WORTHLESS

The results are in for the spoiler: It goes...

I hope you all learned your lesson about voting. Your votes didn't count because you didn't know that we were using the electoral college system. I choose to have it stay gone (at least for the time being) because while I was removing it one of the screws broke off inside its corresponding hole and it is going to take more than a few minutes to install the spoiler once again. Popular vote loses again!

YAY OR NEIGH

I am going to put the fate of the spoiler with my blog followers. I would say to comment on the one you like but some people may be a bit nervous about making a comment on my blog. Therefore, there will be a poll on the right side of the blog where you can vote. I am aware that you can cheat the voting, so in the event of a tie the spoiler will stay off. If you have a strong enough opinion either way and choose to vote multiple times for one, I applaud you for your conviction. If you are an economist and believe that your vote won't count, you are probably right because I am going to do what I want almost certainly. Vote if you wish to. Go.

GONZO

I have driven to and from Salt Lake City a number of times both while living there and while living in Cedar City. There are a few things that I seem to notice every time even when I am not paying much attention to my surroundings. Ever since I can remember there has been a little red car in a field, abandoned. It has suffered some beatings over the years. On one occasion I noticed that the mirrors had been knocked off. Over the years the windows had all been broken. I check on the little red car every time I drive by in the daylight hours.

I was shocked to see last time that the car was missing. All the years we had seen each other and there was little more than tire tracks leading away from the spot that the car had been lying dormant. It didn't call me or even leave a note. You can imagine a red car in the field to see how sad you may become if it were to be gone one day.

BABIES!

I found a better picture of my Halloween costume from last year. I haven't ruled out being a baby again. Tune in for an update after Halloween is over.

GOOD SPORT

Brett Grimm is the best. She is so forgiving/apathetic toward my goofball demeanor. She even plays the silly games my family plays with little or no complaining. (i.e. pumpkin suction (sucking up paper pumpkins with a straw and running across the room to deposit them into a plastic pumpkin, and Jack-0-lantern Shootout). If she were on "Shallow Hal" she would look the exact same, or perhaps even more beautiful. In the past I haven't posted the most flattering pictures of her, but it was all I had. I am going to infringe on copyright to bring you these. I love this girl.

This is something of me now.

GRAYSCALE

I have been taking some pictures with my phone lately and today I decided that I would share some.

I decided that my full face helmet looked dumb so I decided to paint it.

Before

After

I have been riding my motorcycle up Cedar Canyon quite a bit lately. I decided that since I was going near Cedar Breaks so often that i should stop by and see it. I have lived in Cedar City for the large majority of my life but I have never traveled the 20 or so miles up the canyon to see the National Monument. Photos I took with my phone can be seen below. I was told that the tree in the photo below is 1700 years old. That is probably the oldest tree I have ever come in contact with.

POST

I have this picture that I never put on my blog that I intended to put on the blog. Here it is. Salt Lake City has some cool mailboxes and whilst out walking with the Goddard's, Chelsea and Margot, I was this and decided that it would be cool to get a photo to prove it. Proof?

BAG

I have a girlfriend. I think that she is great.

CABIN

I have been seriously neglecting my followers. I must apologize to everyone that has missed reading this incredibly pointless blog. I am sorry [for you]. I have been incredibly lazy about blogging until today when I was talking to Buddy. So the point to this is that anyone that had been checking my blog to see if it had been updated can thank Buddy for a change of scenery. Feel free to award him points. I will add them up and any points that are awarded to Buddy will be accepted as legal tender for a "Buddy point".

I have digressed from the origional point to this posting. I have been working with my uncle Todd Thorley (for stats click this link) this summer, as I was the summer of 2009, doing construction on a cabin for my grandfather (for stats click this link). I have been enjoying it a great deal. I have really been thankful for the experience I have gained about building the cabin with him. I really admire the general knowledge that Todd has and am incredibly thankful that he is sharing that knowledge with me as fast as I can absorb it. I have a vastly closer relationship with him than the relationships with any aunts or uncles from either my fraternal or maternal families.

The cabin have been keeping me quite busy during the day for the most part. I will am sure that i will miss working on it when it is done, but it will also be nice to be able to go to the cabin and just relax for the first time. I have been spending a lot of my time that could easily be leisure time.

