Funny Short Stories

OK - two quick funny short stories - both about the same person.

I went with George to go donate plasma at Alpha (it's closed down since) and I'm sitting there getting my blood pressure & stats taken, when I hear this really loud voice coming from my left, loud enough so the whole room can hear it. "I'm wondering why you want to know if I've been in prison for more than 72 hours. Do you just assume that if I've been in jail for 3 days I've been raped by some guy named Bubba?" Then later on, he was told that his veins were too small for him to be able to donate plasma, and he said: "GREAT - One more thing I can't do because I'm out of shape!"

Another time George had just moved into my apartment, and another ex-roommate, Alfred, had moved out 4 weeks before but still kept on coming back to 'borrow' things. Like, "Hey guys, can I grab a roll of toilet paper?" or "I just need some plates for my new place." And one time, I was in the kitchen cooking stuff, when I hear Alfred come into the apartment once more. I hear George say to Alfred, "Oh, do you still live here?" Alfred: "I just want to visit my friends." And I just cracked up laughing because nobody else in the world but George possibly say that to Alfred.

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Guide to Cheap Good Eats

Okay, we now present to you some places we know with really good cheap good food. This is essential information for every student. Also: please comment on your own places as well so we can all share in your joy too.

TACOS GUANAJUATO
495 W 800 N, PROVO, UT 84601
Phone: (801) 356-2779

Awesome place to go for chimichangas. I've only had their beef chimichanga so for, but it was most excellent. Best tasting crust I've EVER had on a chimichanga, and I'm a very large frequenter of Mexican Restauarants. Also, the chimichanga is just stuffed with cheese. I haven't tried anything else there so I definitely can't recommend anything else.

Cost: $4.99 w/out beans & rice, $6.99 with them.

Fortune Chinese Restaurant
366 N University Ave
PROVO, UT
Phone: (801) 377-6868

Great variety of items. The thing I recommend is the $1.00 takeout. It costs $1.00 per item, so it's only $3.00 for say, lo mein, orange chicken, & fried vegetables. I recommend trying the fried vegetables earlier in the day since they tend to be a little stale later on in the day.

Beto's
Located by Macey's on 5th West and Bulldog in Provo.

Breakfast Burritos - but you should all know about this by now. Cheap mexican food 24 hours a day. Not as good as say Guanajuatos or El Azteca, but it's open 24 hours a day.

El Azteca
46 W 1230 N, PROVO, UT 84604
Phone: (801) 375-9690

Okay - try the bean & cheese nachos. It's enough to feed two grown men who each weigh over 200 pounds. Cost is around 4-5 dollars. They have tons of chips smothered in real cheese (not that nacho stuff) beans, sour cream, guacamole, salsa,etc. Only downfall is that the chips at the bottom tend to get soggy because they have so much stuff on top of them. Still taste great though.

Why am I telling all of you this at no financial gain to myself? Why it's simple! I want these places to become decently popular so that they stay in business so that I can still eat there on occasion.

Buen Provecho!

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Students Slap Teachers Day

Are you sick and tired of the ‘less effective’ method of Teacher Evaluations? “What IS the ‘less effective’ method of Teacher Evaluations?” you ask? Why it’s the method provided to us by our school wherein the teachers tell us to take these surveys online & occasionally the teachers look at it and take it to heart. Let us stress that we do believe that MOST teachers take these comments to heart, but there are a few teachers out there that just read it and laugh maniacally and say to themselves, “Why they think I’m mean this year? They should have had me last year when I didn’t get the syllabus to them until November the 7th, and then over half of the information was incorrect!” That’s right Freshman – these surveys that we take aren’t viewed by our professors’ leaders, but rather only by the professors themselves, and then only if they choose to. We hereby propose a better, more effective method of feedback: Students Slap Teachers Day.

Students Slap Teachers Day will be more effective for several reasons:

1) It is more fun & satisfying than writing and selecting options based on a scale from 1-5.
2) It provides teachers with more immediate motivation to change their behavior for that semester.
3) It actually gives students something to look forward to at the end of the semester.

There would be just a few rules:

1) Each student may slap each teacher once, and only once, with the palm of the hand on either cheek.
2) Students will not be allowed to wear gloves or any article on the hand unless the article is made of cotton. No, students, steel is NOT made from cotton.
3) We will have 2 slapping days per semester – this way the teacher is more likely to remain consistently nice during the whole semester.
4) If the student feels the professor has performed adequately, (We stress adequately - they do not have to perform above & beyond the call of duty) the student shall refrain from slapping the professor.

Of course the honor code will apply to the above rules, and students must HONESTLY apply them to Students Slap Teachers Day, or they will be fined $50.00.

Just think of the results that could occur from this new system!

