I'm wearing my ridiculous hat.

I love this hat.  It is hard to deny that it is ridiculous though...

 

Well, everything in me wants to start talking about music.  It’s where my mind is and thus, it’s where my fingers take you via this keyboard, these words, this blog, your eyes, and your mind.  However, I’ve been told that it’s the bores when I just sit here and read WAY too into a few songs for so long that you have to do like 3 large pulls on the mouse scroller just to get to the bottom of it to see if there’s anything else.  So I’ll chill out this time and talk about something else.  However, before I do that and just to get my own personal fix, I’ll share with you a short 4-song mix that, if you are interested in getting your music on, you should check out.

1.  Heart it Races (as played by Dr. Dog), technically by Architecture in Helsinki

2.  Safe and Sound, by Electric President

3.  Save it for a Rainy Day, by The Jayhawks

4.  Sweet Disposition, by The Temper Trap

OK, I just needed to get that out of my system.  Everything in me wants to explain to you why those four songs are completely worth your time but I’ll resist the urge.  There's that though for those of you who are interested in finding a few new tunes to fall in love with.  I'll move on.

So I think that I walk faster than almost anybody when I’m just walking around.  It seems like almost no matter what, whenever someone makes the comment that he or she is “a fast walker”, everybody else sitting around will chime in with their own statement of “oh yeah, I’m definitely a really fast walker.”  People like to communicate that they “just can’t believe how slow some people walk.”  However, whenever you see people making these statements across the board, you have to take them with a slab of salt.  So I look to my experiences with people.  Now here’s the deal, I’m not trying to brag about how fast I am or anything but I’m just saying, people NEVER pass me.  It just doesn’t happen.  I am always the person passing other people.  So it’s hard for me to believe that all of these people saying that they’re such speedy little walkers really are as speedy as they’re saying.

And I bet that right now you’re sitting there thinking “oh yeah that’s the way it is for me.  I’m faster than everybody too.”  I just don’t buy it though.  There is no way that everybody really walks faster than everybody else when I still am always the one doing the passing.  It just doesn’t statistically make sense.  So yeah, you may not be a “slowass” (Mallory, Rachel, Betsy-ism there), but I just feel like the chances that you walk faster than I do are not high.

This all comes to light because today, I was walking on campus and what I thought would never happen happened.  This dude was maybe 5’8” (and that is being generous).  So he was a fairly short guy and he was wearing this Jansport backpack that must have been just absolutely packed full of books cause the straps on it looked like they were one hard step from just giving up.  But there I am, walking briskly along in front of the library and out of the corner of my left eye, I saw him coming up around me.  It was the weirdest feeling.  Seriously I never experience having someone come up from behind me and pass me.  I generally just assume that the last person that I passed is the closest person behind me.  Sometimes I even bank on it and start singing a little to myself whenever I feel like I’ve gotten enough distance on the last person I passed.  But he passed me.  Fair and square.  So I don’t really know what to say anymore.  It made me feel like I am the person that I just accused all of you of being.  I’m the guy who just THINKS he walks really fast but in reality, I get passed just like everybody else.  I don’t know where it leaves me.

It was really messing with me for the next couple blocks or so until I came upon something else to take my mind off of it.  I came up on the situation that you see all the time and probably always chuckle about in your head when you see it.  Let me paint a picture for you:

 

You’re walking a short ways behind this guy who looks a little bit like he doesn’t know how to take a hint.   And by that I mean that he doesn’t know how to look around him at all the other college students and see that he should not be tucking his t-shirt into his high-waisted, tapered BLUE jeans.  That kind of thing.  So basically, a homely little fellow.  Seems like a nice guy though and he is probably just a little bit older than the average college student.  Let’s go with somewhere around age 28-29.   Then he sees her.  Here she comes.  She’s his female equivalent in every way.  He knows her from a class that they had a couple semesters ago but he only talked to her a couple of times back then.  He really wants to say something to her now but he hasn’t quite yet decided if he has the courage.  You know he’s decided to speak up and be a man when you see his butt-cheeks clench underneath those beautiful wranglers.  Then all of a sudden, she turns off onto another path!! Oh no!  She’s not going to pass right by us anymore!  What to do, what to do!?  Our little friend panics and doesn’t say anything until she’s almost too far away and then, in a moment of courage, he speaks up!   It was right at the last second; so when he says “hey Brenda!” she is roughly 15-20 feet away from him.  However, she hears her name and turns around.  SCORE!!!  Now comes the part that I love and that is special to these types of fellows.  In this situation, the socially comfortable person would walk closer to the other person.  However, because both of these people are mildly inept at social situations, they will have an entire conversation at 20 feet!  HAHA I love it!  And if you have the time to stick around, the closure of these conversations is well worth waiting for.  Often, it is even more riddled with awkwardness than the beginning.  It’s kind of like a finale to a wonderful people-watching show.  I can’t help but chuckle inside as I see them standing 20 feet from each other making what would probably have been an awkward conversation in the first place, 10 times more awkward by doing it at a distance.  Oh it’s so great.  Sometimes you wonder how some people ever end up with a soul-mate or ever end up finding someone to spend the rest of their lives with just because you wonder how they ever get up the gumption to talk to someone of the opposite sex, but this is where it all happens.  This is where frumpy-dude’s dreams begin to become a reality.  This is where the more-than-mildly-awkward girl’s dreams of a Prince Charming begin to culminate.  This is romance happening!!  Awkward people have awkward romance.  I think that’s just how it is.

 

So I know what you’re wondering right now.  You’re like, “man, I wonder what Christian’s favorite beer as of late is?”  Well, let me just tell you.  Lately I’ve been DIGGIN this beer:

 

It’s a Dunkel  (which means “dark” in German in case you were unaware) from Warsteiner Brewery, one of Germany’s larges breweries.  It is, as you might have guessed, just outside of Warstein, Germany.   I’m a little bit scared to give this recommendation because this is by no means a “standout” beer.  It receives average ratings and it’s one of those that people say is good not great.  However, I have been really really liking it for some reason.  I thought about recommending it earlier but I thought that maybe my taste buds were just off for a couple days.  But I had it again last night with my boy John and I’m just sayin, I like it a lot.  Enough that, even though the ratings are good not great, I am going to give it a great and say you should maybe look into it.  The awesome thing about taste is that you can’t really argue with me.  I mean if you try it and you don’t like it, it doesn’t change the fact that I think it tastes wonderful.  That fact, in and of itself, is wonderful.  And you are wonderful.

