The Dating Game

I haven't been feeling the creative juices lately, so I am going to go ahead and steal a previous post of mine from one of my other blogs. I think it is still very relevant, and hopefully all will enjoy.

In a recent late night conversation with a friend, I stumbled across a beautiful gem of knowledge. (It seems that my greatest insight tends to come when I am least in control of my faculties.)

We were both commented on the ridiculous nature of the dating game, and how we wished it could be avoided. I mean, imagine it?! What if you could just tell someone you liked them, and they would either say, "Oh, I like you too." or "No, not really." Then you could just be like, "Oh, cool." and then you could move things in the right direction, be it towards or away.

But instead...

• You have to try and use subtle tactics. That way you don't expose yourself to the enemy.
• You are prohibited from saying what you are actually thinking. If you were to do this, you would automatically be considered "weird" and you may be relegated to "undateable" status.
• Mind games.
• Doubt.

It is all just so miserable.

However, there are a couple of problems with the idea of not playing the game. For one, everyone would have to stop playing it. If half are playing, and half aren't, it would cause an even bigger mess. This is when I had my epiphany.


JUMANJI

My mind jumped immediately to the movie Jumanji staring Robin Williams. It seems that my subconscious had already drawn the connection between the two evil games. You see, in both of them the only way the game will ever end is if you keep playing till you reach the finish.

There is no quitting.

There's nothing left to give.

It appears that the Choose to Give campaign has started up again. Few things get my dander up like Choose to Give.

Before I get fully to my rant, I should say that I'm sure that the Annual Fund goes to really good causes. I'm sure that the money that is raised every year goes to help my individual education. I'm sure it's done great things. Despite all of that, though, I'm sure that it rubs me the wrong way.

I don't respond well to being asked to "donate" money to BYU. Maybe I'm off base. Can I just pay my tuition instead? Is tuition so low that BYU students just have piles of cash lying around?

(breath)

Doesn't it seem a bit like having a blood drive in the in-patient ward of a hospital? Don't take their blood! They need what they've got - and often quite a bit more!

I'd suggest that they make it easier to target a donation. They do have an option where you can choose what school your money goes to (fine arts and communications, physical and mathematical sciences, etc.), but that doesn't help much - each school has lots of departments, and within those plenty of majors, and chances are good that your donation isn't going to go where you'd like it to go.

But, anyway, go donate, because I'm sure it's good. Pay your tuition. Be a Hero.

Peter Priesthood's Pious Pretense

More than a couple times in recent history, I have heard from my friends who are girls (not girlfriends, sorry ladies, I'm tight with Official Declaration 1) about a certain breed of dating male. Tell me if you know any yourself; the defining characteristic is that he will try to win girls over by virtue of his intentionally overbrimming piety. Maybe in casual conversation he will mention how much he respects women, or how much he wants to be just like his mission president, or how many wonderful promises his patriarchal blessing makes, but no, he can't tell you about those. And then he does anyway.
Now don't get me wrong, piety is a thing I strive to have in greater abundance. However, that will not be the subject on a first date, or even a second or third. I don't want the girl to think I'm her dad or something. Pretty sure a much better idea would be to...uhhh...make her laugh. Maybe instead of telling her how much you respect women, you should just let them know how much you like them. I'm sorry, I don't mean to go all Dr. Phil on ya'll, but your own righteousness and respect and reverence for eternal things, that should just come through if its really there. You shouldn't need to advertise it.
Oh, and if you are a BYU student, that kind of religiosity is the last trait that will set you apart from the 15,000 other guys here.
I need feedback, people. Let me know if I'm out of line here. I've never witnessed this lameness myself, but being a guy, I'm not in much of a position to see it.

Facebook and MySpace: The Devil's Social Networks

My stake president told us to get off of Facebook and MySpace this Sunday. No explanation. He mentioned chat rooms in passing, but came down hard on these networking sites. So, I did. I cancelled my Facebook account. I'm willing to trust him here - I haven't had any problems with it, but if it's a big enough deal to announce in stake conference, then I'll take his word for it.

