eulogy

last week i was talking with my sister-in-law up in sandy. she was telling me about her hopes and dreams of what her children will someday become. i posed the question, imagine it's twenty or thirty years into the future. koji has died. what do you want people to be saying and thinking at his funeral? while i posed the question to her, i honestly didn't care about what she had to say. the question was suddenly my own. how would i answer this question myself. what do i want people to be saying and thinking at my funeral?

death cab for cutie has a beautiful song (styrofoam plates) that takes on the perspective of a grown child at the funeral of his dead-beat father. if the mourning remain quiet, you can deck out a lie in a suit but i won't buy it. i won't join in the procession that's speaking their peace. using five dollar words while praising his integrity. and just cause he's gone it doesn't change the fact... he was a bastard in life thus a bastard in death. funerals and death have an interesting affect on those who have passed. no matter how rotten that person may be, the living only speak words of praise. no matter how little they were known, their sudden absence invokes a reverence and kinship to those who have passed. death tends to pull out feelings people did not know they had, but at the same time buries other feelings that may have been festering inside for ages.

so i guess, maybe the best of questions isn't to ask what people would say and feel at my death, but rather what are they saying and feeling about my life? what kind of affect do i have on people. what does my life mean to others. if they imagined my funeral, what would they be thinking as they imagined passing by my cold stiff body during the public viewing. am i someone that would be missed. what do others really feel about me. do i make a difference in others' lives.

i want whatever people to say at my funeral to be just as real as what they say about me in life. this isn't about self-praise. this isn't about glory. this isn't about some legacy for my kids to carry on. this is about who i am as a person. this is about the difference i can and should make in the world. this is about the people around me. the people i love and care about.

so what do i want people to say about me at my funeral? what do i want them to say about my life?


he loved me.
i knew that no matter what he would always be there for me.
he would have given up everything for me.
i am a better person because he believed i was.
he was my friend.
he didn't judge me.
he helped me.
he was passionate.
he lived true to himself.
i loved him.

reminiscence

the last time i remember hanging out with brandon was driving him to the emergency room after his face had collided with the concrete sidewalk just below the roof he fell from. we were painting a house a light shade of blue. sky blue. his face turned a different shade. navy blue. night blue. bruised and swollen blue.

that was three summers ago. on saturday, i decided do give him a call and give him a vist. brandon is now married, graduated from school, managing a branch of zion's bank, and raising a one year old daughter. he and i used to be living the same life. struggling with relationships, wage labor, homework, studying, church, all the happenings of single, college, happy valley life. now we are living in different worlds. that seems to be the case with pretty much everyone i grew up with.

during highschool, brandon's mom didn't like the group of kids he was hanging with. apparently, they were trouble. we started hanging out and she was delighted. apparently, i was an angel. sure, i didn't drink or do drugs. i didn't steal anything expensive. i didn't graffiti walls or hold-up gas stations. instead of that, we just did what every bored adolescent does. we drove around and threw condiment-spraying firecrackers at unsuspecting victims. we collected and re-dispursed christmas decorations. we occasionally had frequent toilet-papering adventures. we swore, spit, fought, harrassed, and went to church every sunday. we were angels. just angels who got bored and needed a little healthy release from the mundane.

it was fun to sit back and talk about these good ol' days. to laugh about and briefly show glimpses of remorse over the foibles of youth. looking back, we felt a little bad, but not bad enough to feel too embarrassed to share the tales with others. they were our bonding moments.

after graduating our group dispersed and everyone went their seperate ways. several immediately left on missions. a few went to byu. some went to snow. utah. suu. ricks. other places. i stuck in sandy and commuted to uvsc. brandon was a year younger than i, but we shortly parted ways for a while over a girl. i don't even remember her name anymore.

when i got home from my mission, things were already drastically different. i had hopes of regrouping the group, but it was clear that effors would be futile. my folks had moved to a new neighborhood. home was no longer home. some had gotten married. others were already away at school. new lives and friends had been made, old ones set aside and forgotten. things just weren't the same anymore.