A) Teachers will no longer give us tests that end on the day of the BYU-Utah Football game.
B) The professors in charge of the testing center will stop loaning out only those darned backwards function HP calculators which takes the majority of students (I figure it’s the majority of students since the majority of students I know use TI-85s or 86s or any calculator besides those made by Hewlett Packard) an extra 5 minutes per problem on their tests.
C) Math professors will no longer force their students to use poorly written calculus books just because they (the books) were written by a BYU professor. Either that or the BYU professor that wrote the book would be more motivated to do a better job of writing it.
D) Professors will stop causing students thousands of hours of combined anguish by presenting them with instructions for projects based on programs that are no longer available in BYU computer labs. This in turn will lessen the need for computer lab attendants to work on inane problems, which will in turn save the University money when they hire less lab attendants the next year. This in turn will cause our tuition to drop, which will allow the students to buy either more ramen & frozen burritos, or more quality food resulting in better nourished students which will result in better test/essay scores & grades and better BYU Alumni Career Placement all around, and the reputation of BYU will increase & people the world over will be heard to say, “If only I could make it into BYU.”

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A Copout

Author’s Note: The names in the following flyer have been changed to protect the innocent. It was written as a joke, and the author had the consent of the person of whom the flyer was written about. Her roommates loved the flyer, and helped to pass it out. She herself read the flyer before it was passed out. Do not worry, no harm came to her. The following flyer is also a copout by the author who is still exhausted, and would most likely even fall asleep during Batman Begins but thinks you should find this amusing.

A FINAL FAREWELL
When: Thursday, 6:00 p.m.—Whatever Hour Necessary for the Task to be Complete
Where: You need to be smart enough to figure it out – if you can’t, you aren’t allowed to attend.

Brothers and Sisters – One more activity has been planned for this week. A wonderful, SOCIAL activity. One of the ladies in the ward, whose name shall remain unmentioned, but for sake of her anonymity we shall only say that her name might be similar to Bephanie Bohnson. This dear sister shall be leaving the ward soon, very soon, never to return, and never to see any of us ever again. This saddens her greatly, and she doesn’t want to leave our complex with so many great opportunities missed. This lady believes firmly in Romans 16:16, so much that she’s based her whole testimony on it. “What in the world is Romans 16:16?” you ask? Why – I’m shocked that you don’t know your scriptures. Did you not attend Seminary? For Shame. Plainly put it says, “Salute one another with an holy kiss.” Yes dear brethren, she wants to kiss every last one of us before she leaves for home. Even the engaged brethren if their fiancés so permit.

She will be receiving men for this cause at her current place of residence. This place of residence might just include the number 5 and the number 1, so you know perhaps number 51 or number 15, or even 1 or 5. Whichever one of those that contain a girl whose name rhymes with Tephanie Tohnson. She has been practicing long and hard for this activity. She told me that she’s been doing lip exercises in her bedroom in order to increase both her endurance and strength. Her Kiss Maniacs Magazine says this is a sure way to increase overall kissing performance. Men have also been involved in her training. She is uncertain of the overall number of men, but she said if she had to make a rough guess it would have to be anywhere from 200 to 300 men in the last year. 20 of those men have told me that out of all the 50 women they had each kissed she was the top kisser, and another hundred said they ranked her in the top three. Please don’t disappoint her, she is wonderful, and is only doing this because she loves each and every one of you. I am making this flyer at her request – otherwise I would have selfishly kept her all to myself. Please, I beg you, come return the love that she shows you. I swear that you shall never regret it!!

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Just Give In To Your Illness, Make It Your Friend

Hmm - I thought I would be better today and able to think clearly, but I'm actually feeling sick. Unfortunately, it's not the sort of sick that makes it so that I can't go into work. It's the sort of sick where you want to go home from work, but you'd feel really guilty if you did it. The sort of sick where you can still get things somewhat done, but really shoddily done. The kind of sick where most people don't want to go around saying, "I'm sick" because they'll feel like a weenie, but in reality they should probably just give in to the sickness, and let themselves relax and feel better rather than running around trying to be superman and fixing the world's problems.

So that's what I'm going to do now: give in to the sickness and go home and do nothing. See ya later folks.

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Family Stories 4

OK, this will be just a quick post, but I promise that I'll get a couple of decent articles up and written over the weekend. You know those days where you try to be witty, and bright, and enlightening to all those around you, but everything you say pretty much comes out as completely sarcastic and just flat out mean? Well, that's the day I'm having now - so instead of trying to be creative I think it's best I stick to real life funny stories.

It's like if you write somebody an email at like 3 in the morning, because you just can't sleep so you may as well do SOMETHING that's productive. So you write this long, heartfelt email to a dear long lost friend, with some occasional friendly jibes, and you go to sleep feeling good in the knowledge that all is well with the world, and your friend will rejoice in receiving your email in the morning. Then you wake up in the morning, and go back and reread your email, and realize that it's written in the same tone that you would use to write those darned Columbia House DVD people to tell them to stop sending you those freaking crappy DVDs that you NEVER asked for. So I figure - best not to write anything new now.

