Cassius Caulfield

Help!

2012-01-10T12:38:00.000-07:00

I have a problem and I need some help with it. It's about our dog.

I know I've blogged and facebooked about this before. The thing is, I've always joked about this in the past, but it's no laughing matter.

Lately I've been watching episodes of Monk on Netflix. My kids have watched it with me sometimes. One day, after hearing me complain about the dog, my daughter said, "Dad, you're just like Mr. Monk. You're afraid of dog germs."

The thing is, it's true. More and more I see it in myself. And I know that the problem isn't the dog. It's me. And it's straining my relationship with my daughter.

Here's the lowdown:

Sometimes I pet the dog when I leave the house in the morning. Just a pat on the head. When the weather's cold this is easy because I put my gloves on first. If it's warm outside or I haven't got gloves on yet I usually just don't pet him. If I do, because his sad face makes me feel guilty, I usually wash my hands immediately afterwards.

Sometimes I challenge myself to pet him with my bare hands and not wash them. I can sort-of deal with it because if I'm going to work anyway my hands are going to get covered with grease, scrubbed, and covered with grease again several times throughout the day. But I can't bear to leave my hands unwashed if I'm staying home. In fact I swear I can feel the residue from his fur on my hands for hours afterwards and I'm very conscious about what I touch. It just about drives me crazy.

It gets worse. The dog likes to happily roll around on our living room rug. It literally turns my stomach to watch him do this, snorting and shuffling and slobbering all over. Usually my feet are the only part of me that touches that rug. If I sit down on the floor to play a game with the kids I wash my hands afterwards and my clothes usually go in the laundry.

The dog also sits on one of our couches regularly, so I never sit on that couch except when the home teachers come over. While they are visiting with us, I feel acutely conscious of my body position and the parts of my body that touch the area where the dog likes to sit. I don't dwell on this too much and it doesn't nag at me for very long, but It's definitely outside my comfort zone.

If I feed the dog, touch his food or food bowls, touch the doorknob to the room where his food is kept, or if heaven forbid his wet nose or snout ever touches my skin, it goes without saying that I immediately wash my hands.

I know that this is irrational. I know that he isn't toxic and that living with a dog is not dangerous to me. But I can't stop feeling this way. I've even prayed about it some. I've tried to train myself to be nicer and more affectionate with him. The best I've been able to do is coexist without too much vocal complaining. My daughter made a deal with me that I owe her a dollar every time she hears me complain, so I've kept my mouth shut lately.

A couple of months ago I had a serious talk with the kids and I tried to explain this problem to them in at way they'd understand. I told them that we had to sell the dog because he deserved to be with someone who could be affectionate with him and play with him. There was weepingandwailingandgnashingofteeth. I backed down.

Since then my daugher has been extra affectionate with Midnight. She is constantly hugging and nuzzling and petting him. She really loves him. This morning as she was leaving for school she came to give me a hug (after just hugging the dog) and inside I kind-of cringed. I hugged her anyway, but it wasn't easy.

After she left I sat and thought about this problem. It comes down to this: Either I get over this phobia or I damage my relationship with my daughter. I don't know how to do this. So I'm sending a request into the vast ocean of stupidity we call the blogosphere. Somebody help me please.

The First National Bank of Kmart

2011-12-17T08:33:00.001-07:00

By now everyone has seen the news about "Layaway Angels." This is a phenomenon in which people are anonymously paying off the layaway purchases of Kmart shoppers. It's a Christmas miracle.

Yesterday in response to a thread on facebook, I made a snarky comment about this. While I thought it was humorous, it drew the ire of several people I don't even know. Ain't facebook grand?

I will quote my comment here, though it will probably just serve to enlarge the angry mob I incited yesterday. Here you go:

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that though I think this is great, it seems that the best thing you could do for the K-mart layaway customer is buy them a basic course in life skills. You know, teach a man to fish instead of smoke with his kids in the car.

I've been thinking about this comment, and the response it got a lot since yesterday. This morning I woke up early thinking about it. I'm sorry I wrote it because I think I spoiled the Christmas buzz people had gotten by reading the associated article.

However, since this is my blog and I can do what I want, I think I'll put my comments in context.

I used to work for a company that provided retail assembly services to all the big chains. Mostly I assembled bicycles. I regularly worked at Target, Walmart, Shopko and Kmart. Most of the time I worked at stores in Utah, but on three occasions I was sent out of state to work. I worked in Detroit, Chicago and Fairbanks. (Interesting tidbit: the Fairbanks Kmart sold more bicycles than any other store in the chain.)

When you spend a lot of time at these stores, you start to notice things. They all look the same, no matter where you are. It's like LDS meetinghouses. For example: Target stores are generally cleaner, the lights are brighter, the aisles are wider. Employees are everywhere. The shopping carts roll smoothly. Shopko is generally a little less presentable up front, but with a homey vibe, while their warehouses are much smaller and less organized. Kmart is at the bottom of the spectrum. Aisles are narrow and often cluttered with boxes. Employees are scarce and not very helpful. Merchandise looks as if it's been thrown on the shelves by an angry teenager who didn't want to clean his room. The shopping carts are old and rusty, their wheels a good way to teach three-year-olds about shapes other than circles. Fluorescent lights flicker from a ceiling of crumbling yellow-stained acoustic tile. The warehouse is a dank dungeon from which light cannot escape. I hated working at Kmart.

The interesting thing about this is that even though the stores sell a lot of the same crap, they attract a very different clientele. (In fact, the bicycles at Target were among the worst. They had a brand there that made Huffy look decent.) This isn't to say that all of the stores fit my descriptions. These are generalizations after all. But real trends are readily observed, and these trends are established at a corporate level, where the suits set their sights on their "target" customer. (This is why I find the name Target appropriate if not a little "in your face.")

I used to wonder if Kmart was just overseen by a bunch of idiots. But I believe that there is a method to the madness. They attract a certain clientele because of their seeming ineptitude, not in spite of it.

This brings me back to the "Layaway Angels." I believe that at best this is misguided giving, which is still giving and therefore good, right? But at worst, this is one of the most brilliant viral marketing schemes ever.

Think about it for a minute: Layaway is a program which provides numerous advantages to the retailer, and very few to the consumer. Best of all, layaway shifts the risks of the loan back onto the head of the lessee. Imagine borrowing money to buy a car, paying the loan origination fees, downpayment, and any surcharges they might invent at the time of purchase, then having to leave the car at the dealership until you have paid off the loan.

Kmart loves layaway. By providing a Layaway program, Kmart effectively becomes a bank. And not just any bank either: they become a bank like a pawn shop or a payday lender. They make short term loans at absurdly high rates of return with almost no risk.

Here's how it works:

When you make a layaway at Kmart, you can choose an 8 week or 12 week plan. If you are buying Christmas gifts, this means you are committing to buy those gifts from Kmart in September or October; well before any holiday sales begin. Kmart wins.

Next you pay either a $5 or a $10 service fee. You also pay a down payment. No matter what happens, Kmart keeps your service fee, and your down payment covers the cancellation fee if you default so Kmart will never have to spend a penny on collection. Kmart wins.

You then make payments every two weeks to pay off the balance. Each time you do so, online or in store, Kmart has the opportunity to sell you more stuff. Kmart wins.

If you are more than a week late, Kmart returns your would-be purchases back to the shelves and you forfeit a $10 or $20 cancellation fee. You can get a refund for the remaining paid amount. Kmart wins.

At the end of your contract you can take home your purchases.

Imagine a person makes a $200 8-week layaway. If they don't default, Kmart makes only $5 (in addition to the profit they made on the merchandise). Seems like a fair deal. Actually though, if you calculate that money as interest, the annual rate is 16.25%. A similar 12 week layaway yields 21.66% APR. That's a really high yield considering that Kmart had no risk other than the expense of taking your shopping cart full of stuff and sticking it in the warehouse for 8 or 12 weeks.

If you default it's even better for them. They don't have to repossess anything. The merchandise in question is still brand-new, and they triple their return by withholding cancellation fees from your refund. A customer can default in as little as 3 weeks. A $200 purchase on a 12 week layaway defaulted in 3 weeks means you paid Kmart over 115% APR on a loan that wasn't really a loan in the first place because goods never changed hands.

Is it so hard to save up a little, buy what you can afford, and hide your gifts until Christmas? Clearly there is little benefit provided to the consumer that they can't obtain for free with a locked closet and a modicum of self-discipline, while Kmart reaps huge rewards.

This is why I said that people who use layaway would be better served by being given a free course in life skills instead of by "layaway angels." This type of program encourages people to buy more than they can afford, and works even better for the retailer when the "loan" goes bad. And now with the rumors of "layaway angels" swirling (real or fabricated), you can bet Kmart will be laughing all the way to the bank.

2011-09-04T19:48:00.000-06:00

I haven't posted in a long time. Sometimes I sign in and stare at the blinking cursor for a while, then sign out. A week or two ago I signed in and read a bunch of my old posts. It was actually pretty entertaining for me. I had forgotten a lot of what I had written and it was fun to remember.

This Summer was good. Business was good. The challenges and the frustration at work were good. I had a few really great vacation experiences-- two with family, one without. I read some good books. I finally finished Catch 22. I read Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut. I'm working on The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else by Hernando de Soto. I read J.D. Salinger a Life by Kenneth Slawenski, along with re-reading Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger. I've just begun reading The Elements of Computing Systems by Noam Nisan and Shimon Shocken (an introductory Computer Science textbook).

But I haven't written much of anything. There's that cursor taunting me. I have so much to say, but most of it should probably be abandoned in a journal somewhere. Privacy, Shame and Tact have all conspired against me and the parts of my life that would make the most captivating narrative are all held hostage by those three old spinsters.

It has been a good year. I've been blessed with a lot of positive changes in my life over the past two years. I came pretty close to dying. I was strengthened by abundant blessings and prayers. I have seen God's hand at work in my life. Miracles have been frequent and profound.

A few days ago I was sharing some of my thoughts with an addiction recovery group I attend. I told them about some of those miracles. I know that Jesus healed the blind and the lame, the leprous and the possessed, the adulterous and the afflicted. I've read of those miracles and been touched by those accounts. But those miracles are no more real nor greater in magnitude than the miracles He has worked for me personally. Those are the stories I would tell here if I had the courage.

2011-04-13T07:54:00.000-06:00

I discovered U2 when I was in 7th grade. I had heard they were good, and I thought that socially it would probably be a good move to get into them. I asked a friend in my English class (whose brother was a confirmed U2 fanatic) to get me a mix tape of their best songs.

The tape was a winner. It had all the best tracks and even some deep cuts ranging from their earliest work up to Wide Awake in America. I listened to it at night while reading The Chronicles of Narnia.

Later The Joshua Tree was released and I purchased it on Vinyl. Rattle and Hum was the first CD I ever bought. Achtung Baby was the soundtrack of my entire senior year of high school. I think I listened to it at least once a day.

When I went on my mission one of the things I had a really hard time with was letting go of my music. I was afraid that I'd come home after 2 years of no popular music and find myself hopelessly out of touch with musical reality. (This from a guy who completely missed Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and the entire Grunge scene because he was listening to Mysterious Ways 10 times a day.)

Once, as a missionary, we had dinner with a young family who had a large Pink Floyd collection on display. The father of the family was a huge fan. My own exposure to Pink Floyd had been fairly limited due to my fear of anything remotely associated with long hair, black T-shirts, and drugs. (Bono's mullet notwithstanding.) But I knew that their Dark Side of the Moon album had broken all kinds of sales records, so we made conversation about it. I left there meditating on the sad state of people who stagnate on tired-out old bands. "Luckily for me," I thought, "I'm into U2 so that will never happen."

Tonight I went to see Arcade Fire. It was a great show. I have to say though, that a lot of douchebags have discovered them since I saw them play at Thanksgiving Point a couple of years ago.

Notes on Crystal to the Rescue

2011-03-22T14:28:00.000-06:00

My sweet little daughter loves to draw and write stories. When she hangs out with me at the shop she takes all the printer paper, the stapler, and a box of markers and gets to work binding her own books.

The story below was one of my favorites but it just about broke my heart. I fear that she feels she is always left behind. I worry about what might happen to her.

Just this morning as she told me about the outfit she was putting together for the day, I looked at her eyes and was struck by how bright and clear they are. I said a silent prayer that nothing would ever happen to her to darken those eyes. Yet I know that those things happen in all our lives. And I know that those things can turn for our good. Yet I pray that nothing ever darkens her bright eyes. And I hope against hope.

Last night we were having ice cream and she said, "Daddy, if I died would you be sad forever?"

I answered, "Yes, sweetheart." But there are no words to express the grief that would consume my every waking moment.

As I prayed this morning, I thought of how the Savior entreated us all to be as little children, and I imagine he means that our eyes should be as my daughters eyes, bright and clear. But doesn't it also say somewhere that we should wise as serpents? I don't know how to reconcile that.

I just want my daughter to always be safe.

Crystal to the Rescue

2011-03-12T11:18:00.000-07:00

Crystal to the Rescue

I am a girl that always gets left behind.

One day I saved someone 'cause I have wings. The only one with wings.

Mister Pratt had everybody wear fake wings.

Now I'm called a fairy.

The whole school made a statue of me when I died from cancer.

The end.

Las Vegas High Rollers Scooter Rally 2011

2011-03-05T23:33:00.003-07:00

For the past ten years or so, with only one exception, I've been attending a ridiculous event called a scooter rally in Las Vegas, NV.

To be honest, the first few years were really fun for me, the rest have been somewhat disappointing. But I keep on going in hopes of it being fun again. I'm no different from the feeble, nicotine-stained old women that play the slots for hours on end. We all keep hoping for the big payout, and we all keep losing.

I hate Las Vegas. I think it's one of the worst places in the world. There's no reason a city should even be there, yet it persists, like a gaudy, artificial oasis. Its imported palm trees are a metaphor for the whole damned place--fronds bathed in soul-sucking neon light, roots littered with leaflets advertising payday loans and prostitutes.

I go there for the rally. But always within a few hours of arriving I feel like one of those trees and I can't wait to leave. Some argue that it's a great place due to the wealth and low taxes, but with something like 80% of Las Vegas homes currently underwater, it's clear that the wealth is an illusion. The city is an empire built on the backs of addicts, strippers, and illegal aliens. Its economy is a house of cards.

Still I go. And I have fun. We ride our scooters around, head out to Red Rocks, or Hoover Dam, down the strip to the "Fabulous Las Vegas" sign. We eat at buffets and try to get some sun.

This year our family also had a legitimate reason to go there. My mother-in-law married and moved to Las Vegas a few months ago, so the rally presented us with a good opportunity to visit her. They were gracious hosts and my kids really enjoyed visiting and riding their horses.

Speaking of animals, that brings me to the real reason I started this post. I know you thought I was just going to trash on Las Vegas until all my relatives that live there hate me. Well the joke's on you because most of them never liked me much to begin with. But seriously, my wife is from Las Vegas, so it can't be all bad.

Actually the real reason I started this post was to complain about our dog.

See, when we left for the rally we had to find someone to watch him. After some arm-twisting my wife convinced her brother to take him in. I'm not saying her brother is dangerous or anything, but if anybody stood a chance of accidentally poisoning him with a strange herbal concoction, he's the guy. He even mentioned he had a good remedy for Midnights bad breath. I was ecstatic. The kids would never forgive me for getting rid of the dog myself. Though he has bitten me more than once I'm stuck with him. But if it was an accident. . .

I've realized that though I'm not generally touchy about germs, when It comes to dogs I'm a total germophobe. Like today for example, my mom wondered what the puddle of sludge leaking out of her car was, so I tasted it to see if it was brake fluid, motor oil, or anti-freeze. No problem. But just knowing the dog has rubbed his abcessed gums on our area rug makes me think twice about even entering the room.

For someone like me, a dog is a miserable lose/lose proposition: On one end a snot-nosed, stinky dishrag of a face, and on the other a furry anus.

Sure, our dog looks like a teddy bear, and teddy bears are cute. But if your teddy bear started walking around your house pooping real poop and eating vomit, you wouldn't let ol' Teddy Ruxpin lick your mouth, you'd kill him with fire.

So the best part of the weekend-- the thing that kept my spirits up in the city I call Satan's Armpit was that for two days I harbored a warm, glowing hope in my heart that maybe, just maybe, my brother-in-law would accidentally kill our dog while we were gone.

Much to my chagrin, when we returned to pick him up, not only was Midnight still alive, but he had just foraged through my brother-in-laws trash and eaten a poopy diaper.

He happily got into our car, snuffling and snorting, his doggy beard glistening with diaper crystals, and tried to lick me.

I almost threw up but I didn't want to give him a treat.

Why does Facebook hate my blog so much?

2011-02-13T19:28:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to get my blog to import to Facebook. It used to work, but I played with the settings in hopes that I could get it to show my whole posts and not just the first paragraph. It turns out it was a blogger setting I needed to change, but now I can't get my blog connected to facebook again.

I'm actually just writing this post to test things. Sorry if you've read this in hopes of something more interesting.

2011-02-09T20:12:00.000-07:00

Today sucked. Here's why:

I woke up extra early and found that my son, Sir Wipesalot, had clogged the toilet-- again.

I proceeded to unclog the toilet using our plunger that just can't ever get a good seal on the poo-hole which always means a good splash or two before it finally goes down.

Then I went to court. I won't go into any detail on that because discretion is important. That sounds strange when I just used the word poo-hole in a sentence, but I do have my limits. Suffice it to say that I have to defend myself against the allegations of a drug-addict poo-hole I had a dispute with.

After the humiliation of court I went to work. At work I've been working really hard to get some dents out of a scooter I'm trying to restore by the end of the month. I'm way behind and I'm hammering and sanding my hands off trying to catch up. Meanwhile, out in the parking lot, someone hit my van and put a nice dent in it.

On the way home from work my freshly-dented pig of a van ran out of gas.

Today was great! Here's why:

I woke up extra early and found that my son had clogged the toilet. I love that kid, even if he has no concept of appropriate toilet paper usage. I'm grateful for my kids.

I was able to unclog the toilet with fairly minimal collateral damage and it was pre-shower so I got to scrub down afterwards anyway.

I went to court and saw a divorcing couple enter pleas for hitting eachother, and be sentenced to anger management and parenting classes. I'm glad that I'm not in their shoes.

At work my wife hit my van with her van. My van got dented. It's not too bad. I love her, even if she has no concept of space when she's in a hurry behind the wheel. I'm grateful for my wife.

On the way home from work I ran out of gas but my wife was able to rush over with a can of gas and get me going again quickly.

When I got home my wife had prepared a nice dinner.

I still have a couple of cookies in my secret stash.

I guess my day wasn't that bad after all.

2011-01-25T13:33:00.000-07:00

The first time I laid eyes on a Vespa it was 1994. Until then, I had never heard of Vespa scooters. I must have seen them in pictures or on the streets, but I couldn't have picked one out of a lineup.

It was my brother Tom that inadvertently got me hooked. He was a senior in high school and persuaded our parents to let him sell the family's old 1978 Toyota Corona station wagon in order to buy a 1979 Vespa P200E. It was $400 if I remember correctly. When we brought it home it was in pieces, but I was able to quickly get it running. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen.

Tom and I had had other vehicles growing up, from go-karts to mini-bikes, to a Honda Aero 80 scooter, and we enjoyed them together, but our individual connections to them were distinct. Tom had a much more balanced life with lots of friends and other hobbies. I had difficulties connecting with my peers and found myself talking about go-karts non-stop, obsessing about various repairs and modifications. A kid like me has trouble making friends, but a kid like me with wheels can get by.

Anyway, this project followed the same pattern as other projects Tom and I had as kids. He acquired the vehicle because he had the taste and the social skills to do so. I repaired the vehicle, with Tom handing me tools and helping out along the way. Then we struggled to work out a joint-custody arrangement.

We finished that restoration just a few days before I entered the Missionary Training Center to begin a two-year mission for my church.

This is what it looked like when we were finished. Fall 1994.

When I got home from my mission the first thing I was dying to do was to ride the Vespa. I ransacked my room until I found the envelope containing keys that Tom had hidden for me before he left for his mission. It would be a year before Tom came home from Brazil. During that time I rode the Vespa everywhere. In addition to being basic transportation it was a decompression valve, and a key that opened doors for me socially that I had hitherto been too clumsy to lockpick.

When Tom came home I handed the keys back over to him. By that time I had begun fixing Vespas for other people. I had also begun work on my 1963 Ford Galaxie. I was getting my life underway. College was going well. I had a good job. And I enjoyed fixing Vespas on the side.

I remember eating at a Japanese restaraunt with a friend (whose scooter I was helping to restore) and he began talking to the waiter about scooters. When the waiter expressed interest in getting a Vespa, my friend introduced me to him as the expert. I was floored when the waiter said that not only had he heard of me, he had my name and number in his wallet.

I restored and repaired a lot of other scooters during that period. I met a pair of businessmen who, in addition to buying and selling used Levi's, had made a trip to Italy and returned with a container of classic Italian scooters. With these now in local circulation, demand for my help increased dramatically.

