Life in type

It’s just that I got into the education program at UVU.  That is all.  This is actually pretty easily done.  But my GPA isn’t stellar so I was very relieved to receive my acceptance letter.

So we recently studied one of my more favorite authors recently. Good ole William Wordsworth. He had some awesome ideas about poetry and how it should be made, so I’ve attempted to take is advise and by applying his methods I came up with this. Hope you enjoy it. Understand that this isn’t supposed to imitate his style or anything, its just trying to apply his methods of creating poetry.

To Mr. Wordsworth

It’s true Mr. Wordsworth

Little I see in nature that is mine

Except the summer storms,

I might own those;

I’ve seen them, smelt them

Become them every whit.

Maybe you’ve seen the clouds

Hulk and bulge over the southern mountains.

The wind, their vesper herald,

Skimming across the lake stirring the water

From emerald blue to steel grey.

I stand with the ancient cottonwoods

Their barky bulk stalwart against the wind

While their branches wave and beckon

Dropping snowy cotton as they cry

“What news from the south?”

The storm shouts its reply

Which echoes off the evergreen hills behind me,

And reverberates through my being.

Then the sheets fall

In curtains and rows

Like an old woman’s laundry hung out to dry.

I long to run through them like a hiding and seeking child.

But before I can move

They come to me.

The water falls fast and cold

Rejuvenating all it touches

Even me. I’m clean.

I retreat to watch from beside a fire.

Everything is so green when it rains.

         
One of my all time favorite books is Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli.  It is so good I’ve probably read it more than any other book save Ender’s Game.  Maniac is one of those books that you read as a young person and the lessons learned in it have stuck with you throught life.  Your memories of it seem to become a friend that has traveled with you throughout life.  Jerry Spinelli has a way of writing that makes the story intimate and personal, but his style creates larger than life legends which inspire. 

So I’ve read this book over and over and love it even now, and for years people have been telling me to pick up Stargirl. “It’s way better than Maniac Magee,” they’ve told me.  So recently I lucked out as the Valantine’s Day Fairy brought a copy of Stargirl for Amy.  I read it (before Amy) and I was frankly disappointed.  Not in any overt way.  I ddin’t want to flush it down the toilet or set it on fire, but there is no way this book is better than Maniac Magee. 

Now to be fair I have to say that it is an excellent book and I recommend it.  It did get an emotional response out of me, especially at the end.  I felt a tangle of emotions that I couldn’t really understand.  Spinelli’s ability to create legends also comes into play here.  That all being said, I think the books point is a little dangerous.  I think alot of people (mostly young ones) put alot of emphasis on being different.  They either look down on other people for being different (which this book shows as very wrong and I agree with that view point) Or they go out of their way to be different, and call it being unique which I think is very wrong and possibly dangerous.  In reality if we make this decision (which I did many times as an adolecent)  we just give up our true uniqueness because of the status quo.

Anyways this is in very really danger of becoming a soap box rant so let me end by saying that this is a good book I think everyone should read it.  But I also think that everybody should understand that tolerance can be a bad thing and that conformity is often a very good thing.

No apologies, I just haven’t blogged in a while so deal with it.

I wasn’t tagged by Chris, I haven’t been very active in the blog community lately, but I thought this sounded like fun.

1. I beat up imaginary bad guys when there is no one else around. It’s a habit that has persisted from childhood.

2. Another habit that has persisted since childhood is observable if I am walking on cement. I play the sidewalk game. Its a simple game with few rules. 1. You must have one line step (step where your foot lands on a line) for every two space steps (steps where you don’t step on a line.) 2. In every space or on every line you are allowed a maximum of two steps. 3. Lines are loosely defined as any fissure in the cement which is intentional or not. A new line also begins whenever another line bisects it. 4. Chunks taken out of the cement or strange indescribable black dots on the ground are called dinka dots, if you step on a dinka dot that step does not count as a line step or a space step.  WARNING: Don’t ever start playing this game, you’ll never, ever stop, even with counseling.

3. I have Created well over 200 characters in my life, all of which belong to some story or at least have some sort of back ground that I could tell you about. This only partially includes the 100 superheroes I made up and drew in the sixth grade. Super heroes like Big Baby, and the Acidator.

4. When Amy and I got married I owned more Chick Flicks then she did.

5. I once read something about tapping maple from maple trees for syrup and such, and how sometimes they let it dry and crystalize to be turned in to syrup. So I poured some maple syrup in a milk lid and hid it in a box in my room so that it could crystalize so i could turn it in to…maple syrup?

6. I’ve known my best friend since I was one month old.

First Friend: Matthew Paul Wood, (everyone in his family is named paul, funny huh?) Matt was born a month after me and since our parents were decent friends and since we lived around the corner from eachother it was pretty much destiny that we become firends for life. He is, to this day, my truest and best friend.

First Time to Disneyland: I can’t remember the first, my granparents used to have a Condo at a place called Cornado, which was pretty close to Disneyland, so my parents made some sacrifices and we went a couple of times. I rememeber one time when I was very young, my brother spencer took my on Thunder Mountain. (its a roller coaster that looks like an old railroad) You go through a cave at one point and my brother yelled “Come on Ryan put your hands in the air!” Being the scared little boy I was I called back, “It’s a good way to loose them.”

First Memorable Gift: I remember lots and lots of gifts from childhood, and can’t remember which came first. I wanted this laser tag type gun one year and my parents called up my friends and asked them if their kids wanted them. So it was pretty cool when we all got the guns on christmas mornign so we could play.