Story Number One
My family back at home all lived within a 10 minute drive of each other, from my Grandpa down to all the cousins, so we were pretty close and did things with each other quite often. So one year we took a vacation where Grandpa rented a bus and we drove for a few hours to a niceish place kind of close to the country. While there we held the first Family Golf Tournament. Unfortunately in the middle of the tournament it started to thunder, lightning, with small chunks of hail. That didn't actually stop us, because we were all manly men who will play golf through anything, come rain, hurricane, blizzard, or earthquake. Unfortunately the people in charge of the Golf Course thought otherwise, and asked us to leave the course. I don't remember who won the tournament, but I do remember that my uncle (he was a rather large man at the time but has since REALLY slimmed down) was too tired to walk some of the holes so instead of numbers for those scores, he had an H, two T's, an R, and a P, for Hot Dog, Tired, Resting, and Pooped.

Story Number TwoMy family has always done things in an innovative way. When I was a little baby (at least this is what my Mom tells me, I have faith that it's true)during Christmas time, my parents said I was too destructive to be around the Christmas Tree, so they put the tree in the playpen and let me roam free.

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Okay, I was Dumb

I'm sorry - I should have followed this rule: "Never battle with a stupid person because they're too stupid to know they've been beaten." Come back and comment all you want Wake Up and people of similar intelligence. Remember: you're only hurting yourself.

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Intelligent Comments

k, I was hoping that I wouldn't have to make any announcements about this. Most comments on here (all but 1) have been intelligent. I'm quite alright with critiquing as long as it's done intelligently. Please don't make comments like the person named 'wake up' did under 'Updating Your Personal Information'. At least read the article before you make a rebuttal. Wake Up's comment is akin to somebody watching the first 5 minutes of Fellowship of the Ring and saying, "Oh, the whole movie is about really little people who like to throw parties and see fireworks," or watching the first few minutes of Spiderman and saying, "Oh, it's about this nerdy guy who likes a girl but is too nervous to do anything about it and gets beat up a lot. I'm not even sure why it's called Spiderman."'

Plus - he or she must not have noticed that I'm using a gmail address for this site - as shown up above right under 'The Rantings of a BYU Student'

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On Commenting Anonymously

I completely approve of commenting anonymously on here. However, you can more often than not hilight the radio button next to 'other' and then type in a pseudonym, like say ItsyBitsySpider40, or Boy Wonder. That way we can kind of differentiate one anonymous person's comments from those of another.

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Fees: The Ultimate Destiny of Mankind

Preface: This article is supposed to be a good natured ribbing about the increasing of fees. Also, it's meant to apply to the whole world in general, but it focuses on BYU because that's where I have the most recent examples of it occurring.

Many people have noticed that BYU has recently started increasing fees to be paid and adding policies that students must follow this year. This leads us to speculate what the future of BYU will be like.

Imagine that it is the year 2009. A man dressed in a nice Lilac Blue shirt (the official color of BYU has changed once again) walks down past the library, by the Wilk, and has he walks he does his duty. The awesome duty of the BYU Fee Police. They have recently popped up in the last year, designed to help keep students from breaking the honor code by not paying the fees due.

“You there!” He calls, “Yes - YOU! You owe $10.00 for a Light Absorption Fee. Since you are wearing a black shirt you are absorbing more visible light than you are reflecting and thus causing a shortage of light for the rest of us who are wearing clothing lighter than Royal Blue.” “Okay, you caught me, I’m so sorry for trying to get away with this,” he says with chagrin, and delves in his pocket for the money.

On walks the man, “Excuse me,” he says to a passerby, “But we need to collect your Air Usage Fee from you, since you are from Missouri, a state ridden with tobacco smokers, and thus your lungs are constantly polluting our beautiful clean Utah air whereas the lungs of Californians enhance it.”

He walks on, and sees a group of freshmen girls rambling past, taking a lackadaisical stroll. He follows them vigilantly to make sure that the fees they owe are paid. They walk by the HFAC, down by the JKB, go counter-clockwise around the Eyring Science Center for not one, but two loops, and finally stop to rest by the SWKT. “Pardon me ladies,” he says, “But as you are well aware, there is a new Concrete Destruction Fee and since you walked down more than 3 paths, you must pay $6.00 per person for your use of the walkways.”

Everywhere he goes he sees a fee: “Yes sir, you slept on the grass for more than 15 minutes, which caused over 13 blades of grass to die, and much needed maintenance will need to be done to bring it back to proper conditions.” “Ma’am, that will be $8.00 for drinking for more than the allotted 7 seconds from that fountain.” “Sir, you occupied that spot on the Wall by the Library for more than 45 minutes and must, I say MUST, be penalized $4.00 for that.” “Ahem, students, your hair is more than 2 inches long, and since you are Male, we must charge you an Unkempt Appearance Fee of $2.50 per person.” “Christopher Christofferson? I am here to collect your Lengthy Name Fee of $0.50 for every letter over 18 letters, including spaces.” “$4.00 for kissing in public in the presence of single people” “$2.00 for being single” “$40.00 Freshmen Naiveté fee” “30.00 Senior Slacker Syndrome Fee” “3.00 for Talking In The Middle of the Sidewalk In a Group of More than 5 People While Hoards of Other People Try To Walk Past Fee” “5.00 Sneezing Fee” “$50.00 for Being Allowed to Sustain Life Fee”

Ah, what a beautiful thing the future. I can’t wait until it becomes the present.