We formed a scooter club called Brigham's Bees. It was amazing to me to go on rides with ten or twenty other Vespa owners. We'd line our scooters up in front of scenic mountain vistas and take pictures. I would secretly count off the ones I had repaired or restored. It gave me a great sense of accomplishment. I had found, and forged, a community for myself.

I've tried to count the scooters I've restored. I should have kept records and pictures of all of them. I know I have restored at least 15 scooters since that first P200. All of them for other people.

On July 28, 2004, I bought a Vespa for myself. A shop in Austin, TX had a 1961 Vespa GS150 project. Price $2000. One of their employees was heading to Denver for the Mile High Mayhem scooter rally, and my friend Kent was also going to that rally, so between the two of them I was able to get it transported to Orem for free. I wish I had pictures of it pre-restoration. It was pretty ragged but full of potential.

I quickly took it all apart and took the body to a painter. I ordered many of the parts I would need. When the painter finished I began reassembly. As at other times, with other aspects of my life, I got off to a good start. Unfortunately I soon slacked off and the scooter began collecting dust.

The process of restoration is pretty interesting. It's a heartbreaking hobby. Any time you undertake to fight entropy, you end up losing. Just look at Joan Rivers. Things deteriorate. It's a law of nature. trying to make things go the other direction takes a tremendous amount of energy, and when you stop putting that energy in, entropy reclaims its prey.

Restoring a vehicle is challenging on a few fronts. First there's the problem of rust. Rust is like a cancer that eats metal. It gets into microscopic pores and seams in sheet metal. It's very hard to eradicate. There's also the problem of dents and dings. Those kinds of scars require skill to remove. On cars most of the sheet metal only has one exposed side, so you can get away with using dent fillers more liberally. But with scooters much of the sheet metal is exposed on both sides, so filler very quickly makes it look too bulky and thick. Also the sheet metal on a scooter body is exposed to more vibration and flexing, which can cause heavy filler to crack and flake off.

These are just a few of the problems. Others include scarcity of replacement parts, repairing the mechanical parts like the engine and suspension, and refinishing the various parts in the appropriate finishes (chrome, polished alloy, paint, etc.)

When I first started with this hobby I had no qualms about having a scooter painted any color, or using whatever new parts were available for a restoration. Gradually I've grown to appreciate original colors and refurbishing old parts, even when new ones would look nicer. I like to try to preserve some of the history and character that come with age, rather than just making it look showroom new. It's funny to me that I feel this way now, but I do nevertheless.

I have finally finished restoring that 1961 Vespa. I guess it's a good time to have it finished because it's turning 50 this year. This is the first scooter I have done for myself. I think it turned out nicely.

2011-01-01T11:25:00.002-07:00

I once read about a study of unrequited love in adolescents. One of the findings was that young men reported much more heartbreak over unrequited love than young women.

On the surface this might seem puzzling given that women stereotypically are much more affectionate and emotional. But it was obvious to me.

As a young man, I couldn't have explained why it was obvious, but having had my heart stomped on by more than one indifferent young woman, I knew it was true.

But I think I could explain it now.

For women, being connected is socially acceptable. Women hug and kiss and hold hands in public with other women. Women engage in social activities with other women that would be comical for men to do together. For example, women go to the bathroom as a group activity, it is socially acceptable female behavior. Another example I see in my line of work is female motorcycle riders. Two women on a motorcycle or scooter is cute, two men on the same motorcycle is embarrasing for all involved.

What's this got to do with unrequited love you ask? I think that men aren't wired so differently from women. I think that men experience the same emotional needs for acceptance and connection as women do. And as boys these needs are met by mothers and fathers, big sisters, brothers and extended family. Nobody is uncomfortable with it. But at some point before puberty boys are made to become ashamed of affection. We are set adrift in a sea of competitive isolation wherein we founder aimlessly until we strike upon some foreign shore of love and affection. Sometimes this is a safe harbor, but often it's an island inhabited by cannibals. Because the women who become the objects of our affection are not as needy as we are, we eat ourselves alive.

For adolescent men, disconnectedness and isolation are the norm. Everything from football to pornography reinforces this disconnectedness. The way we are expected to relate to both men and women is infused with aggression and alienation.

So of course young mens' hearts are more often broken. Young women have eachother, and the undivided attention of young men who don't even know how to approach them. Young men have only their confused selves and their raging loneliness. (An argument could even be made that their loneliness rages harder than their hormones, but I won't go into that here.)

Unfortunately all of what I've just said is anecdotal. And any serious research would be thwarted by the very problem I'm trying to describe. Men wouldn't admit to having these feelings, because these feelings are not manly.

Years ago I was introduced to a girl who was in a Women's Studies program in a prestigious university back east. She looked down her nose and saw the grease under my fingernails and proceeded to tear me apart for being a manly man. That's all I was to her, and all I would ever be. Her contempt for me was clear, and her ability to talk circles around me left me speechless. I felt I'd been run over by a trainload of sneering, superior, articulate women and I hadn't been able to get a word in edgewise. In my impotent frustration I behaved exactly as the troll she saw in me. Our one-sided conversation turned into an argument that culminated in me dropping her off at the curb and squealing my tires as I sped away.

I couldn't express my feelings at all then, and "manly" anger took over, but what I wish I could have said to her is that her course of study was not liberating her femininity, but rather it was arming her with the same weapons of self-isolation that are standard-issue for all ten-year-old boys. I would have explained to her that both men and women are bound and gagged in boxes and that liberation will not come in the form of one gender tightening the shackles of the other. I would have told her that we need to free eachother as people in order to be truly free.

Unfortunately, had I had the sense to say those things, I probably would have used them as pick-up lines.

2010-11-24T08:40:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I went to all sorts of trouble* getting my van ready so I wouldn't have to ride my scooter through the mountains of snow the weatherman promised.

What a disappointment that was.

Here's a little vidya my friend Nick made. You might have to click on it to see the full width. It doesn't play right in my browser and I'm too lazy to figure out how to fix it.

*not really

2010-10-16T23:47:00.002-06:00

Once upon a time in a magical land there lived four little princesses: Princess Bouquet, Princess Hugglesworth, Princess Sweetiecakes and Princess Tootington.

Princess Bouquet, as you might imagine, was a lovely girl who was enchanted with flowers. Everywhere she went, wild flowers bloomed, and she was fond of arranging them in wonderful bundles and giving them to her friends.

Princess Hugglesworth was a very generous spirit who shared her love and kindness with everyone she knew. Whenever a friend was feeling blue, a warm embrace from Princess Hugglesworth was better than chicken soup.

Princess Sweetiecakes was a talented baker and enjoyed sharing her delicious cakes and cookies with everyone in the kingdom. As an added bonus, unlike what you would expect of such a stereotypical character, she wasn't chubby at all.

But poor Princess Tootington had none of these desirable talents. She was the token homely girl found in nearly every group of girl friends. Oh how she wished she could do the wonderful things her friends could do. Instead she balanced her time between eating Cabbage (her favorite vegetable), and talking with all the boys that were in love with her friends but too intimidated to talk to them directly.

One day Princesses Bouquet, Hugglesworth, Sweetiecakes and Tootington decided to take a walk in the woods. Just as you might expect, they encountered a villain. This particular villain was a woegre, which is what you get when a Wolf and an Ogre love eachother very much and get married. The woegre roared at the Princesses and declared in no uncertain terms that he intended to eat them up.

Princess Bouquet said, "Oh please Mr. Woegre, don't eat us up! Here is a lovely floral arrangement to enjoy instead."

But the Woegre said, "No thanks. I don't go in much for flowers." And swallowed her up in one bite.

Princess Hugglesworth realized that maybe the woegre was having a bad day and went to give him a big hug. The woegre swallowed her up before she got a chance.

Princess Sweetiecakes, though most normal people would have run away by now, chose instead to offer the woegre a basket of her delicious baked goods. The woegre said, "I'll save these for dessert, but I'm still working on the main course." And with that he swallowed up Princess Sweetiecakes.

Poor Princess Tootington was so scared she didn't know what to do. She knew she would be next, and she didn't think there was anything she could do about it. She cowered and shook with fear as the woegre drew closer. She felt his hot breath on the back of her neck. Her whole body tensed in terror. Just then, as the woegre opened his ugly mouth to eat her up, she squeaked out a fart the likes of which had never been smelled or heard in all the land. This happened right as the woegre inhaled, so he got the brunt of it right at close range. The terrible smell was like a putrid fist that reached up his nose, grabbed the olfactory centers of his brain, and set them on fire. He puked up all the other princesses, still alive, and ran into the forest.

The princesses were all very happy because the fairy tale had reached it's logical conclusion and now they could all go take showers and live happily ever after.

And Princess Tootington proudly farted all the rest of her days.

2010-08-28T00:47:00.001-06:00

Bedtime Stories

Some time ago my brother Tom's kids were staying over and for fun I told his kids some bedtime stories about when Tom and I were little that were kind-of embarassing to Tom. Later he repaid the favor by doing the same thing to my kids when they stayed at his house.

The stories have since evolved to the point that the kids really enjoy them and there are morals to the stories and everything.

I think it's time to write them down:

The Lemon

When Tom was a little boy he enjoyed eating lemons. He would cut a lemon in half and carry it around for hours, slowly sucking the sour juice while his teeth turned to mush.

One day Dave decided to see what all the fuss was about and tried a lemon. It was disgusting. Dave didn't know how Tom could stand to eat them, so with an obvious disregard for the physical limitations of household plumbing, he threw the lemon in the toilet.

Some time later, their mom noticed the lemon floating in the toilet bowl, and knowing that it was a terrible way to make lemonade, fished it out and left it on the back of the tank. (Obviously nobody in the family had ever heard of a trash can.)

A few hours later, their mom noticed that the lemon was gone and asked, "Who took that lemon I fished out of the toilet?"

Tom's face turned green and he felt sick to his stomach. He had found the lemon and eaten it.

The moral of the story: Don't eat things you find in the bathroom.

The Poem

One night when Tom and Dave were teenagers Tom was hanging around in his room with his friend Boyd. Dave was excited about a poem he had just written and went into Tom's room to read it to them. It was probably a really lousy love poem about some dumb girl that had serious personal hygiene problems and kissed other boys every time Dave had his back turned.

The problem was, Dave wasn't wearing pants. He was only wearing his tighty whiteys. He had been so excited to share his feelings with his friends, he didn't bother to put on pants.

Right in middle of the poem, when Dave was baring his innermost feelings, Boyd flicked the waistband of his underwear. Dave got really mad and yelled at Tom and Boyd for disrespecting his "art."

The moral of the story: If you want to be taken seriously, wear pants.

2010-06-26T20:11:00.000-06:00

I want to tell about the triathlon I did a few days ago. I want to tell you how much it meant to me, in a very personal way, to do it. But I don't think I can tell it. There aren't words.

I'll try anyway.

The past year has been the most significant year of my life. As with most worthwhile things, the challenges of the past year have been very difficult. In addition to the accident that ultimately resulted in the loss of a kidney, there were other more personal tragedies. Some I've hinted at on this forum, some I've kept entirely to myself.

Maybe that's why I speak often of losing my kidney. (I fear it may seem I'm throwing myself a pity party, but that's not it at all.) I speak of it in reverence and in faith. It represents for me, just one of the amazing ways that God touched my life this year, and the one I feel most comfortable sharing.

So when I decided to participate in a triathlon, it wasn't because I felt I had anything to prove to anyone else. And I really didn't feel the need to prove something to myself. The triathlon was a way to give thanks, and I don't know if there is any way I can explain that and have it make sense.

I just want to thank my Heavenly Father for giving me my life, for giving me freedom, for running to me when I was lost, and for giving me this year to get back on track. I wish I could have run faster, breathed better in the wetsuit, had more energy throughout, but it was enough to finish well. And that's what I intend to do from here on out.

2010-06-12T09:01:00.000-06:00

My brain has been doing backflips for the last four days. That's the best way to describe it. It's also a little like a migraine but without the head pain. There are these flashes of disorientation and static. My days are also punctuated by bouts of weeping for no reason. I hear a beautiful piece of music, see a beautiful scene, or just think of anyone out there in pain and I can't stop it.

Why am I doing this experiment? Why rock the boat?

I'm tired of being disconnected and in monotone-tune. Maybe it's better to experience scales and chords and to sometimes be desafinado. Twenty years of medicated sanity is long enough-- it damn well should be.

Oh please just let this pass.

2010-05-17T14:40:00.002-06:00

Nicknames of customers and business associates over the years:

Douchey McDoucherson,
Flame Job McGee,
Chesticus,
Roid Rage McGee,
Roketa McGee,
Homeless McGee,
Addams Family McGee,
Gingivitis George,
Flapjacks,
Lindsay Morgasm (courtesy of Taylor),
Phil McCracken,
Jay Z.,
Flocahontas,
Señor Martgage,
Dirty D,
The Deuce,

And last but not least, Fartwad Fard aka Frankie Fraud

2010-03-20T10:29:00.000-06:00

2010-03-19T23:28:00.000-06:00

Welcome newcomers. This is really just my personal (sometimes too personal) blog. You won't find anything here about a certain douche who is being charged by the state of Utah with 10 different counts of forgery etc. But it's awesome to see justice being served.

2010-02-15T23:53:00.002-07:00

I took this picture in New York. Notice it says: "We Flavor Kids Medicines."

2010-02-02T00:23:00.000-07:00

I don't like the name "blog." It sounds like an amalgam of "blah" and "log." Like a mediocre turd, when expectations were high.

By that definition, a "blogger" would be someone who consistently launches mediocre turds under high expectations, and "the blogosphere," well, you can go ahead and guess that one.

This definition isn't too far off the mark for some of the blogs out there, I've sworn off more than one blog for repeatedly swirling around the metaphorical toilet bowl, but I still think there should be a better name for "blogging."

I vote against using any form of the word "diary" though, because that always makes me think of diarrhea.

2010-01-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

Do you ever get that "not so fresh computer feeling?"

Presenting Apple's new iPad. Cool product, worst name ever.

*Photo stolen from engadget.

2010-01-10T22:22:00.025-07:00

I haven't been writing as much, or facebooking as much, or browsing aimlessly as much, since the death of my dear friend iPhone.

This tragedy has had my cyber-self so depressed that it can hardly get out of bed in the morning. Adding insult to injury, our router broke within two days of iPhone's fatal accident. Now if I am to indulge in any virtual activities I have to sit in a very uncomfortable chair, in front of a very uncomfortable desk, my spine bent like a capital C, my wrists getting scratched on the particle-board desk-edge as my fingers plunk away at the keys.

However, I haven't replaced my buddies Router and iPhone because I'm finding that real life is pretty good and very worth living. And my wife likes being able to talk with me without me updating my facebook status on the fly.

Right now though, I'm getting a really good wireless signal from the high school across the street. (Usually it's pretty spotty and I have to hold my laptop just so to load a page.)

As you know if you've read much of my blog, I've done a lot of stupid things in my life. For the past year or so, I've dwelt on my most recent stupidity, which time hasn't separated from me enough for it to be funny. I don't think I'll ever look back on 2009 and laugh, except maybe about losing my kidney. There's some good material there, but I digress. . .

I want to go back and find something distant enough to be hilarious. I know that's setting the bar pretty high, especially considering that this is, so far, a free-writing exercise.

I have a bunch of cousins who are really good, interesting people. Because of the circumstances under which they were born, their scottish ancestry, and their hardscrabble childhoods, they are all tough as nails. When we were kids we were pretty close, but we drifted apart later when their house in Payson, Utah burned down and for some reason they moved into a haunted house in Durango, Colorado. They came back to Utah when the poltergeists got the best of them, but unfortunately we were never as close afterwards.

The youngest of these cousins was Jedediah, who passed away a few years ago. Being at the bottom of the pecking order, he had to get tough right away. He was still in pampers when one of his brothers hit him with a board and put a splinter in his eye. He was a cute kid that little Jeddy, but he didn't take crap from anybody.

One time, when Jed was about ten years old, he and my brother Tom wanted to go for a bike ride. Jed was at our house visiting and didn't have his own bike to ride, so he asked to borrow one. Somewhere I had acquired a cast-iron rattle-can yellow bike frame that weighed about 400 pounds. I had been piecing it together with junk parts for the last few weeks, and for some reason, probably selfishness on my part, I let Jed use that bike instead of one that was fully functional.

So he and Tom took off down the hill from our house. Being the tough little bastard he was, Jed pedaled as hard as he could and picked up lots of speed.

The problem was that the bike only had a coaster brake, which works by pushing the pedals backwards. These kind of brakes work great unless the chain derails, which it did unfortunately. With no brakes, Jed blasted through two intersections before t-boning a car and hitting his head on the hood. I don't remember all of the details but it seems like Jed may have cut one of his fingers and had a seizure. An ambulance was called, reports were filed.

Man, I can't even tell that story in a humorous way right now. I guess I'm just not in the mood.

2010-01-10T22:18:00.000-07:00

I'm not feeling nearly as quiet and desperate as I was when I changed my blog around, so maybe it's time for another change.

What do you readers suggest for a name?

2010-01-05T01:41:00.001-07:00

I was discharged from the hospital on a cold Sunday night. Until I went in for surgery the Winter had been mild, but during my stay it snowed several inches. The result of this was somewhat disorienting, like when you go see an early movie, and when you come out it's dark outside. The landscape had changed while I lay in bed full of morphine.

I was glad to be going home, but I was nervous as well. I worried about the noise the kids would make, and the inadvertent pain they'd likely inflict when climbing on me. Most of all, I felt wounded, "injuried" as my daughter called it. But it was more than that, I felt heavy and oppressed.

Prior to the operation, I had similar feelings. Maybe I was feeling sorry for myself. Maybe I was worried about things going wrong. But I think overall I was feeling a sense of loss.

This introspective pity party is nothing I'm proud to admit, but it's the way I felt as we slowly rounded an icy curve on Canyon Road, and I noticed a deer standing in the middle of the street.

"Deer" I said, pointing.

Kaerlig slowed the van just in time as another deer bolted out in front of us, momentarily froze, then leaped back to the right shoulder. The air hung icily in the headlight beams, the deer stood still, and we realized there were a whole group of deer on the left hand side of the road. We stared, and they stared back. Then the one in the middle of the road walked across to the group. The one that had just jumped in front of us hesitated, then ran after the others. This deer miscalculated the speed of an SUV that had been approaching from the other direction, or maybe didn't notice its approach. Either way there was a sickening crunch as the deer's hindquarters intersected with the passenger side headlight of the SUV. The poor creature was knocked to the shoulder of the road like a bowling pin, and landed silently on the curb of recently plowed snow. The animal lay still, The SUV drove away without stopping.

For a moment I projected myself into that cold, dying creature. A moment before it had been alive, wide-eyed and uncertain. Now broken and wounded. (Even if I had had a hunting knife I doubt I could have dispatched it to the other side the way my father-in-law once did in a similar situation. I wanted to put it out of its misery, but I didn't have the strength.) I felt the ice of the snow and the confused mess of bones, muscles and tendons trying to make sense of themselves. At once I felt fear and death and longing.

The kids were confused. Thankfully they hadn't seen it. They didn't understand what had happened. I closed my eyes as we continued homeward.

2009-12-29T15:29:00.002-07:00

My surgery didn't happen on the Monday I said it would because the surgeon that was scheduled to assist broke his hand snowboarding. So the procedure was postponed until Wednesday the 9th of December. I was in the hospital until the following Sunday, then came home.

I'm now feeling near fully recovered.

Thanks everyone for your prayers and support.

2009-12-10T01:03:00.000-07:00

It's finally done. I now officially have only one kidney.The procedure was done laparoscopically, which is supposed to mean a speedier recovery and less pain.

So far I feel okay.

2009-12-05T18:13:00.000-07:00

So I'm finally getting my kidney removed on Monday. I'm actually pretty excited. I'm looking forward to the rest, and having meals brought to me while I watch TV.

The Dr. is going to try to do a hand-assisted laparoscopic procedure. This means a small incision below my belly button, and two ports for the laparoscopic instruments. In the event that my kidney won't fit through the hole, they'll have to do an "open" surgery in which they will make a pretty big incision on my side and back. Hopefully they can do it laparoscopically and the recovery will go more smoothly.

My arm is getting better. I'm supposed to still wear the splint and sling, but I actually seldom do. Today I replaced the front brakes on our van. When I raised the hood to look at the brake fluid level, I did it with my left arm and realized that I had made progress. Over the last month I have had to raise the hood a couple of times and it has been really hard to do. I couldn't do it with my left arm, so I had to raise it with the right, then support it with my head while I put up the prop-rod with my right also. It was nice to be able to use my left arm, even for something so mundane.

I think that by the time I'm recovered from the surgery, my arm will be pretty much all better. Still some soreness in the shoulder, but that will get better with time.

This experience has been a roller coaster so far. When I found out about my kidney I got pretty depressed for a few days. I even told my 8 year old son that I thought this might be the end for me. (stupid, stupid, stupid!) But I feel so much better these days. I feel very optimistic and hopeful. I feel like this really has been the worst year ever. But the year is nearly over. I feel overwhelmed at the outpouring of love and support from friends, family, and strangers.

2010 will be the best year ever, mark my words.

