Given the recent rash of engagements among my friends recently, I feel that the time has come for me to write yet another post on the topic of marriage. Rather than make this a diatribe against what is unquestionably a timeless practice that is credited with maintaining stability and continuity in cultures the world over and throughout time, instead, I want to talk cracks in the shiny facade that is the Utah Valley Marriage Propaganda Machine™.

First, don’t pretend that such a machine doesn’t exist. It is very real. It is orchestrated from the highest levels: talks in conference and church about the importance of marriage. Then there are subtle reminders from parents and their married friends. And then it gets much more insidious. Your friends start to get married. And then all they do is rave about how great it is, while trying to set you up with their friends on the hope that you too can be as blissfully happy as they are. Now, at first, resistance is easy. But it’s like Chinese water torture. All the little drips keep hitting you and hitting you until, at last, you can’t take it anymore, you find yourself a ditzy blonde from Orem who’s just out of high school, and you join the ranks of the indoctrinated, basking in connubial bliss. In summation, I’m convinced that this is a massive conspiracy perpetrated on young LDS single adults in Utah Valley.

And here we come to the aforementioned cracks in an otherwise perfect mechanism. At my place of employ, I am one of only a handful of single young adults. They’ve purposely kept us all separated so that we can’t communicate with each other to find solidarity in our singleness. Fortunately, I managed to rope an intern out of our tech support department who happens to be single, so I have some comradeship. Anyway, I think because all the married people are surrounded by othe married people, they let their guard down and forget that they’re supposed to be convincing us to join their ranks. For example, a coworker walks into our office, plops down and prefaces her story by telling me and the intern, “guys, don’t ever get married.”

The CEO walks in and tells us to “enjoy being single because once you get married and have kids, your fun will dry up.”

My boss walks into the bathroom and sees me cleaning something off of my shirt and tells me “just wait until you have kids and all your shirts get throwup stains on them.”

Occasionally, there is useful advice sprinkled into the cynicism: “buy all your toys now because when you get married, you can’t buy anything fun.”

You get the idea.

My favorite part about all these comments is that, once we remind people about their duty to convince us to get married, they quickly backtrack:

Them: “Being married sucks.”
Us: “Phew, well, I guess I won’t do that then.”
Them: *clicking sound as conditioning kicks in* “Oh, no, don’t get me wrong, marriage is great. You should do it!”
Us: “Right.”

So that’s my theory. If you love it, spread it. If you hate it, it’s probably because it’s true.

Me: “But a blog post has to have a good punchline.”

Brian: “Wenches.”

As I was driving home tonight, I passed by something that smelled strongly of donuts. My first instinct was to hit the brakes and look for cops. There weren’t any, but my next thought was that my response to the smell had made sense because, after all, one never knows when one might develop a new cop-sensing superpower.

Over at TheBigBags.com, Nate has posted what is probably one of the most excruciating musical performances I have ever seen in my entire life.

As we were discussing this video while carpooling home from work, it reminded me of an experience I had a couple of years ago.

Now, I love the Internet for many things. It gives me information when I want it, instant communication with virtually all of my friends and family, and entertainment on demand. In fact, I love it so much that if it were not an abstraction, I WOULD marry it, so don’t even say it.

However, one day I was brought to realize that there is one flaw, one wart, one horrible imperfection with the Internet that threatens to ruin the love affair.

It is the existence this video. (Warning: Watch at your own risk. This is, after all, the WORST VIDEO ON THE FACE OF THE INTERNETS. I AM NOT EXAGGERATING.)

The first time I watched it, I couldn’t finish it. By the time they started rapping, I was literally about to start dry heaving. I got dizzy and had to sit down. I swear I am not making any of this up. Even now, just the thought of watching it makes me a little nauseous. It is because of this video that I will always and forever despise Microsoft marketing, no matter how slick it gets from here. Because for me, there is no forgiveness in this life or the next for a video this terrible.

Several months ago, my buddy Ryan told me about an online service called Remember The Milk.

“Nice name,” I said, “and by nice, I mean retarded. What am I going to do with an online list-making reminder service?”

So I ignored it. Until today. See, a month or two ago, I realized that my productivity had dwindled to approximately zero and that, if I wanted to keep my sanity (and my job) I was going to have to change something. And I started making lists. Every night before I went to bed, I’d make a list of all the junk I needed to get done the next day. And it turns out that it works pretty well for me.

Fast forward to today. I got into work and had a little bit of time to kill before the rush of the day hit me. And suddenly I remembered Remember The Milk.

Less than one hour later, I had put my entire to-do list into RTM, organized it by work and personal to-dos, tagged everything, and integrated it into GMail, iCal, and email. And then I actually used it. So anyways, Ryan, this post is for you. You were right, ok?

And for the rest of you, if you don’t hear anything further, it’s because I’m happily Remembering The Milk.

I would just like to announce to the world that I am a gigantic wuss.

That is all.

Every so often, and actually pretty regularly these days, I ask myself, “self? What are you doing with your life?” Well, let me tell you.

