Genealogy and other adventures in real and cyber-space

Yesterday my dad's brother Brent visited, which was cool. My dad gave him the tour of biloxi, and i went too since i hadn't gone yet. There were a lot of really cool houses, and there was a map that showed all the houses that my dad's program had built or are building or helped rebuild and it was a pretty shocking amount, maybe over 100. It's cool that biloxi is going to have this mark left on it by my dad with all these really good houses on stilts. One of the houses was amazing, it was built right around the branches of a tree so as you walked up to it it felt very much like a tree house. Live oak trees, by the way, are amazing. I think they might be some of the coolest trees i've seen, and i've seen lots and lots of trees.

We also ate at The Shed, probably the most southern place i've ever eaten at. It's definitely a place that needs to get featured on that food network show where they go to all those little restaurants...i can't remember what it's called, something, drive in's and dives maybe. Something like that, anyway, it was good stuff. After that we went down to the beach and me and isaac swam. It wasn't really swimming, since after walking out about a hundred yards it was still only 3 feet deep, and i started scaring isaac by talking about sharks so he didn't want to go farther, but it did feel good.

Today, we said goodbye to Brent (the tour was actually today too, somehow it seems like it was a long time ago) and then i've just been meandering about the rest of the day. At some point i posted mission pools on facebook and my family.com, so go one of those places and guess where you think i'm going on my mission. At some point today i googled 'perkes' and found all sorts of cool things. For instance:
According to this site Perkes descend from the Norman noble Perahgoz "lands in Kent by Duke William of Normandy, their liege Lord, for their distinguished assistance at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 A.D." I'm very skeptical of this, since it's a website trying to sell you medieval-esc pictures (they charge you 17 dollars for a digital image) of family crests and the like, but i dunno. According to them our motto is Semper Paratus, making us the boy scouts of the turn of the millenia. I have trouble trusting that would charge anything, let alone 17 dollars, for something with no inherent value or even existance (in this case, a digital image), it also conflicts with the known genealogy of Perkes, which i discovered after that.

I found a website wholly devoted to the name Perkes, specifically the descendants of James Perkes (of which i am part) who left England and Established Hyde Park in Utah and had lots of kids. He was the son of John Perkes, and seems to be the only son who carried the name on (there were lots of daughters, and one guy who's name seems to die off. This could, however, be because that Perkes doesn't have a small army of Mormon Perkes' trying to learn about their genealogy). It is cool though to look at stuff about people you're descended from. Apparently the Perkes heralded from Worcester (which is tricky to say, and can make you appear really stupid to those who know how to say it right), which still has a decent little LDS population. It also has some pretty impressive population density (90,000 people across 12 square miles), but i guess that's somewhat typical of england. So yeah, cool beans. I'd still like to know where the name Perkes actually comes from (i don't buy into that purchase crap) but i'll survive i'm sure.

Things Fall Apart

Time passes in the worst way down here. Day's trod on with no real distinction, but already it's been 4 weeks since i said goodbye to everything i had found over the past year. I am such a bum.

I wrote in my real journal last night (always a good decision) and realized i haven't really accomplished anything while here. I mean i've gotten some interviews that have moved me forward on the path to exciting adventures in mission life, i've become immune to hepatitis (originally i was going to try to do that through sheer force of will, but it turned out the vaccines are cheap), and today i discovered that i can make uncrustables. Is it sad that the highlight of my day is making little pb&j crepes? perhaps. For a second there i was worried my spacebar had stopped working. That would have been disastrous.

Lets see, i may have given up reading The End of Nature. It's a sad book about how climate change has fundamentally altered nature, not just the climate, but the innate independence and immutability of earth's environment has been lost. Probably the scariest part is it's nearly 30 years old and the climate change discussion hasn't really changed: the majority of scientists are calling for change while the majority of status quo is hoping some deus ex machina will come alone to make in a non-issue. Maybe it will, with any (i.e. absurd amounts of) luck the next president will be able to fundamentally alter the nature of American politics, since anything short of that isn't going to change much.

I started to read this book that my mom said was really good. The book itself said that it could change my life by discovering my true attributes. I just couldn't take it seriously though. It started by comparing humans to flowers and how we need to bloom and transcend our trepidatious ways and discover blissful...so that's about that point i stopped reading. Any book that could change my life would read better than a self help book for little girls. And, as a rule, i try to avoid Oprah's book club.