2009-11-19T12:12:00.000-07:00

Here's the latest in the giant kidney saga:
A renal scan showed some function in the giant kidney, but not enough to outweigh the negatives. However, during the scan I experienced pain in my good kidney, so the doctor ordered another test. It was called a Bilateral Retrograde Cystoscopy. I was completely unconscious during the procedure, but it was cold in the O.R. and I may or may not have shouted, "I was in the pool!" at a group of giggling nurses.
This test revealed a small tumor in my bladder and a healthy good kidney. The tumor turned out to be benign (insert sigh of relief here) but in the interim the Dr. noticed a cyst on my good kidney in the previous CT scan. So this morning I had an ultrasound on it to make sure it wasn't something scary, because apparently a simple cyst on the kidney isn't anything to worry about. The test was good, so now I'm going to be scheduled for surgery to have the gigantic kidney removed. Hopefully I'll be all recovered around the same time my arm gets better and I'll be able to get back to my normal routine-- minus the mexican coke. Gotta take extra good care of my one remaining kidney.

I want to thank everyone for your prayers and support. There have been miracles in this ordeal, not the least of which is feeling the love of friends, family, and God. Thank you.

2009-11-12T22:43:00.000-07:00

On this day ten years ago we started down a road I had longed to walk my entire life, and I had wanted to walk it with you as long as I had known you. But in spite of that lifelong desire to walk this road, I was ill equipped to do so.

Now, ten years in, I am filled with regrets and rejoicing all at once. I regret so many bad choices, miserable failures, and angry words. And I look at myself and at my failures and I wonder what there is in all that mess worth redeeming, worth salvaging when it's so obvious that I have failed. Yet I rejoice in our abiding love for each other and for our children. I rejoice in our family, the collective greatness that anchors us in spite of individual weakness.

This year I have come to appreciate the power of the family. It's something hard to describe. Though there are numerous examples in nature that illustrate how the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, yet in the living of it, in the flood of the experience, the magnificence defies description. I love our family. I am proud of our family. There is safety in our family.

And so we continue down this road: now much better equipped and much more aware. We are a little worn but not jaded. We are refined by our trials.

And the most important thing I want you to know as we continue, hand in hand, is that had I known it would be this hard, I would still have begun that walk with you. Had I known the challenges we would face together, I would still have chosen you. In the mess of myself that I often survey, there is one shining thing to salvage and it is the me that I can be when you are by my side. It glimmers like a pearl in the mire.

I love you Kaerlig. Thank you for being my family.

2009-11-01T22:40:00.001-07:00

I have a gigantic kidney. All the doctors are like, "That's one impressive kidney." and "Holy cow!" and "I've never seen a kidney that large."

And I'm holding up my right hand high (because my left arm is broken) and I'm like, "High Five!" because what else do you say to a doctor who tells you your kidney is gigantic?

Here is my impressive kidney (it's the big blob on the left smashing my liver into a thin paté). It's about as big as a football (a NFL football).

I wasn't feeling too hot and the doctor sent me to the hospital to get a "virtual weiner" (as my 8 year old calls it).

It is a tube placed into the kidney to drain it (a Nephrostomy tube). I told the nurse that a nephrostomy sounds like a refreshing beverage. It could be because I was extremely thirsty at the time after not eating or drinking for about 3 days.

Imagine 1.5 liters of urine hanging out in your kidney with no place to go. Imagine the relief you would feel if this was in your bladder and you finally peed. That's how I felt after getting this out.

My wife made me smile for this picture...but for the first time in several days I could actually kind of do it.

P.S. This post was written with a lot of help from my wife Kaerlig who has been gracious enough to do a lot of things for me these past days, including giving me an enema which we have agreed to never speak of again.

2009-10-25T13:10:00.003-06:00

On Thursday morning I fell off a ladder and broke my arm. typing with one hand sucks.

2009-09-26T20:51:00.000-06:00

In case I came off like an arrogant turd in my last post, I'll clear things up by interpreting my own dream.

1. I like The Arcade Fire. A lot. I wish I could hang out with them.
2. I'm actually very insecure and shy around high-profile people. I was even more insecure as a teenager.
3. In my dream I was a teenager, hanging out with cool people, and they liked me.

So in case you thought I just dream about how awesome I think I am, please understand it's actually the opposite. In this case, I dreamed about not being as insecure and pathetic as I used to be. I think it's kind of funny how I won them over by talking about being insecure.

By the way, did I mention I'm insecure?

Will you be my friend?

2009-09-23T23:25:00.000-06:00

Last night I had a dream that The Arcade Fire came to my house (only it wasn't my house, but my mom's pre-remodel house) and hung out with me. I was still a teenager, but I was way cooler than I was in real life. Win thought I was cool and Regine became infatuated with me. Win wasn't jealous though because of how cool I was. The other members of the band were there too and they also thought I was cool, but I don't remember their names.

I remember sitting next to Regine on the couch and telling her how when I wanted to speak to someone, I became so self-conscious that I analyzed my words to the point of being unable to speak, and that this introspective tendency of mine was a self-perpetuating cycle. She ate it up.

I don't know the interpretation of this dream, but I'm pretty sure that if you don't like The Arcade Fire, I don't want to be your friend anymore.

2009-09-06T18:29:00.000-06:00

It seems like it's been about a hundred years since I last posted. (How many posts start out with a variation of that sentence?)

I think I'll get a late start on my edumacation.

This is why I have a blog:

I like to write. I think I express myself better in writing than I do in person. At least I flatter myself to think so. But depending on the situation I can do pretty well in person too.

But it wasn't always that way. I used to have a really hard time talking to people in person. Was I making too much eye contact or too little? Was I saying "like" too much? Was there a booger on my face? And what the heck am I supposed to be doing with my hands? Pockets? Gestures? Straight down at my sides? Do I look awkward? Is my zipper down?

I think my mission helped me get more comfortable in my own skin. But nevertheless, writing is still more comfortable for me. You don't have the luxury of the delete key in person.

So the short answer is that I like to talk, so I blog. But there's more to it than that.

At first my blog was a place for me to vent my frustrations. I didn't think anyone would ever read it, and I didn't care. Then one day Jet Set Carina commented and I had an audience.

I started telling funny stories from my high school days. This was partly because I went to high school with Carina and partly because high school was so traumatic.

Things went along pretty well like that for a while. But then my blog hit stage 3 of blog development. People I told stories about started reading my blog and sometimes getting angry. (If you're keeping score, stage 1 was "no audience", stage 2 was "fun audience" and stage 3 was "angry audience")

Maybe those of you who have moved past stage three can help me out, because I still want to tell a lot of stories, sometimes at the expense of friends, neighbors and strangers, because there are funny and stupid things everybody does, and because self-deprecation, though my target is wide, is often more difficult to pull off.

But I don't want another episode like the altercation I had with my wife's grandfather over the things I said about the colossal douchenozzle Rick Koerber, so I keep my mouth shut.

I'll have to tell you about that incident sometime.

2009-08-18T11:23:00.002-06:00

Get ready for your testimony to get ROCKED!!!

2009-07-30T22:14:00.003-06:00

The above pictures are from an article in Zions Bank Community magazine. Pretty cool. You can read the article here. Just ignore the remarks by Giovanni Del Douchbaggio. He doesn't know what he's talking about.

2009-07-17T00:12:00.002-06:00

Today my wife told me that for every Mexican Coke I drink I have to swim a mile. I am behind now by two miles.

Also today was the second day in a row spent without a phone in my pocket. I dropped my well-loved iPhone two days ago (for about the millionth time) and this time, unlike all the other times, it didn't recover. I took it apart in the vain hope of fixing it and gave up when I saw how tiny everything is in there. I'm pretty good at fixing almost anything, but the iPhone might as well be a Liahona because it is of very curious workmanship. I think I'll be phoneless for a while. It's sort-of liberating. My wife says I can get a simple phone for phone calls, but no replacement Urim and Thummim for the time being. That's like telling an alcoholic to replace the sauce with Sprite, and expecting them to jump for joy. My digital life is over.

On the plus side, maybe I won't be pestering my facebook friends to chat while I'm on the toilet.

2009-06-28T12:45:00.001-06:00

Grace, by U2

Grace
She takes the blame
She covers the shame
Removes the stain
It could be her name

Grace
It's a name for a girl
It's also a thought that changed the world
And when she walks on the street
You can hear the strings
Grace finds goodness in everything

Grace, she's got the walk
Not on a ramp or on chalk
She's got the time to talk
She travels outside of karma
She travels outside of karma
When she goes to work
You can hear her strings
Grace finds beauty in everything

Grace, she carries a world on her hips
No champagne flute for her lips
No twirls or skips between her fingertips
She carries a pearl in perfect condition

What once was hurt
What once was friction
What left a mark
No longer stings
Because grace makes beauty
Out of ugly things

Grace makes beauty out of ugly things

2009-06-17T00:20:00.006-06:00

From "Why can't I be good?"
by Lou Reed

I want to be like the wind
When it uproots a tree
Carries it across an ocean
To plant in a valley
I want to be like the sun
That makes it flourish and grow
I don't want to be
What I am anymore

In many ways I feel as though I have just awakened from a fitful sleep, in other ways I feel that I have slipped over the edge of a precipice and have only just begun to climb back up. Honesty, displaced for so long, has the dizzying effect of making one feel simultaneously empowered and liberated on one hand, and overwhelmed by reality on the other.

There are moments of my life remembered as though I had awakened to find manna on the ground around me, and there are moments which struck as a thousand raindrops or snowflakes, a sudden thunderstorm, or a swim in cold water. There are also, unfortunately, moments remembered as though I had stepped in filth, stumbled in a pig-mire, or fallen into an abyss.

Why can't I be good? Why is it so hard to consistently make good choices?

It's gotten a lot easier since I got honest. Thank God for honesty.

2009-06-17T00:10:00.003-06:00

Prodigal

In miry clay obscurity
I squandered my inheritance
A potsherds insincerity
Kiln-broken, crushed to penitence

Begging food I supped with swine
Deep hunger was my souls lament
Unworthy to be called thy son
To be thy slave was my intent

When from afar thou sawest me
And sped my the compassion cup
The fatted calf gave mercy meat
The bitter dregs were swallowed up

Oh Father. . .

May I bend my will and cleave to thine
May I render thee my soul in fine
My heart, my life thou gavest me
All gratitude be unto thee!

2009-06-12T20:02:00.003-06:00

Spiritual experiences have been few and far between for me over the past several years. And any effort to cultivate them on my part resulted in being faced with the dilemma, the elephant in the room, that has ridden on my back all this time. The creature from which I couldn't be freed without being honest was too heavy to carry yet I persisted in silence for fear of the fallout I knew would punch radioactive holes in everything I hold dear. I tried to find a fallout shelter, knowing full well that there are no loopholes in the law of repentance.

Yet the spirit didn't stop striving with me. All this time He didn't stop. I begged Him not to stop.

I recently had a spiritual experience in the shower. I was listening to Fix You by Coldplay and as I sang along to the words, "Lights will guide you home, and ignite your bones, and I will try to fix you", I was overcome as I felt the spirit testify the truth of that message to me.

So now I have freed the elephant. I decided to take the advice of a wise leader and "hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and accept whatever came." So far we are okay.

I know that I can be fixed.

2009-06-11T18:45:00.001-06:00

Miracle Drug
U2

I want a trip inside your head
Spend the day there…
To hear the things you haven't said
And see what you might see

I want to hear you when you call
Do you feel anything at all?
I want to see your thoughts take shape
And walk right out

Freedom has a scent
Like the top of a new born baby's head

The songs are in your eyes
I see them when you smile
I've seen enough I'm not giving up
On a miracle drug

Of science and the human heart
There is no limit
There is no failure here sweetheart
Just when you quit…

I am you and you are mine
Love makes nonsense of space
And time… will disappear
Love and logic keep us clear
Reason is on our side, love…

The songs are in your eyes
I see them when you smile
I've had enough of romantic love
I'd give it up, yeah, I'd give it up
For a miracle, a miracle drug, a miracle drug

God I need your help tonight

Beneath the noise
Below the din
I hear your voice
It's whispering
In science and in medicine
“I was a stranger
You took me in”

The songs are in your eyes
I see them when you smile
I've had enough of romantic love
I'd give it up, yeah, I'd give it up
For a miracle, miracle drug

Miracle, miracle drug

2009-06-09T22:14:00.001-06:00

Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles)
The Arcade Fire

I am waitin' 'til I don't know when,
cause I'm sure it's gonna happen then.
Time keeps creepin' through the neighborhood,
killing old folks, wakin' up babies just like we knew it would.

All the neighbors are startin' up a fire,
burning all the old folks the witches and the liars.
My eyes are covered by the hands of my unborn kids,
but my heart keeps watchin' through the skin of my eyelids.

They say a watched pot won't ever boil,
well I closed my eyes and nothin' changed,
just some water getting hotter in the flames.

It's not a lover I want no more,
and it's not heaven I'm pining for,
but there's some spirit I used to know,
that's been drowned out by the radio!

They say a watched pot won't ever boil,
you can't raise a baby on motor oil,
just like a seed down in the soil you gotta give it time.

2009-06-02T22:36:00.001-06:00

Crown of Love
Arcade Fire

They say it fades if you let it,
love was made to forget it.
I carved your name across my eyelids,
you pray for rain I pray for blindness.

If you still want me, please forgive me,
the crown of love is fallen from me.
If you still want me, please forgive me,
because the spark is not within me.

I snuffed it out before my mom walked in my bedroom.

The only thing that you keep changin'
is your name, my love keeps growin'
still the same, just like a cancer,
and you won't give me a straight answer!

If you still want me, please forgive me,
the crown of love has fallen from me.
If you still want me please forgive me
because your hands are not upon me.

I shrugged them off before my mom walked in my bedroom.

The pains of love, and they keep growin',
in my heart there's flowers growin'
on the grave of our old love,
since you gave me a straight answer.

If you still want me, please forgive me,
the crown of love is not upon me
If you still want me, please forgive me,
'cause the spark is not within me.
it's not within me, it's not within me.

You gotta be the one,
you gotta be the way,
your name is the only word that I can say

You gotta be the one,
you gotta be the way,
your name is the only word , the only word that I can say!

Only one that I can say!

2009-05-24T14:48:00.004-06:00

Fix You

by Coldplay

When you try your best but you don't succeed

When you get what you want but not what you need

When you feel so tired but you can't sleep

Stuck in reverse

And the tears come streaming down your face

When you lose something you can't replace

When you love someone but it goes to waste

Could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home

And ignite your bones

And I will try to fix you

And high up above or down below

When you're too in love to let it go

But if you never try you'll never know

Just what you're worth

Lights will guide you home

And ignite your bones

And I will try to fix you

Tears stream down your face

When you lose something you cannot replace

Tears stream down your face

And I

Tears stream down your face

I promise you I will learn from my mistakes

Tears stream down your face

And I

Lights will guide you home

And ignite your bones

And I will try to fix you

2009-05-13T01:31:00.003-06:00

I've been thinking about an article I read recently. It was about a study a psychologist did involving pre-school kids. In the study he took the kids aside one at a time and offered them a treat, but told them that if they didn't eat it, he'd give them more in a few minutes. Then he would leave the room, and come back in a few minutes.

The interesting thing was that years later he followed up on these kids and the ones the were able to wait had better test scores, went to better colleges, had better jobs, and experienced more success in life than those that didn't.

I've realized that almost all behavior involves choosing between instant gratification and delayed gratification. If I could just learn to wait, I'd be a much better person.

In business I see this type of decision a lot. For example, many times a choice that would lead to a quick buck, would produce the opposite result in the long term. Selling cheap products with wider profit margins has its appeal, but in the long term has many shortfalls. And I wonder whether most of the economic problems we are currently facing aren't due to a market environment in which instant gratification ruled the day.

The same applies to personal matters. In fact I would argue that any choice which results in instant gratification is the wrong choice. All such choices erode and dull our senses, diminishing the real value of consequences, hard work, diligence, and temperance. For everything worth striving for, there is a shortcut to a counterfeit.

So I ask myself why it is so hard to make the hard choices. As Rilke said, "that something is difficult should be all the more reason for us to do it." Why do I struggle to put off the natural tendency to take the easy route to false pleasure, when I know that the hard route leads to true joy?

I wonder whether I would have eaten the treat or waited for more. I don't know. In grade school I always saved my school lunch dessert for last, and I always ate everything I was served. Do you know how good Jello tastes after gagging down soggy spinach? I do. Yet I continue to choose instant gratification in so many instances.

I want to have control.

2009-05-12T18:32:00.002-06:00

So I stumbled across Zeebo on Facebook. Should I:

A) Send her a friend request and see if we can't get the families together for a BBQ

B) Send her a note and ask her why she felt it necessary to spread nasty rumors about me.

C) Forget I ever found her because she's a psycho hose beast and I don't have a gun, much less a plethora of guns necessitating a gun rack.

The answer is definitely not A, I never want to see her again. The obvious choice is C. But part of me really wants to take her to task for the things she said about me. Then again, it has been over fifteen years since the rumors made their way back to me. Why reawaken them, right? But they were really nasty rumors, the kind that ruin reputations for good. It's very tempting to do something.

Advice anyone?

2009-05-04T00:13:00.007-06:00

This post is not for people with weak stomachs. As some of you may recall, I sometimes do surgery on myself. This twisted little hobby of mine is probably the result of all the recreational self-mutilation I inflicted on myself as a teen for no good reason at all, coupled with my "hands-on" attitude toward all things broken. (I realize that last long sentence could have been written "I do this because I am crazy," but I'm feeling longwinded tonight.)

So a month or so ago I decided to get rid of another lipoma in my right forearm. This time I took pictures.

My forearm, shaved and prepped for surgery.

The Scalpel (My friend Jake gave me a real one, no more razor blades!)

Making an incision

Opening up

A slight squeeze and the little bugger starts to come out

There it is.

Like a little ball of gristle

FIN

2009-04-05T16:36:00.001-06:00

Bono and I go way back. My first exposure to U2 was in about 1984, when my brother Isaac brought home The Unforgettable Fire album. I told him I didn't like it, but cut me some slack, I was only 9 years old. Back then, Isaac had a friend whose older brother was in high school and taught him all about Polo brand products, pegged jeans, hair gel and music. Isaac came home with tapes of Depeche Mode, Scritti Politti, Ebn Ozn, Captain Sensible, INXS, etc. Maybe I really didn't like U2 then, or maybe I was just being obstinate, I don't know. But Isaac has never let me live it down. And in light of my later obsession with the Irish quartet, and his subsequent move toward Bobby Brown, MC Hammer, and Vanilla Ice (can you believe the latter two came here in concert last month?) I can understand his frustration.

By 1986 I was a fan. When I joined Columbia House for 12 LP's for a penny, The Joshua Tree was one of my choices. I also remember getting a Bill Cosby record, a Billy Crystal record, 'Til Tuesday, and Thompson Twins. The rest I have forgotten. Of course, The Joshua Tree was undisputably one of the best albums ever, and without doubt the "three-chords and the truth" of Adam, Larry, Bono, and the Edge worked to shape the synaptic connections of my developing brain.

It was common knowledge that a seventh-grade classmate of mine had a brother who was a U2 superfan. I gave him some blank tapes and in a few days had some great U2 mixes which I played over and over while reading the Chronicles of Narnia. I didn't know the names of any of the songs, but I loved them.

The pattern continued when I was the first in my family to acquire a CD player. Isaac gave me an MC Hammer and a Bobby Brown CD first, but the first CD I got of my own volition was Rattle and Hum.

When Achtung Baby came out I was eagerly anticipating it's release. It wasn't what I expected but it became the soundtrack of my high school years. The heartache expressed in songs like One, So Cruel and Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses was echoed in my own experiences with dating, kissing, and getting dumped. I must have listened to most of those songs two or three times a day for three or four years. In the morning I would program my CD player to play tracks 1,2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10, drag a speaker into the bathroom (I had spliced together a really long cable) and sing along in the shower. (I took really long showers then, apparently.) I would listen to Achtung Baby again while driving to work, and often while at work as well. My senior year I took a design class in which I cast the U2 rings from the album cover art. They didn't look nearly as good as the originals, pictured above, but they were pretty cool.

Years passed and still I was a U2 superfan. Zooropa, Pop, All That You Can't Leave Behind, and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb were released. I spent stupid amounts of money to see the band play in Salt Lake on the last three tours. The Popmart concert was almost a religious experience for me. The subsequent two concerts I saw were slightly less breathtaking. Yet still I bristled when I read this. I was ready to defend their work and I truly liked a lot of the songs, right out of the box so to speak.

Now U2 have released another album. It's called No Line on the Horizon. The first single is called Get On Your Boots. If you haven't heard it yet, let me forewarn you, the song sucks even more than its name. And though it's hard for me to admit it, the rest of the album is pretty lame too. It's like listening to a U2 cover band. It sounds like U2, but it lacks fire. I think that in their comfortable, grown-up lives, they've lost touch with the the hunger that made them great.

