2.5 Things about me.

1. I have never read any one's "25 things about me" list.

2. It's only because no one has ever tagged me in one.

3. People think I'm not cool enough. Well, everyone will feel pretty foolish on March 4, 2010 when I...

I hope you enjoyed my 2.5 things. If you would like to subscribe to my newsletter "Things about Kyle : Short Lists for the Listless" please tell me a way that I could make money by getting subscribers to a newsletter and what I should include in such a newsletter.

Valentine's Day

Wow, I can't believe I have been blogging long enough for this to be my 4th Valentine's Day post. This time I got to spend it with my wife. We had a very cultural day. When I say cultural, I mean we got to explore a culture that neither of us was very familiar with. It's a culture of tattoos on men, women, and children. It's a culture of cigarette smoke, beer, and saturated fat. It's a culture of dirt, exhaust, and deafening noise. It's the culture of Monster Trucks. We were very moved by the experience. I think I cried a little.

There's this girl I know who's really awesome. If it weren't for her I would probably never do anything. I would just sit and stare at a wall until the second coming, or a Charles in Charge reunion movie. She's an amazing friend to me and a lot of other people. More importantly, she's an amazing enemy to all of my enemies. (That's right Calista Flockhart, you'd better watch your back) People can count on her. I've only known her for a little over two years, but it's hard to believe that anything existed before her. I love to see her laugh. I wish I could record a video of her laughing, put it on repeat, and play it on some futuristic contact lenses all day, and when anyone asked me why I was so happy to see them, I'd simply reply, "It has nothing to do with you, someone else is making me happy". This girl managed to take the ashes of my self-esteem, reconstitute them into living matter, piece together the broken fragments, smooth all the rough edges, and shine it up like a brand spankin' new monster truck. Plus, as time goes on, and life gets to me, she's always there to apply a new coat of wax. She puts up with my ridiculous metaphors and similes like a hyrax puts up with its closest living relative, the elephant. Her initials were RKA, but now they're RKV. She got married around the same time I did. Her husband is an okay guy, but I like being around him a lot more when she's there. I love her.

Wow I'm starving and need to eat something STAT. By the way, just to remove doubt from anyone's mind, I was talking about Becca.

Korean

Here is an English phrase.
How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?

Here is the same phrase translated to Korean and back into English.
How many which lick where does many this it; In order to get in the justice center has and goes; Tootsie lists Pop?

Here is the resulting phrase run though the translation a second time.
Do many this in it where, how many which licks probably is many; Is having and that gets from the process center, goes; Do Tootsie rosters break?

A third time.
The many thing stamp how many is many, is many and probably and this from it which licks in the place; Is having and it goes and from the processing center, gets; Do Tootsie rosters cut off?

Lost in Translation - A poem by Kyle

For which thing which lick to be many,
from place how many is many,
and is, the thing stamp which is many,
the many thing and probably and is this from it;
Is having and it gets
and from the processing center, goes;
Tootsie rosters which are intercepted?

Critical Thinking Exercise 1

In school, teachers would assign the exercises at the end of the chapters. I always loved to hear the words, "Go ahead and skip the critical thinking exercises." Now I want to go back and complete the exercises I skipped; starting with elementary school.

Directions: For each number, explain what the words have in common.

1. California, New York, Mississippi
Nothing. They're not even in the same state. duh...

2. Pizza, French fries, Cheeseburger
They all played a part in killing John Candy.

3. Rose, Daffodil, Carnation
Girls who would have dumped me had I dated them.

4. Washington, Lincoln, Clinton
The -un sound.

5. Red, Blue, Purple
The personality types of my closest friends, and the color purple.

6. Radio, Telephone, CD player
Things I could steal and sell at Jumping Jack Cash pawn shop.

7. Milk, Juice, Soda pop
Things that should only be mixed and consumed when in desperate need of getting a girl's attention in the lunch room.

8. Basketball, Football, Soccer
Things I've always been ashamed of not being good at, but that I am still forced to do in school. The principal causes of embarrassment, trauma, and depression.

9. Newspaper, Book, Magazine
Things that are inferior to Wikipedia, no matter what every BYU english teacher says.

10. Cow, Pig, Horse
Lieutenants in His Majesty's Royal Navy

Beauty

This post is dedicated to some of Nature's more beautiful creations.

The Giant Chinese Salamander


The Star-nosed Mole


The Blobfish


The Slimy Hagfish


The Hairy Angler


The Angelina Jolie

Insight

I hear that Whitney is back from the cold cold land of mother Russia! That would be great, but I don't believe that she's really back. You see, bitofwhit hasn't been updated. If AAAAhhhhhwwwwhit were really back, she would update bitofwhit.

