Man Versus Nature - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/80/running-after-antelope

I'm not a runner, and I'm not a hunter either, so I wish I could just call this one in and just assume that I don't have anything to add to this particular one, but I'm sure that if we broaden it just a bit and try to go to man versus nature, then I'm sure I can scrounge up something considering that that's one of the major conflicts within literature and story telling.

Boy Scouts is one of those things that I didn't do in my own free will. Had things been different, had I been able to choose my activities, I would have never picked Boy Scouts. Being outside, hiking, biking, climbing, boating, and whatever else, is not my flavor of fun. However, church has it set up that young men's activity every Wednesday was Boy Scouts. It wasn't church, it wasn't religious, it was once a week, every week, Boy Scouts.

We worked our way through merit badges, camping trips, hiking trips, orientation, and pioneering, and I was never a fan of it. Learning how to tie a bowline - useless information to me. Learning how to navigate through a forest only using the stars to help guide you - useless information while growing up in the metropolis of Las Vegas.

Hiking was even worse because in Vegas there's no nearby area where you think, 'You know what? It's 100 degrees outside, and it's only eight in the morning, and the one thing that I want to do is walk for ten miles for the rest of the day.'

Boy Scouts was one of those things that I managed to do quite a bit of stuff, but unfortunately it wasn't until I was 16 and had direct control over the stuff that I did during those Wednesday meetings, that the fun stuff that I did was anything that I actually wanted to do. I'm sorry, but I'm just not that big of a fan of getting stuck out in nature, getting lost, or 'roughing' it.

You know what I want to do when I go camping? Sleep. Sit around and read. Enjoy nature by opening up my tent door and sitting down on a padded sleeping bag and going 'wow, I sure could fall asleep' and then falling asleep. I don't need to trek miles upon miles, I don't need to see the waterfall that has no water actually falling from it because of the drought that has been hitting the west like a red headed step child, I can just find a camping spot, stay there, and read.

You want to know my favorite activity while camping? D&D camping.

You can go share stories over the campfire, or sing songs, or whatever it is that you enjoy doing, but do you know what's really fun? Having the entire group of people around the campfire involved in that story telling.

Do you know why it is so awesome? Because no one can interrupt you when you're out camping. Everyone is interested in the story, everyone wants to know what happens next, and because they don't have all of their electronic devices with them. When there's a group of people and literally the only thing they have to entertain themselves is a story that they're a part of, they get attached to the story. The only thing that is tricky is doing dice rolling, but generally speaking camping D&D is more roleplaying and talking than it is roll playing and killing.

I'm not one that wants to go out to nature to conquer it, I just want to go out to nature so that I don't have to deal with electronics and have no one bugging me.

The 90's? - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/79/stuck-in-the-wrong-decade

This one is tricky, because I haven't ever thought about myself really stuck in a specific time period. I think that you could say that I was stuck in the 90's because I'm still pushing that old 90's techno move, I'm in love with 90's games, but I'm just not entirely stuck in the 90's.There are some elements, because I did miss out on a few things in the 90's and in my development as an adult (leaning how to pay taxes, learning how to write a resume, learning how to do simple things like turning on utilities) but that doesn't mean that I'm stuck, it just means that I missed a few things. There's even the fact that I'm writing about a program that was produced in 1997, but that doesn't really stick me in that decade either, that's just a writing project. I could use any weekly serial from any decade, I just went with this one because it's a MASSIVE serial that typically has different topics each week, and gives me something to write about as often as I can, so that doesn't really stick me in the 90's.

I propose, to the people of the jury, that I do, however, know of a person who is stuck in his childhood. Stuck in a world where his mom comforts him, where he plays video games with no ill effects of the world around him, and that he can do whatever he wants and pays little respect to his own future. To the people talking about people stuck in the past, I have Jared (name has been changed to protect my butt).

The man is a kid.

He is an adult, he is even married with a child, with a child on the way, but still, despite the fact that he is finishing his masters degree, despite the fact that he is supposed to be an adult making adult decisions, he is anything but that. You see, although he's in his late 20's, he goes back and finds comfort in everything that he knew from when he was last comfortable, when he last had to worry about other things in the world, when he was a kid. Although he is the 'man of his house' and tries to show just how much control he is of his world, he retreats back into being a young teenager as often as possible because in that world there is no chaos. In the world of being a young teenager his family has his answers, his gameboy has his entertainment, and life is easy.

