A Grievous Error

So I got this email in my candidbyu@gmail.com inbox the other day:

Though I love the newsletter I have decided that right now I just am to busy to use the information and the newsletter is just piling up unread in my inbox. Therefore I request that you remove xxxxx@xxxxxx.com from your mailing list.

Sincerely
Name of Guy Who is NOT Your Cousin


Turns out that what I thought was my cousin's email address was actually THIS guy's email address, just some random stranger, and I've beeen sending him emails once or twice a week for the last four months.

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The Crack Song

For those of you who know him - this is Carl singing about crack, as in crack the drug.

Mp3 Format
Wav Format

I strongly, and I mean strongly recommend that you download this file onto your computer first and then listen toit. And unless you're like SUPER obsessed about quality, I recommend the mp3 format because it's only 783 k whereas the wav format is like 8300 k.

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Fun With Pictures

Today we present Fun With Pictures. We're bound to have more fun with pictures in the future. These pictures feature me with a partially shaven head and a really weakly grown beard which has since grown in better. Enjoy!


For those of you who aren't sure what this is - it is the BACK of my head - there you have the collar of my shirt along with the back of my ears.



There is my left side of my head - along with my beard and a few other features which I'm sure you can work out for yourself. After all, if you're able to read English I'm sure that you're also able to understand which part of my face is an 'eye' and which part of it is my 'nose'. If you do not feel capable of this, please enroll yourself in a basic anatomy class at your local college.



This is the right side of my face. I believe that I am currently facing roughly North North-East in this picture, I think. If that's true then I was facing roughly South South-West in the picture before and then hmm...90 degrees away from that would be - hmm....if I had a pen and paper I could draw this...West North-West? Well - whatever's approximately like 15-20 degrees or so above West on the compass...is that right? Well - anyway - you've got the picture. At least you probably would if I was able to be at least somewhat coherent in this paragraph.

And there you have it: Fun With Pictures - Part 1. We will have more fun with pictures in the future.

If you thought any of the above explanation was rude or patronizing to your sensibilities, and you demand satisfaction, feel free to either 1) leave a comment or 2) email me at candidbyu@gmail.com. Only emails written in the Chicago style, 500 words exactly - no more no less, double spaced, with proper in-text citations will be accepted. If I find any emails without proper style I will regard them as 'refuse' and will discard them in the rubbish bin. Many thanks!

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Language: Your Barrier to Communication

Today we present another segment on language. We all use language as a tool for communicating ideas from one person to the other, ideas like, "I like soup" or "I hate tomatoes". These are very important ideas that must be communicated eloquently to other people - if not we would all either die of starvation or, even worse, end up eating terrible nasty things like tomatoes or olives once in a while. And the absolute most wonderful thing about language, is that if one uses it improperly, especially while learning it, language can be an awesome wonderful source of humor to yourself and others, just like in these wonderful small stories below.


English Version
A couple of missionaries, Elder Bell and Elder Gibbons, in Miami had just met a lady, (Quick sidenote: bienvenido means 'welcome' in Spanish), and they said to her, "What's your name?" (Of course they asked her this in Spanish. For the full spanish version go to the paragraph immediately below.)So they said to her, "What's your name?" "Bienvenida" "Gracias. Now - what's your name?" "Bienvenida" "Gracias, and...what's your name?" "Bienvenida" "Gracias..." And after a while she explained to them that her name was "Bienvenida".

Spanish Version
Dos misioneros, Elder Bell y Elder Gibbons, acaban de conocer a una señora, y le preguntaran a ella su nombre. Ella les dijo a ellos, "Bienvenida" "Gracias, y como te llamas?" "Bienvenida" "Gracias - y como te llamas?" "Bienvenida" "Gracias..." Y despues de un rato ella les explicó a ellos que su nombre era 'Bienvenida'.

One of my roommates, Rao, was from India, and he asked me & my roommate Greg, "Can you give me a ride to compoosa?" "Compoosa?" "Yes, they sell computers." "I've never heard of that before." "Nope - me neither," said Greg. "Here is an ad," said Rao and he handed us an ad for CompUSA.

There was a sister missionary, still new to Spanish, and she was listening to a long story that a lady was telling them. At the end of the story she said, "Oh, que bueno!" (How wonderful!) And her companion turned to her and said, "It is NOT wonderful that her house burned down."

Another sister missionary had no clue whatsoever how to speak Spanish at this point in her mission, and so she got in the habit of just nodding her head and saying 'Sí' to make them feel like she understood. So she got in this really long conversation by herself at church, and then Elder George came over to her and said, "You just offered to cook their family dinner."

