This is a funny graph. According to this chart, I'm already 100% wrong.

Soap Box in spring

The weather has been getting warmer, and people are emerging from their enforced hibernation. Everyone is out on the lawn, playing Frisbee or participating in what could only be described as co-ed lawn wrestling. (I may blog more on PDA later; it merits a lot of griping.) Also out for spring is the Soap Box, the venerable institution that is BYUSA’s surrogate for free speech. Last week as I walked by there was a girl up there on the microphone complaining how Soap Box was lame and uncreative and blah blah blah. . . Basically, she was guilty of everything she was complaining about. I mentally assigned her the title of “Moron and Doesn’t Know It.” Then I started thinking about my freshman year, when I actually listened to Soap Box sometimes, and thought of a great story.

The best part about this story is that Mynamyn was there, and I think Duchess might have even been there too, although I don’t remember exactly. It was the last day of Soap Box, and they were trying to keep it going as long as possible. A short, hairy fellow was yapping every other turn, and the hecklers in the back (who were faithful, if overly-opinionated, listeners) were giving him an especially hard time. A freshman from DT got up and explained that he had lost a bet with his roommate, and that as a consequence he had to shave his legs and show them in public, so he showed his naked calves and everyone clapped appreciatively. Then the little hairy fellow got up again and talked about something else, and the big heckler in the back was completely mocking him. So the little guy said, “Hey, if you think you’re so cool, why don’t you come up here and say something?” The heckler laughed and refused, so the little guy said, “If you come up here and say something, I’ll. . . I’ll. . . I’ll shave my legs. The crowd (which had grown to a considerable size by this point) cheered, and after a moment’s thought the big heckler strolled up to the front, got on the Soap Box, and pleasantly thanked everyone for their comments, which made for very enjoyable heckling.

Meanwhile, the little dude was trying to escape, but the crowd blocked him in. Someone passed a hat around for money to go buy a razor, and after they had enough they ran to the Bookstore and returned quickly with a Lady Bic. Mynamyn offered her water bottle, and they sat the unhappy hairy guy down on the Soap Box and shaved his legs right there. The poor fellow had very thick leg hair, and I think they cut him a couple of times, but that’s the price you pay for making rash promises.

So no wonder I don’t like listening to the Soap Box anymore—how could you beat something like that?

Worth it

Iraqi blogger Husayn Uthman on whether the war was worth it:

So you ask me, Husayn, was it worth it. What have you gotten? What has Iraq acheived? These are questions I get a lot.

To may outsiders, like those who protested last year, who will protest today. This was a fools errand, it brought nothing but death and destruction. I am sheltered in Iraq, but I know how the world feels, how people have come to either love or hate Bush, as though heis the emobdiement of this war. As though this war is part of Bush, they forget the over twenty million Iraqis, they forget the Middle Easterners, they forget the average person on the street, the average man with the average dream.

Ask him if it was worth it. Ask him what is different. Ask him if he would go through it again, go ahead ask him, ask me, many of you have.

Now I answer you, I answer you on behalf of myself, and my countrymen. I dont care what your news tells you, what your television and newspapers say, this is how we feel. Despite all that has happened. Despite all the hurt, the pain, blood, sweat and tears. These two years have given us hope we never had.

This is an educated guy who even lost his own brother in the insurgent attacks. When he says it's worth it, I believe him.

Thanks again to Glenn Reynolds for calling it to my attention.

That's sick

I was sick most of last week. It started out with a slightly sore throat, but in a day or two it had blossomed into a full-blown, head-pounding, snotty and stuffy, I-can’t-breathe, body-aching-all-over flu. I don’t get sick very often, so I’m a total wuss when I do get hit with the bug. At first I was afraid I was going to die, and then I was afraid I wouldn’t die.

Actually, it wasn’t too bad, but there was one time in my life when I did feel like that. Well, maybe two times, but one of them was in Latin America, and my general quality of health down there was so low that the incident didn’t seem so comparatively bad. But I really did feel like dying when I was seasick. I spent a week on a private yacht in the Florida Keys with my Boy Scout troop when I was 16, and it was one of the best weeks of my entire life. When we first got on the boat, the captain told us up front that about half of us would probably get seasick, and that it would be very uncomfortable for the first day but by the second day we would all be fine. We all accepted this readily, since it’s not real until you’re hanging over the side of the boat retching. Our first few hours were great, but then we got out onto the open sea and the captain’s predictions came true: half of us were miserable. The first one to go was my friend Charlie, who puked all over the head (the tiny little bathroom on the boat) and had to clean it all up. The smell emanating from below drove us all above deck, where three of us lay on benches or on the deck, trying to ignore our stomachs. By this time we were regretting having eaten sausage and bacon for breakfast. The other four guys in the crew were cheerfully hanging off the bow taking pictures of dolphins, making us feel even worse for our sorry situation. Then the guy to the right of me lost it and the sound of him puking made the guy to the right of me lose it. So I was lying on the deck, plugging my ears while on either side of me my two friends were emptying their stomachs. Gross.

We finally reached the reefs where we were gong snorkeling, and we geared up and got in the water. I felt better for a little bit as we dove down and saw coral and barracudas and sea turtles and stuff. But after a while I started getting queasy, and I discovered a terrible fact: you can actually get seasick while you’re in the water. I had the unfortunate but unique experience of throwing up 10 feet under water. It was pretty spectacular, and I just about drowned before I could get to the surface and take a breath. I at least had the presence of mind to tear my snorkel out of my mouth before the fireworks happened. The worst part was when the fish flocked around and ate the reruns of breakfast. . .