A while ago, Overstock.com’s CEO Patrick Byrne was on NPR doing an interview. Apparently he has a good friendship with the legendary Warren Buffet, and so the interviewer was questioning Byrne on that relationship and some of the ways that it had influenced Byrne’s life. In response to one of the questions, Byrne shared this analogy that Buffet had told him at some point:

You see, life is like a baseball game where you’re perpetually up to bat. So more like a home run derby, actually. Anyway, life will throw you lots of pitches. Some will be good, and some will be bad, and the temptation is going to be to swing at all the good pitches. The problem is, if you swing at all the good pitches, you might knock a few, but you’ll be exhausted from all the swinging. Instead, you should sit and wait for a big, fat, slow pitch right over the middle. And once that pitch comes along, you swing away for all you’re worth, and because you’ve saved your energy, your odds of hitting it out of the park are multiplied.

I’ve chosen to adopt this strategy, so anytime I ask myself what I’m doing, I tell myself that I’m waiting on a big, fat, slow pitch. I just hope that life keeps throwing.

Here’s a quick list of highlights from today:

8:00 AM – I walk into the office and notice that my coworker who always locks his computer has left it unlocked for the first time. I commemorate the occasion by changing his background to cute, cuddly puppies and kittens.

11:00 AM – I find a video called Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag about the annual air combat exercises held by the U.S. Air Force. Somewhere, my inner ten-year-old self starts drooling.

3:00 PM – Our HR Manager walks into our office and hands me and my two office mates little sqooshy rubber balls. A sqooshy ball fight quickly ensues, ending with me pegging one of my coworkers in the face. Totally awesome.

6:00 PM – I rekindle my love for documentary filmmaking by stepping behind the camcorder lens to capture my little sister’s 20th birthday party. My camera privileges are quickly revoked.

6:45 PM – My brother and I arm wrestle for a solid two minutes before we call it a draw, much to my chagrine.

10:00 PM – I go to the gym to make sure I beat my brother next time. While there, I determine that PC Laptops have the most annoying commercials since Totally Awesome Computers. Their tagline is “PC Laptops, where we love you!” Insultingly stupid commercials + obnoxious CEO on TV = not feeling the love.

11:30 PM – After giving up the search for a link to the kitten picture I put on my coworker’s desktop because of some disturbing search results for “kitten,” I decide to give it up and go to bed.

Since I graduated, I’ve really been trying to figure out what to do with all this free time that I now have. Now that I don’t come home to a shload of homework that has to be done for class the next day, my evenings are full of open-ended possibility. When I think of all the awesome things that I could do with that time, I get almost giddy. After all, there are classic pieces of literature to be read, musical instruments to be learned, businesses to start, and friends to hang out with. Therefore, you’re doubtless interested to hear what I do with all my free time. Well, I’ll tell you.

I come home, sit on the couch, and watch TV. Somehow, between the time I leave the office and the time I get home, all my motivation and excitement dissipates from my body, leaving a shiriveled, lazy husk. Somehow I manage to extract myself from the car and drag myself upstairs to the couch, where I sit with a bag of whatever junk food is most convenient, watching Law and Order reruns whatever happens to be on TV.

This is a frustrating situation for me, because deep within this unmotivated shell of a man is someone who really wants to do great things with his time. And yet the siren song of easy, mindless entertainment is too much for me to resist. After all, the TV promises an evening of effortless enjoyment, asking only my time in exchange. Forget the fact that at the end of the night, all that’s left is this vaguely disappointing sense that, somehow I have managed to waste yet another portion of my life on something of little to no value. Curse you, TV, with your seductive, seductive appeal. I shake my fist, nay, I bite my thumb at you for the hours of time you have stolen from me.

Anyway, writing this blog post has made me pretty tired. I wonder what’s on right now?

P.S. It’s remarkable how many cat pictures show up when you do a Google image search for “couch potato.”

Whenever a big company loses a court case, the losing lawyer usually makes a statement concerning the company’s feelings about the loss. Generally these feelings are described using the words “shocked,” “dismayed,” and/or “deeply disappointed.” The statement “company X is shocked and deeply disappointed about this verdict,” is a textbook example of proper usage. I have two things to say about this.

First of all, I love how this is almost universally the leading statement that the losing lawyer says. There must be some class in public relations or something in law school where they teach law students to say this exact statement just in case they have to represent a client in front of cameras because it shows up so consistently. And of course, who can blame the lawyers for expressing this sentiment? After all, what corporate lawyer is going to get up and say “yeah, we totally saw this coming, and, well, we’re really not all that torn up about it?” But at the same time, I could use a bit more variation.

Second, the sheer hyperbole of the statement is audacious enough that I’m considering using it in my own day-to-day operations. After all, how much more sincere will I sound if I’m “shocked and deeply disappointed” when I don’t get my way, as opposed to just “bummed?” This new phrase is guaranteed to pull at the ol’ heartstrings of everybody who hears it, thus swaying public opinion in my favor, which is all I was going for in the first place.