I'll Let The Picture Speak For Itself

I got bored waiting in the car - these new camera phones are pretty nice.

We Get Bored During Our Breaks

I finally got to make those Diet Coke and Mentos explosions I talked about a while ago. Instead of finding a field in the rural South with my partner-in-crime, I gathered two of my oldest and zaniest friends, snuck into our old Bishop's front yard, and nearly peed myself on the driveway with the explosive nature of forcibly-hushed hysterical laughter.

Eventually we decided just to knock on the door and ask permission, which worked out much better in the end, because Keith and Russell were home on break and came outside with us, and gave us some pointers. I guess Russell had done it before - leave it to a boy to have poured Mentos into a two-liter of Diet Coke.

The explosions weren't quite what I had anticipated, which left me hungry for experimentation. What if I changed some of the variables involved? How high could I get the spray to shoot? I was nervous that I'd spend all of my available resources on soft drinks and hard candy, and that I'd be turned out onto the streets, penniless, to continue my experimentation, roving from university to university, in search of precious grant money. I was saved from that grim fate by a turn of utter stupidity - in checking Mr. Bank Balance, I came away depressed about my monetary situation, and figured I couldn't buy anything at ALL, much less spend so frivolously. That news killed the buzz of my fervor quite rapidly, indeed.

I was sitting in an auditorium waiting for a bell choir performance to begin when it hit me - TODAY is Friday, and my payday, NOT yesterday. I have no earthly idea what I was thinking, but my mind is now echoing the words of Tobias Fünke: "Let the great experiment begiiiiin!" (Points for identifying context.)

Oh, and: Don't step in rooster poop. Trust me.

And So It Begins

I started studying for the LSATs tonight, and I'm already exhausted. I may not make it til June.

Christmas Eve For Real

Christmas Eve Dinner with the Family.

Cast of Characters (dramatis personae):
Mother
Grammy - Mother's mother
Grandpop - Mother's father
Aunt Rose - Grammy's younger sister
Narrator - me

I know I set it up like a play, but the dialogue just wasn't that exciting for the most part, so I'm just going to catalogue a few things that happened:

- I ate three different vegetables. Three. Jaela would be so proud. The first was corn, which okay, isn't exactly a vegetable, but most of America thinks it is, and the consensus of the majority is what I'm after here. The second was cauliflower, which is definitely a vegetable in every sense of the word, and no one can dispute that. The third was ham, which probably no one considers a vegetable but me, but I can assure you that 1. ham is kinda gross, and vegetables are things that are gross, 2. ham does not have the consistency of what I would consider "meat," nor is it a bread, nor is it a delicious fat or sweet, so it must be a vegetable. I also consider mushrooms to be meat, so it's possible my classification system is just out of sync with what "professionals" would have us believe. Who decided what to classify what as anyway? If I want to have a category "vegetable" and put every gross thing in there, I can do it, and no one can stop me. Thus the power of the internet.

- I decided to quit college and move to Alaska to be a reindeer farmer. My mother doesn't believe that I'm serious. She told me about some kind of Country Woman article where a sheep farmer had to hand feed lambs every four hours, to discourage me. ("There is this Country Woman article--" "I know, but goats are dumb." "Will you let me finish? This woman has to HAND FEED lambs every four hours." "I can do that with baby reindeer. What are they called, anyway? ...Gos...lings?" "Hahahahahaha." "Oh! Fawns! Reinfawns!") Her tactics didn't work; I can't concentrate for long enough.

- There was a monster pigeon as big as a turkey and I made friends with it. I guess Grandpop feeds them, because they flock about as if they own the place.

And now my grandparents are bickering like old married couples do, and the rest of us are sitting here digesting. What they don't know is that in three minutes, I will unplug this laptop and hurl it across the living room. Muahahaha.

Christmas Eve (Eve) In My Hometown

I walked in the door and had to smile. My mom had left me a very enthusiastic note taped to the entryway, where notes always go, and the little Christmas tree was a-glitter with lights, and the snowmen were out in full force in the kitchen. I looked up just now and saw how her nutcracker army has grown, and there is a cat purring beside me as I type this.

I do miss the bubble lights, though, and the kids' tree, and the old nativity that I used to play with and always pretend to be the angel ("Hey, Jaela, every time a bell rings, an angel DIES." "I think you mean 'gets its wings.'" "Oh."), and the race car track, but hey, it's home enough for me.

The Whole Town Probably Thinks We Jump Over The Counters And Cart Awat Handfuls Of Whoppers, The Way She Was Yelling

Yesterday I got yelled at for "embezzling from Burger King." My crime? My coworker and I accepted the cheeseburgers they gave us.