At the first part of this summer while being employed by my grandpa it was nearly exclusively just the two of us that were going to work. It was sort of a joke i had to keep myself sane that he was always so tired and couldn't do much work until it came time to do the fun work (i.e. using a chain saw, driving home in the mud). I really didn't mind when he would just sit there and watch me work. I just really liked the company. I thought that it was pretty cool to be able to work with my gramps and hear the stories of his life I have really missed having him around.

I am not going to post a picture yet of the cabin, but if someone can persuade me to add one I will give you a point.

ACID

This truck made some acid from my stomach lurch into the back of my throat. I found it to be quite an eyesore. What do you think: Like or dislike?

SAM BAG

I am not sure if this bag is full of sand or sam. It is labeled "SAMBAG" but only the person that wrote it can know that was meant for sure.

ADVENTURE

I saw old trains. I ran on the water. One train got loose and came after me when I called it old. I saw where the golden spike was put into the transcontinental railroad. I saw the spiral jetty. Chelsea did some laundry at the train station? I saw the Not Great Salt Lake. It was quite the adventure.

TRADITION

I have owned five different cars in the last five years. My 5th was purchased earlier this week. I believe that this one will be around for more than a year but the past would indicate that it will be roughly a year. It is a 2000 Acura Ingegra GS-R in case any of you were wondering.

YO TRABAJO CON JESUS

I got a job building laminated counter tops. I am half of the white population at work, and the only person that doesn't speak Spanish. I have become racist. I would rather work with these guys that I work with than white people. The language barrier makes speaking more direct. It has created paranoia for me though. I always see the other workers talking together in Spanish and laughing. I am fairly paranoid when it comes to people watching me work, but when they are not speaking English I imagine the horrible things they are saying. Today I was accidentally shot with a nail in the stomach, but it didn't puncture. I have been building tops with incredible efficiency. Today alone I built somewhere near 35 tops at least. It is incredible what one can do when they have good machinery.

MY PERSONALITY

Rob Thorley took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! "Lives life to the fullest. Has a high energy leve..." Click here to read the rest of the results.

I'M GOING SELLING

I have a bike, and I would like to sell it to a family member if anyone is interested in buying a bike for one of their little girls so that I won't have to move it throughout college. Comment if you are interested. The florescent green, "gear up" pouch will be included with the purchase.

SCARED KIDS

I recently went to see Scary Kids Scaring Kids, a band I enjoy more than most, play what is probably their last show in Salt Lake. I have posted things about musical events I have gone to before but this was one of the better shows I have been to. As you may know based on the posts that have preceded this I find mosh pits funny and entertaining, in many cases more entertaining than the band on stage due to the silly antics that take place in there. This was particularly the case for the Scary Kids part of the event.

SKSK announced that they were breaking up the band and were going to go on a farewell tour of the country to let people that have supported them a chance to see them a final time if they wished to do so. I have seen some pretty gnarly things at shows in the wild commotion of the crowd. This show had my three of my new favorite moments all within about 30 minutes of each other.

Moment 3: This was not one single moment per se, but an ongoing assault that just seemed to pick on one particular girl in the crowd. Each time a pit would form I would see this small girl on the edge of the pit getting pummeled over and over. It seemed as though she wanted to be on the outside edge of the pit due to the frequency that I would see her there, but if you looked at her face you could see that she didn't want to be there. The pushing and bodies slamming against each other seemed to get her to the edge like an object rising out of vibrating sand. Eventually she was next to me and I took pity on her and tried to guard her from getting slammed. I actually ended up standing right next to her, but the inertia of the bodies going straight at her were often too much for me to stop and would end up slamming her still. There were a few times where she was knocked down and once when her phone was knocked out of her hand.

Moment 2: There was a kid that was terribly annoying that was always in the pit running around being very aggressive. The way the venue was set up was interesting. You could surf the crowd and get right up on the stage with the band. There were quite a lot of people crowd surfing and i find it quite unpleasant to be kicked in the back of the head or have a body fall on me when I am watching the band. This is what made moment particularly enjoyable for me. I was watching behind me and keeping an eye on the surfing people and the pit. I watched the annoying kid get a boost from his friends to crowd surf and as he was being lifted there was a thin spot developing in the crowd. He was tossed into the air and with no crowd support he landed on the ground. I gathered from the visual evidence around that he was not hurt very much but he did hit his head.