When asked about where he wants to live when he finally finishes up his degree, or when he finally has money in the bank, his response is that he wants to live in his childhood home. The same one that he grew up in, the same place that he found comfort in as a young teenager, he wants to return to it in hopes that that comfort can still be found.

His favorite books, his favorite music, his favorite views on everything, and his life in general is based off of the concept that life was as good as it could get when he was a teenager. Somewhere around sixth or seventh grade, life was as good as it would ever get, and so he strives to live back in that moment. He doesn't want to stretch past that, he doesn't want to see past that, and even though he's married, and sort of living on his own (long story about why I say sort of in this sentence) he lives as though he's still thirteen.

If you went back in time and showed his thirteen year old self his current life, every dream would be made. He's married to a stay at home, faithful, wife, he's within a five minute drive of his mom, he has a large TV with his favorite games on it that he can play forever and be the best at, and he has the freedom to do whatever he wants whenever he wants because his job is so flexible (and meaningless) that if he wants to take a day off to do nothing, he can do that. He has food on the table, he has bills being paid for, and he doesn't have to worry because he's on so many government ran subsidies that he doesn't have to pay even a tenth of what life would actually cost.

I am certain that the reason he wants to keep on going to school, to continue this eternal stretch of being a child, is because once school is done he's going to have to be responsible. Instead of being under the comforting wing of a society that is willing to give him just enough to survive without making him homeless, he will be faced with the very rude fact that he suddenly has to pay bills. As soon as he graduates he will have to move out of university housing, start paying for the decade worth of student loans, and get a full time job to support his family.

He's living the dream, and stuck in a decade, but the unfortunate side effect is that soon (because it is going to be very soon for him) that time dilation is going to pop back to reality and he will be faced with not learning how to survive as an adult for missing the past ten years because he was stuck in that time period.

180 Pages

Think about the most recent book that you read. It was most likely somewhere around the 70,000 word mark because that's a normal book. Now, think about reading that book, and any time that you get to a point that you didn't like, you could change it.

It becomes 'create your own adventure' in the worst way possible. If anything isn't exactly how you want it, or if something doesn't make sense, you can just stop, fix it, and make it make sense. The worst part is that there are times that you just have to stop, delete a large chunk of what you wrote, and then rewrite it all over again.

The hardest part about self editing is looking back through your stuff, and believing that other people want to read it. I'm 50 pages in, and looking to edit the next 50 tonight, and it's hard to look at the story as enjoyable, or even readable to any outside audience. The more I edit it, and the more I start to realize how poor of a writer I am, the more I don't want to even try to publish it.

The problem is, I like it. But it's one of those things that I like it because I made it. I'm still entirely unaware of if other people will like it. I've had a grand total of one person willingly pick it up and read it, but that was because she was bored at work and had nothing else better to do with her time. Other than that, I have no scale to judge if other people are interested, or even like, reading what I write.

Right now, my story is fridge art. I put it up there, and I like looking at it, and my mommy says that she likes it enough to take up the space right next to the Scooby magnet, but I have no sense of if it is actually any good.

Publishing Goals

I don't know why, I just saw it and wanted to share this picture.

It's sort of depressing, but sort of interesting to start thinking about publishing DA. I was trying to figure out revenue, but then I was sort of saddened by the realization that my goal for publishing, my dream upon dreams right now, with this Kindle e-book publication would be to sell 20 copies.

20 books is exactly that many.

I'm not even shooting for 24 people reading the book,

My goal, is 20.

Even 18 I'd be okay with.

The math goes a bit like this for the 20

1. Alicia buys a copy just because she's awesome and she'll do it
2. Parents buy one because they have to
3. Gwen gets one because she's supportive
4. Katie gets one, maybe, that's an iffy one because that would require her to spend money on something that she could just get for free, still unsure on this one. 
5. Smitty and Lola would of course buy one instantly, if not before Alicia because they're super duper supportive. 
6. Danica would buy one to be nice. 
7.  Lucinda would automatically buy one because she knows that I'm going to buy whatever she creates.
8.  
9.  
10.  
11.  
12.  
13.  
14.  
15.  
16.  
17.  
18.  
19.  
20.  

That leaves 13 spots open for people to surprise me. 13 spots of people that I either hardly know, or don't know at all, to shock me, and that's me stretching my mind as far as possible. This is why 20 is me stretching my selling of this because I just don't have the audience or following yet.

I really want to be an international best seller with millions of copies sold, but let's be honest, for a first time publication from a no name author that has no audience following at all - 20 is going to be stretching it.

