after hours

maxx is my mom's cat. he's long-haired and orange, making him look like hermione's cat, "crookshanks." and while he's not my favorite cat we've ever had (that would be moke,) he is certainly the friendliest and most social. at night, he seems to enjoy exploring the house when it's quiet and everyone else has gone to bed.
so do i.

i love this house.
i like sitting by the hutch in the dining room, where just a enough light spills from it to make the room visible, but everything i still in shadows. i like looking at the kitchen and rewinding back through time in my memory, remembering how it's looked and changed over the years and the adventures that have happened therein. while i was on my mission in japan, my mom remodeled the whole kitchen and dining room to the point that, when i was sent pictures from my sister's high school graduation party, i didn't know it was our house until i recognized the dishwasher.

i love looking out the sliding door window at the soccer fields behind our house, and how the snow-covered ground sparkles like gold under the orange sodium-vapor lights of the parking lot. i feel bad for my future wife, missing these quiet moments with me.

i like that i'm no longer scared of the utility room. growing up, just being in there seemed a little creepy; if monsters were going to live in our house (or, as i became a teenager, "aliens"), this is where they would be. i'm now confident in my physical skills enough that i no longer fear the supernatural in that room and like looking around. so much of my life history is still contained on those shelves, it's almost like being in the ministry of magic's department of mysteries.

just off from that room is "the corner", a spot under the stairs where we were sent to sit if we misbehaved. i hated sitting under there.

it's late now and i need to get to bed, but i do enjoy these quiet times with just me and my house.

rumours

yeah

lots of little notes for posts jotted down, but none that i really feel the need to write right now. and i usually write when i want to.
or, more correctly, have to.
i miss that passion.
but you can't really force it, sadly.

it comes and goes in waves, as they say.

diving into the wave

i'd been thinking about my talk all week and had mulled around some ideas but still didn't have anything written down by yesterday evening. and instead of writing a talk, i went to the rec center instead.

and so when i sat down two hours before church this morning, i still wasn't able to focus much and was not really in the mood to write a talk. but i kind of had to. i couldn't even polish it during sacrament meeting like i sometimes do with my lesson because, well, that was when i would be speaking.

having taught sunday school for more or less five years straight and being up in front of people every other week (or every week last summer), i'm rarely asked to give talks. i think i've given three in that time. one i would like to forget, one was my "farewell" when i moved from utah, and i can't remember a third, i'm just guessing there's another one in there. so i really don't know how to prepare a talk. and so i showed up with several pages of notes, not sure if i would only get through a fraction of them or if i would breeze through it all in four of my ten suggested minutes.

sitting on the stand in my Christmas green bow tie, the relief society president texted me a good luck and i confessed to her that i was feeling very nervous and was having difficulty focusing on anything.

i was given the suggested to speak on "Christ in our lives," which was broad enough to allow me to speak on just about anything i wanted. and that sort of vague liberty can be a little paralyzing, not knowing which direction to go in. so, i did the best i could think of: i gave the talk that i wanted to hear.

i had numerous people come up to make and thank me for my talk afterward and throughout the day, which was encouraging.
the thing is, i mostly just quoted the charlie brown Christmas special and read a lot of psalms.
as jaime noted right before i left utah, "it's all about the psalms."

little lion man

i guess everyone needs a nemesis, and i've finally found mine. this guy:

that little pony is a total punk. and every time we go riding, i have to spent 15-20 minutes locked in mind games with him before i can get the rope around his neck and lead him to the stables so that we can take the horses in the pasture. (the rope isn't visible because i'm holding him very close to make sure he doesn't get out.)

this morning i realized that i was out late last night with a group of friends at northgate (the place--and the only place--to spend a friday night at a&m) and was out riding horses this morning. it's official: i live in texas now.

and it's not that bad.

roses

God gave us memory that we might have roses in december.

j.m. barrie

boston in the fall

so it's been three weeks since i've posted here.
yeah.

anyway, i went to new hampshire last week for thanksgiving with some pretty great friends.
that was cool.

she didn't want to be with daddy or even mommy, but "father goose."

including a large stash of stephen's hot chocolate.

apparently they don't sell frosted animal crackers
in utah anymore, so this was a big deal.

i'd explain that this is kirk with a turkey on his arm,
but i think that's kind of redundant.

joe and his pregnant wife.
she turned out to be cool and fit in with our group.
and she slapped me.

so this is maine.

goose rocks.

boston. : )

this guy was absolutely amazing and a great
showman. we estimated that he brought in $100-200
on this show and he deserved every dollar.

me and sam adams: identical twins.

