Signs of the Times, Issue No. 89 - 01/19/10

Drive Thru Window: Say thanks with a gift card

Greetings to one and all from deep inside the belly of a TRAX train. Yes, you see, I've been quite busy and didn't quite get the head start on the Newsletter that I was hoping for, so I'm going to have to write this thing throughout the day since I'm in class until 5 and will be occupied with family matters this evening. Here's to hoping that you and your loved ones are Feeling Good About Yourselves this Tuesday. Topics to be discussed: Filling the quota, two giant reasons why you're not in Idaho anymore, breaking fire code on the Jazz bandwagon, a couple reasons why I never really liked Nintendo games, and a way you can get mentioned in the Newsletter every week. But first, the reason why I've been so busy. On we go!

The end of the line. As far as we go.

Why, you ask, have I been so busy recently? Why haven't I been online? Why haven't I been out dancing with chicks - wait, I actually did go out dancing with chicks... more on that later. But what's the big deal, A-Town? It sufficeth to say that my family has been in the process of moving. Many people have asked me why we moved - and why we only moved about three minutes away from our old house. For fun. That's why. Now stop asking. We just moved into a tiny little house and we'll definitely end up being "comfy" for the next little while, that's for sure. There's not even close to enough room in this house for all the junk we've accumulated over the years, so we've ended up throwing a bunch of stuff away and renting a storage unit in Draper to keep a lot of it until further notice. It will be Good, though. We'll be fine. I remember having to rent a house in Sandy for three months in between houses when we moved from South Jordan to Draper. As crappy and small and weird as that house was, we actually have a lot of hilarious memories from that joint on Serpentine Way. Most of them involve professional wrestling, but that's another story. Don't be strangers - come say hello and check the new place out. It's really a nice little house and I think we'll have a lot of fun there. My room is pretty sweet. I've got a big screen TV and a couch so Scott Aylett and I have tried our darndest to make it into a place that is conducive to the spirit of double dating, but up until now, those efforts have proven virtually fruitless. It's only been like two and a half days, though, so give us some Time.

Speaking of Mr. Aylett, I think I owe him a million American dollars for all the help he gave us on Saturday. In fact, It's Time for the Shoutout of the Week, which goes to everyone who came over to help us move or offered any kind of assistance to my family this last week. Ryan and Steven Aaron, Gaylen Christensen, Steve Bullock and his son, Jeff, Brent Goulding. Too many to name. I know you all think I'm a huge jerk or whatever, but it's true - A-Town does have a heart - and I'm extremely grateful for everyone who helped us in the moving process. Now give me a second to take a deep breath and dry my tears... Ok... Anyway, after we'd basically finished for the night on Saturday, we headed up to the University of Utah Institute building for their "Welcome Back" stomp. It should be no secret that, um, we're both obnoxiously single, so we figured we'd start the semester off on the right foot - by actually trying to go meet girls. I guess that's a Good place to begin. We got to the dance and scouted out the competition, almost immediately finding two girls standing all by themselves. (We may or may not have actually kind of followed them into the parking lot, but hey, that's not creepy - we were just going to the same place and they were right in front of us.) We ended up talking to them for About half the night and they were pretty funny. One of them was a BYU fan, which prompted numerous "You're-so-classy" jabs. They left halfway through the stomp, leaving us behind to find other girls to talk to. Whether or not those plans were successful, we'll just say that Scott and I both filled our quota and met our goal or phone numbers received. And it was more than one. The end of the evening culminated in something I'd like to talk About in the next segment.

I hate to tell you, but you're a horrible dancer...