So with one book depressing and one extremely dull, i've opted for reading the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy again. While it does, admittedly, leave you with a certain emptiness, it is a happy emptiness, akin to video games, or general anesthesia. I figure between intensive temple and mission preperations, i'll be able to find enough meaning in my life even without motivational oprah books.

My Jackson trip has been pushed back and shortened due to the dual requirements of a Stake President interview next thursday and family coming a week after that. It'll be cool to have family around, even if 14 people, two of whom are still card carrying babies, will make this house feel a bit Oliver Twist. I don't even know where we're all going to sit, but i'm sure we'll manage.

That's about the extent of what's going on down here. Yesterday we saw the new indiana jones. My main complaint is an overabundance of silliness. Swinging through trees with monkeys is ok if you're Tarzan, but not if you're Shia Labeouf. CGI is spectacular and all, but it really takes away from that grittiness that the old indiana jones movies had. One shock is how spry Harrison Ford still is. Apparently he worked out 3 hours a day and did a lot of his own stunts. That is one hardcore old man. Other than the over all silliness, the plot was weak, and a lot of things weren't explained properly. A good movie, but not a great one. Lucas should be limited to no more than three movies of the same title. Or maybe he just shouldn't be allowed to make movies after the 1980's. Either way, there's a threshold he's crossed into the place where great movies lose their magic.

Digital TV is good stuff, the picture is as promised, and our current technical difficulties stem from an antenna that long ago became trash. The bigger issue is the total lack of good tv on network. I never realized what i was missing, but USA, BBC America, Comedy Central, Discovery Channel, and others are all pretty good stuff. and, lest we forget, FX has the movies. All in all, it's difficult to enjoy idleness (idle-atry). Naps remain highly enjoyable however.

Today i played ball in the house. I'm a rebel.

And I'll form the Head!

I've been reading a lot lately. Today i finished the Tipping Point, and yesterday i finished The President of Good and Evil. Both were good, although the latter was really depressing and made me sad that America is going to crap. It's also sad that politicians running for office are unable to criticize the country without seeming anti-patriotic. I think real patriotism requires working to make the country better. So i'm hoping that the next president will be willing and able to make hard unpopular decisions and convince Americans that the rest of the world matters to and we can't just ignore treaties that we don't find advantageous. So after reading a book about the inconsistencies and hypocrisies it felt good to read a book that was more cheery.

Hillary Clinton is in no way photogenic. I think this is a serious flaw on the part of her campaign staff. Maybe part of it is personal and media bias, but it seems like every picture of her she's on the verge of a psychotic killing spree. She just doesn't have a very nice looking smile.

Look at that baby, it's terrified. And how could it not be? That face is scary.

by the way, this made me laugh, the caption is good too.

Last night i had a dream that i was batman. But i was also billionaire playboy ammon perkes, or actually just normal guy ammon perkes, and there was some sort of snaffoo going on, it seemed like maybe a concert or something. At first there was that rubber fence stuff all around it, but then they let everybody in, and there were lots of people i know there, and they were all playing baseball, but i'd come late so i didn't get to play, but i did distract alex long enough to make him get an error, which was recorded for some reason. Meghan was also there. Also most of the soccer team. I tried to find some food. It was an exciting dream, but then i got to the more superhero-ish part of it, with me in my bat cave, but i had lost all my strength or something, and i needed to break out my prototype armored robo-batsuit that allowed me to fight without requiring me to actually be in good physical shape. At somepoint in here, n'sync came and they were all super heroes. I really don't know what happened there, i remember thinking at the time that they were really lame. I think i might have been robin actually, or else i was taking over for some older batman, but for some reason or another i didn't know the password to the bat suit, luckily there was another way in. For some reason it was stored in a tiny hole. Anyway, just as i was about to break out the batsuit and start fighting crime, i woke up.

I dunno what this dream means, except that i have weird dreams when i sit in bed for a long time in the morning, and apparently said dreams are prone to being disappointing in many ways.

In other news, life down here continues in much the same way. My Mom's back from Cambridge, which is nice. My papers should get submitted sometime soon, i'm a bit tired of waiting to start waiting for my call, so i'm glad it's finally getting moving. Otherwise not a whole lot is going on, my netflix finally got here, so i think i'm going to break out the Eureka. I watched television for the first time in a long time a couple days ago (i've been watching dvd's and online). I was shocked when the commercial lasted more that 15 seconds. One of these days i'll get a hair cut, it's starting to get a little silly.