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Moustache Day Status Report

We just wish to report that Moustache Day was indeed a success! A complete and total success! We may not have had 7000 Moustached Men & Women walking around campus, but word about it definitely spread far and wide, as illustrated by this story:
My roommate Ben was standing around there, in his university shirt because he works for BYU and all, and somebody ran up to him and said, "Hey man! Where's your moustache? Don't you have school spirit?" People who never even knew me or heard of my name before in their life (not that that's a hard feat mind you) had heard about Moustache Day and thought it was a BYU Sponsored Event even! I hope Moustache Day keeps on giving and the only thing left for it to truly become a success in my opinion is that it becomes a tradition at BYU for years to come, and I want to thank each and every one of you for the hard work that you put forth to make Moustache Day a true even to cherish for the rest of our lives!

By the way - there is no 'rest of the article'. That's all there is, folks!

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Tracting Stories: The Good & The Bad

Couple of quick stories from the mission. They're not spiritual religious experiences or anything, just funny things that tend to happen on the mission.

Elder Evans and Elder Bell were a companionship - two of the first missionaries I lived with. Both funny fellows - Bell had a nice full set of hair and so did Evans. But Evans was worried to death that he was losing his hair. He'd run his fingers through his hair, and look at the amount of hair that would be there, and we would say, "Don't worry Evans - not that much is coming out," "Oh yeah? You do it!" And then we would run our fingers through our hair and we'd have just a small tiny amount less than him, "See! I am losing my hair!" So one day they're out tracting, and they see an Aloe Vera plant, and Bell says to Evans, "You know, I've heard Aloe is good for hair loss," "Really?" They had knocked on the door several times but nobody was coming to answer it. So Bell says, "Go ahead, just take a little piece off and try it." "You think I should?" "Yeah - how will they notice a little piece?" So Evans goes to break it off, and a whole foot and a half long section comes off. "Aw, Fetch!" he cries - so he goes to break another little section off to make it a little less noticeable, and another huge chunk comes off instead, "Aw, fetch!" So here's Evans standing in the door with two huge foot long pieces from the Aloe Plant and wigging out. And then the owner opens the door...

There were a couple of missionaries out knocking doors - and they came to this one guy who'd evidently run into missionaries before, and was sick of talking to us. They start to talk to him, "Hi this is Elder Smith and this is Elder Young," and then the guy pulls out a machete and starts chasing them with it. They both got away and everybody was happy, the missionaries were safe and the guy was sitting peacefully in his apartment. A couple of months later another missionary, Elder Gibbons, tracted into Machete Man, and he starts BRT'ing with him. BRT stands for Build Relationships of Trust - missionary term for chatting with people, getting to know them, asking them where they're from, introducing yourself etc., you know - shooting the breeze, chewing the fat, making small talk, etc.) with him. Gibbons BRT'ed so well that Machete Man gave him his machete.

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Hair Trimming: An Art Form

So there I was, shaving my head... so that I'd have the 'bald headed bearded look'. It's usually an easy way of getting a haircut, and the shorter the haircut is the longer you have to wait until you cut it again. But this time my hair was too long and it kept on gumming up the razor. My only two real options for shaving it were either to take a shower while shaving so it would rince all the hairs off my head while I'm shaving, or to go have a barber do it with clippers and pay for it, and who wants to pay over 10 dollars just to get their head shaved?

And here I was, I was almost done - almost there - I was close to finishing - over 78% done. And then I ran out of hot water. And now I'm sitting here with a couple of weird patches of hair left on my head, waiting for the hot water to come back. I thought I could just go down and use the same hair clippers Grandpa used to cut their dogs' hair with, but when I called them up turns out they'd given the hair clippers away already. Pictures will come soon - I promise.

Speaking of Grandpa's hair clippers, back when Dad was in high school, Grandpa was cutting my Dad's hair and he was almost done too, and was trimming up the back of Dad's neck. "It's not quite even" Grandpa said, and trimmed a little more, "It's still not quite even," and Grandpa kept on trimming Dad's hair, evening it up, until Dad had no hair left, but at least it was even.

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Key West Sucks During the Holidays

Last Monday at noon I was chatting with my friend Dave online. He says to me, "So - roadtrip?" "Sure - where?" "I don't care - you?" "Miami?" "How long?" "If we drive hard - tomorrow" "Let's do it"

In we got into the car, and off we went. I was supposed to go to a family party that night, but I decided the road trip was more important. I'd been having 2 days of family parties already, and frankly, out of 34 people at these parties, I didn't think my presence would be missed that much. My immediate family did tell them I was in Tennessee though. "What's he doing in Tennessee?!"

So on we drove - through the night, and through the next day, through traffic and clear sailing.

I looked down for a few seconds at one point on the highway in Georgia, looking for some snacks that we had down there, and Dave says, "Hey man!" and I looked back up and there was somebody with their brakes just slammed on - so I slam on the brakes, but couldn't stop in time - so I swerve off the highway to the left shoulder - and almost gave Dave a heart attack. Wisely, he was on guard ever after that point.

We made it to Miami around 12:30 a.m. Wednesday Miami time - and being that I had lived there for 2 years on my mission, I drove Dave around some of the streets and showed him various places, and then we drove down to a better part of Miami to look for a hotel. On entering downtown Miami we had immediately locked all of the car doors. It's not necessarily a place you want to get lost.

