Chicken But

As some of you may know, I am no spring chicken.  But sometimes I question my status as a summer or fall chicken, or whatever comes next in the chicken hierarchy.  Case in point:

Today in my Writing in Psychology class, a group of students was doing a presentation on grammar and punctuation usage; they were doing a very good job (I learned that semi-colon trick from their presentation [also that hyphenation]).  After a few minutes, they went into a discussion about conjunctions.  The girl that was explaining the principle had several example sentences on the board of their proper usage.  She then asked if someone could come up with another sentence that used a conjunction.  Someone offered an example using the word 'so.'  In response, another one of my classmates politely commented, "I would use but."  The girl presenting didn't hear the second comment, and she asked one of the other presenters what was said.  The response:  "She likes but."   

Um.  Lol.  I looked around but only one other guy was laughing, and that was only after he saw me laugh and realized what was said.  I suppose maturity's not one of my strong suits...

Proverbial Bull

A few weeks ago, I tuned in to a lil somethin somethin called General Conference.  As a member of the LDS church, I believe that God has called and given authority to men again in these days as prophets and apostles—exactly like Moses or Paul of olden times.  Two times a year, we get to hear them speak on a variety of subjects.  I consider these messages to be divinely inspired and the counsel of God to the earth as a whole, delivered through those appointed to do so—exactly as was done in the times of Moses or Paul.  Given my stance on the situation, this is a big event for me and I look forward to it every six months.

One of the biggest reasons is because of another important facet of my faith: I believe that we are all literally children of God.  I also believe that as such, we inherently possess the ability to communicate directly with Him.  Hand-in-hand with this statement comes the logical inference and empowering reality that He, too, may communicate directly with us.  In other words, we have the ability to receive inspiration individually regarding things we need to know in our separate and personal lives.  This is my favorite part of General Conference:  Though the messages go out to all of us as a collective and are generally applicable, personal inspiration seems to come more readily as we prepare to heed the counsel of the Lord through his appointed servants.

This General Conference, I learned several things, but I will focus on what was most pertinent for me:

We’ve all heard the old adage of ‘taking the bull by the horns.’  It’s an idiom that refers to taking charge or taking control of a difficult situation.  It’s also good to remember that it’s just an idiom, and any horn grabbing should only be done metaphorically. At this point in my life, I have a decent list of responsibilities that I must tend to, as well as interests and goals that I wish to achieve.  If I were to plan them out and do them, I could easily fill most days without a minute to spare.  At this point in my life, I have also found myself to be quite ADD.  Despite all the things I need to be doing and/or worrying about, I find myself not/naught.  We join our hero in this predicament at the onset of General Conference...

One talk that was given was by a man named Ian S. Ardern.  It was titled A Time to Prepare.  The entirety of the talk was focused on the value of our time and the importance of using it to do things of significance.  He warned of the dangers of wasting time and suggested ways that one can better make use of it.  Later on in the conference, there was a speaker that said something that really stuck out to me.  To be honest, I don’t even remember who it was or what they were talking about.  They simply taught that living the kind of life we want to live is never easy.  It requires constant hard work.

This was a very Duh moment for me.  Those are two things that are probably pretty obvious to pretty much anyone.  But sometimes I think we get in mental ruts where we get so focused on shtuff that we don’t recognize basic problems when they glare us obviously in the face.  Or at least I do.  Often.  Despite the logical simplicity of the concept, I don’t think that my anterior mentality was in congruence with what superficially seemed so simple.  I felt like I had just been coasting along for some time, doing what I needed to be doing as long as it was easy and convenient.  But I had been neglecting to push myself to do what required more, both in the way of sacrifice and of myself personally.  The experience was a pretty powerful one for me.  Not only did I finally realize what I needed to know, but I realized it with some oomph.  Some gusto.  Some chutzpah.  Some hair on its chest.  And I think that put some on mine.  The feeling that I needed to make this change struck me deep down, and it’s almost as if while it was down there it awoke something.  It lit a fire in me and under me.  

So I was able to immediately recognize something in my life that needed some good fixins.  Luckily, I felt inspired regarding several things I could do to get the process started.  I was also reminded that it wouldn’t be easy.  I suppose that’s a given, though.  Most things that are of worth require diligent effort to obtain.

So!  Like I said previously, I have goals and ambitions just like any other little boy.  I am currently trying to remember more readily what those are.  As I focus on them, it helps me to both steer clear of things that will distract me and steer near the things that will point me in their direction.  I’m trying to be more disciplined with my time and cut the proverbial fat.  Speaking of, losing weight is another one of my goals.  I had a thought recently that I don’t think I would do a lot of things I do if I were to determine beforehand whether or not those actions would build towards the achievement of goals I have set.  That was a thought I don’t think I’d ever had before, and it really made me think hard about the real purpose behind my actions.  You know.  I hope that thought passes through my mind more often and I’m able to better regulate my actions by recognizing what they are leading me to become.  Imagine what could come of such foresight put into practice.
 

Wish me luck!  Yay Conference!