Stroke, Publishing, House

So, this week has been a fun one.

In the past 48 hours, the following things have happened.

1- I signed papers signifying that I was willing to pay a significant amount more than I've ever seen in my entire life, to own a home. A nice home with four bedrooms and two baths in the area that we want, as well as the payrange that we want, but still a significant amount of digits compared to anything else that I've ever done before, and it also caries with it the small fact that unlike all of the other times we've done this (two other times) this time Alicia and I actually think that we just might win this bidding war.

2- Remember that class I was supposed to be creating for LDSBC? Remember how it was supposed to do all sort of fancy pants things? Apparently the guy in charge of everything had a stroke, and now all of it is held off until fall, because you can't get approval from a guy who is in the hospital suffering a stroke. Weird, I know, but makes sense.

3- I figured out a way to get my book published, at no cost to me, with royalties coming to me. It's not much, but it's Kindle publishing, and it allows me to publish my material directly to Kindle, with a 70% profit on all sales going to me. Not to mention listing in the Kindle book store for international release.

Yeah, it's been a crazy few days, and now I can't decide if I want to wind down the day with a bit of FF13 farming, or if I want to just go full author mode and start editing DA by slapping on my headphones and not looking back until the sun rises.

Uh oh. . .

I'm not 100% on this, but I'm almost positive that I screwed up my platinum on FF13.

I'm deadly afraid that I sold something that I shouldn't have because I was being greedy and needed short term cash. This could be bad.

This could be really, really bad.

I'm debating on either restarting for my FOURTH play through for an even more intelligent play through with less stupidity, or if I should just man up and keep going and see if I can make it work. It's only 30 hours that I'd be replaying, and now that I know what I need to do, it'll be a lot easier to make a few things work (like shroud farming in early chapters so that I can have them later when I actually need them). Because the option is either re-do the 30 hours and know that I'll get the 100%, or just do the next 30-ish hours of grinding and post game things and push my luck that I didn't completely mess everything up.

I'm going to have to do some research to see if I just messed something up.

Lazy - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/78/how-bad-is-bad

Lazy.
You're just lazy This American Life.
I'm sitting here bored at work doing nothing, and you're being lazy.

You're outright plagiarizing your own show. The first bit of this show is a direct copy, word for word, cut for cut, from your second show that you ever created. You want to know how bad, bad is? Don't cite yourself for stealing stuff that was aired two years previous, and under a different title called, "Small Scale Sin". You answer the question you pose to us for those first two sections? How bad is bad? Not that bad, it's just small scale sin.

The next two acts are small little short acts that don't really add much to your topic. Luckily the movie one tries to start talking about good and bad and trying to understand what makes something good or bad, however, it's so quick and so vague in its discussion of movies, things go down hill and doesn't really work for anything that I'm working with. That leaves me with one final act, and I'll see what I can do with it.

Too bad that I'm 99% sure that I already listened to this one about hacking telephones and the weird things that he would while hacking, and how that the majority of it wasn't for crime or hurting anything, but for fun.

Yup, I went back to that second episode and it's the same close to the same thing. You change the middle with those bits from  Chicago as well as that little bit from the movies, but it's essentially the same episode that you did the second time that you were on air. If you want to know what I'd write about this, go to the second episode that I ever did for My American Life - http://adrillf2.blogspot.com/2014/07/small-scale-my-american-life.html

One side note - on the last section, the one about the actual hacker, that background music, if I ever get on TAL, that's the music I somehow want to work in my piece. That music is TAL in my mind.

Just Talk - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/77/pray

Spoiler, I'm religious.

Shocker, I know.

The crazy part about listening to this was listening to how other people pray. I'm so used to being surounded by my own faith and those that think the same way, or at least very similar ways, to the way that I do, so I don't get much variation. When I listened to how those people in Colorado Springs pray, it just seemed weird.

First weird thing - holy cow did they say, 'O Lord, God' all the time. It was like a mantra that had to be said before and after every single sentence. I'm sorry, but He gets it. You're talking to Him, you don't need to keep addressing him. How would you like it if every time your best friend talked to you, they started and ended every sentence with your name? Nick, I don't think we should go out for lunch Nick. Nick, I don't have enough money to eat there Nick. Nick, I think that I'm just going to have tuna fish for lunch, Nick.

You do three minutes worth of that towards me, and I would ignore you.

