Baseball is pretty much the greatest sport. Ever. It just screams “America!” which is obviously awesome. Think about it. Hot dogs. Popcorn. Sitting around. What could possibly be more American? How about free stuff? That’s the American Dream, my friends.

I bring that up because I was at a BYU baseball game this weekend with my girlfriend and some friends. Sometime during the 4th inning, one of the marketing people for the team approached me in our upper-deck seats and asked if I wanted to be in a promo during the 5th inning. Who’s going to say no to that?

I figured they were going to give me a little stuffed Cosmo the Cougar or maybe a spiffy BYU t-shirt that I’d never wear. But, fortunately for me, this was the Bookstore promo, and the Bookstore wanted to come large. I was told that I’d be playing a version of “Deal or No Deal,” where I’d be given a $40 gift certificate to the Bookstore, which I could either keep, or return to Cosmo the Cougar for a chance to pick one of three boxes. (On no uncertain terms I was instructed to choose one of the boxes. “You might want to think twice about choosing box 3 though,” the promo guy told me. “It might be lame.”)

Anyway, the fateful moment came, and it was showtime. I gave the card back to Cosmo and, wisely avoiding box 3, chose box 1. They turned over box 2, which was a DVD player (I started to sweat a little here). Then came box 3 (a box of pushpins. Thanks, Promo Guy. I owe you.). Finally, they turned over box 1 to uncover… an iPod Shuffle. Needless to say, I was ecstatic.

So let me just say that I now love America. Also, I now also love the bookstore more than I ever have in my entire life, especially during the beginning of every semester when I have to hemorrhage cash to get my textbooks. I can’t help but feel like I deserve a little something back after all the benjamins I’ve dropped into their coffers. Now about that tuition…

Technorati Tags: byu bookstore, baseball, byu, free ipod

This morning, I sat in my freezing cold car at a stoplight, waiting for the light to turn green. It was early, and there wasn’t another car to be seen. (Except for the one fateful car in front of me.) We waited. And waited. I kept glancing at the little green walking man on the lightpole, willing him to be replaced by the friendly flashing hand. However the little green man remained in his place, pulling faces and dancing in mockery of me. If it wasn’t for the car in front of me, I would have just gone.

Finally, off in the distance, I could see headlights. The light down the road had changed, and some cars were coming. And, after several minutes of waiting for the light to change while there was no traffic going the other way, it was ironic that the light turned yellow as soon as the first car passed, so that the rest of the cars had to wait while I went through my (finally!) green light.

Now how difficult would it have been to have a green light for us when there was no traffic the other direction so that when there was traffic the other direction, they could have a green light?

I think that there is something far more sinister at work here than ineptitude. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I think that Greenpeace has taken over traffic duties here in Provo. Their evil plot? Drive people like me crazy until we give up our cars for more eco-friendly transportation, like walking.

technorati tags:traffic, lights, waiting, rant, greenpeace

I’m going to apologize in advance. I don’t usually spew my deeper thoughts onto my blog, so this is a little out of the ordinary. This post is long and philosophical, and almost completely selfish and self-indulgent, so feel free to pass on by. And if you choose to read it, please be gentle. Thanks.

Whenever I get stressed or discouraged, it really makes me miss making music. There was just something about making music that was soothing and challenging and joyful all at the same time.

Sometimes I feel like I just pound my life out. I pound out ad campaigns, I pound out assignments and papers, I pound out websites, but frankly, none of it is beautiful. It just is. There’s not much elegance to it. It doesn’t grab you on an emotional level. It serves its purpose and I move along.

I don’t mind this, it’s the nature of work and school and life, and I’m ok with it most of the time. But sometimes I miss making something beautiful. There was just a certain elegance to making music that I don’t really have in my life anymore. There’s a concern for the aesthetic and the emotional that’s somehow unique to the experience of making music. i miss sitting at the back of the orchestra and watching a sea of strings bowing in unison before me while chills run up and down my spine. I miss hearing the careful weaving of melody and harmony together and then pouring golden, pure sound into the mixture.

There’s something liberating about creating something beautiful. It represents hours of sacrifice, discipline, and concentration. But when beauty comes at your bidding, there is a joy all its own. It’s triumphal and reverent and emotional. And that’s what moves people.

