Festival of Colors: Not a Myth (Probably)

This weekend, Katie, Jessie, and I decided to attend the Festival of Colors, or Holi. For those of you not aware, this is a Hindu festival celebrating the beginning of spring (by throwing colorful chalk everywhere)...filled mostly with Mormons. Because everyone likes a good festival. Our adventure began right away, as getting to Spanish Fork, Utah turned out to be a lot harder than you'd think. (Incidentally, what makes the fork Spanish?) Our first thought was to take the bus. We duly trotted out to the front of the Wilkinson center, where the bus was due to arrive every hour. However, at about 4:02, we began to get nervous. Were we in the right place? Suddenly spotting a bus on the other side of the building, we sprinted over, leaping flowers and small children alike, only to discover that the bus was not free, and it was cheaper to drive after all.

When we finally arrived in the generally right area, we discovered that the event itself was difficult to find. We quickly resorted to following cars in which the passengers appeared to be wearing white (most attendees of the festival wore white). This went about as well as you'd expect it to. When we had just about given hope, we discovered a steady stream of people in white shirts heading in one direction, and people covered in chalk heading in the other. Excitedly, we parked the car and began to follow the masses of people.

Our enthusiasm could not be dampened by the many people who chose to throw chalk at us before we had reached the festival. In fact, we kind of enjoyed it. However, after we had been walking for quite a while, we began to doubt ourselves. Blisters started to form, time continued to pass, and there was still no festival in sight. When we asked a passing stranger how much farther we had to walk, he merely responded, "far as flip" (edited). Sounds scientific. We soon formed a theory. There was no Festival of Colors. The entire event consisted of people pelting us with chalk as we passed on the sidewalk. Just as we reached the approximately two mile mark, and began to seriously consider demanding that someone come and pick us up, the festival came into sight.
And that's why you should always wear comfortable shoes.

Before

Upon Arrival

After

we are the BEST home teach-ees.

recently, we were informed that one of our home teachers, tyler, was sick. more specifically, the boys told us "he's really sick. and also, he's dead." so we got to thinking. about once a month, tyler provides us with a great home teaching lesson, followed by like 45 minutes of fantastic guitar playing (sara and i are a little bit creepily obsessed with his mad guitar skills). what if he dies?! scotty, his roommate will have to take over sole home teachingness. which is not entirely a bad thing, because scotty is awesome also. but then we can't creep on his guitar skillz anymore.

and that just won't do.

so sara and i decided that the only way to make him feel better was to assemble a care package. at 11:20, we ran to the creamery and got him some power pills (m&ms, reese's pieces and skittles) and lots of chicken noodle soup.

but obviously no please-stop-dying care kit is complete without a card! we mustered forces with jessie and marina and composed this gem...

a lovely rhyme and heartfelt message on the inside, with pictures of his favorite things on the outside. i guess it worked, because he's still kicking. but for real- are we not the nicest people ever? just click on the picture if you're having a hard time reading our loving note.

are we mother theresa incarnate or what?

if you too want to fall in love with his guitarism, go ahead and smerf on this link:

or this one

Katie's Love Will Never Die

I have this friend...we have come to call it the Magic Balloon of Love.

Let me take you back to Valentine's Day.

The cannon center was selling delicious cookies and balloons that you could get for your lover or friends. The cookies came complete with hearts drawn in and your name scripted on it. Katie, being the lovely person she is, decided to buy a cookie and balloon for all three of us. Treasuring my balloon, I lovingly tied it to my nightstand so that I could gaze at it while I laid in bed at night. Marina and Sara decided to turn their balloons into toys, proceeding to punch it, hit it, bat it, draw on it, smerf it, hug it, tell it they love it, and ...even blow it back and forth between each other. Needless to say, their balloons were dead in about three days.

Panicking at the life span of Sara and Marina's balloon, I laid down the rules! My balloon was not to be touched or messed with in any way!! One could simply admire from afar. If they broke these rules, they would face my wrath. The fact that I like to stab things with knives may have been enough of a threat because they stayed away.