I've listened to it several times hoping to get into it, or for it to get into me. I hoped to find a gem of lyric, or a really great bridge that made an otherwise mediocre track great. I haven't found any such thing yet. One song has pretty good sound, but the lyrics include such crapulence as, "force quit and move to trash, restart, reboot yourself." Seriously Bono? Computing metaphors? (He must be running windows by the way.) But that isn't rock and roll. Rock and roll metaphors shouldn't be based on middle-aged cubicle life. What the H? You're not Wilson Phillips for crying out loud, you're U effing 2! Grow a pair!

Ok, I'm back from that tirade. I should probably delete it, but I think it has merit.

All of this has forced me to face facts about myself. If U2 is no longer relevant, if their music no longer beats to the pulse of the youth of the world, what does that say about me?

I swore I'd always be cool, that I would rage and rage against the dying of the light. I swore to be in tune and on board. And I didn't think it would be hard for me, but now it's becoming clear that I am obsolete and irrelevant too. And no matter how hard I try, I'll never be cool again, not even if I reboot myself, metaphorically speaking.

I do take some comfort in the fact that though I fooled myself into thinking otherwise, in reality I never was cool anyway.

2009-02-01T20:29:00.003-07:00

Recently, courtesy of The Sneeze, I discovered an artist that I really like. His name is Eric Joyner. I'm neither an artist nor an art aficionado, but when I started browsing Erics work I was really struck by one painting in particular. It's called "Mr. Atomic." (I hope Eric won't mind if I include a couple of pictures here.)

A print of this painting now hangs in my home. When visitors notice it we joke that it's a portrait of me. Those who know me well may see the resemblance. If I indulge in the comparison I would say that I am like our mechanical donut philosopher friend in the sense that I am equal parts popular culture, popular science, thinker, and tinkerer. Plus I've always liked robots.

Another painting I can relate to is called "Summertime."

I like this one because it reminds me of a painting my grandma had in her home. It was a picture of a farmers field, with trees in the distance. I used to stare at it because there were some shapes in the foreground, could have been planks, and I wondered what they were supposed to be. Unlike my grandmas painting, I "get" this one. Looking at "Summertime" I envision myself enjoying a Summer day like that little red robot. I recall how during my adolescence I struggled so hard to find something or someone in the world to relate to. I was in love with nature and spent a lot of time exploring on my mountain bike. I could commune with nature, but couldn't relate well with people.

Maybe it's the ass-burgers talking, but I feel like I relate to these robots.

The reason I'm writing about all of this is that due to my liking Eric Joyners work so much, I added him as a friend on facebook. Then I emailed him and suggested that he paint a picture of robots on classic scooters. I didn't expect him to take me seriously, but he did. Look at the awesome paintings he came up with:

This one is called "On a Mission." You can tell that this little guy has something important to do.

This next one is called "Narrow Escape."

How awesome is that? He actually painted robots on scooters for me!

Another one I really like (which has nothing to do with scooters) is called "Does Not Compute." The color and lighting of this one is spectacular.

So bloggers, check out Eric Joyners work here and here. He even has a book out called "Robots and Donuts." You can pick it up here. It's fun for the whole family and makes a great coffee table book. I hope you like these paintings as much as I do. And if you'd like to see a print in person, stop by my house or the shop sometime. Maybe one day you'll even be able to see an original.

2009-01-24T16:59:00.008-07:00

Having grown up in the Provo/Orem area, I've seen a lot of nice things bulldozed in the name of progress. Fields where horses grazed have become subdivisions with stupid names like Canyon Valley, Valley Vista, and Vista Canyon. (I sometimes wonder if there isn't a pair of dice in some developers office, each with six realty buzzwords on them, and by shaking them the subdivisions are named.)

There used to be an old wooden barn on Canyon Road next to the fire station. In days gone by it was a fruit and vegetable stand. Now it's becoming a stucco-covered series of McMansions. What is it with stucco? Don't people realize that it's the biggest copout of all exterior finishes? Don't get me wrong; if you want your home to look like a sumo wrestler ate a bag of clay and shat all over your house, go ahead and stucco.

There used to be irrigation canals that cut through wooded areas. Their water rippled with mystery. Lazy summer days were spent daydreaming near the water. There were rope swings suspended by tall trees, and there were plenty of old farm buildings, presumably full of classic cars and relics of brighter days.

Now those things are gone. We've made progress as a society. We don't need silly things like rope swings or yards anymore. We just need really big houses on really tiny lots. We need artificially antiqued furnishings and three car garages. We've torn down everything rustic, and erected in it's place our personal temples, decorated with brand-new, rustic-styled artifacts made in China and purchased with credit cards.

But the very most unbelievably, amazingly, catastrophically stupid example of this trend is a place I affectionately call the Midtown Monstrosity. Granted, I wasn't a fan of the trailer park it displaced, but in a situation where almost any change would have been an improvement, they managed to make things worse.

The first thing they built when the project began was a small white tower. It looks like somebody cut off the top of the Timpanogos temple. I call it the Temple of Wanton Consumerism.

Above: the best picture I could steal from the intertubes. You get the idea. I keep waiting for them to place a golden statue of a woman holding shopping bags on the top.

On either side of the "temple" is a huge complex of condominiums and retail space. One of them is pretty much complete. The other is still a mess. According to The Daily Herald only four of the condos were sold, and as a result, the developer was unable to pay the contractors and construction was halted. This is shocking considering that the condos were priced at just $325,000 to 1.4 million. That's really a bargain when you consider you would get to live on State Street in Orem, upon the same prestigious acreage where mobile homes once freely roamed.

The most baffling part of the whole thing is that a bunch of people must have thought this was a good idea for the project to get as far as it did. In spite of the fact that similar projects nearby were struggling to sell their condos and keep the retail spaces leased, this $100 million dollar disaster got the green light.

Currently, there's only one tenant in the entire place. It's a business called Pizzeria 712, and by all accounts the food is excellent. One of these days I'm going to go try it. Right now though, money's tight. I might have to wait until my new business takes off. I'm putting one of my other talents to good use on a new venture. Anybody know where I can buy some clay?

2009-01-11T00:23:00.004-07:00

For me, Junior high school was a living hell the likes of which only those who have survived trench warfare could possibly comprehend. At least that's how I imagine it, since I've never fought in a trench. But I have seen a picture of a soldier frozen in abject fear with wet pants, and I totally relate to it.

Above: Pretty much exactly what junior high was like.

I went to a school called Farrer Middle School. It was built in medieval times, though throughout the centuries it had been converted, renovated, and patched together to comply with new building codes. It even had such modern amenities as plumbing and electricity. And in a move that could only be described as "twisting the knife" by the handicapped, they converted the stairs in the building into absurdly steep, alpine-grade wheelchair ramps. A healthy biped could barely climb them without an icepick and a pair of crampons. The thought of a wheelchair-bound tweenager trying to actually use those ramps makes me laugh out loud even today. (Yes, I'm a jerkface.)

The big improvement made during my tenure there was the addition of an ultra-modern cafetorium. Supposedly it was a cross between cafeteria and an auditorium, but I think they also had a crematorium in there for good measure.

The worst thing about junior high though, was the F-Dudes and F-Chicks. In case you aren't familiar with the term, I give you the following, from Urban Dictionary:
"'F-Dude: a guy who drives a truck, has a mullet, has a 'no fear' sticker, and feels strongly about whether he drives a ford or a chevy. oh...and they sure say "F**K", and "DUDE" alot...thus the name, "F-Dude"
"Did you see Tammy? Like, I can't believe she is dating that F-Dude!""

I don't entirely agree with that definition, but it's a decent place to start. In Junior High, F-Dudes, and their female counterparts, F-Chicks were the kids from the other side of the tracks. Instead of listening to mainstream pop music, they listened to bands with names like Slayer, Cinderella, and Megadeath. They wore the torn black concert t-shirts to prove it. The F-Chicks had ratted hair, the F-Dudes had mullets and rat-tails. You could expect to be challenged to wrestle or fight one of them at any given moment, and you walked the halls in fear of being ambushed by them. They were from a different socioeconomic demographic, and to me, a north Provo-ite, they may as well have been from a different planet.

The F-Chicks wore such tight jeans that I once was plagued by a pubescent NRB after seeing a chubby one with a camel toe. (Something I'm not proud to admit.) Nevertheless, I never would have associated with any of them had it not been for the cafetorium. For some reason, the psychotic Principal decided that no students would be allowed inside any part of the building during the lunch hour, with the exception of the Cafetorium. So after lunch students would line up at the doorway from the Cafetorium to the main building, waiting to go back to their lockers, the restrooms, etc. There were these two F-Chicks, the chubby one and her friend Tina, who would always manage to block the hallway when the doors were opened. I don't think it was so much a feat of strength as it was due to the other students unwillingness to touch them for fear that whatever diseases they had might be catching.

One day I must have really needed to pee or something and in frustration I yelled "push those sluts!" from the back of the crowd. Tina and Chubby immediately turned around and came after me. Chubby started repeatedly kicking me in the shins, and as I impotently tried to defend myself it dawned on me that Tina was fondling my junk. No joke. Talk about a mixed message.

There was one F-Dude named Earl Roberts who committed suicide by shotgun. As the news spread around the school, an announcement was made that any students who were in need of some grief counseling could be excused from class to speak with someone. I remember that some friends of mine and I decided to go just to get out of class. We were callous little bastards, what can I say?

I would excuse myself based on my young age at the time, but it turns out I'm still a callous bastard. A couple of weeks ago a bunch of my wife's friends from Provo High had a get-together at an Indian restaraunt. I didn't go to Provo High, so I was worried I wouldn't have anything to talk about. Then the subject of F-dudes came up. I was excited to reminisce about the poor kids from way-back-when. I said something like, "Oh man, I remember this one kid named Keith Maynard! What a tool! He was the quintessential F-Dude!" I chuckled heartily over my Malai Kofta until someone said, "Wasn't Keith Maynard the guy who shot himself our senior year?"

All this has gotten me to thinking. I guess F-Dudes weren't so different after all. They were just like the rest of us. Maybe they had hard lives by circumstance and not by choice as I had always assumed.

So to all F-dudes I say that I am sincerely sorry for judging you. (But Tina and Chubby, no touching.)

P.S. My wife feels strongly that I should delete the part about getting a boner because of the camel toe altogether. I compromised and used the term NRB instead of what I had originally written. During our discussion about it though, she came up with a real gem. She said, "I don't like when you talk about vaginas. You have a problem. You're like an atheist who talks about God."

2008-12-20T00:23:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends and Family,

As 2008 draws to a close we extend our love and appreciation to each of you for the contributions you have made in our lives. Also, in keeping with tradition, we will provide you with a one paragraph summary of each member of our family, followed by a trite and hackneyed holiday message. If you read all the way to the end in hopes of anything different, you will be disappointed. In fact, you might choose to save some time and re-read any of the letters or cards already adorning your mantelpieces and simply substitute our names for the names of whomever the card was originally from.

I’ll make it easy for you. Our names are David, Kaerlig, Rainer, Davey, and Ellie.

Since I know some of you won’t do this, in spite of it providing the same net result, here come the paragraphs:

Ellie turned four this year. She is a very sweet little girl. Over the summer we took the kids to Disneyland, and in spite of being too short to go on most of the rides, she was a good sport about it. We didn’t tell her there was a whole section of the park for kids her age, opting instead to drag her from attraction to attraction, repeatedly getting measured by pimply teens who repeatedly told her to come back next year when she was bigger. I’m sure she can’t wait.

Davey is now six years old. He is a good boy and does well in school. His first grade teacher thinks the world of him and I can’t blame her. He’s adorable. His chief ambition for now is to work at The Scooter Lounge when he’s bigger. He also wants me to mention that he is handsome and very good at soccer. In addition, he’s a very good climber and literally climbs the walls in our hallway and doorways.

Rainer is turning eight this month. He is 55 inches tall and weighs 90 pounds. To put that in context, I didn’t weigh that much until fourth grade and I was pretty big-boned. Rainer is huge. He does well in school and reads on a fifth grade level. His teacher says he’s a model student. This may be because she is afraid of him, but I choose to believe her anyway. He also won the Reflections art contest again this year. Those judges just never tire of dinosaur paintings apparently.

Kaerlig is currently giving me the silent treatment. She read the next paragraph over my shoulder and I think she took it personally. It wasn’t meant to be read that way. She was recently named Employee of the Quarter at the hospital where she works. She enjoys running and going to the gym. She also does a great job keeping the household running. Were it left to me, our home would be reduced to a smoldering crater in short order. Kaerlig is the glue that keeps our family together.

As for me, I am now 33 years old. This year I have lost a little more hair, gained a little more weight, and vastly shrunk my bank account. For fun I enjoy regular verbal abuse, avoiding bill collectors, and not getting kicked in the groin. In my spare time I sleep in the fetal position on my corner of our king-sized bed, sometimes trembling as I stare down the barrel of at least thirty more years of the same.

Merry Christmas everyone! May your days be merry and bright at this most wonderful time of the year when our thoughts turn to peace on earth and goodwill toward men. As you go dashing through the snow on all your holiday errands, may you pause to reflect on the little town of Bethlehem where, away in a manger unto us a child was born, a Savior which is Christ the Lord.

2008-12-15T21:45:00.000-07:00

Today I walked home from work. It's just over five miles. I didn't do it for physical fitness purposes. It was more for the mentally therapeutic benefits. I've been feeling pretty much like the family dog lately. I can't seem to do anything right. I don't mean to sound like Charlie Brown here, but I guess I probably do. Good Grief.

Walking was pretty nice. At first it was bitter cold, but by the time I got home, I was actually sweating underneath my down parka.

Speaking of "parkas," I think that's the first time I've used that word. But I remember the first time I heard it. I was six years old. We had just moved into my Grandparents' home and my grandma needed me to run across the street for something. I don't remember what. But I guess I didn't have a coat and it was Winter. Grandma wasn't about to let me step foot outside without a coat and she told me just to wear her "parka." It was orange. I didn't want to wear it because it was a womans coat, and her casually throwing the unfamiliar word "parka" around didn't help either. I don't remember what happened after that, but if I had it to do over again I'd wear the parka happily.

While I walked I listened to some music. I hit play and Radioheads In Rainbows album came on. It's a good album. You should get it.

Since I don't have much else to say, I'll just copy and paste some Radiohead lyrics and call it a night.

Bodysnatchers

I do not
Understand
What it is
I've done wrong
Full of holes
Check for pulse
Blink your eyes
One for yes
Two for no

I have no idea what I am talking about
I'm trapped in this body and can't get out
Ooooohhhh

Make a sound
Move back home
Pale imitation
With the edges
Sawn off

I have no idea what you are talking about

I'm trapped in this body and can't get out
Ooooohhhh

Has the light gone out for you?
Because the light's gone for me
It is the 21st century
It is the 21st century
You can fight it like a dog
And they brought me to my knees
They got scared and they put me in
They got scared and they put me in
All the lies run around my face
All the lies run around my face
And for anybody else to see
And for anybody else to see

I'm alive...

oh no no no no no no no no no no no no ma ma. (X3)

I've seen it coming. (x4)

Elves

2008-12-12T09:17:00.000-07:00

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

2008-12-05T20:15:00.000-07:00

It was bound to happen, but I've been avoiding it. Here I am, writing a post with my iPhone. Is this the pinnacle of technological convergence or the last nail in my apple fanboy coffin? I don't know. I'm pretty sure that nail was driven several months ago when I purchased an apple TV. If that's the case, then this is just me being self-indulgent and snotty.
No matter how I slice it, I'm pretty much a douchebag. Especially considering that I'm doing this while at my dads 74th birthday party. He's running on fumes. I should be cherishing every moment with him. Instead I'm staring into my artificial urim and thummim and sending my thoughts into cyberspace. All of this points me to one simple fact. I am going to die alone, probably too fat to get out of bed, a sandwich rotting in my flesh-folds.

2008-12-04T09:50:00.000-07:00

Dear Blogosphere,

I'm afraid I've run out of stories to tell. I've summed up my entire life in a handful of posts and there's nothing left. No juicy bits anyway. Just the mundane details of life. For example, today I woke up and sat down to pee. I've been doing it that way lately, so I can sit and close my eyes and sort-of sleep in in a demented way. I do this until somebody shouts at me to get moving. Then I drag my heels down the hall and start getting ready for work.

Facsinating, isn't it? Now that my vast audience is totally engaged in the excitement that surrounds me, I will regale you with tales of toothbrushing and bloody gums. I may even tell you about skipping breakfast because it was puffed wheat cereal and let's be honest, that's about as exciting as a bowlful of packing peanuts.

Now I'm procrastinating actual work by blogging.

I gotta get a hobby like base jumping or sword swallowing. I'm dying of boredom just thinking about my life.

2008-11-13T20:17:00.001-07:00

Rough draft of the Christmas letter:

Very Merry Christmas to all our friends and family!
As the year draws to a close we pause to reflect on the events of the last twelve months.
Great things have happened to our family.
It would be easy just to say that we are happy and well and leave it at that.
Never one to oversimplify things however, I feel inclined to elaborate.
After all, everybody is dying to know the mundane details of our lives.

Little has changed in our family this year.
As of this date, there have been no major crises or disasters.
But of course there is still time for things to take a turn for the worse.
If they do, you'll be the first to know.
And your support will be appreciated.

Christmas is a cherished time in our family.
Life provides few such occasions for togetherness and giving.
It was difficult this year when we explained to the children that Santa Claus isn't real.
They were sad.
Overall though, I believe it will be a positive experience.
Rainer is already showing a deeper appreciation for the act of giving.
It appears he is looking forward to what he will give more than what he may receive.
Sadly, he still hasn't given up on receiving a $300 Pleo robotic dinosaur.

Virtually every day is a new adventure with our kids.
Usually each of them surprises us with an astute observation or cute idea.
Lately they have been playing well together and we enjoy watching them interact.
Vigorously though they may argue, they are good friends.
After all, this is what being a family is all about.

Happiness prevails in our lives.
You wouldn't believe how much fun we have together.
Maybe we will invite you on one of our fun family vacations so you can see for yourself.
Enjoying eachother is what it's all about.
Never forgetting how much your loved ones mean to you is the key, I think.

Merry Christmas from the Hurtado's

So what do you think bloggers? Is it fit to print? Can you do better?

2008-11-10T01:51:00.000-07:00

Two Sundays ago at the "Dinner at Mom's House" I did something pretty difficult. It was a long time coming and hard to do, but I could no longer sit idly by. I had to tell them. I came out to my parents.

I said, "I know you won't agree with this, but I have to be true to myself. I'm voting for Obama."

My wife, of course, wasn't surprised. She has known for quite a while. My stepdad left the room. My mom had lots of questions.

You should know that eight years ago I voted for Nader, just for spite, and four years ago I voted for Bush. I felt it was my duty to do so. I was asked to speak in church during that election cycle and I gave a thinly-veiled, pro-Bush speech. I swallowed Karl Rove's baited hook without hesitation.

So, like my mom, you may be wondering what has happened during these last four years to make me jump ship. You may ask, as my mom did, if I have changed my mind about abortion or about the importance of the traditional family in our society.

Here's how I explained it to her:

When I voted for Bush four years ago, it wasn't because I liked him, or felt he was a good person or a great leader. It was more in spite of my feelings to the contrary. I felt it was my duty to support Bush because I believed that on his watch abortion would be curtailed and family values would be supported. These are issues of morality. And while I know that not everyone agrees with my convictions, I felt that Bush did, and that these particular moral issues were of the utmost importance. (I don't know if you've noticed, but Bush didn't do a whole lot to support these issues anyway.)

I recall John Kerry during one of the debates saying, "you can't legislate morality." And I said to myself, "Well then what are you supposed to legislate, you smarmy creep? Of course you have to legislate morality. All law is based on morality. The law is a moral code. We outlaw murder, theft and rape because they are immoral acts."

But this year I realized something. I don't think the phrase, "you can't legislate morality" means to remove moral questions from the purview of the law. I think that what it means is that laws aren't going to make people abide by a moral code. Rather, laws reflect the moral code of a society. If our society degenerated to the degree that other fallen cultures have, new legislation would do little to curtail an increase in murder, theft, and rape.

For this reason, I believe that education and public discourse on the issues will always trump legislation. Teaching moral principles will do more to stem the decline of our society than pushing legislation.

In the same way I voted for Bush on moral issues, I also felt it was imperative to vote for Obama. While he may not agree with me on the issues that made me inclined to support Bush, I have decided that there are other moral issues which have been ignored under the current administration. I question the morality of preemptive war, of corporate welfare. I don't feel good about the unbridled greed and rampant consumerism we embrace in the face of hunger, poverty and squalor throughout the world. I'm certain that America as a nation will experience a greater peace and a reduced risk of terror attacks if we beat our swords into plowshares and help other nations grow. Enforcing peace with the threat or use of violence is unacceptable in our own homes and it should be unacceptable to us as a nation. I'm not so naive as to think that once the new administration is sworn in wars will end. But I hope that we can pursue a course that will secure peace through increased diplomacy and decreased force. An enemy never becomes a friend by being beaten into submission.

According to the local paper, Provo is the reddest city in America. A smaller percentage of voters here supported Obama than any other city. Being in such a small minority is somewhat unsettling. I have been very careful what I say, and to whom I say it. A good friend and neighbor of mine very strongly disagrees with me politically, and I have no desire to adversely affect that friendship. Under these circumstances it would be easy to just not vote, or vote for Santa Claus for that matter, because it really wouldn't make any difference here. That's why I'm writing this. My vote may not matter much to the Utah electorate, but hopefully the people who read this will consider these ideas and recognize that I'm not part of some lunatic fringe.