This topic has come up lately in conversation, and in another board I frequent - a friend's stake president did the same thing. Before you go any further, watch this clip from The Daily Show
on the subject. Many kudos to Optimistic for bringing it to my attention.

There seems to be a couple of things that people are worried about:
1. Sexual predators - a problem, yes, but nothing unique to online social networks. If this is the reasoning, then message boards and blogs probably need to go, too.
2. Kids forming "virtual" friendships instead of real friendships - a reasonable worry, I guess. A market researcher did a study and found that, to a great degree, the time spent garnering "virtual friends" is time that would otherwise be spent alone watching TV. That's kind of how I feel about it, but I understand the worry.

Austin said he quit his MySpace account a while ago because it went too far - weird people wanting to be his "friend," people masquerading as something they're not, bots trying to generate traffic to porn sites. I'm not sure what's wrong with Facebook, though... it seems to be a bit more on the tame side. I like Facebook because it has allowed me to stay in touch with friends from high school, that I haven't had any other contact with.

Has anybody else gotten this counsel from Priesthood leaders? Did you close your account? I closed mine, but I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has thoughts on the topic.

Be Somebody!

I have become increasingly surprised at the number of people I run into who have never heard of Mr. T. I was always under the impression that the man was one of the icons of our generation. I mean seriously... The A-Team rocked. So I have taken it upon myself to enlighten all who will read.

We will start out with a blurb from wikipedia:

Mr. T (born Laurence Tureaud, May 21, 1952) is an actor known for his roles in the 1980s television series The A-Team and as boxer Clubber Lang in the 1982 film Rocky III.

Laurence Tureaud was born in Chicago, Illinois, the eleventh of twelve children; he and his four sisters and seven brothers grew up in the city's housing projects. He was a college football star, studied martial arts, and won a scholarship to Prairie View A&M University, Texas, but was thrown out after a year.

For about nine years Mr. T was a bodyguard to the stars, protecting such well-known personalities as Muhammad Ali, Michael Jackson, and Diana Ross. He charged around $3,000 a day and his business card famously read, "Next to God, there is no better protector than I." He always boasts that he never lost a client, saying, "I got hurt worse growing up in the ghetto than working as a bodyguard."

In 1970 he changed his name by deed poll from Laurence Tureaud to Laurence Tero and then in 1980 to "Mr. T" so that people would have to address him as "Mr."

It was while reading National Geographic that Mr. T first saw the unusual hairstyle for which he is now famous, on an African Mandinka warrior. He decided that adopting the style was a powerful statement about his African origins.

A friend of mine the other day somehow got his hands on an old motivational video that Mr. T did back in the 80s. I have seen few things in my life as funny as this. One of the segments on the video is a rap that Mr. T wrote about "Mothers." You should check out this clip if you haven't seen it already.

I also recently found out that he released a rap CD in about the same year... I am going to see if I can get my hands on some of the tracks.

There are better ways.

So, while I have still never been arrested, I came pretty close a few nights ago. We decided to try some guerilla marketing. We cut out some stencils of the site, and darn near perfected the method of chalking the website onto asphalt. We erroneously assumed that it wouldn't cause much of a legal snafusis, but on the last spot of ground we were going to tag, it all went sour. A couple of security guards saw us and wondered what was going on. Not really wanting to take the time to explain it all to them, we...uhh...we bolted. Ya, we panicked and bolted. But I am a little dense, and had my car parked there illegally. When we went back about 30 minutes later, there were two cop cars, taking my plates and making some calls. I knew I wasn't going to get out of this, so I went to talk to them.
They played the "Good Cop, Bad Cop" routine to a capitol T. They said they had been on the phone with a tow truck when I came (that coulda' been pricey) and they were about to come to my apartment to question me. They ran the seriel number on my car stereo to make sure it wasn't stolen. Was that for dramatic effect? But long story short, they made us clean it up, and by the end of it all, they thought it was pretty funny, I mean the business and the shirts and all.
Oh, and Bad Cops parting word: "You can bet that most of the guys down at the station will be checking out your site. Who knows, maybe they'll buy a shirt or two."

BYUSA elections: Y?

Is anybody else really, really bothered by BYUSA elections this year? Wow.

