A Twist on Invictus

So I was just writing something. In my writing, I was quoting Invictus. Instead of writing:

I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.

I wrote:

I am the master of my fate, I am the caption of my soup.

In some ways, I feel like my version is deeper. In other ways, not so much.

Mustaches for Maddie

One day, my niece Maddie, ran up to her mother. Her mom was sitting on the couch punching away at the keyboard of her computer, blogging to her heart’s content. But Maddie had something way more important for her mom. Way more important than the comments her mother was anticipating from her next blog installment. Way more important than the very thoughts racing through her synaptic brain. Maddie had piece of paper in her hand, maltreated from her journey from the table to the couch.

“Mom,” she said with a anticipatory smile on her face, “Guess who is going to hilarify you!? Me!” She proudly displayed the paper. “Look! I drew pictures of babies with mustaches.”

Maddie loves mustaches. She thinks they are hilarious. Not real ones, but the fake ones, of course.

This is a picture of Maddie with her three brothers. I imagine that this is one of her favorites. Partly because of the funny mustaches, and partly because this was before she found out how fast she was going to have to grow up. Before her childlike innocence was swallowed up with the need to be brave. Here is her story as her dad tells it:

My wife started noticing that my nine-year-old girl would tuck her hand in next to her side subconsciously—a strange way to relax. Then, one day as my girl helped in the kitchen—which she loves to do—my wife tossed her an avocado. It hit her chest and fell to the floor.

“Why didn’t you catch it?” my wife asked.

“That hand doesn’t work very well,” my girl responded.

So my wife called the doctor, who told us to take her to Primary Children’s Hospital immediately. An MRI later, we found out . . . well . . . my little girl has a golf-ball-sized tumor pressing up against her brain. 

Maddie just had surgery today. The surgery was successful. So successful, in fact, that it only took 4 hours instead of the 8 hours that the neurosurgeon had scheduled. But the lasting effects of the tumor are still unknown. She may have vitiation to her optic nerve. There may be irreparable damage to her pituitary gland. She may be dependent on pills or shots every day for the rest of her life. Her life will be thoroughly altered by an unwelcome and unruly mass that her own body produced. Her life won’t be ruined, but drastically different from what she imagined it to be.

Over the past few days, petitions for prayers were sent out to family and friends throughout the social network empire. The response of support was overwhelming. Responses of promises of prayers started pouring in. But one of the unsolicited consequences of the social support network was also one of the best.

Since the story of Maddie hilarifying her mom with babies and mustaches is fairly famous in our family, Maddie’s aunt posted a picture of her daughter wearing a fake mustache. Thus began the mini-phenomenon among Maddie’s family and friends. Pictures of people with fake mustaches littered my facebook newsfeed with the subject: Mustaches for Maddie.

Sometimes, I wonder why such hard things have to happen to the people we love. Why illness has to afflict the youngest bodies. But you know what? Now a young family knows that they have true friends as they begin an uncertain future. Now a little girl in the post-op floor of a hospital knows that there are people in this world willing to sacrifice for her. Even if that sacrifice is just finding some time to say a prayer, make a fake mustache, snap a picture, and hope they can help her smile through the pain.

Here are a few of the awesome Mustaches for Maddie:

Fredette about it!

This was just too good to pass up. A girl wrote a letter to the editor (we all know how good those are) of the Daily Universe (BYU's newspaper). She complained about everyone "worshipping" Jimmer Fredette. This entire sentence is a link to her letter. BYU Fans everywhere responded by posting on her facebook page. Here is a link to the thread. Some people were a little sac-religious, but I think they were doing it to prove a point. This whole thing has been talked about by ESPN and CBS Sports. I think this will get some national attention. Oh, poor poor angry little girl...

