It's been a good day.

Today I asked my best friend to marry me.

And she said yes.

Pirate church.

I went to Anne's ward today. It had a pirate theme.

When we arrived, we were greeted by a gentleman with an eyepatch. The real-deal black eyepatch. He knew Anne, but introduced himself to me (I think his name was Smee, but I'm a little fuzzy on that). He then made some comment about how he'd been keeping an eye out for her. That was almost too much—there were guts exploding out of my back as I resisted the one-eye joke. Oh man.

The speakers were a couple who had just returnde from their mission. That meant that they had a whole crew of family in the congregation—several rows' worth—including a autistic grandson. This grandson was apparently on board (get it?) with the whole pirate theme, because he kept shouting "ahoy!" every few minutes during Sacrament Meeting. It was awesome.

There were a few more cool things about that meeting, though they depart from the theme. There was a musical number by a lady named Ans (pronounced "ahns"... like Hans without the H). Her husband? Frans. Ans and Frans. I was pumped.

Anyway, the musical number was scheduled for after the couple had spoken, but before the final speaker (high council). The musical number had already been announced, but by the time the couple had finished speaking the meeting had already run over. Unsure of whether she was still on, Ans called from the back of the chapel: "DO YOU STILL WANT ME?" They did, and she did her song. But I don't think I've ever heard anybody shout from the congregation like that.

All in all, it was a great meeting. I'm gonna go again.

Kinko's, a surprise friend, and me.

I went to Kinko's last night, around 1:30 AM.

I prefer going to Kinko's in the middle of the night—you don't have to wait for your stuff, the person behind the counter is willing to help, and sometimes they let you use the saddle-stitch stapler yourself. On this particular visit I had some portfolios cut, and went to find some counter space to settle down with said stapler. I assumed I was, as usual, alone in the store. If I was, it wouldn't be making an interesting story now.

This Kinko's had a somewhat different layout than other locations I'd been to. The counter, featuring friendly sales representatives, is on the left when you walk in. To the right are the self-service printers and copiers, and then around a corner, out sight of the staff members, is a bank of desks for plugging in laptops. And at the last desk I found my friend. A hobo, sleeping.

It was actually a female hobo (hoba). She had her head down on the desk and seemed to be sound asleep. She stood a good chance of not being discovered, because (a) she was quiet, and (b) the staff people probably didn't have any reason to go looking back there. Kinko's was probably a pretty good place to spend the night—it was a pleasant temperature, and soft music was playing. I actually enjoyed that this particularly hobo had found such a good, clean place... it's nice to see a hobo who takes pride in their work (hobo pride = hobris).

I didn't turn her in or anything. The last thing you want is to be blacklisted with the hobo community.

(gratuitous hobo picture)

I'm just crazy, really.

People who have lost a limb often have phantom sensations that the limb is still there and attached to the body. It happens a lot more than you might expect—50% to 80% of amputees report it—and it is generally said to be painful.

Beyond just pain, though, is the concept of having an actual phantom limb. Some people report that their phantom limb makes gestures as they talk. Particularly compelling is this example, which shows that the phantom feelings are not abstract physiological white noise, but rather specific and concrete:

I placed a coffee cup in front of John and asked him to grab it [with his phantom limb]. Just as he said he was reaching out, I yanked the cup away.
"Ow!" he yelled. "Don't do that!"
"What's the matter?"
"Don't do that", he repeated. "I had just got my fingers around the cup handle when you pulled it. That really hurts!"
Hold on a minute. I wrench a real cup from phantom fingers and the person yells, ouch! The fingers were illusory, but the pain was real - indeed, so intense that I dared not repeat the experiment.

They used to think that the sensation was caused by something in the nerve endings where the limb was supposed to be, so they'd try amputating a little bit more of the stump. This only complicated the problem, though—people afterward would not only continue to have the phantom limb sensation, but would also experience phantom feelings of the stump that was also now gone.

What happens is that the brain reorganizes when it finds that sensory input is cut off from that limb. The somatosensory cortex, which receives the data, will instead start taking data from another area of the body—thus the brain doesn't figure out that the limb is gone, because it starts to again receive sensory data indicating that all is well.

And sometimes when I don't have my phone with me I still feel it vibrating in my pocket.

A Positive Consumer Experience.

Every once in a while I have a Positive Consumer Experience. And I like to share them because I like to reward the company for being awesome.