Moment 1: While the mosh pit was in full force there were a bunch of hardcore dancing kids. I avoid these kids because they swing limbs wildly and I have seen people leaving the pit with blood all over themselves. There was a slight lull in the pit where there was only a handful of kids in there, one was a small girl, that were dancing around and running into the people on the perimeter of the pit. The small girl ran into the guy standing next to me and said, "C'mon man, push me back." This was a mistake that I can't fathom she will make again because although the guy was a bit reluctant to push her back in he did it with quite a bit of force. This in itself is quite funny to me, but here is where moment one comes from. Right as he pushed her we both see a hardcore coming straight for her, but not just straight for her with arm swinging, straight for her with a roundhouse jumping kick. This hardcore jumped, spun, and put the sole of his shoe right on her face with force. There was a gasp from the people that had just seen this event. The hardcore felt pretty bad and stood stunned with his mouth hanging wide open as he stared at his victim lying on the floor. It is standard pit protocol to pick people up when they go down, and as such the small girl was quickly picked up. She was lifted up and asked if she was okay, she gave a nod but then stumbled, much like a fighter that had just been knocked out, into the thick crowd and vanished. The people around me were all still in shock from this, and it took her vanishing into the crowd before I could think of anything to say about it. I turned to the guy next to me that had seen the whole thing go down and asked him the only thing that I could say, "I think that is the craziest thing I have ever seen happen maybe, dude, um, did that guy just seriously roundhouse her in the nose? Jeez. Seriously, dude? Jeez." Looking back I realize that it wasn't the most intelligent thing I could have said, but if you saw what I did you would be too shocked to make a great sentence as well. I guess the point to the story is, don't ask to be pushed?

FEMALE WARIORS

Last semester I purchased 4 books from the bookstore at the University of Utah and on Amazon.com. The books cost me more than 400 dollars to buy. It was incredible to see the prices for the books that were not even a new edition. I was buying used books for over 100 dollars. I came to the conclusion that if I bought the books used for over 100 dollars that I would be able to salvage some of that expense in the selling back process.

I try to buy my books for college almost exclusively from the internet, but there are some cases where you must buy "specialized" books from the university. I hate the specialized books that are made uniquely for a single university, but that is beside my point.

In the past I have made a net profit from selling my books back to the book store at a university, or at a third party kind of book buy-back store. This was not the case last semester. I went to sell back my 4 books that were still in nearly pristine condition. I was offered an astonishingly low amount for the books.

The money maker was going to sell for about 20 dollars. The other 3 combined for about 15 dollars. I was devastated by the loss from my investment. I declined the terms of the sale and decided that I would venture to the very same place that I have grown to love over the years, Amazon.com.

I posted my money maker online. There was a considerable amount of time that was used on signing up for the ability to use the website among other things. I had to verify that I was indeed the person I claimed to be. I had to offer a credit card number. As you can see there was a considerable cost that was included with this process.

The book sold today for 30 dollars. That $30 has a percentage taken from it from amazon.com so that they make money. I was aware of that percentage when I signed up to sell my book. I chose to do what I did.

Now we can get to my hate. I find it incredible that we have such a system that it is impossible to expect to resale your books from college for anywhere close to 50 percent of what you buy them for. I don't like to buy text books.

Although I made more money on the book than I would have without Amazon.com it is unlikely that I will use that service again soon. If anyone is interested in owning some text books let me know. One is about sports economics, one is statistics, and one is about the banking system and money. I will give them away to a good home.

Signed,

Hater

GAY PRIDE

I have had a very hard time falling asleep for a few years now. I have been given an article about sleeping and how to have a better sleeping pattern. I have linked it for you. I hope it helps any of you followers that I love so much. I have added a trademark random photo for your enjoyment as well. I hope it can help you sleep.

EDIT: Here is the link for you that the photo didn't work on. http://www.oodora.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/passed-out-drunk-guys.jpg

REGRET

I should have let this mature.