In past years it's something that I have smirked at, but had a gentleman's agreement with - I leave them alone, and they leave me alone. This year, though, it's gotten out of hand. I can't walk around campus without hearing the Official Oldie of one candidate or another - and it seems that color schemes are a major part of political platforms this year.

I'm told that about 1,000 people voted in last year's election - out of about 30,000 BYU students (quick math: that's 1/30th, or around 3%). Only 1,000 cared enough to vote! That sure sucks the credibility out of it. I'd suggest that a good portion of that 1,000 will vote no matter what, and also that a good portion of that 30,000 will NOT vote, no matter what. Targeted advertising is a wonderful thing - sell yourselves to the people that are actually going to vote. You're only alienating the rest of the student body.

BYUSA differs from other student governments because, well, it's not a student government.
I'm sure they do wonderful things, but I've never noticed an iota of difference from one year to the next due to different leadership. Whether that's a result of BYUSA's lack of influence or just the sheer homogeneity of the candidates, I'm not sure we could tell. Perhaps both.

I'd be interested to hear from anyone who disagrees with me. If you can make a compelling enough case for BYUSA, I'll kick around the idea of voting before ultimately deciding not to.

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Celebrity Lookalikes

Well, we finally got the website up and looking mostly respectable, but it means I am left trying to write my first blog entry at 1 in the morning. Not when I am generally most lucid.

I do however have a fun website that everyone should know about. I discovered it thanks to my Spanish Teacher, Bob Valentine, father of the lead guitarist of the band Maroon 5. This website is called myheritage.com.

On the myheritage website you can upload a picture of yourself, and it will analyze it and run a comparison on the photos in its celebrity database. You can see which celebrity you most look like! Here are my results for this particular photo:

Julianne Moore (55%)
Emma Watson (51%)

Emma Watson, eh? She is pretty cute. But also a girl. What else we got here...

Grace Kelly (50%)
Mariah Carey (48%)

Okay... still no guys. This is a little discouraging.

Katie Holmes (44%)

At least I look like attractive girls, right? Is that a good thing?

Patrick Stewart (44%)
Gilbert Becaud (43%)

Ah sweet. Finally some men. But Patrick Stewart? Is that really any better. And Gilbert Becaud? Who is that. Turns out he is a French singer. Not better.

Orlando Bloom (41%)

The Light at the End of the Tunnel! Famous. Good-looking. Now we are getting somewhere.

If you want to see more of my results, you can stop by my apartment blog.

To try it yourself, head here.

The Wonders of Modern Technology

I recently saw on campus the engineering students next to the Clyde Building working on their maze navagating autonomous robot and wondered about some of the projects we have here at "The BYU", as my grandmother would say. I love technology, robots, and the sort, but I wish we could have more focus on practical application. The quintessential example of what we should be sinking our time and money into is exemplified in this piece of magic at MIT. Please, please, please watch the video, and take special note of the androgenous banshee speaking the native tongue of its creation.

NOTE: Tone of voice unfortunately doesn't come across in blogging. This is all dripping with sarcasm, and that should become clear when you watch the video. So watch the video now.

Hasselhoff: Not Since the Beatles

I came across this video recently - okay, I saw it in class.
David Hasselhoff - Hooked on a Feeling

It's priceless for several reasons, enumerated here:

• It's David Hasselhoff
• It appears to be serious
• It's the worst video work I've ever seen
• Yeah, it's David Hasselhoff

Apparently he's a big thing in Europe. His first album went triple platinum and won him "Most Popular and Best Selling Artist of the Year" in Germany. He sang at the coming down of the wall, for crying out loud. Does anybody have any insight on how something like this can be so popular? Or perhaps this isn't representative of his normal stuff?
What makes this even more fun is that he tried to launch his singing career in the U.S. with a performance on TV - however, on that evening, O.J. Simpson decided to flee from the law by driving his white Bronco at maddeningly slow speeds on the freeway, so nobody saw the concert. I'm not convinced, though, that that's the only reason he's not popular here. Even his name is funny.
Anyway - you've got to see this video, if you haven't already. Oh man.