I’m not questioning the value of what I do. I live for it, and I love it. But sometimes I miss making that emotion. I miss making people smile. I miss making beautiful things.

You see, the problem with making something beautiful is that it can’t be taken lightly. It’s demanding. It comes at a cost, sometimes terrible to be paid. It requires a depth of soul and dedication that requires everything. I once made that commitment, and was richly rewarded for it. But it was too difficult, too exacting to be compatible with the rest of my goals and desires. So I walked away. Most of the time I don’t regret my decision, but every once in a while I feel like an exile, someone who has forsaken paradise for the thorny way.

I realize that this post appears to have a rose-hued tint, but I also remember the long, long hours in the practice room and in rehearsals, I remember the frustration of inadequacy, I remember the bitterness of the defeat which would sometimes come, which is why I don’t go back. And I’m satisfied that I made the right decision. So I content myself to the role of a music appreciator and look for other ways to create elegance and beauty. And while I don’t think I’ll ever find something that affects me the same way that music does, I know that there are alternatives.

In the end, I think that we need to create elegance and beauty somewhere in our lives. Maybe it’s in the way we interact with people. Or how we go about our duties. Maybe it’s in how we solve problems and overcome obstacles. It could be in the things that we do and say and are. It’s not the same as creating beautiful music, but it doesn’t have to be. And maybe one of these days when I get some time, I’ll be able to go back to my first love. In the meantime, I guess I need to work on making my life more elegant.

Reject a woman and she will never let it go. One of the many defects of their kind. Also, weak arms.
-Dwight Schrute, Assistant Regional Manager, Dunder Mifflin Paper Products

Let me begin by saying that I have a huge amount of respect for the female gender. The very concept of childbirth is enough to win my undying admiration and respect. That said, I have often wondered why I’ve never heard about great female explorers. One would think that the ability to withstand the pains of childbirth, high heels, and body waxing would translate into the ability to survive the extremes of global navigation into the uncharted. In fact, I had chalked the lack of estrogen in exploration up to repressive social practices towards women. My recent experiences, however, have demonstrated that there may be an actual physiological reason for the lack of intrepid exploratory females.

A couple of weeks ago, I went on a date. It was a chilly night, and when my date got into my car, she started to shiver. She cranked the heater and waited for the car to heat up. Several minutes later, as the car reached a comfortable temperature, she turned the heater down. After several minutes of that, she became cold again and turned the heater up. This pattern of turning the heat down and then up went on for the duration. With each cycle, my date got closer and closer to that elusive “perfect temperature” where she was completely comfortable. Finally, as the temperature in the car reached perfection, we pulled into the parking lot of our destination.

As I pondered the irony of this situation, I realized that despite the wide temperature fluctuations throughout the trip, I hadn’t really noticed a huge increase in my discomfort levels. In fact, I was pretty much happy wherever the heat dial was set. In addition, I also realized that I had had this same experience with other girls. In fact, somewhere down the line, I think I subconsciously realized that this temperature dance was going on and I made it my policy to relinquish the environmental controls whenever a girl got in the car.

Think of it this way: When I was in middle school biology, we had to do plant reports. For part of the report, We had to draw these maps and indicate the band around the globe where the plant could live and thrive. Some plants had a really wide band, indicating that they could exist in a fairly wide range of climates. Other plants (usually tropical) had a fairly narrow band. I think that if girls had a band, it would be about the same size as a longitudinal line on the map.

That said, I believe that this limitation makes it incredibly difficult of the female gender to exist outside of their strictly temperature-controlled environment. That’s why you never see a female explorer. And rest assured that if there ever was a great female explorer, she wouldn’t go anywhere without her electric blanket and convection fan.