 AWESOME MOVIE

This movie comes out this weekend.  I want to see it way more than I care to admit.  At first, I wasn’t that excited about it because I thought it was going to befairly cheesy (mostly due to the horrible three second clip of “Zeus” aka Qui Gon Gin from Star Wars aka Liam Neeson where he’s got like this retarded looking glow around him as he says something in a voice that is hardly what you’d expect from Zeus).  BUT, I watched the preview like 8 times and now I’m pretty sure it’s going to be awesome.  So if you’ve seen the preview only once and you think it isn’t going to be that tight, watch it like 7 more times and reassess.  Of course, if you watch even a relatively small amount of TV, you have probably already seen the preview like 19 times.  And though it is usually a sign that the movie is going to suck whenever they push it so hard on TV, I am still holding on to high hopes.  Greek mythology is just awesome for some reason. 

They were just playing a Dashboard Confessional song here in Aspen and I was about to comment on how it was making me want to slit either my own or everyone else’s wrists, but then right as I began to type that sentence, they turned it off.  Like right in the middle of the song.  It was weird.  But now they just turned it on again.  Ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh.  BTW I don’t hate DC.  I actually kinda like some of Christopher Carrabba’s songs.  I do think it’s kinda weird though that he still writes high school, heart throb songs when he’s almost 35.   I mean I understand that when you find something you’re good at, you stick with it.  But at some point it kinda starts being a little weird.  Whatever.  I didn’t mean to talk about him.  And just to be clear, I didn’t REALLY want to slit anybody’s wrists.  It’s just the action that is generally associated with Dashboard Confessional.

OK, I have to go.  It’s almost closing time…

 CLOSING TIME

…and I need to get out of here and go do something awesome.  What a horrible song and video...

Also, as I look back over what I've written, I kind of wish I hadn't raved about Clash of the Titans.  It's probably going to be a blockbuster flop.  Maybe just maybe though it will be awesome.

Peace.

I don't think I'll ever go Where the Wild Things Are again...it wasn't much fun.

Originally, I was planning on telling you all about this short, 5-song mix that I came up with and I was just going to give you basically all of my thoughts about the 5 songs.  However, instead, I’m going to tell you all about this OTHER short, 5-song mix that I came up with because I told somebody about the first one and thus, I ruined it for myself.  It just didn’t feel right to use that one after I’d already talked about it to someone.

To you though, it is really neither here nor there because you never new about the first one.  As such, this one might as well be the only one I ever came up with.  And to be honest, I didn’t change EVERY song in the first list.  Some of them are still in here.

OK first song is Cutting Off the Blood to Ten by Right Away, Great Captain!.  NOTE: this song is mildly depressing and intense.  Consider yourself warned.   A of all, I’m pretty cray cray about this band.  (cray cray = crazy for those of you not up with the lingo of future generations)  This band is the solo project of the lead singer of the band Manchester Orchestra.  Also a really good band though nowhere near the caliber of the solo project. 

 

I feel like the picture should help validate my argument that he’s legit.  And by the way, if you’re going to try to look up Right Away, Great Captain!, some good songs are actually Right Away, Great Captain!,  Right Ahead, Young Sailor!, and Devil Dressed in Blue.  So start there.  But anyways, this song is intense.  Which is why I like it.  He starts off with talking about “cutting off the blood to ten, with a  rope around my wrist”.  I’m not positive, but I am pretty sure that is a reference to committing suicide via tying something heavy to your hands and throwing it overboard.  (he likes nautical references so this may be talking about an anchor?)  Then he moves on to talking about how he knows his wife cheated on him with his brother and how pissed he is about that.  Ok, this is sounding like the kind of song that you would usually label as “too intense”, so let me explain why I like it.  If you listen to the song, it starts off really slow and quiet.  Then later on in the song, there is a part that get’s really loud and intense.  Then it quiets back down at the end.  I like it how this song illustrates that you don’t have to be screaming for a song to be filled with emotion.  There is almost more emotion and intensity in this song when it’s being all slow than there is when it picks up.  I think it’s cool.  Also, look up the lyrics.  They’re crazy-poetic and, if you haven’t already figured it out by now, I’m kinda into songs with good lyrics.

In the end, you can make your own interpretation of what he’s talking about in this song if anything.  My take on it is that he’s basically sitting there at the end of his life, completely pissed about how his wife and brother hurt him so much.  But yet he’s having this realization that he’s even more angry about the fact that he was never able to move on.  I feel like the point of the song is that no matter how crappy a situation is, or how mad something makes you, you’re always going to be better off in the end moving on than you are going to be holding onto it.  I can relate in a much smaller way.

Next song!! (I may not get through all these before I choose sleep)  California English by Vampire Weekend.  If you start listening to this song, you will immediately find that you can’t really understand what he’s saying very well.  He sings in a really broken voice and says the words with strange inflection and very quickly.  BRILLIANT!  The reason I think that is so cool is that, if you can decipher the lyrics to this song, you can see that basically he spends the whole song basically talking about the differences in the way that people in California speak from the way that that the rest of the country speaks.  He does this by “telling a story” about a girl  he likes and all that jazz, and as he’s telling the story, he just throws in a bunch of ironic California stereotypes.  Take the first line for instance.  The first line is  “wouldn’t ever gag you with a spoon, my only true love”.  In this line, he’s referencing the phrase “gag me with a spoon” I’m pretty sure.  I’m also pretty sure that is a phrase that comes from the valley-girl-type girls in California.  And he continues to make references like that throughout the rest of the song I think.  I can’t figure out what some of them mean but there are a bunch of the lyrics that are definitely referencing California-talk.

So as a band from California, I think the point of his song is to say that California English is different from English everywhere else and that really, we can’t understand the band in the same way that someone who has experiences Cali could.  On top of brilliant lyrics, he sings the song in a way that is ironically hard to understand.  So awesome.

Before I move on, I would like to state that obviously, I might be completely wrong on the meanings of these songs.  If you hear something completely different in them than awesome, tell me about it.

