The Battle of the Blinds

It's national poetry month...though I haven't done very much to celebrate it. Several friends have been celebrating it by posting favorite poems, or poems they made up, on their blogs. I don't know my poetry all that well, and I have the writing skills of a three-legged mongoose, so I've held off on doing too much. But, as the month comes to an end, I feel like I should do something. So I decided I would make up a poem for this blog entry. But to save myself the embarrassment of not being a great poetry writer, I also decided I would claim this poem was written by me in the third grade. Understand, though, that this poem, that I wrote while in the third grade, is about recent events in my life.

Though turned, these blinds aren't open. See how the room is enveloped in darkness? Can you feel it wear at you to the very soul? Thus begins the Battle of the Blinds.

The Battle of the Blinds (allegedly written some many years ago)

_

Have you ever suffered such,

that pain and loneliness were nothing new;

And death's destroying touch

Carelessly hovered, hanging over you?

I once did, and here's the tale told,

Of a fight fought with a heart bitter cold.

_

Spring, season when hearts are light,

When winter's grey at last begins to flee,

Windows and blinds, once shut tight,

Thrown open wide, in hopes the sun to see.

But for me, the blinds opened not,

Tangled tight, stubbornly they fought.

_

Cried my heart, heavy with wrath,

Begone blinds that bind me and hold back

The noonday sun to light my path,

And the air with freshness my room does lack!

Fear not, I tugged till tired and sore,

I battled with the blinds, I won the war.

Open at last, after hours of desperate struggling, nigh past the time when fervent hopes of the heart fell lost into the dark bleakness of misery. Hurray for perseverance, the winner of wars!

You don't always win when you gamble.

During the two weeks since I last wrote, having missed writing on Easter, I actually came up with several ideas that I could write about. That's no good, since that means I have to choose between them. So I stopped thinking about them for a few days, until I could only remember one, and that's what I'm writing about. The idea that stuck with me, though, is the one I wish I could forget. It is about events that adversely affected me this last week. Adversely affected me in a very strong and horrible manner. We're talking hope crushing, dream destroying, life changing (for the worse), soul gnashing (sounded good...may or may not actually mean something) events. You could say I gambled...and lost horribly.


I used to feel invincible, like nothing could touch me, I could do whatever I wanted...until I lost horribly. My seat on top of the world was taken out from under me, and all my delusions smashed to fine grained dust, sifting through my hands and out of my grasp. Then I was faced with my own mortality, my human frailties, my now obvious vulnerability to hardship and failure.


It wasn't money that I gambled away though, you can recover from that. I basically gambled away my right to happiness, my ability to feel joy, and any opportunity I had for good fortune. And all to try something different and save a little money. In retrospect, I don't think it was worth it. There I was, blissfully moving through the week, picking up some food to help me get through it. One of my roommates got me hooked on oreos a while ago, so I thought I'd pick some up. After all, it makes me drink more milk, which is good for me. As I went to get them though, I suddenly didn't feel like normal oreos. I thought I'd be adventurous, explore some new area of oreo flavor. I saw mint oreos, chocolate covered oreos, white oreos, white oreos with chocolate filling. But what did I end up getting? Peanut butter oreos. Peanut butter and chocolate go well together, right? A good change up I thought. If I have ever been so foolish before in my life, I don't remember that time. Peanut butter oreos aren't bad...but they aren't the type of oreo goodness that I had come to expect. Oh the disappointment I experienced when I got home and tried them. The heart wrenching realization of what I had done! The misery and depression that followed almost proved too much for me...especially with this next gamble I would make.

Where were you, Cadbury Creme Eggs, during the post-Easter sales? I searched the store for hours. I checked the top shelf, I check behind the peeps, I rummaged through other people's shopping carts when they weren't looking. Alas...no eggs were to be found.

Easter, a time for religious celebration, a time for family and friends, laughter and games. A time for special Easter candies, like robin eggs, chocolate bunnies, and of course, creme filled Cadbury eggs-the undisputed king of Easter candy (I put undisputed, so don't bother trying to dispute it now). Being the smart shopper though, I decided to wait until after Easter to buy my fill of delicious, heavenly Cadbury eggs. Folly! Foolishness! How could I possibly believe that any of this creme filled goodness had even a remote chance of lasting beyond Easter? The shopping trip the day after Easter held only further depression, despair, and several boxes of peeps for me. I thought I could wait, I thought I could save some money. I gambled. I lost.

Canned joy

I was going to add more to the logo, but I thought I'd keep this one simple and tasteful, rather than action-packed and tasteful, or awesomely cool and tasteful like some of the other logos have been.

I hate to revisit a topic that I so recently blogged about, but I had a pretty successful day foraging at Kroger's recently. So successful, that I'm pretty excited to share it with everyone. So it started out like any other shopping trip...I'd been out of food for about a week, and shear desperation forced me to drive the 1.3 minutes to Kroger's to restock on food. And, as is tradition, I went with no plan, or even a vague idea, of what I was going to buy. I got there, and the foraging commenced.