Here's some insight into how my mind works. I always buckle my seat belt. For example, if I'm driving back from Smith's which is two blocks away I'll think, "maybe I won't buckle my seatbelt", but then I always do. Here's the reason. It would be really embarrassing to get in a car accident and die because I wasn't wearing my seatbelt. The thought of some news woman putting on a serious face and saying, "A 24 year-old was killed in an automotive accident this Saturday night on his way home from buying hemorrhoid cream. The driver was not wearing his seatbelt" makes me cringe.

Short

I'm blogging from our new wii. It takes a long time, so I will only write that which is most important for the future of the human race. MEATLOAF ROCKS!!! Wow I kind of feel like Nephi.

To Defend My Honor

Becca's picture of our tree made it look tiny! It's not that small. Really. Here's a picture of us standing in front of it. You can clearly see that when put in the proper perspective, it's really a great tree. Here's to you Charlie Brown.

Wordy Water Way Wacky

A co-worker brought this in to work yesterday. It's a real advertisement from a real magazine. Believe me. This is not your ordinary hoody.

Wow. Those are some interesting facts. I mean, of course I knew that the intent of words can change the structure of water. That's basic chemistry/linguistics, but there is no way that we are 70% water. It's absolutely ridiculous. It's amazing what kind of stuff people will make up to earn a buck (in this case 79 bucks). Why don't they just market mugs with positive words written on them? That would make more sense. There's no reason to lie about the make up of the human body. It made them lose all credibility. If I end up buying these for every single friend and family member, It will be because of the giant DNA molocule eating Earth, and not the words printed on the inside, that's for dang sure.

I WIN

There was an election tonight, and it turns out that I won. I would like to thank everyone who voted. I will do my best to not destroy this country. In the next four years I plan to employ a strict program of eugenics. Give me four years of complete submission and I will make Americans stronger, taller, faster, and less diverse. For the economy, I will pay off all our debt. That's something I like to do. First, I'll sell California and New York to the Japanese. That should make some money. Don't worry. I don't want to lose California or New York permanently. We're going to play a little "Trojan horse" game on the Japanese. After we sell it, Californians and New Yorkers will simply revolt. Become their own countries for a few months, and then decide to join the union again. A union with no debt and a robot senate. What about abortion? Well, I say we let the babies decide. We should raise the "to be aborted" baby to the age of 18 and then let it choose if it should be aborted or not. That's fair isn't it? Illegal immigration? Let's just make all immigration legal! Then it won't be a problem. What should we do about Iraq? We'll ignore it. People are bored with it. I also propose we change the flag. Here's what it will now look like. 

It's a frog fighting a snake. I'd salute that. And you will too. 

CB's Ex

I didn't know Council Bluffs's old flame was still in town. Emily had better keep a close eye on him.

Lightning Strikes the Brittle Vein in the Forehead of my Mind

Kyle here, just sitting on the couch watching School of Rock and remembering the time I rented it and took it to Idaho with Lashley and Tania in search of the elusive Civil Defense Caves, tore up my car, had a lot of fun, ran around on a sand dune, had a lot of fun, and drove home while Lashley and Tania watched School of Rock in the back seat. I take credit for their future together. I wonder what they're up to? 

I saw the car of Council Bluffs's old girlfriend today. Picture to be posted soon. 

Also, it's Becca's birthday month! If you see her wish her a happy birthday. It's also my Mom's birthday month! If you see her wish her a happy birthday too. If you see me, don't wish me a happy birthday. You see it's not my birthday month. You see how that goes? I don't know what I'm talking about. 

Tip of the Day - Optimism

Optimism is all about seeing the good in every situation. For example, let's say someone insults the cut of your jib and get's up in your grill every time you see them. Look on the bright side! One day they will be dead and no one will miss them! Let's say you fail an important math exam. Look on the bright side! Seinfeld is probably on! Actually, that's the silver lining in every cloud. 

"I'm sorry, you are terminally ill and only have one month to live....and your dog likes Gilmore Girls"

"Does Seinfeld still exist?"

"Yes"

"Great!"

Large Hobo

Alan owes me a new pair of pants, because a receipt of his made me wet mine. What is a large hobo? I found this image online. It's only one number off the number on his receipt. Hmmm...Sinister. His hobo must have been one of another color. 

After further investigation, I discovered that this must be the large hobo he was talking about. That thing will pay for itself in no time at all. 

Tip of the Day - Teamwork

Teamwork is the art of making people do things for you and making them feel guilty if they don't. I'm not a fan of teamwork because I'm usually the one who is teamworked and not the one teamworking. If anyone ever approaches you with a proposition of teamwork you need to ask them a question followed by a répondre toujours The question is, Whose team? No matter what answer they give, tell them to take their communist propaganda and socioeconomize it with their communal hammer and sickle.