The next on my list is a song called No Intention by Dirty Projectors.  I’m going to go ahead and start off with telling you that I have absolutely no idea what this song is talking about overall.  I mean there are individual lines that I think are really cool and really clever.  But I can’t seem to make sense of the song as a whole.  The reason that I’ve added this song to our playlist is for it’s bobble-head quality.  You know what I’m talking about.  You know when you see people moving their head all around the place while keeping their shoulders completely still?  That’s exactly what happens to my head whenever this song comes on and I hear that simple but inspiring beat.  Thus, I love it.  Dirty Projectors is a band from somewhere in the northeast of America.  New York maybe?  I can’t remember right now.  However, they are coming to play in Norman for the Norman music festival which is debatably either this weekend or sometime in April.  Nobody really knows at this point though I’ve heard it from a reliable source that multiple people have been saying it’s not this weekend as we originally thought.  Either way though, I’m going to be there in Norman when they are and I’m going to be right up front when they sing this song straight to me.  Plus, don’t they just look really cool and down to earth?

 

Ok, I’m kinda tempted to keep typing about the other two songs cause they really are legit but I’m getting really really tired and I don’t think I’m going to make it much longer.  It’s about 3:30 AM right now so I feel like my sleepiness is justified.  Unfortunately though, I probably won’t be able to post this until sometime tomorrow afternoon because our internet is being all kinds of weird tonight and I just don’t have the will to go fix it right now.  So what will probably happen is that I’ll shut my computer here in about 45 seconds and then, tomorrow, I’ll reopen it at some point and either continue typing about the other two songs or I’ll just take this post as is and put it online for you to do what you will with it.

Peace.

**NEXT MORNING**…well, let’s be honest.  **NEXT AFTERNOON**

Well, I woke up today pretty much ready to just keep typing my little heart out.  So this may be one of those posts that is just so long that many give up on it.   That’s alright…which reminds me.  “Jesus is still alright with me! Jesus is still alright!”  The word alright always makes me think about that song.  Whatever, that’s neither here nor there.

The next song.  Mansions of Los Feliz by Eels.  No.  It was going to be that song but I just changed my mind.  I think I’m going to change it to A Shot in the Arm by Wilco.  Yeah, I like that one better for the here and now.  I should inform you again that Wilco is easily one of my absolute favorite bands.  They are the only band that I have ever seen 3 times live (other than like Hero Factor or other local bands).  Originally, when I listened to them, I wasn’t a big fan.  I wasn’t just a one song and done, but I probably was something like a 6 song and done.  They just didn’t catch me.  WOW, how did they not?  I’m almost embarrassed about it.

So then, and this is back during like my sophomore year I think, one of my best buds Joseph Harvey Hanson basically forced me to listen to them again and he walked me through some of the songs and why they were so awesome.  So I’ll give him 50% of the credit for getting me hooked on Wilco.  The other 50% is split 48% to Wilco and 2% to me for being awesome (I couldn’t go unaccredited)

Out of all the heaps of absolutely amazing Wilco songs, why did I pick this one?   Well, the reasons are three-fold though you might be able to combine two of them so that the reasons are only two-fold.  That doesn’t seem necessary though so I’ll keep the reasons at three.   A of all, this song has a lyric in it that is in my top 5 lyrics.  And I’m not saying that it’s PROBABLY in my top 5; it is EASILY in my top 5.  The lyric is the opening line.  It is as follows:  “The ashtray says you were up all night.”   Oh my face how awesome of a line is that?  It is beyond brilliant.  Actually, give me just a second.  I’m going to look up brilliant in a thesaurus and find a better word for it.  Ok I found it.  That lyric is PROFOUND.  I don’t even know how to talk you through how awesome it is if you don’t get it.  I mean if you can’t read that  line and see the poetry, than I don’t know that any kind of explanation by me would even help.

Ok, before I go to B, I’d like to make it clear that this entire song is lyrically awesome.  It’s not just that first line.  But B of all, this song is just plain fun to see live or to listen to loud in the car.  About halfway through the song, he starts freakin out.  The reason that this freak out is one of my absolute favorites is because he starts singing with almost a mix of yelling and singing.  And the pitch is the kind of pitch that is in everyone’s range.   So if you blast this song in your car, you can basically just lose yourself in yelling/singing these lines.   He doesn’t worry about keeping his voice pure and smooth, so you don’t have to either!  And he doesn’t try to fly up out of your range or anything, so you can really just easily start having a blast with this song.  I hope that kinda made sense.

C of all, (and this is the one that probably could have been worked into A because they’re kinda related)  I have a funny memory associated with this song.  There was one time that I was writing a song (probably not a very good song), and the aforementioned Hanson boy was my roommate. ..you know what?  I’m going to stop this story right there.  I’m going to leave you hangin! And you know why?  It’s because yesterday, this girl started telling me a story but then she had to leave all of a sudden and I didn’t get to hear the end of a story that I was genuinely kinda interested in.  After she left I wondered how horrible she must feel about herself for not finishing the story.  So now I know…man, it really doesn’t feel bad at all.  I could move on right now no problem.  And I think I will.

Ok the last song that I was going to talk about will no longer be talked about.  It was actually two songs by the same artist but I just feel like I’ve hashed out enough about music at this point.  I’m ready to move on to something else.

 

Lately, my little brother, my little sister, and I have been going rock climbing a lot at the indoor rock climbing place here in town.  It’s kinda disconcerting to see my brother climbing around because he’s the kind of good that I’ll NEVER get to.  Like it just won’t happen.  And it kinda makes me realize that I think the time of my life where I’m better at things than my little brother is over.  It’s a weird feeling to see your little bro surpass you in basically every arena.  I can deal with it though cause I’m a big boy.

 

Seriously though, how do you compete with that?

Next on my list is the next big craze in the United States.   First came "Do tha Heizman", then came the "Superman" where we learned to "superman that hoe".  Now, we're all about to experience the FLEX!!!  My buddy showed me this video a little while ago and even though these dudes are nothing right now, I'm calling it, this song is gonna be the next big song in the genre of "Introducing New Dance Moves".  See it here: Party Boyz - Flex

There’s something else I kinda want to write about but at the same time, I don’t want to write about it.  I feel like I’m just cutting off all my talks and I should probably just shut down this post.  Save my other thoughts for another time.    So I think I’m just going to have to…

That's not to say I've found, or that I ever will. It's just to say I'm looking, and I'm sick of sitting still.

