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March 21, 2006
March 19, 2006
[{(underscored and set aflame)}]
my teeth have turned to sand
March 16, 2006
xiu xiu
xiu xiu is the name of a band. It’s also the sound of my little baby’s heartbeat (pronounced “shew shew”). About 6 weeks ago we heard our little future additions heartbeat for the first time. It was one of those moments that makes you feel peaceful and frightened at the same time. It was magical. There’s a realization that there really is a life in there. It’s exciting and it’s sobering. It’s also frightening because you are on a path hurled forever before you. This will be your child. You are going to be responsible for this life. You will probably make mistakes and they will probably remind you about them throughout your life and make you feel like a horrible failure some of the time. You will also feel like a tremendous success for associated with such wonderful people who will at times acknowledge that you weren’t the horrible failure they sometimes said you were. There’s a whole future history that flashes in all of it’s possibilities accross your mind. All this from a little microphone up to your wife’s belly and the amplified sound of xiu xiu xiu xiu xiu xiu.
Two weeks later they told us we woould have the ultrasound at our next appointment (in four more weeks). Of course we were excited. It’s one thing to talk to someone on the phone, but to meet face to face is infinitely more satisfying. That’s kind of how I see these two similar events. Of course we thought about what it would be like and were anxious to see if we were having a boy or a girl. From my experience looking at the pictures of other people’s ultrasounds, I wasn’t sure I would know what I was looking at at any given time. We watched the screen as the nurse places the device on Veeda’s belly and out fo the black emerged a mass of gray noise and out of that noise the form of a baby’s round head and zipper-like spine appeared. The arms we there and the little bony hands and fingers. 5 months along and already the baby was pushing those legs out and trying to make room; anxious to meet us … and give us many many headaches and sleepless nights. This one’s going to be mischevious and brilliant. I might be biased.
We waited patiently and expectantly for that magic moment. That moment they tell you whether to go out and buy every pink baby thing you can find or every blue one. Just what are we having, a boy or a girl? I could tell where the head was and the arms and the legs and I could see are little one turning about but some things are not so obvious. Finally the nurse asked us again if we wanted to know what we were having. Some of you will say that you knew all along. Lucky guesses if you ask me. Here’s a little glimpse at our first baby pictures.
By the way, it’s a girl!
March 09, 2006
Dear default value,
BYU has so many ways of making me feel special and appreciated. Like I’m not just one little cog turning in a much larger, more important machine that would be just as good, if not better without me.
Dear default value,
In 2002 you graduated from BYU with a major in Philosophy.
As the President of BYU, I am very interested in the experiences you had while at BYU and your impressions about the value of your BYU education. …Your opinions and thoughts about BYU are very important and cannot be adequately described by anyone else. …Thank you for your help with this important survey.
Cordially,
Cecil O. Samuelson
To their credit, someone in charge of sending out these mass e-mails actually sent an apology a few days later and begged me (and about a million others like me) to please complete their survey. I did not complete the survey by the way. Not because I’m so principled but because I’m lazy and I don’t care.
March 08, 2006
as per your request
This is not going to turn into an mp3 blog by any means, but Joe requested another post. He also suggested writing a post that was related to music. I’m a thoughtful type and didn’t want to post just anything. I wanted to post something that would probably not be on your itunes or your radar. Something a little bit outside of your usual. I suppose that will be different for everyone.
Some time ago, when I was living in San Francisco, I went to see Deerhoof at the famed Bottom of the Hill. They were celebrating the release of their newest album, Milkman (which is no longer their newest). This is a band that you need to see live. If you think you don’t like them, give them a chance woo you live. They are a spectacle if nothing else (personally, I would argue that they are more than that).
One of the things that made the show so great was the opening band; Good For Cows. They are an experimental jazz duo. Possibly a super duo, though they appeared normal, like you or me. I could tell you how great they were, but you wouldn’t quite get it. I could post an mp3 from their CD, but you wouldn’t quite get it. However, I’m posting an mp3 anyway.
This is off of the album “bebop fantasy” - Fuma (w/PG)
Also, I thought I would post this Deerhoof song off of the album “Milkman” - Giga Dance
A totally coincidental coincidence is the fact that both of these songs are track #2 on their respective albums.
March 07, 2006
Viva la junk mail!
I’ve wanted to start a habit of posting the most rediculous junk mail messages I find in my inboxes. Below are a couple that I found to be particularly refreshing for either their cryptic beauty or their poetic bluntness.
