USA finances

Someday I'll get around to writing more on how bad a situation I think America is in Financially. In the meantime, I really want to see this movie. I.O.U.S.A.

in Texas...

Yet another way to know you're in Texas is when you're sitting in Church and you hear,

" 'Cause he knew he was fixin'ta die"

from the pulpit.

Back to Lubbock

So I'm back in Lubbock - without internet until next Tuesday, so I'm up at the Law School right now, checking upon my assignments that are due the first day of class, checking emails and posting this.

Anyway, on my way back out to Lubbock on Monday I saw two really cool things:

1) A house on fire in Seymour, TX. It was surreal, just right off the road. Everybody was stopping and watching for about 30 seconds, then driving on. It was pretty crazy. Did I ever see any sign of firefighters? No.

2) Aurora, TX - and the cemetery where they buried a space alien. I'm not kidding.

Greenville, TX

So I finished up my summer at L-3 Greenville. I'm guess I'm ready to head back to Lubbock, since I'm doing so on Monday. But I couldn't leave without a small tour of Greenville.

First of all, its not pronounced 'Greenville', its pronounced 'Green-vul.' It helps if you add a pinch of hick and a pinch of twang to it.

This definitely is a nice addition to my list of crappy towns. What makes it crappy? Primarily that they don't take care of the place. It just looks like a dump. Poor traffic patterns certainly adds to the crappiness. But here's a few interesting things about the town.

1) They once upon a time had a decent baseball team that beat the Yankees.









But of course they didn't take care of it and now its a parking lot for electrical transformers. Neato.


2) This is downtown. It's pretty dilapidated, but I hear they have a really good costume shop.

3) This is where the 'Modern' crappy shops are. The fast food, the mini-malls, etc. I think it looks like crap because the electrical lines are all above ground. If they were to bury the electrical lines, the property value in Greenville would probably double overnight. It just looks like crap.

Also here's two great shots:
Check out this sweet house... and since when is corn brown?!?

Chicago

Chicago was sweet. I had some good interviews and my ol' buddy Powell (Aaron) came out from Spokane to interview as well. He and I met this crazy dude in the EL terminal, got some deep dish Chicago pizza, then went swimming at the hotel. It was pretty sweet.

The true vacation took place after the interviews were over. Powell took off and Jenn Wheeler came in town. She wore me out walking all around downtown Chicago. We took an architectural tour, walked the lake shore, went to the Field Museum, ate at some sweet restaurants, went to the Art Museum, listened to Lalapalooza, saw Wrigley Field, and saw the LDS temple. Here's a few of my favorite shots from the weekend:










This is Chicago. Beautiful town - when the weather's good. When the weather's poor, not fun.










This is the Ghost and the Darkness. They were some killer lions in Africa many moons ago, and the only thing I really wanted to see in Chicago. I was super happy we found them. This other thing is the Big Bean.

This was an incredible poster explaining leadership among native Americans... Jenn really liked the tshirt...










And this is Jenn looking cute, with my face covered. I think its funny...

Off to Chicago

The family reunion in Park City was super fun. Got to see lots of cousins, kids were running around. I'm thankful for Mikelle, Shannon, Ken, Kevin, and Jenny for spending their Saturday with me.

I'm also super thankful to have a family that loves one another so much.

Going back to Utah was kinda weird, I'll be real. First time in a year - I miss it. I think I was starting to be 'satisfied' with Texas, then I got back to Utah and realized that one doesn't have to breath super-humid air, and that there are mountains to climb (and descend!). I don't know if/when I'll make it back to Utah next, but it certainly has a special place in my heart.

I'm off to Chicago tomorrow - job interviews!

Family Reunion

I leave tomorrow for a family reunion up in Park City and come back on Sunday. It comes at a perfect time - I need a vacation.

68%

So this summer I've been busy. Like, 'no fun' busy. Frankly it stinks. I've been working all day, then doing the extra stuff at night so I can try and get ahead in the hunt for a job post-law school. For a few weeks this meant the law journal write on competition, which was no fun. For the past 6 weeks its meant studying for the U.S. Patent Bar exam. This is the test you need to complete to be able to represent others and submit things to the United States to get a patent.

Well, I took the test yesterday, after putting over 200 hours into studying, and needed 70% to pass. I got 68%. That's a hard thing. All that time and effort, just so I can take the test again sometime in the coming months. Fun.

Anyway, the results are 'unofficial', so I'll wait until the final results come in the mail before I sign up again.

Caddo Mills TX

Continuing my account of crappy little Texas towns comes Caddo Mills, TX. I was actually kind of excited to check out Caddo Mills because it's quite a bit bigger than the other towns I've gone through so far. Whereas Nevada and Josephine had basically no stores/businesses in town, Caddo Mills has a nice gas station, a subway, a grocery store, a used car dealership and a small little 'downtown.'

This is a sweet firetruck for sale at the car dealership. I didn't check on the price...

Unfortunately, once I began driving around a little, my hopes for this little town disappeared. This is a crappy little town. I would rather live in Josephine or Nevada. What makes this town crappy is two things.

