Asshats

Well,
My adventures in blogging have spawned new depths of stupidity.
See, I shared this blog with two of my co-workers. For the sake of anonymity, lets call them Matt and Kyle.
Matt started a blog, and the only things I can fault with it are the fact that he calls me a Rat Bastard, and he copied the same template that I use. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so I really didn't throw too big of a fuss. He has some fairly funny stuff out there. Much better than the crap that I spew out.
Kyle saw that everyone else had a blog, and decided on one of his own. Not only did he post the best picture of himself that he could find, he also decided to link back to me. At least the link says it links back to me. Instead he linked to his favorite gay website.
All I can say is "Thanks."

Update:
Kyle has wisely seen the error of his ways, and changed the link on his blog. In fact he has deleted the link entirely.

I don't have anything new to write about.

Not a damn thing.
Just thought I'd share that.

I love nature

I love nature.
Sometimes there is so much breathtaking beauty all around us that it can be darn near overwhelming.
For instance, yesterday as I was out working, I was driving past some trees which were in a horse pasture right next to the road. As I drove past, a whole flock of migratory birds took off from the trees, surrounding my car in a whirlwind of flight.
It was amazing. For about three seconds.
Thats when bird crap began to rain all over my car. It looked as if I had parked under the worlds largest bird cage.
I hate nature.

Star Wars Episode III

I am a pretty big Star Wars geek. I admit I am a fan, but not to the extent of dressing up for movies or anything like that. I saw the local news interviewing some moviegoers who said that they cried, and that the movie changed their lives. All I can think is that there are a large number of fans who need to get a job, move out of their parents basements, and spend a few minutes in the sun to help dim the pasty glow they have aquired from years of spending more time with their gaming consoles than interacting with live human beings.
That being said, this was a pretty good movie. It didn't change my life, but I think that anybody who's lives are changed by something they see via an entertainment medium like movies or television didn't really have much of a life to begin with.
I ended up going to each of the last two movies with a freind who has moved away. He is a pretty big fan too, but he was going to be unable to go to this one until a few days after the release. Since I was going to a midnight showing on the opening day, he made me promise to write him a review the next morning. It contains no spoilers, as he didn't want to know too many details before he gets to see it. After reading it, he suggested that I post it somewhere for others to read, so here it is:

Okay, you wanted a full review, so here it is.
Episode III is without a doubt the best of the prequels, and possibly
the best overall.
I knew going into this, as everybody does, the eventual outcome of the
movie, but it still drew me into the story & I found myself quite
surprised at many of the events. I still found myself expecting the
'good guys' to win as they do in most movies.
Anakin's fall is done quite well, with his internal struggles
portrayed clearly to the audience. They actually spent more time on
this than I had really expected. I had feared that Lucas would make
something like the Emperor saying "Join the dark side, Anakin!" and
Anakin just saying "They don't know how powerful I am! Okay, sign me
up." He actually came through quite brilliantly in overcoming my
admittedly low expectations. Your mileage may vary.
Lucas still doesn't know how to write a love scene. He and Tom Clancy
should be required to attend a course on how to write a love scene.
They are quite possibly two of the worst people on the planet at
writing love scenes, and this includes grade school kids who still
think that the opposite sex has 'cooties'.
Ewan McGregor has done an amazing job of trying to incorporate a
likeness of Alec McGuiness into his portrayal of Obi Wan Kenobi. There
were times, especially near the end, where I was able to make the
mental leap between the two. He does this while remaining a serious
badass.
There were three scenes where I felt the movie was a little too
gruesome. It absolutely deserved the PG-13 rating, and I am seriously
pondering if I should attempt to hide my wifes eyes during these parts
when she sees it. I guess I'm just getting soft or something.
I felt that certian parts of the story were rushed at the end, but at
that point I really didn't care because my bladder was about ready to
explode, due to the movie being just a hair shy of two and a half
hours long. Late night + lots of caffinated beverages + long move =
Floating eyeballs.
Lastly, you are probably wondering about 'The Duel'. After reading so
much about it, I actually found myself feeling like it was a little
short. However, there is enough other lightsaber action throughout the
movie that I really don't feel like the movie was lacking in that
department. On the contrary, I felt that it contained just the right
amount of lightsaber action, which translates to a whole lot.

That's the end of the review. It was a good movie. Go see it.