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Family Stories Part 3

Just a couple of quick stories from family stuff:

Story Number 1
My grandpa's a mortician. For 13 years he was also a bishop, so everybody called him Marry 'em Bury 'em Fred. During family dinners my dad and his sisters would say, "Tell us about your day, Father," and he'd say, "Well, I had a real interesting case today..." and Grandma (who has a voice like Edith Bunker from All in the Family)would say, "Don't you do it Fred, don't tell them any stories while at the dinner table," and he'd say, "Well, I better not kids," And the kids would all say, "Come on, tell us! Tell us!" Grandpa would say, "Well, all right," And then he'd go on and tell them the story about the guy who'd fallen asleep with his head on the railroad tracks, so he didn't have any head left, or the one where the guy died in the middle of a heat wave with the air conditioning off while his wife was out of town. Or the guy they found in the river after two weeks. Dad says, "We always loved those stories."

Story Number 2
My aunt was driving down the highway with my dad in the car, and she said, "I wonder what would happen if I put the gear down to l2"(or D2 or whatever Gear 2 is on automatics these days) and Dad says, "Don't do it Susan, don't do it!" So she throws it into L2, and the car made this horrible grinding sound. She says, "Don't you tell Father, don't you tell Father!" And Grandpa finally found out about it 20 years later.

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BYU: It’s More Than Just a School

Welcome new students to Brigham Young University, a University that is much more than just a University! We pledge to be better than the rest, to rise above them, to stand forth and to show an example to the rest of the poor universities out there. That’s right dear students: We pledge to be your mother!

We don’t care how old you get at this University, we will still think of you as ‘Our Children’. We will love you like you’re our kids, and will hold your hand, and make you lunch, and see you off to school. Most importantly, and we say this to you Mothers & Fathers out there as well: We will NOT let you do anything or say anything to us without us checking with your parents to see if it’s true! No sirree bob, we will not let this happen to you, because we care. If you happen to get bad grades, we will send a letter to your parents. If you switch housing, we will tell your parents. If you happen to purchase a more than adequately sized lunch or less than adequately sized lunch we will also tell your parents, because we care so much that we will not trust you to do this on your own.

What’s that? You say that you’re 25 and an undergraduate and have chosen to live with your parents for this semester? Well Mister or Miss, we just care too much to be able to trust you on this matter, so we’re going to have to call up your parents and ask them, or better yet, you just better get a signed permission slip from them saying that you have their permission to live with them, and that you truly are doing so and are not just living in your car on the street.

Oh, and don’t you go bringing up the fact that you signed the Honor Code and that we should trust you - the Honor Code is merely a way of ENFORCING honesty, so that we may kick you out of this University if ever you should break it. It’s more of an incentive to help you be honest, rather than a statement saying that because you signed it, we now implicitly trust you. Yes sir, when we draw a chalk circle and ask you to promise that you’ll never leave it, we won’t just go one mile with you by trusting you to stay in it, instead we’ll go twain with you by absolutely making sure that it is impossible for you to break your word: we love you so much that we’ll even put one of those invisible dog fences underneath the chalk circle, and shackle one of those dog collars to your ankle, thus ensuring that there is no way in all this grand campus for you to break your word. We fully stand by our motto: Teach People and Let Them Govern Themselves? No! Teach People And Then Force Them to Do the Right Thing!

This is of course one of the reasons for BYU approved housing: we can’t trust you students to choose decent housing for yourself, so instead we will insist that you live in a small area designated by us as proper and good. And to teach you to appreciate the value of money, we will create a monopoly to inflate prices and deprive you of it. We are following the time honored tradition that one can never truly appreciate having something until one loses it.

You say that cleaning checks are merely an excuse for the apartment complex owners to charge more money by charging $25.00 per hour for cleaning but only paying the cleaning people $10.00 and that you’re always charged a fee for it, but never ever see the cleaning people actually doing the jobs you’re charged for? What a silly notion! Apartment complex owners are adults and are to be completely trusted.

What’s that? You say that we should trust you to be adults and decide where would be a decent place to live yourselves? Oh you silly students! You’re so cute when you fend for your freedom! “Why’s that?” you ask? Oh, haha! It’s very simple: because we said so!

Just remember students: we’re only doing this for your own good.