1) A really trashy side of town, separated by the main road from a nice-er side of town. I wouldn't really call it nice. Decent maybe? Houses on both sides are run down, weeds growing everywhere, and everything needs a new coat of paint. What distinguishes the nicer side from the trashy side is the use of brick on the nice side. Wooden houses, or aluminum trailers, just don't hold up without constant care.

2) A dilapidated downtown. This was just gross and severly disappointing.

It looks OK from here. But once I got even with the buildings they were all closed and in severe disrepair.

So what did this little drive teach me? That having more people in your town doesn't make a lick of difference in the quality of the town. Some people make it a priority to take care of their town, some people don't.

Why we're broke

I don't usually have time to watch the Daily Show much lately. And by lately, I mean the past 3 or 4 years. But I still really enjoy it sometimes so I turned it on last night and Ted Koppel was on, talking about China.

I thought the comments a nice mix addressing multiple reasons for current and forthcoming economic problems in America. As far as Koppel goes, I think he screwed up by letting his opinions get in the way of his reporting, and paid a price - which is unfortunate.



The only thing I feel needs to be recognized is that Koppel and Stewart talk a little about the cost of the war, but make no mention of how much we spend on Social Security, Medicare, or U.S. Foreign Aid programs, all of which I'd be fine cutting out to pay for the war (not that I think they're totally bad, I just don't think government has any mandate to be involved in them. but that's another subject.)

Josephine, TX

So I continue to study for the Patent Bar. I take it the 19th, and basically it's making my life miserable. So in one of these miserable moods I decided it was high time to highlight another Texas town: Josephine. I figure any town named for some dude's daughter has to be alright in my book.

To start off the journey, since I wasn't in a real great mood, I decided I'd do better if I had my usual drink of choice. (By the way, if anyone from Sobe wants to sponsor me, I'll gladly do ANYTHING you want. )
Sure enough, I immediately felt better. I then proceeded down a dirt road for the Josephine Cemetery. I think you can kinda tell something about a town from the way they keep their cemetery... how a community chooses to remember its dead. Anyway, so I head out to the middle of nowhere to this cemetery,
almost hit a tractor, then get to the cemetery, which pretty much looks like this:
But you know, sometimes there's reasons you feel like going someplace you've never been.
I don't know who this dude was, but maybe someday I can find out. Anyway, there's nothing like being in a cemetery in the middle of nowhere to clear your mind. Absolutely beautiful out there.
I always feel bad when I come across an infant's plot. Anyway, back to Josephine.

Josephine is a better kept town than Nevada, TX (which I highlighted 2 weeks ago), tho it's actually about a hundred less people less. The lawns are all immaculate, they have a nice city park, multiple water towers, and I happen to know that for the 4th the police department was hosting a BBQ and stuff in the city park. I saw no signs of commerce, but I get the feeling that people who move to Josephine are looking for a quiet place where everybody knows everybody, where people will work hard to take care of their homes and their land. I give Josephine a thumbs up.

Last Place on Earth?

Just about the last place I think I could ever be found would be at a Jesus Rock concert. OK, so the actual name was Celebrate Freedom, but it was one of those big Baptist sing alongs, with much preaching and rock n' roll in between. We listened to some preacher talking about some woman that had an abortion, and we reveled in the amount of of merchandise that the money changers were swapping at a church event (that's a dig from the Bible ya'll!), but the highlight was the band - we only got to see one, Sanctus Real. They were actually very good.

p.s. I only went because of a girl.
p.p.s. Of course I put my hand up and waved a little with the crowd. You know, so I could get the spirit an' such.

Rome?

I'm too exhausted and it's too late for me to post much about this. All I can say is that I believe America to be on the slow but sure road to extinction when we refuse to eliminate pedophile rapists. No doubt other people will think its a sign of civilization that we don't kill vermin like this. To those people I reply that you are destroying the morals of this country. But hey, what's that matter. It's not as if declining moral codes ever caused the fall of an empire... oh wait.

I haven't read the entire opinion yet, but from what I have read it seems that the majority's main argument is that social mores have shifted such that killing crap like this would be "cruel and unusual." While the mores may have shifted, I also think such behavior as a Nation is self-destructive and sad.

Nevada, TX

So I'm pretty dang busy this summer - and I feel like the rest of it is already filled with obligations. This makes it tougher to find adventures and stuff going on, but an idea popped into my head to highlight some of the Texas towns I pass on my way to and from work. This week's town is Nevada, TX.

Now, you're probably saying, Nevada TX? and pronouncing it incorrectly. You see, it's pronounced Ne-VAY-da. Yup, and it's a real winner.