So first let me apologize to all you who have been expecting a post. I’m in Vegas right now at PubCon 2006 (see JazzcatSEO for more details) so posting is going to continue to be sparse. Sorry. As far as Vegas goes, it’s interesting. I haven’t been on the strip for years. And when I say years, I mean the Luxor was brand new last time I was there. Anyway, we spent some time wandering around the casinos, and I was struck by:

• The large quantity of old people.
• The equally large quantity of bad drivers (coincidence?…)
• The ridiculous amount of money spent on sheer spectacle

Honestly, after seeing so much, what with the flashing lights, ornate decorating, extensive imitation of historical and geographical locales, distracting sounds and delightful smells (aah, cigarettes), I started to get overloaded. I understand what it means to get jaded now. One thing Vegas has yet to learn is that more isn’t always better. Sometimes its just more.

Coming up: Why virtually every great explorer was a man.

I’m starting to realize that there’s a lot of room for mediocrity in this world. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I do as an internet marketer, and I have concluded that I do well enough right now, that I could probably stay as I am without doing a whole lot more, and I’d most likely be ok. But how do you feel excited to go to work every day if you’re only mediocre? How do you keep (or even have) the drive to be successful if you’re about as good as the next man? Where’s the thrill, the anticipation, if all you do is maintain?
The problem with excellence is that it means a lot of hard work. It means rolling up your sleeves and digging into stuff that might blow your mind the first couple of times you read it before you finally understand it. It means taking the hours to program that site yourself, just so you understand how it’s done. It means putting aside your pride and admitting that maybe you don’t know quite as much as you thought you did, so that you’re free to learn. It means sacrificing some of the things you want to do now for an eventual goal that could be a ways off. That’s why there’s so much room for mediocrity. Most people don’t want to go to that effort. And they don’t necessarily expect you to, either.

Reading CNN’s website, I came across an article about Lewis the attack cat. Apparently, neighbors are tired of being attacked from behind by the 6-toed animal, so they have charged the owner with second-degree reckless endangerment. The owner, Ruth Cicero, is fighting for special probation to keep the cat from being euthanized. My favorite part of this story? Apparently, some animal-rights protesters showed up at the courthouse with t-shirts proclaiming their support for Lewis and Cicero. Anybody else find the following statement kind of ironic? From the article:

They want to kill a cat for a scratch,” said Marisa Sampieri of Fairfield, one of the cat’s supporters. “These people have to get a life.”

This is coming from someone standing outside a courthouse to save someone else’s housecat. Maybe Sampieri should take her own advice.

“In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love…”

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Except that it’s only February, and yet everyone I know is getting engaged. It’s like an epidemic. And yet, somehow, I remain immune. However, this outsider’s perspective has given me some ideas about how my own (theoretical) engagement should go. And when I say ideas, I mean idea.

You see, I’ve come to realize that competition is an eternal facet of mortal life. I hold with the philosophers of economics who hold that from the very moment of our entrance into this temporal sphere, we are competing with the rest of humanity for scarce resources: food, shelter, love, etc. And nowhere is this more apparent than the engagement ring.

This has become a common scene to my eyes. Several girls bump into each other. As excited greetings are made, it becomes known that several in their midst are engaged. This elicits a request to see the ring. This is equivalent to the well known sports phrase “Let’s get ready to rumble!” Rings are produced and the competition begins among excited gasps and cries of “that’s so beautiful!” But don’t let the innocuous appearance fool you, this is the very furnace of competition. Each girl is silently sizing up her opponent’s ring, assessing whose ring has the best combination of beauty, carat-age, and thoughtful selection. And in virtually every case, one girl walks away, knowing that she stands victorious on the field of battle, having triumphed over her opponents.

Now, let me peel yet another layer from the onion. This competition actually has very little to do with the girl. No no, my friends, this is about the fiancee. The fact is, when it comes down to brass tacks, it’s the guy who buys the ring. He makes the final selection of ring material, carat weight, features, etc. He is also responsible to come up with some kind of creative flair in which he integrates what he knows about his soon-to-be fiancee into a ring design that is unique to her. And of course, he must shell out the proverbial cabbage for the privilege.