So there I was, out in the middle of Kroger, foraging for much needed sustenance. I had nothing but my wits to keep me alive and guide me through this expedition. It was long and grueling, fraught with danger, peril, and a hazard or two. But in the end, it was totally worth it.

As part of the traditional shopping trip, I headed to the canned fruit section where I'd normally grab a thing of pears, peaches, and apricots. I don't want you to get confused and think I buy this stuff for health reasons. I usually make sure to get the fruit soaked in heavy syrup, and just to make sure I get enough sugar intake, I drink like half the syrup after eating the fruit. Anyways, so there I was, looking at the cans of fruit, when suddenly a flash of light caught my eye from the top shelf. I glance up and immediately my eyes fell onto something new. Something exciting. Something you might even call exotic. New types of canned fruit that I had never seen before. Fruits that I would never have thought to can. As I looked at them, the can of purple plums seemed to tilt, as if nodding to me, and I thought I heard a voice in the wind whisper "Yes Mike, we are here for you. No we don't cost much more than normal fruit cans. Try us. Add us to your cart. We will never abandon you." Afterwards, lightning struck and two cans, glowing with power and sheer amazingness, fell into my cart. It was quite the experience.

A picture of my cabinet after the addition of the can of Red Tart Cherries (pitted), and the whole purple plums (not pitted it turns out). How do they fit so much goodness into a can? I suspect they take an entire fruit tree and put it in the can, and then remove the less good stuff like roots, bark, branches, trunk, etc.

I hadn't had a shopping trip experience like this since the one time I went to Meier's and found a can of mangos. My hobby used to be to try new types of fruit whenever I saw them at the store. As of now, my new hobby is to try new types of canned fruit. I'm excited to have my eyes opened to the wondrous and exotic world of strange fruits, stored in small, metal cans.

Friendly insults.

The process of choosing a blog topic is very intricate and complex. It involves such steps as random thoughts going through my head, and me deciding to write about them. The random thought for today's post came while I was talking to one of my friends from BYU (where I did my undergrad work). After a brief exchange of pleasantries, some small talk about the local weather, and an involved discussion on world peace, I realized that we didn't actually do any of these, and mostly we just traded what I would call friendly insults. Basically from greeting to farewell, we shared friendly insults, with little bits of news from our lives scattered sparingly between. And this of course, strengthened our bond of friendship at least 232 fold. So, for those who want to make their friendships stronger, I thought I'd share some of the secrets from the art of friendly insulting.


Friendly insults are usually similar to real insults, but changed slightly to add that friendly feel. Take the word "jerk" for instance. It is curt and harsh, and can inspire feelings of hatred and malice. But, add the suffix weed to it, and it becomes "jerkweed". There's an insult that inspires feelings of brotherly love, peace, and harmony. There's quite a few modified insults out there. Another personal favorite is taking the angry "Sucker" insult, and changing it to the happy-go-lucky "Suckahfish" friendly insult.



Consider the difference between these two very real examples. When the insult jerk was used, everyone felt angry or hurt. However, when jerkweed was used, there was laughter in the air, friendships were strengthened, and steps towards world peace were made.

Now that you've got some of the classics down, let's move on to the slightly more advanced friendly insults. These are the ones you make yourself, using some key words. The most important of these is "face". Face, by definition, is a term of endearment (note: It's somewhat possible that definition was made up by a friend). So by adding face to the end of nearly any insult, you immediately lighten it up and change it to a friendly insult. See how nice it sounds when you change lame to lame-o-face? The o isn't usually needed when you add face, it just makes this one flow better. Hopefully this has been educational for you. There are many more rules, but hey, let's just start with the basics. Now you're equipped to strengthen any friendship.

A weakness

All my life I've been taught you should make your weaknesses your strengths. No one ever told me how to do that though. I guess it's supposed to be one of those things you learn as you go through life. I'll let you in on a secret I discovered though. There are two ways to make weaknesses strengths. You could actually work on overcoming them and all that stuff, OR you can find a way to make your weaknesses look like strengths. That's the goal of this post. I've found recently I have a new weakness. I can't make what I do sound exciting, so either I need to think of a new way to describe my work/research, or I need to convince everyone out there that science, when described in a monotone, unexcited voice, with long drawn out details, is really cool!!! Please use a tone of voice for that last sentence that merits the three exclamation marks. You can use your really excited voice, your awestruck voice mixed with wonder and amazement, or you can use your cool voice, with undertones of rocking out.

Monotone science explanations are now cool. They're the new black (I don't know enough about fashion to actually know if that means something).