I’m a pretty big fan of Bon Iver.  He’s pretty much what I’m about to talk about for the next paragraph or so. (also, note that Bon Iver is actually a band with multiple members, but the band themselves talk about Bon Iver as if it is a solo person…a “He” if you will…so I shall too.)  So if you’ve never heard of him, you’re going to need to look him up and listen to at least a couple of his songs, otherwise you may as well skip these first couple paragraphs and get down to the stuff for which you’ll at least have a bit of a frame of reference.

So about Bon Iver.  Let’s start with what I knew before a couple days ago.  I knew that I was crazy about literally every song on his album For Emma, Forever Ago.  That CD is beyond legit.  If you’ve never gotten into it, then the obvious first song you need to check out is Skinny Love.  “I tell my love to wreck it all.  Cut out all the ropes and let me fall.”  Mmmm…get it boy.   That song does a beautiful job of contrasting emotion and passion.  For the beginning of that song, he’s singing and all of his words are overflowing with emotion.  They are all so completely heartfelt.  Even if all the words themselves don’t connect with you, it’s easy to feel the emotions that the words are coming from.  Then, when he hits a certain part of the song (it’s obvious), the emotion in his voice changes to passion.  If you’re singing along in your car, you can feel the change in the way that you sing it.  You may be trying to make it all sound smooth and pretty during the emotional part of the song, but once it jumps to passion, if you’re still singing along, you don’t even care if your voice is cracking or straining.  You just want to belt it along with him.  At the end, you’re just left with the feeling that you just experienced something usually kept private. 

I could go off on tangents about LITERALLY every song on that CD but I won’t.  Anyways, I listened to that CD a ton of times and waited patiently for more Bon Iver to come out.  Finally, I got a small amount of fulfillment when the movie New Moon (Twilight 2) came out.  There was a song on that soundtrack with Bon Iver and a girl named St. Vincent (she used to be in Polyphonic spree I think.  I looked into the other St. Vincent stuff…not my favorite.  I think Bon Iver is the one who really makes this song what it is..)  Oh man. This song is amazing.  It’s called  Rosyln.  Just thinking about it was enough to make me basically have to turn it on.  So I’m listening to it as I type.  This song is literally one my favorite songs ever.  I don’t even care if it’s on the Twilight soundtrack.  The lyrics on some of his songs are a little hard to understand sometimes but look up the lyrics when you listen to this song.  They’re so eloquent.   The space that he captures in this song is one of my favorite parts.  I can be laying in my bed at my house in Stillwater but when I turn this song on loud enough, it feels like I’m listening to him playing the song across the sanctuary in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City.  It’s so huge and the song is so cool.

Click on that picture.  It's really high quality and is a sick picture.

So anyways, then after this song came out and I listened to it like a hundred times, I was again strongly desiring more Bon Iver to come out.  And of course I was happy when the Blood Bank EP came out.  But that pretty much brings you up to this last Friday.  I had purchased a CD earlier in the week that I hadn’t really listened to yet but I decided to give it some air time in my Accord.   As I’m listening to the first song, I was happy that I’d finally found a band that was similar to Bon Iver.  As the song went on though, it simply became undeniable that this HAD to be him singing.  So once I got home, I looked it up and, sure enough, this was the same singer.  I’m ecstatic at this point because not only was I happy to find out it was him, but I was happy to find out that it was awesome.  Also good to know what that his real name is not Bon Iver.  That was good because people are always arguing about how to pronounce that name.  So know we realize how much more irrelevant that conversation is than I‘d even previously thought.  His real name is Justin Vernon.

So of course when I found that Bon Iver was an alias, I had to look up his real name and see if there was any music released under his real name.  Sure enough, he’s put out two CD’s as Justin Vernon…and they’re AWESOME!   Also, he was part of a band called DeYarmond Edison, which also has some really tight songs (his full name is Justin Deyarmond Edison Vernon).  So anyways, I’m basically in heaven right now because there’s so much of him out there that it’s going to take me a while to listen to all of it.  All of these bands have a really different sounds though so you may or may not like each of them.  Here are my two favorite songs from each that I’d say you should listen to to see if you love it:

               Bon Iver:  Skinny Love, Flume, and Rosyln

               Volcano Choir: Husks and Shells, and Still

               DeYarmond Edison: Love Long Gone, and Silent Signs

               Justin Vernon:  Hazelton, and Frail Sail

Also, I found another band called Isbells that, if you’re into Bon Iver, I think you might really realy like.  Maybe check out Time’s Ticking as well as As Long As It Takes by them.  Good stuff.

OK so if you were trying to skip down to all the stuff that isn’t about Bon Iver, this is the paragraph you would have wanted to skip to. Sorry, I wrote a little more there than I’d planned.

So much has happened since I blogged a couple of days ago but it really doesn’t matter because I never really talk about anything that has anything to do with my schedule on here.  It’s pretty much just random thoughts.   However, I did go see Tim Burton’s new version of Alice and Wonderland last night with Patch in 3D!  I made the decision as I started typing this sentence to NOT give any kind of a review on this movie.  It’s not that I don’t have a plethora of thoughts and opinions on the many facets of this movie, it’s more that I don’t want to take the time to write them all out right now because this is already very long.  So I’ll just say that the movie get’s probably a 7.4 out of 10 stars for me.  You really don’t know what that means though because you have no frame of reference for how I rate movies because this is the first one I’ve ever given a rating on here.  I’m hoping that this will be the first of many ratings for me though so that, in a couple months, you’ll understand how I rate movies and maybe they can start to mean something. 

The reason I bring up this movie though is just because Patch (Patrick Williams) and I got some SWEEEEET 3D glasses at the movie.  I’ve been wearing them around all day and it’s crazy that this little pair of cheep shades can make it so that I can see the entire world in 3D.  Technology these days blows my mind.

Plus, we have decided that they are fashionable!  You have to agree right?  Right.

I don't wash my strawberries before I eat them.  And that's not gross.

Achouffe Brewery puts out some really good beer.  It's in Belgium and all of their beers come in large 750 mL bottles.  One thing I like about that is that it promotes sharing the beer with a friend.  I've only had the Le Chouffe (a blonde) and the Mc Chouffe (an unfiltered dark beer) but they were both mind-blowingly awesome.  I had the Mc in Australia with Kelly a few times and then I found the Le here in Stillwater at Brown's.  If you actually care what the beer you drink tastes like, look for this in the liquor store.  So tasty and a great beer to have an awesome conversation over with a buddy.  I look forward to trying their other brews.

