Ralph Nader is a huge jerk.

First breakfast in a week. Still burning in the heart

Do you know how long it has been since I have had some good, honest Cheerios? It is, like, a staple food of men, but it has been at least fifteen years. They are more delicious without sugar than I remember.

I hope the Crap Blog Detective isn't reading this. That guy is a [jerk], SCREW YOU, CRAP BLOG DETECTIVE.

Proof that freshman are the most retarded people on the planet.

Borrowed from the BYU Daily Universe:

Photo by Jamison Metzger. Daniel Wells gathers acorns on the west side of the Brimhall building.

For college students primarily living on chili and ramen, it’s nice to have a little variety in your diet. Some students may choose to try the occasional exotic dish, but such an adventure could harm their sensitive budget. By choosing a local ingredient one student was able to find a solution to this predicament.

Daniel Wells, an open major freshman from Middleton, Idaho, has been gathering acorns around BYU campus oak trees since the acorns started to fall.

“You can eat acorns,” Wells said. “[And] I don’t have any money.”
Wells got the idea to gather and consume acorns when he was walking on campus and saw acorns covering the grass.

“I saw them all over the place,” Wells said. “I didn’t think [anyone] needed them.”
Roy Peterman, director of grounds maintenance, doesn’t see a problem with students gathering the nuts, but there might be a problem with students selling the acorns for income.

“There might be a conflict of interest there,” Peterman said. “That is inappropriate.”
Peterman said it’s common for students to pick the plums and elderberries. He once gave permission to a scout group to pick up acorns and give them to a local wild animal shelter for use for feed, but he asks that students ask him for permission before doing anything like that.

Wells made his first acorn muffins last weekend, but first had to prepare the acorns. He said it took about four hours boiling, emptying and refilling the water to get out the brown tannin, a semi-poisonous chemical that makes the acorn inedible for humans.

Once Wells prepared the acorn meat he combined it with flour, butter, sugar and pancake mix, baking it in muffin tins.

“I thought they tasted pretty good,” Wells said. “But I didn’t really taste much of the acorn.”

Wells said he plans on maybe trying pancakes next, but he might buy a blender first. He doesn’t recommend trying an acorn recipe if people aren’t ready to put in the time and effort.

Now, try to ignore the way he is dressed for a moment. Read it carefully, it took him four hours to make enough flour for one pan of muffins, not to mention the money he spent on flour, sugar, eggs, and pancake mix. Why not get a real job, work for those four hours, make $25, and buy Little Caesars? For that matter, if you are that desperate, why hit up mommy and daddy for some money, buy new clothes, then buy real food?


Freshmen, sheesh.

Writing contest

I am entering a contest that the school newspaper, the Daily Universe, is holding to celebrate something having to do with the "literary""juggernaut" Twilight. The challenge is to write a story under 100 words that is so cheesy, so delightfully amateurish it just makes your eyes bleed yet excites you and sells a billion copies. The example they gave, along with contest rules, is found here.

My humble entries:

Shandon and Idiala by Alan Rosenhan

Shandon gazed forlornly into the tinted windows of the Wendy’s, scornfully eying the red shirt Idalia was clad in, the red shirt that kept them apart for two hours a day after school. His eyes cast themselves earnestly across the emptied dining room, stopping but for a single halting moment, distracted by a sallow mark on an otherwise glossy Bakelite dining table. Or was it Formica? Perhaps particle board covered in Masonite? He did not know, all he knew was that these tables lacked the high cheekbones, delicate nose, and sparkling green eyes that his Idiala had. The classy yet reserved décor of a Wendy’s restaurant could never compete.

Lacta and Bruno DeFiglia by Alan Rosenhan

“What else is on my shopping list?” Lacta asked herself. She always spoke in the first person, Lacta felt that speaking to oneself any other way was demeaning. “I have a limited budget this month and I have to choose between buying these delicious red strawberries, coruscating as rubies can in only their wildest ruby dreams, or purchasing these soft, velvety kiwis with skins like chamois, so firm to the teeth yet so easily yielding to the tongue.” The grocer, Bruno DiFiglia, stretched his hand, stained purple in the juice of millions of tantalizing blueberries, towards her.

Casparella and Baseball by Alan Rosenhan

Casparella loved baseball. The sensuous turns of the hips of the champion home-run hitters, the smooth, tight grain of the ashen Louisville Sluggers they wielded. Her favorite part, however, was the chalk lines leading both to and away from home plate. The pure, authentic white of the chalk simply gleamed from the vermillion of the base paths. No doubt the bedazzling white of the lines were beacons, taking successful hitters away from home and after, guiding them safely back. How they shone afore the emerald grass! How the contrast between the verdant turf, the rouge of the infield dirt, and the immaculately hoary lines stirred her heart!

Hoisted by my own Petard!

Oy heavens! When I order food, I usually order it in a funny accent to brighten up the otherwise mundane task that food ordering is. Today, I was Quebeçois, because I was wearing a shirt for a hockey team.
"Uh, ahello, ah would pleeze lahk an amburger"
"Okay. (something in French I did not understand)"

CRAP! My jig is up! Think fast, man!

"Uh, no-uh please. I ahm here to study in English and I must. Did you serve your missyion en Quebec?"
"No, Paris."

CRAP.

Army Army Army, woohoo

So man, a few awesome things have happened lately. I should jump back and tell of some not-so-awesome things, but this isn't a friggin' journal! It's a blog!

I have been going to ROTC lately, and it is everything I have ever dreamed of. Waking up at 5:00 for PT and meetings, wearing an Army uniform, marching, crawling around in the dirt, shooting stuff, the list goes on...

We haven't shot anything yet. This coming weekend we get to go to Camp Williams for a field training and HOOBOY I am excited! We get to qualify with M-16s (the Captain said, quote "You can qualify with M-16s, correction, you WILL qualify with M-16s and we will stay at the range until you do so." I got to go shooting when I was on *MY* mission and I qualified as a 19 year old missionary punk, it should be no sweat to do so now as a hardened 23 year old soldier.

I am going to the leadership camp this summer where I get my rating that the Army is going to use to put me in whatever branch I am going to serve in for the rest of my life. I hope I get a good enough rating to go into aviation and fly Blackhawks or Apaches. If not, there are a grundle of other things that I would want to do; be in intelligence and do translating or whatever, Armor, JAG, Special Forces (I am a wuss but I speak friggin' Arabic), loads of stuff. I am bound to get at least one.

Okay, the reason this weekend was so great is related to this. I got some boots that fit and look good, I passed my PT test, I aced my physical (I have 20/10 vision sucka) and I got all my paperwork turned in, so I am IN! All I have to do is sign the contract and I start getting paid and my small family is financially made until I get killed and Julie has to start dicking around with my life insurance so she gets paid.

Hooah.

So put your hands UP! UP!

If you think about it, "Single Ladies" by Beyoncé is an anthem of male empowerment. Yes, yes, I said male empowerment and I meant it.

Sure, it looks like a song about a proud, strong single lady on the heels of a breakup, going to a club and putting 'drink' in her 'cup' but the chorus of the song is a plaintive cry for her man to have 'put a ring on it.' She desired a ring, she gave permission, but he didn't do anything about it.

Men! Women are crying out to us to put rings on them! Rise up and do so! Empower yourselves and put [rings] on [them]!