I love the ridiculousness that our management has become. I also love the hypocrisy, because if someone the assistant manager likes gets free food from Burger King, oh, there's nothing wrong with THAT.

It was also implicated that I would start trading cigarettes for food and they would put me in jail forever.

Sigh.

Just like the assistant manager (yes, ASSISTANT manager, as in, the actual real for reals manager has no problem with me or the goings-on of Store 45, but this little lady has her panties in a twist and delusions of grandeur or some such) told us to call the police because some old guy who'd been coming in the store forever to play the lottery was helping himself to one of our complimentary cups of coffee. That we, you know, give away to regulars and the police and fire department and park rangers and your mom. She wanted us. To call. The police. We throw away buckets and buckets of coffee every shift, and somehow this sweet old man was...costing us money?

I tried to envision THAT telephone call. "Hey, Randy? [Randy is one of the cops in town, and we have his personal cell phone number.] Yeah, you're supposed to come arrest Doo-Doo [that's what he's called, I swear, and yes, it cracks me up] for getting a cup of coffee. Yeah. That's right. Stop laughing...no, Randy...stop...you have to. Who do you THINK asked me to call the police? Okay. Well, thanks anyway."

I guarantee you the police, even in Buena Vista, have better things to do with their time.

Management has suddenly become a farce - a complete farce. And you all know what happens next.

A Room With A View

Since Audrey left this morning, and she was the last roommate left, I spent the day by myself. That day involved cleaning the bedroom and hanging up my Christmas presents:


The much-talked-of barometer, hanging on the wall in weather-y splendor.


There is a moon in my room.


And a dark shot, so you can see the glow-y effect.



With a room this cool, who needs other people? I spent the day watching Arrested Development, napping, listening to the soundtrack from Darren Aronofsky's latest film, reading Everything Is Illuminated for the somethingth time, and missing absolutely no one.

I don't expect that to last past today, though, and by tomorrow night, I'll be wanting people again.

Before You Go Home For Christmas

TO DO

- Break into someone's house to use their washing machine, because the stark reality of several weeks' worth of unwashed clothes piling up in the laundry basket in the closet has finally hit - the very real, very terrible reality of wearing spandex exercise pants, not to exercise, and not as a joke.

- Buy some food coloring and a nail, the final items necessary to fully install and appreciate the weather barometer I (no joke) got for Christmas and still can't quite believe I actually possess. WEATHER! BAROMETER! Apparently Anna thought Art was a little insane for thinking it would be an acceptable Christmas gift, but I can promise you right now I will be positively glued to the thing and may even forget to go home for Christmas.

- Find out where the internet lives; throw rocks at house. This kind of tomfoolery isn't even funny, it's just plain cruel.

- Read 483758392947 books.

- Figure out how, exactly, girls manage to have so many pretty, girly things laying about in beautiful arrangements of class and femininity and duplicate it. Maybe this requires having secret admirers send you things over a lifetime? Fine.

- Pretend to be my own secret admirer and leave me packages with beautiful, romantic notes scrawled on the packaging to be torn off and kept in a shoebox under my bed. I can do romance, even if I have to do it for myself.

- Get a haircut. I know it's lovely and long, but it's threatening to take over your life. Make sure it's still quite long, though, because your mother and grandmother both want it short, and what are you, compliant?

- Spend more time with the Microsoft program Paint, creating whimsical recreations of every person you've ever met, with the only distinguishable difference being the mismatched eyes, crooked mouths, and cartoony, never-duplicated-in-reality color palette you have to choose from.

Done

I feel bad for all of you who are coming here because you googled that WeffRiddle poem. Just look a few posts down, you'll see what you're looking for AND a hint, so merry Christmas to you all, or happy whateveryoucelebrate.



I'm officially done with finals as of thirty seconds ago. I thought I'd feel more elated to be DONE, but, truthfully, I don't like being done. Not being done gives me something to do, something to work for, and I can't help but feel how slightly empty my life is without a paper to write. It's the only way I'm a productive, contributing member of society (because selling lottery tickets to people who can't afford them is, I'm sorry, not a contribution to society - my apologies to everyone who has made that their career).

I'm always a little tacken aback at all the people who come in and know me, and know that someday I want to be a defense attorney. They always have something to say about it, and even the ones who hate lawyers are good enough to respect me, and to wish me the best. They don't want law school to break me, to turn me into something cynical and hard and unworthy. Because right now, this sweet little blonde thing who's chatting with them about her latest ideas on God and life and how we really know anything, well, she should stay that way for a really really long time. Maybe forever.

Maybe she will.

No Whining

Please immediately go to this link.