I was getting a haircut the day before the election, and another man was telling the barber how Obama is a muslim terrorist who hates America and wants to make us socialists. I have received emails from people with good intentions which have said the same things. All this fear-mongering is so childish and counter-productive. This man who will be our president is a good man who, like Senator McCain, loves this country and her people. He has excited the electorate in a way that no candidate has in recent years. And he has done so on a platform of optimism, courage and dignity. If you dislike Senator Obama, I hope it will be because you disagree with him on the issues, rather than because you believe the false claims that continue to circulate about him.

That pretty much sums it up. I don't want to start a political debate here. I just wanted to explain my feelings about this election. I'm excited for our country and the direction we're headed. I feel more patriotic lately than I have in quite a while. I know a lot of my friends and family see things differently, and I respect that, but I think it says a lot about the greatness of America that a man like Barack Obama has been elected our president.

2008-10-11T21:47:00.000-06:00

At the request of my friend Marty, I'm going to write a new post. Though I don't know whether it'll be worth reading. I don't have any great stories to tell tonight.

Okay, here goes:

One of my very first jobs, besides a newspaper route, was at Burger King. I worked there for about seven hours. I was assigned to put patties on the grill. I'd take them out of a freezer, stick them on a conveyor, and watch them get "flame broiled" in a greasy machine, then catch them on a bun at the other side and store them in a steamer. That was my station on the burger assembly line. (This process may also have involved picking up the occasional dropped patty from the floor, and broiling it anyway, but I'm not saying.)

At the end of my shift, at closing time, my boss told me to clean the grill. This part involved scraping tar-like sludge off the stainless steel hood of the machine. I was directed to the janitors closet where there was a hose and a floor drain, and given a box of powdered laundry detergent and a scouring pad. While working at this task with the hopelessly inadequate tools provided, I developed my very first migraine headache.

I drove home that night greasy and wet, nauseated and dizzy. And I thought to myself that any job in the world would be better than the bitter hell I had just endured.

Luckily the next morning I got a call from another place where I had applied, offering me a job. I immediately called the BK and told them not to bother scheduling me for any more shifts. . . ever. And I began my career as a warehouse worker at Best Products Co. A job I loved for the next couple of years.

Best was a department store where you could buy a variety of items. Some smaller items were stocked on the shelves, but larger items were only displayed up front. If you saw something you wanted to buy, you'd take a ticket to the cashier. Then while you were paying for the item, warehouse guys like me would send it up to you.

It was pretty mindless work. Whenever an order came through a loud buzzer would go off, followed by the sound of the dot-matrix printer crunching out a ticket. I would tear the ticket off the printer, and using the information printed thereon I'd find the item, pull the item off the shelf and send it up the conveyor belt. (I've just noticed strange parallels to my work at Burger King.) If the item was too large, I'd take it up front with a dolly or a cart. Often I was also called upon to help the customer load the item in their car as well. Besides those duties, I brought in the shopping carts as needed.

It was the perfect job for me at the time. I was going through some tough stuff in my life and at every idle moment my mind would become consumed by such despondent feelings that I became paralysed by depression. At work I was able to cope because I was constantly on my feet, running up and down aisles, lifting heavy objects. I was too engaged in repetitive tasks to think of anything else.

Best is gone now. The entire chain went under in '96. Sometimes I miss that place.

2008-09-11T00:46:00.000-06:00

I like a pretty wide variety of music. This is probably thanks to my parents and older siblings. My dad sang in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for 22 years. He listened to lots of Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti. My mom on the other hand loved the Kingston Trio and Peter Paul and Mary. My brother Carlos is a devout worshipper of Dan Fogleberg, and I remember my sisters listening to everything from Chicago to OMD. Also significant to my musical DNA is the fact that as long as I have known him, my stepdad has spent at least two hours a day making mix tapes of his vast collection of vintage country vinyl. Though I found it really annoying as a U2 loving young man, I have even come to appreciate his musical taste.

So when I write a post titled "The Best Song in the World" you better believe I mean it.

This song, today, in my humble opinion is Gypsy by Fleetwood Mac

Gypsy

So Im back, to the velvet underground
Back to the floor, that I love
To a room with some lace and paper flowers
Back to the gypsy that I was
To the gypsy... that I was

And it all comes down to you
Well, you know that it does
Well, lightning strikes, maybe once, maybe twice
Ah, and it lights up the night
And you see your gypsy
You see your gypsy

To the gypsy that remains faces freedom with a little fear
I have no fear, I have only love
And if I was a child
And the child was enough
Enough for me to love
Enough to love

She is dancing away from me now
She was just a wish
She was just a wish
And a memory is all that is left for you now
You see your gypsy
You see your gypsy

Lightning strikes, maybe once, maybe twice
And it all comes down to you

And it all comes down to you

Lightning strikes, maybe once, maybe twice
And it all comes down to you

I still see your bright eyes, bright eyes
And it all comes down to you
I still see your bright eyes, bright eyes
And it all comes down to you

I still see your bright eyes, bright eyes
(she was just a wish)
(she was just a wish)
And it all comes down to you

Lightning strikes, maybe once, maybe twice
And it all comes down to you

Today was one of the few days this year I drove rather than rode to work. As I drove home in the Galaxie after dark, windows down, Gypsy came on. And when Stevies' vocal dropped to nearly inaudible levels at the end of the word "velvet" and the beginning of the word "underground" I was transported to a place I may never have been, but remember just the same. I remember hearing this song as a little boy, as though it were part of the soundtrack of my childhood. I remember a teenage Carlos telling my dad he'd be back in "half an hour" and how suddenly a light went on and I understood what that meant. I remember how brightly Carlos shone before my adoring eyes, how cool he was, and how kind. I don't know if any of this is even real because Carlos was something like 18 years old when I was born, but the memories drive with me as my car rolls across the texture of the road, and the texture of Lindsey Buckinghams finger picking and John McVies Bass.

And I can't help but think that this has got to be the best song in the world as for four minutes and twenty five seconds I am back to the child I was, and Carlos is my unblemished hero. Back years before I learned about the drugs, before I saw the door to his daughters bedroom smashed from its hinges, before I knew anything about him but the feelings this song evokes in me.

I remember Carlos as the one who drove his Trans-Am from Provo to Salt Lake in something like 17 minutes flat, and whose girlfriend cross-stitched me a picture of a little boy fishing.

My big brother

2008-09-09T11:49:00.000-06:00

I just yawned and my daughter said, "Daddy, your breath smells."

"Does it smell yucky?"

"No, it smells like another persons breath. It smells like a person who does Spanish."

Thanks for clearing that up. I guess I'll have to stop brushing my teeth with refried beans. Actually, I have been eating at Maria Bonita lately, so maybe she's onto something.

2008-09-09T01:07:00.000-06:00

This is the best craigslist ad ever! (Click to see full-size)

2008-09-09T00:43:00.000-06:00

The first time I saw a picture of Sarah Palin, I said to myself, "That lady looks just like Peggy Hill! I should blog about that."

But then I didn't.

A few days later I decided to google "Sarah Palin Peggy Hill" and I found that about one million other bloggers had beaten me to the punch.

Nevertheless, for your edification I present two pictures I stole from the internet:

Then I found a blogger who took it to the next level and pointed out this resemblance:

Pretty good stuff.

2008-09-09T00:30:00.000-06:00

Though I've been blogging for a while now, and I can be found linked on other fine blogs, I still haven't put any other blogs in my sidebar. I lurk on several other blogs but seldom comment. Am I a selfish blogger? A blog snob?

I hope not.

I'm not sure where I fit in in the blogosphere. First off, I have testicles. That in and of itself (themselves?) is enough to make me feel marginalized in this society.

Sometimes I feel like I just walked in on a baby shower. Awkward.

I don't want to be an unwelcome guest at anybody's party. I just want to tell the funny and sometimes sad, often disturbing stories of my life.

However. . .

I want to mention that I truly wish Christian and Stephanie and their children and extended family the very best. I don't know them, but I know that a lot of gracious bloggers out there who sometimes visit my corner of cyberspace do know and love them. I hope that I have friends like you, and I hope I never have to find that out through tragedy.

So that's all I have to say.

2008-09-02T00:39:00.000-06:00

Part IV (read the first three parts below.)
They've Resorted to Telemarketing

A couple of days ago I got an interesting phone call. The conversation went like this:

"Hi, I was just driving by and saw your store. What kind of scooters do you sell?"

"We sell a couple of major brands. Prices range from about $2700 to $4500."

"Well it's gonna get cold soon. How many scooters do you sell per month in the Winter?"

"I don't see how that could possibly be relevant to this conversation."

"Well let me tell you what I do. For the past 15 years I've been working with companies to bring products in from China. I have brought in all sorts of consumer goods. Some are sold in Wal Mart. But I've been importing scooters lately. I don't know if you're familiar with Motobravo?"

"You mean the scooters being sold by the guy who's going to prison for mortgage fraud? Yeah, I've heard of 'em."

My reply threw him off his game momentarily, but he soon continued, "I helped those guys as well as other businesses like yours to source those products. I speak fluent Mandarin, and I know my way around. I can help you get some of those scooters too."

"Frankly Sir, if I wanted to sell Chinese scooters, I could have been importing them myself for the past six years."

"Actually, that isn't true. You see, I speak the language and I know how to find the best deals. I have years of experience. Importing them yourself is like marrying the first girl you date. . ."

I interrupted him at this point. "Actually I could import them myself. I get emails every day from the factories in China. They all speak enough English anyway, and besides that, throw a rock in the air in Utah County and you'll hit a 'direct Chinese importer' on the head. Like I said, If I wanted to import the garbage you import, I could do it without your help."

I think he hung up at that point, which is a shame because he missed a long tirade about how he better have really good insurance and how he better have his scooters EPA certified, and about the severe penalties associated with importing non-EPA compliant products. I think he would have found it fascinating.

2008-09-02T00:38:00.000-06:00

Part III (if you haven't read the first parts read them first below.)
The Flamethrower

The next story began a couple of months ago. A girl who looked like a female Napoleon Dynamite came in with a friend looking for a helmet. (They had been in before looking at scooters, but didn't buy.) When I asked what kind of scooter she had, she told me she had just purchased a Motobravo. (A little background: Motobravo is not a brand. It is nothing more than a sticker being applied to a generic Chinese P.O.S. scooter being imported by some of the fine individuals that helped make Utah the Mortgage Fraud Capitol of the West.)

Sometimes I'm more charitable towards Chinese scooter owners. This was not one of those times. I asked her why she didn't buy a scooter from us. She said she couldn't afford it. So I asked how much she paid for the scooter. She said $1200. I said, "Can you afford to have a twelve-hundred dollar decoration in your driveway?" She looked puzzled so I continued, "Did you know that they buy those things for around five hundred bucks? Did you do any research before you bought it?"

"Well, my friend who knows about scooters said it was a pretty good one."

"Is your friend going to fix it when it breaks? Because the guy who sold it to you on the side of the road, without a dealers license, or insurance, or a store, or spare parts, is going to be too busy laughing all the way to the bank to help you out."

Well, she didn't like being insulted to her face, but she didn't know quite what to say, so I decided to be sporting about it. "Look," I said, "I'll make a deal with you. I'll bet you twenty bucks that your scooter will break down within thirty days. If it doesn't I'll pay you twenty dollars. But if it does, I'll just add it to your repair bill."

Fast forward 30 days. I still hadn't heard from her. So I called her up and said that I owed her $20. She said that it was ok, her mom taught her not to gamble, so she wasn't going to hold me to it. I said that she should just hop on her scooter and come collect the money fair and square, but she was gracious enough to decline. Out of curiosity I asked how many miles were on her scooter and she said about a hundred. I laughed and said that next time I made a bet like that I would have to have a mileage stipulation. A hundred miles in a month is pretty low.

Fast forward a few weeks more. I was standing in front of the store watching someone on a test ride, when this cute blonde runs across State street and says, "Hi, remember me?" I didn't. "You made a bet with my friend that her scooter would break."

"Yeah" I said, "I guess she won. She said the scooter never broke down."

"Well actually, It just broke down across the street. Can you come take a look at it?"

While we waited to cross the street I made conversation.

"At least she won the bet. Though when I called her she had only ridden about a hundred miles."

"Uhmm, well, the speedometer broke a while ago" she sheepishly admitted, but then she added, "but this is the first time it has actually stopped running."

I chuckled to myself as we crossed the street. When I saw the scooter the first thing that caught my eye was the gasoline leaking all over the ignition coil. I removed the rubber boot thats supposed to protect the wires from moisture and a few ounces of gas poured out. I said, "You're lucky this didn't start a fire. Two Chinese scooters have started on fire in my shop this year." (True story. I had to buy new extinguishers because of them.)

The girl who owned the scooter was also at the scene with a can of gas in hand. She insisted the scooter wasn't leaking and that she had just spilled a little gas when she topped it off. I watched it for a while and the steady flow of gas didn't really diminish. She insisted it didn't leak gas, but that was clearly the problem. When the gas had finally leaked down below the defect in the tank, it stopped. I dried off the ignition coil wiring and the scooter started right up. I reiterated how lucky they were that the scooter had stopped rather than gone up in flames. I showed them how when I shook the scooter a bit, gas would leak again because it was splashing up into the area where the leak was. The owner finally admitted that maybe it had leaked gas once before. She then said that one of the brakes didn't work but her friend (probably the same idiot who told her it was a good scooter) had told her that it was just because it was leaking brake fluid. There was so much wrong with that statement I didn't know where to begin. "Well, that brake is your rear brake and it's not hydraulic, so it can't be due to a brake fluid leak. I looked at the cable adjuster and found that it had never been tightened up. After tightening it I looked at the "brake fluid leak" by the front wheel. Thankfully, it wasn't brake fluid leaking. It was just one of the front shock absorbers leaking oil. That problem is a sure fire way to fail a safety inspection, but it's not as bad as a brake fluid leak. Also while looking at the front wheel I saw that the speedometer pinion had basically fallen apart, which explains the defunct speedometer/odometer. It had stopped with 110 miles on the clock.

So now I'm fixing her scooter. It took a lot of effort, but I didn't say "I told you so." No, it was too painfully obvious to everyone how right I was. The scooter is less than two months old and has a leaky gas tank, a broken speedometer, a leaky shock absorber, and a brake cable that the "dealer" never bothered to adjust properly. I hope they realize how lucky they are just to be alive.

2008-09-02T00:36:00.000-06:00

Part II (see part I below)
Dave Gets Ornery

This past Saturday morning we got several calls by some people in South Jordan who wanted to buy a blue Buddy125. Everyone working spoke to these people at least once. When I spoke with them, they told me that they were "willing to consider" buying from us, because the dealer in Salt Lake was out of stock on the scooter they wanted for a few more days, but "only if we would match the other stores price and throw in a free helmet too." I informed the customer that I knew for a fact that our price was already nearly $200 less than the other store, and that if they didn't buy it for full price that day, someone else would surely buy it the following day. (That's how it is with the Buddy125, we sell them as fast as we can get them in.)

He didn't like that answer and hung up on me. But his wife called back within the hour and Taylor was the lucky one that answered the phone. Taylor is 15 years old, a great guy, and he treats everyone with courtesy, enthusiasm, and respect. I don't know what he told them, but they must have felt encouraged because they told him they'd be in within the hour. (Taylor was pretty excited. He didn't know that Lee and I had both spoken with the same people and that they were just trying to find the softest person to exploit with their two-bit jedi mind tricks.)

When they showed up, we had a line of customers to help. Of course I didn't know who they were, but I greeted them and told them someone would be with them as soon as possible. The lady angrily replied, "Well we're just waiting for someone to tell us about scooters!" To which I said, "I'll be happy to help you as soon as I can."

A minute later I approached her and said that I was ready to help them. She said she wanted to talk to Taylor. I said that he was out at the moment but that we don't work on commission and I could help her. She said, "Show me the blue Buddy."

"Oh," I said, "you're the people from South Jordan. I've spoken with you on the phone." (At this point my customer service skills went straight to hell. We had already wasted enough time on the phone with these tire-kickers, and if she thought she was going to score points with me by having a nasty attitude, she thought wrong.)

She snarled, "You spoke to my husband." (Thanks for clearing that up, ma'am, I'm a little rusty on the finer points of gender differentiation.) And then she walked over to one of the Buddy150's, which had a huge "SOLD" sign on it, and said, "What about this one?"

I replied "It's sold."

"When will you get more of them?"

"Probably a few weeks. They sell faster than we can get them. Most of the Buddies are sold before they get here. This latest shipment just came in yesterday and as you can see, several are already sold"

"Well how can they be sold before they get here?"

"Because people pay for them in advance. That's how they make sure they get one."

I was hoping that at some point in this conversation these people would realize the implications of "supply and demand" but they didn't. And since I wasn't about to go into another brass tacks negotiation with her husband, I turned and walked away.

We then proceeded to ignore them until they left. Call me the Scoot Nazi if you want, but when you act like a jackass, "No Scoot For You!"

2008-08-31T21:46:00.000-06:00

The following stories are all kind-of related, but taken at once it's a long read, so I'm breaking them down into four installments.

Part I
Enter The Dragon

Two men came into the store to see if I would buy their used scooter. One guy was grizzled and leathery. He had the skin tone of a chain-smoker, tanned and loose. His ragged shirt with torn-off sleeves was unbuttoned halfway down his wrinkly chest. His arms were covered with old, faded tattoos. They were the variety of tattoo you would see on members of the Manson family: Cryptic symbols and words, haphazardly spattered over the forearms-- like he had done it himself with a needle and a bic pen.

This guy was interesting, but the second guy even more so. He had curly white hair in a sort-of mullet, like a mall Santa in the off-season, or like a slightly more flamboyant Kenny Rogers. He was portly, but not jolly. He wore a flannel shirt and jeans, and in his arm he cradled a little chihuahua, Paris HIlton style.

They approached me and asked if I would buy a "Kwinchki" scooter. I think they meant Quingqi, a Chinese Sh$%box of unparalleled crappiness. I matter-of-factly said no, and the first guy asked me why. I explained that they were really crummy scooters and I could buy them new for less than $300. They left, the first guy muttering something about "less than $300" under his breath.

They were such an odd combination, that taken together I can only assume that at some point the pair were crowned King and Queen of a Prison Prom.

2008-08-17T23:19:00.000-06:00

I've been trying to persuade myself to write more frequently. So I'm writing in hopes that something halfway entertaining will come out, but I'm not very optimistic about it. I've been re-imagining my blog a little bit these past several months. A lot of the anonymity of blogging has vanished. I've gotten in trouble more than once with people who have read things here that offended them. I don't want to censor my comments all the time for fear some cyber-stranger will take offense and demand an apology. I like publishing my opinions and telling my stories. It's really discouraging that I have to be accountable for them in real life. I guess I better get used to it.

One obvious remedy is to use fake names for people, but that only goes far enough to prevent people from finding my blog by random googling. If they read this, they'll know I'm talking about them anyway, so I can't be as bold as I'd like to be. Meanwhile I'm getting two paragraphs into this post and still no entertaining anecdotes have sprung out of my brain.

If you're still reading this, you are a real trooper. I can't believe anybody would read this far into an obviously empty post. Give yourself a pat on the back. Nice work.

Anybody watching the olympics? I've only seen a little bit. I think the athletes are all a bit crazy. I admire them, but at the same time I think they're a little out-of-round if you know what I mean.

I was on the swim team my first year of high school. Our school didn't actually have a pool, so every day our team rode the bus to our rival school and we trained there. It was good to be part of the team. I enjoyed it a lot. I wasn't bad either. I probably would have been pretty good if I had stuck with it, but I became too depressed to keep it up.

Well, this is so boring I'm depressing myself. I think I'll go eat some cookies now, or stick my head in the oven, or something.

2008-08-02T12:56:00.000-06:00

Anglerfish live deep in the ocean, in the darkest abyss. They are known for having scary fangs and skeletal faces, blind eyes, and dangly lures hanging from appendages in front of their mouths. But what you may not know is that some anglerfish have strange breeding methods.

From Wikipedia:
At birth, male ceratioids are already equipped with extremely well developed olfactory organs that detect scents in the water. When it is mature, the male's digestive system degenerates, making him incapable of feeding independently, which necessitates his quickly finding a female anglerfish to prevent his death. The sensitive olfactory organs help the male to detect the pheromones that signal the proximity of a female anglerfish. When he finds a female, he bites into her skin, and releases an enzyme that digests the skin of his mouth and her body, fusing the pair down to the blood-vessel level. The male then atrophies into nothing more than a pair of gonads, which releases sperm in response to hormones in the female's bloodstream indicating egg release. This extreme sexual dimorphism ensures that, when the female is ready to spawn, she has a mate immediately available.

Did you catch that? Basically the male anglerfish bites onto a female and then atrophies into nothing more than a pair of gonads! And this is so that when the female is ready to breed she's got sperm immediately available. It's like having portable testicles, "pocket nuts" if you prefer.

