Can I have it??

All my life I've wanted to be both funny and an actress so that I could do this kind of thing and make people laugh until they wet their pants:



I don't think that's too much to ask. Alas, for all my efforts the most success I've found was in the form of winning "Best Actress" in a ward talent show (humorously made out to Susan Krebs). I'll just have to stick to sharing hilarious videos instead of starring in them. C'est la vie, n'est-ce pas?

Something I don't understand

My mind plays a very strange trick on me that's getting more and more noticeable every year. When I watch a movie or TV show (something I rarely do) and the main characters are in their early-to-mid 30s they seem so young and vibrant. It seems like the prime of life! But whenever I tell people my age (which is not yet in the early-to-midarly 30s range) I suddenly feel haggard, hoary* and hag-like (alliteration - get on that train!). Especially when said people are like 23 and I realize that they were still in middle school my freshman year of college. When I tell them my age they get this look on their faces as though all of the sudden wrinkles are going to explode forth from my face to smother them in ancientness.

Look out! It's old age and it's coming to get us!!

I know logically in a tiny part of my brain that I am a spring chicken; a wealth of youth and vigor or something. I'm not even as old as those people in movies/TV who are depicted as being the *it* age. So how can I overcome this worry and paranoia that makes me want to be a cliche and start lying about my age?

*Okay, this is not normally a word I use but thesaurus.com promised me it was legit.

Blog envy

Okay, so not only do I frequently suffer from deep insecurities about not being funny at all when I read other people's blogs (why are you pity laughing??), but now I'm finding all these blogs that have existed far less time than mine has and they all have book deals! How do I get on that money train?

Granted, they are all VERY hilarious and they all cover topics a little more broad than mine, but surely the world needs to know of my zany adventures? Also, I don't swear NEARLY as much as these other guys do, so I'm safe for kids! Okay, maybe the world doesn't care, but I wants me some money. So, if anyone out there is reading this that has an in with a publisher, get me a book deal and I'll make it worth your while. I give a mean head scratch!

(here are a few blogs who know the right people and crack me up. warning! some of the posts are not suitable for all audiences - view at your own risk! for more blog-to-book stories, read here)

passive agressive notes (a site that locates and posts the silly notes we leave when angry)

stuff white people like (a site that makes me laugh and feel bad about myself at the same time)

regretsy (a site that mocks the crazy things sold in etsy shops. employs occasional foul language and also displays some pictures with nudity)

f u penguin (a site that tries unsuccessfully to mock adorable animals. also, sadly, uses the F word a lot - hence, the title)

Hell

After spending hours raking through mulch to pull out unwanted individual blades of grass, and picking decorative lava rocks out of a flower bed, I now know what Hell has in store for sinners.

Ode to Idaho

Today I was introduced to a poem that completely captures my feelings about these brief months I have spent in the frozen... well I was looking for an appendage to describe Idaho with (ie. armpit, booty), but what appendage gets frozen? Toes? The tip of your nose? Anyway, this poem will invite you into the heart of an Idahoan winter and allow you to verbally experience what the rest of us poor suckers are experiencing in the frozen tippy-toes of the world, even though it's APRIL.

Winter Poem

It's winter in Idaho

And the gentle breezes blow

Seventy miles an hour

At thirty-five below.

Oh, how I love Idaho,

When the snow's up to your butt

You take a breath of winter

And your nose gets frozen shut.

Yes, the weather here is wonderful

So I guess I'll hang around

I could never leave Idaho

I'm frozen to the ground!

For those who are about to die, we salute you!

This is a tribute to all my showzz that are getting the boot this year. It may seem like a silly post, but I'm a TV junky and I love these shows like they were family. The main problem is that either I have horrible taste or the media does. I'm pretty sure it's the media.

Pushing Daisies - Why, gods of television, WHY?? I blame everything for the demise of this beautiful show (both literally beautiful and hyperbolically beautiful): ABC for turning out to be as moronic as Fox*, the public for not watching this show more and keeping ratings up, Neilsen for being a crappy ratings system anyway, and the weather because that's SOP when blame is involved. I mean, could *you* cancel this?And what, you ask, is replacing it? Lost reruns! Hooray. My mortal enemy, Lost, who has strung me along like that guy that you should dump but you just can't because maybe someday it will actually go somewhere. Whatever, I hate everything.

Eli Stone (probably, it seems) - Finally a show that is intelligent and humorous and stars Johnny Lee Miller *AND* it has singing and dancing. Of course it gets canceled. Once again, I blame ABC for sucking and not realizing a good thing when it's got one. The replacement - Primetime: What Would You Do? I'll tell you what I'd do, I'd kill Diane Sawyer and her stupid show for booting Johnny Lee Miller out of my weekly life. I LOVE YOU JLM!

Lipstick Jungle - Okay, so I don't really care so much about this show, it's just another thorn to prick at me and make me mad. The thing is, I liked Cashmere Mafia so much better, but the public picked this show as the winner in the contest of shows about beautiful power women, and now it's getting canceled too! Stupid public.