The next thing, that always gets me when more evangelical/charismic Christians pray is the back up squad. To me, this is the equivalent of a group of people coming up to talk to me, one of them saying that they're speaking on behalf of the entire group, and then every now and then one of the people in the back of the group yelling out, "Yes! He just said what I was thinking! That was me! That one was from me! Glad he said that, because I was the one who was thinking it!" Come on, I'm trying to have some one on one time with the person that you chose to represent you to talk to me, give them a moment and let them do their job.

The worst part about this episode was that any time there's religion, like I've talked about before, I just hope to myself, please don't be mormon, please don't be mormon, please don't be mormon. We are ALWAYS put as the crazy people with religion. Somehow, someway, we manage to slip things up and can never be in the normal group. Sure enough, even though this was about a non-mormon group, one of them is an ex-mormon.

Finally, the main article that was part of this just bugs me. I can't help it. I am not a fan of forcing religion on people. You give them the option, you give them the choice, and if they don't want it, you move on and let them be. I don't like this whole idea of forcing Christianity on people, it's not my style. I don't like forcing religion on people and think that it should be a personal, private, individual thing. Figure out what works for you, and share it for those that want to know, but if someone doesn't want your help, don't force it on them.

It's the equivalent, in my mind, for those people that LOVE a certain type of music. You can listen to it all days long, you can  jam out to your playlist and be a super fan, but you have to know that there's a point where your music turns from something that you enjoy, to something that everyone else hates because you are so bad at presenting it. It's nice to say things like, 'hey have you ever heard of this band? They're really great, maybe you would like them' and then if someone says they're not interested in that genre of music to just move on. Maybe they're not a fan of heavy metal, or whatever it is that you listen to. Just move on, you're not going to win them all, even with the best music ever.

What's not appropriate is saying, 'hey have you ever heard of this band?' and then jamming an ear bud from your mp3 player into their ear at full volume during the middle of one of your favorite songs with no introduction or explanation as to what is going on in the song. Then, once the person freaks out, rips the ear bud out of their ear, and says they aren't interested, you then chase them around for the next week blasting your favorite music at them from your car stereo, mega phones, and even wear the band's shirt in hopes that if they just see the band, they'll become fans. Finally after an entire week of you stalking your friend, trying to force your favorite music on them, you stop and just think that they are forever condemned to never know what an amazing piece of art your favorite music is.

You want to know why they didn't listen to your music? Do you want to know why some people get turned off about church, prayer, and religion? Did you ever think it was you? Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, you were being a tad bit too pushy with it? Did you ever think that right then, while you were going off the deep end citing some scripture from Isaiah while praying to a person who doesn't even understand that there is a God, that maybe, JUST MAYBE, the person wasn't quite ready for Isaiah?

Finally, as a secular person who also prays, time to give my point of view. It's not an either/or sort of deal. You don't have to be either a spiritual or secular person. It is very possible to be both. It is very possible to believe in the tenants of science and discovery, and the beliefs of a life after this, of a God who loves us and wants us to live with Him again, and of a holy book that can guide you and help you in your life. You don't have to do either/or, you can easily do both. You can believe in a little thing called intelligent design, and it works. You can believe in science, and still be Christian.

English Crime Syndicate - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/76/mob

I've never been in a gang, I've never had any contact with any mob, and even my friends together could never be quite threatening.

No one considers the D&D playing cellist as any threat to their well being.

The thing that I am starting to notice though is the mob like mentality of professors.

Seriously, some of the best teachers out there, act like a mob boss in their class. They have set rules and standards, and some of them go on killing sprees of GPAs.

You want to come into my class and act like a fool? You want to disrespect me and my class? You want to mess with me? Huh punk?

Seriously, my student asked me what I was doing in class to receive a pay check (he thought I wasn't doing anything and was just having fun) and suddenly I was going full mob boss on him.

Are you aware of what I can do to your grade? Do you know how strict I can be to your paper? I can make them bleed red ink! I can turn that 4.0 into a 0.4 faster than you can blink, and you came into my classroom and disrespect me like that?

I might not know much about the underworld of mobs, but I sure do know a thing or two about if someone snitches on you to your department head about what you're doing in class, that there are going to be repercussions to that action. I might now know much about enforcing policies with violence, but I sure do know how to enforce some strict grading rules on late assignments.