Wuss part deux

After my last post, I thought things over, and decided to not be such a wuss. What was this girl going to do? Sprout fangs and eat me?
The very next day I ended up in the office again, and this time I decided to get it over with. I said "Hello" as I walked past her. She very curtly snapped "Oh, hi." as she brushed past me.
I started thinking "okay, that wasn't so bad..." as I finished my paperwork. Then another deputy walked in. "Oh, Hi Justin!" she gushed to him. "I'm leaving, but you be careful out there and don't get hurt or anything!" And then it hit me. Her voice was like nails across a blackboard and I had this sudden urge to run for my life. If we took a sample recording of her voice and played it repeatedly through speakers at Iraqi insurgents, they would be begging to surrender, if only to make it stop. It was like a flashback to a combat zone.
Maybe my subconscious instincts were trying desperately to protect me and I mistakenly thought it was fear?

If my wife ends up reading this at some point, thank you dear. Thank you for not having that voice. Thank you for not smothering me in cute pet names, nagging admonishments, and inane babble. Thank you for letting me have freinds. Thank you for knowing when to just let me be an antisocial jerk and be left alone. You truely do not know just how special that can be.

What a wuss

I like to think of myself as a kind of Tough Guy. Not necessarily Dirty Harry or anything, but I generally feel like I can hold my own. I'm an ex-cop. Before that I worked in the maximum security unit for criminals at our state mental hospital. If you're going to be scared of something, a 300 pound psychotic man who thinks you are one of the aliens out to get him should do the trick, but I really didn't mind too much. However, I do have this unnatural fear of spiders and snakes. I can deal with them if I prepare myself mentally, but if one surprises me, I’ll scream like a girl. Give me a guy with a knife or gun any day over a big hairy spider on my skin.

Well, now you can add ex-girlfriends to the list of my unnatural fears. Very recently, a girl I dated almost 10 years ago started working at the same place where I work part time. I was a pretty big jerk when we broke up. We only dated for a few months, but during that time she had managed to go from someone who seemed to share the same interests with me to a nagging almost-spouse. She started to complain about the time I spent with my friends, felt that my hobbies were too dangerous, and generally started trying to change me. You know the old saying “A man marries a woman and hopes she won’t change, while a woman marries a man hoping he will change…” In the short time we dated she had managed to pretty much offend all of my friends and family in some way. Be it telling my best friend that I shouldn’t be going shooting with him because it was much too dangerous, to getting jealous of another very good friend who was a woman (who has always been like another sister to me), to inviting herself to a lunch date my sisters who live in distant states had planned for just themselves to catch up. It became apparent that I really needed to get out, and get out quickly. Instead of being a man and just telling this girl that she was too ‘clingy’, I gave her a very believable BS story about how I was having ‘commitment issues’ as a result of my divorce a couple of years earlier, and that I ‘just needed some space’. I then promptly dropped off the face of the earth without ever talking to her again.

Which brings us back to the present, where she has just started working at the same place I do. Our jobs are very different, with her working a few hours during the day while I work in the evenings. On top of that, aside from receiving my assignment at the start of my shift and returning completed work the next day, I don’t spend any time in the office – I work out in the field – so when I found out that she started working for the office, I laughed and shrugged it off. Right up until today, that is.

Generally I go into the office to return my completed work late enough that under normal circumstances I would never run into this woman, so I really hadn’t mentally prepared myself for any contact with her. Never gave it a second thought. Today was a different story. I went to the office on my lunch break from my full time job, as I often do on days when I’m not working the part time job in the evening. The office is the opposite direction from my house, so I can get a head start on evening traffic if I return the previous nights work during my break. As I pulled in to the parking lot, I spot this girl’s car. “Oh no” I thought to myself as I realized my dilemma. My heart started pounding, my eyes narrowed, and my stomach seemed to drop – classic symptoms of an adrenaline dump. Here I am having a panic reaction at the mere thought of running into this girl. I swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and walked in. There she was, sitting at a desk at the far end of the room, facing away from me. I start to slide over to a computer as far away from her as possible, hoping to check my stuff in and be out of there before she notices, but then I spot her coat hanging on the chair at that computer, and her purse laying against the keyboard. Looks like I’ll have to use the other computer… which is right behind her…

I nonchalantly walk across the room to that computer, silently praying that she will not turn around. Ordinarily I would say hello to someone sitting where she is, but there is no chance in hell that I’m making ANY unnecessary noise. I sit down, with my back to her, and log into the computer. I start checking my work in, and notice that my hands are shaking – that damn adrenaline is still pumping at max levels. While working, I’m trying to figure out how I can extract myself without her at least trying to say hi – she’s way too friendly to not at least do that. Just as I am finishing up, and envisioning myself running from the room like a madman, she gets up and walks to another room, to talk to our boss.

My silent prayers have been answered, and my escape has been provided! Usually I go in and chat with my boss for a minute or two, but there’s no chance of that happening today. I get up and slip out of the office without making any noise. As the door latched quietly behind me, it hit me – I am SUCH A WUSS!