jr and i lived together for a while, but then he met rebecca. a week later they had a wedding date set. so typical of this place. they're in tooele raising two daughters. brandon got home from his mission and we hung out quite a bit... until his face met the cement. jenae nursed him back to health, won his heart, and now they're in lehi finishing the basement of their home and teaching their daughter to say her name.

i'm still in happy valley. one year left of school. that's about it. new groups have come and gone - casualites of school, moves, and relationships. i'm sure i'll be here for a while longer, maybe not geographically, but at least demographically. sitting, moving, waiting, learning, trying to understand this life of mine.

some thing

i said something a few days ago.
something i've said before.
something i've never quite meant before.
something that had a whole new meaning.
something unplanned.
something that was real.
something that could be faked.
something that made all the other times seem so superficial.
something i can't explain.
something void of motives.
something that made me smile.
something that almost made me cry.
something that felt good.
something that might hurt
something i never understood.
something that i know.
something that was right.
something i could feel.
something i can't take back.
something personal.
something shared.
something i held inside.
something i let loose.
something i can show.
something i could hide.
i said something the other day.
just something.
some thing.
just a thing.
or maybe nothing.

wittgenstein resurrected

wittgenstein isn't dead afterall. while not fully salvaged, it looks he'll be available for our prodding. the few of us philosophy nerds who signed up for the class were able to urge brian birch to let us continue as an independant study course. we're going to focus on brian's dissertation which deals with a wittgensteinian approach to the philosophy of religion.

the dilemma now is whether i should still take the nietzsche class. i've gotten myself all excited for it now. if i do both, that'll up me to 19 credits which exceeds the (up to)18 full-time credits that i've already paid for. if i decide to do both wittgenstein and nietzsche, i could drop philosophy forum from my schedule. dennis potter would still let me sit in the class if i wanted.

so far, my classes look like they are going to be a blast this semester.

thank god for technology

grabbed myself a subway sandwhich earlier today. the usual. six inch veggie delight on italian bread and cheese. american cheese. toasted. all the veggies, minus the green peppers and pickles. mustard. mayo. large lemonade.

just as i was about to pay, the card reader on their register stopped working. they must have gotten it at compusa. i had some cash on hand, but as they asked how i was going to pay, i heard a still small voice. pay with your debit card. this wasn't the still small voice people refer to in church. this was the voice of the dark prince (aka the devil, lucider, satan, the fallen one, dick cheney). as i normally do when prompted by the lord of the underworld, i followed his advice and told them i'd be paying with my check card. they told me that their card reader had malfunctioned and that it might be a few minutes before they could ring me up. i sat and waited as they rang up those who were paying with cash. i sat and waited a few minutes longer. i waited a few minutes more.

eventually one of them came to me, told me that they could not get the machine to work, and offered me the sandwhich and drink free of charge for my inconvenience.

thank god for technology. thank the devil for his still small voice and sweet words of wisdom. thank subway for free food.

wittgenstein is dead

on the eve of a new semester, i was delivered the disheartening news. i had just left the uvsc bookstore, having purchased the last book i needed when i ran into my professor, brian birch. the class on ludwig wittgenstein had been canceled. yes, that class. the one i had written about before. the class i had been waiting all summer to take. major bummer. apparently, there were not enough students enrolled in the class. because the new uvlink registration system is an utter joke, there is a small possibility that a large number of students will show up with add cards on the first day and the class will be able to continue, but that chance is too slim to put any hope in.

on the brightside, i'll be able to take the class on nietzsche now. not what i was hoping for, but a pretty good consolation prize.

now i gotta buy a few more books. i guess thats cool though.

sasquatch

when i try to step back and understand who i am, i find myself relating to the sasquatch.

minus the hair and stink of course.

who would steal a book?

