unfortunate news

today while at the doctor's office, i weighed myself. with my shoes and clothes, i was a meager 158 pounds. it's been 4 months since i quit going to the gym and it is very apparent as i've already lost 7 pounds! i'm thinking that once i take the lsat i will reclaim those lost pounds and maybe even put some more on. in fact, i maybe i could look like this someday: bettinakadet.com. just kidding, i'm not ridiculous. well in the meantime, i'll just be wasting my body away. peace

Red is not my favorite color

It's not that I'm opposed to red, I just think it's not the best color out there. Blue is a great color. My eyes are blue. Gray is a cool color. Black. I like white. But red? I don't know. I'll give red some pluses: the Red Sox are red, my Marines water bottle is red. But on the other hand, let me tell you something else associated with red: blushing. I am not talking about the act of applying blush, which females oftentimes do. I am talking about having a red face from embarrassment or shame or agitation or emotional upset. I hate it when I do stupid things and subsequently blush. Doing stupid things is normal and I'm fine with that. But to then have a color on your face that flags you as a moron is quite another thing. The worst is when someone mockingly calls you on it, which furthers the blushing. Blushing is something that I've come to accept as beyond my realm of control. I can't stop it from happening. So instead, I'm going to try and figure out why it happens from an evolutionary perspective. Maybe it made predators think that the idiot caveman was angry and stopped messing with him. I'm pretty sure our faces turn red when we're mad. Maybe it used to be attractive to see those cheeks on fire. I'm going to stop hypothesizing. Green is another cool color. It reminds me of wildlife.

Sleep dep

I used to go to Orem High School, home of the tigers. My junior and senior year I did policy debate. My partner in my senior year was my cousin Stan Nelson. We named our case that we ran "Sleep Dep." short for sleep deprivation. It focused on how our society needs to get more sleep. For more information about this topic, please refer to this wikipedia article here. Since high school, I have run across different people with differing needs of sleep. It turns out that a large part of someone's sleep needs is based on genetics. Some people honestly amaze me at how little sleep they can operate on. I am not the type who sleeps in until 11:30 by any means. In fact getting more than 8 hours of sleep is a rare thing for me indeed. But I need a decent amount of sleep! I have learned this lesson a lot lately. If I get 4 hours of sleep for a night, I get sick the next day almost automatically. Then there are those who can pull all-nighters, or get by on a consistent 5 hours of sleep per night. When I encounter such people, deep down I wish I had such an ability. But I can't blame myself for my physical inadequacies, that's obviously my parents' fault. What I can do is do everything in my power to enable my future children to be endowed with these advanced traits. You may be thinking to yourself, "Why Trent, you are advocating Nietzsche's superman philosophy! How dare you?" I may have to agree with that astute observation. But to my defense, may I cite a true principle that explains a lot about life: evolution. It is because of continually advancing our genetic makeups that we are alive today. Why shouldn't I strive to produce a competitive posterity in today's world? In the meantime, I am going to keep on the lookout for a certain girl. In addition to the three qualifications that I have maintained for a long time, she's going to not need very much sleep. Is it selfish of me to do this? Well yes, [pause] and no. I'm going to bed.

And the winner is, [drumroll please]

I remember reading an editorial in the Daily Universe last year about how BYU has bad toilet paper. I want to say that the toilet paper here at Harvard is worse. You'd think that with a $35 billion endowment, the toilet paper wouldn't remind me of Russia, but it does. In the toilet paper competition, I declare the winner to be my own sweet home.

Don't even go there

By being single, you get to meet and associate and even date a lot of members of the opposite sex. As we are all built differently, we each have different preferences for what we like and don't like about others. One question that I sometimes get asked, or led to answer is the following: "So why don't you like her?" or "What about her don't you like?" There are two types of people who ask this question. 1) Those who really want to know the answer to this question just for curiosity's sake. 2) Those who have ulterior motives and secretly want to refute your answer so that you appear judgmental, too picky, and charity-less. I rarely run across type 1 and hence do not usually disclose reasons as to why I'm not interested in someone. As a result, I have a lot of thoughts that are just bubbling inside, with no one to go to. Someday I'll find me a psychologist and the secrets will then end.

We're going global

So recently I was introduced to Google Analytics, a web tool that allows you to track the in depth statistics on any website that you are in control of. It's only a 2-3 line javascript snippet that you copy and paste into your html. I was impressed with the tool. I was checking out the stats for UtahValleyFun.com and I noticed some pretty remote countries that have visited the site: Australia, Thailand, and even Iran. That's right, I have no idea what the city of Yazd is like, but someone there apparently accessed my site in the last month. I'm already thinking of potential global growth, especially in the middle east. I can see it now: GoodTimesinIran.com, FuninIran.com, IranRec.org, hmmm we'll keep on thinking about this idea...