Miami is a crazy place. Miami may be located in the United States, but when you go to Miami, it's like visiting another country. Some stats about Miami (taken from here): 2,341,167 live in Miami-Dade. In the city of Miami proper, 362,470 live there, and encarta.com says: "Hispanics, who may be of any race, made up 65.8 percent of the city’s people." And from personal experience of living in many parts of Miami, the county residents are around 65.8% Hispanic too. It's probably even higher, because a lot of them are probably scared to take part in the census for fear of being deported. Dave called up Amber, and he told her: "It's like we're in Mexico - most of the signs are in Spanish."

Now many of you people are thinking, “Oh – awesome! I want to go to Miami and eat some authentic Mexican food!” No! Bad people! There is more to Hispanics than just Mexicans! In Miami actually they have very few Mexicans. They have a lot of Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, Colombians, quite a few Peruanos, Chileans, Guatemaltecos, Honduranians, Costa Ricans, Ecuadorians, a few Argentinos, and a few Uruguayos. I met more of each of those countries than I met Mexicans.

It was wonderful using my Spanish again. We went to a Nicaraguan restaurant, and I was doing good, not quite back on form, but I was fluent again. I decided to go in for the kill and ask for a Chia drink. "Y una china!" I said! Blast! I had just accidentally ordered a Chinese woman.

Miami drivers there are absolutely insane. In Miami, you do not need to actually pass any tests in order to obtain a driver's license, you can just go out and buy one. It might not be legal, but it can be done. During a traffic jam on the highway, a Garbage Truck just drove right off of the highway, over the grass, and onto another road.

We then decided to head down to Key West. Thought it would be great to spend the night there, then drive up in the morning. To get down to Key West – you go on a 2-lane highway, for 138 miles, crossing over 5 mile long bridges between the Keys, going only 30 mph in one place so as not to kill any Endangered Key Deer. And then we got down there, at 9:30 p.m. and we drove to a hotel – it was full. We drove 3 more miles to another hotel, it was full. Dave got online to check out available hotels, while I called up my sister for help at home. There was 1 hotel with a vacancy in all of Key West during the holidays, and that cost Fifteen Hundred Dollars.

So we turned right around and headed as far up Florida we could go that night, away from Key West with its No Vacancy signs, away from Miami with its $95.00 a night Red Roof Inn prices (something we had paid $40.00 for in Georgia), and made it to Ft. Pierce, where I noticed the Treasure Coast Inn was $10.00 cheaper than and decided to stay there. We drive up, we both say, “Hey, this is a decent looking place!” We go inside the room, and I can honestly say that this is the worst place I’ve ever stayed in, EVER, in my whole entire 28 year long life.

The place smelled of mildew and a couple of other smells mixed in. The tile was peeling off the wall. Dave and I were both scared to look underneath the beds for what we might find under there. Dave went to take a shower, and there was a friendly little cockroach in there saying, “Hey! I’m your hotel shower buddy!” The water was slightly red-tinged and smelled funny, so I decided that in this case, no shower would be better than any shower at all.

Then I drove for a couple of hours, and Dave took over, and using Ft. Pierce as motivation, he drove 1004 (also the exact amount of words in this article. Yes – exactly the same amount) miles from Daytona Beach, Florida back home to St. Louis, with nary more than a 15 minute rest for gas, food, or a potty break.

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What a Wonderful New Year!

I just want to take this time to proclaim a Happy New Year to everybody! It's been a great vacation at home. For more vacation details, read on:

Started off by hanging out with the whole Farmer Family for a baby blessing, then we played monopoly with the cousins. Incidentally I won 2 out of 3 of the games. The game I lost it was 3 people who merged to play against me, and I say this oh so modestly: it still took them 2 hours to take me down.

Then on Monday at 12:00 noon my friend Dave and I finally decided to go on a roadtrip, and then after some very thorough packing and careful planning we left at 12:30 p.m., and on Tuesday night around midnight we made it to Miami. Now you're all saying to yourselves "Why were you in Miami?" Now if ever it was possible to ask a stupid question, I believe that would be the question. I also believe the correct question to ask in this case is: Why NOT be in Miami?

Got back from our roadtrip on Friday at 4 a.m. - Dave successfully drove for 1004 miles or so from Daytona Beach to St. Louis.

I then thought to myself: "Why not drive to Kansas City to purchase Arthur Bryant's?" and I successfully made it to Columbia Missouri when my brain finally answered the question I asked it 2 hours before: "It's only 6 a.m. you idiot, and Arthur Bryant's doesn't open until noon!" So I turned right around and made it back to St. Louis at 8 a.m.

And then celebrated the New Year with friends I hadn't seen in years, and will soon be regretting this when I need to wake up five hours from now to go to church. But you're supposed to "live in the moment" eh?

More on roadtrip and other events later - I've got to run if I want to make it to Arhtur Bryant's and back in time for church.

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