∞

I've decided rapid changes in humidity are the cause of my stuffedness. It dropped down to about 30% humidity the day before i got sickish, then i got better, and it just went back 80ish and now i'm stuffed up again. Luckily, in 3 days i'm going somewhere with no humidity, so i can expect my sinuses to defenestrate themselves.

So, other than being sick (again), life moves on. I went bowling yesterday, so now my hand is all sore from how i spin it, i imagine with poor form. I went to Baton Rouge with my dad today and helped clean out some people's yard. It wasn't as rewarding as the katrina removal, because it didn't seem to need it nearly as much, but it was still nice.

I'm going to kill this blog on monday, or at least close it, cus i don't want portuguese people who i'm trying to teach the gospel read about how i hate catholics. I really don't hate catholics at all, but i'm sure somewhere in my blog there's something that someone would take offense to. Plus, it has nice symbolism of me putting my life on hold and stepping back from my normal stuff.

So, i figure now's as good a time as any to point out my other blog. Just stick 'elderammon' where 'ammonsblog' usually goes, and you'll be there in no time. It's your one stop source for mission updates. I don't really know what it'll be like, but i'm sure it will be interesting.

Well, i guess that's about all. The air conditioner is dead so it's absurdly hot and humid in our house. I'm looking forward to utah, where it is never absurdly hot, or humid. This might be the last post on this blog for two years. So soak it all in.

An Epic Loss for Words

Update update update update update update

Now that word has no meaning, hooray.

Anyway, life continues, my departure is getting to be absurdly close. A week from tomorrow is my last day. i feel like i should have so much to write about right now, what with the impending leaving my family for two years, but i don't have much to say. I've realized that i generally don't have much to say about life changing events, it's the little things i can ramble on about for forever. But yeah, with the epic things, i always end up at a loss for words.

In other news, i'm getting pretty close to being ready to go, logistically at least. I got my contacts, and my motor history report (they charged me $11 dollars to print off an un-certified online document, plus a $2 'service' fee. That's highway robbery), i got a new driver's license (with my current address and the obligatory terrible picture of me.), registered to vote...it's been a comparably busy week. I need a hair cut sometime this week, and i need to buy some cheap clothes that will last a while (jeans, sneakers, that sort of thing). Also, posting is going to fall off quite a bit after next sunday, but i'm starting up another blog to chronicle my mission life. Sometime this week i'll finish up this blog for a couple years, maybe with some final, reminiscent post to wrap things up, and post a link to my other blog, which is currently under construction.

hm, anything else? I have to give a talk in church next week, it'll be pretty short though, so that'll be cool. Every time i do something now i'm like, "this will be the last time i do this." I'm reading Crime and Punishment still, i'm going to have to start reading faster if i want to finish before i leave. I'm only slightly motivated to do that.

Well that's about all that's going down here. I'll post once or twice more and then i guess i'll be signing off. Madness.

In this time of Introspection, on the eve of my election:

So first, my blog has become super popular over the last week. Not really, but four separate people commented, which is about even with the comments by people i actually know. I dunno what that means, but it's probably something big.

Anyway, i did manage to pull myself out of the wallow of inaction (evidenced by 3 blog posts in 3 days) and accomplish something. So that felt good, i went swimming, i read most of Ender's Shadow (not quite as good as Ender's Game, because i don't like Bean as much, he's too cold and calculating, but still a fun read) and started reading Crime and Punishment again. I only got to the Crime when i was reading it in highschool. It's still a punishingly slow book, and i can't read more than a chapter unless i've had more than adequate sleep the night before. I've started waking up at 9 in an effort to shift towards the 6:30 alarm i'm looking forward to in 2 weeks (holy crap, 2 weeks). As soon as i manage to work that out (not staying up to blog at 1am will be key) i'll push it back to 8. There's no reason to push any farther than that since with the time zone change i'll be getting up at 7:30 central.

My biggest difficulty with swimming for exercise is my attention span. I have neither the patience nor the personality to swim freestyle slowly for miles (except when it's a race and i'm pacing myself). The best part about swim teams (or any athletic teams really) is you have friends and coaches to motivate you and keep otherwise boring exercise interesting. So i've been swimming 100m I.M.'s to keep things short and interesting. I've been switching the Butterfly out for other strokes some of the time because i'm still really out of shape and don't want to throw up in the nice people's bathroom again. But i figure over the next couple of weeks i'll be able to build it up to 200m IMs, butterfly included, just in time to swear off swimming for two years. I guess in the MTC i'll have to go back to weights. Maybe do a bike machine or something. I have a feeling running would take it out of my legs really fast, my knee still gives me trouble sometime, and my shin feels like it did back when i got shin splints.

