on the issue.

Musings Early Monday Morning

2008-09-22T02:23:00.003-06:00

So it is currently 2:23 a.m. and something peculiar is happening. I am unable to fall asleep. I know I know, this is absolutely unheard of, but such is my unhappy lot.
I'm not terribly perturbed at this for, as a college student, I'm quite used to not getting much sleep; I'm more confused about why it is that I can't sleep. I usually have absolutely no trouble whatsoever getting myself to settle in for an evening's repose.
Just last night for instance I had decided to stay up a little bit later than usual to read over the lesson that I was to give in Priesthood today from the Joseph Smith manual. Well, I sat down on the couch, opened the book, and promptly drifted off into that blissful state of unconsciousness which we all know and love. But not tonight. Nothing will do it for me. I've tried the dictionary, both regular and usage types. I've tried listening to soft piano music. nope. I've tried imagining the back of a penny (yeah that's a trick I've used since I was a child, I'm not sure why really.) Nada.
As I can't sleep, I've decided to blog. Man I still hate that word. In saying that I'm "blogging" I feel almost reminiscent of those innocent days of childhood when I'd pick my nose in bed and wipe it on the wall. (and no I am not ashamed of that.) That is a definition better fitting of the word blog. But I digress.
As I look back I see that it has been several weeks since I've *ahem* blogged. As I look back to what has happened to me in the last little while that is worthy of my writing about it at this ungodly hour a few things come to mind.
A week ago last Thursday I was pepper sprayed, by a cop. Now before you all go writing me off as a hoodrat and a hooligan, let it be known that it was a part of my training as a security guard.
Pepper spray, when applied to one's eyes, hurts. A lot. As I cast about for a satisfactory way of describing this pain, one phrase comes to mind. Hellfire. Not hellfire and damnation...but just hellfire. Even though I was told to cover one eye and close the one that was to be sprayed, I still felt as though someone had lit a fire on my right eyelid and then poked me repeatedly just for the sheer enjoyment of my pain. Herein follows a picture of me standing in front of a fan about ten minutes after the incident . Please note the eye swollen shut, the tongue hanging out (the spray got in my mouth and, while it wasn't nearly as intense as my eye, it burned) and the snot coming out of my nose.

So after about 20 minutes I was able to hold my eye open without any fingerly aids, and after about 30 minutes I could see perfectly fine.
It wasn't for about 3 hours though that the burning on my cheek and forehead completely went away and I had a headache until the next morning.
So I imagine this recounting has caused the question to arise, was it worth it. The answer: a resounding yes that echoes through the canyons.
I mean think about it, how many people out there can say they've been pepper sprayed. And of those, how many can say they've done it voluntarily. I daresay that, while that number may reach into the thousands and perhaps millions, that is still but a fraction of the world population. I suppose that the conclusion that I'm striving to reach here is this, I'm pretty cool.
Well, as we approach the 3:00 a.m. mark I suppose I'll wrap up this little musing by inviting all who may venture to read this, Be Excellent To Each Other.

Day or Night; Rain or Snow

2008-08-29T10:00:00.004-06:00

The last few nights, as I have been out and about, there has been something different in the air. A combination of several things has filled me with an expectant, apprehensive and euphoric mood. It's the slight crispness of the air. It's hearing my peers discuss classes they will be taking starting next week. It's thinking to myself, "I need a new pencil before school starts." It's in the birdsong that gently drifts down faintly as smoke from a chimney. It's seeing the maple trees with their leaves all tinged with brown edges. (That may be a result of a lack of water but we'll take as a sign of autumn in this instance.) It's hearing young men and women across Provo laughing and pursuing gaiety in these last few days of freedom from the oppressive hand of academic progression. It's a combination of these things, which are but a small sampling of the many that could be listed, that has induced my uncertain excitement for that which lay ahead.

I have long held that Summer is my favorite season. For during the summer it seems, if but for a small season, that the world relaxes somewhat and that life slows down marginally from it's breakneck speed. (I realize that, as I am still in school, my perceptions of reality and somewhat skewed and that perhaps my views on this subject are probably not widely held, but I can see the world through nobody's glasses but my own and you must, therefore, bear with me here.)

While those few months of ease from the stress of the rest of the year are wonderful, there is a special feeling that comes with autumn. Autumn brings with it a renewed vigor for life and increased desire to improve and make one's self better than ever. There is a rejuvenated enthusiasm that seems to bring the world into sharper focus and really makes one appreciate the beauties of the world that are all around.

It is this heightened perception of the world around me that has brought into ever clearer focus the love that I have for being a sports fan.

The summer, while a wonderful time for sitting back and lazing away the endless afternoons, lacks in great measure that added spice to life that comes from following with fervent care the progress of sports. The only sport worth following through the months of June, July and August is baseball. And baseball, while truly being the great American past time, lacks the intrigue to keep one's interest peaked throughout the entire summer. The Olympics did a good job of holding off the unrest caused by the dearth in sporting news, but their short tenure led to a short-lived sports fix.

But with autumn, sport returns in full force. And leading the fray, is college football.

Anyone at all acquainted with myself or my family knows the deep and residing passion that resides in our souls for Brigham Young University Football. As today the long-awaited season officially starts today, and as I will be fortunate enough to be present for it's inception, a full summer's worth of pent up emotion, anticipation and excitement are sure to come spilling out of me with as much fervor as my skinny self can produce.

Much has been said throughout the news world about the high expectations for this season and great lengths have been gone to in effort to acquaint us with the team therefore I shan't delve into that realm. But I will merely say; Ra Ra RaRaRa. Ra Ra RaRaRa. Ra Ra RaRaRa. Gooooo Cougars.