I ate the above-mentioned, unwashed strawberries in my bed the other night.  I ended up staining my sheets with strawberry juice.  Awesome.

It's kinda gross cause it kinda looks like blood...but I swear it's not.  It is strawberry juice.

I’m sitting here looking at the beginnings of a stencil that I’m working on and the longer I type, the more I wish I was stenciling instead of typing.  SO I’m going to have to go ahead and get to it.

Peace out.

This dude in the elevator is looking at me. Who does that?

Last night, I was having dinner with some people at the greatest margarita in Tulsa…wait, no. I was having dinner at El Tequila which serves the greatest margaritas in Tulsa. Yes, that’s right. But one of the people there having dinner with us was Christopher Tyler(?) Cleveland! How crazy is that? It’s weird when you see these people in music videos on yahoo! Entertainment or you hear their songs playing on sweet shows like MTV’s the Real World, and then you find yourself one night just kickin it with them. Haha little bit of sarcasm there but also a little bit of not sarcasm. Either way, Chris Cleveland is a tight dude and we were sitting there eatin our burritos straight from bomb.com when the conversation turns towards Chris’ new living situation. He’s living with a dude whose name, I believe, is Bong. Now I may have heard that wrong, but every time people say his name, that is what I hear. Thus, that is what I assume his name is. But the main part of this convo that I want to focus on was what he said next.

Here's Chris Cleveland by the way...HOTT haha:

Apparently, Bong is a cat guy. He has two cats that live with Chris and him. I’m not gonna lie, that kinda weirds me out a little bit. I’m trying to stay open-minded but you just don’t meet guys between the ages of 20 and 30 who are into cats. So anyways, it’s beside the point but I definitely have a weird mental image of this Bong guy. At the same time though, I like him. And this brings us to what I hope you will agree is the climax of this story. I don’t remember one of his cats’ names because I didn’t care about it. I just know that the other one had the greatest cat name I’ve ever heard. What was it? “Gray Kitty” !!HAHA!! I love it! Seriously I started dying laughing. You can ask Chris if you want. I really did. Or if you don’t have the ballsticles to go up to the lead singer of Pop-rock band Stars Go Dim and ask him whether I thought that cat’s name was funny, you can also ask Rachel Read. She was sitting right there as well and witnessed the whole thing. Or you can just trust me..

So this flippin awesome kitty name has got me thinkin. It’s hard for me right here because the name “Gray Kitty” sends my mind simultaneously down two different tracks. I know that eventually, I will take you down both of them with me but right now I’m trying to decide which to go with first…

So what exactly is the deal with grEy and grAy. Like what is the difference? I’m sure it’s one of those things that I could find out if I would just take two seconds and google it but I think that I’ll throw out some of my own hypotheses first before I do that. Ok, here are the facts that I know. I know that there is a singer-songwriter named David GRAY. I know that Dave Matthews wrote a song and called it GREY Street. I know that there is a TV show called GREY’s anatomy. I know that, to my eyes, the word GRAY looks more natural than the word GREY. I know that Crayola has chosen to label it’s Crayon GRAY. And the last fact that I know is that there is a major bus line called Greyhound buses. That is pretty much the extent of facts that I know.

Let’s evaluate. OK, the biggest puzzle for me here is that I’ve always thought the Dave Matthews song was referring to the color of the street. As in he was making a poetic reference to the street being dull and GREY. However, then Crayola (a pretty reliable source when it comes to colors I would think) goes with GRAY (I know because I’ve looked before and wondered). That’s confusing for me. However, I guess that Dave could have been referring to the actual name of the street. Like someone might live on GREY street or something. Definite possibility. But then there’s also the question of whether one of them is typically a name? Because we have both a Meredith (sp?) GREY and a David GRAY. So clearly both can be used there as well.

So the only thing that I can think of is that maybe there really is no correct or incorrect use of either one. I find no evidence that says that one is used over the other. So possibly nobody knows why there are multiple spellings of a the same word. Now I shall go to google and see if I’m wrong. Un momento…

Well, apparently, it’s a regional thing. I guess that GREY is the standard British spelling of the word but then there are a lot of places in America that spell the word GRAY. So I’m going to say that my hypothesis was almost fully true. There is a little bit of reason to the different spellings but I think that, in general, you can pretty much spell it however you’d like and the words are interchangeable.

I spoke of another road I might travel earlier but I think I’ll skip that road.

….hmmm. This morning I was supposed to take a shower. That didn’t happen. The night before, a shower in the morning sounds just amazing. Then my alarm goes off (clip from Skinny Love by Bon Iver) at 7 something and I’m like HELL NO I’m not getting up just to take a shower. So I lie in bed absolutely as long as possible and usually end up waiting too long to get up and I barely have time to even get dressed before I go to work.

So I’ve pretty much got my morning routine down to an art. Everything is a race. I deodorize with one hand while givin myself a little bit of the ol’ cologne with the other hand at the same time. I fly through brushing my teeth. Like I think part of the reason that my brushing is so effective is that the friction buildup between my toothbrush and teeth literally incinerates the evil that tries to destroy my teeth. (Don’t worry though, I am still thorough) anyways, etc. etc. I am quick with my morning routine. Then I hit this one point at the very end of my routine. I like to use this stuff:

I used to use the minty kind because just the thought of citrus mouthwash sounded wrong and disgusting. Having finally tried it though, I can tell you that if you ever felt the same way I did, flippin try the citrus. It’s awesome.

Anyways though, there is a big decision that I have to make the instant that I put that stuff into my mouth. Once it’s in there you really only have about a minute of having it in your mouth before it begins to burn more than you can take. The first option is to stand there with it in my mouth while I’m at the sink, wait out the minute, and then spit. This is the safer option but it does force me to basically waste an entire minute…and minutes are valuable when you play the last minute game that I play in the mornings. The second option though is to put it in my mouth, and then fly through the house trying to grab all the things I need for the day in time that I can be out the door and can spit into the yard on my way to the car. This is more dangerous because if there is even one little hic up in the move from the bathroom to the yard, you can end up with an extra 20 seconds of mouthwash time which is excruciating. The other issue is that sometimes my mother is sitting out in the living room and wants to say bye or something. Then I have to make some awkward noise that sounds like a goodbye and run out quickly. (part of the game is to not let her know that I have mouthwash in my mouth) Anyways, today I didn’t have the guts to go for it and I ended up just standing in front of the mirror wasting an entire minute of day.