This reminds me of two things: The first is that song by King Missile called "Detatchable Penis." Ten points to anyone who remembers that song. The second is what it feels like to be a man when your mate is trying to get pregnant. . .

. . . reduced to little more than a pair of gonads.

2008-07-24T22:06:00.000-06:00

My wife coined a word that needs to become part of the English lexicon.

Apocochondria: Noun. An irrational fear of the apocalypse. Symptoms of apocochondria include stockpiling dry goods, ammunition, and firearms. Apocochondriacs are mostly harmless, and prepared in ways that are useful, but they live so focused on a fearsome future that they cannot control, that they often lose control of themselves in the process.

2008-07-24T21:31:00.000-06:00

A couple of Saturdays ago I was standing in front of the store with the front door open talking to a customer. Suddenly a brown streak passed between us and into the store. I didn't get a good look, but the customer said it was a squirrel. I thought it was strange for a squirrel to run into our store in the middle of the day on the busiest street in the county. We have lots of more natural habitat here in Utah than inside a scooter shop.

The following day I got an alarm call. Having forgotten the squirrel, I rushed to the store to check things out. I didn't find anything amiss, but while looking around I heard the sound of an angry woodland creature cursing from the back room. I put two and two together and decided to lock back up and go home.

On Monday I went in early to meet with CFO-Lee. As we were going over the budget, we heard the woodland creature cursing. When we went into the back room to check it out, we saw it scurrying around behind the shelves. We decided it would be our store mascot, and as a matter of business we appointed it to the board of directors and named it vice president of international sales.

Tuesday morning I was also early. After going over some paperwork I decided it was about time to open up the store for business. But first I had some business to take care of in the restroom. As I approached the door I heard faint splashing sounds. Here is what I saw when I opened the door:

The poor little bastard was nearly drowned. After taking pictures I fished it out and wrapped it in a towel to dry off and get warm. It was surprisingly docile and sweet. . . until it got warm. Then it went all Kung-Fu on me and literally tried to kill me when I stroked it's back with a piece of straw. I had to let it go. Needless to say we are going to be looking for a new V.P. of International Sales.

In other news: I was working on a scooter a couple of days ago that seemed to have a clogged exhaust pipe. This sometimes happens due to excessive carbon buildup. But in this case, there appeared to be dry grass and brush stuck in the outlet of the pipe. After being unable to remove it with a pick, I connected my compressed air hose to the inlet and let it blow. At first nothing happened, and no air came out, but suddenly there was a loud POP and a stinky cloud of brush, seed hulls, and grey mouse-bits exploded from the pipe. There's a fairly good chance I have the Hanta virus now.

This was a scooter that was just in for a "tune-up." In case you were wondering, a tune-up involves replacing the spark plug, cleaning or replacing the air filter, and changing necessary fluids. It does not include removing cooked vermin from your exhaust system.

The sure fire way to know if a scooter needs serious repairs, is if the customer asks for a "tune-up." This generally indicates that the scooter is on the verge of breaking in half or bursting into flames.

In fact, every day I am faced with the difficult task of interpreting the following sentence: "Can you guys do a tune-up on my scooter?" Sounds pretty straightforward right? Wrong. It depends if by "scooter" you mean a motorized skateboard, a scooter, or an electric mobility chair, and if by "tune up" you mean perform routine maintenance, or unload an entire fire extinguisher on your flame-throwing carburetor. (By the way, this really happens sometimes. I have seen two Chinese scooters this year burst into flames when we've attempted to start them. Next time I'll get a picture.)

I do have one other picture to show you. I was up until 2:30 AM one recent night trying to catch up on some repairs. One scooter had no spark and I had the thing all taken apart testing the various circuits and connections when I finally found the problem. The kill switch was wired backwards. When switched to "ON" it was off, and "OFF" was on. I was very irritated. Imagine if your car left the factory that way. How long would it take Toyota to do a recall? But this kind of crap happens all the time with the cheap Chinese scooters. How am I supposed to explain the bill to the customer? "The factory wired your switch wrong. Since the place you bought the scooter from is out of business and there was never any warranty on it, you have to pay half of what the scooter cost in the first place because I had to test the entire ignition system to chase down the problem. Thanks for your business."

I chose a more passive-aggressive route.

2008-07-24T21:28:00.001-06:00

Scootard: noun

Definition: Me

2008-07-18T21:00:00.000-06:00

Recently I learned a new word: Lactivist

From some online dictionary:
Lactivism (portmanteau of "lactation" and "activism") is a term used to describe the advocacy of breastfeeding.[1] Advocates, referred to as "lactivists", seek to promote the health benefits of breastfeeding over formula-feeding and to ensure that nursing mothers are not discriminated against.[1][2]
One form that lactivism can take is the staging of a "nurse-in" (a play on "sit-in"), which involves women gathering in public to breastfeed their children, usually to protest incidents in which a nursing mother was asked to cover up or leave a location because she was breastfeeding.[3][4][5]
Often during nurse-ins, breastfeeding mothers will sometimes wear clothing with the International Breastfeeding Symbol on it, to show their solidarity.[6]

I had never realized breastfeeding was such serious business. Learning about it got me thinking about all the meaningful breastmilk related experiences that have shaped my life, and I'm not just talking about the time my cat Spot tried to suck on my nipple either. (That was awkward.)

For example, when I was on my mission in Texas there was this single mom named Carmen Baltazar that used to invite the missionaries to dinner a lot. The thing was, she used to nurse her littlest bastard (named after me no less), right in front of us all the time. She'd be standing there in her doorway with her boob hanging out, kid lazily lapping up the flow, talking about who knows what, and I'd be trying to do anything but look her in the eye (or nipple). The worst part was that she lived right across the street from a gay bar called The Hidden Door. This was not the type of gay bar frequented by young, well-groomed Erasure fans. It was a seedy dive bar that catered to dirty-old-trucker Village People types.

I was faced with exposed motherly boobs on one side, and parking lot gay hookups on the other.

But I got off easy compared to a District Leader I had. He was once teaching a discussion and the lady of the house began nursing her baby. He riveted his eyes on the reading materials in the discussion, until he heard the womans children giggling. He looked up and saw that the baby had let loose the nipple, and the mother was playfully squirting the babys face with her milk. Then she began squirting her other kids. Then the unthinkable happened. The mother noticed the look of absolute horror on his face, and so she took aim and sent a stream of milk across the room and hit him in the arm.

Thinking about these experiences led me to conduct a scientific poll on public breastfeeding. I asked all the women in my household between the ages of 32 and 34 what they thought about it.

Here are the comments:
"I don't particularly like seeing some other womans breast. It's not my favorite thing."

"It's natural, but so is peeing."

Don't get me wrong, I love boobs. I think boobs are the best thing ever. And I'm all for breastfeeding too. I don't even mind if you whip it out right in front of me. I'll avert my eyes and play it cool. Just don't stand there and talk to me as if there isn't a huge lactating elephant in the room, so to speak. Also, please don't squirt me.

2008-07-06T19:33:00.001-06:00

I know the last post was weird. It's only funny if you happen to be familiar with the late great Wesley Willis, and have known the joy of owning a Ford Windstar.

Here's something with a wider appeal:

New Scooter Lounge Commercial

hope you like it.

2008-06-23T22:31:00.000-06:00

2008-06-13T23:17:00.000-06:00

I hate salespeople. Not all salespeople. That would be hypocritical of me since I sell scooters for a living. But I hate the salespeople that interrupt business to try to pitch things to me. I don't care if you're selling cleaning products or advertising, you should not come into my store and make demands on my time. I don't come into your living room and try to sell you a scooter do I?

One time a young woman came into the store and tried to sell me some crappy dream catchers to help keep Christian kids off the streets. She seemed a little retarded so I spoke slowly when I told her I wasn't interested. Not five minutes later I was behind the store and I heard her on the other side of the fence talking on the phone. She wasn't retarded at all.

Another time I actually bought some "Green Apple Advanage" cleaner. (Yes, they spell it that way.) I only bought it because the salesperson was a black man who did a little comedy routine about how it was biodegradable and you could drink it and it tastes like apples but gives you the squirts. He said things like, "yessuh" and "nosuh" and his whole song and dance was pretty good. Afterwards I felt bad for falling for it though because he was just acting the part of a subservient southern black man, and it may have worked because on some level I might be racist. That caused me some introspection for a while. So I decided to kick him out just as angrily as I would a white guy next time he comes by.

I've fallen for some pretty stupid stuff over the years, but I think I'm finally getting wise. Salespeople all use the same aphorisms, bad math, and hollow promises to convince you that you should buy what they're selling. If you think it's bad at home, try owning a business. We get telemarketers and door-to-door people all day long. Lately the telemarketers aren't even real people, they're recordings! It's so bad lately that I want to scream. It is interfering with our ability to do business.

Yesterday our fridge broke and I had to go buy a part to fix it. I was the only customer in the store and I had to wait for help because a very pushy saleslady was trying to get the business owner to renew his yellow pages ad. I heard him explain to her over and over that he didn't want to do it. She kept on telling him the same things about how people don't throw their book away, how businesses get a really good return on their investment, and how she'd even give him a discount. Finally he said, "Look, I don't want you to sell me this right now. I just want you to take no for an answer."

She got offended and said, "Okay, if that's what you want. We won't put your ad in this book this year. It's your choice if you don't want your business to grow. I don't have to beg people to be in this book. People want to be in this book. Blah, Blah, Guilt trip, Blah. . . "

She finally left and I bought my part and went on my way.

Later at work, at an extremely busy moment I noticed two guys in ties holding yellow pages books trying to get my attention. I wasn't about to be double-teamed by a couple of pushy douchebags. I had neither the time nor the patience. So I pulled out a secret weapon I've been holding onto for several years, too scared to use it. It's a powerful question that when used properly will allow you to go nuclear on anyone pushing you to do anything. It's so powerful I've always been afraid to use it for fear of vaporizing the salespeople in such a blinding flash of light that their shadows would be printed on the walls of my store.

I approached them and asked if they were together. They said yes. (A twofer!) So I asked them the question:

"Is there a really nice way for me to say no?"

They were taken off guard. A momentary stupor crossed their faces. Then one of them, with a hearty fake laugh, said, "No you have to be really rude."

"Okay then, GET THE HELL OUT OF MY STORE." I said it calmly but forcefully.

"Are you serious?"

"YES."

And that was it. Eviscerated. Disemboweled. Leveled.

I clapped my hands and bowed before employees and customers. "And that, my friends, is how you get rid of salespeople," I said. I was downright giddy. It was awesome!

2008-03-30T09:52:00.000-06:00

The first thing I remember Sunday morning is the sound of my little girl telling me to wake up because the dog had pooped on the floor. My wife was at work. It was up to me to handle it, but I slept in anyway.

I don't know how much longer I snoozed, but I jumped right out of bed when I heard one of the boys say something about there being a lot of poo upstairs.

They were right.

As luck would have it, there was a tremendous pile in the upstairs living room, and a couple of hershey's kiss sized turds on the family room carpet downstairs.

After surveying the damage, I sent a text to my wife:
The dog crapped all over the house

Her reply:
Did you barf?

To which I responded:
No, but there's a staggering payload in the living room

Throughout this ordeal I kept thinking of the Homer Simpson quote I've cited here before: "Animals are crapping in our houses and we're picking it up! Did we lose a war? This isn't America. This isn't even Mexico!"

What has become of my self-respect? I'm about one step away from being the guy who follows his dog around with a plastic bag over his hand, waiting for the bestowal of a juicy gift to collect. Is there anything more pathetic? If I ever do that, you have my permission to kick me square in the crotch.

You may be wondering why the first thing my wife did was ask me if I threw up. The truth is, I have a very sensitive gag reflex. She knows this only too well. With her stuck at work for 12 hours, it was my job to get the kids dressed, fed and off to church. I imagine she was afraid that with crap all over the house and me incapacitated by dry heaves, I might have a little difficulty with the tasks at hand.

Precedent sides with her on this. About a month ago all of us were unexpectedly gone from early morning to late evening. I was stuck at work and she and the kids were someplace else. I had the dubious honor of being the first one home. As I opened the door I steeled myself for the mess I was sure I'd find. After all, nobody had let the dog out all day.

At first glance I was relieved. I thought the kitchen floor would be a linoleum-lined piss pond, but actually there was only a small puddle of the warm, foamy stink-syrup our dog calls urine. I wiped up this pleasant surprise with hardly a twitch. But then I went to check the basement.

Right smack in the middle of the middle stair was a doggy-doo double-wraparound. It began as a typical dry, easy-to-clean turd, but each turn was a turn for the worse and the tail end was drippy and runny. I dry heaved and ran upstairs to get cleaning supplies. In the bathroom mirror I did my best to psych myself up. It's just poo, it's just poo. . .

But as soon as I laid eyes on it again the battle was lost, as was my lunch, all over the stairs.

2008-02-13T21:58:00.000-07:00

Blogger Blogger Blogger

What do I have for you today? Not a whole heck of a lot. No adventures. No funny stories. Nothing but redundant snowstorms and freezing my butt off.

I did start doing pushups in the mornings.

2008-01-27T21:24:00.000-07:00

A few items:

First, thanks to the power of the internet, I was able to collect some money I otherwise never would have been paid, from an individual who makes a career out of ripping off small businesses. I'm not going to publicize the ordeal any further here. But since my use of the internet was such an effective means of gaining the upper hand in this situation, I would be happy to assist anyone in similar circumstances to utilize the blogosphere the way I did. Feel free to contact me at the store. The phone number is listed on thescooterlounge.com

Score 4750 for me and the internet. 0 for the douchebag con-artist.

Second, I'm going to be changing things around a little bit in the near future. In order to provide more useful content to customers of my store, I'm going to switch to a blog format that will exclusively involve scooter-related "how-to" materials and other related articles.

For those of you who enjoy reading my blog for the non-scooter-related stuff that I always wind up writing, I will continue blogging and I hope you enjoy reading. The address may change though, I haven't decided.

Third, I just learned that President Hinckley passed away this evening. I don't care who you are or what your faith may be, Gordon B. Hinckley was a great man and a true exemplar of living right. I'm sad to learn of his passing.

2008-01-12T12:38:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I got a catalog in the mail from one of those companies that sells personalized pens and beer cozies. They had a keychain with a logo bearing the word "POOLIFE" on it. I thought it was a joke so I googled it and found this disturbing tidbit.

Yep, it's a real company. I don't know how this name got past the focus groups and onto their business cards, products and letterhead. Didn't anyone notice? How could they miss it? Did somebody think it was clever? '"Let's think of a name that conveys the relaxed lifestyle of swimming pool ownership. Hmm. . . maybe we could combine the words "pool" and "life."' Is that how POOLIFE was born? Because I don't look at that name and see "pool" and "life." Am I the only one who sees POO LIFE? Doesn't that sort of conjure up the opposite image of the pool lifestyle? Is this stuff supposed to kill germs or preserve them?

Here's one of my favorite products in their "arsenal":

Which slogan do you think is better:
POOLIFE: For the Poo in your Pool
or
POOLIFE: Adding Poo to your life

2007-12-25T00:28:00.000-07:00

'Twas the day after Christmas
by David Hurtado

'Twas the day after Christmas, when all through the country
Children were playing with new toys a plenty.
The presents all opened, the wrapping all shreddy,
I set about clearing post-Christmas confetti.

The ornaments, bubble lights, nativity scene,
The garlands, the wreaths, our fake Christmas tree,
And the stockings I carelessly tossed into storage
mingled with all sorts of cheap plastic whorage.

I bagged all the paper, the tinsel, the trap
The gift bags, the boxes I crammed in a sack
And dragged all the trash to the end of the drive way
For the big garbage truck to pick up the next day

When, what to my wondering eyes should be popping,
But a black limousine, at my curbside a-stopping.
The driver quick-opened the passenger door
And out stepped a man little children adore.

He wore no red coat, no white furry trimming
He was chubby and plump, but his Armani was slimming
Yet I knew from his chuckle and twinkling eye
It was good old Saint Nick, no doubt in my mind

"To what do I owe this great honor old friend?"
I said with a question mark placed at the end.
"Just came to find out how you liked all the gifts
It's a pain in the neck, but Marketing insists.

"Focus groups and surveys can only do so much
They tell me good marketing takes a personal touch.
It seems like a chore, but it's money well spent
Our profits are up thirteen hundred percent."

I stared at my shoes, unsure how to say it
Afraid to discuss it, I tried to delay it
But most of the toys broke right out of the box. . .
Lead paint, choking hazards, electrical shocks. . .

I crafted a carefully worded reply
A compliment masking a jab on the sly
"Christmas was great as it always has been
The best gifts, you know, well. . . they come from within

"So what does it matter if toys are unsafe,
If they're made by small children for minimum wage?
There's more where they came from on Wal-Marts toy shelves
And with prices so low, who cares about elves?"

He sprang to his Limo, to his driver he nodded
Then speeding away, from the window he shouted,
"What's it to you Bud? Don't be such a whiner,
The elves joined a union, I outsourced to China"

2007-12-16T10:01:00.000-07:00

The Christmas Letter

Dear Friends, Family and Various and Sundry Loved Ones,

Once again I get to write the Christmas Letter, and by "get to" I mean Laquita* is making me do it. You may remember that last year our "beloved" dog Midnight got totaled. I'm "thrilled" to report that this year Midnight didn't eat any more poison and is alive and well.

Recently however, our "beloved" Ford Windstar got totaled. In this case we're doing the sensible, humane thing and putting it down. You see, unlike some animals (Midnight, I'm looking in your general direction) we learn from our mistakes.

BoJamboJambo is turning 7 this month. He's huge! He reminds me of Dolph Lundgren in Rocky IV. One of these days we're going to ask him to clean his room and he'll solemnly reply, "I must break you." This is my second greatest fear. I'll tell you the first in a second.

Mr. Scootypants is 5 and he's doing really well in school. He's a very sweet little kid. He taught himself to whistle, and now reminds me even more of Opie. He entered a drawing in the "Reflections" art contest and it was great. However BoJamboJambo's "Jambotopia" took first place overall. So unfortunately it looks like we're keeping family tradition and letting Mr. Scootypants languish in his older brothers shadow for now.

Twinkiebuns is a lovely little girl and she loves princesses and her daddy, in that order. This brings me to my greatest fear: One day Twinkiebuns will become a teenage princess and all my hair will fall out from the stress. She's going to be a real heartbreaker.

Laquita has worked as a pediatric nurse for five years and she loves her job. She probably wouldn't love it so much if her greatest fear came true and she accidentally killed some kids. But she's an excellent nurse, so there's little to worry about in that department.

As for me . . . well, like Midnight I'm still alive. I'm overweight and my hair is thinning, but I'm not totaled yet. The Scooter Lounge continues to be a fun business. In fact, I think I've pretty much got it made, because how many bald, fat guys love both their jobs and their families? We are truly blessed.

We hope that you have a wonderful holiday season. Merry Christmas!

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent

2007-12-07T20:33:00.000-07:00

If you've been following my blog recently, you're probably aware of a certain problem I was having, and you may have noticed that certain items have disappeared from the internet.

There is no need to panic. My freedom of speech has not been infringed upon. It's just on hiatus until January 15. Then we'll see. For now, certain things will not be published.

This is not bad news, so don't panic. And to anyone out there in cyberspace, if you have anything you need to discuss with me, all comments on this blog are now directed straight to my inbox for me to moderate, so don't hesitate to comment and I will be happy to discuss any concerns you may have. Your comments will not be published unless you want them to be, and I approve of them of course.

The best news of all is that for the time being I can go back to regaling the internet with tales of my youth and other stupid stuff. Like there was this one time when I was younger and I fought injustice and I kicked it in the teeth. It was awesome!

2007-11-14T10:06:00.000-07:00

After dinner on Sunday at my moms house, I went downstairs to play Barbies with Ellie. My attention span for playing Barbies is about 2.5 seconds, so before long I was going through boxes to see if any of my old things were there. Inside a box of photos I found some shots of me at 19 mountain biking in Moab. There were a couple of pictures of me with my shirt off flexing and stuff. I showed them to Ellie and said, "Look Ellie, this is Daddy." She looked at the pictures and then back at me incredulously and said, "Daddy, you ate too many cookies."

2007-11-12T01:23:00.001-07:00

I've always been a sucker for homeless people. For example, there was one time I picked up a lady and her babies that were begging on the side of the road and took them to Wendy's for a meal. There was another time I fixed the power window of a guys truck because it was really cold and the window was stuck down and his truck was also his house. There was Stinky Hugo and then there was Richard Guhn.

I'm not trying to make myself out to be some kind of a saint. I'm not, I just have a sharpened sense of middle-class guilt. That and I can't look a crazy person in the eye without sympathizing on some level. After all, mental illness runs in my family. Plus, my family says I'm a "weirdo magnet."

There was this one homeless guy I affectionately call "Captain Combover." This is his story.

Back when I worked at BYU I used to watch the surplus equipment sales just to see if anything interesting ever came up. One day I found an old travel trailer that had belonged to the Archaeology department. It was pretty run-down, but I thought it would be fun to fix up and pull behind my Galaxie 500. I bid $200 and won it. I was pretty excited about it and took it home to show my wife. She wasn't thrilled, but supported me and encouraged me to fix it up with some kind words. I believe she said, "I'm not setting foot in that trash heap until you get rid of that awful smell."