i was at borders earlier today only to find the cafe closed and the book i needed longer in stock. while browsing for something else to redeem my 30% off coupon on (i eventually picked albert camus' the fall), i noticed that some books had security stickers stuck between their pages. you know what i'm talking about. those magnetic stickers they place on cds and dvds to keep you from tucking them into your underpants and walking out the store. those stickers that signal the embarrassing alarm when a cashier forgets to deactivate them. those stickers that we would peel off items and drop into the coats and bags of unsuspecting strangers for the enjoyment of watching them being scrutinized by security guards and acne-infested teenage employees.

i can understand why someone would want to steal a cd or dvd. i have a friend who habitually copies and/or downloads music and movies. thats just something that people do. on the other hand though, stealing a book just seems so much more immoral to me.

i don't ask this because i feel like a book is something not worth stealing. it's not a rhetorical question. obviously the threat exists or borders would not be using the little security stickers on books. i ask this because to me, stealing a book is just wrong. more wrong than just stealing. the eighth commandment says what is bad. the subclause to the eighth commandment says what is really bad.

8b. and though shall not steal a book, for he that stealeth a book shall be damned for all eternity and shall receieveth really bad diarrhea.

i guess, for me, books have a value in them that movies and cds cannot have. it's hard to describe what it is, but it's there. for those of you who enjoy books as much as me, you can probably understand how i feel.

however, i must admit that some movies can come close to this level. fight club and duck tales: the movie - treasure of the lost lamp come close, but there is still a drastic difference. read the book fight club, and you'll understand.

religious studies program assistant

that's my new title... until i can think of something better. right now the only other title i can think of is brian's bitch. as of a few days ago, i'm officially employed by uvsc for the religious studies program. for any of you who really know me, you'll know that i'm very excited about this. my duties will include copy editing the proceedings from the last two conferences for the society for mormon philosophers and theologians, assisting with a few religious and mormons studies conferences at uvsc, as well as helping the religious studies program at uvsc get off the ground.

awesome, you say.

i know.

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haven't updated this for a while. the boredom created from my lack of school and work has sterilized my creative and intellectual abilities. as sad as this may seem to some of you, i'm totally excited for school to start up again next week. i miss the rush and clutter of homework and readings, the camaraderie of fellow classmates and professors, and that feeling of sitting in the halls and feeling oh yeah, that's right.

current book update

i've gotten a bit behind in my current reading list. i finished kierkegaard's fear and trembling a couple weeks ago. i must admit that i had a hard time understanding much of it. luckily, it looks like we'll be reading it in my philosophy in literature class this fall. second time around should hopefully be a little easier.



i also read and finished albert camus' resistance, rebellion, and death and chuck palahniuk's fugitives and refugees. camus' book was just as great as the his other books i have read. i especially enjoyed his letters to the nazi germans originally printed in an underground newspaper for the french resistance and his essays regarding the deplorable nature of capital punishment. palahniuk's book was... well... different. it was basically a tour guide of portland. some entries were personal and interesting looks and the fringes of 'normal' society in portland. others were quite boring. perphaps it would have been better if i had lived in and experienced portland.




while in virginia, i picked up albert camus' the plague at a local waldenbooks for my flight home (the entire state of virginia is entirely void of both borders and barnes and noble - apparently a testament to the state's literacy rate). i'm not sure what or if i will read to along side it.