Today's winner is the online ordering from Old Navy. I've always liked Old Navy, but this was my first time ordering online. I did so because I was getting a pair of shoes, and most of their physical locations don't have shoes.

The problem with ordering shoes online is that you have to guess the size. I guessed 10, and I was wrong. They were too small. So I knew I'd have to ship them back, and it would be this big problem that would cost me more money.

Not so.

Old Navy puts a pre-paid return shipping sticker in the bag with your stuff. But that's not all, oh no. The bag it came in is resealable. You can just put the thing back in the bag, slap the shipping sticker on it, and drop it at UPS. Doesn't cost a cent of shipping. I couldn't believe it. If you want, they'll even send you the new item before you return the old one, and credit you back the cost once they get the old one. Impressive.

They're awesome shoes, too. Wool shoes? Rad.

Mad props to Old Navy for providing today's Positive Consumer Experience. Go buy things from them.

A cool shirt.

I got a cool shirt yesterday. At work.

It's from the Truth campaign, which has been one of my favorite ad campaigns for a while. It's the anti-smoking one... encouraging kids to not start smoking. It's cool stuff. And it comes from CP+B.


The shirt is a "secondhand shirt," meaning that it's actually an old shirt that they've turned inside out and printed on. On the front it lists the names of some poisonous chemicals. And on the back it says, "All of the chemicals on this secondhand shirt are also in secondhand smoke." There's your concept.



But only focusing on the concept means ignoring the extreme coolness of this shirt. For one thing, it's an inside-out t-shirt, which is terrific. I'm including a detail picture of a seam, and as you can see, there's even a big string hanging off. Awesome.


But it's also definitely just an old shirt, and you can see the original printing through it (look closely at the second picture above). This one was for "Malibu Caribbean Rum with natural coconut flavor." Could there be a cooler shirt than this? Maybe. But I won't know until I've turned many more shirts inside out and printed on them.

One year older, and wiser too.

My blog is one year old today. Woohoo.


This is the 86th post, creating a mean of 7.167 posts per month, or one post every 4.24 days.

Stats for number of posts, by month:
Mean = 7.167
Median = 5
Modes = 3, 4, 5, 8, 10
Min = 1 (November)
Max = 14 (January)
Standard Deviation = 3.609
Variance = 13.026

My first post was the story about the big black man yelling at me on the subway. And it's still one of the better ones.

Things Britons say.

This is an account of an actual conversation between me and my British roommate last night. I promise.

My roommate, who I'll call Dave, was thinking of things we needed to get from the store. "Oh," he said, "we need more liquid."

"All right..." I paused. "What kind of liquid?"

"Oh, you know, washing up liquid."

This was a term I'd never heard before, and as he wrote "washing up liquid" on the dry-erase board I had a good chuckle to myself.

"You mean soap?" I asked finally.

"You just call that soap? For washing up?" He gestured to the dishes in the sink.

"Yeah. Or dish soap, at most."

He seemed a bit bothered by the number of things we call soap—from hand soap to dish soap to normal bars of soap, which is the only soap that he calls soap. But "washing up liquid"? Wow. Wow wow wow.

In my own defense, he got a kick out of when I called a portable stereo a "boombox." I'll concede that "boombox" (box go boom!) is about as cool a name as "washing up liquid."

A question, for everyone.

Would you wear pants with a velcro fly?

PROS:
Your fly would NEVER be open. In the act of buttoning the top button, your fly would just close. And the button would keep it from accidentally pulling open, or anything. No stuck zippers, no series of buttons to button, just pure fly-related confidence.

CONS:
- The sound, when you open it.
- Velcro has to be topstitched, but they could cover up the stitches. I'm not too worried about that.
- The lint accumulation problem. I've never personally had this problem, but it would seriously damage my fly-is-never-open argument.
- It would have to be very flexible velcro, so that it wouldn't be too stiff in such a crucial area. But jeans are fairly stiff anyway, so maybe it's a moot point.

So? Would you?

Bullet points again.

These aren't all of general interest. Sorry.

• Last week I touched the Titanium Grand Prix and Interactive Agency of the Year trophies from the Cannes Lions.
• Yesterday in Sacrament Meeting a guy talked about how he took an Astrology class in college that made him feel closer to God. Pretty sure he meant Astronomy.
• This was in an email from Jeff, about the Ad Lab: "...and still have a ton of Ad Council work. They tell us we are their largest agency."
• Saw the Harry Potter movie on Saturday. Bellatrix is awesome. They should do a whole series of movies about her.
• This is the coolest website ever: www.simpsonizeme.com. You upload a picture of yourself, and it makes you look like you would on The Simpsons.
• I saw somebody wearing a Goorin hat at work last week.
  