Trying to drop hints to clueless students is by far the worst. It becomes so bad that it's borderline on some of the bad threats movie mob bosses give. You might really want to re-think not studying for the test, it would be a pity if you didn't study about sentence structures and just happened to have to answer a few questions about them. You really might want to go back home and look over your notes about prepositions because you're not going to like life if the test has 30 points on nothing but prepositions.  Remember that class that I taught about different elements of writing? It would be a good idea for you to include those in your notes, because without them, you don't want to know what would happen without them.

The more I think about it, and the more I throw on that stereotypical godfather accent into those phrases, the more I sound like a crime lord of English. It's not a perfect comparison, and there are a lot of holes throughout the entire thing, but in a weird way, I'm the mob boss of ENG 101 at LDSBC.

Imagine this

Let's play a little game of imagination.

Put on those imagination caps, because we're going for a ride.

Let's assume that you're a student trying to get their degree in math.

Now this isn't too weird because when you think about it, it's a skill that you have, it's something that you enjoy doing, and you're more than willing to help out. It's your church, it's what you believe in, you think that it's a gift for you to have the tallents that you have, so you're more than willing to work with it and help out with the church's math needs.

That's a thing, and you're doing great, and then you manage to graduate and get a real job in what you want to do. You're a professional mathmatician, and you love it. You do what you love for work, and you also get to help a little bit in church doing what you love.

This is where the real kicker comes, you get a second job at church to do even more math.

Now, this is where I'm at. I'm a teacher, I like teaching, I like books, and I like teaching books. I teach throughout the week and I like it, but come Sunday, I have two classes that I'm in the rotation for teaching. If the stars don't align and things go poorly for me, I have to teach for two hours straight on some Sundays.

Don't get me wrong, I like the opportunity, and it is sort of different than teaching at college, but it's still the same thing, just more of it. The weekend isn't a break from my job, it's just an extension of it. I like the opportunity to teach, in fact I like church better than college because at church I'm not getting paid for it, so I can do what I want and be a bit creative with what I'm doing and not fear my wallet will take a hit. It's just a hair unsettling when it's just teacher on teacher with more teacher, and yet I've still never taken any serious class or any bit of education that actually teaches me how to be a teacher.

Hi There. Welcome to the Party

The most recent winner in the 'which country is watching me write stupid things' goes to. . . .

Poland, you can't just go sneaking up on people like that. Seriously, my little graph that tells me how many people are reading this (all two of you, don't worry it knows how to count to two) just got all wonky because you decided to mass read everything I've created.

Either way, hello to my person from Poland!

Small Things - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/75/kindness-of-strangers

This entire show was about big kind things (or even big bad things) where strangers were being nice to one another. Most of my life there's never been one of these moments. I've seen smaller bits of kindness, and there's been moments where I've even tried to be that nice person, but they're never that big. It's giving a person an ear that they can talk to, or moving from your seat to have a person to sit down, but they're never that big.

Nice things that happen to me aren't that often, and typically speaking, they're never from strangers. Honestly speaking I can't remember what a true stranger has done to me that was nice. I've had co-workers, or even family do small things like make sure I had the right chair at work (it got taken away and one of my co-workers found it and gave it back to me, it's super comfy and fits my desk!) but as for strangers, not so much.

You'd think that there'd be more out there considering I live in the mighty promised land of Utah, but really, the nicest thing that someone that I didn't know has done for me begins and ends with letting me merge into their lane during a traffic jam that merited the 'hey bro, just saw what you did there' hand wave.

Even things that have been happening in my life, with my close friends and family, is either super duper small things that are being nice, or it's nothing. That's the tricky part about this is that my birthday was recently, and so if we're counting that, people were super nice, but it's because it was my birthday. You can't count the day where people have to be nice to you.

Other than that, I can't think of any thing that has been happening to me that's been nice. I guess I could count things like last night Alicia helped clean up a bit after Addison, but that was because the carpet cleaner was coming over and we had to clean up. The important note to this is that she didn't do that much, it was just a few toys in the front room, but it was still something.

The biggest thing that recently could count as being nice was that I was at graduation super late and asked if Alicia could pick up Addison from daycare and she did. That was really nice because it made me not stress about having to pick her up from daycare, but even then it wasn't just because she wanted to be nice, but because if she didn't Addison wouldn't have been picked up.

It's sort of depressing thinking about it that way, but that's life. People aren't always going to be helpful and kind. Try as hard as you want to think otherwise, and even with the few experiences where people are nice, it's not that common. Even to their family and friends, people don't do kind things just because.

Hi Google Bot!

Hi you crazy little scripted program trying to identify and predict web activity on the entire internet.