Scott was trying to find this girl from his bowling class who we shall now refer to as "Bowling Chick." While Scott mustered up the courage to go flirt with Bowling Chick, we had sort of positioned ourselves in the corner of the gym, kind of like wallflowers, only we weren't next to the wall, so it was more like cornerflowers, I guess. So there we sat, like lions ready to pounce on our prey, when we heard this voice say "You guys aren't dancing!" Ohhhhhhhhhh, how I hate that! I was recently thinking about my pet peeves and I'd have to say that when people tell me how to act, it really ticks me off. When somebody tells me "Smile, Aaron!", what do they expect me to do? Smile? NO! If I only smile when people tell me to smile, what's the point? If it's not genuine, I'm not going to do it. If there's something for me to smile About, I will, but I guess I've apparently got a really sad, depressed-looking face or something because every. single. day. somebody tells me to look happier. I am happy! That's my normal face, dang you! So don't tell me how I'm supposed to be Feeling!! And don't tell me to dance, either! I'll dance if I want to! Anyway, back to the story. Scott and I were a little taken back by this comment from this girl we had never met. She had walked up behind us and started to, uh, flirt, I guess was what she was trying to do. We didn't want to be jerks, but we didn't want to be idiots, either, so we started dancing a little bit and what does this girl do? She tells us we're not Good dancers! She continued to insult us for a couple minutes and then a slow song came on, to which she commented, "I'm from BYU-Idaho and I finally realize that guys up there actually know how to dance. Down here, guys can't dance... Guys don't even ask girls to dance anymore." Scott asked her to dance. He's a much better man than I am. A) She had been insulting us for five to ten minutes at that point - I don't know a lot About how to attract people of the opposite gender, obviously, but I know that's not a smart way to do things. B) I wasn't attracted to her in the first place. So Scott and Annoying Girl go off and start dancing... I'd had my eye on a group of five girls that were over by us for a few minutes and I didn't want to be a loser and sit there doing nothing for the whole song, so I finally hiked up the proverbial skirt and started to walk over. "Would one of you like to dance? Would one of you like to dance?" I repeated silently in preparation. I opened my mouth, began to extend my hand, and... "Would you like to dance?" But this wasn't my own voice. No, no. It was Annoying Girl's dang roommate! NOOOOOOO!!!!!!! That's P.M.U.!! Then the stomp was over and the dang BYU-Idaho girls just talked our ears off until we decided to get the heck out of there. Unbelievable.

Would one of you like to dance?

All aboard the Utah Jazz bandwagon!! All aboard!! You know you want in on this junk - and there's plenty of room for everyone, apparently. You know the only reason you were watching that game was to see LeBron James. Uh huh. You love him. It was last Thursday night and the Cleveland Cavaliers were in town. That's an easy loss, right? Oh yeah. I can hear people beginning to Boo me already. You know I'm right! If the Jazz are playing the Cavs, the Magic, the Celtics, the Lakers, that's usually a pretty easy loss - a potential blowout. Why? Because the Jazz aren't that Good this year and because superstars like LeBron James get all the calls. They play by their own rules. It's all part of the conspiracy. The NBA is corrupt. However, I started watching the game and the Jazz were playing pretty well. We were up by 12 at one point, but then with three minutes to go in the game, LeBron took over. He was wheeling, dealing, taking huge dang steps and travelling all over the place, and knocking down threes from two feet behind the line. The Jazz found themselves down by six with under 40 seconds to play in the game. The game was over. My parents and I had to get up early the next day to start packing our house up and it was 11:40 at night. Jazz fans were leaving the game. You could see them walking up the stairs on TV. But I figured I might as well just stay up and watch the end of the game. We kept intentionally fouling, putting them at the free throw line. I've never seen this actually work in my life. Surprisingly, they missed a couple free throws and, after a miraculous behind-the-backboard shot by Kyle Korver, that hottie, we were only down by two with five seconds left and we had the ball. We passed it in and around the horn to Sundiata Gains, who just joined the Jazz on a 10-day contract from the D-League. He'd never made a three pointer in his five-game-long NBA career... until then. He stepped up and nailed the three, giving the Jazz a shocking one-point win over one of the best teams in the league. I know what all you bandwagon fans are saying - "We never gave up hope. We knew he'd make that shot all along." Bull. Crap. You did not. You can't possibly tell me you weren't worried at all when LeBron started sinking those threes at the end of the game. But whatever. Some of you Facebookers out there have only watched one Jazz game in your life and it was that one. You've now got a sense of false hope. And in that case, and that case alone, it was the so-called "best Jazz game ever." Was it a great moment? Yes. Absolutely. Was it the best moment in Jazz history? Not even close. Nothing will EVER beat John Stockton's shot until we win an actual championship. At that point, come back and talk to me. You know I'm right. You know I'm right.

Gaines 4 Life!