• The snogging in the HP movie wasn't as bad as it could have been. That said, there's a billion times more of it in book 6. So I'm sure we'll get an eyeful before these movies are done.
• We've been piggybacking on somebody's unsecured wireless network and home. Except now they've secured it. Dang.
  
• I can not, and will not, live without internet at home. And if that means paying for it, well... so be it.
• I'm about halfway done with my internship, I think. And the prospect of having to get a real job scares the lights out of me.
  

It was like... magic.

I went to the library a few days ago. I'd just finished Catch-22, which was tremendous, and I needed another book to read.

I decided, on a whim, to see if they had a copy of Harry Potter, book 6. I knew it would be fruitless, though. I'm pretty sure that every copy in the world is checked out, so people can reread it before the 7th book comes out (which is exactly what I had in mind). When I looked it up on the library computer, all the copies were indeed checked out, except for one—which indicated it was in a section called "Basement Children."

There were no stairs, so I got in the elevator to go down to the basement. Only it didn't go down to a basement.

After looking around a little bit, I consulted the librarian at the front desk. She told me there wasn't a way that I could get to "Basement Children," but that she could go get the book for me. This is where it gets interesting.

She took a set of keys out of her desk, and walked to the wall. Neatly disguised by the wood paneling on the wall, was a hidden door. She opened the door in the wall and disappeared down a flight of stairs. She came back up a few minutes later, indicating that luckily the book had just barely been checked back in, otherwise she wouldn't have been able to find it.

I was pleased to get the book, for sure. But what's the deal with "Basement Children"? And the hidden door? Is there a vault down there? What else is in it?

So many questions.

Pam Pong. Lyrics and chords.

I'm obsessed with The Office. Like, actually obsessed. And there's a pretty good chance that you are too, if I have any idea who reads my blog.

It turns out there's a great fan-created song about Pam, called Pam Pong, by Sweet Diss and the Comebacks. Most fan-created content is crap. But this song is well-written and well-performed. Do you think I'm allowed to put an mp3 here? Regardless, I can email it to you if you want to hear it. And you probably do.

The mere existence of the song doesn't prove that I'm obsessed with The Office. But the fact that I transcribed the chords, and am posting them here, does.

Verse:
A Fmaj7 A Fmaj7 G (4x)

Chorus:
C Fmaj7 C Fmaj7
C Fmaj7 C Fmaj7 G

The other part:
C Dm Am D G (4x)

And here are the episode-reference-laden lyrics. They're actually quite charming:

She will make up her hair, but she can’t make up her own mind
She will answer the phones, but she can’t answer her own heart
She’s the kind of girl you see, whose smile could light The Electric City
She’s the kind of girl you know that you could marry just to show you care

So, how are you Beesly? Who’s getting you down?
You know that you tease me when no one’s around everyday.

Catherine Zeta flirts, Bobblehead Joe has fireworks
The boss is already out, he’ll Schrute it up, I have no doubt.
She’s the kind of girl you’d adore, that you could make your famous cheese sandwich for.
And dance until the music stops; Look into her eyes, tell her how you feel.

So, how are you Beesly? Who’s getting you down?
You know that you tease me when no one’s around everyday.

She said ‘Swaying isn’t dancing’ and any idiot could tell you that
I was crushed and what I said to her was so mean and then, I walked away from
the girl I love, the girl I need, the girl I deeply care about;
the girl I want, the girl I desire, the girl I simply can’t live without

We hiked Garden of the Gods.

Isn't it about... time?

I haven't really taken it upon myself to put ads up here in the past. But I thought this one was worth sharing.


The site, as you were probably wondering, is Thesaurus.com. I'm not sure who decided that thesaurus users are the most likely to have severe underarm sweating, but oh well.

Also, I hope the lady in the picture gets her big break from doing this.

Feliz Cuarto de Julio.

A few thoughts from the last few days.

As of July 3rd, it's been five years since I went into the MTC. Five years. I can't believe I've even been alive that long.

I just spent the last day or two in the company of an extremely pregnant woman, and she was really, really hard to be around. I'm sure not all women are so unpleasant before childbirth, but this particular one was worthy of a certain appellation I've never felt comfortable saying. Wow.

I hope everybody had a good 4th of July. We made pupusas and chili rellenos. It was great, albeit not entirely American.

