It's summer, what to do...

Well, looks like it's about that time of year: The birds are (not) chirping, the sun is (not) out, and all the hot girls are (not) chillin around. Looks like another great summer in Logan.

Okay, it's not that bad here, I'm just hoping that maybe once it warms up, I'll be able to get my summer tan on. Get some good hikes, mountain bike rides and maybe go swimming again.

I'm sure anybody who reads this, the few, if any of you that are out there have noticed it's been months since I last posted on either this or my motorsports blog. To address that, I finally stopped caring about what other people were doing and decided that school was going to take a bigger priority than my blogs; particularly Off The Apex. Now that summer is over, I've got a few projects that I want to accomplish as well as a few things that I want to let loose via the internetz.

A lot has happened since I last posted anything anywhere: I've successfully completed another semester of college and I think I've managed to change a lot of the things about myself which had prior gone unaddressed.

For example, I managed to do better in school the last two semester than I have ever. To be honest, it's a great feeling: probably one of the best I've ever had. The feeling of a reward that is no greater than a simple alphabet character on some arbitrary piece of digital paper has far too much power when you have invested nothing but countless months of hard work, tears, and sleepless nights to the cause. It's far too mundane that it is all equivalent to a piece of paper that in ten, maybe even five years from now, will have practically no value. The thought that once I get my first job and prove my worth via work ethic and intelligence, these four, or five or six, or however many year I have devoted will be nothing but a smudge in my personal history.

Still, I can't say that I have ever felt better. Even more so because there have been certain classes which have been huge obstacles to me in the past which I have finally hurdled over. I'm not sure why it was: that I have performed so much better here than I ever did when I went to school down in Arizona. Perhaps it is because here, I share so much more in school pride? Maybe that I feel more comfortable here knowing that I'm not surrounded by rich, spoiled, pampered kids? Or even that I just don't feel like a dumbass here. In any case, the feeling that it is to be part of something huge, part of a awesome school which people have actually heard of and respect is something I took for granted before. The bottom is, I love this place. It's an interesting contrast going from a school where I didn't really care about who I was and what I was doing to beyond incredibly proud and confident of my school and who I am and what I'm doing. When people ask me where I go, I don't think I could get more satisfaction than from saying "Utah State Engineering". It's one of the best things ever.

Now it's summer though. So they say at least. When I look outside and it's 50 degrees, snow on the mountain outside of my window, and cloudy and overcast, I'm not exactly convinced. Seriously: it's effing June tomorrow.

Obviously I've been spending quite a bit of time now submerged in the Utah culture and the LDS religion. Nearly all of my friends are LDS, and are even strict followers. Prior to living here though, I held little respect for Mormons, this is mostly partly because of the way the Mormons I grew up around acted, partly because of my own personal beliefs, and fully due to my personal ignorance.

One thing I've always truly believed is the thought that you cannot judge a book by it's cover.I earnestly believe you can't judge or believe in something until you have good reason to via experience or research and so forth. Along those same lines, you can't claim knowledge without knowing the subject. Sadly though, I've realized that thats how I have lived when it comes to the Mormons.

With that, I've been spending a lot of time speaking with Mormons and non-Mormons alike and I've decided that I'm going to go through and read various religious testaments including but not limited to the Book of Mormon. With that, I'm hoping that I'll be able to get an "outside looking in" view without other influences: neither negative nor positive, this purely my own personal quest of understanding. Don't take this as me signing up to a different church, it's just a journey of knowledge. I'm hoping to read a little bit every night, and write about it on here. That's my daily devotion and I hope it works out. Hopefully I'll have it done by the end of the summer.

So buckle up and get ready, this should be fun.

Utah as a box

As of January, I will have been living in Utah for a year; that's a hell of a long time. 

After being here for that long, I have since decided that moving here wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. Granted, its a lot better then where I was before, either AZ or ID, but its still falling short of my expectations. Those expectations being that of a improved social life.

The biggest thing is that, quite frankly the social life here sucks. Everyone here is enveloped in Logan's own subculture; go to school, go to church, be Mormon. I'm not trying to start a anti-Mormon rant here, because thats just not the way I prefer to portray myself as; but the way things appear to someone such as me, an outsider to the church, it's all pretty sucky. 

The problem is that, when your not a member of the church, you're essentially, locked out of society here; that is that your excluded from so many activities and even excluded from being a normal member of the community. It seems as though, when you're a non-member, people shun you. Now, if I were to come up with a random number, I would say 75% of the community here is LDS, and just like that 75% of all relationship opportunities, 75% of social activities, 75% of everything.

