Yes, we are still here.

I really enjoyed this session of General Conference. I mean I always do (who doesn't?)(atheists). I guess I forget just how much I enjoy it. The talk of the town this conference time is Elder Holland's amazingly powerful and impassioned talk about the truth of the Book of Mormon. It was interesting because at one point I thought "This isn't how general authorities speak normally," but then he mentioned something about the world and I reached a decision: this talk is not for me, I can listen to it, but it was Elder Holland speaking to the world, everyone. At least that's my interpretation of it. It is still helpful to the members of the church, but it was not aimed at them. It made me think that must have been what Abinadi sounded like when boldly standing before King Noah.

However, I think that the apostles should have a "This talk is going to be the most quoted talk for the next six months" award. Elder Holland would have it two sessions running. Other winners would be the "Don't Hang Out" talk by Elder Oaks and the "Good Better Best" talk also by Elder Oaks (who looks like he'll be a contender). I hope you don't find this sacrilegious by any means, I really do love and respect these men. They are marvelous speakers and the doctrine is true. I just find it amazing how there always seems to be that one talk that sticks out from the rest, and because of this, it will be our elders quorum lesson bi-monthly for the next year.

Okay, blasphemy aside. I had an amazing weekend. My goal this year was to not try and write down full quotes from the talks, but to write who was speaking and any thoughts that I had while they were speaking. Then I can go back later and re-read the talks and find the quotes. If they meant that much to me now, they'll at least mean something to me then. It went swimmingly. I have pages and pages of notes. Just thoughts about life. A new outlook on some things that I will try to implement and improve on.

Anyhow. I'm excited to go back and revisit these talks over the next six months. I hope that you will too. Here it is.






Seriously, I'm not blasphemous.

I make fliers...

I like music. A lot.

My roommate Scott and I were discussing just how much music I have and how fast I'm getting it. I currently have 25085 items (songs) which would take 99.2 days to listen to and takes up 132.30 Gigabytes of space on my hard-drive. We compared those numbers with the ones I posted on May 13, and then did some generalizations. We figured that I'd been adding an average of 70 songs everyday for the past 100 days. This also means that in the past 100 days I've added 50 days worth of music. That means that I'd have to have music running for 12 hours out of the day with no repeats in order to keep up. But my favorite way to look at it is that I have added as much music in the past 100 days as I have in the past four years...

That's actually kind of disgusting.

Anyhow, that brings me to the real point of this post. I feel that music is like a good book, or an inspirational movie. It can be a powerful emotional force in life and when you are lucky enough to stumble across something worthwhile, it deserves to be shared. There's no point in having all of this music if I can't make other people's lives better.

So, in that vein I would like to introduce you to Sigur Ros (and if I knew how to make letters have accents, the 'o' would have a fun little line above it). I have been listening to them for about three years now, and I love them. They are an Icelandic band and they are national heroes to the tiny island. The music is mostly of an ethereal nature, which is created through some interesting instrumental techniques (such as using a cello bow on an electric guitar, or singing into the guitar's pickups rather than the microphone).

I had seen their videos and I knew they were inspiring, but I revisited them tonight and I remembered just how great they can be. I know that watching three videos can take some time but I really hope that you take my word for it and watch them all. So here goes.

-Von- This re-release is off of one of their newer albums that was accompanied by a Dvd (although a different version of the song had been released on an earlier album). The band was directly involved in the making of a documentary, called Heima, that focused on the hidden beauties of Iceland. It is an absolutely gorgeous film. Here is a great song from the Dvd.



-Glosoli (again those 'o's would totally have accents over them)-This video makes me cry about half the time that I watch it. I love it because there is an amazing build at the end of the song and the cinematography matches perfectly. There is a lot of discussion as to the exact theme of the video, I think you should work on developing your own theory.

(Okay, youtube disabled embedding on this one, so you'll have to click here, entirely worth the click though. And make sure to click 'HD'.)