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today was the first of eight days void of both school and work. needless to say, it was quite boring. i'm not sure what i'm going to do with myself. hopefully i'll be able to get some hiking and maybe a camping trip in before school starts.

back home

last week i was telling my friend tory that being a vegetarian has helped me watch what other foods i eat and that i've practically taken fast food off of my diet (besides little caesar's cheese pizzas of course). tonight i went with jesica to get some icecream and a large fries at mcdonald's of all places. i really hate mcdonalds a lot. they don't take credit cards and have a 50 cent debit card service charge. i still feel like i've got frying oil pumping through my veins from their over-salted fries. and their mcflurry was quite mcshitty. i hope i learned my lesson tonight.

here are a few more short short stories,

the last leg of my virginia trip went well for the most part. for a while on sunday night, things got rather uncomfortable and unpleasant. eventually things cooled down and worked out for the better.

between norfolk virginia and salt lake city (with a layover in baltimore and a short stop in chicago), my plane ride home lasted a total of about 8 hours. i usually do a pretty good job of managing my urge to pee. this way i can take a window seat and not have to worry about bothering others nor being bothered by others. couldn't quite totally control the urge today. after checking to make sure the facilities were unoccupied, i disturbed my neighbors so i could make my way past them. no sooner had i gotten to the aisle when a dozen other people jumped up in a race to be me ot the lavoratory. i didn't need to go that bad, but i had already become a nuisance in getting to the aisle, so i had to wait in that long line to relieve what i could.

am i the only person scared that an airplane toilet might vacuum suck part of me or my clothes when flushing?

tonight is one of those nights i've been waiting for. nice and cool. laptop. music on the balcony. relaxing to the pouring rain outside.

that's all for tonight. i've got a long over-due book update to post tomorrow as well as a new background song. any suggestions for the music? i'm thinking some iron &wine.

oh yeah. if you haven't yet, sign the guestbook. thanks to those who have

another post

it's 2am eastern time. 12am mountain standard. about 10pm loyd time.

time for another post. i got nothing else to do.

a couple days ago, it really hit me that life is getting good. in other words, i'm happy. i've just been so excited for things lately and all that has been bringing me down in the past has either gone away or has finally settled and found a place where i can handle it. on the other end, things are looking so up for me. most of you probably cannot understand how excited i am to be working for my professor this fall. it's something that i've been looking forward to since the spring and it's finally becoming a reality. for a while i thought it might not happen, but somebody had some special power of faith it would work out... and it looks like the magic worked. along with work, i'm excited for school this fall and everything that'll go along with it. i was even excited to come visit my parents (which has turned out to be a lot of fun so far).

while talking about all of this with my friend on thursday, i couldn't help but jsut smile and be ecstatic with everything going on.

of course, i've gotta throw in that bit of pessimism and nihilism that this is all temporary and all hell along with a sh**storm is about to come loose, but until then...

life is good

virginia day 2

went to see my parents new house. it's nice. really nice. almost nice enough to make me want to move in... well... maybe not that nice. the house should be finished next week for them to move in.

after checking out the house, we drove out to the national museum of the civil war soldier. while not being the most exciting of places, it was pretty interesting. i'm not too sure how i feel about the civil war. people usually speak of it as this great american war that needed to be (and obviously was) won by the union. of course, this is always done in retrospect. while the emancipation of the black slaves is probably the greatest achievement of the war, what were the losses. first of all, over 620,000 american soldiers died fighting. not fighting over slavery, but fighting over a larger issue of economic and union/state rights. if these two larger issues had not existed, there would have been no civil war. while plenty did care about the immorality of slavery, not enough cared enough to make a war over it. what people cared about was money and power. the north feared that the south had an unfair economic advantage because of slavery (which would not have been as beneficial for their industry-based economics). and likewise, the south feared that the abolition of slavery would give the north an unfair economic power over the southern states. this struggle poured over into the issue of whether the state or the federal union had more authority to govern the state. the south didn't secede because they were racists and wanted to stay racist (most of the north was equally racist), they seceded because they wanted to be able to govern themselves... kinda like the colonists and england three-quarters of a century sooner.

while the war began and was initially fought over the state/union issue, it was not enough for the north to win. seeing the union struggling, lincoln reached into his back pocket and played the race card. it turned out there was enough moral rage against slavery in the union to fuel the yankees to victory. some people did give a damn.