McSweeney's is an internet site I frequent because its humor so often and so consistently hits the spot, and this open letter is certainly no exception.

Thank you, Zev Borow.

Don't Worry, Mom, This Was A Text From A Verizon "IN" Customer, Which May Be The Only Kind Of Person I'm Allowed To Be Friends With

I really hate the text messages that say "No one makes me laugh quite the way DavidZobell does."

If that seems a little pointed and specific to you, well, good. It's not like that's the new, cool way to say hi to someone, like these kids are doing with their awkwardly elaborate handshakes, or wierdly distant and brief head nods (though maybe it SHOULD become a new way to say hi - I'll have to look into that, maybe Google around a bit, hack into famous blogs, something), so it's not like I would receive that sort of text message often.

But when I do get text messages like that, immediately I feel a sense of crushing, terrible jealousy and bitter, bitter remorse. I realize that, somewhere out there, people are hanging out with David Zobell, and I AM NOT ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE. And do you know WHY I am not one of those people? Because I am dumb and rash enough to transfer schools after my junior year of college. Dumb and rash and BRAVE enough, yes, but when hit in the face with the fact that, oh my goodness, my friends are having fun WITHOUT ME, the bravery becomes oh so much less highlighted.

Well, fine. I'll just have spectacular amounts of fun without THEM. Ha! I'll go buy some two liters of diet coke and plenty of mentos and make little cola-y explosions all over some empty fields somewhere. ...By myself.

Sigh. And then it hits me - my partner-in-crime is pretty much continually MIA, and it's not like I'm the kind of person who can just REPLACE broken partners-in-crime. So it's back to the old internet and thinking that maybe I should pack for more than five days in Provo, because it may turn into just living there for a while.

Provo. Do you see what madness I have been driven to?

I Put The "Punk" In "Punctuation"

And that's all you need to know.

NURLO

The only bad thing about Finals Week is that it's keeping me away from my latest obsession.

I spent basically all day sitting at my computer desk, staring at

the astronaut devoured me
say
aforementioned food
delectable stuff
arrangement of beautiful daffodils
then fantastic wallflowers
have lunch
and eat steak
yum.

Do you have any idea what that kind of thing does to your brain? My desktop is piling up with notes and old downloaded jpg's, all clues to help me move, step by step, through this riddle. Though it's said to be in the vein of notpron, it's nowhere near as technical as that giant riddle one. These are mind games, TRUE riddles, and ones that I can actually solve (usually with loud crowings of "I AM THE SMARTEST MAN ALIVE!!!").

But now I am stuck. So stuck. More stuck even than I was all day with the poem, if you can imagine. My only hope is to mire other people around me, and maybe together, we can work our way out of it. Nurlo?

[EDIT: To everyone coming here looking for a hint - and believe me, I wouldn't have figured this out if my lovely roommate Audrey hadn't said something - try it in morse code. Trust me.]

V Cast

I need to know how to un-sign up for Verizon Wireless's V Cast nonsense. Because I got a one month free trial (and I'll take all the free I can get), but I absolutely refuse to pay $10 a month for the privilege of paying MORE money just to get a stupid song on my phone. Not when I already have thousands of songs on my computer, just waiting for me to transfer. PLUS, it's my music, and Verizon would not know good music if it snuck up behind them, tackled them to the ground, duct taped their hands behind their back, and played for them on a ukelele. That is only one of the differences between me and Verizon.

So please, if anyone has any hints for me, I would greatly appreciate them.

Fan Club

Apparently I have a fan club?

Which isn't so strange when you realize that in my very first Ward Council meeting, the Bishop said I was smarter and better than everyone else in the group.

Basically.

A Purely Hypothetical Scenario

In Kant's universal law formulation, it is required that we only act on those maxims that we could will to universal law.

I have a universal law for you: Never drive off without paying for your gas and leave your cell phone at the pump.

Because chances are, the employees of the gas station will find your cell phone. And then, maybe your girlfriend will send you a text message, and those bored employees will text her back. Once they find out that she tried to break up with you via text (a text you didn't get, since you were a shoddy criminal and left your cell phone at the scene of the crim - and if you were as shoddy a boyfriend as you are a criminal, then she probably has more than ample reason to sever all ties with you), things will quickly escalate into large quantities of amusement and rapid-fire texting.

Don't blame the employees for impersonating you - just pay for the gas next time, okay?

Oh, and Bruce? Tell Latonya you love her. Because she thinks you do.

Oh, The Scandal

aroundbychance: muffin-making
aroundbychance: it's the national sport of new zealand, you know?
SanctAgnes: oh
SanctAgnes: i thought it was riding whales
aroundbychance: that's only if you're making muffins with a really, really large girl

Who Do You Carry The Torch For, My Young Man?