That said, when your girl whips out her ring and gets her game face on, she’s really not the one going to battle. That’s right, it’s you. You’re on the line, and the way your ring performs reflects on you. You might say that it doesn’t matter if your ring loses. She still knows that you love her. I mean, it’s just a ring, right? Oh, my friend, how wrong you would be. You see, that ring is a reflection of your love for her. And if she loses the ring-duel (images of Space Balls begone!) she’ll start to notice that the diamond doesn’t sparkle as much as it used to. The band just isn’t as shiny. It doesn’t fit as well as it used to. And pretty soon, she’s wondering if she agreed to marry the right guy! So you see, this is far more crucial than I think any of us had noticed before. It was like an epiphany bursting over my head when I realized all of this. And that day I dedicated myself to winning! Always winning! My ring can and shall stand the victor on the field of engagement, and we shall live happily ever after! My final argument comes from my roommate’s fiancee, “Lucky Dub,” as we like to call her: “Go big or go home.” Need I say more?

I realize that, by adding yet another installment of parking lot observations, I’m bordering on obsession, but I can’t help it. Maybe people are just at their best (or worst) in the parking lot. Or maybe I tend to watch people a little more closely because of parking lot paranoia. In any case, I consider it my sworn duty to alert my loyal readers to the dangers and possiblities that await in that most crucial of places, the parking lot.

Tonight I feel the necessity to discuss the nuances of the blinker claim. For those of you not familiar, this is a standard move for when the parking lot is full and spaces are nearly priceless. If you’re fortunate enough to find someone getting into their car, you turn your blinker on, thus laying claim to the spot. Though I have never personally seen it, I’m pretty sure that if someone ignores the blinker claim, you are legally justified to spit on their windshield. Let me caution you if you are not used to the blinker claim, however, to help you avoid embarrassing novice mistakes. For example, make sure that you indicate which spot you are claiming by using the correct blinker. It sounds simple, I know, but in the heat of the moment, such details are easily forgotten. Also, and this one is crucial, DO NOT USE YOUR BLINKER TO CLAIM A SPOT IF YOU ARE THE ONLY CAR IN THE PARKING LOT LOOKING FOR A SPOT. Need I say more?

I would also like to throw in a word of caution to my fellow parking-lot sharks: watch out for people like me. And when I say “people like me” I mean people who forget where they park. There are few things as frustrating as following a potential victim fellow driver in order to take the spot they are about to vacate, only to have them remember that their car is on the other side of the parking lot. These individuals may be identified by glassy eyes, aimless shuffle, and slurred speech. They may also be drunk. Or elderly. Or me. That is all.

So I picked up the Incredibles Soundtrack this evening. First of all, it’s not quite as good as I thought it would be. Fortunately there are a couple of songs that make the album worth the money (Off To Work and Life’s Incredible Again, most notably). But that’s beside the point. Over the past few months I have become increasingly more concerned about the music industry’s apparent lack of concern for their customers. First there was the Sony/BMG rootkit debacle, where Sony/BMG put malicious hidden software on a Van Zant (who?) CD, along with 19 other CDs. Add in the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)’s dogged determination to threaten and sue anyone who might be infringing on their intellectual property (including those who really aren’t, like LyricFind.com. Turns out that the RIAA was forced to back off and issue a formal apology, but not before the site was shut down.) and you have what seems to me to be a rather anti-consumer attitude.

This brings me to my point. Today I realized that none of this should have been a surprise. Anybody who has ever purchased a CD will be able to relate. Now, I have a feeling that the guys who design retail CD packaging are the designers of the Great Wall of China reencarnate. Is there any retailing packaging that is more difficult to get off of the product? First you have that outer cellophane wrap, which seems to be impervious to any method employed to tear, slit, or unfold it from the CD case. Then, if/when you get that off, you;re confronted with the additional challenge of pulling that little adhesive strip off of the top of the case. Here, I think the designers got a new idea. Unlike the outer packaging, the adhesive strip disintegrates with very little effort. Meaning that you end up pulling off a million little pieces of sticker instead of being able to pull it off in one piece. Very clever. You would think that a multibillion dollar industry would be able to figure out a slightly more consumer-friendly approach. For example, how about some of those little red pully tabs like they put on chewing gum packs? I mean, are you going to let Wrigley’s beat you out like that? Perhaps the motivation is to create such a sense of desperation in the attempt to unwrap the CD that when/if you finally get it open, you appreciate the music that much more. Who can say for sure? What I can say is this: that next time I want to buy an album, I’m looking on iTunes first.