Send A Little Rain

I might be genuinely happy and not faking it at all -- but I'm still searching for that underlying peace that only comes when I'd rather be nowhere else.

And Magnolia Lane is very, very far away.

Some Goals For The Week, Since It's Monday And Everything

My goal is to go an entire week without one guy trying to kiss me. It really shouldn't be that hard--I don't have a sign slung around my neck that says "Kisses: $1," and I don't really make it a point to invite people in to my life, and I'm not superhot, nor do I lean seductively into car doors--but I'm often surprised by what people attempt, so we'll see.

Another goal is to find more opportunities to compose 14-line Romantic-style lyric poems and then to stand on top of my desk to recite it to my British Literature class, because I am an attention whore that way, and I like being complimented on my writing by people whose own writing spurs me on to greater heights.

And my last goal is to see how many people I can secretly tear apart whilst in conversation with them. The internal mockalogue is especially virulent this week; I can already feel the inner stirrings of the nastiness, and if you're going to ask me a dumb question, well, you asked for it. The thing is, I don't really want to make anyone cry or feel bad, so if I can make fun of them without their knowing it, I'm vindicated, and they go off feeling their question has been answered, and everybody wins...except for the Cougars, but we can blame that last one on a bad call. Can't we?

The Quality Of My Writing Will Steadily Decline As I Am Forced To Pander To Hack Mormon Authors

One day, I will be a famous author, and I will sentence Dean Hughes to a purgatory filled with only him and his books...BOOKS ON TAPE, READ BY HIM, MUAHAHAHAHA!!!

I don't know how exactly being a famous author will afford me this privilege, but trust me, it will. Because what's the point of going through all the trouble to develop a tone and construct interesting characters and hash out a meaningful and thematic plot and actually get the thing published if you do not at least have the power to punish people who drag the literary world down to the circus level? It'll be in my contract, right under the part about never revealing my Mormon origins to everyone.

Because, well, Mormons and I, we have a problem. That problem is, most (all?) Mormons are unable to come up with anything transcendant and beautiful. They hack out the same stories or write the same screenplays and get a royalty check based on the fact that they're Mormon, and other Mormons will buy their stuff, because it's a fun little community thing going on. We are mindless, mindless sheep. And we should not be! I should not have to say things like, "Can we stop being Mormon for a second and think this through intellectually?" No! I should be able to say things like, "Can we START being Mormon and think this through intellectually?" The glory of God is intelligence, right? I mean, right? So why this pervading culture of secularized Mormondom that discourages intelligent discussion and differences of opinion?

Way to discourage free thought. It's just like when Dean Hughes told the class, "It doesn't matter if you liked it, I HATED it, and I'm the one grading the paper." Well, guess what, Dean: the phoenix is staying. I liked it, other people liked it, it fits in well with everything else, IT STAYS. Oh, and m-a-n-t-r-a isn't pronounced man-truh, but good try.

How Scattered My Brain Feels

My internet went out for a day, and it was absolutely terrible. The great thing, though, is how nearly everyone sympathized so perfectly. "Your internet is out??? Wha-- how-- THAT IS UNACCEPTABLE!"

Also, I'm solving the secret of Shadow Ranch, and apparently it's a really big one, because a computer game that was designed for eight-year-olds is too hard for a twenty-year-old.

The end.

Good Thing He Doesn't Know How To Work The Internet To Find My Blog

I got a phone call last night. A call from one R. Dallan Bunce, who happens to be, I don't know, oh -- IN PROVO. So Ryan, Kristin and I piled into Ryan's car, toting Ghostbusters, and drove up to see him.

I miss smart boys.

We watched Ghostbusters, Kristin made a few unfortunate comments, Ryan almost destroyed the house, and Dallan, well, Dallan told The Stories. You know, the Dallan Stories, the ones people beg to hear over and over because they're hilarious and they're true and he intersperces them with quirks of the eyebrow and facial contortions and hand gestures and fluctuations in tone. Kristin and Ryan got to hear some of The Stories last night, and they doubled over laughing, and I think they understood why I got so excited when he called.

I miss smart boys.

After Ryan left, Kristin, Dallan, and I retired to a more intimate setting so we could dissect every infinitessimal aspect of our lives, implementing various philosophical, theological, ethical, and grammatical critiques. We also learned how to dodge kisses.