The sins of his father...

"And he walked in all the sins of his father..." 1 Kings 15:3

It's amazing how things you do in your youth can come back to haunt you in later years.
For some, it's those embarrasing brushes with the law. For others, it's the abuse to their bodies from chemical refreshments which do some sort of permanent damage. In my case, it is a certain run in with a high school administrator for which my son may have to pay consequences.

Flash back just over a decade ago, and you would find me in high school, doing my best to avoid school work. I was much more interested in the aerodynamic principles of a frisbee or the laws of motion applied to a football at the park than anything taking place inside a classroom. Throughout the duration of my high school career, there was one Assistant Principal who could not stand my cavalier attitude toward her sacred institution. We shall call her “Rosanna”. I played Ferris Bueller to her Mr. Rooney. She hated me, and I hated her right back. She tried to get me tossed out of my high school and sent to an 'alternative' high school for students with behavior problems, right up through October of my senior year. I had a number of major family issues which had contributed to my delinquency the year before, and now it seemed that had provided her the needed ammunition in order to be victorious.

She called me into her office. “Sit down, Mr. Reid…” she sneered as she closed the door. Then she sat down at her desk and pulled out a small stack of papers. “It seems that I have what I need to finally send you to another school” she said as she searched for a pen. It was at that moment that the door opened, and in walks the Principal, whom I was actually on very good terms with. “I’ll take it from here, Rosanna” she said. She added “and you will no longer be concerned with Mr. Reid. If he has any discipline issues, I will handle them personally. Mr. Reid, if you will follow me please…” and walked out with no further debate. I thought that Rosanna’s head would explode. If looks could kill, her eyes would have opened up with laser beams and obliterated me on the spot. She never spoke another word to me. The principal took me into her office, and asked me to try to be better behaved, and to stay away from Rosanna. That was the end of that particular story in my book. Until recently.

I have a son who is in junior high. He’s a pretty good kid for the most part. His mother and I ended our relationship before he was born, but I try to spend as much time with him as I can. You know, the usual ‘every other weekend, one night a week' thing. Up until now, I’ve tried to be very involved in his schooling. I went to his school more than a few times to deal with the inevitable trips to the principals office, to meet with teachers, and the like. But it seems that Rosanna has had some advancements in her career over the last decade. She is now the principal of my son’s junior high school. She doesn't know that he is my son, because he has a different last name. I really don't want her to find out that I am related to him, because I know she is vindictive enough to take some of her unfulfilled frustrations from her previous experience with me on him. Now, when my son gets into trouble, I have to ask my wife to help me out in these situations, and she worries (rightfully so) about creating a rift in her relationship with him.

I guess that the moral of the story is that you may not want to torch the bridge, just in case your kids have to cross it…

People Change

A few nights ago, I was working my part-time job as a constable. I went to this one house, and in speaking to the woman who resided there, I found that I was actually trying to reach her in-laws. (They had apparently registered their car at her address) I was asking questions about how to reach her in-laws whe she stopped me and asked "Don't I know you?"
I get that question about 10 times a day, and usually its because at some time in the past I have either served them some court paper or arrested them. These people are not usually ones that I want to have a conversation with, so I answered with the usual "No." She persisted, asking my name, which I gave to her. (Nevermind that its on the photo ID hanging around my neck...) She asked "Did you grow up in Provo?" Only about 150,000 people in Provo, no worries yet... "Did you work at Ream's in high school?" Okay, now my mind is racing. This woman knows me, but I don't know her, which is a situation I find uncomfortable... and then it hits me.
When I worked at Ream's grocery store back in high school, I had worked with this girl. A few of my freinds were interested in her, and as such, she had become the topic of more than a few conversations. While she had a very pretty face, she had other features that could only be described as spectacular. Two of them to be exact. They weren't oversized or anything, they were accurately described as 'perky'. So thats how we referred to her in our conversations. "Did you get a look at Perky today? She looks good tonight!" "Hey, are you going to finally ask Perky out?" Now that I've identified her, I exclaim excitedly "Oh! You're Per... You worked at the camera bar, right?" She was excited that I remembered her, and in the midst of her asking questions about how I'm doing and how I've been for the last 10 years or so, she somehow misses the fact that I am trying not to wince from the pain I am feeling for biting my tongue so hard. Seems she's gotten married, had a few kids, and had just a typical life so far.

And no, they aren't perky anymore...

Hello there

Well, If you've managed to end up here then you obviously didn't check the map.
I've decided to finally put some random thoughts out there on the web to share.
Hope you find what you're looking for.

Ted