-Svefn-g-englar- This video makes me cry... always... within the first minute. I love the quotes, I love the song, and I love the respect that is paid to the wonderful special needs theatre group who make the video. I think there is something absolutely angelic about the whole situation. I've tried to think why it makes me cry so much and I think it really has to do with the beauty and the perfection that is shown. It feels like heaven.




Alright. Thanks for humoring me. I may do this once or twice more. I know that this post was more sentimental than humorous, but maybe it brightened your day.

Don't worry, that's the title of a play, I'm not creative enough to have come up with that tasty little play on words/phrase.

So, remember the post where I said I wasn't doing anything with my life? It was a lie. A blatant, terrible lie. I have been doing stuff and things. It's been great.

One of these stuffs that I have be doing is directing for a local theatre group known as New Play Project.

Thank You.



Your diligence has not gone unnoticed. As our blog is titled "Yes We Are Still Here" (see above), yes I am still here. Not posting often (such classic blogger style), but it's never too late to start the comeback right?

To be honest, I haven't had much time to blog. No wait, that's entirely false, I'm not doing anything with my time whatsoever.

I took spring classes (which turned out very well BTW) but those ended in late June. I don't have a job right now. Sounds cool right? Wrong, entirely so. It was fun for the first little bit, but after my 3rd straight day of doing nothing but watching youtube, I was done with it.

Oh, our car died! You remember the one that was on it's way out before? Well, it officially bit the dust... because we killed it. Well, I killed it. I may or may not have discovered the secret to unlocking the airbags in your car... hit something. Seriously, try it. It works.

This lovely adventure all took place on our trip to Seattle. Luckily there was no structural damage to our car or to the car of the bride and groom, who we happened to be following...

"But if there was no damage to the car, why do you want to get rid of it?" Good question... um... you. Turns out new airbags run about $2,400, which is 2.5x the value of the car. So say hello to the newest member of the family... Honda!! (pretend there's a picture here). We recently celebrated the arrival of a bouncing baby 1998 Accord.

I started that reading thing again. You know the one with the books. With the words. It's been a while since I've had time for pleasure reading (rather than textbooks, ick). I decided not to make a goal, since my last one turned out so wonderfully (sarcasm). However, I do plan to read whatever I like, whenever I would like to. I figure that's a goal that I can accomplish! I have recently read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and am in the middle of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. They are both books.

I also do photography type stuff. I will now post pictures. These are from last night's "storm" (come on Utah, you call that weather). Although I must admit, lightning photography is going to be added to my list of sucky type photography (see: theatre photography). Oh right, the pictures (click on them for better resolution):
This is at the Provo Temple, which I also took pictures of, but I may post those later.

A bus stop outside the gates of the temple, this is one of my favorites.


These two have no lightning (a little lens flare) but I still love them anyways.

Alright for those diligent few who are still reading. Thanks for hanging in there. I'm going to end now because I have a Harry Potter book waiting for me (what am I doing?!). Oh and don't worry, Nathan still exists. He's around here somewhere...


(Oh and sorry if this post seems a little disjointed, I'm a little rusty...)

So, my birthday is coming soon. I haven't thought that much about it. Until today.

This just started the wish list.

For those of you who feel that I have been neglecting this blog, that is simply not true. I have been purposely postponing my posts (P's) so that I can do what all bloggers do and apologize for not having posted in forever. Trust me on this one. I would venture to say that 90% of blog posts start out "I know it's been a while..." I just want to fit in.

However, since I only have about half an hour before my next class, I will keep this brief and full of lists (probably). So here are some things:

-I am now called as the ward activities council co-chair. This means that I am in charge of entertaining my entire ward for a whole summer. Our first activity is a throw back to elementary school. Ask me more on Sunday.

-I took glamor shots for the ward directory. Go to flickr.com, search for my name (first and last) and then click on the people tab and you should be able to see a few of them.

-With those glamor shots I pushed myself up to about 12,000 shots on this camera. Let's see how high it can go!!