More science

Holy cow holy cow holy cow I just found this cool video of cool science!  It's this magnetic hovering thingerizer (I believe that's the technical term they use for it).  Fer checkitz.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/18/levitating-superconductor-floats-within-a-magnetic-field-so-you/?a_dgi=aolshare_facebook

Science is off the hook.

Heroes

He makes it sound so simple and natural.  I suppose it should be.

 

Blushing Pilgrim

Romeo once described his lips as "two blushing pilgrims, ready stand[ing] to smooth [a] rough touch with a tender kiss."  Physiologically, blushing is the involuntary dilation of blood vessels, causing blood to flood to a certain part of the body.  Pilgrims are these.

Thus, yesterday at work, I could also describe my lips as the same—although his was a bunk pickup line and mine was a call for medical assistance.

I was sitting at my desk, doing my thang, when I noticed that my lips were not completely smooth.  Certain self-inflictive, OCD habits kicked in, and I tried to correct it.  Without going into much graphic detail, I ripped a ragged chunk of flesh out of my own lip and in sailed my bloody blushing pilgrim.  I was finally able to slow the bleeding, but only after about half an hour and one polka-dotted napkin.

And that was only about one half of it.

Who the heck even knew lips bled so much?  This guy sure didn't.  ...but the internet did.  So wise.  I did some research, and I guess lips are thin and house a lot of blood vessels and are moist, so it takes them a long time to heal.  And according to this little Copyrighted, Sample Use Only graphic that looks like a bald Jake Gyllenhaal, there's a main facial artery that runs right all up along there.  So there's like a constant flow of blood to keep things interesting.  Celebrity look-alikes:  Also So wise.

Welp.  Look like I've got a habit to break and not bleeding to death as incentive.  Cheers.

Fptrbrblshmot

Earlier today, I was perusing the internet once again and found something else worth sharing.  After all, sharing is caring, and I love you.  It is a list of onomatopoeias from an array of languages.  Who knew that farts, bites and animals sound different in different countries?  Anyways.  I had a good time going through and pronouncing a bunch of them.  I don't get out much.

Culture yourselves:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-linguistic_onomatopoeias 

Aural Influx

If you know me like at all, you know that I love music.  I could listen to it all day long.  I also tinker with various musical instruments, a tinkering that brings me lots n lots of joy. 

That being said, it seems that my immensity of intensity towards music has been slightly more extreme than usual as of late.  I think this has had to do with my level of musical involvement.  I've been doing a bunch of musical stuff lately.  Some of it has been cool/fun.  Some of it has been... well... music-related.

First of all, I think I've been missing my drums a lot.  After all, I like to play.  This isn't simply a hunch, as it has been confirmed by weeks of revelatory behavior.  The first indication is a fairly normal one (for me at least) in that when I'm listening to music, I usually will drum along.  I have been doing so lately.  So if you see me on campus with my fingers flailing wildly about, just imagine them as short stubby drumsticks and it'll look a lot cooler and a lot less spastic.  I promise.  To go along with that, I did a wild double pen solo the other day.  In one of my classes, we had a guest speaker come and present a spiel about a thing:  Mildly entertained.  After said spiel, he announced that he had brought free pens from his company:  Super entertained!!!  I grabbed two for good measure on my way out the door.  They were of the clicky variety.  I walked along campus, enjoying my new acquisitions, one in each hand.  I began to click them, and my enjoyment increased.  After a few clicks of each, I discovered that I could coordinate the clicks into a pretty cool-sounding rhythm. Before long, I was performing a double pen solo, walking along and clicking away.  Luckily there weren't that many people on campus at that time.  But the ones that were got a percussive adumbration when they least expected it.  You're welcome.  The last but not the least involved milk.  And percussion.  I got home from the gym one day and proceeded to whip myself up a nutritive drink, as is my custom.  This drink involves the mixing of powder into a glass of milk and sitting back to enjoy.  As I stirred in the powder, I was surprised to find that the cup I had chosen was squarish in shape.  This made the stirring a little bit difficult, but I could deal.  After even further stirring, though, I came to find that the spoon made a cool clunkity noise on the cup whenever I would hit the adjacent side.  Therefore, the clunking became frequent as I repetitively spun the spoon in circles.  I also came to find that if I did it in a certain pattern, it made a cool rhythm.  So I continued to stir up the beatz, joyfully this time, and probably longer than necessary.  And my roommates were probably wondering what the heck I was doing.  But I'm sure they then got lost in the beatz and forgot everything.  Even who they were maybe. 

A couple of weeks ago, I played a gig with some friends.  My old ward was having a music night, in which I participated over the summer.  I had previously agreed to do it again, and so I played a couple of songs with a couple of peeps.  The first was a cover of Falling Slowly by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova from the movie Once and the second was a cover of Radiohead's Motion Picture Soundtrack, which may actually be my favorite song ever.  If not, it's pretty close.  The link is to an acoustic version, which is closer to what we played.  Should you dare, here is the album version.  It went well. :)

Last but certainly not least, I have been playing the musics with the Austin lately.  We may or may not be planning on sending in a demo to perform at Acoustic Explosion.  We've even got some original songs picked out and everything.  Look at us go.

So anyway.  Yeah.  I like music.