Mild pain aside, life continues hurtling forward at a crawl. 2 weeks from now i'll be packed. I don't know how to deal with that. I am sort of accepting the idea of myself going into the MTC. It feels a lot like me going to college. I still have no idea how to feel about it, can't believe i'm really old enough to be doing this, but am expecting it sort of. I don't quite know how to describe it. I never do.

Music is so amazing. Seriously. (I'm listening to The Killers again, Read My Mind to be specific.) Just the way music can not only convey emotions, but actually produce them. What is it that makes songs like this so beautifully perfect? (I originally phrased that as comparison to crap music, but even Brittney Spears, 'nsync, and Creed, the groups that came to mind for crappy music, aren't really that bad, they're just shallow. I can't think of any bands that are really pointless, just a lot of bands i don't like) Music is powerful stuff, more so maybe than any other art form, at least in it's directness. Art can make you think, and sometimes visualize the abstract, theater has a lot of potential for conveying ideas and even draw you in to the emotion of the characters, but music can, within about 5 seconds, create completely real feelings and emotions. (I didn't mention dance. Dance has never done much for me, yeah it's beautiful and impressive, but it always seems that when it comes to conveying things, which i think is what all Art is at it's core, conveying the inexpressible, it's a very convoluted method with definite limitations, and it almost always depends a lot on music. Music can make you want to do stuff, dance, cry, go to war, etc. I have yet to get anything like that from dance, but maybe i've just been going to all the wrong places. In a lot of ways it seems like dance is a combination of music, art, and theater, but without some of the best parts of each. I didn't mention poetry either, but that's good stuff.) Someone should make really really good music for missionaries. My problem with religious music, mainstream Christian music especially is that the thought is good, but the Music and the Lyrics suck. Maybe they don't fit, i dunno. My impression is that most Christian songs are created by picking a absurdly simple thought (God is Good), jazzing it up with a couple of adjectives (God is SO good) and repeat until the song is long enough. Then grab an acoustic guitar, pick three chords, and go nuts! Too much Christian music tries to survive on the fact that it's Christian music alone. It ought to be music first, that just happens to be about Religious themes. I think the real power of music is also drastically under utilized. Religion is full of deep and difficult to express things. Why waste a song on something that can be explained in a sentence? I'm sure there's decent religious music out there, there are a whole bunch of hymns i like a lot, so there's no reason people haven't managed to make decent music about God that isn't in SATB chord structure.

I totally forgot to mention that i played piano for a Funeral last week. Happily, that went a lot better than some of my wedding exploits. (Can a funeral really ever go 'well'? Do you go home saying, that was a great funeral!) It also made me give a lot of thought to being cremated. The thought of being embalmed, sitting in a box slowly rotting, being paraded before all my relatives, and then dropped in the ground where i'll gradually decombone*, not romantically back into the earth, but covered in my own compost, into a zombie like wraith due to the box and all the poison pumped into me. No, fire has a very nice romanticism and purity to it. I think if i could pull it off, floating into the ocean on a pyre that's lit by flaming arrows would be pretty rockin, but i imagine they frown on that these days. Also the whole scattering of the ashes thing is way cool. I would still want a tombstone though, but someplace cool. Cemeteries are nice, but it's a little scary how many dead bodies are below you, and they are very necessarily public places. I want a little tombstone at the top of a mountain or something. It would be nice for it to be somewhere accessible though, so maybe at the lip of a valley. Another problem with having a tombstone above your corpse is that it's hard not to go and imagine what their body must look like at that very moment, whereas if you're cremated you can only be remembered as you were. On top of that, ground space is bound to get harder and harder to come by as time passes. I dunno if the Church has any policy on Cremation, I know we have standard procedures for funerals, but i've never heard anyone say cremation was frowned upon, I can't imagine why it would be, the end result is the same, time is the only differential (and the amount of poison the dirt around your body will soak up). One thing i don't like is the thought of Cremation itself. Because that is almost necessarily unceremonious, which is a shame really, given how ceremonious it can be. My imagination is them tossing your possibly naked corpse into a furnace. I'll have to scope out some cremators sometime in my life. Someplace with a pyre.

Wow, this post has drifted towards the macabre, but now you know, just incase there's a freak vespa accident while i'm in portugal.

So, that's the news from Biloxi Bay, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.