Here's the sign, and I think the population is maybe a little on the generous side.
Most of the town consists of doublewides or really nice 1-2 acre mini-mansions. Quite the wealth disparity. I'd guess the majority of the town works the surrounding fields doing corn or wheat. Here's a picture of the biggest store in town.
Other than that, the nicest building in town is the Baptist Church.
Nevada seems like an ok small town that's been down on its luck for years. Right now its at the edge of Metropolitan Dallas' expansion, so real estate prices are probably jumping or poised to jump significantly in the next 5 years. Maybe then they'll have more of a city park than this:

Chipped Tooth

So about 10 years ago I was playing basketball in the MTC and nicked my tooth. It was on the backside of my front big tooth - I could feel it but nobody could see it. Well, with time it apparently weakened the tooth, because on Thursday it chipped off. After some frantic phone calls, a very generous dentist offered to fix my tooth Friday morning at 9:30. Turns out my great-grandfather was his stake president at BYU eons ago. Anyway, my tooth is more or less better. Not perfect, and I can still tell a difference because its my tooth, but its not noticeable unless you're really checking out my teeth. Here's a pic of the chip before and after the 'reconstruction.'

Running Down Deer (literally)

So a little while back I read an article in Adventure Magazine about Navajo running down deer on foot. I thought that sounded pretty sweet, so this week I did a little more research about this.

Sadly, the old ways have largely disappeared and are replaced with people on ATVs and crap like that, so there wasn't exactly a club of people who do this sorta thing. Anyway, my research led me to these 2 related things:

1) New York Times article from way back when.
2) Running After Antelope

Neither of these sources sound totally legit. Still I think a really hungry man might be able to do something like this. Or a really crazy one.

Suburbia

A trend I've seen lately around Dallas and Salt Lake are neighborhoods where you can live in a condo upstairs and they have shops down on the ground level. I think they look nice and trendy - a place I could see myself living in should I remain single for several more years. It'd be nice, to have shops and restaurants in walking distance. But I don't think it would make for a good place to raise a family - for all sorts of reasons.

So when I read this article it made me think about the direction America is moving with its housing. Are we going to become a country where the suburbs are dominated by crime? Will there be no place for kids to ride bikes and run amok?

Random bits

So instead of studying tonight I played around with Picasa for a bit, making that eyeball photo up at the top of my blog. Basically I filtered out all the other colors but the blue in my eye. Here's the instructions. I think it's cool, so it'll stay for a bit.

In other random bits:
1) I've been thinking a lot lately about the differences in people. I generally make no qualms about my dislike of morons, and I think everyone in America can become as successful as they push themselves to become. But sometimes I think we push people to become more than they want to be, and I'm not sure we should. Example: Should we push a pizza delivery man to quit his job and go to school? If every pizza dude did that, who'd deliver my Papa Johns? All I'm saying is that while we should obviously push, help and encourage loved ones and those seeking advice/help... but that in a capitalist society there are different levels of workers, and we can't all be at the top. In a perfect United Order type society, those distinctions would disappear. Unfortunately, we're not there yet.
2) Life is fragile.
3) I'm exhausted.
4) While I'm enjoying watching the Celtics-Lakers, basketball, and particularly the NBA is a joke. I'll be happy to recant this when someone can adequately respond to this quote: Michael Wilbon recently wrote in The Washington Post - "The larger point here is that nobody has ever known what is and what isn't a foul in professional basketball. … It's as subjective as anything in sports, calling a foul. You can't get a consensus from people who've been in and around the game for 100 years."

Dirty Harry

So I think I was born just a few years too late to truly appreciate the Dirty Harry movies. Every time one's on, I usually just get bored - a common problem with my generation, but eh... whatever.

Nevertheless, I think Clint Eastwood's a great actor, and while I don't pretend to know much about his politics & lifestyle, what he says in this article resonated with me. Be warned, he uses a foul word or two, but I just love that he says that Spike Lee should "Shut his face." I also like the fact that he disagreed with Arnold about putting a toll road through a National Forest and got booted from the California state park commission. In short, while I don't pretend to know enough to whole-heartedly endorse the man, Clint seems like a guy who sees the world a lot like I see it, so without further adieu the link.

Indiana Jones rant

So I've taken some time thinking about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. After pondering it more, I have made up my mind: don't go see this movie. In fact, don't go see anything George Lucas has a hand in making in the past 15 years.

I don't really have a problem with Harrison's acting, the Shia, and I was actually really excited about Karen Allen's return. But I do have serious problems with the plot. Here, let me compare it to something everyone understands: If you liked Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace you will like this movie. Why? Because both were written by the same idiot and both destroy character's and themes we've loved for years. If on the other hand, you thought more of the Phantom Menace than I, I don't know why you're reading my blog but you will like the new Indiana. Who wrote both? George Lucas. (hold up, I'm filled with desire to spit after writing his name. ok, I'm better now)

In my opinion, Stallone should have written this movie. (I'm joking... kind of.) Why? Because Stallone gets the characters he's resurrected. Rocky Balboa was great because it made you remember Rocky, what he was, and then you see what a broken down man he's become, how badly he wants to go out on his terms, and a great fight. Rambo was incredible because it took a killing machine jaded by time and corruption, had a sweet battle, and pulled no punches about what was happening and why. Even Live Free or Die Hard did a good job reviving a character long out of the limelight by giving him a plot equal to previous movies.

George Lucas fails because he thinks we care about some freaky Crystal Skull myth. He doesn't get why the original Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies rocked. Here the plot stinks, and guess what? As fun as it was to see Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones with no plot stinks. Pop in one of the first 3 movies. Or if you feel like going to the theater, go see Iron Man.