Hi there you cute little thing,

I just noticed lately that I'm pulling a lot of views from google, and then I remembered that you existed and realized that it was just you running around my blog reading everything, and not actual people. Hope you enjoy the stay you precious little thing, next time you drop over by This American Life's web page tell them that I said hi, and want to know if they're hiring.

Avoid Saharah - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/74/conventions

I have never been to a convention. Writing programs come through and I know that I should go to them, but I never have (I don't want to pay money to talk about something that I love, I don't know it's just weird). Although I've never been to a convention, one thing that I have done is lived in a town where conventions are a dime a dozen.

http://www.vegasmeansbusiness.com/planning-tools/convention-calendar/?e_keyword=&e_sortby=5&formid=&e_sortdir=2

Conventions in Las Vegas are more common than drug raids. They happen all the time. They come in different sizes, in different shapes, and in different numbers, but there's always a convention happening in Vegas.

Growing up in Vegas, I never understood what the appeal was to come to Vegas. It's super hot, it's dry, and every one that ever comes to a convention stays within a ten mile radius of the airport, and they never get to actually experience the town. They stay in their hotels, clog up the streets with unnecessary traffic, and just make things annoying for everyone else that lives there.

There are two conventions that make everything in the city hurt for one solid week before life returns to normal. CES and AAIW. CES is the tech show. Everyone that is anyone that wants to do something with electronics is there for CES. CES is "the" place for all things electronic. Nerds and geeks flood the streets trying to act like they're high tech companies while real businessmen hide in their suites on top of hotels. It's not so frustrating on the actual flow of the city, than it's super annoying to just have to deal with the people.

Then there's the AAIW (also known as SEMA). This is the bane of Las Vegas natives.

The AAIW is the automotive aftermarket show. All of the people, world wide, that play with their cars to make them lower, faster, louder, than everyone else show up to Vegas for a week with their cars that are lower, faster, and louder. This takes the traffic of Las Vegas (which is already congested and infamously slow moving) and adds another 100,000 cars into the mix.

Roads that you thought were once the native Vegan's secret back roads that no one ever used or knew about become parking lots. That amazing short cut across town using streets like Sahara or Charleston (as long as the underpass isn't flooded, try as hard as they want, any time it rains that underpass is going to flood, someone is going to boat their car, and it's going to show up on the news) become useless, and the freeway takes just about as long.

I don't care how fancy your car is, or how rich you are, on a free way when the speed limit is 65, you shouldn't think that it's okay to drive 45 mph because you want to show off. I don't care. I have to get somewhere, and your fancy car that costs more than my life isn't helping me get there.

The worst part about Las Vegas conventions is that there's always one, and people are always there. This isn't a bad thing because of the traffic or whatever else, it's bad because if you see someone and try to talk to them they'll tell you that they're in town for "the" convention and you have to sit there and look stupid for not being aware that there is a convention for the US Table Tennis Championships that weekend. Just because I live in Vegas, doesn't mean that I know every single thing that is happening, and there surely is no way that I'm aware of every single convention that half a dozen people have shown up to.The people that come to conventions think that they're the only ones in the town, and that the entire reason that my home exists is because they were coming in to see the latest and greatest about

Little Fish In a Little Pond - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/73/blame-it-on-art

There's that phrase that someone is a big fish in a little pond. This is to mean that they're big stuff for the small circle that they travel in. The thing about this is that it's valid. In high school my stand partner thought himself a composer.

He loved to consider himself the next Mozart, and wrote musicals, symphonies, and dreamed about being a composer of film scores. While in high school, no one else had this dream, no one else was trying to organize a full orchestra with choir to perform their home brewed piece of work, so he was the composer. He was the only thing that was there, he was the only composer in the thousands of students, and he was big stuff.

Then he went to college.

I didn't keep in touch with him, and I don't know the full story, but I do know these simple facts. He never finished his degree. He got arrested a few years later for pedophilia because he was back at our high school trying to flirt with a Freshman girl, while he was a college student. He worked at a Pizza Hut as a delivery guy. He keeps trying to live the dream, but still hasn't made it.

The problem about not being able to make it? He keeps thinking that he's the only one in the pond. He is stuck in high school.

In high school, he was the only one that was doing it. There was no competition because he was the only one that he was competing against. It's easy to be number one when there's no one else to compete with. You can make world records when you're the only one in the world doing something. The problem is that he moved out of that small pond and is now trying to make it in the very competitive world of composition, without a degree, without experience, and without anything more than his pipe dream from high school (note high school ended for him 11 years ago).