This brings us to your last question for the moment. Does liking this man make you old?

That, my friends, is Louis Armstrong in case you didn’t know. This man’s music puts off one of the classiest vibes I’ve ever heard from music. Like I flipped on a little bit of the Louis yesterday and was like “dang, I feel underdressed for this.” This music sounds so legit that it almost seems wrong to have an electric copy of it. It should only be able to be played either through an old busted radio or from a vinyl record. Either way though, that doesn’t answer our question. The question was whether liking this guy makes you old.

I was talking about this with a young lady that I work with yesterday and I think, in the end, it depends on what else you listen to. Take for instance, if you’re 22 and you go from listening to Loius to listening to Sinatra to listening to Pink Floyd to listening to Pete Townshend to listening to James Brown, then yes. You are old and you need to join the rest of us 22 year olds in generation Y. However, if you go from listening to (insert cool, hip band name here) to listening to Louis Armstrong to listening to (insert cool, hip band name here) to listening to (insert cool, hip band name here), then I think the addition of Louis to your repertoire just bumps you up a notch on the scale of class and of the eclectic. So if you’re 22, by all means get in there and let Louis do his thing for your ears. But just mix it up a bit so that you don’t end up turning into an old fogey too quickly. That’s all. Louis Armstrong IS legit though. Right now I’m listening to the song Blueberry Hill by him and it’s changing my day into something beautiful.

I’ve gotta stop at this point. However, I do have a couple final requests. A of all, you should start a blog because I want to read about the random stuff you think about too. It’s only fair. B of all, I was going to request that everyone leave a comment so that I know who reads this but forget it. You just do your thing. C of all, get some Louis Armstrong and let him show you what’s up.

Peace out.

Spanish Leather? No, my boots are made of steel.

I am not enjoying the music that I’m listening to right now. “Why are you listening to it then Christian?” Well, let me explain. I am listening to the new CD by Rogue Wave. It just came out yesterday and when I saw that the band that had given me the songs Bird on a Wire, Lake Michigan, and Publish My Love had put out a new CD, I was mildly excited. See, those were songs that I had definitely listened to a lot of times back in the day, but they were also songs that I hadn’t had the desire to listen to in a really long time. When that happens, it usually means that my flavor has changed a little bit and that the band might not still fall into my realm of tastiness (if you will). But regardless, I was still mildly excited to hear what they had come up with.


I originally discovered Rogue Wave, not because I was looking for music but because I was sitting around bored and so I went on a Wikiadventure. If you’ve never been on a Wikiadventure, it’s where you go to Wikipedia and just click on random links on each page. You pick a number and then, every page you go to, you click the link that is corresponding (i.e. if you picked 7, you would click the 7th link that appeared on each page and you would do it 7 times). Then you read whatever page you are on at the end. I ended up on a page about Tsunamis I believe. They are also sometimes referred to as “Rogue Waves”. I thought it was a cool phrase so I clicked on it and then I saw the little note up at the top of the page that says something to the effect of “If you’re looking for Rogue Wave (band) click here.” So I clicked there and the rest is history.

Anyways, I am sitting here listening to this CD. I don’t like it. However, whenever I decide to evaluate a CD, especially if I’m going to share my opinion on the CD, I like to really listen all the way through it with an open mind. When I typed the first line of this post, I was about 45 seconds from the end of the CD and have since moved on to better music. However, I do feel that I gave the album an honest shot and have still come to the conclusion that it is not my flavor.

Here’s my pork (or “here’s my beef” if you’re more comfortable with that phrase) with this CD and really this band in general. They are entirely too repetitive. During a song, you hear not just the same LINE over and over again, but you hear it sung to the exact same melody and with the exact same music behind it. It jumps right over being boring and jumps to almost being annoying. And the thing is, repetition of lyrics is ok as long as you change up the melody…and repetition of melody is ok as long as you change up the words and the melody is awesome (Snow Patrol proves that in my opinion). However, Rogue Wave fails to create anything interesting to me and thus, I shall probably never listen to this CD again and will definitely delete it from my iPhone if not also from my computer. No thank you Rogue Wave.

I have moved on instead to a CD called Illuminare by a band called Umbrellas that I’m pretty sure is from Tulsa…I KNOW they’re from Oklahoma, but I could be wrong about the Tulsa part. Either way though, they’re from “round these parts” and that basically makes us family. I’m really diggin this CD though. The sweet thing about them is that, if I remember right, they recorded this CD in an old abandoned comedy club building and I think they recorded another CD in a “haunted” house place. I think it’s this band that I’m thinking of…I don’t know. Google it and call me out if I’m wrong. I don’t have the time to check my facts. But the sweet thing is that their music fits that so much. Their music is kind of dark and haunting a lot of the time. I especially remember having that feeling a couple of years ago when I saw them live in Tulsa. It felt like the kind of music that you should find as the soundtrack to either an epic battle between two vampires (you know what I’m talking about) or in a scene from some artsy fartsy movie when the main character is walking around slowly but everything around him or her is moving really fast. Like it’s all just flying by. And the sky is overcast at the beginning of the scene as it slowly turns to night by the end and he ends up sitting on a bench somewhere, all alone with his thoughts in the silence left after the song has ended. You know what kind of scene I’m talking about? You’ve definitely seen this type of scene in movies before. Anyways, that’s the vibe I get from these songs. So I think it’s kinda cool that they were recorded in such empty, haunting places because it’s almost like that vibe has been infused into their music. I dig it. It’s WAY better than that Rogue Wave CD. I don’t think it’s really one of those albums where you fall in love with any specific songs though. I think it’s more the kind of CD where, if you have to work 8 hours a day and you can listen to music, you turn it on and let it play through for an hour and appreciate the fresh vibe that it puts off. However, if you’re going to sample it and see whether you dig it, their best song is probably either Boston White or Ships. Check out Boston White.