*I obviously meant to say decompose, but i think decombone is a hilarious word that conveys what's happening quite well

3 a.m. is no place for a mighty warrior

Cool story:
So last week i went with the missionaries to visit a couple people, since they don't have a car. Unfortunately both the appointments fell through, and so we just ended up driving about for half an hour (be patient, the story gets better). On our way to one of the appointments however, we noticed that this cop was following me. Now, i like to think that i'm a fairly safe driver, and i generally don't speed too much, but it's certain that a cop in a bad mood could pull me over for any number of things, mild speeding, rolling stops, etc. So I was a little concerned when i saw a cop behind me, but i figured, "no biggie, he's just headed the same direction". So then we turn off onto the smaller road, and the cop is still behind us. We drive for like 3 miles on this windy road and the cop is still right behind us. We turn into this neighborhood, and he turns off to. He continues to follow us at ever turn we make until we pull over at the house. It turns out that the cop lived a few doors down, but that was enough to make me thoroughly freaked out for the entirety of a fifteen minute drive. Cops are scary.

Less scary but much more disappointing are old ladies that tell you that your investigators are going to their daughters ballet. A likely story. but whatev's, i've done splits before, it wasn't the first time that several appointments fell through, and considering i have two years of that to enjoy, i figure it's just as well.

In other news, i'm super excited about portugal. Tomorrow i'm applying for my passport, i feel so international. I found this blog of a girl currently serving in my mission. It's cool to read about missionary life out there. So yeah, that's about all that's been going on. I just remembered that story and wanted to write it down. It's not everyday a cop follows you for 15 minutes.

What's this? Ammon on vacation but not bored?

Today was surprisingly eventful. Perhaps not exceptionally productive, but at least full of accomplishments. I woke up at 1pm, ate some breakfast and watched the second two discs of scrubs season 6, having watched the first last night. Then Tim im'd me and we went down to Dick's and took another crack at the rock wall, which this time around i totally beat. My forearms aren't nearly as sore this time either, which seems to be indicative of a certain bit of progress. After i climbed my forearms didn't look skinny, which is something that hasn't really happened in the past decade, so that was kinda cool. I must admit that despite being confident and suave in all other respects, i am a little overly conscious of having such tiny wrists. It's not something i lose sleep over or anything, but yeah.

I've realized that generally my Blog and my Journal are in direct competition, and generally the one i write in second gets a lower quality account of my thoughts and musings, and my increased consistency of writing in my journal may be contributing to a lack of quality and quantity in my blog, but i figure my journal will be more likely read by descendents and such, although i imagine my blog will still be around, barring some collapse in the internet and/or google infrastructure. Anyhow:

After climbing i came back and finished reading Freakonomics, having read the first chapter last night. That pretty much was my day, but i'd say it was a good day.

Freakonomics had a section on baby names and their social implications, and as it turns out, Amy and Katie are among the top 20 whitest girls names. As it happens, all my sisters respective significant others have names on the whitest boys names list (Dylan, Colin, and Logan)

reading through i spotted a few other names that are native to my family, so i concluded that my family is very very white. Go figure.

It's interesting how a single moment can have such a profound influence on the rest of your life. None of those moments happened to me today, but i did remember a few of them.

Herein lies the problem with this blog. It, unlike my journal, is written not for an audience per se, but certainly in front of one. I mean it's listed right over there >
not to mention the variety (vicissitude is a fun word, btw) of random people who might happen to come across it, and future people i'll meet who will probably see it. I read my Latin Teacher, the venerable Davy Jones', blog, which had months of really fascinating stuff that i'm sure he never planned on any of his students reading, especially since in the hands of certain students it could have led to some very serious problems between him and the murrah administration...hm, there was a point to this tangent...
right: People read my blog, and so i don't say quite as much. It's not that i'm hiding things from people really, just some things aren't polite conversation, which is why i have yet to post about the rather surreal experience that i was privy to in the midnight hours of tuesday night, or why i'm not mentioning some of the random instances that have forever changed my habits in some way or another. And then of course there are somethings that i probably am hiding from people, at least things that i wouldn't bring up without a bit of prodding, and of course, the things that would logically follow that thought to support that statement are the very things that i'm not really wanting to say.

Freakonomics was an interesting book for me to read, or rather, it's an interesting time for me to read freakonomics, since for the past few weeks i've been thinking about a few interesting questions, and i'm not quite sure how to vocalize them, which is a bit of a problem because they inevitably get worked into papers i write, where they aren't very well illustrated. I just used two verbs in describing writing that really have nothing to do with writing, interesting. Anyway, for one, stemming a bit from the discussions we had with The Things We Carried and Beloved, on the difference between truth and fact, and the readings i've done of plato and aristotle, i want to say that feelings are the truest form of thought we have, but then that poses some problems, because i don't really want to say emotions are more relevant than rational thinking, but there's definitely a difference in my mind between feelings and emotions, in that emotions are much more temporary, but feelings are much more consistent...or something.