We finally left and I snuck into my apartment, trying not to wake my roommates. It was just a little too early for dawn, so I turned on the star lamp and collapsed into my down comforter.

I miss smart boys.

My favorite part of the evening was when Dallan casually and offhandedly made a comment that displayed his rather considerable knowledge of cars, and when I asked him to teach me...he said yes. Simple, but it stood in stark contrast to a few days earlier when I was talking to a friend who refused to teach me anything about web design when I asked him to. And it stood in clear parallel to the patience spent this summer teaching me what a motherboard looks like and how all the parts in a computer fit together.

I miss...well.

Yet Another Reason Why I Will Have The Sexiest Pair Of Legs Ever

I didn't have time for it anyway.

Right?

Right.

It May Seem Like Whining, But Really, I Have Such The Coolest Life

I keep meaning to update this, and I even wrote a whole post about my new haircut, complete with picture, but I never seem to have time anymore, and so I think I need post several notices.

Notice to the Internet: Stop expanding. You know I have to explore you to your badly-written and poorly-constructed and non-footnoted end, so just stop already, okay? There's just not time.

Notice to The BYU: Stop providing interesting and exciting opportunities for me to participate in. They are beguiling, and I have not the power to resist your International Cinema nor your theatre productions nor even the classes you provide for me. The schedule is exhausting, and I think we can all agree that I'd have more time if this were a crappy university with nothing to do and a lax attendance policy and easy grading.

Notice to my professors: Homework? Pfft. You've got to be kidding me. Who has time to do all this? Certainly not I, and my priority right now is getting outside as much as possible before winter sets in in the next two weeks. If you're not careful, I'll stoop to unethical levels and copy/paste the papers on Plato's apology that have been offered to me pre-written, and THEN where will we be? We will be with a philosophy student who has never fully read and digested the Apology. For shame.

Notice to the fun people here: Stop hanging out with me. I like hanging out. I like going out for ice cream and seeing shooting stars up in the canyon and eating cake until I explode and running my heart out and hiking Timp and going to see the Utah Symphony Orchestra and washing boys' (whom I barely know) dishes and learning where all the stores in University Mall are and accidentally hitting on prophets' grandsons and watching the Cougars lose miserably and having breakfast cooked for me and chilling in front of the television and all the other billion and a half things I get to do every week. BUT. When will it end? And also, when will hot tubbing be involved? 'Cause I'm totally there if it involves hot and tub.

Notice to the David O. McKay Essay Contest and BYU Religious Education Student Symposium: I totally own you. You are mine. Bill will not win you. Jordan will not win you. Elizabeth will win you. Get to know and love that name, because it's gonna be plastered all over your sweet, sweet glossy pages.

And what am I going to do with all the leftover time this gets me, you ask? Fall asleep in front of the webcam, of course, with a Froot Loop cereal bar clutched in my fat little hand and Contact playing in the background. Hoo shah.

"Never Shall I Forget That Smoke"

It's been four years....

Four years since the dizzying unbelief of a world gone mad crashed upon us.

Four years since televisions were turned unanimously to the news without question and without a single voice of dissent.

Four years since humanity converged together in one breath of common suffering and loss and feeling that bound us in blood.

Four years since we were absolutely unable to tear our eyes from the images we saw, that smote themselves upon our hearts and our lives.

Four years since the smoke and the fire robbed us of our innocence.

Four years since we watched in horror as bodies, people, threw themselves and fell from the towers.

Four years since I could not stop shaking.

Four years since the world ended.

And what do we carry within us now?

I Pledge Allegiance To BYU 5th Stake And To The Deliciousness Of Their Dinners

Do you know what's good?

Funfetti cake is good.

But do you know what is even better?

Tables and tables spilling over with every kind of cakey goodness imaginable, including differing varieties of sprinkle-frosted funfettis. And eating two and a half pieces of the cakey goodness, including much funfettiness. It was like heaven, only better.

And yes, I'm aware that that comment probably makes me ineligible for any heavenly opportunities from now on, but there's a chance that God is chuckling about it right this very moment and ordering Him some funfetti cake with sprinkle frosting of His own -- which would mean that God reads this blog, so you'd all better be on your BEST behavior.