My balloon continued to be a beacon in my life. It floated, never faltering for at least THREE weeks. We were amazed by its super powers. Even after it began to lose its hold on life, it still did not touch the floor for almost another week. In case you struggle in math, that's about four weeks folks! Who has heard of a cheap helium balloon lasting that long? The only explanation was this: the balloon took on the tremendous task of representing Katie's love for me. Obviously it knew our love is undying!

think of the possibilities!

ok first: possibilities is a deceptively hard word to spell.

second: for some funtertainment, smerf the picture provided here.

now onto more pressing issues: i think i control time now. or something. when i tried publishing a post about a week ago, a notice (the one in red/yellow in the right corner) appeared.

HOW DOES TIME NOT EXIST?! i understand daylight savings (kind of. i use the term "understand" very loosely here) and spring forward and whatnot (ok i totally get confused by daylight savings, but it's ok because i have great roommates and family who explain it to me). so i guess, in theory, this hour is just gone. but that kind of blows my mind. and somehow, when i try to comprehend the idea of an hour just not existing, the only thing i can think of is that i should be taking advantage of this non-hour. THINK OF THE CRIMES I COULD COMMIT!

officer: "where were you from of 1am and 3am on sunday, march eleventh?"

me: "well at one, i was in my room writing a blog post. and at three i was still in my room, sleeping."

officer: "and what about two o clock?"

me: "it's daylight savings, sir. there was no two o clock."

officer: "ah, well that seems like a sound alibi. on your way, then."

and that's how i successfully robbed the candy factory downtown that is never open when we try to visit it. without even lying! try having normal operating hours, guys, and maybe i wouldn't hypothetically rob you of all your delicious sweets and treats. your call.

Next Olympic Sport

Occasionally, on the very extremely rare chance that we decided to procrastinate our homework, we get creative on ways to entertain ourselves. Seriously, this is good stuff. So good that I believe they should give us our own reality tv show. We'd be international celebrities which would fulfill many other desires of ours...but that is another story. This story tells the tale of how we began mattress rolling.

It all started when Katie drifted into my room. She was tired of doing homework and wanted to be provided with a distraction. She didn't find one as Marina and I were busy working on our own homework. So Katie took to laying on my bed and speaking every off topic thought that came to her head. As Katie likes to live life on the edge, she laid on the very edge of my mattress- her favorite spot. One such thought that came to her mind (and she of course voiced. why deny us the privilege into the extraordinary world of Katie? it's a fascinating place, let me tell you. You wouldn't believe the smerfing that occurs there!) was what would happen if she rolled right off the edge of the bed? I of course responded that she would be injured and probably seriously regret it. She was feeling brave. She began to tip herself off the bed. However, she lost her nerve at the last minute, screaming and righted herself. I felt bad! Katie was not being able to live her dream! Who was I to sit back while her world fell to pieces around her? This injustice could not happen! I had to do something. Call me an angel if you will.

I thought about it for a minute and then asked Marina if she would particularly mind if I borrowed her mattress. Not being one to kill the prospects of a good distraction, she agreed. I maneuvered the mattress until it was right underneath Katie...then I told her to try again. Chaos ensued. See for yourself:

The Rules

Several months ago we decided that, just to simplify things, the four of us would only hate people as a group. And it really did make things easier for a while. Every once in a while, one of us would just announce, oh by the way, we hate _____ now. And so we would. It's almost always a man. Make of that what you will. It never lasted very long though; we just don't have the commitment for long-term hatred.

Yesterday, though, things got complicated. It all started when Katie and Jessie asked Sara and I to save them seats in church. We did, but they were stolen a couple of minutes later. This evidently ended our friendship. And since they hated us, we soon realized that WE were obliged to hate us. We wallowed in self-loathing for a couple of hours before we were forgiven. But it got worse. Evidently, during our brief seperation, Katie and Jessie began planning for the Civil War. They started recruiting boys for their team. When they had recruited Alex, and Michael supported us, we suddenly realized that we all hated both of them. So, naturally, we spent the rest of the afternoon asking people which side they would support. No matter what they said, we responded, "Good. We hate you now." Many people were confused. There was no correct response. Except for what Asa sent, which consisted of just this picture:

There's no way to argue with that.

true story.

sometimes i see the year written out and i panic. i think part of my panic is due to the fact that until about six months ago, i genuinely believed the world was going to end this year. so when i see that it's 2012, i have a very small, very immediate smerf attack. what does this mean for us? is it really so far in the future? is iPhone's siri technology going to pull an iRobot and take over the world?!

then i see things like this picture, and i don't necessarily feel better... but i do absolutely feel like a crazy person.

but we all knew that already, right?