Also, why is it in church when people are asked to volunteer to say the prayer there's almost always this long awkward silence. I doubt most of the people in there are in a position where they don't like praying, or don't feel comfortable praying. I guess it might be a symptom of a general fear of speaking in front of other people, but i don't think that's really what it is...i dunno.

There was something else i was going to poorly elaborate upon, but now i don't remember so much...i should write outlines for these things, seeing as they're longer and more eloquent than a lot of essays i write, though definitely less correct as far as spelling and grammar go.

Well that's all for me tonight, i've been writing this for a rather long while, and i need to go to sleep. 10 Hours from now i expect the Utes to be mopping the floor with BYU, and i'll need to be awake to watch that.

fin

"It's my blog...it's kinda a big deal"

I've been bad about updating consistantly, but, in my defense, a lot has been going on lately. I graduated. That's pretty monumental i guess. It doesn't really feel monumental, i hope other big milestones in my life are less anticlimactic. Despite what people say, i haven't been building up to graduation for 4 years of my life, i've been building up to college, and being out of high school. Being out of high school is not at all dissapointing, and is every bit as independent and enjoyable as i had hoped. Thus far, it's been significantly less productive, and i still haven't gotten in the habit of working out. My New Month's resolution is to start monday working out consistantly and keep going through the entire month of june. I'm going to swim too, so that i'll be in shape for backpacking.

I went shopping today, completely on my own. It sounds kinda stupid, but it's the first time i've gone shopping completely independently for a long time, probably since the cambridge years. Usually i'll at least have to ask to borrow the car, and or clear some spending with the parentals, but today i just up and went after cashing my check, and then went to work.

I bought some sandals, some shorts, and some khakis from target, and i'm pretty happy with them. The sandals are, in truth, more of water shoes, but i like the way they look and this can be fodder for some new nick name. I also need to buy some new running/hiking shoes, but those are expensive, so i'm going to shop around some.

I got another Wii remote on wednesday night for a graduation present, which is pretty awesome. Now we can play 2 player boxing and tennis and baseball on the wii. And i downloaded Starfox 64 and Mariokart 64 for the Wii. I think i wasn't supposed to let logan know, but whatever.

Lets see...in other news i'm working a lot. That's taking away all my hang out time, so i'm having to be creative with my fun times, like in the mornings, or the middle of the night. Yesterday michael and spencer hung out at my house and we played video games and watched a movie until around 5am. That was a bad plan, i was sleepy this morning, and though it was mostly okay, spencer missed his grandparents leaving, i feel bad about that, I really failed at being woken up by my alarm. I don't even remember it at all, at some point i managed to turn it off without waking up. So that's something.

I think that's all that's been going on right now. I got payed today, so i have almost enough money to completely pay off the parents. That's pretty fun. Oh, we now have a house rented down in biloxi. I say we, i really mean they. I'm never really going to live in it, which is weird. But because of that i have to pack up all my stuff and be pretty much packed for college sometime in the middle of june, apparently i'm living pretty much on my own for the second half of june, which is going to be a little weird, probably some fun, hopefully i'll stay productive. We'll see. I think that's all the news from the Ammon front. Stay tunes for the next exciting installment of Ammons blog.

A Vacation...from my problems

I was feeling like posting a picture, and that one caught my eye for some reason, then i messed with it in Picasa for a while, and so there you go.

I've been reading The Poisonwood Bible for a while, delaying the aweful amount of calculus take-home test i need to do, and generally relaxing. Church today was normal, i wore a suit, which isn't normal at all, and that was fun. I also pissed off my teacher by unintentionally calling him a bad teacher. In truth i was frustrated at the inefficiencies of the Socratic Method for teaching, mostly in the way that i answer a whole bunch of questions. I tried to steer us into a nice socratic debate about what freedom is as penence, and that seemed to cheer him up, so i felt a little better.

After church i came home, meandered around as is my custom, and eventually took a stats test, which wasn't so bad. I studied the stuff i figured would be on the test, so i was ok there, but then i kinda blanked on the process it was testing. Luckily it was mostly multiple choice, so we'll see how that goes.

I'm realizing the inherent inefficiencies of having two seperate blogs. Instead of digressing into happy philosophical thinking, i keep myself talking about my day and stuff like that. I guess i'll consolidate my blogs someday, till then i'll leave them. It does make my other blog a bit more interesting to read perhaps, although i'm really not sure which is more interesting, my emo teenager thoughts or my mundane daily toils. I think i'll just let this turn into a thoughtful blog and stick it on my good blog.