Ok so here’s an issue that I have. I was reminded of how much this confuses me today as I was going into the Walmart at 81st and Lewis today during my lunch. I was going in there to buy some steel-toed boots. I got these ones:

The brand of these boots is Brahma which, if I’m not mistaken, is the name of one of the three major gods in Hinduism. I’m about 65% sure that he’s the god of creation? I might be wrong there but I think that’s right. Either way, if that really is the name of a hindu god and it really is the god of creation, than I feel pretty good knowing that these boots come straight from the master creator himself. Sarcasm is what that was…just for the record. But I had to buy these boots so that I can go do a physical inventory count of some sheet metal out at the client I’m working on right now. So to answer the question that everyone always asks me, NO, I do not just sit at a desk all day. The good news is that, even though these are probably one of the most disgusting things that I have ever paid money for, I get to charge it to Grant Thornton. Thus, I basically got a free pair of shit. Thrilling.

Ok I just got way off track. My point was that today I was walking into Walmart and this lady walking in front of me was smoking a cigarette. As we neared the front door, she took the half-smoked cig out of her mouth and flicked it on the ground. Here’s my issue here. Why in the world are people so OK with throwing cigs on the ground? Like I have no doubt that this lady would just as quickly drop a crumpled up receipt on the ground or throw a cup out of her window if she was out on an interstate highway. The thing is though that when people litter things other than cigarettes, they are generally really sneaky about it. Like if someone is going to drop a crumpled up receipt on the ground, he/she will do something like stick his/her hand in his/her pocket and nonchalantly let the receipt slip out onto the ground so that if someone was watching, the person might believe that the receipt had been dropped on accident.

Or if someone is going to toss a McDonalds cup out of the window at 75 miles per hour on the drive to Stillwater from Tulsa, he or she will usually wait until there aren’t many cars in sight to do it so that no one really sees it. You rarely see someone roll down their window when they’re driving right next to you and chuck some trash out onto the street. People are more secretive about their littering than that.

The difference with cigarettes though is huge! Not only do people not care if other people see them drop their cigs right on the ground, but they FLICK them!! A flick is by no means a nonchalant act. It’s not like you just don’t care if someone sees you DROP your cigarette on the ground. Instead, you use a fairly noticeable motion that essentially screams “yeah, I’m gonna toss this cig butt right here and I don’t even care.” It’s weird that cigs are the one thing that people brag about littering. ‘Cause that’s what that flick is. It’s like a brag that your trash is good enough that you can put it wherever you want.

I understand why things are that way though. It’s all this guy’s fault:

Him and his other Hollywood buddies made it cool to flick away wherever you want. I’m not saying that it gets me all worked up or that it even pisses me off or anything. I’m just pointing out the inconsistencies in the way that people treat their trash.

Well…this has once again gone on for entirely too long. I’ll leave you with just this:

That, my friends, is my running tally for how many peanut m&m’s I have eaten today. It is 2:45 pm and, as you can see, I have eaten 98 peanut m&m’s. That’s more than you think it is.

Peace out.

Christian Roderick: Quest for Reasonable Assurance

So let me explain what you're about to read should you choose to take the time.  I am getting graduate credit for this internship that I'm doing at GT in Tulsa.  3 hours to be exact (and I do mean exact).  Part of the requirement for my getting credit is that I have to write a paper at the end of the internship about "8 things I wish I had in my 'toolbox' at the start of this internship"...are you kidding me?  Lame.  So anyways, I've decided to have some fun with it because the dude probably doesn't read these papers anyways and I felt like it.  So this is the paper that I wrote.  I must tell you these three things about this paper though:  A of all, I did not read back through it and probably never will. There WILL be grammar mistakes and typos.  B of all, none of it is true.  Like literally there is almost zero truth to any of the stories I allude to.  I didn't necessarily learn any of these things.  They're just things I came up with to fill a stupid assignment and get my credit.  C of all, this is Christian Roderick's BS at it's finest.

Christian Roderick: Quest for Reasonable Assurance


My name is Christian Roderick. Many weeks ago, I began a quest. Then, I had only a very rudimentary idea of where this quest would take me in the end, and I had almost no idea at all about the road I would have to travel to get to where I am today. To say that it has been treacherous would be an understatement. I have encountered many monsters and obstacles along the way but can now proclaim that I have made it through unscathed.

As is the case with most quests, mine began with a challenge. There I was, just going through college like every other student who has dreams of becoming a CPA, when all of a sudden, Sir Masters Program grabbed me by the scruff on the back of my neck and said “Christian! I challenge you to complete an internship in the field of public accounting!” So of course, being the hero that I am, I accepted his challenge and shortly thereafter, I signed up with Grant Thornton in Tulsa to do an 8-week internship in their audit department.

The internship started on January 13. As I walked into this office on that first day, I was hit by an overwhelming sense of familiarity. I had seen this place before; I knew it. As I continued through the building and looked into all the faces of auditors as they worked away at their desks, the feeling of déjà vu continued to grow. Then, as I rounded the final corner before arriving at my assigned desk, I made eye-contact with a very pretty, petite middle-eastern girl and like a tidal wave, it all came back to me. I had interned here before!! I had spent 4 months here just last spring, I had worked with these people before, and I had already signed to start full-time with them once my Master’s degree was completed!

It was very relieving to realize that I was coming into an environment that I already knew and understood. All of the office culture that I had learned last spring started coming back to me as I began getting reacquainted with my surroundings. It is here that I will insert the first of 8 things that I wish I had known before this internship began. I wish I had known that just because I had been accepted into the office culture last spring did not mean that I was immediately brought back into the culture when I walked in the door this spring. I think that, no matter how long you work somewhere, it is never good to come into the office every day feeling like you own the place. It is always good to maintain a respect for office culture and remain humble as you go throughout the day. Definitely don’t freak out about trying to be “accepted” by everyone, but also don’t ever get cocky and assume that you’re on everybody’s good side.

I met this obstacle in battle by the end of my first week and am proud to say that I was victorious! I have added a plume to my helmet, a feather to my headdress, a bead to my necklace, a notch to my belt, or whatever other metaphor I could use to communicate that I had added a victory to my resume.

As I laid in my bedchamber trying to fall asleep the Friday night after that first week, I couldn’t help but think about whether this was going to be a job that I could do for the rest of my life. Could I be ok with being an auditor and slaying the evil that pours out of the lands of fraud and incompetence? I waged an inner battle trying to make the decision right then and there. It was a powerful time of inner turmoil for me. As I was laying there trying to put these thoughts out of my head, a beast seemed to rise up out of the darkness around me! It was wreathed in fire and kept screaming something at me over and over again. Only after about the 5th time it spoke did I realize what it was saying. It was repeating the statement, “Christian, you have to figure out whether you like this job RIGHT NOW!!”