Radios? Fine. Syphilis? If you like. Photography? I don't see any reason why not.

Forty-three more pages on the Manifesto of Surrealism to go.

I got the webcam working.

I ate three "tangerine sours" altoids.

I changed my trillian font to conform with Mark's preferences and then immediately changed it back when learning of its iPodic ties.

I examined Walter Benjamin's picture for a while and decided that he has a mousy look about him, but as yet have been unable to place it exactly. I think it has to do with a cartoon character.

I trimmed my fingernails.

I chewed on my pen cap.

Clearly, surrealism and I will be strange bedfellows for some time yet.

There Is No Spoon

Hi, I'm dumb. I thought I'd get that out of the way first, to clear up any confusion. Because, well, sometimes it's easy to forget that when I'm up to my neck in college textbooks: Ooh, look, so many pages and so many, many words; that must automatically make me very intelligent! Haha, what a lark.

You see, I don't really know when to call it quits. I can sit and reason to myself and diagram it all out on spreadsheets and flipcharts and posterboard, but that means nothing to me. Nothing. Spreadsheets and flipcharts and posterboard have one thing in common, and that is that they are Boring. Why should I listen to them, when they know nothing of intuition or of ambition or of hope. And so I don't. I think to myself, I can save the world; and I think to myself, I can change their mind; and I think to myself, I can get what I want.

Do you see the flaw in this? There is a very big flaw in this. The flaw is, I am an idiot. The flaw is, "I miss you" doesn't mean a whole lot. You're obliged to miss me, everyone is. You have to love puppies and miss Elizabeth, those are the rules; and if you do not follow the rules, you are shunned, an outcast, a pariah, a puppy kicker, a baby eater, a Beth Not Miss-er. "I miss you" is not shelter, not sprung from anyone, even though I know you mean it. It cannot tell me where to go, or how.

The flaw is, I cannot save the world.

And the flaw is, I cannot stop trying.

You Wore Flip Flops To The White House?!

I wore flip-flops to church today. Two of them! One on each foot! So now that I'm wearing both flip-flops again, I have to stop lying to people about what really happened when I opened that door on top of my foot. Kristin was loving introducing me to people as a four-toed freak, too.

I Always Thought That Whole College Thing Would Be A Lot Harder

I'm pretty sure a guy in my ward has met 50 Cent. You can trust I'll be getting the Full and Complete Story from him as soon as possible, because holy cow, 50 Cent freaks me out.

My first week of college (Okay, sidenote: as I was typing this, I wrote "high school" instead of "college." Weird. I haven't been in high school in years. I suppose it comes from a longing for those simpler days, because as drama-filled and uncertain as those days were, they absolutely cannot compare to the confusion that is Now.) went pretty well. It's hard getting back into the grind of homework, especially since my Brit Lit anthology seems to be caught in a weird timewarp dealy. Words have never taken that long to read before, ever. And creative writing looks like it'll be a failure of a class. I took it because I wanted to write everyday and call it "classwork" and walk around with a mischevious grin on my face like "I can't believe I'm actually getting University Credit to be doing this," but no. The professor spends fifty minutes telling us what a personal essay is. A PERSONAL ESSAY. Personal. Essay. It's an essay, and it's personal. What the heck, is my only response. WHAT THE HECK.

Oh, well. I'd rather be sitting in a classroom not paying attention to pointless lectures than out in the real world looking for one of those "career" dealies. Pfft. Career. How silly.

I Had That Dream Again Where I Was Lost For Good In Outerspace

I don't think I want to have nightmares anymore. I don't think I want to wake up like this for the rest of forever. I like startlement at 3 a.m. and delirious ramblings about something pleasant I can't even remember and being wrapped in a blanket with maybe a movie on somewhere in the distant background. Or I'd take the stars singing me to sleep again; yes, with sometimes the moon peeking at me, chiming in. I'd trade pillows for a shoulder. I don't think I'm all that strange. But this lateness feels too lonely now to keep me until dawn, and so I must sleep, unguarded, unguided, unfriended, sneaking in hoarded voicemails.

Please don't call me cryptic. I just don't think I want to have nightmares anymore.