While we've been going through the moving process, we stumbled across our old Nintendo Entertainment System, that primitive beast. This, coupled with the trailer for the new "Prince of Persia" movie got me to thinking. NES games were a total jip. I don't think I ever beat a single game for the regular Nintendo system. Maybe "Where in Time is Mario?" or whatever, but that game was dumb and could have been conquered by a child. "Super Mario Bros. 3" was one of my favorite games, but I never beat it. I got to that dumb eighth world once, I think. It was a giant battleship on a sea of lava. I made it like 30 seconds into that level and then got eaten by a giant fireball or something and, soon enough, all the 15 extra lives I'd saved up were gone. We also had "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves." That game was pretty cool, especially when you got Little John on your team and could steal his little twirly thing and attack enemies on all sides of Robin simultaneously. Pretty much the only thing I remember about that game, though, is the dang music that plays when you get killed and it shows the "Game Over" screen. "You have been mortally wounded." I didn't even know what the heck that meant when I was eight, but I knew it meant I had to go all the way back to the beginning of the dang game. Even if you'd been playing for like five hours, if you died once, it sent you back to the first level. Dumb. Then there was "Prince of Persia," which was cool. You looked like a little barefooted Jedi running around until you fell off a ledge, plummeting three stories, then landing on spikes. That was pretty intense. The problem with this pre-Sands-of-Time stuff was that you only had like an hour to beat the game. There was a clock down at the bottom of the screen and it would tick down until the bad guy was going to like... kiss the girl or something awful like that. I never found out because A) I never made it past the third level and B) I don't think I ever made it an hour into the game. You can only fall on so many spikes before you start chucking your controller at the screen... and parents don't generally like it when you treat their appliances like that. Dang you, NES. Dang you all the way to The Boo Box. Everybody together now - BOOOOOO!!

Geronimo!!

Here's a Facebook fan page for you: "If we all die in 2012, Miley Cyrus is going with us." Ya dang skippy. Maybe this could be a recurring segment.

**QUESTION TIME!!**

Q. "Dear Aaron,

What's up with all these anonymous commenters? You'd think they would have stopped after that huge fit you threw last week, but NOOOOO!"

Just Curious,

-The Junior Mounties

A. What's up with nobody submitting Questions? That's the real Question. (SALUTE!) Um... you know what, it's almost like I don't even really want to talk About it because I know what they're trying to do. I'm fairly positive that there have only been one or two people that have posted anonymously without leaving a name or anything. I'm also fairly positive that I know who my anonymous commenters are, which, uh, kind of defeats the purpose of them posting anonymously, does it not? But their whole deal is that either A) they don't know how to not post anonymously or B) they know that if I knew it was them posting anonymous comments, I wouldn't use them. They want to get face Time in the Newsletter and they think that if they ask Questions or leave comments without me supposedly knowing who they are, they'll get talked About in "Signs of the Times." I therefore am left with two choices - if I really don't want these people to read the Newsletter - and I'm talking, like, really, really don't want them reading what I'm writing - I can either A) stop writing or B) change the blog site so you have to request permission before you can access it. Neither of those are going to happen, so that leaves me with my other option - not use or mention comments I don't want in the Newsletter. Many people will email me with the name "A Loyal Subscriber," etc., at the end of their inquiry, but since they email me, I know who it is anyway and that doesn't bother me. My concern about this anonymity is simply that A) there's somebody out there that's really creeping me out with their stalkerishness and B) if there are people out there reading, I want to know who they are. So, from now on, if you post anonymously, I reserve the right to A) delete your comment as if it never even existed or B) not use it. Here's the new problem, though - my answering this Question has probably made my stalker extremely happy because she has once again infiltrated my blog. Cruddy.

Put an end to SotT Stalking.

If you wish to have your Question answered in the next Issue of "Signs of the Times," email it to the new email address or post a comment on the blog site.

Finally, happy birthday to my dear mother. I refuse to give her credit when it comes to Fantasy Football, but, as far as birthdays are concerned, I'm all for it. Happy birthday, Mom! How lucky you are to celebrate this great day on the most blessed of all weekdays, Feel Good About Yourself Tuesday. I hope you have a great night. Smiley face.

I don't know about you, but I think this has been probably the best Issue ever, other than any Issue that mentioned Craig T. Nelson, that one Time I predicted Donny Osmond to win, the Nose Wax Issue, the rhyming Issues, that Time I got dumped, and probably a couple other Newsletters, as well. So... maybe it's in the top 20 or 30. Reporting from a crowded TRAX train, this is Aaron Christensen, Sr., completing this Issue in record speed.

Until next Time,

Move It! Sell It! And Leave the Door Open!

Aaron