I found the source of the offending odor in short order. Below the rear window there was a mossy green growth on the wood paneling. It looked like your everyday moss, but when I touched it, instead of being moist and verdant it disintegrated into a dusty cloud that invaded my sinuses. It was like the stuff that comes out of the Ark of the Covenant and melts the Nazis faces on Indiana Jones. The next day I was miserably sick: coughing, sneezing, difficulty breathing, watery eyes, trailer smell permanently welded to my olfactory receptors, it was awful. I went to the doctor but apart from reassuring me that I didn't have the Hanta Virus, he said there was little he could do.

I was sick for about two weeks. When I finally felt better I wouldn't go near the trailer without a surgeons mask and rubber gloves. I decided the trailer would have to go, there was no way I'd be able to fix it.

The problem was, how does one get rid of a trailer that's infected with deadly mold? I came up with a solution. The next day I posted a note on the buy/sell board at the Wilkinson Student Center. "Make all your white trash dreams come true with a fabulous travel trailer. Free to good home."

Within minutes there were two calls. One was from a student who probably would have gotten sick and sued me. The other was from middle aged guy who lived in his van. Of course I picked the homeless man. If he got sick and died, who would notice, right?

It's sad, I don't remember his real name, but the nickname "Captain Combover" will never be forgotten. He had a combover the likes of which not even Donald Trump could compete with. I think he had the kind of Male Pattern baldness where the hair only grows on the temples and at the back of the head. He must have grown it about two feet long, then folded it up over his head, then flipped it back over and back down to the nape of his neck. It looked like a morticians pompadour. He held this hair contraption in place with copious amounts of gel and a few bobby pins. See the picture below to get an idea.

I actually let him come over in the evenings and work on the trailer until it was livable, so I got to know him a little bit. The funny thing was that by the end of the day, after working up a sweat battling Satan's jock mold, his hair would fall off to one side in great clumps. He'd push it back up and keep working. Here was a guy who lived in his car, who hung around the Wilkinson Center hoping to meet a homely coed with a heart of gold, and who probably followed Warren Jeffs' polygamous sect yet was single. Are you getting the picture? He was a man with absolutely no dignity. Yet he persisted in maintaining the illusion of having hair, and believe me, he wasn't fooling anyone.

Luckily I'm pretty tall, because people can't usually see the top of my head. But the fact is, I'm losing my hair. I haven't even combed it since I was 17 years old, and yet it's thinning on the crown. Maybe not this year, maybe not next year, but one day I'll have to deal with the fact that my baldness can no longer be concealed. I don't know what I'm going to do.

2007-10-28T01:27:00.000-06:00

Dear Britney,

I never liked you and your music sucks. I always knew you were just another child-turned-skank that Disney is so adept at pimping out. I expected you to enjoy your 15 minutes, then make several turns around the toilet bowl before finally getting spit out the bottom of the fame machine.

(But secretly I admit I thought you were hot. Sometimes. In the right light.)

When you got married to a man who can most kindly be described as a poor man's Eminem, and let's be honest, that's being extremely generous to him, I didn't care. Just more hollywood crap. So what if you had grits and bacon rinds at your wedding? Is any of that newsworthy? No. You married a loser. That's your problem.

Then, something in the news caught my attention. You did something that surprised me enough for me to start paying attention. You filed for divorce.

I thought, maybe there's more to Britney than meets the eye. Maybe she has a shred of dignity, an ounce of common sense, a scrap of self-respect. Maybe Britney Spears is more than the sum of her parts. (Her parts being a digitally enhanced voice, lip-synch skills, the ability to look hot in leather pants, and a weak chin.)

So I started watching the trainwreck that is your life. I wanted to see how you would rise to the occasion, take advantage of an opportunity to reinvent yourself, to become a sympathetic character instead of a hollywood caricature, to grow up.

I even started reading Perez Hilton's stupid site for the latest Britney news. (Just admitting that is humiliating for me, but I did it for you Britney.)

Now, I know I can't believe everything I read, but seriously, if even a fourth of it's true, I'm deeply disappointed in you. You're a disgrace to motherhood. The fact that a judge deemed Fed-Ex a more fit parent for your children than you speaks volumes about your maturity level. How screwed up can you be, that K-Fed is a better candidate for full-time custody? They might as well be raised by a pack of wild dogs.

So please Britney, get your act together. If you don't do it soon, your only remaining fan may be that fruity blonde haired kid on youtube with the gender identity crisis.

2007-10-25T13:22:00.000-06:00

I switched to Apple computers around six years ago. I imagine that if an amish person were to trade in his handcart for a Mercedes, he wouldn't be as thrilled as I was when I tossed out my XP machine and learned to live without the CTRL+ALT+DEL key combination. I have never looked back.

That's my two cents.

2007-10-11T00:47:00.000-06:00

Today I visited an old friend of mine. We've been friends since about Junior High, but haven't hung out much in the last few years. Come to find out, he got a vasectomy a few weeks back. I asked the typical questions: Did it hurt? Where does the sperm go now? Are they just swimming around in your bloodstream? Can you get a girl pregnant with your sweat?

He said the body makes antibodies, hunts the swimmers down and kills them.

"In fact," he said, "I just had my stuff tested and my sperm count is zero."

He was happy about this, of course, but I've known others for whom this news has been devastating.

I teased him about the whole process of providing a sample, and we laughed about how the doctors offices have these exam rooms made over with dimmer switches on the lights, leather recliners and dirty magazines. As if you would feel comfortable under those circumstances. "Umm, okay nurse, I'll just get you that sample right away then. I'll be in here for a few minutes looking at smut and abusing myself, and then I'll come out and hand you a little of my genetic material in a cup."

My friends wife isn't one to let her husband treat himself with this sort of contempt, so they took matters into their own hands in the comfort of their own home, then rushed the sample to the lab. They were only given a 20 minute window though, so it wasn't exactly a cakewalk. (Incidentally, I heard a morning radio show once where they were wondering how long the swimmers stay viable and a technician at a sperm bank actually called in and said she had just gotten a rather large sample and she would let it sit out and see how long it was still good. She called in a daily report for three days and those little buggers were still going strong, so I think the 20 minute window is bogus. The doctor probably just had a tee time to make.)

All this talk of male reproductive mechanics reminded me of the "maturation clinics" they held in elementary school. The girls got to have a maturation clinic in fifth grade and another in sixth grade, but for the boys there was just the sixth grade one. Some of my classmates and I wondered why girls needed to have two. I speculated that the first one was to learn about boobs and the second to learn about vajayjays. I suppose I'll never know. The girls were all sworn to secrecy about it and came away with a donut and a smug sense of superiority. "We had two maturation clinics because we're more mature."

The boys maturation clinic wasn't bad. First, there were donuts for us too. Second, it was given by Brad Wilcox. Brad Wilcox was a sixth grade teacher at the time, but he's pretty well known around here because he's since written several books for Mormon youth, he is a regular speaker at Mormon youth conferences, and he's a well-respected church leader and just generally all-around nice guy.

The things I'm about to say about him may give the impression that he's creepy or weird, but he isn't. In fact, since sixth grade he's been one of my heroes. So here goes:

Mr. Wilcox used to give out assignments in class and then while you worked he'd walk around and rub your shoulders and whisper that he loved you and that you were special. Undoubtedly this was creepy for some kids and alarming to some parents, but it was benign. And for a kid like me who felt about as valuable as a dogs' hemorrhoid, it was a positive experience. (This was back when the wannabe cheerleaders used to chant, "who's the biggest dork in the class? David Retardo!" at every recess.)

Mr. Wilcox was a positive affirmations kind of guy. He worked hard to make you feel good about yourself. This is a work ethic he brought to the maturation clinic with gusto. He explained to us that we were undergoing changes, special changes, that would enable us to be fathers one day, special fathers. He talked of special little factories working overtime to make millions of special baby seeds. He explained that those factories were located in a special, wrinkly, climate-controlled pouch where we may have noticed special new hair growing.

"You may wonder," he said, " what your body is going to do with all these baby seeds. After all, you won't be needing them for several more years. Well, when your body has too many seeds, it has a natural way to get rid of them. It's called a nocturnal emission."

He then went on to explain the process in greater detail. Words like "semen", "epididymus", "testes", "seminiferous vesicles" and "erection" were thrown around like basketballs at a globetrotters show. It was mindboggling. The best part though, besides the doughnuts, was this, "'When this happens to you, don't be ashamed or scared. Do your mother a favor and put your bedsheets in the wash, then quietly go inside your closet and say to yourself, 'Yay, My body works!'" This he said while flashing his broad toothy smile and gesturing like a guy who'd just won an international foosball tournament. As if the greatest thing in the whole wide world was being awakened from a boneriffic dream to find you'd made a mess in your tighty whiteys.

(I don't know about you, but I'd take that lecture over the modern hands-on, put-a-condom-on-a-banana approach any day.)

Now if I could just figure out what exactly birds and bees have to do with any of it, I'd be in good shape.

2007-09-27T18:13:00.000-06:00

My daughter Ellie is my honeybunch, sugarplum, pumpy-umpy-umpkin, sweetie-pie, cuppie cake, gumdrop, schnookum-schnookums. . . the apple of my eye.

In fact, one of her first phrases was "apple eye." And she would poke me in the eye while she said it. She is the best little girl in the world.

A few days ago my wife and I were in an office signing some papers with a loan officer. Ellie was sitting on my lap, when suddenly she turned around and asked me, "Why is his name Won Ton?"

"Won Ton?"

"No, Wong Thumb"

"Wong Thumb?"

"No, Wrong Turn!"

"Wrong Turn?"

"No!" She grabbed my beard and enunciated very carefully while looking me squarely in the eyes. I finally understood and burst out laughing.

A few moments before this exchange my wife had asked the loan officer, "What are your plans, long term?"

2007-09-22T14:38:00.001-06:00

Here's a post a friend of mine wrote that I thought I'd share. It goes well with my last post.

Click here to read it.

2007-08-15T20:49:00.000-06:00

My dad's a sucker for a business opportunity. First there was Amway. I remember getting "Glister" toothpaste and "Deter" deodorant in many a Christmas stocking. Then there was Melaleuca. For a while there we were putting tea-tree oil on everything from abrasions to jock itch. That's only the beginning of the list. The most recent "business opportunity" my dad has become involved in is called Mona Vie. It's another hocus-pocus antioxidant beverage from an exotic plant. I met my dad for lunch one day recently and the guy in my dad's "up-line" was there to ambush me. He was this skinny, cheesy-looking old fart with a bad blonde toupee and teeth worthy of a polident commercial. I didn't take the bait. (My idea of an antioxidant is bacon grease. Think about it for a second: Oxidation is a fancy word for rust, and grease is a fabulous rust inhibitor, therefore, if you're looking for antioxidants, look no further than the deep fryer.)

My dad isn't the only person in the world who thinks he'll make it big selling snake oil to his neighbors. It seems like every time I turn around somebody is trying to get my wife and I in on the "ground floor" of the next big thing. Everybody from my in-laws, to various old classmates has offered me the key to financial independence. That key has been shaped like nasty chocolate, or vitamins, motor oil, or even financial planning, and it always comes at a price.

I've started to wonder whether this phenomenon is widespread or if it's more local. While certainly there are get-rich-quick schemes everywhere, they really seem to thrive in Utah. I think that one thing a lot of network marketing people have in common is their faith. I'm serious. Multi-Level Marketing might as well be called Mormon-Level Marketing for all the faithful LDS adherents jointly striving to serve both God and Mammon.

(Before you start accusing me of "Mormon bashing" remember that I am a Mormon myself. This is like when Chris Rock uses the N word, okay?)

For those who aren't familiar with MLM, here's how it works:

You don't just buy a product for personal use, but you buy the rights to distribute the product, and you don't just distribute the product alone, you sell the rights to distribute the product as well. Every time someone signs up under you, sometimes for several levels, you will recieve a commission. They are called your "down line." Often the majority of the money circulating through the system comes from the sales of distribution rights, rather than from actual product sales. With some companies, it's difficult to determine what the product even is, but that doesn't deter people from buying in.

Remember 12 Daily Pro? It was a big hit with a lot of local morons. All you had to do was surf 12 webpages per day, spend some money, and you'd get a 144% return on your investment every 12 days. That one came crashing down when a BYU business student presented it to one of his professors as a great opportunity. The professor at least had the sense to recognize it was a scam and report it to the authorities. The student on the other hand, is a fantastic example of whats wrong with education these days. Obviously he was absent the day they taught critical thinking.

I have a theory as to why we Mormons are so gullible when it comes to MLM: It is familiar to us. Multi-level marketing is very familiar in fact. How so, you ask? You might want to sit down for this: The gospel as we know it is spread in the same fashion. I know I'm going to get some angry comments for this, but it's true. Take for example, the following scripture from the Doctrine and Covenants Section 18: "And if it so be that you should labor all your days in crying repentance unto this people, and bring, save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my Father! And now, if your joy will be great with one soul that you have brought unto me into the kingdom of my Father, how great will be your joy if you should bring many souls unto me!"

How many times have you heard missionary stories from the pulpit about how a missionary only had one convert and felt like a failure, but then that convert went on to share the gospel with many?

These are stories about a "down line." In MLM they practically quote that scripture when they show you the charts and figures about how you will get rich by sharing the "opportunity."

As missionaries, we were taught that the most effective way of finding people to teach was through "member referrals." This is the process in which active mormons prepare a friend to hear the missionary lessons. We were told to visit member families and ask them to make a list of everybody they knew that wasn't a member of the church. We would encourage them to talk to everyone-- friends, family, cashiers, hairdressers, etc. Have you ever been to an MLM meeting? They do the very same thing!

So you see, Utah is the perfect breeding ground for MLM. Here we have a surplus of twenty-somethings that served missions where they were inadvertently inculcated into network marketing strategies. These young people come to Utah for college, they need some income, they're recruited. It makes perfect sense! I have no hard statistics to back me up, but I think this is what happens. MLM is presented with missionary zeal. The opportunity to get rich becomes a counterfeit gospel.

The other day I was driving and I saw a big yellow SUV with "PRODUCR" on the license plate. It's possible that the guy was in the movie business or something, but I suspected something more sinister. There is a guy here in Utah right now who is making a big noise about what he calls the "producer revolution." He runs a pay-to-play, MLM type real-estate investing scheme that has made him obscenely wealthy. I think the Hummer driver was one of his disciples. His name is Rick Koerber and he calls himself the "Free Capitalist." He has billboards all over the place with pictures of his sneering, goateed face below phrases like "principles govern!" or simply, "I am the free capitalist!"

I wanted to know what a "Free Capitalist" was and what kind of "principles" he was talking about. In my mind, the term "free capitalist" conjures up a robber-baron type whose greed is unfettered by the inconvenient restraints of charity and common decency. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. But I did find a list of the Free Capitalists 13 principles. You know what principle number two is? "Faith begins with Self-Interest." Seriously. So I guess we are to believe that faith (the substance of things not seen) begins with greed.

I've tried to give this the benefit of the doubt. After all, I've never listened to the guys' radio show, nor did I have the patience to wade through all of the fluffy motivational spinmeistering on his website to actually get to the meat of his programs. But I can't think of any interpretation of "Faith begins with Self-Interest" that doesn't smack of scriptural gerrymandering (a term I just made up to describe how people re-interpret the scriptures to support behaviors that run counter to the scriptures own true message.) Are we to believe that faith is excercised in order to get personal gain? I don't get it. I thought we were supposed to do good because we love God, not because we love money.

Luckily for me, I was invited to a weekend getaway at a cabin that, it turns out, belongs to the free capitalist. It's a modest mountain getaway-- a primitive retreat. It gave me time to reflect on things like wealth, virtuous capitalism, and faith. I especially meditated on these subjects while I swam in the indoor pool there. Maybe the guy is a saint, but what little exposure to him I have had has led me the conclusion that he represents everything that is wrong with Utah County Mormons. When I was getting out of his pool to take a leak, I thought of his freeway billboards and changed my plans.

Now instead of feeling annoyed while I drive down the freeway, I just chuckle to myself quietly.

2007-08-05T21:41:00.000-06:00

This weekend was our fifth annual "Provophenia" scooter rally. Here are the details:

On Friday we met at 4pm at the store. There were about ten scooters. Those who came early voluntarily cleaned up the back lot, which was really nice of them. I can't say thank you enough. Derek T.O.B, Martinio, the Mowers and Jay from Boise were especially helpful. When we finally left we took a roundabout route through the foothills of Provo, past BYU and down highway 89 into Springville. We ate at Brand X.

I don't know whose idea it was to eat at Brand X, but I'm looking in the general direction of Dusty Bottoms and Flocahontas. It could also have been Tommy Two Shoes' idea, but he doesn't eat beef, so I doubt it.

Whoever is responsible, I'm glad there was a McDonalds across the street with a restroom. I'm also glad I bought a copy of the Daily Herald there, because I needed something to read. I've found that when there is an emergency of this nature, reading material is the best medicine. Without it, the IBS I got after my first adventure with Cafe Rio would surely have had me doubled over in agony. Brand X is pretty beat down. I ate there once a few years ago, and all I remembered was that there were a lot of flies, and that the food was good. At least my memory was right about one thing. There's still a lot of flies.

After Brand X some people split, the rest of us rode out past Lincoln Beach, around West Mountain and into Genola. Then we headed back through Santaquin, Payson, Spanish Fork and Springville. It was a nice long ride.

On Saturday we met at the store again for a barbecue, scooter shenanigans Derek T.O.B. put together, and a ride around the Alpine Loop. Dereks Slow Race and Scooter Slalom were a hit. Nearly everyone participated, and Dusty Bottoms won a free massage from Tim. It was down to me and Dustin, and frankly, I'm glad Dustin won, because I would feel a little too much like George Costanza getting massaged by a dude. I know it's different for women, but in my book, massage is just a means to an end-- like foreplay. I've heard it said, "backrubs in the front room lead to front rubs in the back room." Truer words. . .

So Tim, nothing personal, but you and Dustin have a nice time, ok?

The ride around the loop was great as usual. We had a total of 21 scooters in attendance. After the ride we went to sliding rock in Alpine. It was fun too, though only my wife and I actually went down the slide. Everybody else wussed out.

But the real purpose of Provophenia for me, was to have fun with my friends and get out and enjoy scootering for a change. Thanks to everyone who came. I hope you all had a great time.

2007-07-27T01:10:00.000-06:00

When I was a kid I wanted a go-kart, but I didn't think I'd ever get to have one. We didn't have money for those kinds of things. A go-kart was something hopelessly out of reach, something exclusive to princes and potentates.

I'm not sure why I wanted one so much. It might have stemmed from the fact that after my parents' divorce, I was at the mercy of adults to visit my dad. I couldn't see him at will, but only when someone could drive me there, so I think I became obsessed with transportation. I was fascinated with mobility. I can remember vowing to ride my bicycle to my dad's house (50 miles away) when I was seven or eight years old. I didn't actually accomplish that until 8 years later. To my surprise, the go-kart dream came true first.

(Incidentally, the post-divorce transportation-fixation probably factors into how I wound up becoming a "motorscooter professional." I remember seeing the older neighborhood kids riding mopeds and scooters home from school. It was like seeing Aladdin swoop past on a flying rug, or Elroy Jetson on a space-bike. As they passed, their engines steadily whirring like magical bubbles popping, the riders smiles transcended the limitations of my own little world. It was a freedom I coveted, one that wasn't too far out of reach.)

I was about 13 when my brother Tom brought news that an older neighbor kid had a broken go-kart in his yard. We immediately set about scheming to procure the kart. As it turned out, Scott didn't really want it anymore. It was broken, and he was old enough to drive. Tom and I, along with a couple of his friends, pooled our money and bought it from him. I don't remember exactly what it cost, but I'm sure it was less than fifty bucks. I think I probably conned the other three investors into letting me make a small cash contribution in exchange for putting my mechanical skills to use in getting it running.

The other three raised money with a lemonade stand, and briefly, a lip-sync stand.

In case you were wondering what a lip sync stand is, think of a lemonade stand, only instead of paying a dime for an icy cold glass of lemony refreshment, you pay a dime to watch kids dance to top 40 hits. Not surprisingly, people didn't want to pay to see them lip sync so the venture went under. This was a bitter irony though, since the songs on the menu were all by Milli Vanilli, a duo who at the time were playing to sell-out crowds, but were later exposed as lip synchers themselves.

Somehow, in spite of their failed business venture, Tom and Co. were able to chip in with me and buy the go-kart. One of the front wheels was broken off, but that didn't stop us from riding it. We just couldn't make any left turns, or the front left corner would dig into the pavement, showering the driver with sparks and gravel.

It was the best thing we had ever bought.

We had a lot of fun with that old kart, until in 8th grade I decided to try and stretch the frame to accomodate my now longer legs. I did a pretty good job cutting it in half, but a pretty sucky job welding in the extensions. It broke in half on the maiden voyage.