Crazy One-Liners We Use to See Who is Listening

Sometimes we wonder if anyone's really paying attention when we're rambling. That would be embarrassing.... So we've come up with a solution to find out. Randomly include these crazy one-liners in normal conversation and see who catches the weirdness. Enjoy.

-I made out with him so passionately, I think I might be pregnant
-We had to dig a hole to hide the evidence.
-Then he told me I should probably go see the bishop, because that's just inappropriate.
-I ran away screaming.
-And there I was.... Handcuffed to a chicken...
-All my problems would be solved if I just had a life sized chicken suit!
-But I was like, "Wait, don't go in there! That's where the clowns live!"
-Your daddy must have been a baker. Cuz you've got a nice apron collection.

-Once I ate a smurf. It tasted like arctic hen.
-I just can't sleep ever since the monkey stole my parents
-One time I wandered into the produce section of the grocery store, and ended up in Narnia for 3 hours. I came back and realized, Mom was right! I shouldn't take candy from strangers!
-I saw a cat today, and realized I was really hungry for some tacos.
-And then I was like, "No, you can't take my baby!"
-My mom still tells me what to do. Sometimes she calls me and reminds me not to eat things out of the garbage.
-Last year, I had an affair with the couch. I haven't looked at pizza the same way since.

And there it is folks. The product of our very bored minds. Make of it what you will.

Scooters, and the Many Uses Thereof.

We got ourselves some brand new wheels, y'all!  

Isn't it hot??  We named him Jorge.  It's a Spanish name, apparently.  Which means it is not pronounced like "George."  Duh.  Who would think that?

In testing out our new wheels, we've taken Jorge all over Helaman Halls.  Outside, inside, even up and down the stairs.  We've discovered that it's so much easier and faster to scooter down the hall rather just walk.  Psh.  We don't walk.  Come on.  That's so mainstream.

Because of Jorge the scooter, we have stumbled upon an important truth- and we even did it using the
scientific method.

Step 1: Ask a question.
Would it be beneficial to you to have a scooter if you were randomly being attacked by a mad man?

Step 2: Do background research.
Surprisingly, there are not many scholarly articles on the most effective use of a scooter if one is being raped or molested.  Too bad.  So we settled with asking a few of our hall mates what they thought.  Mostly, we just got weird looks, so we abandoned our research and moved on to step 3.

Step 3: Construct hypothesis.
Having a scooter like Jorge with you in the event of unsuspected attack would be beneficial because you could scoot speedily away.

Step 4: Test with an experiment.
This was easy enough.  Katie and I took turns playing "Mad Rapist" while the other scootered down the hall at high speed.  Turns out, no matter who was running and who was scooting, the runner could always catch them.  We wanted more evidence, however, so we recruited Leah to help us.  She was very willing to chase us down the hall, and the same thing happened.  It wasn't until she switched roles that we realized there was more to this experiment than met the eye.  Leah, upon being chased, turned around to face her attacker.  She picked up Jorge the scooter and began to beat the "Mad Rapist" until she no longer felt threatened.  Then she calmly set Jorge down and walked back to her room.

Step 5: Analyze results and draw conclusion.
If you are ever scootering through campus, be aware that although it may be faster and less work than walking (especially down hill), nothing is faster than just plain running.  So if your fight or flight instinct tells you to run, ditch Jorge.  He'll live, I promise.  And he might even find it in his heart to forgive you.  Eventually.  But if your fight or flight instinct tells you to beat the living daylights out of the creepy man behind you, smerf off and let Jorge do all the work.

we ♥ summer.

today is a beautiful day. it's snowed probably four or five times in the last week. generally, it's been depressingly cold. so cold in fact, that i actually wore pants under my pants twice last week. but today is different. it's sunny. it's breezy. it's warm. and when it gets warm, great things happen....

...the track kids emerge from hibernation...

because who needs real men when you can take hyper-zoom pictures of shirtless strangers and then use the computer to zoom in further and check out their ab muscles? not us. we don't do that. we just shout things at them. after all, why not abuse the excellent view we have of the track? we're nothing if not opportunists.

it was so nice that even we were outside for a while, studying. and by studying, i mean meditating. and by meditating, i mean napping. and by we, i mean me. jessie and sara might have been legitimately doing things... but i was too busy smerfing the warm sunshine behind closed eyelids. anyway, enjoy this collaborative shot of people enjoying the beautiful warm weather. because here, it never lasts long.