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Updating Your Personal Information

Reference Article: http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/56583

It’s Tuesday, 12:49 p.m., you’re going down the sidewalk to get to your next class when all of a sudden the idea pops into your head, “Hey! I have 2 whole minutes to check my amazingly efficient Route Y Email!” So you head to the nearest computer lab, or terminal, or pop open your laptop (or you go find a friend who has a laptop. Luckily here at BYU we’re all friendly people, so any random stranger could count as a ‘friend’). Next thing you know you’re on www.byu.edu and you can hardly stand the excitement as you type in your Route Y ID & Route Y Password, knowing that soon you’ll be connected via the internet to a potential millions of friends as well as millions of offers for free laptops. You hit enter, and next thing you know, up pops something that says, “Unless you update your personal information soon, we will fine you so much that you will no longer be able to afford eating anything besides top ramen for the semester.”

Ha ha! Those silly Route Y people and BYU administrators! They are of course joking when they say that, because they know that as a student you already can’t afford to eat anything besides top ramen, and that this fine will actually make it so that you will still eat only Top Ramen, but now it will be the inferior Smack brand instead of Maruchan, and instead of eating it 3 times a day, you will only be eating it 1 time a day! So you hurry, all the while thanking your lucky stars that the BYU Route Y people went ahead and were very easy on the students, and go to update your information. “Surely this will be very easy on me,” you say to yourself, “since BYU implemented it and everything Route Y has ever done has always worked correctly on the first try,” and then you hit ‘Save Changes’ and up pops something that says, ‘We know you did your best to make this work, but our system has caused an error that will certainly be fixed in the next 15 minutes. If it is not fixed then please call 422-4000 to let them know’ So you decide to come back and try it again after class. After class, you try it once more. Still the error comes up. You decide to wait until Next Wednesday, which is of course the Wednesday one week after tomorrow, knowing that surely by then the error will no longer be occurring. You mark it on your calendar to remind yourself, resting easy in the knowledge that the deadline for updating your personal information is still several weeks away, and that you will definitely be able to change it in time.

A week goes by, the error still occurs, and this time you say to yourself, “What the heck!” and call up 422-4000 (this may or may not be the real number) and say to them, “Why isn’t it fixed?” And they say to you, “But it is fixed! It happened 5 seconds ago while you were dialing the phone!” Then you go back and try it, and the error STILL comes up! And you want to smash the computer! But of course you just sit there and you go to the phone calmly, you push the buttons calmly, and they tell you, “But we REALLY just fixed it this time! The last time we were blowing smoke, but this time we’re REALLY telling you the truth! HONEST! But remember, if you can’t update it by September 16th at 5:00 p.m. - you owe us $25.00! And also remember that we’re trying to be very easy on YOU, the STUDENTS!”

And you replace the phone calmly, and think to yourself, “Of course! They ARE being easy on me! If I can’t update my personal information, even if there is an error in the system, then I deserve to pay an extra $25.00 to BYU. They’ve been very patient with me, and if I don’t have the intelligence to figure out a way around that error in the system, then I must pay them $25.00. Sure that’s reasonable. And if somehow the error persists and I still haven’t figured out how to update my personal information by another reasonable date, like say October 4th, then surely they’ll up the fine by a factor of 5 so that I will pay them $125.00, which is very reasonable. Man oh man are they sure easy on us students.”

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More Family Stories

Well, quite frankly - it's late, and I'm tired, I don't just mean a little tired - I mean the sort of tired where if someone asked you what your middle name was, you'd tell them it was Frank, and then 15 minutes later you'd realize that you don't have a middle name, but if you did have one, you'd wish it was something manly like Hank or Slugger or something like that, and why the heck are we talking about middle names anyway? Oh yes - to illustrate that I'm tired and likely to ramble. This is a short and sweet story about a dog: and we'll just tell you right now that the dog dies, but don't worry, this is still comedic! We vow to not post any of that maudlin chick-flicky type stuff designed to make you cry!

So my dad's family consists of him, two sisters, and his parents. My one Aunt was recently married, and she had a dog named after my Grandpa: Fred. One day Fred (dog) ran out in the street, got hit by a car, and was killed. So she called up my Grandma to tell her about it. Later on my other aunt called up my Grandma, and Grandma says to her, "Fred was run over by a car today." And my other Aunt starts asking Grandma tons of questions about it, thinking Grandma was talking about Grandpa. After a while, I think they finally got it straightened out. Just don't go asking my Aunt about it - she still gets a nervous twitch to this day.

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We HIGHLY Encourage Comments

We want this to be a forum for a free exchange of thought. Feel free to leave comments on here. Of course, all comments beyond the bounds of decency will be deleted.

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Wonderful Words Americans Don't Use

Today we are proud to present to the world: Wonderful Words Americans Don't Use. We hope to make this a regular segment - and hopefully get people to present other words that we, the makers of this blog, are not aware of either. The first word we present to you is: Garbarator.