So in 9th grade I took a metals class and built a new go-kart. I fixed up an old 8hp roto-tiller engine, and built a frame that had two seats so Tom and I could ride together. I even leveraged the project to get my "model design and building" merit badge. We also had a lot of fun with this second kart. We even took it to our dad's house once and he drove around in it with us.

In many ways kart #2 was the best car I've ever owned. But it wasn't without its problems. It only had one-wheel drive, the steering was jerky and imprecise, and the brakes were nothing more than big metal pads that rubbed directly on the tires to slow it down. By 12th grade, I had higher aspirations. Having considered all of the weaknesses of the original, and having need of a project to keep me sane in the wake of Becky's death and Zeebo's dumping me for a major douche, I decided to make a new go-kart. (If you want to see a movie about this period of my life, go watch "Better Off Dead." It's basically the same story only there was no cute French foreign exchange student in my version.)

This third kart was supposed to be my crowning achievement, though few people around me understood what I was trying to do. Like beating a sword into a plowshare, I aimed to make a 1974 Yamaha DT250 into a high-performance go kart. I had only ridden the motorcycle once, with Becky actually, before disassembling it to see what made it tick. Since I had the motorcycle engine already, I designed the kart around it. The frame I built had front and rear suspension, a special homemade steering box, disc brakes, and a really wide track for stability. My objective was to reach a top speed of 100 mph, though I didn't know what I would do after that.

In the end, it didn't work out the way I'd planned. Not that the kart broke in half or anything, I just never really finished it. I drove it home from school one day, without brakes, and parked it in the backyard. Soon after, I graduated from high school and moved on to other things.

Sometimes I regret never finishing that kart, but maybe some things are better left unfinished. Like a lip-sync stand, or Milli Vanilli, the Go-Kart served its purpose without actually accomplishing its goal. I didn't need to drive it, it didn't need to actually work. In the end, none of that mattered. It was a con. The real purpose of the machine was revealed in my own survival. In the middle of a maelstrom of personal problems, I daydreamed about a vehicle, planned and calculated and designed a vehicle, and I built a vehicle to see me through to the other side.

2007-07-16T22:02:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, as I was leaving my mom's house, I noticed some weeds growing in the sidewalk cracks so I pulled them. Then I noticed that the storm drain was partially plugged with pinecones and mud so I cleared it out. Then, since I had the garden hose out already, I watered some dead spots on the lawn.

Davey came out and asked me what I was doing. When I told him, he gave me a suggestion on a "great product" to help with the situation. He says, "each time it rains on that, it grows very fast." And, "They are even better than ordinary seeds, they're robot seeds."

I gotta stop letting them watch infomercials. What kind of sicko television programmer decided to put infomercials on when they should be airing Saturday morning cartoons?

"Um, Dad, what if you took a shower with patch perfect all over you?"

I gotta ask again, "What kind of sicko. . ?"

2007-07-14T10:38:00.000-06:00

VIGILANT BLOG-READERS: KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN FOR MY KIDS' SCOOTER. IT WAS STOLEN YESTERDAY OR LAST NIGHT FROM THE FRONT OF MY GARAGE.

IT'S ONE OF A KIND, SO IF YOU SEE ANYTHING RESEMBLING IT, EVEN IF THE COLOR HAS CHANGED, CALL THE POLICE, OR SHOOT TO KILL, I'LL LEAVE IT UP TO YOU.

2007-07-14T00:14:00.000-06:00

So here's a fun one: After nearly five years in business, I finally reached a milestone of having a complaint filed with the Better Business Bureau. Not only that, but the day before that complaint was filed, a different customer also threatened to complain to the BBB, but didn't follow through.

I won't pretend to be a saint or anything. In both cases I felt that the customers were being unreasonable to the point of frustration. There were no compromises to be made. Both were way out of line in my view, and I wasn't about to get pushed around or forced to kiss up to them. I was direct, firm, and a little volatile.

The first guy to threaten me was some turd who bought a piece of junk Roketa scooter. Like most, he began experiencing problems with the scooter in short order, and adding insult to injury, the place he bought it from didn't have the resources to help him troubleshoot it. This is almost always the case with these gray-market scooters.

So a few months ago he called and said his scooter wouldn't start and could we pick it up and bring it in to the shop. We explained to him that we charge $25 for in-town pick ups. He agreed to it and Dustin went and brought the scooter in for repairs. As soon as Dustin unloaded the scooter from his truck he found the problem: there was no battery in the thing. That's right, just an empty compartment where the battery should have been. (I think that was the case, but actually it could have had a dead battery, my memory is a little hazy on this point. I know Dustin picked up a scooter with no battery in it, I'm just not sure if it was this particular one. Makes for a better story though.)

Dustin immediately called the customer and informed him of the problem. A couple of hours passed, and the guy sneaked up to the store with a battery, put it in his scooter, and took off without paying the pick-up fee.

Dustin called him repeatedly and left messages politely reminding him that he had forgotten to pay the fee. The kid never answered his phone. Then one day, after being threatened with legal action, he called right back and apologized. He claimed he had been out of town or something. He said his scooter still had a problem and that he needed to bring it back in. He would pay the $25 fee when he brought the scooter back for repair.

So just to recap: Guy hires us to pick up scooter and do repair. We pick it up and do a preliminary diagnosis. Guy buys part somewhere else, sneaks over, gets his scooter, and robs us of our fee. Got it? Good.

When he brings the scooter back in, we immediately write up a ticket on it with the $25 dollar fee being the first item on the repair order. It's a matter of principle. The customer complains of the scooter not starting, headlights and horn not working either. We make sure he knows that we are at least two to three weeks backlogged in our service dept. and that he will have to be patient.

Almost two weeks to the day later, he calls me on the phone. He's upset. Wants to know what's taking so long. Asks me if I've ever considered hiring another mechanic. I am very appreciative that he is willing to counsel me on how to run a scooter shop. I tell him that I will personally take a look at his scooter that very day, so that I can at least tell him what may be wrong with it.

Immediately after the phone call, I dropped whatever else I was doing and brought his scooter into the shop. It started right up. The headlight switch was turned off. I turned it on and they worked. High and low beams both worked fine. The horn honked like a champ.

Brief recap: Customer complains that scooter won't start, headlights don't work, horn doesn't work. Customer is unwilling to wait for repair. Customer is belligerent on phone and insists that we speed things up. I make an exception for him and move him to the front of the line. Scooter starts, headlights work, horn works. And remember, this is the same kid that tried to steal from me.

I'm perplexed. Everything seems to be fine with the scooter. I leave it in the shop, and several times over the next couple of days I test the scooter to see if any of the problems surface. Finally on the third day, the horn doesn't work. Simple. I adjust the voice coil on the back of the horn and it's back in action. The adjustment takes about five minutes, but a big body panel has to be removed in order to get to the horn, so in all I spend about 45 minutes to an hour on the job (including the time I spent testing it.) I write up a bill for half an hour of labor in addition to the original pick up fee, and the customer pays and picks up his scooter.

The story should have ended here, but it didn't. The next day the customer called me to complain that his scooter wouldn't start and that we didn't fix it right. I explained to him that I had tested it and it had started fine several times over a few days, so I hadn't done anything with the starter and charging system. He complained that I had charged him money for the repair, so I explained that what he was charged for was the horn repair and the pick-up fee he had tried to steal from me. I explained that I had found no problem with the starter, and that the headlight switch was just off, so I hadn't charged him anything for those because there was no apparent repair needed. He complained that the scooter had been in the shop for a long time and that it wasn't fair. I explained that what wasn't fair was that I had put his scooter ahead of lots of other people in order to take care of it. He told me that I had an attitude problem. I told him that I didn't have an attitude problem, but that I did have a problem with people who tried to steal from me. He said he didn't pay the pick-up fee the first time around because he didn't feel that we had done anything to deserve it. I was appalled and so I restated in the form of a question, "You don't think that sending two employees out of the store for a half-hour to go to your house, pick up your scooter in a truck, bring it back and identify a problem was worth anything? I told him that if he desired, he could bring the scooter back in, wait at least three weeks until I could get to it, and pay a minimum hour of labor for me to diagnose the charging and starting system more thoroughly. (This is what I would regularly have charged anybody.) He said he was going to report me to the Better Business Bureau. "Go ahead," I said, "they won't do a damn thing."

The moral of the story: That guy sucks.

The second guy was even more awesome. The first time he came into the store, I wasn't there. I was at home with my kids. I got a call from the store because this customer was there and wanted a quote on a scooter to take to his bank and get a loan. My fabulous employee Flocahontas wanted to double-check the price of the scooter. She said, "I'm quoting him $3500, is that ok?" I asked if it was the orange one or the black one and she said it was the orange on he wanted. So I told her to knock off 200 bucks because the orange one, though new, was a 2006 model.

The following Monday, the guy came into the store and explained that he was on the way to the bank to get a loan for the scooter and just wanted to ask a couple of questions. I don't recall all of the details, because I talk to a lot of people about a lot of scooters, but he seemed really concerned about the scooters top speed. He wanted to know if it would go 70. I said that I had never gone 70 on one, but that others had told me they could go that fast, and that I had gone 65 on one and I weigh 285lbs.

He got the loan and bought the scooter.

One or two days later, he called and said that the scooter handled great, it had a great ride, but that it wasn't as fast as advertised. I said that he would need to give it some time to break in, and it would be faster. This is an immutable law of machines. They need to break-in. There is extra friction in all of the moving parts of an engine until it has seen some use. (My wife and I used to have a Toyota Corolla, and that wonderful car which I highly recommend, saw a significant power increase at about 110,000 miles.) Stuff has to break-in. Period.

Well the customer insisted that something was wrong with the scooter, so I told him to bring it in and we would look it over. Dustin took it for a ride and assured both the customer and myself that the scooter was perfectly fine. The customer had some particular concerns about the rev pattern of the engine and I explained to him that unlike a geared transmission in which RPM's are directly related to speed in a given gear, a CVT transmission, by nature, will allow the engine to rev differently according to load, throttle position, and speed. He looked at me like I was speaking Punjabi, but he left the store somewhat contentedly.

A few days passed and the customer returned to the store. He spoke calmly but his upper lip was twitching. Among other absurd things he said he wasn't going to pay off a $4000 dollar loan on a vehicle that was just going to sit in his garage. I asked why it was going to sit in his garage and he said it was because the scooter wouldn't go 70. I said that that was a stupid reason not to use a vehicle that functioned perfectly and that if he would give it time to break in I was sure he would be pleased with it.

He insisted that it should go full speed without breaking in, and that every other vehicle he had ever owned would go full speed right out of the box. I said that that was ridiculous and that any mechanic at any shop would agree that break-in is a necessary process.

(I think at this point I will just copy and paste the customers BBB complaint, as well as my response to it. It's long though, so go to the kitchen and get a snack, get comfy, and read on.)

Here is the customer's complaint, unabridged:

I recently purchased a new scooter from the Scooter Lounge in Orem (June 13th 2007). I was not able to take the scooter for a test ride because the dealer told me that they didnt want to spend the money for dealer licence plate. I had to base my decision to buy the scooter on the brochure and what Dave the manager told me about it. I was told that the scooter could go at least 70mph and the brochure also says that it will as well. My speedometer has never made it over 62mph. I told Dave this and he says its because I have not broken it in yet. I was 100% sure that the speedometer was inaccurate so I checked it against a GPS unit and it displayed a speed of 50mph when the speedometer showed 60mph. I told Dave this as well and he says that he can file a warranty claim on the speedometer. He also says that he believes that Im not telling the truth about the scooter only being able to go 50-52mph. I told him that the GPS was checked against my cars speedometer and the speed on the GPS always matched my cars speedometer. I asked him to please refund my money since I consider the scooter to be a lemon and falsely advertised that it does something that it doesnt do. He became angry with me over the issue while I spoke calmly to him and then he told me that I can take it up with the manufacture because its there problem and that I paid for it and that its now mine and he wont do anything for me about it. He then asked me to leave his dealership and not to come back. I now have a scooter that my bank holds a lean on and the bank says I should get a refund for the scooter. Even if the scooter had its speedometer repaired to indicate the proper speed then it would show that I am going almost 20mph under the speed I was told it could go. I first started talking to him about the problems on June 15th 2007. I want a full refund for the scooter and the interest that it has accruded on the loan. My bank feels I should be refunded to get my loan paid back.

Here is my response to the above hogwash. (Only the customers name has been changed):

It seems that the nature of Mr. Numbnuts' complaint is that the vehicle he purchased doesn't meet his expectations regarding speed.

He contends that he was led to expect more performance from the machine than what it delivers. He further contends that because of this, the vehicle he purchased is a lemon and he is entitled to a refund.

This argument is false on both counts. He was not led to believe that the vehicle would perform any differently than it does, and the vehicle does not suffer from any defect that would make it fall under the purview of the Utah lemon law.

First, the vehicle he purchased was not falsely advertised or misrepresented. He claims that I said things to him about the vehicle that I did not say. (This is the part that is the most frustrating to me on a personal level. The customer is, in effect, calling me a liar, which I resent.) It would be futile to rebut his claims point-by-point, because it would be a "he said, she said" argument. But let me give two examples of how his argument is flawed:

First: Mr. Numbnuts claims he was not allowed to test drive on the road because we told him we "didnt want to spend the money for dealer licence plate." (sic) I assume he made this claim to cast aspersions on our sales strategy, as if to indicate that we knew the scooter was slower than we claimed, and therefore made some excuse to prevent him from driving it on the street. I personally resent that implication. The fact that because of liability issues we don't allow anyone to test drive on the street (and neither do most of our competitors for that matter) is not important to Mr. Numbnuts, he would rather paint a picture more compatible with his strategy of bullying an honest business into caving to his unreasonable demands.

Example 2: Mr. Numbnuts claims he "was told that the scooter could go at least 70mph and the brochure also says that it will as well." Again, this is false. There is a difference between being told that the "top speed" is 70mph, and being told that the vehicle can go "at least" 70mph. At no time, verbally or otherwise, were assurances made that the vehicle could go "at least" 70mph. The vehicle he purchased is capable, when properly broken in and under the right conditions, of reaching speeds up to 70mph. One of my employees took the time to ride Mr. Numbnuts' scooter, and then to ride a brand new one for the sake of comparison, and he reached the same speed on both, 68mph. He reached this speed on the freeway, where he kept up with the flow of traffic. Yet still Mr. Numbnuts refuses to be satisfied. He now insists that the speedometer is inaccurate and that my employee is dishonest.

When Mr. Numbnuts first complained that the vehicle was not as fast as he expected, I assured him that it would develop more power after being properly broken in. He objected to this assertion. But I ask you, If Mr. Numbnuts won't take my word for it, or give any credence to the manufacturers recommendations regarding proper break-in, what is the basis of his complaint? He has been told the facts, but refuses to accept them. The only way I can explain his persistent reality denial is that he is experiencing a bad case of buyers remorse.

In an effort to resolve the problem I offered to file a warranty claim and look into the possibility that the speedometer could be inaccurate. If there were something wrong with the vehicle mechanically, we would gladly fix it under warranty. But this is not good enough for Mr. Numbnuts. He demands a refund. Yet the vehicle he purchased performs exactly as it should. There is no mechanical defect to speak of. The vehicle does not meet the criteria to be classified as a "lemon." And the vehicle was never advertised to do anything that it doesn't do.

The bottom line here is that Mr. Numbnuts will not get a refund because there is no basis for giving him one. He may as well complain to me that the scooter doesn't fly and demand a refund on that basis. There is no merit to his complaint.

We have a record of good customer service and honest business practices. After nearly five years in business and after selling hundreds of vehicles, including many of the model Mr. Numbnuts owns, we have not had a single complaint filed with the Better Business Bureau. There have occasionally been problems. This is normal for any business. And when there have been problems we have always given the customer the benefit of the doubt and done our best to make them happy. We treat people by the golden rule, and people buy from us because we have an excellent reputation. The products we sell are among the finest in the industry, and we stand behind them.

This is why Mr. Numbnuts' complaint is so bewildering. He clearly doesn't want to be satisfied. A repair to the speedometer isn't good enough. Breaking the engine in so that it develops full power (something all manufacturers require) is not good enough. Nothing short of a full refund will satisfy this customer and I think I have adequately laid out my reasons not to give him any sort of refund.

I was somewhat relieved to find out that Mr. Numbnuts has a reputation for being unreasonable. It happens that a good friend of mine is well-acquainted with this customers unreasonable demands at another retail establishment. This may not change the fact that a complaint has been filed against my business, but it does provide me with a context in which to place this transaction.

No further communication on this matter will be necessary.
Thank you for your kind attention.

Sincerely,
David Hurtado
President
The Scooter Lounge Inc.

So now I bet you all are dying to know what the customer had to say about this. I haven't heard back from him yet, but rest assured, no amount of coercion is going to make me refund him a penny. Last time I saw him he was peeling out of the stores parking lot in his rice-rod Mazda. Later that same day, three of his former roommates came to the store to show me their bullet bikes. One of them used to be my neighbor and they're good guys, even if they do ride bullet bikes. I was still irritated about Numbnuts so I told them the story. They said that Numbnuts had taken his car back to the dealership no less than 30 times for nitpicky complaints. They said that after an oil change Numbnuts claimed the dealer had left a mark on the headliner (the cloth upholstery on the inside of the roof) and made them replace it. After that, he complained they had scuffed the glovebox and made them replace that too. (I wonder if he'll make them replace his tires for wearing out prematurely.) After hearing that, I can see that I got off easy. Numbnuts is is the kind of person you can never satisfy.

While we were standing in front of the store by their bullet bikes conversing, Mr. Numbnuts rode by on the "lemon." I wish I could have had a radar gun on me.

2007-06-24T20:24:00.000-06:00

Moab Part 3:

After a hearty breakfast of Krispy Kremes and juice, I talked my wife and a few friends into scooting into town for a hearty breakfast at the Jailhouse cafe. (I usually eat two breakfasts a day, but normally one before bed and one in the morning. This habit may be the main reason riding slickrock was such a disaster.)

After breakfast number two, we all rode through Arches National Park. Here are the highlights: Riding scooters through amazing scenery, hiking to the Delicate arch, hearing two funny off-color jokes, not getting ripped apart by the wife over said jokes because I wasn't the one who told them, having a front-tire blowout going 60, fixing said tire on the side of the road.

I think part of the reason I enjoy riding scooters so much is that there is always the risk of something going wrong. On a larger cycle a certain element of adventure is removed from the equation. So I'm serious about the flat tire being a highlight of the day.

Later Tommy Two Shoes, Dusty Bottoms, Leslie Lew, my wife and myself ate pizza at a wood-fired buffet called Zax. Zax's motto should be: "The name's pretty gay but the pizza is great." I can't even think "Zax" without singing to myself the Flash Gordon song by Queen. "Zax! Ah Ah! Savior of the Universe!"

I think I ate about 15 pieces of pizza. One of them almost came out of my nose I laughed so hard at something Leslie said. For some reason the subject of marriage and divorce came up and I said that if I ever got divorced I would never remarry. Leslie said, "Oh, that's so sweet!"

My wife and I busted up pretty hard over that one. I had to explain that what I meant was that if I ever got a divorce, I'd never be dumb enough to remarry.

I've seldom felt so close to my wife as when we both laughed at Leslies naive outlook on life. Yep, those moments are the foundation of a long and happy marriage.

Later that evening, basking in the glow of a fun trip together, we drove home. It was at this stage in the trip that I was forced to listen to "The Secret." My wife brought the CD's along because her mom had been trying for months to share this "life-changing" wisdom with us. A lot of people are firm believers in "The Secret," so I have to be careful what I say about it.

"The Secret" is the biggest pile of horse crap the world has ever known. If all of the Budweiser clydesdales went and ate at Zax pizza, then chased it down with cola and pop rocks, the aftermath would pale in comparison to the staggering payload of equine dookie that is "The Secret."

If you aren't familiar with "The Secret," here is the the transcription I made while driving back from Moab:

CUE MYSTERIOUS MUSIC

ANNOYING AUSTRALIAN LADY (Picture a female Steve Irwin who gets off on money instead of crocodiles.)

"Throughout the ages, a great secret has separated the successful from the losers, the haves from the have-nots. I used to be a have-not like you, but then I discovered the secret. People like Plato, Einstein, Newton, and every other famous person I can think of, knew the secret. I know the secret too because here I am, making a tape for you to spend lots of money on. Now you can know the secret. Blah, blah, blah, the secret, blah. . ."

CONTINUE WITH MYSTERIOUS MUSIC AND RANDOM BLATHERING PEPPERED WITH "THE SECRET" AND THE NAMES OF FAMOUS DEAD PEOPLE FOR APPROXIMATELY 52 HOURS

ANNOYING AUSTRALIAN LADY
"The law of attraction works like magnets. You will attract that which you express. (This isn't true by the way. Magnets are attracted to opposite poles.) Now you hold the greatest secret of all time. You can have anything you desire. You are master of the universe! (By the power of Grayskull, I have the Power!)

THE END

By this logic, I now can have whatever I want. Therefore Universe, I command you to create a human race smarter than the average bucketful of Lemmings. Make mankind stop paying attention to this nonsense. And I want a billion dollars. Right now.