I'm realizing i need a break from my friends. I like my friends, they're fun, but when I need a bit of time to just relax and not do a whole lot. My vacations seem to become very busy. I'm looking forward to camping, and wondering how exclusive i should be. It is one of the last big things we'll do together, but in all honesty, i just don't want to go camping with everyone i'm friends with. And as hard as it is to explain, there is a very noticable and enjoyable difference in hanging out, especially camping, with no girls. I don't want my nice small camp get away to be turned into just a normal day but with nature. The other thing is that guys hanging out with their respective girlfriends and/or crushes just aren't as much fun. It's fun for them, but yeah. Maybe i just need a girlfriend. So i'm debating how this camping this is going to go. I also am wondering how everyone and their mom now knows about the camping thing. From my memory i've only told like 4 or so people. Everybody knowing complicates things.

So i'm realizing this blog is fairly revealing, and although only a few people read my blog, it's pretty thoroughly public. Chances are if you're reading this i'm not talking about you, unless you're spencer, and then i most definitely am. Sorry about that, just the way it goes.

Well, it's 7, so i'm going to start working towards doing my homework, starting with writing a quick review of Ghost Rider. Forsooth.

Del Taco?

ew, i just sneezed on my screen. There must be a way to delete entries, but since i can't find it, i'm just going to replace the previous entry with this one.

post midnight thinking

So i guess this is as good a time as any to admit that mr. Jones totally inspired me to start a blog. At midnight or so i started reading them for a bit. almost an hour later and 9months worth of blogging earlier, i came upon a problem that i understand and experience but have never really thought about it that much. Latin is the only class i take that isn't advanced in some way, this means that it, like computer discovery years before, is about my only forray into the general masses of JPS students. These aren't really the general masses i suppose, since normal people don't take latin, but it's close enough.

So all through his blog he's dealing with the problem of teaching both excellent and mediocre students at the same time, and having to go a bit to fast for some and a bit to slow for others. The logical solution to this problem would be to divide the classes into smart kids and less-advanced kids, and would, in theory, wind up with everyone learning more. The problem with this is dividing students based on intelligence is a dangerous thing, and isn't especially acceptable. This would be even worse, because probably all the White kids would end up in the smart class. This leads me into another fun topic: racism.

I've always had to deal with the problems of racism and such...that makes is sound like i'm discriminated against, which isn't especially true. I've always had to deal with the inherrent stigma, and exhistance, of racism down here. About all of my friends are white. In a school that's about 95% black this seems to point to racism. It's kinda bad how all white kids kinda cling together in murrah, and it's always been that way. In my defense, I'm friends with people who are like me. People who are like me usually come from similar cultures, which means a lot of them are white. I don't dislike any black people on the basis of their skin color. I do dislike a lot of black people based on their personality, humor, values, and opinions. I dislike a few white people based on these things to.

Now, it gets a little more sordid when it comes to people like Carrie, or Karlos, or Melissa, or many many other black people who aren't that different from me. If they were white they'd quickly become part of the white click and we'd hangout and have fun and junk like that. Also on the topic of girls i'm perhaps unreasonable partial to white girls. Again, some of this has to do with personality, i'm partial to girls i like, but there's more to that. I dunno, i suppose everybody's a bit racist. It's sad that everything in mississippi gets turned into a racial debate. Oh well, i digress.

So back to fun school thinking. Would it be wrong to seperate kids into smart kids and dumb kids? We seperate out mentally disabled students. We create APAC and AP and accelerated and all that jazz, but there's no simple division of classes based on needs and potential. It's a bit risky to say potential, because it's terrible un-PC to say that anyone has less potential than anybody else, but i was born into a nice, white, high educated, high religious, loving and structured family who work hard to ensure that i'm outstanding. If i were born to a single mother who dropped out of college and works fulltime to put food on the table, i probably wouldn't be anywhere near where i am. I probably couldn't play piano, or swim, or read, or type, or think like i do now, since all of those require a bit of capital. It just doesn't quite seem fair that i have an easy time in high school while some people have to work. I'm just thinking classes like latin, health, computer discover, and those types of things would be a whole lot more productive if instead of dividing us by the magic formulas councelors use and mess up day in and day out, simply use testing, test scores, or just preference to chose where students end up. Why did i take mrs. cook for Chemistry when most people take Stokes?

Oh well, i think that's all for me, i'm in desperate need of some sleep. Hopefully i'll be able to wax philosophical on most of my blogs, and it doesn't turn into xanga or livejournal.

btw, i'm attracted to those who are unbridled and free. So says the magic quiz. Incidentally this is very true, but whatever.