Garbarator is a Canadian word, and we're not sure how it's spelled (any Canadians out there please feel free to leave a comment correcting us on any grievous errors) however we do know that it sounds much more powerful and prestigious than its American (United Statesian) equivalent: Garbage Disposal. It's a word of power, a word of grace, a word of beauty, a word that rolls off the tongue, and, most important, it's a word with far less letters and syllables in it than its American version. Just compare the difference in the following sentences:

American: "Hey Ma! The garbage disposal broke after I shoved that chuck roast down it!"

Candian: "Mother! The garbarator broke after I shoved that chuck roast in it!"

Now that you know about this marvelous word, garbarator, go out there and spread the news, and help to make the world a more joyful place.

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The Right To Bare Facial Hair

Today we wish to discuss a subject of great controversy, a subject which has divided the masses, and pitted men against women, brother against sister, boyfriend against girlfriend. We’re not talking about the dreaded ‘one-strap backpacks’ that no girl should ever wear or even about the difference of people wearing shorts that are one inch above the knee versus shorts that are two inches above the knee. We’re talking about something completely different: the right of males to only wear facial hair that quite frankly looks gay. When we say gay we do not mean happy as gay is used in C.S. Lewis's The Silver Chair nor do we mean homosexual. No, in this case we mean blatantly moronic.

Males (& females) of BYU campus of course follow the honor code, and the honor code when dealing with facial hair says:

“If worn, moustaches should be neatly trimmed and may not extend beyond or below the corners of the mouth. Men are expected to be clean shaven; beards are not acceptable.”

I assume since the above phrase does not include ‘women’ that women are presumed to be okay to wear beards. Not that any women would admit to that, but frankly I’m sure many of the women are now gloating over this to the men, looking at the men and saying, “Look what I have the right to do and YOU don’t!” This is blatant sexism! I am shocked and appalled, yes - appalled, at this blatant disregard of the rights of men being equal to the rights of women! Heck, it doesn't even tell women they have to shave their legs, which in most people's opinion is MUCH more of social faux pas then men not shaving their faces. But I digress.

We men don’t love this rule, but we follow it because we have to. You look around during the 2 week winter & summer breaks, and you will see 98% of male BYU students sporting goatees, full beards, some even sporting the John Taylor style beard which in all honesty was rather grotesque and can be seen in this picture.


The remaining 2% that don’t grow beards are those unfortunate souls, who, even though they are more ashamed to admit this fact than the women who can grow beards, CANNOT grow beards even if they rubbed minoxidil all over their faces every day and forwent shaving for 20 years.

The one facial hair item that is condoned by the honor code is ironically the one that is condemned by most of society: the moustache. Most men out there prefer not to grow mustaches. They would rather shave their entire body, daily even, than be forced to grow a moustache. Don’t get me wrong – some men can grow absolutely beautiful moustaches, like a whole 2 out of every thousand of us. The rest of us men on campus are forced to do one of two things: 1) wear a hideous looking mustache, the like of which would be repulsive to monkeys 2) do without facial hair altogether.

There is now a third option men! We have been researching the honor code for many years and found a loophole. It will require a great sacrifice from all of us males on campus: There is a type of mustache, worn by Charlie Chaplin, and later made completely unacceptable by a fascist megalomaniacal dictator which is actually acceptable within the guidelines of the honor code stated above. Wearing this mustache would force the Honor Code Office to either give in to our demands and allow us to wear socially acceptable beards, or ban moustaches completely from campus for ever. Either way, I think it's worth it.

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Family Stories

Okay, here's a couple of family stories which might sound like they're made up - but I swear they're not. I know I shouldn't swear, but darn it, I just can't help myself.

Story Number One: - My uncle HATES taxes. He hates them so much he goes to great lengths to not have to pay them. So once he raised a bunch of goats, and gave them all names and social security numbers and tried to claim them as dependents on his tax forms.


Then another time he went in to the tax office on the very last day possible to pay his taxes, like one minute before the office was going to close, and he paid his taxes in nothing but Susan B. Anthony silver dollars. They said to him, "I'm sorry sir, but we can't accept this money for your taxes." So he says, "Okay, then sign this form," and he takes out this paper that he had typed up that says 'We do not accept this man's legal U.S. currency for his tax money, and he is hereby exempt from paying taxes.' So of course they wouldn't sign the form, and of course they took all of the Susan B. Anthony silver dollars.

The next year they were ready for him with machines that could count silver dollars.

Story Number 2: My grandparents were out looking for new fixtures for their house, and they were checking out faucets, and my grandma saw letters on them, and she says, "Oh Fred! Wouldn't it be great if we could get F for Fred and G for Gene?" and he says, "Oh Gene, that's H for Hot and C for Cold!"

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Humanities Testing Center Explanation

First off - this article is informative - while the article "The Humanities Testing Center Experience" is very funny and you really should read it.