Mercenaries For Hire

Ok well maybe not mercenaries, it just sounded cooler. Actually, Katie and I are now master Private Investigators. But I mean that's basically the same thing right? Who hires a PI unless they plan on killing people. We just multi task. I guess that means we can charge you double! Anyways...

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Marina. Marina was in the process of obtaining housing with her friends. But you see, Marina was running late for class and did not pay attention to the instructions given to her by her friends. Those instructions were to fill out her information on the last sheet of her contract. At least she was kind enough to provide her signature (but only one, don’t get crazy).

[Insert Marina’s friends: Katie and Jessie, here after told from Jessie’s perspective]

So we made our decision on where to live for next year. We read the contracts…well really I read the contract and told them the important stuff. Now all we had to do was sign and turn in our contracts. However, we were having trouble finding a time where we could all trek over to the office. You see, we all have very different schedules and there is never a very good time that all of us are at home. It was then decided that Katie and I would have the honor of representing everyone. As they both had class and would be gone by the time we retrieved the documents, we told Sara and Marina to fill out their contracts and leave a blank, but signed check in the rooms and we would handle the rest.

Apparently Marina felt we should get to know a little bit more about her.

The back of the contract held tons of information such as home address, emergency contact, driver's license number, social security number, birth date, etc. There were also portions that needed to be initialed and a signature at the bottom. Guess which part we needed Marina to fill out? Yes, that's right, all of it! Guess which part Marina filled out?....only the signature. This put us in quite a bind. I had a class that I needed to be back for shortly, the office was closing, and Marina had no service for her phone nor would she had seen it if we texted her. So we did what we do best..creeping :)

That's right. We stalked Marina. We started with what we knew: her name, birthday, phone number, favorite color, age, email, and we hoped for our sake that we assumed correct on her criminal record. Next came the ward directory which had her home city. Then we moved to Yellow Pages where Katie searched her last name in the right city to find her home address. Using Facebook's contribution of her mother's name, we confirmed the address. All that remained was a social security and driver's license number. Being Marina's close and personal bestest friend...or her roommate...I happen to know where she keeps important documents. Luckily this super secret place was unlocked. I rifled through all of it until I held in my hand that golden little card with her SSN on it!

Yes, I know you are thinking how we failed to obtain every aspect of information, but cut us some slack, it was our first job. And if I had my dear friend Matt on call, I'm sure he could have easily walked me through hacking into the DMV to get her DL#. But seen as how I had already reported on my contract that my criminal record was clean [and it was written in pen!!] , there was no risking it. I don't think they would take lightly me smerfing government organizations.

Katie willingly took the identity of Marina long enough to initial all spots. And there you have it folks: a finished contract, completely and totally true. That is the whole and honest story of how Marina got hijacked. So the lesson here is...do what Jessie tells you! Or you run the risk of identity theft.

As Long as it's 3,000 words...

I told Katie that she either needed to put me out of my misery or come write my paper for me.

She sent me:

APaperForMarinaYouAreVeryWelcomeHereIsYourA

Marina Haddock

Professor Something

Mythology 101

13 February 2012

Mythology is a Perversion of Decency

Everyone is familiar with the classic Greek myths. The tales of Greek heroes and gods are shared in early school years, and later analyzed in high school and college. It is easy to be blinded by the popularity of the highly dramatized Greek legends and overlook the disturbing themes underlying our favorite tales. Nearly every Greek myth bears at least a slight mentioning of incest, rape, or unicorn beating. This problematic pattern allows readers to ponder the real meanings behind the classic Greek favorites, and to explore the possibility that the Greeks aren’t as “cultured” as we have believed for centuries. In fact, is it possible that the Greeks are just greedy unicorn users and abusers as well as dirty, dirty pedophiles? Could it be that all the celestial Greek inbreeding is the REAL leading cause of puppy deaths today? Indeed, recent scientific discoveries and preliminary tests are the beginning of what will be a long, thorough investigation into the Greek psyche and internal reasoning.

I sent her: The paper is for my philosophy class. But thanks. I'm probably putting this on the blog.

However, I am still working on the paper, and I hate it so much that I'm seriously considering throwing this in on the end. I don't think anyone will notice, do you?