So yeah, I guess I wasn’t too sick last week, and I’m better now. And to all of you going on a boat, I have one piece of advice: take the Dramamine early and often, just in case.

Free money

I love free money. Yesterday I reached into the back pocket of my jeans and found ten bucks that I had forgotten about. I rarely forget about money (I’m kind of a penny-pincher) so it’s a special treat when I randomly discover cash. It’s not the first time this month that I’ve had “free money” land in my lap. We did our taxes pretty early, so we already got our tax refund. I think this is the best kind of money, because it’s a pretty good chunk of change (about a thousand, between our federal and state income tax returns) and it’s absolutely no-strings-attached. I happen to pay tithing on my gross income rather than my net, so whatever I get back from taxes is completely tax and tithing free. It couldn’t have come at a better time, either, because The Redhead and I just paid for our rental truck for moving across the country and made a deposit to save my seat in law school, and that racks up pretty quickly. I’ve been checking our account balance online frequently lately, and it’s so fun to log on and find your balance is $700 higher than yesterday. Usually it’s the opposite.

LOL

These are my top laugh-out-loud movie moments. They don't really serve any purpose other than to feed my ego in my rash assumption that other people care what I think.

Tommy Boy
When Chris Farley and David Spade pretend like they're getting attacked by a swarm of bees to get out of a speeding ticket, I just can't even stop laughing. I know it's stupid humor, and I know it's terribly unrealistic, but I just can't help it. Honorable mention in this movie is the scene with the deer.

Black Sheep
In the same vein but not of the same caliber, this movie really wasn't that funny to me. Not even the "Kill Whitey" scene made me laugh that much. In fact, it would be a wholly worthless experience were it not for the scene when the roof of the cabin blows off and Chris Farley's top bunk collapses on David Spade on the bottom bunk. I've only seen this movie once, about 9 years ago, but I still laugh to myself when I think about it. Hoo, boy, I'm chuckling as I write this.

The Gods Must Be Crazy
Never seen this one? You should if you haven't. It's such a low-budget 80's camp classic. The part that gets me rolling is when the guy gets chased by a rhino right into the schoolteacher while she's undressing. That's just classic situational comedy. Honorable mention to the scene when the aborigine is driving the car backwards while standing on the hood.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail
This one had to make it into the list somewhere. The trouble with this movie is that the best moments aren't really laugh-out-loud moments. They're more like perfect quotables, but nothing that makes your sides ache. So the laugh-out-loud moment for me was the stupid Trojan bunny flying over the castle wall. Maybe that's just too cliché for most of you, but when I saw it for the first time, I had no idea what to expect. So it was bizarrely funny to me. A very strong honorable mention, however, goes to the scene with Sir Galahad in the castle of the women. Even though it contains the movie's most inappropriate lines, it has the best line at the end when Sir Lancelot and the rest of the nights come to save Sir Galahad from "certain temptation." Sir Lancelot brandishes his sword at the would-be seductresses and tells Sir Galahad, "It's too perilous." Galahad whines as he is dragged away, "Well, let me have just a little bit of peril?"

Signs
This one isn't very intuitive, although the movie certainly had some great comedic moments. I liked how they kept you on the edge, because you didn't know whether you were about to jump or about to laugh. The scene with the tin foil hats gets my vote for best comedic moment. But the part that made me laugh out loud was supposed to be a scary one. When Joaquin Phoenix is watching the TV in the closet and they show the video from the Brazilian birthday party, all the children in the video scream their heads off when the alien steps out of the bushes. I'm a wuss in most scary movies, and Signs sure had me jumping in other parts, but the kids screaming made me laugh aloud in the theater. It kinda made everyone look at me weird. I must have a strange sense of humor.

Zoolander
I have a love-hate relationship with Ben Stiller movies. On the one hand, I think they're stupid, frequently dirty, and more popular than they deserve to be. On the other hand, they have some absolutely hysterical moments that I find myself quoting. The best moment for Zoolander, without a doubt, is the gasoline fight. When his roommate lights up a cigarette, and it flashes to the funeral, I laughed through the entire next scene. I had to see the movie again to hear what they were saying in the next scene because I basically missed all of it.

Napoleon Dynamite
I have to admit, this movie really didn't make me laugh out loud much. In fact, it didn't make me laugh much at all while I was watching it. It was only after I saw it that it started making me chuckle and quote some of the more absurd lines of dialogue. There was one moment, however, that made me crack up. It was where Napoleon tries to jump those boards on Pedro's bike and bites it. Oh, man, I love when quirky dialogue is juxtaposed with low-brow humor. It's such a winning combination.

My other self

Have any of you ever Googled yourself? My real name doesn’t show up on the Internet much, and none of the references are me. I guess I haven’t done anything noteworthy yet with my life. But my Board name shows up, especially on Yahoo! search, which includes blogs. There are a few other Benvolios out there blogging, but none of them are as regular as I have been, and they mostly write silly drivel the reveals their high-school age. The ironic thing is that there’s another fellow by the pseudonym of Benvolio on Blogger, and he does basically the same thing I do—he answers questions. He does it on his blog, but still, the similarities were eerie. He’s had his blog longer, but I’ve been rockin’ out on the Web for a couple years now, so I predate him. So a quick survey—have any of you found other people with your aliases? What are they doing with your names?