at the holocaust memorial. couldn't resist snapping the picture.

even the back alleys in boston are awesome.

my favorite picture of the trip.

we made it to harvard.
wish i'd taken more pictures there. or even just looked around longer.

girls who wear shirts of skeletons in skirts are ok by me

i still hope that we'll make movies one day.

wish you could've been there.

she gets it

the only song i know of hers is "we are never ever getting back together," which i think is completely manufactured to be a "hit" but has still ensnared me in its catchiness to the point that i now know all words. whether it's in spite of that or because of it, there's something about this that i really love, though i can't fully explain it:

to be a rock and not to roll

i'm really enjoying my dance class. we're onto our last dance of the semester, swing. i feel like i've learned "swing" at least three official times and i still don't know which is which. and the jitterbug that we learned in country dance last fall doesn't seem that different, either. the downside is that, if a girl asks me if i know how to "east-coast swing" i likely won't know which one that is. the upside is that a lot of the moves are pretty similar, so once i get the appropriate rhythm down, i'm good to go.

one of the biggest things i've learned about dancing the importance of your dance frame. as a guy, it's my job to lead. i need to choose the steps and moves to do but then also communicate that to the lucky girl as well. that requires a little bit of tension between the two of us. my hand on her back can give some indication, but a lot of it comes from where we hold hands.

if she's so stiff and unwilling to move, obviously that's a problem. it's just as much of a problem if the opposite is true; if there's no resistance in her arm and she passively lets me move our hands wherever, the whole thing is mushy and there's no way to communicate. no tension, no play, no fun.

but when there's a little bit of tension in her arm and also her posture, so that my pushing or pulling to the left or the right shows where we're doing, she doesn't just follow but keeps up with me. if you can find a partner like that, dancing is a dang lot of fun.

and i think i found a couple of girls who will be good partners for the swing test.

pangs of frustration

i suffer pangs of frustration, seeing there a wondrous array of books which i have spent many years preparing to read and gleefully collecting in dusty bookshelves... but now, just as i am able to handle the stuff, i must forego the temptation and delight because there is other work at hand. 

hugh nibley

psalm 22

i think that one of the most poignant moments in the final hours of the life of the Savior was His exclamation on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (matt 27:46) i've heard it said that that was the moment when His Father withdrew the comforting companionship of His Spirit, so that Jesus would actually know what it felt like to be totally alone, the equivalent of having sinned to the point of losing the spirit of God completely.

a few months ago i picked up an old issue of the ensign that was lying on a table next to me because an article featured on the cover sounded interesting. and it was. then i flipped around and read a brief thought that was on the final page of the january 2011 issue.

the article noted that those words that Jesus spoke--"My God, my God, why hast thou forsake me"--are scripture; the opening verse of psalm 22, to be precise. Jesus often quoted scripture throughout His life and, if He's anything like me and my friends (and i like to think so), His reference of the first verse alluded to the following verses as well:

1. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
 2. O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.
 3. But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
 4. Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
 5. They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.

psalms 22:1-5

the verses cry out for God, admitting that they feel they have been forgotten or ignored. but then they remember and acknowledge that God is God, and that includes His character that He will always be with us and watch over us and help us. the next few verses reaffirm this explicitly, citing that those before them trusted in God and things worked out. and so the same must be true now.

and that's good stuff to remember. but what really makes this interesting is that Jesus, in a time of extreme difficulty and struggle, was turning to the scriptures as a source of strength. in essence, He was re-reading some of His favorite verses to remind Himself of what He already knew.

i do that, too, sometimes.

the grey area

so i know that fewer and fewer of you are actually around the byu area anymore these days. 

life does that to sometimes, i guess.

but if you are, you should really go to my friend kristin's art show this weekend.

like, really.

if you like they way i write/think/am, you'll probably like this show:

it's thoughtful, ponderous, clever, and really beautiful.

i won't be able to be there,

but i've been able to see the projects grow and develop.

this is good stuff.

the show opens this saturday evening, with the reception at 7:45 in the hfac main gallery

and will be on display until nov. 12

busy weekend

we went to an art exhibit at the memorial student center, the ward halloween dance and supercult movie night at the viz lab. we had great success building a willy wonka costume at the thrift store, played mah-jong, watched a handful of good movies, went star-gazing, and baked chocolate chip cookies. we ate at the hullabaloo diner, kolache rolf's and layne's chicken (of course.) we stocked the drink fridge in the lab, did a photo shoot in the studio, rode rides at the carnival and toured the blue bell ice cream factory (the "gingerbread house" ice cream is AMAZING.)
not bad for a five day visit.