First Time Wearing Makeup: Well believe it or not there have been a few times when I’ve worn girls makeup. Maybe the earliest was when I was in sixth grade when I was hanging out with a bunch of my girlfriends from the ward. Since I was the only boy it was time to pick on Ryan. By the end of the night I was covered in blush, and eyeliner and the whole deal, except nail polish I wasn’t going that far.

First Pet: It’s hard for me to tell which pet was first, we had lizards snakes , frogs, a lost owl, many cats a few dogs, a ferret, rabbits, a vulture parrot, my sister had a tarantula, but I think the first pet that I thought was mine was a tabby cat that I used to sleep on when I was two or younger. My mom has pictures of me sprawled out on the poor animal.

First time out of the country: My first time out of the country was when I flew to see my parents in australia. It was pretty amazing. I got to see all kinds of things. I scuba dived on the Great Barrier Reef, (thats the largest reef in the world if you didn’t know.) I saw wild kangaroos, (they’re the largest marsupial in the world, did you know that?) And I gotta hike Ayers Rock, or Ularu as the locals call it. (Thats the largest monolith in the world,if you didn’t know.) I even got to hang out with my sister’s. (They’re the largest dorks in the world, if you didn’t know)

First Car: I don’t want to talk about Doobert or I might cry.

First Job: My first Job was a bagger at the neighborhood Reams, good times wearing that green apron and fantasizing about how good I would do in the upcoming Grocery Store Olympics. I was very sad to learn that there wasn’t a grocery store olympics, but if there was garaunteed I would have placed silver in speed, and gold in structure in the bagging event.

First Car Accident: Those cursed eclairs. My first and only accident was when I was leaving my senior seminary social. I had grabbed a small plate of eclairs for my mom, I’ve never cared for eclairs that much but everybody else seems to think they’re great. So As I swing around in the church parking lot the eclairs roll of the plate and are indanger of staining my dads kia. So I bend down to rescue them when the car comes to a sudden hault. Smart me, I had not turned the wheel far enough or straightened out so I ran the driverside headlight into the hedge on the edge of the parking lot. It tore out the blinker and left some major scratches but other than that, nothing terrible. I just realized that my first real car accident was with my family but that is a sad story so lets not talk about that one.

First Concert: My friend and I took dates to a King Singers concert. If that dosent’ count then of course my first real concert was James. It was wonderful, I think I wept.

First College Roomate: My first roomate was named Ben, he spent an hour everymorning getting ready and had a lisp. We didn’t get along.

First Airplane Ride Alone: My first ride alone was when I flew out to California to Meet my friend Mika and Help her drive back to provo for fall semester. She had just gotten her liscense a few weeks prior so it was kinda scary.

First Time I met Amy: I know I met her before this briefly, but the first time I really met Amy was when we were elcted to carpet clean together at work. She told me she was seventeen and had graduated early and her professors hated her because she knew for than they did. I belived her.

First Kiss With Amy: Well if you read Amy’s blog then you have a pretty accurate picture of what happened. But heres an expedited version, dancing, watching movie, trying to get more snuggling then I was getting, jumping through hoops to get the kiss. (just kidding she didn’t make me jump thorugh hoops, she just wanted to know if this relationship really was gonna go anywhere, which it did.)

First Home With Amy: Cracking paint, dented scrached and missing tan and green tiles in the kitchen and bathroom. Cold water that was always hot, a tub that never looked clean (I’m a proffesional cleaner, this thing never quite got there, even with hours of work) Neighbors that were loud on the bed. But lots of love and good times. I loved our first apartment and kinda miss it sometimes.

First Real Job: Yeah I would have to say my first real job is Strong Household Cleaning.

First Baby: Josephine Marie, the squishy.

First Time I realized I wasn’t a kid anymore: Well the other day I was looking at my legos..come on who am I kidding. Speaking of which…

First Time I played with Legos: I was maybe eight or around there, and we were playing on the hill in Matt’s (see first friend above) back yard. It was a good hill, full of rocks and thorny weeds so when we threw ourselves off it we tumbled and got that days quota of nicks and cuts and bruises all in one go. But that day we found a bunch of lego knights on the hill, so we dug out a hole and made a castle for them. It started so innocently, who knew what an impact those little plastic dudes would have on me

New Rafe chapter.  Enjoy.

Hi, its me. I’m sorry that this has been the most boring blog on the planet for the last month and a half. I haven’t had internet access and thus have not been able to post. I do have for you now a short list of coming attractions.

1) Creation = Happiness

2) A tour through Granite 17, the out post for Sentai fortress, and current home of Jack Quimby, among others.

3) A blog of complete randomness

4) I have many chapters to post on Demons Bane but with out the where-with-all I have not posted them, I plan to post two chapters with in the next week.

So there you have it some coming attractions, please stay tuned as I expect to have slightly more regular access in the ensuing weeks.

Well the count is in. There have been some nasty rumors going around that there was some illegal voting going on, but we assure you that the voting was done proffessionally and honestly. I also want to assure you that every vote was taken in to consideration. We the judges would also like to take this opportunity to thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to vote. So after the official count Demons Bane is the clear winner. The first two chapters are already waiting for you at unkownhistory.blog.com/, or at the “A Pending Novel” link to the right . It should also be mentioned that because Jack did not win there will be lull int he writing at Tales from Corinth. Thanks again for your votes. Remember to start at the bottom at chapter one.