On the other hand, when it comes to my art of choice (writing) I've never been a big fish in any pond that I've lived in.In high school I wasn't the best, in college I wasn't the best, and in every writing group that I've ever participated in, there's been someone in there that was better than me. I wish I could say that I was the best at what I love to do, but that's the catch. For my favorite form of art, I love doing it, but I'm not the best. I can put in hours and hours and enjoy every second of it, but that doesn't make me the best at it, it just makes me the most in love with what I'm doing, and I'm okay with that. It's frustrating sometimes knowing that I'm not the best, and super frustrating writing and then knowing that it'll never be seen by any other eyes but my own, but I'm okay with it at the same time, because at least I wrote it. At least at the end of the day I can look at some of the things that I've created and be proud at what I've created, even if no one else (except for you three people that keep reading) reads it.

Assertive Versus Bossy

Yesterday we watching My Big Big Friend with Addison.

And the story that we were watching was about Lili.

Lili has the not so great trait of being bossy, and I said to Alicia that her stories are always the worst because she is so bossy and rude to other people around her and she just wants to get her way.

Alicia brought up a point that has been said on the internet a few times and asked if Lili was actually being rude and bossy, or if she was just being assertive. Just because she's a girl we look at her differently, and had a boy been doing any of those same activities that he would be seen as getting what was rightfully his and wouldn't be considered rude at all.
http://naomisimson.com/men-are-%E2%80%98assertive%E2%80%99-%E2%80%93-women-are-%E2%80%98bossy%E2%80%99/
But then Lili proceeded to start stealing things and taking what was being used by her two best friends just because she wanted to, no matter what they said to try to stop her.

Now, I'm all for making sure that we keep equality equal and keep standards the same across the genders, but sometimes people can judge each other pretty aptly. Lili is bossy, it even says so on the wikipedia. She likes to get what she wants, and doesn't like it when she doesn't get her way. It's the way the character is written. It's not because she's a girl, it's not because she's anything else, she's bossy because she's bossy.

I get it, in some cases women are shown in a bad light because they are assertive, and if a man did those same things nothing would be said. In those times, yes, it's sexist, and offensive and needs to be changed. However, there are some times where women are jerks, just like men, and it's perfectly okay to call people (not just men, and not just women, all people) entitled brats when they act like entitled brats.

South Africa - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/72/trek

This episode was all about going on a trek to South Africa, and having never been to South Africa, or ever really wanting to visit there, I don't really have much of anything to say. It's all about finding your long lost family, race relations, and everything else that has to do with South Africa. Unfortunately I don't have much/any to say about South Africa.

The first experience that I ever had with South Africa was at BYU where one of my classmates went through introductions and he said that he was from South Africa. My only other tie to South Africa is that one of my current students is from there. Both guys were pretty chill, the first was a comparative literature major, the second is my student, and that's about all I've got.

I wish I could say more about South Africa, that I've always wanted to go there, or how I feel so strongly about the race relations that are there, but honestly, I don't have much. I don't want to visit there, race equality happened there by the time that I was old enough to understand what had happened there, and there's nothing that is really pulling me to pay attention to it. Sure they had some really messed up history in South Africa, but that doesn't mean I want to visit now.

Sorry, but this is just one of those that no matter how hard I try to stretch it, I just don't have anything to add to this episode of This American Life.

ROI Reading List

I have an annoying person that I work with at ROI, we like to call him Joyce.

He's asked me before about which book(s) I think he should read, and he's yet to read it. You see, Joyce has a very different view on life and we don't see eye to eye on just about anything. Again today he asked me for what books I think he should read, and when I asked him about if he had read the previous book I mentioned he told me he has yet to read it.

I told him to read that book first and then get back to me.

He didn't want to do that and wanted more of a list, so I wrote him this -

http://www.ala.org/bbooks/100-most-frequently-challenged-books-1990%E2%80%931999
http://www.ala.org/bbooks/top-100-bannedchallenged-books-2000-2009
http://www.ala.org/tools/libfactsheets/alalibraryfactsheet23
The ALA is a good start for lazy people that don't want to look up books on their own and find their own favorite authors. When in doubt find a literary award that you like and read every single book that has been nominated or won that particular award. Bonus points for not picking Newbury or Caldecot awards. Then, if you really just want to give up and have other people decide which books you should read there's always this list - https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top or you can even go here - https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top here - http://www.listchallenges.com/50-books-to-read-before-you-die or even here - http://www.powells.com/25-books-to-read-before-you-die
here - https://medium.com/@joelapatrick/creating-the-ultimate-list-100-books-to-read-before-you-die-45f1b722b2e5 or if life just hates you, you can go main stream and go through this list - http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/06/living/amazon-100-best-books/ There, now you'll never have to ask me about what you should read ever again.