There were quite a few other fledgling shows that didn't make it from the nest, but I won't bother listing them. I'd rather also pay tribute to my other TV peeps that were killed by the writers' strike last year: Moonlight (sexy vampire detective? How could it fail??), Journeyman (time travel, hot Scottish guy from Made of Honor... again, how?), Miss Guided (just so cute), and Bionic Woman (she was supposed to be unstoppable!).

I lay a single rose at your headstones.


*Fox, the notorious stupid-heads who canceled Firefly, Arrested Development, and Futurama which then had to be made into movies to appease angry fans. Can they ever be forgiven for this? I think not.

Where's my rainbow? Heck, where's my ark??

I have terrible judgement, really I do. I'm bad at picking movies to watch, restaurants to eat at, and especially picking out apartments. Ever since my first horrible apartment, which was picked mostly out of abject fear of not moving fast enough to get a properly empty apartment (because my roommate had three other friends that just *had* to live with us) rather than out of experience and wisdom; I've had a run of crazy landlords/roommates/maintenance problems.

My sister and I fought tooth and nail in an exhaustive battle to get our heating/cooling system fixed so we could be cool in August, but warm by the end of September (how unreasonable of us); as well as to get our deadbolt fixed so we wouldn't be raped and/or killed in our beds (again, what jerks we are!). That was my craziest landlord.

Then it was the crazy roommates. There was the one who collected little bears - so many little bears, all over the apartment; one couldn't help but imagine them coming to life while looking into their beady glass eyes... maybe I'm the crazy one? Or there was the roommate who's friend would always bring his pet boa constrictor over to "play". He delighted in leaving it next to me, hoping that I would squeal or scream. I didn't, but oh boy did that boa want to eat me! Fortunately I was the bigger one. HA!

And the maintenance funnies. I moved to a basement room that seemed nice enough. Until I noticed my closet dripping, that is. Foolishly, I merely moved my clothes to the other closet and watched with curiosity until, to my horror, the closet ceiling collapsed under the pressure of water from the shower upstairs. That was fun times, living with a crazy big fan blowing ALL THE TIME until they deemed the carpet dry enough. After that I lived in another apartment that had BEES (or at least *a* bee) living in the vents of my bathroom. I steamed up the bathroom more than once after that, because there was NO WAY I was turning the fan on again.

My newest adventure took place in the form of yet another flood, but this one was of Epic Proportions! The girls above me mistook the sprinkler heads for hanger hooks and placed a hanger on one. Apparently some pulling or tugging of the hanger occurred, and all Hell broke loose. Well more accurately, a lot of water (about 600 gallons) came pouring from the ceiling. Of course that amount of water doesn't just sit there, so it made its merry way through their floor, which also happened to be *our* ceiling! After many angry mutterings and gasps of horror, my roommates and myself packed away our more perishable items (TVs, computers, bedding) and moved to a hotel. First is was two days, then three, now four. I hope to move home someday.

What I really want to know is: Noah got a rainbow promising no more troubles, where's mine??

Parking jerks

BYU just finished that wild and wacky time known as Education Week, where people from all over come and wander cluelessly about campus, make lots of noise, and take up all the available parking. So this past week whenever I came to use the computers at the library, parking was about as available as the Dodo bird. Yesterday, after a having a particularly bad morning, I came to relax and veg, but parking was really *really* bad! After circling and circling like a desperate vulture, I saw what was maybe... was it really?... it looked like a spot! I drove eagerly closer only to find that some JERK had parked about 2 feet into the next spot! Now these aren't narrow, impossibly small spots. We're talking about Utah, the land of the SUV. Spots are plenty big. And at a time like this where there has never been more traffic as a result of all the circling cars, who does that??

Anyway, there was just enough room for me to still park, but I decided to angle the car so that I could get out, but the moron couldn't get in. My front left bumper was about 2 inches from his door, mwa ha ha ha! Then I searched for some non identifiable scrap of paper (there was no way I wanted him/her tracking me down!) to leave a nasty note on. I was all poised to say something clever like, "Way to really uphold the BYU standards of sharing and kindness" but I decided that was overkill. My front bumper should explain loudly enough. As I got out, I saw that someone else had not been so restrained. There was already a note stuck in the windshield wipers! But then I noticed, with worry, that the note had the handicap guy on it.

I thought, 'Uh oh, what if this guy really is handicapped, but couldn't find a spot, and so he parked real far over so as to be able to get the wheelchair out? Am *I* the jerk?' So I naturally had to pull the note out a smidge to read it. I was in luck. Instead of being some sort of explanation of a disability to walk, it was a homemade calling card regarding the jerk-cars inability to park. The card said: "Handicapped parker - learn how to park, moron!"

Ha ha ha ha ha! It was so sweet. Printed on someone's computer, and apparently carried around for the very purpose of scolding crappy parkers. I did get a little worried that the driver would think I had left the note *and* blocked the door, and might key me. I briefly considered leaving another rude note just so he/she would know that more than one person had parked there. Then I thought, to hell with it. If they key me, it's not like it'll make my car look any worse!