The article below is true - and I went and passed it around campus during the summer as well as emailed it to 100 BYU humanities professors. "Why in the world would I do such a crazy thing?" you ask? Before I answer that question I recommend that you go sit in a chair for 40 minutes while your body is screaming at you to go use the restroom and at the same time try to write a coherent essay on how the Spanish Inquisition affects Japanese video game programmers.

I spammed 100 professors because there's really no good way to be able to get a hold of the person in charge of the humanities testing center. Even after all those emails and calls to the BYU Info Desk and several different responses, I still have no idea who is actually in charge of it or who to talk to about it.

A few professors emailed me back and said, "Why not just use the restroom before hand?" or "be prepared and go before". To which I wonder if they actually read the article or not, because if they had they would clearly see that that idea was already included in suggestion #3.

One secretary was wondering where I got the professors' emails from because she said the list was 'outdated', and I gave her the answer: "Your current BYU Humanities Webpage". Hopefully they've updated it by now. And hopefully they've given back students the privilege of using the restroom during a test.

Footnote 1: I'm mainly saying the negative aspects - a few professors emailed back with words of sympathy, and one professor even made a good point that people with medication or diabetes or other illnesses often have intense urges to use the restroom and should not have to disclose private medical knowledge in public just to be able to use the restroom.

Footnote 2: you are currently allowed to use the restroom while in the middle of a test in the normal testing center located in the Heber J Grant Building - I know this because I emailed them myself.

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The HUMANITIES Testing Center Experience

Welcome one and all to the NEW Humanities Testing Center – it is located down in room B153 of the new JFSB (Joseph Fielding Smith Building) and has some wonderful, marvelous new features and rules of which you are yet to be aware. These features are truly fantastic, and cannot be discovered by merely reading the rules on the front door. The first and most important rule is, and we quote, “Students are NOT allowed to leave the room until their test is finished.” We know that this is a true new feature because we witnessed this event, not just once, but twice, when two different students went up to the front desk and asked calmly, “May I go to the restroom?”, to which the attendant responded each time with the above quote.

We realize completely that the front desk attendant is not allowed to break the rules; he (or she) is merely there to enforce them. The manner in which he (or she) replied was not rude in the least, however the look on the faces of the students who asked the question was one which spoke volumes, and which even a person with 20/4000 vision who had forgotten their glasses that day, could tell said, “How the crud am I supposed to finish this test when I have one hour left, and my bladder is SCREAMING for relief?”

And indeed, how is one supposed to do well in their academic endeavors, with all of that pain occurring while at the same trying to write an essay on how the bubonic plague has greatly influenced modern polka music? Have you ever tried to do anything useful while having to go to the bathroom before? Heck, people aren’t even capable of reading The Cat in the Hat when the urge to use the restroom hits.

This leads us to conclude that this must be some way of further testing the student body’s intellectual growth, in that they must be capable of performing great feats of intelligence while enduring immense pain. What will come next? Will the Humanities Testing Center start to administer electric shocks at random intervals? Or put thumb screws on our big toes if we don’t finish the test within 15 minutes? Or maybe the only way we can give our answer is by typing it on a keyboard placed at the bottom of a 15 foot deep pool?

Of course, we realize that this rule was actually put in place to keep students from cheating. We wish to propose other methods to help keep students from cheating. #1: it is entirely possible that students have and will continue to write answers on easily exposable body parts, such as perhaps the kneecap, forearm, bicep, calf, or belly button. In order to prevent this we should be required to put on a special Humanities Testing Center Jumpsuit, similar in construction to those environmental protection jumpsuits, and then the zippers will be padlocked to prevent the removal thereof. If that is not plausible, then we propose that the computer engineering department develop a special set of ‘Humanities Testing Center Computer Goggles’ which will completely envelop the eyes, so that no person may look in any direction besides directly at the test.

#2: In order to prevent any student from possibly breaking the Honor Code and attempting to cheat, a full-body search of each student will be conducted in order to detect any items that can or may influence a person’s answer in any manner. This includes family photos found in wallets, which may possibly be used to give a visually symbolic clue to the student and will somehow tell them, word for word, that Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1450 and that BYU special collections has a copy of a Bible printed on it that is worth around $53,016.23.

#3 – Trust that when a student says they need to use the restroom, they are stating that they are obeying the honor code, and will in no way cheat when they use the restroom. Or if this isn’t good enough, build a restroom that is directly connected to the Humanities Testing Center. Or perhaps tell the students about the rule beforehand so that, similar to hospital surgery procedures, they can go without food and drink for 12 hours before their test, thus preventing any need to use the restroom during the taking of the test.

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The Purpose of This Blog

This blog is just a place for me to put down my thoughts on various subjects into writing and for people to come and read it if they wish. All you BYU students out there are probably now wondering why I don’t just send in a letter to the Daily Universe instead or perhaps try to just publish a flyer using my own resources and spread it all around campus.