count wonka

last night after everyone left the office, i swapped out all of their office nameplates with black and orange halloween names ("andrew kilzer" became "andrew killer", etc... for my own door i just went with "count dracula")

this morning in my dance class a few lucky girls got to swing dance will willy wonka.

i took this picture with the camera in my imac at work and shared it on facebook. posting the picture then making it my new profile pic meant it appeared twice on my timeline. at last count, the combined "likes" from the two pictures is at 93. i'm sincerely flattered.

i listened to oingo boingo's dead man's party, the good songs from the rocky horror picture show, an pretty solid halloween playlist on spotify, and watched thriller while waiting for my boss to come and check out my newest edit on my cancer video.

while i never watch network television anymore, i happened to check the guide just as it's the great pumpkin, charlie brown was starting. it's not the same as the Christmas special, but i think there's still something really great that it's still showing on tv almost fifty years later.

and i even took time for a real, sit down scripture study this evening.

"we are the dreamers and we are the music makers"

blank inside

taking a break from working in the lab and listening to radiohead's "king of limbs."

Comedy Central

actually, i've been taking a lot of breaks. i think it might be time to call it a night.

portraits in studio a

i thought it would be fun to do a photo shoot while janelle was in town, so i reserved the studio and a few lights for this afternoon. it was fun to play around with different lighting styles and find what i liked best. i haven't had time to go through all of them yet, but here are a few that i've tweaked a little.

citizenship in the nation

thanks to getting my voter registration submitted six minutes before the 5:00 deadline two weeks ago, early voting, and no lines at the memorial student center on campus, i voted yesterday.

i really don't like the idea of voting "straight party," since i think that candidates should chosen on personal positions and not just whether they're "red" or "blue" or "green" or whatever libertarian is. (yellow? orange?) but i do think it's important to know for whom you are voting. (i figured i'd use proper grammar here for once.)

as soon as i got the ballot booth and cast my vote for the presidency of the united states, i realized that there were six pages of other people running for other offices this season, too. these ranged from u.s. senators and district representatives to railroad commissioners and, well, other kinds of railroad commissioners. at first i started just picking names and considered choosing candidates from parties other than the republicans and democrats, just to help the little guys get a leg up on the pile. but i thought back to one of the lessons from boy scouts that has stuck with me for twenty years.

one of the required merit badges for eagle scout is "citizenship in the nation," which helps us... learn about the nation. i honestly don't remember anything more specific than that except this one thing that stood out to me: when you are voting, be informed. if you just randomly cast your vote, you are, in essence, canceling out the vote of someone who took their time to decide which candidate best represented their views.

four years ago, utah sent out a small booklet outlining all of the candidates in all the races and briefly listed their positions, platforms, or principles. in a move that would be quite high on the dork scale, i read through everyone and made a small list of who i wanted to vote for. and when i went to vote, i took it with me.

i didn't have any list or any booklet with me today. so i cast my vote for the only candidates about which i was informed and put my "i voted" sticker on my shirt.

the little things

the last time i watched the royal tenenbaums was when i was in utah for mark's wedding. sariah and i watched it on my ipad and it was as good as when we first watched it together eight years ago.
actually, i think i love the movie more as time goes by.

yes, it's a great story about love and frustrations and family and forgiveness, but there are a lot of movies like that. so why does this one stand out for me? because of all of the little things about the way it tells its story, and even (especially?) those things that seem almost trivial but actually make the movie everything that it is.

• the way the kids run away to the museum that is a total homage to my childhood book from the mixed-up files of mrs. basil e. frankweiler
• the music from a charlie brown Christmas playing in the background as margot leaves raleigh's house
• dudley kneeling down to hand eli his shoe after the car crash
• the little dalmatian mice occasionally in the background
• that there are bullet wounds in the characters' costumes at the end of margot's birthday play
• that richie takes his shoes off during the tennis game meltdown
• dudley pointing out that the gypsy cab "has a dent in it."
• "and another dent here. and another one here."
• the instrumental version of hey jude (my favorite beatles song) playing over the introduction
• the faint sound of a bird screech and richie looking around for it before eli answers the door
• the moment when richie watches margot step off the bus to meet him at the station
• the line of men in white uniforms walking out behind him in slow motion while he watches her
• the way that pagoda walks over to the balcony as soon as eli leave the room and says "there he goes."
• that dudley has an extremely acute sense of hearing and absolute cannot tell time
• the way that etheline gets so vulnerable when henry shares his feelings for her
• the barrette in margot's hair

i could go on.

and yet i think it's even something more than all of those things, but that's the best i can figure out so far.