Bear Grylls, Expensive Cars, etc...

Tonight will be a relaxing evening at home with my wife. Becca isn't feeling well, so rest and plenty of fluids will be our nightlife. She's sitting right next to me reading a book about Bear Grylls that I gave her for her Birthday last year. Becca, what's your favorite thing about Bear Grylls? "He has a nephew named Mungo". I think her true favorite thing is the way he drinks his own urine, or compares the color of his urine to the color of his friend's urine. Tonight we also need to clean the house so that Christy never knows how messy our apartment usually is. In it's current state I doubt that Bear Grylls himself could make it from the door to the kitchen. And if he did, he'd have to drink his own urine on the way. 

I'm introducing a new feature on my blog. It's the Tip of the Day. The Tip of the Day doesn't represent the views or opinions of this blogger or his followers. It's meant to be either satirical, sarcastic, silly, or just plain stupid. I love playing devil's advocate. I'd make it a career, but the devil doesn't offer a good 401K. And he doesn't have any scruples. I just can't respect an unholy demon bent on the destruction and captivity of our souls that doesn't have any scruples. 

Tip of the Day - Family Finance

The only way to have enough money to pay for your children's college education is to not have any kids. Is this extreme? Maybe it's possible to do it by just having one less kid. First, decide how many children you want and then have one less. Let's say that number is four for the sake of this tip. It costs about 736,000 dollars to raise four children in a middle class home in the United Stated. If you only have three, you save 184,000 dollars! That leaves you with more than 60,000 dollars per kid. That will pay for a top of the line education. If you're really good at family finance, you won't have a family at all. With that 736,000 dollar "no kid bonus", you could buy this LeBlanc Mirabeau and enough gas to run it for twenty years.

It's a two-seater, which is great. Enough room for you and your groceries on your way back to your lonely apartment so you can eat two and a half bags of Doritos and then lick the processed cheese powder off your fingers while watching Cheaper by the Dozen. 

Jerry-man-der-ring

I spy with my little telescopic spy mirror...something....Bungee-y!!!!!!








I spy with my little telescopic spy mirror...something....Camera-y!!!!!!

I spy with my little telescopic spy mirror...something....Bird-y!!!!!!

I spy with my little telescopic spy mirror...something....Creep-y!!!!!!

Tied for first place in the greatest sister-in-law competition is Katy Anderson. She gave me a telescopic spy mirror and some bungee cords. Eternal gold medalist in the greatest wife competition, Becca Vaughn, has a great eye for things that I will think are the cat's meow. You should see the cuff links she got me. Yowsers! They rock. She is back in school and loving every minute of it. I'm excited to vicariously learn some Welsh through her. Here is an acrostic describing my adorable wife.

Bear Grylls Enthusiast
Empathetic
Caring
Capri Sun
Arsonist-NOT

Venerable
All That and a Bag of Chips
Uber Classy
Great
Heart of Gold
Norse God of Wisdom...Pretty much

It Needs a Name

What is this? It's the best picture I've ever drawn. It's a picture of the moon escaping backwards from a lasso happy pair of legs with a head and a cowboy hat stuck on somehow. All it needs is a good title. If you want to post a suggestion I would greatly appreciate it. You can also think of something funny and just laugh to yourself without ever telling anyone. I would greatly appreciate that too. Or you can spit at your computer screen in disgust. I wouldn't appreciate it. Your computer wouldn't appreciate it. But you might, so hey. 

I used to feel like that moon. Other times I'd feel like the cowboy, or the lasso. I'm happy to say that at this moment and as of late, I don't feel like anything in this drawing (with the exception of the color teal). I'm pretty happy. I'm not chasing anything. I'm not being chased by anything. I'm not being used by a torso-less cowboy. I'm actually pretty happy. I'm just enjoying life, hanging out with my wife, avoiding strife, sharpening a knife*, and thinking about Chuck Fife. We're out of debt now which feels pretty nice, so now we're saving up for the future. What does the future hold for us? Well, I visited the future* and I didn't like how things were, so I've been working to change them. The problem is that once you change the future you're back at square one and you don't know how anything is going to turn out again. Time travel isn't nearly as glamorous as Bill and Ted make it seem. 

I'm excited for school to start because I'll get to savor the fact that I won't be there. It's too bad that Becca has to go. I'm sorry Becca. It'll be over soon. I promise. 

* Bold-faced Lie

Do you hereby covenant?

I, Kyle, do hereby swear by the honor and livelihood of my chiropractor that I will blog at the very least once a week from this day forward. 