-Current state of my iTunes library: 17168 songs, 48.2 days, 85.32 gigs.

- I still try to read. (I just signed up for goodreads.com). Some of the things that I'm reading:

• Antigone written by Sophocles reworked by Jean Anouilh and translate out of French by Lewis Galantiere.
  
• Lord of the Flies
• Taking Steps by Alan Ayckbourn (it's a farce!)
• Red Noses by Peter Barnes (Plague comedies rock!

I just read THE dumbest news story I have ever read.  It has made me so mad I could... I'm gonna... I wanna... Blog!!! 

We're back! and we have a challenge for our avid listeners (that's you)!

I'm a news Junkie.  I almost always have some news site open on my computer and check it frequently for any minute changes.  One thing I have become quite impressed with is the money.cnn.com writers ability to think of new verbs to describe what has happened to the stock market that day.  How many ways can you politely say "the economy is in the toilet?" So to honor their hard work I have started keeping track and in the column to the right you will see a list of the past two days worth of words.  Two days and they came up with all those.  They better slow down because I think there is a limited number of verbs and adjectives in the english language and at the current rate they'll need a couple thousand to finish out the year.

I'm Back!

I also decided that it was time I got my affairs in order in my room and went to work giving my room a deep clean:

Christian, not wanting to be left out of the cleaning extravaganza, did his part to organize his half of the room:

As you can see, he has successfully sorted his towel from his coat.

Just when you began to say "Wow! you must have been swamped for the first two weeks of February!" I say to you, there's more!  That's right!  Amazing things happen when you don't have a TV in your apartment.  It turns out you have all this time where you can do "useful" things.  Or you can do what we've done.

Because Christian and I made a new years resolution to become the cooler than the pope, we and our roommates have started hosting a game/dessert night on sundays evenings after ward prayer.  Our apartment just didn't have that "We're Cool!" flavor to it though.  Christian ingeneously solved this dilema by printing out 150 of his favorite pictures and purchasing enough sticky tack to stick our car to the side of our apartment building.  The end result:

The picture of the pictures looks pretty cool, but it really looks even cooler in real life.

And finally our most entertaining project has been the bathroom.  For Christmas I was given crayons.  I love crayons, I don't know if something was lacking from my childhood and now I'm trying to make up for it by owning and using as many crayons as possible, so the gift of crayons was perfect.  Not only were they crayons, they were special crayons that allow you to write on bathroom surfaces... so we did.  You may have to click on the pictures to be able to read what it written.  

So you can see why I haven't been posting as much, I've just been so busy.  I'm still alive and well, and will keep you up to date on future undertakings (like taxes and the resurrection of the scooter).  It just wouldn't be a post without a link, so here's probably the funniest thing I've read in a long long time. And this one is gold.

So I've been watching a bunch of superbowl commercials studying for midterms. Now, I'm a huge fan of supporting companies that have awesome commercials, but some commercials just restore my faith in humanity. You may have seen these already, but I think it's worth the time and effort to revisit them. If you don't have time for all three, make sure you at least watch the last one. We'll go in reverse order.

I know that this is just a short post with nothing it. But I found this video and wanted to share it with the world.

Alright folks, it's time for more goal setting with the slim chance of it actually coming to fruition. With the onset of school, I've been looking for more things to occupy the time that I should really be using to study (ha! just kidding parents). However, these wonderful time wasters are not a waste at all, these are wonderfully useful things for me. First off, I'm trying to get better at sketching. I recently picked up a book called "Sketching for the Theatre" or some such nonsense. This involves learning to sketch set designs and costumes and such. The other thing that I've become very interested in is maskwork and mask making. Unfortunately the one mask making book that I want in the library (of the three books they have on the subject) was checked out the exact same day I went to get it! Let's talk about probability...

Here's a little something to tide you over between posts, I hope it tastes good.

Also for those of you who are a little bit more high-class, here's a little social networking Shakespeare.

Bon Appetit.