I like pop music. Not necessarily everything that's on the radio, and in fact I'm a bit behind in popular music, but I like the lack of pretension that comes with pop. Most performers don't take themselves too seriously. And it's refreshing.

I really like my job. And by job I mean internship.

That's all, really.

Things we studied in my junior-year high school english class.

• Self-important, hyper-feminist literature selected by the teacher to compensate for the feelings of hopelessness and conformity caused her solitary, oppressed life.

• "The Awakening," by Kate Chopin.

Three similar acronyms I have heard, two of which are vulgar and one of which is pleasant.

• BFD

• BFE

• BFF
  

I must have missed the first ten.

Saw Ocean's 13 yesterday.

It's good. If you liked Ocean's 11, you'll like this one almost as much, because it's a rewrite of the same movie. Casino heist for revenge. It's a good premise. Then load down the movie with Hollywood superstars, and it's hard to go wrong. This one's a bit more convoluted than 11, and less exciting, but it's not bad.

I need to provide some background before I say anything more about 13, so let's leave that for a moment and talk a bit about 11.

Ocean's 11 was the epitome of cool. The music was cool, the visual stylings were cool, and it starred a bunch of cool guys wearing cool clothes. And they said cool things. It was cool, through and through. And I think it's sort of a tribute to the more golden years of Hollywood.

And I know it's a remake of a Rat Pack movie, but I'm not talking about that at all.

What I'm talking about more is how Ocean's 11 is like an old Fred Astaire movie. Fred Astaire did three things well: sing, dance, and wear a tuxedo. And he did them very well. Thus, in every movie he's in he ends up singing and dancing at some point. And, inexplicably, the plot of the movie always makes it necessary for his character to be wearing a tuxedo the whole time. In several movies he played a performer whose job it was to sing, dance, and wear a tuxedo. It was a recipe for success because he was the best at it, so they wrote his movies around him.

Ocean's 11, I think, is a lot like that... only more so because you bring in a bunch of superstars. George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, etc... any of these guys can (and do) star alone in their own movies. And the first three listed can be pretty cool. Ocean's 11 gives these guys the chance to hang around in sharp-looking clothes and say cool things, just because they're good at it. It's written for them. One would expect that they're hardly even playing characters, as much as they're playing themselves.

Which brings us back to Ocean's 13. The plot doesn't have anything new and worth writing home about. But it's always good to see these guys doing what they do best.

Two things I learned from girls, that contradicted what I might have supposed before.

1. Water is not the appropriate antidote for dry skin. It may seem that if your hands are dry, then water (being wet) would counteract that; apparently, this is not the case. You need lotion instead. Washing your hands repeatedly, or even taking long showers, isn't going to make you moister. At least not for long.

2. Not all girls' clothes have belt loops. If you're a guy, every pair of pants you own has either belt loops or an elastic waistband, so it doesn't totally matter if things fit. You can make any of a number of sizes fit, if you have a belt. But not so with girls' clothes. Apparently, for some things, you have to buy it in just the right size—then if you get any bigger or smaller, it doesn't fit anymore.

You learn something new every day.

The Centennial State.

I write tonight while sitting on my Ikea bed. It's the only piece of furniture in my bedroom, unless you count the cardboard box that I'm using as a nightstand. It's pretty cool.

I'm in Boulder, and it's pretty cool. If you've heard that it's a bit liberal, you're right; if you heard that it's full of hippies, that's true too. It's not a bad thing. Even the lame grocery store near my apartment (King Sooper's) has a huge natural foods section. I tend to prefer the normal processed foods, but I like the social awareness.

I've been at my internship for a week and a day. Some of the stuff I'd heard about it is true, some isn't. There are no cots laid out for people to collapse on when they've worked themselves to exhaustion. It's pretty normal inside. People have desks and offices and soccer teams on the weekends. I expected there to be a chocolate river. But there isn't one.

That said, I came home at 8 pm today and felt like it was getting home early. There's a big difference between this and other jobs, though. At other jobs I've always been counting down the minutes to 5 o'clock. Here, 5 comes and goes and you don't even notice. 6, 7, 8. By the time you look up the sun is going down, and you realize you'll have to pick up where you left off in the morning. I love what I do. What a great job.

This is one of those times where the reward for years of hard work is that you get to start all over again. I gave it everything I had through college to get here, and now I'm at the very bottom of the ladder (an intern... very bottom), looking up. That's cool, though. I've never turned down the challenge before.

Things are good.