with the war over, the slaves found freedom and replaced their chains of servitude with chains of prejudice, racism, and inequality. chains they are still struggling to loose. the south (and the whole of the nation) lost their rights to govern themselves and replaced their power of state self-government with an ever-growing federal reign of power and control. 620,000 soldiers replaced their lives with the beginnings of a new and deadly form of warfare.


the museum itself was rather nice. the best part was a section where a headset guides you through rooms with historical artifacts, dioramas, and scenes of life as a civil war soldier. at the beginning of the tour, you choose from a list of a dozen or so soldiers to guide the tour. over your headset, you hear the accounts of life as a soldier read from letters and journals of the particular soldier you choose. i selected sergeant newton, a half-black union soldier who volunteered himself in an effort to help free the slaves of the south.

in another section of the museum, a short movie is played which is supposed to depict the attitudes of americans about slavery at that time. this is done through 6 different fictional characters representing different americans. it pissed me off.

the first was some old female slave-holder from the south. she was ugly and racist.
the second was a firey preacher from the north; an abolitionist who yelled and screamed about slavery, hellfire, and brimstone.
the third was a former slave living free in the north. he loved talking about how 'massa' was so good to him and how 'massa' let him get a job to buy his freedom.
the fourth was a racist northern who only wanted to free slaves to protect his economic holdings in the north.
the fifth was a female house-slave in the south. she also loved to talk about how good 'massa' was to her and her family.
finally, the sixth was a yeoman farmer in the south. he didn't care to hold slaves, but was racist and hated slavery only because the plantation owners had more luxuries than him (though he pretended he didn't care about such 'fineries'.

here's what bugged me. first of all, the only black slaves were portrayed as being treated well by their masters and seeming to not care at all about the immorality of slavery. second, the only person portrayed as having any moral qualms against slavery was depicted as being some crazy mad-as-hell lunatic. the others against slavery only were so because of their own economic pursuits. while, i am sure that this may have been true of many (or even most) of the time, i could not help but feel that there was some larger motivation behind this movie. virginia, as is the case with much of the south, still harbors quite a bit of racism. what the depictions of this movie did was create a view of slavery that had no moral implications. in some ways, the movie seemed to be an attempt to justify and defend the racist slavery of the past. it basically says that there were no moral failings in slavery, and only crazy screaming lunatics thought otherwise.



the more i type, the more i realize that my writing abilities have gradually declined this summer. hopefully it'll pick up when school starts.

i'll be going to all of church tomorrow with my parents. i haven't done been to all three hours for a long time. hopefully it won't be too awkward. if my parents didn't know i haven't been going, i don't think it would be too difficult, but now i'll have the feeling that they're going to be thinking about me through the whole meeting and stuff. undetectable attention that i don't want. oh well. i'll just have to tough it out. on the brightside, i haven't been to church outside of utah since my mission, so i guess i'll see if it's really that different.

i am sofa king we todd ed

i had a much longer post planned last night, but i was much too tired to type it all out. now the time has passed and i know longer have the urge to tell it all. to sum it all up, last night i went up to hike bell canyon falls with valerie, tory, and mel. about three quarters of the way up, i discovered that i had a hole in my butt. a hole big enough to fit my key through. instead of making it to the falls we had to turn around, head back in the dark, find ourselves locked out of my car, borrow a cell phone, make some calls, use several cars, find my spare, drive all the way back, and eventually get home much later than planned. end of story.