Check it out. Make sure to answer honestly.

I'm back from the dead. I realize that I haven't posted since... let's change the subject. I will now attempt to inform the world of what I have been doing for the past two months. As a preface to this post, I would like to say:

-This post may become a list at any time.
-Two months is a lot of stuff.
-I don't have access to any cool videos right now (sorry).
-Order is not a requirement.

I have no clue where to break into this ostrich egg of experience, it's just a big oval! So, we'll go with the happiest thing that has happened to me in a while. I have left the deepest circle of hell behind and will no longer be working at Inkley's! I know that sounds a little over the top for a job, but no, it's not. I am so much happier these days, and it can all be tied back to the fact that I don't work there anymore. However, this also means that I have no job and am very poor. But only monetarily, not in spirit.

The reason that I left my job is two-fold: I hated it, and I'm back in school! I have been working full-time(ish) this past year and decided that it was time to return to education at the big blue whale of a university. I'm loving my classes (3 theatre, 3 generals) and I find that with no job I actually have time to do that homework stuff.

For those of you who didn't notice, I mentioned being in 3 theatre classes, that is because I am Theatre Arts Education major (for now). This brings me to the yolk of the egg (see metaphor above): theatre!! (btw theatre is the practice of the art, theater is the place you go to see it (even if wikipedia and dictionaries don't agree with me))(I'm using more than my allotted amount of parentheses :) ).

So, developments on the theatrical front. I finished the show that I was producing with only minor headaches (I stepped into two roles, one the night that we opened). We had a great turnout and a great response. I also have been cast in Macbeth at BYU. Now before everyone gets their hearts all a flutter, I'm quickly discovering how small the role of Captaine/Menteith/Lord really is. And it's getting shorter as many of my lines are getting cut because they don't fit with the concept of the show. The concept is directors interpretation of the show and our director chose: Book of Mormon/Meso-American!! That's right folks we've got lamanites and nephites and we're waging some wars! Luckily for me this means that I get to grow my hair out, however they have also toyed with the idea of us shaving our heads (or at least partially to get mohawk type deals). This is not a joke in any way, shape, or form. However, I think the best thing that happened with Macbeth has been the opportunity we had to work with a Shakespearean text expert and have workshops where we learn graduate level stuff. I'm still buzzing from it and it was two weeks ago.

Last theatre thing. I did something yesterday called the 24 hour theatre project. Here's what happened: Friday at 8:00ish pm, five preselected playwrights (wright not write, right? Yes.) met and each drew a title out of a hat. They then had until 8:00 Saturday morning to write a ten minute play using that title. Then at 8:00am Saturday the writers handed their scripts over to five preselected directors. Then at 9:00 (9:15 for me, oops) the actors showed up and were assigned to scripts. Then we had until 8:00 Saturday night to rehearse at which point we performed for a nearly full house. Awesome. Now those of you who are good at math will note that 11 hours of rehearsal divided by a ten minute play equals too much time. Not to mention number of rehearsals multiplied by the number of occurrences of the phrase"Oh my gosh" in the script (25 times) equals I went insane. Literally though the script had us saying "oh my gosh" about 25 times in ten minutes for the humor of it. In the end our play turned out to be really funny and everyone loved us and then there was time to sleep.

Now it becomes a list (since you and I could be here forever at this rate):
-I got glasses.
-I can see now.
-Christmas happened.
-I have new pajama pants that go over my feets. (Thank you Catherine).
-My best friend is engaged and I'm the best man. (I've got your back Brian, don't bottle up).
-I lied, there is a video in here.
-I took my friend's engagement pictures and had fun.
-I took family pictures and had fun.
-I sold my first ever picture at a ward charity auction (5 of them actually, at $35 a piece).
-I shot my first wedding ever (not my wedding).
-It was a weird experience.

I think that about sums it up. So after five hours of reading you should be all caught up on the nature of my existence.

We'll see you in another two months.

*fun activity!! Can you count all the parentheses?*