Now that's out of the way, you may be asking yourself why it has been so long since I've blogged. Was I abducted by aliens again? No. Was I on a mission again? No. Was I out declaring my mantra "You madmen! Stop feeding those salamanders!..." to the world? No. Was I just lazy? Yes. I was too lazy to blog. Luckily I've discovered a wonderful chemical that kicked me in the taste buds and dragged me to the computer, held a carboxyl group to my head, and told me to blog. This chemical is none other than the well known yet misunderstood CITRIC ACID. 

I came across a bag of the good stuff and tried making some super sour lemonade, but unfortunately the lemonade became saturated and it was pretty sour, but not what I was expecting, so I took a pinch of pure unadulterated Citric Acid and placed it on my tongue. Yowzers! That stuff is GOOD! Me and Becca are going to see the Dark Knight again and I think I'll bring along my good friend 2-hydroxypropane-1,2,3-tricarboxylic acid. Who needs sour patch kids?

My hope is that frequent blogging will help me step it up and get more excited about polluting the internet with my life. I just need to renew my love for blogs. I want to go back to the day when blogs were "secret" yet all too public. The days when we would plan doing something outrageous just to see if we would be mentioned in someone's blog for it. 

Ode to Modest Midnight Showers

Closing eyes in hopes of rest,

sweaty shirt stuck to my chest,

beads of sweat form on my face,

I'm already a basket case.

 

I need relief from this steamy sheet

I've got a beef with the summer heat

To the shower for half an hour

Till all my clothes are soaked with power

Back to bed to feel the breeze

of the fan that cools my knees

Asleep to dream of want and wishing

Of the day when I'll have air conditioning.

Listen to this......Put aside your misplaced values and tireless pride for one moment and listen to the advice of a young man trying to help you. HAVE GOOD AIR CONDITIONING and USE IT. My life is completely different now. I fall asleep without having to shower with all my clothes on. No box fans. No sweltering heat. Only love and comfort. I used to be miserable from June 1st to September 1st. There was no escaping the heat. Me and Alan used to have a thermometer in our room. We would check the thermometer and google to compare the indoor and outdoor temperatures. At night I would wait until the outside temp was one degree lower than the indoor temp. Then I would open the window and turn on the box fan to suck in that cool delicious 91 degree weather to alter the climate of our 92 degree room. I hated life more than I hate politics. And anyone that knows me or has had the misfortune of crossing my path while on the campaign trail knows that is saying something.

                                                                                                           

Goodbye Platinum

Goodbye Platinum. May your next fiscal year be filled with happy and wealthy customers. I'm down to my last 30 minutes as a collections agent. It's been really busy the past couple of hours. A lot of people calling in with problems. Someone just called in and started telling me her problem (and boy is it a sticky problem), so I had to stop her and say, "let me be honest with you. Today is my last day and I'm off in an hour." She didn't care. So many people have given her the runaround that I guess she was desperate for someone to help her. She was really nice though. I'd like to take a moment to make a list of the things I liked most about working in collections.

1. The commission check
....
....

....

Wow, it's a pretty short freaking list ain't it! I'm grateful to Celia for getting me this job. It has helped me pay off some debt and learn a little bit about myself. Here is a list of things I learned about myself while working in collections.

1. I'll do anything for money

...

...

...

Wow, another short list. I'm about to have a week off to take care of some personal business and also relax for a spell.

****ALERT**** This is my first time to type "for a spell"****ALERT****

Me and Becca are planning on some fun summer time fun tomorrow. This may include two of the three following activities: Barbeque, Swimming, Clubbing Baby Seals. I can't wait . For your viewing pleasure I have inluded a drawing of the coolest scene imaginable. It's a cyborg ninja pirate riding two raptors like skis through a sea of storm troopers and shooting at a giant bullet proof robot. Also, waldo and white ninja are in there somewhere. Awesome!

If my closet was eBay...

If my home were the internet, and my closet were eBay, this is what I would wear today.



















Total Cost of Outfit= $113.87 + Shipping

The weekend is almost here again. I'm at work and it's 8:00pm. I only have one person left that I can call to collect from. His name is Al and he lives on the west coast. Hopefully he'll pay up. This weekend will be spent getting ready for the grand opening of our house/swanky summer celebration. I'm excited. There's a lot to do. I wonder if I should make a bunch of heart shaped ice. I have the capability, so why not? It's not St. Valentine's Day, but I am of the opinion that love should abound every day of the year, dagnabit.

I just called Al. He didn't answer, so I left a message telling him to call me back. He won't call back. They never call back. I'm still really excited about starting this new job. I'm not even worried about doing something I've never done before. Part of it is the fact that I'll only be interacting with a small, fixed, group of people. No customers to interact with. Just me and the bacteria. I think Becca should change her major to microbiology. That way she could be my lab tech and we can spend all day together. Just us and the bacteria. That would be nice.