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right now i'm sitting in the guest bedroom of my parents' apartment in virginia. i flew up this morning to spend the weekend with them. because of all that has gone on with me these last several months, i was kinda scared of coming up, but so far everything has been great and i don't think i have anything to worry about. this place is beautifully green and there has been a nice rainfall today. for dinner, my mom made some absolutely delicious veggie curry and then we kicked back and watched napolean dynamite.

now i'm bored. it's midnight here and my parents have crashed, but i'm still in mountain standard time so i feel like it's only 10pm. that means i've got at least 4 more hours 'til my normal sleep time.

fin

i'm done. pau. it's over. the end.

what do you want to be when you grow up?

ask me that now and i'll tell you that i don't want to grow up. like peter pan and the lost boys, i want to hold onto my childhood and never let it go. the problem is that i've already done a lot of growing up and even more is inevitable.

ask me that now and i'll continue by saying that i want to be a college professor. that's my goal: to indoctrinate a new generation into my way of thinking. i haven't always wanted to be a professor though...

as alluded to in a previous post, one of my first ambitions in life was to be a triceratops. that was because they were the coolest of all dinosaurs. my friends and i would pretend we were dinosaurs in our backyards. i'd always be the triceratops disemboweling those around me. as i got older though, i realized that it was impossible to change into a dinosaur and had to wish for something more realistic.

as i got older, my influences were michael j. fox movies, specifically back to the future and teen wolf. putting the two together, i wanted to be a time-traveling werewolf. just think about it. not only would i get to visit all sorts of times and places in history and kick it with all the great people of the past (like bill and ted), i would also have fangs, be incredible at basketball, and get hot babes!

with a pencil and my spiral notebook, i drew out the plans to make a time-traveling bike (there was no way i could afford a delorean and even if i could, i wouldn't know how to drive it). the plans were rather complicated, but the bike eventually began working a little. i was never able to travel back in time, but would usually find myself seconds (or sometimes even minutes) into the future after getting off my bike. unfortunately, i have since lost the plans. all i can remember was a box with a red button between the handlebars.

becoming a werewolf was much more difficult. the only way i knew of was to either be bitten by a werewolf or be the child of a werewolf (like michael j. fox). i really didn't want to be bitten by a werewolf. when i was 4 or 5 a dog bit my right butt cheek and it hurt like hell. a werewolf bite has got to be much worse than that. and i did not want to know what it would be like. my only other hope was that my dad was a werewolf (thats because werewolfism is passed on with the y chromosome). my dad seemed to be a good candidate for a werewolf. his ears had a slight point to them. he seemed to have abnormally sharp canine teeth. he was also pretty hairy. all signs of a werewolf. i kept track of him during full moon nights to see if anything happened. nothing ever did. my dreams and hopes disappeared.

since those days, other occupations have passed through my mind as something to be when i grew up. astronaut. firefighter. archaeologist. geologist. homeless drunk/crack addict. weatherman. professional football player. accountant. commercial artist. computer programmer.

while nearly settling with the last of these, i found myself thinking about how much i would have hated a job spend day after day writing out code and how different i was from all the nerds in my computer science classes. philosophy had started to become a bit of a passion of mine and i decided to give it a try. in the process, i discovered a new nerdness to embrace and something that i think i could find myself doing for a long time.

so here i am. growing up. getting older. trying to be more mature and responsible. but at the same time, holding onto the child in me that'll keep me feeling young.

its name was tootsie

after years of searching, i have finally found it.

i had originally given up on my quest to name every ducktales character. i once knew them all. fenton (aka gizmoduck), mrs. beakley (was there a mr. beakley?) , launchpad mcquack, webigail, doofus, glomgold, gyro, magica de spel, bubba, and the rest. however, i could not remember the name of bubba's pet dinosaur.

after some reminiscing with friends, i once again sought out to find the name of this orange triceratops (which just happens to be the type of dinosaur i used to pretend to be. this is because a triceratops is the best damn kind of dinosaur out there. not only do they have three razor-sharp horns on their heads to rip the intestines out of any competitor, they also have shields on the back of their necks to protect them from the teeth and claws of raptors and tyranosaurs (which dinosaurologists now believe are just pussy scavengers who don't attack live dinosaurs, but just eat the remains of dinosaurs who have gotten their asses kicked by a triceratops). triceratops were also vegetarians like me, so that means they were even extra cool).