The reasons for the latter are obvious: 1) I’m just a lowly student who MIGHT be able to afford purchasing all of that ink and paper, however this is much more reasonably priced: FREE. 2) This is MUCH easier for people to access it and spread it around to their friends – if they want to show it to their friends they can just email the link to them. I’m not saying that everything I write in here will be devastatingly brilliant and everybody in the world will be just begging to read it, but I have been told in the past that what I write can be fun to read so people might want to read it.

As far as publishing this in letters to the Daily Universe –that is far from effective. You write a letter to the Daily Universe and you never know if it will be published, and if it IS published, sometimes it’s published months away from the date that you send it in. And whether or not it's published often depends on whether or not the editor just happened to be having a bad day because they ran out of that one type of donut that he loves so much and he (or she) did not get to eat it this morning. Also this gives me space for people to return comments on my letters and kind of open up forums for discussion - which I'm sure some people will love to comment on.

The Daily Universe (http://newsnet.byu.edu)is a good forum for bringing some information to the students, but let’s face it: any information that is considered damaging to the University, even though it might be true, is usually NOT included in there. Take for example the article on the new Bookstore buyback policy entitled, “Bookstore Cracks Down”. Not even ONCE did they mention the exorbitant price gouging that has always occurred at the Bookstore. Instead they made it seem that the Bookstore is doing this COMPLETELY for our Benefit. Well – you can read below the opinions that I have about that.

Why would I want to write a blog at all in the first place? Part of the reason is that I’m hoping to do for college students what Dilbert did for the office place – show the absurdity of life in the college world. And yes, many of you are thinking: why not just draw a comic strip? Well – I would do that, but frankly I just suck at drawing.

Some things I’ll rant about won’t have anything to do with BYU but just about random things dealing with life in general – I’m trying to keep my options open for topics I can write about. Sometimes they’ll just be funny stories I think you’ll enjoy. Often I’ll make up situations to show how silly other situations are, like most of the below bookstore article, or another article I’ll post on here soon concerning using restrooms in the Humanities Testing Center. Here’s hoping you guys can sit back and relax and enjoy the show.

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BYU Bookstore Benefits Students

Reference Article: http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/56365

The bookstore this week has implemented a new policy to benefit students: No more returning of books if you found it from a cheaper or better source. The bookstore is using this as a revolutionary new way of marketing. Instead of saying, “If you find our products on sale elsewhere for a better price, we’ll match you,” they’re using the slogan, “If you find the products for a better value elsewhere and you already bought ours, then Ha ha: That’s life! If it doesn’t kill you it makes you STRONGER”. It’s in this manner that they’re benefiting the students.

The BYU Bookstore has a long tradition of teaching students how to deal with life. Before the advent of the internet they taught the children what it is like to be in a small country governed by a dictator, where they only allow you to buy items directly from the government. They taught us that this was the BEST system, because when it only comes from one source, then there’s less need for confusing choices which will only cloud our brain and keep us from doing things more proficiently in the rest of our life. The extra money that they charge when compared with other bookstores is just a small fee that people pay to the Bookstore for rendering this beautiful service unto them. It was a brilliant move and it worked for many a term until the advent of the dreaded Other Sources From Which To Buy Books For Lower Prices.

Then back in the late 90s, the poor students had many different places to choose from, with lower prices, and soon the students started thinking to themselves, “Hey! I could seriously benefit from this other source of books!” But the admirable BYU Bookstore knew that in the long run this would be terrible, and confusing, and would only lead to students doing less well in their classes. After all if you pay more money for an item then you will value it more and use it in a more proficient manner and get more out of it. Soon students were finding books for 75%, 65%, or sometimes even as low as 50% the prices the Bookstore charged. But how were they to get them in time for their classes when often these books were not available until 2 weeks into the semester?

Soon the students came upon the strategy: Buy the books from the bookstore for the first week and return them for full price once the other books came in the mail! And all the students thought that they were happy because they had less stress in their lives and less need to worry about finding extra money to buy enough food to sustain themselves. But oh the Bookstore knew, they just KNEW that even though the students THOUGHT they were happy, they could not truly be happy, because nobody could possibly be happy unless they worked hard in the long run to gain a reward. How could the Bookstore possibly solve the situation ahead of them? How could they possibly bring the students back into the land where, even though they paid more money for resources, they were truly free to think for themselves?

All of a sudden the Bookstore had a brilliant idea: Keep students from being able to return the books for full price so they are forced to choose the BYU Bookstore. This is not a business ploy to bring the bookstore more money, as many may think, but rather as Tom Hirtzel said, in the Daily Universe article, “We’re hopeful the students will understand the new policy is for their benefit”. And of course they do! There’s no way that the Bookstore would be doing this to gain more profit or to cut losses as a business! This is of course a completely altruistic action by them: to benefit the students, to enlighten them, and above all else, to keep them from foolishly wasting their brain power by looking for cheaper sources.

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