Scantron Armor, ASSEMBLE!

~More likely to succeed.

these pretzels are making me thirsty

The neighbors down here have a weird affinity for crappy music with crappy baselines. Usually i don't care about the musical tastes of people i don't know, but when i have to listen to the same baseline for 20 minutes, it gets a little old (f#bf#bebeb, etc). Oh wait, it modulated down a half step. Those are the neighbors to the right, on the left they like to sit on the porch and be loud when i'm trying to sleep at 10am. I really don't like this house. There are just so many things about it that don't work the way they're supposed to, and for some reason flies like to hang out in here. It just gets to be a little much.

In other news, i'm having a hard time staying productive. I've started going to the gym, and that's a plus, and i'm making dinner and doing dishes from time to time, but i'm spending half my day sleeping and half the time i'm awake i'm watching tv online. I'm sure this is about to change since i may have caught up with all the tv shows i watch. Scrubs, Chuck, and Smallville are all done for the season. I've run out of Psych dvd's (which is probably my favorite show on the air, by the way). Monday Bones and House will be done, i've watched all the firefly episodes (the best show of all time and one more reason to hate fox) so yeah.

We went to see Prince Caspian last night. I've never seen a movie less faithful to the book, but that's ok. Had they stuck to the book, it would have been a pretty boring movie. They added a whole new battle sequence and found ways to stretch conflicts that were resolved in about a page into long-term story arcs. They also added random unnecessary romance for some reason. Anyway, it was a good movie with pretty decent battle scenes and good acting, although Prince Caspian's acting left something to be desired, such as a good actor to play prince caspian. He had a really weird accent that i couldn't quite pin down. It was vaguely spanish. It was like someone with an already heavy accent trying to put on a spanish accent and not doing it very well. I also find it odd that battles in this movie only took like fifteen minutes. That just seems weird. And the giant water Jesus at the end was sort of odd, i dunno where that came from. It was a silly movie, but definitely worth seeing.

We (me johnny and caitlin) Kayaked the okatoma on monday, and that was fun. They stuck us on the crappy part of the okatoma, something i realize was happening at the time. So i'm thinking i need to go back and do it again, this time on the fun part. After that we got some food, and hung out outside a movie theater since there wasn't anything we wanted to see. Driving hope at 1am in mississippi is really creapy. It feels sort of claustrophobic, with the trees and the lack of people. Also because there are deer all over the place, it's not so safe to zone out and just drive, which is what i usually like to do. I also saw a bunch of cops, and so i couldn't really speed. One of them pulled out after i passed him, but i didn't after i crossed the next hill i didn't see him, so that was sort of scary. I was only going about 10 over (in a 75), and it would have taken him around 10 minutes of serious speeding to catch up to me. Ultimately i got home without losing any kayaks so all went well.

If i ever find myself in some ethnic minority somewhere, i have decided i will not eat only ethnic food and listen to ethnic music at 100 decibels. This isn't really a problem for me since as Americans we have very few things that are uniquely american. Most things that we call american are just cheap knock-offs of other people's culture. I guess i could crank up the Mo-Tab and break out the jell-o casserole, but i don't think people would quite get it.

So that's what's going on right now. I'm getting a bit concerned that i'm going to have to wait longer for my mission than i want to, both because my papers still haven't gone in (i need to call the bishop about that today) and i'm going to have to get a hepatitis A booster in november, and i don't quite know how that works. Oh well, with no scholarship being put on hold, it doesn't matter much, i really just don't want to stay here until novermber. I think i'd be really very bored. Anyway, that's all for now. Probably one of my less interesting posts to read, and i apologize, i'll try to make my life more exciting from here on out.

Happy Birthday! Dad, Nephew, and Bono

Today is both my dad's and now my newest nephew Soren's birthday. So happy birthday to both of them, although neither one of them read my blog.