Mint Vanilla Toothpaste

So in my marketing class, we were assigned to come up with different taglines for new products. One of the products was a huge and satisfying boiler-cooked burger. My taglines ranged from "Even cows like the taste!" to "Ingest the Best!" I was having fun laughing at myself in the library while everyone else thought I finally had my break from reality. Another product that I was given was Mint Vanilla Toothpaste. I need to walk you through my train of thought here: What is tingly? Ah! When body parts fall asleep. Here's the tagline: "You know how you cut off the circulation in your arm and it falls asleep? Yeah, it's like that." For me, that's a good tagline. I can appreciate that one. What else is tingly? Sometimes it's tingly when I pee. Yeah. "It's like peeing... in your mouth!" I can see it now. Brooke Sheilds (or some other washed up actress) saying, "Mint Vanilla Toothpaste: It's like peeing in your mouth." I couldn't see that one going over too well with my professor. So I ended up with the tagline: "The Taste of Freshness Redefined." But my train of thought was pretty entertaining. Maybe I've just got peeing on the mind because of my twin nephews who peed in Easter Eggs and threw them at each other in the living room yesterday. If you're confused, feel free to look up Shelly Morris's Facebook page.

Zombie Morning

What will I do when I wake up and realize that everyone around me are zombies? That's how it always works in the movies. People wake up and realize that hell has broken loose over night. I figure that it's just a matter if time until it actually happens in real life. So what will I do? I don't have any shotguns or grenades. I do have knives, but I don't want to get close enough to a zombie to use it. In the movies, they say that the best way to kill a zombie is to shoot it in the head. I'm not completely convinced by that theory because of the fact that the zombie is already dead. How is shooting a dead thing going to kill it? I don't think that Hollywood really thought that one through. I guess if we're going to use movies as the best source of zombie-logic, then my best weapon against zombies would be Will Smith.
One of the biggest questions on my mind is this: will real zombies move fast or slow? Some movies show zombies running at full human-speed, while other movies show them moving like they're wearing a catheter. Different movies have depicted both, but let's face it, that was just directors taking creative liberties. I don't think they really know. Could I outrun a zombie? Could I outsmart it? Maybe there is an unwritten rule stating that a zombie has to answer a riddle before it can eat you... and the answer CANNOT be "Aaauuoomm". I have no clue. The closest glimpse of the undead that I have had are students on campus during Finals Week. I'm guessing that my best bet would be to try to get on the roof of my apartment complex and wait for a helicopter to pick me up. But what if zombies are smart enough to fly a helicopter and the pilot just wants to eat me? There are just so many unanswered questions.

New Study

For my Capstone Project, I am doing research with the former Dean of the Marriott School of Business. It is a great opportunity. We are hoping to actually publish our study once it is all said and done. In order to create our study, I needed to research what other articles are out there about our topic. By the way, our topic is on scams and scammers. So I started doing some searches of the school libraries database. I found a few good articles and a few strange ones. One of the strange ones was titled "Financial loss in pyramid savings schemes, downward social mobility, and acute coronary syndrome in transitional Albania." Wow! That study seems a little to specific and a little too random for my liking. But it did inspire me to change our study. Now, we are studying "Psychological profiles of scam victims, social immobility caused by virtual worlds where a person can heal dragon wounds, the innovation of water noodles, and the technological advances in triple bypass surgery for bark and ambrosia beetles of America Samoa."

Olympic Hockey

So anyone who watched the Gold Medal Hockey Game between Canada and the USA, was biting their nails all the way to the end. They were both very good teams and it was a good match-up. I turned it on at the end of the second period. Canada was winning 2-1. It was a very intense game without a whole lot of power plays or fights. I was glad that the game was being played so cleanly. Then the third period rolled around. I was so nervous for the US Team. The had defeated the Canadian team earlier in the Olympics for the first time since the sixties (or something)! Canada has always had a very strong team and I wanted USA to win (because I'm biased). There were so many shots taken and so many blocked pucks. I told Melissa the Disney would be buying the rights to make a movie in 20 years. I could literal envision it: The economy is in shambles, the political front of the USA is falling apart, terror alerts are a way of life, and every American Dream rests on the fate of a widely watched hockey game. Then the USA finally scored with only seconds left in the game! It was freakishly awesome. So the Gold Medal Game between the two best teams in the world went into overtime. Very awesome! Then Canada came and made a point, finishing the sudden-death overtime period. So the USA lost, I was depressed, the economy is still struggling, and Obama is still in office. Sorry Disney, no blockbuster film here... Canada won.