The only downside to this hilarious story is that I unfortunately left before the crap parker did, so they never knew about my awesome door-blocking maneuver. However, I feel that blessed note probably expressed the innermost feelings of all his/her parking neighbors that day, so life is good.

Fastest man in the world - huh, more like fastest apple thrower!

I'm not too much of a sports freak, I much prefer sleeping (hence my bio picture). So I haven't been following the Olympics these past few weeks. If anything, they annoy me late at night when I want to find ridiculous trash movies to watch, but can't because the speed walking competition is on (for reals!) or synchronized swimming chicks are flipping their fins (although I did actually watch that for a while, that takes some crazy leg muscle!). My mom is the same; we have better things to watch by golly. So I was surprised when she called me last night with some very exciting Olympics related news.

Apparently, the fastest man in the world is Tyson Gay. Sadly, he was not able to compete in the Olympics this year, despite everyone thinking he was a shoe-in for gold. Apparently he pulled a hamstring, or some such nonsense, and didn't make the cut. At any rate, there are still little blurbs about him being run during the Olympics, and Mom just happened to see one. She immediately recognized him as a resident of my hometown. Not only that, but a former student of hers. Not only that, but apparently a former mortal enemy of mine!

So this is the story straight from my mom's lips, mainly because I have no memory of this at all. One day she was called to the principle's office to find me sobbing hysterically after having been hit in the head with a rotten apple during lunch. Tenderly she hugged me and sent me home to clean up. Later that afternoon, a group of students came into her classroom laughing about the little white girl they pelted with an apple, to which my mother coldly said, "That was my daughter, gentlemen." And who was the leader of this gang? Who was the mastermind behind Applegate? None other than the fastest man in the world, Tyson Gay!

So even though I have no memory of the incident (something that I'm very curious about - why don't I remember this? I guess that apple hit harder than we thought), I felt that it was incumbent upon me to record it for posterity. Okay, really it's for bragging rights. One of the greatest athletes of this century pegged *me* with an apple, what have you got?

Gasoline induced stupidity

Okay, so I've never pretended to be good at math. I always just scratched by with the help of a tutor. But I thought I had mastered the skill of addition. Until today, that is.

Thanks to gasoline prices being SO RIDICULOUSLY HIGH, I've been coasting on fumes for as long as I could. Finally, the prices went down to $3.99 per gallon(!!omg!!). I went into the gas station to buy a coke, and saw a sign that said if I were to pay in cash, I could get the gas for 10 whole cents cheaper. WOO HOO! So I withdrew 20 bucks, paid for the whole shebang, and went out to pump.

I was standing there, feeling so smug about my awesome money saving skills, when it slowly dawned on me: $20 bought me 5 gallons of gas. At 10 cents less a gallon, I saved 50 cents. But since it cost me $1.50 to withdraw the cash in the first place, I actually LOST one whole dollar!

So there you have it. My desperation at the horrific hole gas money is leaving in my pocket cost me $1 in cash, and a fortune in personal pride. I guess it's back to paying at the pump for me!

Wikipedia disillusionment

So I know that wikipedia isn't like the Encyclopedia Britannica of my youth, the end all and be all of knowledge. I know that some of the information found there is questionable at best. But I still trusted it and looked to it often for answers to questions like where did vampire legends really start and what was the Vietnam War all about. All of that changed after hearing one horrific anecdotal tale told today in church.


A guy was telling some long and awful story about an elaborate prank he played. For some reason he told it as a preface to a Sunday School lesson about faith. He was a Resident Advisor for a dorm, and one of his innocent little residents, a superstitious boy from Mexico, was terrified of ghosts. So he took some sort of hunting device that plays the sounds of dying animals to lure coyotes, hid it in this kids room, and then (using a remote) activated it every night at 12:26. Naturally, the kid came to him terrified and he told the boy some story about a Mexican worker who died there and to make his story believable he posted the whole thing on wikipedia!!! So because the story was on the internet, and therefore 100% true, the kid spent every night of his dorm experience in fear. He would pray each night that the "ghost" wouldn't harm him!

Not only was the story itself horrific (how the hell did he think that would make him believable as a teacher of Christ's message???), but I've now lost all my faith in wikipedia. If that one stupid guy (well, not really stupid since that was a pretty elaborate plot he thought up) could make a believable wikipedia entry for his own amusement, how can I trust any of the other entries? For all I know they're all made up! I feel like I just found out Santa Claus isn't real. Sigh.

Worst Week Ever

This week has been full of... interesting events that have arguably made it the worst week ever.

1) I found out that the girl who tricked me into switching apartments in January also neglected to tell me when I moved back in that my fall contract was up for sale, so now I have to move mid August.
2) The most recent of failed job interviews failed because if I'm not interested in working on Sundays, they aren't interested in hiring me.
3) My four year old cousin leaned over to me last night, stroked my cheek, and said, "I feel that you're growing a beard."
4) I got hit on in a very CREEPY way by a guy dressed as some sort of zombie/pirate.
5) I stepped on some glass and it hurt.

There you have it, worst week ever. More about creepy zombie/pirate guys later.