I do have an actual list of good books that I think people should read, but if you're not going to listen to my suggestions and actually read books that I give you, then there's no hope for you and you might as well just read through these massive lists put together by strangers that mean nothing to me. The reason I put Chaucer first is because depending on how you like him (or not) I give different recommendations to different people. If you love Wife of Bath, but hate Knight, then there's something we can work with, but you've got to read him first before you tackle any more of my list.

The Idler

I'm putting this out there, just because I know that it'll never happen because the books are too expensive and too hard to find. However, if any of you ever want to know what I really want for a present, find a full, unabridged copy of Samuel Johnson's "The Idler". It's a series of essays that he wrote that I think are down right amazing, and need to be read by every single person ever, unfortunately they're hard to come by.

Important note - do NOT get an abridged or shortened version of the set. There is too many good essays in there to make any edits and it's not what I'm looking for. Most likely it will take two books to cover the entire set and is typically found as volume one and two.

Then the impossible of all impossible finds would be to find the complete works of Samuel Johnson. The man wrote a TON of stuff, to find everything that he ever wrote would be near impossible but I would love to have it.

I'm Not Sick - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/71/defying-sickness

I don't get sick.

I refuse to get sick.

I don't get sick, I get more awesome.

This habit of mine, of not admitting that I'm sick until I'm dying, started when I was younger. There were a few things that caused this. The first was that if you were sick, you couldn't go out and do anything. If you wanted to be with your friends, you better not have been sick that day. If you're sick, you miss out on what you're doing in school, or any activities that you're part of, and you miss out. If you're sick you don't do things, so you better only take a sick day when you're absolutely sick and you know that you can afford it in the missed hours and experience that you're going to not have because you're stuck at home doing nothing for an entire day.

Then also there were allergies. Any person that has had severe allergies knows that when you get allergies, you feel like you're sick all the time, every day, until they're gone. Claratin and other drugs are nice, but in the long run, you just feel slightly less sick than you normally do. Allergies make it so you don't ever consider your health 'good' you just count it as 'not as bad as it could be'.

That meant that while growing up I only said that I was sick only if necessary. It didn't matter if snot was flowing out of my nose, if I was coughing up a storm, or even if I had no voice, I stretched it as hard as I could and I made it work. Sickness wasn't an option.

This then only got worse on the mission. Every day on the mission you are told that you are serving God. You're God's worker bees, and it's up to you to do your job. Your job is to be active, talking to everyone, converting the world, and there is no time for being sick. If you get sick, you don't just bring down yourself when you're on a mission, but you also stop your companion, and ultimately are stopping the salvation of everyone that you could have talked to that day. Getting sick on a mission isn't just a sick day, to the mind of an elder it holds the weight of an eternal consequence. There were many times that on the mission I should have taken a sick day and stayed in for the day, but I didn't because there were more important better things to do.

That leads to now.

I don't get sick. I can't afford it. Getting sick means that I miss out on two jobs worth of pay. Getting sick means that my students fall a day behind and there's no substitutes at the college level, so they don't get class. Missing a day because I might be sick means that I don't get paid for anything that I do that day, and not having that money is not an option. Even when I do get sick, I will always go to work, because I need the money.

Let me make that perfectly clear. I am a well educated adult with a masters degree and teaching in my field of study, but if I am unable to take a sick day at either of my two jobs, without it docking my pay. If I take a sick day or alter my hours in any way, I get less money. I do not have the option for sick or vacation days, so I can't do it. I don't have the flexibility in my life to allow me to loose that money, so I work. I cough, I sneeze, I ache, I freeze, and I do whatever else is needed of me because I can not afford to sleep on my bed for a day.

That's the worst part about this. I don't choose to lie about being sick because I'm stubborn, or even because I'm uneducated. The reason that I do not get sick, and I fight every sickness I get with gallons of orange juice and an extended napping schedule, is because I don't have any other option. I don't get the option to take a sick day. I don't have the option to sit at home. My only option is to work. If I stop working, bills don't get paid, it doesn't matter how healthy or sick I am, that is the sad truth of the life that I am living in right now.