anyways, back to my quest....

after some searching, i discovered that the bubba's pet was named tootsie. yes, tootsie. that is most likely why i had forgotten. what kind of stupid idiot names a triceratops tootsie???? i know bubba was an early neanderduck, but he couldn't have been that lame. bubba had a big-ass club and would break things!!! and then he goes and names his fully-automatic assault dinosaur tootsie! this is a family-family site (sorta), so i have to keep the language clean. f***! a**! sh**! dammell sumbitch!!!!! ugghh!!! whoever did the writing for that episode should have been fired. for hell's sake, they named the three-horned killer after dustin hoffman in a wig and bra.

take a deep breathe.

inhale.

exhale.

inhale.

exhale.

ok, i'm relaxed now.

so now i remember what its name was and wish i can forget again. that show largely defined my childhood. i can still sing the duck-tales themesong from heart and recall episodes with a nostalgic smile. everyday after school i would get home, drink some kool-aid, watch ducktales, watch rescue rangers, watch tale-spin, skip dark-wing duck cuz it sucked, watch fullhouse, watch mr. belvadere, watch.... goddam! i spent way too much time on tv!

i hardly watch tv anymore. i'll catch an occasional seinfeld or teletubbies here and there, but that's about it. channel surfing is too much of a waste of time, and i've already spend too many hours of my life doing it. tv-on-dvd is a different story. god bless the genius who first put tv episodes on dvd. brilliant! if he started a church, i'd be baptized tomorrow and every sunday i'd go to church and watch my favorite shows. southpark with some wine and crackers. sunday school with dave chappelle. nursery with seinfeld. and choir practice with sex in the city. ok, no sex in the city. i don't have a vagina, so i just don't get it.

i'm beginning to blab, but you should all be happy because i haven't yet mentioned my work (which i hate) nor the people of happy valley (which i also hate).





life is like a hurricane, here in duckburg, race cars, lasers, aeroplanes, it's a duck-blur, might solve a mystery, or rewrite history...

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not much else to write about. though this post lacked any bit of intelligence, hopefully it was a little entertaining. life's been pretty good lately. had a fun dinner with valerie's extended family tonight and was surprisingly able to avoid the awkward 80 questions. had a lot of fun in general lately, but enough about that.

one last thing, i can tell that i'm getting a lot of (frequent) visitors, so leave a comment sometime or at least sign my damn guestbook!

one more week

i used to believe in the general goodness of humanity. i believed that most people were charitable and caring. i had hope for humankind.

compusa ruined that all for me.

at first it wasn't so bad. as customers came in and pulled their nonsense, i'd brush it aside and tell myself that they were the minority. i would convince myself that they were not the norm. every customer who felt like they needed to cry and whine until we bowed down to their needs were the exceptions. every customer who would bitch and moan when we wouldn't accept their brother's friend's cousin's barber's credit card were outside the norm of society. i held on to the goodness i believed humankind had and felt sorry for those few.

day after day after day. a middle-aged mormon father would give me a "f*** you!" a 17 year old boy would yell and swear because we wouldn't return a mouse after 6 months without a receipt or packaging. an old lady would all but slap me because i wouldn't take her check without a driver's license (by the way, god bless you lady for not having one). everyone wanted last weeks sale price on an item even though the sale was over. everyone wants to capitalize on someone's mistake. nobody would blame themselves for breaking something they bought.

day after day after day.

the individual instances didn't really bother me. they gave me something to laugh about. stories to joke about with friends later on. it was the accumulation of these events that began to get to me. at the end of each day, i'd find myself hating humanity. i'd project my experiences of these people to the whole of humanity. eventually i began to see those who were genuinely good as the exception. those with a soul became the minority.

in five business days, this will all be over. no more compusa. no more customer serivce. no more dealing with the selfish and prude ilk of society.