jeff vs. the volcano

had i gotten around to finishing the wedding video i made for jack and natalie, the advice that jack's brothers would've given her would be that "you need to understand 'joe.'" they are, of course, referring to the eponymous anti-hero of joe versus the volcano.

like groundhog day, joe is one of those movies that initially seems like an innocuous mid-level hollywood star vehicle. yet the more you watch it, the movie reveals its deeper layers. it's the first of the meg ryan + tom hanks rom-com trilogy, albeit of the pre-nora ephron era. one of the movie's more daring and unique characteristics (for a hollywood film, especially) is that meg ryan plays three different  characters, all of varying romantic interest to tom hanks.

someone once noted to me that not only is it always the same actress, but each character is the kind of girl that joe needs in his life at that point.
that's interesting to think about....

the small iron wall

walking into church a few days ago, i thought about how, earlier this year, one of my friends noted that every time we did something it felt like a "get to know you" all over again. i inwardly admitted that she was right, but i figured it was her fault. i gave it a second thought when i kind of realized that a lot of my friends here seem to get stuck at about that point: nice, causal acquaintances, but nothing much more familiar than that. so, either everyone in texas is crazy/lame, or else it's me. both are totally plausible, but i decided to give "everyone else" the benefit of the doubt and take a look at myself.

it does seem that i keep talking with friends at church as if i just met them last week, rather than as people i've known for a year or two. maybe it's because i'm so busy with school that there's very little time to have people over and hang out and let those friendships wax strong. or maybe i have some residual subconscious defensive "walls" from trying to cope with suddenly leaving ten years of life in utah that i put up when i moved here two years ago and i'm pushing people away without even realizing it.
or maybe i've just become a prickly elitist snob?

this evening i had dinner with our relief society president. as we talked about life and how to live it, she made a few observations about me that were pretty much spot on with how my best friends in utah would probably describe me. and so i'm pretty sure i've just over-thought this whole thing and, while there's room for improvement, i'm probably doing alright.

vinegar

i was looking at some examples of kinetic typography and came across one from the "lye" speech from fight club (note: there is a moment of rough language). which isn't too surprising, since a) kinetic typography is the sort of assignment that would be given in an undergraduate after effects class and b) undergraduate guys tend to think fight club is one of the most profound things they've ever seen. in all probability, it likely is the most accessible exposure they've had to something philosophical (editor's note: the kinetic typography video was made by a professional graphic designer and not a college sophomore as our writer brazenly presupposed.) i think it's a great movie, but i also think there are far greater things out there. (i think it's also one of the most popularly misunderstood movies of my generation, too, but that's another post.)

for those of you not familiar with the scene, edward norton jr. plays a man who feels completely hollow, with little more than apathy filling up his life of consumer products. he meets brad pitt, a cool, confident, rebellious soap salesman who seems to be everything ed is not and wishes he could be. (again, this movie really taps into the collegiate male psyche.) in the scene in question, pitt tells ed they are going to make soap, then proceeds to scoop a spoonful of lye onto the back of ed's hand.

the only thing i (and i think most people) know about lye is that it's used in making soap and that its at the very end of the "acid/base" ph scale that we learned about in high school chemistry. ed screams in pain as brad holds him down, forcing him to stop trying to ignore the pain and to face and accept it. as the narrator continues to fight, brad explains that pouring water on it (the instinctual reaction) would only spread the burning chemical. but if he relaxes and submits to pitt and accepts his philosophy that there is nothing to life, that god has abandoned them, he will pour vinegar on it to neutralize the burn. i suspect this scene comes across as a sort of enlightenment for a lot of people.

listening to the speech this time, i was surprised at how so very close it is to the truth. ed norton is struggling in pain, crying for help, and brad pitt is there, coaching him to not deal with this pain the way he would naturally think to. instead, pitt offers to help him with what will really ease his pain, but only if he will stop fighting him and completely trust him first. heck, when he screams "you don't know how this feels!" brad actually holds up his hand and shows the scar as proof that he's been through this, too. could it be any more analogous?

instead of looking to God, the whole speech is about how God has seemingly disowned them and that they need to confront the cold harsh reality that life is cruel, dark and empty. and it seems that a lot of people really resonated with the philosophies of this movie. the irony is that the actual truth is the opposite; that instead of fighting and finally giving up to accept that there is Nothing out there, the other half of our nature continues to fight until we relent and give up to God, accepting that He is there and He will pour the vinegar on us and neutralize the burn. oddly, the nihilistic center seems to make it much more appealing to so many people than the actual divine center.