This was supposedly to sell me some computer software, but I can’t make any sense of the message. It’s sort of biting on E.E. Cummings literary style but I prefer to see it as an homage to our great american poet:
| a night teach is. is wrong music did corner similar? wrong profession young embarrass supposedto? taught development arms? different side commit. yours side human. raise gym benefit bad miserable miserable? few beautiful latter. reference least commit. purpose am again slow did evening. raise young my. wrong least how reply? |
This was the message portion of an e-mail meant to peddle medication for erectile dysfunction. People might tell you all sorts of funny reasons why it’s my fault that I get so many e-mails trying to sell me this stuff. It isn’t true. Seriously, let it go:
| The size of your accomplishments, the quality of your achievement, will depend very largely on how big a man you see in yourself, what sort of image you get of your possible self, yourself at your best. |
March 06, 2006
a reciprocal love/hate relationship
I have a love/hate relationship with my school that runs deep. They are always finding ways to reject me. I guess I keep giving them opportunities to pull down my pants and laugh at my inadequacy (proverbially speaking).
When I was a lowly undergraduate student at UVSC, toiling away to get my grades up to snuff so I could transfer to Brigham’s famed university, my band mates and I were consistently denied entrance to a variety of performance opportunities. We missed out on the band battles and the spring-fling gigs and the orgies and bibles studies and the renaissance fairs, you name it. Everytime, the excuses were abhorently lame.
When I got my Ass. degree (associates). I applied to the BYU and waited with calm confidence for the letter to arrive that told me when to register for classes. Apparently, failing two courses your freshman year to achieve a grade point average of 1.9 was not only not impressive, it also cast a shadow over the A’s I recieved when I later re-took those classes and the myriad other good grades in other classes I’d taken since that pitiable first year of college. I wrote a strongly worded letter to the admissions department requesting that they pull their heads out and pay attention to the progress I’d made after deciding to put forth minimal effort. They decided that since I had only missed their GPA cutoff by .01 that my recent year and a half GPA of 3.7+ was enough. So, I got in and whipped out a bachelor’s degree in near record time (this has not been verified or investigated and please don’t tell me I’m wrong cause I don’t care about being right. I care about being happy; even if it means believing lies about myself and telling them to other people.).
So, my next move was law school and I made a point of not applying to BYU. Screw them. I’m better than that. I’m on to a brighter future. Turns out, after seeing my GPA and my LSAT score they wanted me to apply. However, their letter begging me to apply and waving my application fee did not arrive until after the application deadline past. Though I had some sense of pride in the fact that they wanted me this time, I felt like they sort of stuck it to me again. I did not even get the dignity of rejecting them because I had just missed the deadline.
Well, joke’s on me. I didn’t even like Law School. It didn’t care much for me either. Now I had an ugly bit of debt from a year of law school in one of the most expensive cities in America and stupid BYU happens to be one fo the most affordable Universities of it’s caliber. Perhaps, stupid me. Why do I insist on continuing to inflict academia on myself when it is clear that academia has never really been sure whether it had any affection for me either? I am self-destructive in the bizzarest of ways.
So, here we go again.
“Hey, BYU, can I come back and study something else? How about psychology? I want a Master’s degree this time (so I can make people call me “Master”).”
“Well, how about if we just put you on the wait list instead?”
“NO, that’s not good enough!”
“Too bad.”
“Well, how good are my chances of getting in?”
“Your the very last person on the list. We just wanted to tease you. You have practically no chance at all.”
4 months later …
“Okay, I guess we miscalculated. It turns out that enough people ahead of you got into better programs, so now we kind of have to let you in. I swear we never meant this to happen.”
So, I got in, but only after they had a chance to reject me. However, getting into the masters program was just a stepping stone for me because I love punishment. I have to get into the PhD program so they can torture me for a longer period of time with more at stake. I applied to get into the program starting next fall. They called me in for interviews, I dressed sharply and made great conversation. I was comfortable and honest (maybe too honest) and i did a stupid writing sample. I jumped through their hoops and danced like an organ grinder’s monkey with a little cap on my head, a diaper on my bum and a little tin can to collect their change in. I didn’t get in. I didn’t even make the alternate list this time. I think they like the idea that they can humiliate me and I’ll just try again. They’re right. I will just try again. It just hurts too good to stop.