instead, i'll get to feel like i'm doing something i really care about and enjoy. as i've mentioned before, i'll be working for a couple of my professors, helping edit books and put together a companion for the religious studies (and more specifically, mormon studies) program at uvsc. since march when my professor approached me about this, i've been excited to do it. i was scared for a while that i might not be able to do it because of some retarded financial aid issues. a friend of mine however had faith that things would work out, and it did.

hopefully, a renewed sense of the goodness of humanity will return this fall as well.

until then, i've still got five more days of what is becoming to be hell left. knowing that i'm just about gone makes it even harder to stick around.

it doesn't help either when i have a 7:30 meeting tomorrow morning. at least that means, i'll get out much sooner tomorrow afternoon.

a little optimism to counter the last couple posts

flashing lights behind me are never a good sign. alternating red and blue, they create a disco atmosphere around me. i'm sure the intersection was green. don't think i was driving that fast. what could it have been? whatever it was, i've jinxed myself. i was too happy about having a much cleaner driving record than i thought and put the laws of murphy into effect.

i pull over and go through a checklist in my mind. drivers license. check. registration. check. insurance. check. alibi. check.

the flashing lights fly past and pull over the car in front of me.



here are some other reasons why today was a great day.

picked up a copy of my driving record. only two citations are listed. having recieved twelve traffic violations in my driving career, this was a pleasant surprise.

my professor e-mailed me back about working for him. because i didn't get approved for any work-study, he's going to hire me through the religious studies account.

found a $48 school book online for $17

lunch with val and misty.

dinner with brady.

hanging out with jess.


i must be honest though. today wasn't perfect. fazoli's didn't give us any extra breadsticks. what the hell is the deal with that??? val didn't even get a single stick. normally, i would let something like that ruin my entire week. since the rest of the day was awesome, i'll let it slide this time.

sleep

it's so over-rated.

i've got the whole day off tomorrow, but with my luck i'll wake up around 7 and not be able to fall back asleep. maybe i should start going to cancer support groups.

day one poetry

my very first posts on this site were some poems i had written when i was struggling with some issues a couple years ago. once i discovered people i knew were reading this thing, i took them off. i had never really read poetry before, so i wasn't quite sure what i was doing. in some ways, they were just lists of thoughts and feelings i had stirring in my mind at the time. having been recently exposed to some real poetry, i've discovered how unpoetic i really am. anyways, here they are. a brief snippet of my life. sorry that they are rather depressing.



(1)

i messed up

did some wrong

had a light

lost it

in the dark

alone

solitary

forsaken

flashes of light fade as fast as they came

reminders of the dark around

now i'm alone

waiting

waiting for the light to return



(2)

to my left
to my right
there's nobody
not a soul
i'm all alone
i feel no touch
i feel no love
all i need
an arm around me
to have that comfort
to hear some words
"everything is going to be allright"
but it's not there
i'm all alone
send me an angel
i can't do this
by myself


(3)

reaching out
grasping air
finding nothing
all alone
not a friend
where am i
where are they
i know it's there
i feel it not
it's my fault
it should not have been
can't change the past
can't jump ahead
it's happened now
i'll have to wait
waiting for a change
return of light
a loving friend
the comforter
back again
a part of them
to be not alone
come back please
forsake no more
return of light


(4)

just need to hold on through the darkness - in a moment the sun will rise - god has his arms around me - i just need to realize it - he loves me although i can't always feel - someday i'll be able to know again - all i lost i'll get back - stronger than i was before - i just need to hold on - i've gone too far - can't stop now - won't give up



reading these over, the memories of then creep back into my mind. that was definitely a tough time. i wonder how much those experiences affect me today.

someday, i'll take another stap at poetry. hopefully they won't suck as bad the second time around. they seem too much like laundry lists.


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work drained me today. luckily, it's nice and cool outside to sit back and relax. hopefully some rain will come pouring down. i've been waiting for weeks to be able to sit in the balcony and enjoy a good storm.