Signs of the Times, Issue No. 180 - 11/01/11

The weather knows it's November.


Greetings to one and all. Happy Tuesday to you. My name is Aaron and this is my Newsletter. Topics to be discussed in today's "Signs of the Times": Funny facial hair,Five ways to have fun this winter, my thoughts (again) about the pending cancellation of the entire NBA season, the impossible rematch between BYU and Utah, and one customer who actually had something nice to say. Ready? On we go!


Boys of all ages go nuts at this time of year, starting today, attempting to demonstrate their manliness to the world by going without shaving for the entire month of November. "No Shave November," they call it. I'm not really a fan. Clearly, I go a few days and sometimes weeks from time to time without shaving, which is mostly due to laziness in the mornings. I figure that shaving and doing my hair takes about ten minutes, normally. If I either do my hair and don't shave or do shave and wear a hat to work, I save five minutes and can sleep in a little longer. It's a beautiful system, really. After a couple weeks, though, the goatee or beard starts to get a little itchy and I end up either trimming it or shaving it off, so I don't know if I could go a whole month without shaving at all. As some of you may have seen, I had been growing out my beard for a couple weeks in October and, when the time came to clean it up, I shaved it into a handlebar mustache for about 3 hours. That was about all I could take. It was a good idea, in theory, but I went to Wal-Mart to grab a couple things before I shaved it off and I felt really... weird. So, all you high school kids out there, have fun growing your ghetto little peach fuzz Mexi-staches this month. I think I'll pass.

Impressive.

This morning as I was working, I looked out the window and what did I see? SNOW! Snow falling from the sky. This may come as a shock to some of you, but I HATE SNOW. Utah weather is the most messed up thing. Yesterday, it was actually pretty nice. Great Trick-or-Treating weather for the kiddos. But then today I head to work in the rain and I turn around an hour and a half later and it's snowing! Before you start calling me a Scrooge, here's my stance: Snow is beautiful, sure. I don't mind looking at it. I really didn't even mind playing in it when I was younger. Not a problem. The problem start when you get old enough to have to shovel the snow and when you have to start driving in it. That's the worst. I'd be totally fine if snow only fell in the mountains and on the grass. If it could kindly just keep off of any sort of pavement or asphalt, I'd really, really appreciate that. I'll tell you what, though. I know you all think I'm such a hater now and you're all contemplating never reading my Newsletter ever again (yeah right), so I'll give you a list of the Top Five things you can do in the snow this winter:

1. Sit in it. It's less fun to do if you don't have the waterproof pants on.
2. Start a snow-cone company. In Utah, you could pretty much run it 9 months out of the year and never run out of stock.

3. Throw it at people.
4. Throw it at yourself.
5. Attempt to melt it with a blow-dryer. Always wanted to try, but haven't found a long enough extension cord.

It's lemon!

**QUESTION TIME!!**

Q. "Is the NBA going to skip a whole season?"
- Jordan Holmes

A. Well, Brother Holmes, the NBA seaon is supposed to start up today. The entire month of games scheduled for November has already canceled and, by the looks of things, we're not going to be seeing basketball any time soon. What bothers me about this is that NBA players should be spending their time attempting to come to a resolution with the owners. Instead, Kevin Durant and LeBron James spent last night challenging each other to games of flag football. In the event that the season could get legs underneath it, teams would need to make up a few of the games that would have been missed due to cancellations. This would require them to possibly play, in some instances, three to four games on consecutive nights. That's just too much for them to handle, apparently. Heaven forbid that they have to work four days in a row! Heaven help them if they were forced to play 40 minutes of basketball four nights in a row! (And that would be for a star player. Most players would only end up playing 20 or 30 minutes per game, which is still asking a lot of them.) I've said it once, I'll say it again. What a bunch of spoiled rotten babies. I'm not sure if the NBA WILL cancel the entire season, but I say they might as well. Teach these punks a lesson. Many of these kids are college dropouts who left school early to go play basketball for a living - something that the rest of us do for FUN in our FREE TIME. They get paid millions of dollars to do so and then they go blow all their money on fancy cars, big TVs, and the newest video games. What a rough life they live... Really, though. I hope they don't honestly expect us to show them any sympathy at all.

I'm about to lock them out of my life.

Brie Ann Lewis wanted me to blog about the Monster Mash again this week, regardless of the fact that I had a whole segment devoted to that wonderful song last week. It sufficeth me to say that at about 11:30 last night, my brother Austin and I cranked up my iTunes and Monster Mashed the night away. It was tremendous.

I was in attendance at Rice Eccles Stadium on Saturday night as the Utah Utes got their first ever PAC-12 win against as they squared off against the Oregon State Beavers. The win was a long time coming, being the fifth PAC-12 game for the U this season. Previous setbacks against USC, Washington, and Cal made this otherwise-easy matchup put Scott Aylett and I on edge, almost to the point of praying that we not lose again. If the Utes would have blown this game, I'm not sure I would have been able to watch another game all season. I tell you, people, it's gotta be bad - really bad - for me to walk away from a game, whether it's the Utes or the Utah Jazz, my two dearly-beloved teams, but I've already walked away from two fourth quarters this season. It's been rough. Thankfully, the Utes were able to pull out the "W" over the weekend and we went home happy campers, as it were. I've heard a lot of chatter from BYU fans saying they'd like a rematch with the Utes, who previously walloped the Cougars, 54-10, in Provo during week three of this year's campaign. The obvious answer here is no. No, you can't have a rematch. We beat you down and that, sadly, is something that can never be reversed. And even if we could have a rematch, that would be like taking two completely different teams and making them play. You've ditched your loser quarterback and swapped out your running backs, we've lost our starting quarterback and lost a bunch of guys for the season due to injury. That would be like racing somebody in a 1976 Ford truck, losing, switching it for a 1994 Chevy, and asking to re-race. Why would anyone ever agree to that? There are no do-overs in football. Sorry, Cougs.

You know what I'm sick of hearing? And it's not like this is something that I'm really worried about right now, necessarily, it's just something that I've heard a few times in the course of my illustrious dating career: "The right girl will come along when you're least expecting it." Bull. Crap. Do you know when I'm least expecting it? Right now!! Where is she??

This lady was waiting, too.

The Game Ball for the past week of Fantasy Football goes to the defense of the Detroit Lions, who earned Gridlock 43 fantasy points with its seven sacks, one interception, two fumble recoveries, and two touchdowns in their rout of the Denver Broncos. Good work. I'm on the bandwagon.

Rawr.

The Shoutout of the Week goes to Victor Stratos, who sent an email to ZAGG about me, saying, and I quote, "I just talked to Aaron at Customer Service and he gave me great service and helped me order... another replacement since my HTC Evo broke and Sprint is sending me a new one. Best regards..." You're a good man, Victor Stratos. Thanks, man. Thanks a lot.

That's about it for this week, my friends. We'll get this out a little earlier than I did last week. Sorry about that. Just thought I'd mix it up and send it at 9:00 at night sometimes in case you're up late and need something to read to put you to sleep. At least now many of you will be able to discuss my wonderful opinions over the dinner table. Welcome to November.

Until next Time,

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

Aaron