The most disturbing dream...

Sigmund Freud believed that dreams provide a key to understanding our subconscious mind. If this is the case, I don't know what's going on deep down in my mind after last night's dream.
So there was a women's baseball game between Pakistan and India. Pakistan was pitching and the pitcher nails the Indian batter. As this stunned batter tries to recover, the catcher stands up and kicks the batter in the back area, dropping her to her knees. The catcher then takes the bat and hits the batter in the head. This leaves the poor Indian woman sprawled across the field. You would think that would be the end of the catcher's abuse. Something very interesting then happens. The catcher starts rhythmically hitting the head of the already unconscious batter with about a 5 second delay in between each hit. The rest of the team is joining in on some chant which resembles some Tongan dance or something. They aren't doing anything to stop it because it seems like they approve. Then I start seeing those who don't approve of this ma lay. From the stands come running Indian fans to the field who want to stop this from happening. The are running, but since they start running from way across the field, it takes them a long time. After that dream, I was trying to figure out if the catcher lived or died because of that experience, but it's just a matter of speculation. I have no idea. One thing is sure, Go Red Sox.

charity is key

As I was in the shower this morning, I thought about people that I don't like. I realized that the reason I don't like a lot of them is because they don't have charity. Paul said it well, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." This was an interesting moment as I made this realization for two reasons: 1) It made me realize that I need to work on charity myself. 2) It made me realize how my preferences for people are changing. I used to like people on the basis of their physical attributes, their interesting personalities, and their sense of humor. I still evaluate my friendships with people based on these qualities, but increasingly I base it off of charity. This assumes that I can judge if someone has charity, which I know I can't always do perfectly, but at least I'm looking for it; and when I find it, I like it.
I just used a semi-colon. I'm so proud of myself!

Give it to me straight up

There's something to be said of frank, candid honesty, especially in regards to how one can improve his or her life. We don't take constructive criticism very well as human beings, but there is another way: anonymous suggestions. If people don't tell us some of the things that we can be doing better, how are we to know how we can improve? I'd like to think that by looking at the good examples of others, we can improve ourselves, but that oftentimes isn't enough. A couple examples hopefully will illustrate.
My friend over last summer was interested in a girl, but one thing about this girl bothered him. She had some fuzz going on above the lip. You would think that a guy interested in a girl would be able to overlook such a seemingly trivial characteristic, but he couldn't bring himself to taking the relationship to the next level with this girl. A couple of my friends intervened. They used facebook to send her an anonymous message through "The honesty box" explaining how she should wax her upper lip. The amazing thing is that she shortly thereafter did, my buddy and her hooked up, and they've been dating ever since.
My other friend likes girls to have good breath. This is especially important in the kissing aspect of dating. I mean honestly, who wants to touch lips with someone with rank breath? No one I hope. Well, my friend was interested in this one girl and that was one of the relationship barriers he faced. He told me the situation and we came to the conclusion that at his stage in the relationship, there was no way for him to talk about it with her. You can't go up to a girl that you've only been out with a couple times and tell her about bad breath. That upgrades the status of the relationship to "way too serious" in one conversation. So we decided to send her a text message from my phone about the subject. The text went along these lines: "You don't know me, but I know guys that would be more interested in you if you had better breath." Because of that text, she was in a position of knowing how she can better herself in an increasingly more competitive world. I don't know the rest of the story, but I share this example to illustrate the point of how cool anonymous truth is.
I'm not advocating for fault-finding, but genuine criticism with the intent to improve someone else is healthy to an extent. I'm grateful for my brother who sat me down a month or two after my mission and told me, "Trent, you're weird." Even if you don't pursue their recommended course of action, at least you have another perspective.

Some of my favorite conference 177 speakers

1) Elder Callister
2) President Eyring
3) Elder Scott
4) President Monson

Listen to your heart

I read the book the Alchemist a couple months ago. In case you haven't read this book, the message that it drives home is that you should be in tune with your heart and it will tell you what you should do. As I was reading the book, I realized how in certain moments in my life I have done certain things because I was following my heart. And while I can't say that I've found my personal legend yet, it's interesting to see where I've come so far in my journey. But that is another story. The point that I was trying to get at was this: I believe that my heart just told me to stop speed-reading. Yep, just flat out stop. How did it tell me that? It gave me a very lazy feeling, sapped all the motivation out of me, enlightened me with other things I can be doing with my time, and directed me to this wikipedia entry which rags on the comprehension of speed-readers. Because I'm obedient, I'm going to comply to my hearts wishes. Maybe another time in the future when the timing is better I will pick up this skill. But for now, on to continue my personal legend quest!