In case you weren't aware, Brand New has a new album. I'm saying this now as a sort of public service announcement, because if you don't have yourself a copy, take your eyes off of the computer screen right this moment, go out to a store, and buy one. Buy three. I'm sure there are people in this world you love, and they deserve a copy, too.

Well Jesus Christ, I'm not scared to die,
I'm a little bit scared of what comes after
Do I get the gold chariot?
Do I float through the ceiling?

Do I divide and fall apart?
Cause my pride is too sly to hold back all my dark
And the ship went down in sight of land
And at the gates does Thomas ask to see my hands

I know you'll come in the night like a thief
But I've had some time alone to hold my lies inside me
I know you think that I'm someone you can trust
But I'm scared I'll get scared and I swear I'll try to nail you back up

So do you think that we could work out a sign
So I'll know it's you and that it's over so I won't even try

I know you'll come for the people like me
But we all got wood and nails
Tongue tied to a hating factory

Love love love it. And the rockstar responsible for it.

Future Plans For Law School Greatness

I think I'm going to take Business Law and rock that class so hard it won't know what happened to it.

I'm basing all of this, of course, on the half-chapter I read through last night hoping it had anything to do with the paper I was writing (it didn't).

Finals Week Again

My final papers are going quite badly, one of my professors thinks I'm an idiot, I have to work so much these next few weeks that I don't even have time to think, the washing machine in my apartment is broken so I'll have to pay to do laundry again and take the time to babysit it, my church calling(s) just got a whole lot more hectic, and I still need to finalize my schedule for next semester.

It's Finals Week (part one) like you've never seen it before. I remain stoically optimistic: I will write the best papers the philosophy department has ever seen (and show Dr. Armstrong that I actually, yes, know how to think), people have started wishing me Merry Christmas when I'm ringing up their purchases, I have an excuse for letting my laundry pile up, I love attending Ward Council, and who needs to plan schedules out in advance? Certainly not me. I have at least three superpowers that I can think of off the top of my head.

(Those being 1. The ability to survive and adapt quickly when circumstances necessitate it, 2. The ability to confuse my enemies with a disarming smile before I verbally eviscerate them, and 3. Flight. As in running away quickly, but I bet you thought I could actually fly for a second. See superpower #2.)

On Friendship

The lawyers of Crane, Poole and Schmidt have always held a special place in my heart - especially the friendship between Denny Crane and Alan Shore.

Not many of us are lucky enough to know an Alan Shore in real life; not only am I lucky enough, but I'm lucky enough to be able to call him my best friend. I used to tell him that someday I wanted us to be like Alan and Denny - old lawyers having a scotch and a cigar on the balcony every night, talking. What best friends share with each other. That's a kind of connection you only find rarely, and you shouldn't toss it away like a penny on the street, old and useless and uninteresting.

The rollercoaster ride that has been our friendship of late (sometimes I think the worst thing I ever could have done for us was to move 2,000 miles to the same town) has often times entirely destroyed me. I sit there and wonder what happened to the boy I knew whose mind I could drift in and out of as easily and effortlessly, and as inevitably, as breathing. I don't know if we'll make it to middle age, to balconies and scotch and commiserating intimately. I'd like to think that some things are too good to go away, but twenty-one years has proven to me that I believe in forever too readily in a place where so little can be permanent.

And a very few sometimes, honestly, I don't want us to last. I want to sabotage it and run like hell - because it is hard to be that close and to trust so much to someone who isn't perfect. It's even harder when there are no pledges of forever to hold to or work toward. Friendships seem to count for so little - but I won't blink first.

"What I give to you, what I share, I do with no one else.
I like to think what you give to me, you do with nobody else.
Now that may seem silly to you. Here's what I think is silly:
The idea that jealousy or fidelity is reserved for romance."

Grab That Cash With Both Hands And Make A Stash

You know that feeling of when you check your bank account balance, and the number you see there at the bottom of the paper, no WAY can that number be the amount of money you actually have in your account - and it's not a "hooray!" feeling, it's a "someone must have stolen my identity" feeling?

Yeah, I know you know what I'm talking about.

Turns out you can get that feeling very easily if your job forgets to give you a paycheck one week. Not only did they forget to give me a paycheck - no, they gave my paycheck to someone else. Someone who doesn't work there any more. Someone who walked out on me in the middle of our very long, very busy shift, leaving me to cover it by myself, stranded, and unable to go to class that night. I'm a little bitter toward him. And now I'm poor because of him, too.

But at least that horrible sinking feeling has gone away. And I can find out where he lives. (Art, I'll need your ninja-ness on this one.)