Now, this may seem like a load of unsupported bullocks, but it's true. There have been numerous instances where I have talked to girls, or even guys and we'll have a normal, healthy conversation, then the moment they pop the question of "where did you go on your mission" or things like that, the conversation heads south. Apparently that's all that is required to keep people away from you. As soon as people find out your a non-member, they don't want anything to do with you.

That bring's me to another thing; what is with girls here wanting missionaries? I'm sorry but that just seems asinine; automatically being more attracted to someone who only has a label in front of his name, and for what reason. What reason do a lot of males go on missions here. I have a lot of friends who are on mission/have been and they don't fit the stereotype of a missionary. Going on a mission doesn't really make you an angel, you're not saving children in Africa from starvation, you're not saving dogs from being eaten in China (yes, I am allowed to say that), Basically, what I am saying is that people should be realistic, don't date someone because he has the word "Elder" in front of his name, or because he is a member of PETA, or whatever bullshit people do; date someone because they are genuinely what you want, because they're a good person. There is as much potential for someone who hasn't gone on a mission to be as good of a person, if not better then someone who has.

Another thing, stop and think about what you're doing. Don't say you don't watch rated-R movies and then go and spend the night in someone of the opposite gender's room. Both are may be harmless on their individual levels but doing that is kinda a hypocritical. There are so many good things that can be experienced from rated-R movies. There are so many good thing that can be experienced from a lot of things, but don't just mindlessly follow what people tell you to do.

To summarize my very rant-like non-rant, all I am trying to say is, don't judge a book by its cover. Don't be so close-minded that you only hang out with people of the same religious following. Don't exclude people because they're not what your society has taught you to be righteous. Those goes for every religion, race, culture, sub-culture, whatever. 

I'm done non-ranting.

What the hell, your 20 live your life. Get out there and get crunk, not married

Excuse my title, but really? Maybe its just because its finally starting to happen to people who I can actually associate with, but damn, people need realize that 20 is the middle of the most exciting period of your life, at least so they say.

I can't even count how many people I know that are married before their 24. Most of these people are still in school, most of them work in a job getting paid minimum wage, most of them (this is of utmost importance..) drive a shit car, most of them live in an apartment designed for college students. None of these things should be descriptions of people who are married.

To get married you need to have a stable income. You need to be able to provide for yourself AS WELL AS YOUR PARTNER should, heaven forbid, anything happen.

First and foremost before you get married, you need to be mentally, socially and economically mature. This sounds a little weird but in my head, it makes sense (but so does vegetarian velociraptors)(WTF, my spell check doesnt know velociraptors?!). What I am saying is, I look at all these married couples and again, economically, they're not prepared. They work at your local grocery store as a waitress or your restaurant as a stocker (thats backwards but IDK). Thats not a good enough job to provide enough money for a marriage. Not to mention to even make enough money to make a difference your working long hours at odd times, so your not even spending quality time with each other. On top of this, a lot of these folks are still in school. Lets do some math here:

Average college student puts in between 12-14 hours a week for school, they say for every hour you spend in class, thats 2 hours of studying.
Say your working 30 hours a week @ $10 an hour.
you should be sleeping 8 hours a night.
these people usually go to church for 3 hours a week

so lets see here 12+(2x12)+30+(8x7)+3=125 hours of nothing time.
theres a 168 hours a week.

168-125=43 hours a week=6.14 hours a day of lovin time.. granted thats not bad but when you factor in that people have lives and actually have other things that aren't anticipated in life, thats not much time.

Oh another thing, your 20, you should at least hope to have some social life, subtract that from your 6.14 hours per day.

Which brings me to my next point, being socially mature; i.e. being not socially retarded.
This is simple, you don't want to be that friend that is lost to all of your other friends because you got married. We all know what I'm talking about. You get married and then your in your own little world; your practically a loss to society, you don't really contribute nor subtract. you're just a rock. No one wants to be a rock because rocks get ground up and made into concrete which is boring.  When you're 20 years old you need to get our and enjoy life. Because after that you'll have a real job and be forced to be a responsible member of society.  So act your age, be irresponsible and wear undies on your head....

Okay economically mature, your wondering "what the dickins does that mean?". I shall tell you, NOW!
Okay go back to my previous number of 30 hours a week of work at $10 an hour. this yields $300 a week. Say you get about $270 after the IRS has their way with it. Combine that with approximately the same amount from your partner, thats $540 a week, not bad. That works out to about $25,920 a year, below the average household income of Utah, much farther below. Thats not much. Estimate rent to be about $450 a month; insurance, gas, utilities, food. That leaves you very little to work with. What happens when your waitress partner gets mashed by a shopping cart then what?

I'm not ready to be called Olaf: destroyer-of-relationships, but living here in Utah and being surrounded by married people or people getting married, I am just hoping people have put all this into consideration before then tie the knot.