So let's look at the different parts of how I explain what I do. First off, I use a monotone voice. 'Mono' means one, and 'tone' is some how related to pitch or something like that. But what people don't realize is that there's a third thing to look at with this word. It has the word 'mon' in it, which is a cool Jamaican way of saying man. So what using a monotone voice means is that I only use a cool manly pitch when describing my work. That's good. It's kind of like listening to Arnold talk as the Terminator. Cool and manly.

There's no need for a caption here, but, since I'm one to belabor the point, let me again point out, science rocks. The more details the better, and if it's told in a sweet melodious monotone voice, even better!

And as for science itself, Webster's online dictionary uses these words, among others, to define science (note that the order of the words may have been rearranged to enhance readability): "Science: Something obtained through a physical sport." So that means talking science is normal, like talking sports. In fact, it's manly for guys, and cool for girls, just like talking sports, otherwise Webster wouldn't have put those words somewhere in the definition.

And let's not forget the old saying, "the devil is in the details". So going into the long drawn out details is like letting your rebellious nature come out. And everyone likes a rebel. So, as you can see, my descriptions of my work really are pretty awesome. Check that off for another weakness turned into a strength.

Foraging, the new manly

So, back in the old days, it was manly to be a hunter, and not so manly to forage around and gather berries and such. I mean, think about it. What could be more manly than taking a sharpened stick and tracking down viscous wild boar? Certainly not frolicking through the forest with a basket looking for raspberries while humming sweet little melodies to yourself. But now with today's modern grocery stores, things have changed. It is now more manly to forage than to hunt. How do I know that? Well, because I forage at stores, therefore, it obviously must be more manly.

Gathering and foraging in the old days was not very manly. The fuchsia border is supposed to help you understand that. Fuchsia is not a manly color. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

People who hunt in stores know exactly what they want. They have items in mind and they track them down. Us foragers are much more care free. We have no idea what we want, nor where it will be found, we just wander aimlessly, picking things here and there as they catch our eye. Usually large sale tags catch our eyes, but sometimes the random things like cherry flavored carrots just nag at your curiosity until you slip them into your cart. Some may claim that we just don't have a plan, but that's not true. Our plan is just so good, that it doesn't need to be thought about before hand. It just kind of happens.

A picture of today's modern forager. Tough, manly, and cool. There's nothing sissy or weak about this.

So here's the moral to the story: It's now manly to be a forager, however, it is still not manly to hum sweet little melodies to yourself.

Also, I've been forgetting to do this mention this, but my roommate started up a roommate blog where we each put a quote on it, and people vote through the week on which one they think we should put on our fridge. So far, in the two weeks it's been going, I've won once. Yeah, I know. That's good. Sadly things aren't looking so hot for week three, but I'll still be one for three...that's not bad. Feel free to check it out: http://fridgeforthought.blogspot.com/. I'm not allowed to tell people which quote is mine, but if you're really my friend, you should know, and should vote for it.

A visit from the sister...!!!

So my sister came and visited me two weeks ago. It made me realize a couple of things, mainly that I don't know how to punctuate to show horror. For trailing off and sarcasm, I often use "...", for confusion I use "!?!??!", surprise "!!!", and such. What do you use for that horror tone of voice, accompanied by creepy music? I hope ...??? did it, because that's what I'm going for in the title.

Here's a picture of my sister and me. If you are thinking the letters on my side seem so much cooler than the letters on my sister's side, that's probably just the letters reflecting my much higher level of coolness. If you think the letters on my sister's side seem cooler, that means the hours and weeks I just spent playing with word art were wasted on you.

So the week with my sister here was pretty good. She's been in Japan of the last year and a half, thus the picture of us eating sushi (before that, she wasn't a seafood fan, like most in my family). Despite her long time in Japan, I was still able to finish my meal before her using chopsticks. She will claim it's because she was full and couldn't eat anymore, but that's like the slow kid who quit the race and said he felt like he had run far enough. Incidentally that kid would then go on to drop out of school. He would quit jobs on and off for the next 15 years until people would stop hiring him. Then he would join the foreign legion but quit that shortly after joining. They wouldn't take his desertion very well though, and eventually they would find him and put him into a prison camp for the rest of his life, where he would die hungry and alone. Just an interesting little story I heard once.

I should have realized a younger sister's visit could be as dangerous as a nuclear explosion. Despite the fact that I've always done those good older brother things (You know, protecting her from bullies, helping her with homework, picking her up when she fell), I fear she may have spread rumors while she was up here, and for all I know is now spreading rumors to the rest of my family. I think she gets this from my older brother, who loves to spread all sorts of rumors. It took me a while to realize why my mom seemed very concerned for me when I first moved to Michigan. It turns out my brother was having a blast spreading rumors to her that I was depressed...

So yeah, sister came, we did fun things, and I of course was a good older brother, meaning I'm sure I was very encouraging of everything she did, and I showed great restraint and didn't tease her in the slightest. Yup, I showed great restraint...only letting a few things here and there possibly slip out...but very small, modest teasings...nothing too big. Well, for the most part.