In other news, i have discovered that i can be linked to myself in six steps and through kevin bacon. Like so:

I dated (if you can call anything that happens in middle school, especially when i'm involved, dating) Melissa Li who moved to california and became friends with Haley Joel Osment who was in The Jungle Book II with John Goodman who was in Death Sentence with Kevin Bacon who was in My Dog Skip with Annie Cleveland, who i am also friends with. I had to use http://oracleofbacon.org/ to like haley joel osment to bacon, i haven't actually seen either of those movies.

Granted, this is sort of cheating, since friends aren't legitimate kevin bacon steps. If you want to be more exact, I can still link myself to kevin bacon, although not as easily to myself without using the same thing twice. This wouldn't be so difficult, but i'm not an actor, and so my filmography is extremely limited. However, i think it's safe to assume that (even though i don't exactly remember it) while at overstreet, i was in the school play with Josh Starr, who was in APAC's production of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe with Roberta Sachs, who was in a production of Our Town with Annie Cleveland who was in My Dog Skip with Kevin Bacon. 4 Steps sucka, probably fewer but i can't remember josh and annie being in the same play.

So i think it's obvious that i've been keeping myself busy. Crap, i forgot to do laundry, i'm going to go work on that so i have clean clothes to wear to church tomorrow.

The C that cost 5 grand.

Weak. I got a C+ in physics, which pulled my cumulative GPA down to a 3.4, meaning, barring some unexpected circumstances, i lost my full tuition super special awesome scholarship. So that's no fun. Stupid physics. I should call and see if i can get something worked out, since otherwise i might have to take some time off so that i can get residency so that i can afford in state tuition. I wonder if i can call cami's house my residence for the second year of my mission and get instate...

Thus i join the long line of perkes siblings who have gotten good scholarships and then lost them. Yay me.

I suppose technically saying that physics is what did it isn't entirely true, since if i had gotten a letter grade better in any of my classes at any point in the year, i would have kept it, meaning my A- in Calculus three technically hurt me, but i think it's safe to say physics gets the most credit. So if i don't manage to finagle my way into keeping the scholarship (and i've never been very good at finagling) I guess i'm looking at taking a year off to work, earn enough extra money to be able to afford college, and live in utah so that it's half as expensive.

Other than that though, life down here is improving a bit. Isaac's no longer sick, so i'm not stuck at home all day. I got some immunizations, so i'm all ready to not get hepatitis, so yeah, reasonably ok times.

And so, Ammon waits, Ammon waits, Ammon waits for a call from a friend.

Biloxi is a boring place. This is what i have decided after spending about a week here without doing anything. Biloxi probably would be a more exciting place if i had friends or even family that wasn't busy all day. But yeah, there's just not much to do and nobody to do it with. On top of that, the sick that i got a week or so ago seems to have passed on to Isaac (i carried it all the way from utah, like a modern day plague-rat) so he's stuck home all day meaning i'm stuck home all day watching him. Hopefully that'll be done tomorrow so that i can go kayak the okatoma with some jackson friends. We shall see. i wonder if releasing isaac back into the wild is a good idea, given the apparent contagiousness of it...oh well.

So yeah, not a whole lot going on on this end. I've been watching a lot of tv online, since there are only like 3 channels in biloxi, and one of them is PBS. I need to start exercising, since i need my knee to be in working order, and not doing anything all day seems to make it worse. I don't think it'll be a problem for the next two years, what with the bike riding and such, but it'd be nice to be able to walk into the MTC.

Otherwise i've been pretty bored, waiting to hear from Katie when little Soren joins the mix, since he's due any second now, and playing ben folds songs on the piano and playing a bit of guitar to see if i can't remember how that works. My problem with guitar is that i lack guitar music to learn songs to make it fun. I have figured out "We're going to be friends", and that makes me happy, but i want some new songs. I can't find my teach me to play guitar book, but that was a pretty crappy book anyway, it didn't include fun songs, just boring chord progressions. If i expect to woo some future wife with mad guitar playing skills I'm going to have to have those guitar skills within a couple years, otherwise i'll already have woo'd the wife and lost my motivation for guitar. Then i'll have to pick up my other goal, mad harmonica skills, in order to convey my loneliness when my wife leaves me because of lack of mad guitar skills, so obviously it's pretty critical that i be able to play the guitar. My whole future depends on it, just like Michael J. Fox, or i suppose Joaquin Phoenix, although he never travelled to the future to realize how important it was and avoid a potentially crippling injury.

So yeah, that's life of late. Hopefully it'll pick up soon.