Well, the instant that I had fully identified the enemy, I flew up out of my bed and instinctively grabbed the only weapon that I could find nearby which was my trusty old saber! I swung at the monster but the blow glanced off the thick hide on his forearm as he blocked my attack. I ducked as he countered with a swipe right at my soul, spun, and I came up with my saber, stabbing directly through his heart. I had defeated the enemy. I looked down at my old saber. I hadn’t used this thing in years. I knew there was a reason that I had named this sword “Chill Out and Stop Worrying” all those years ago. I wish I had remembered this sword before I started my internship. There’s really no need to worry about what’s coming 2 years down the road. I’ll get there when I get there and all I need to focus on is making sure that I’m working hard and doing a good job today.

As I walked into work that next Monday, I walked in as a new person. I was now as easy-going as they come and nothing was going to faze me. I came in and sat down at my desk, set up my computer, flipped it on, immediately checked my email and my IM to see who was online, and then sat back. I had gone through my beginning of the day routine and I was ready to get going on some auditing. As I looked around my cubicle, something weird started happening…as I looked at my desk, I slowly saw that it changed into a table, my cubicle slowly turned into an audit room with three other people sitting around my table, and our office turned into the office of a client that I was on last spring! I was out at a client today! Hooray! This is what I’d been waiting for.

So I was pretty excited to finally be out of the office and back out on the job. I was excited to get back into auditing where I knew I would learn and grow daily. I looked around me and realized that I already had all the materials I needed to get started on the first few sections of the audit that I was responsible for. Thus, I immediately began my work. As I started flying through the material, an uneasy feeling began to grow in me. I didn’t really take notice of it though and pretty much dismissed it as indigestion. That was my first mistake.

As the day went on, the uneasy feeling grew. Every once in a while, I could have sworn I heard voices telling me to “work faster! Just get through the sections faster!” But every time I thought I’d heard one, I’d look around and, seeing no one, I would dismiss them as my imagination. After I finished the first two sections, I sent them to my senior for review. That pretty much ended the first day out at the client and so I went home with a mixed feeling of accomplishment and uneasiness at the end of that day.

The next morning, I came into the audit room feelin good. I sat down at my table and went through my morning routine again. Soon after I’d finished my routine, my senior handed me the memory stick with my sections on it. She had finished her review and it was time for me to clear her review points. I wasn’t real worried about this though considering it usually only takes a few minutes to clear review points on these sections. I plugged in the memory stick and opened the file on it. Immediately, I knew something was very wrong.

As I sat there looking at my screen, my laptop began smoking and sparking. The smoke grew thicker and thicker and began to lift the computer off the table! It formed into a body with arms and legs made of smoke and my computer screen had become the head! I backed away slowly, poised and ready for anything. The monster became very still for about 5 seconds…then all of a sudden it began firing at me! I wasn’t sure what it was firing at me but I knew that I didn’t want to get hit for sure. I ducked and dodged shot after shot. Finally, I overturned a table and crouched down behind it for cover. There beside me on the ground, I saw what exactly the monster was firing at me. It was a review note that my senior had written me explaining a revision that I needed to make in my section! All of them were review notes. There must have been thirty of them around the room. At this point, the beast had stopped firing. I snuck a peek over the table and was alarmed to see that the monster was moving towards me! In that moment, I realized that the only way that I was going to defeat this monster was to gather up all these review notes and clear them! Over the next hour or so, I flew around the room, grabbing and clearing as many review notes as I could. Every time I’d review one, it would fly back to my computer screen and I could see the monster get a little bit smaller. Finally, after almost two hours, I cleared the last one and as it flew back to my screen, all the remaining smoke dissipated leaving my computer resting firmly on the table again. I slumped into my chair and rested. That had worn me out! But at least the monster of “Speed over Quality” had been vanquished! I wish I’d remembered to be sure I do a good job the first time instead of listening to the monster and trying to fly through my sections as fast as possible. If I’d have slowed down a bit, I probably would have had far fewer review notes to clear and who knows, the monster might not have even showed up.

The next couple weeks went by fairly quickly and with little incident. I wasn’t worrying about the future, I was taking my time doing a good job, and I was happy. So happy in fact that I failed to recognize an enemy force of darkness growing right underneath my nose! Everyday, this monster would come into our audit room with a sweet little smile and a cute little auditor quip. I thought nothing of her. However, I now know that she was trying to lure me into a false sense of security! She wanted me to feel like she was easy to talk to and like she would listen to what I had to say and answer the questions I brought up. I couldn’t have been more wrong though. One day, I came across an issue in my section that I needed to get some clarification on. I asked my senior who I should ask about it and she informed me that it was “this monster”’s area. I wasn’t worried at all. I had seen her so many times in our audit room being so sweet that I didn’t even sweat it. So I walked down the hall with my computer and into her office. There she was, sitting there looking sweet. She even had a dish of heart-shaped chocolates on her desk! (now I realize that they were probably poisoned) I sat down across from her and proceeded to show her a place that I thought she had maybe calculated a number incorrectly. Instantly she morphed into her monster form! She was gnarly and had 4 heads! All of them swiveled to look me in the eyes. She flashed her sharp teeth and all four heads screamed at me “you’re wrong Christian! I know I’m right! I can’t be wrong! I’m never wrong!” I was incredibly taken aback! What had happened to the sweet lady who had been sitting in front of me only moments before? Where had she gone? I looked around and realized that I had no weapon with me. I had been caught unawares and had not thought to grab anything on my way to her office. I started trying to frantically think of something I could use to defend myself. As I sat there with the FARMM (Financial Accounting and Reporting Manager Monster) bearing down on me, looking to rip out my jugular, I finally remembered something that a great hero had once told me. The great Matt the Man (Manager at GT) had once told me that if you can’t tell them they’re wrong, you have to pretend you’re stupid and let them figure it out themselves.

I immediately began to take Matt’s advice. I started using phrases like “I don’t really understand”, “could you help me figure out”, and “maybe I’m looking at this wrong”. As I did so, her heads slowly started to shrink back into one. Her face turned back into that sweet little smile and her voice changed from the screech of a monster to the docile voice of a kind, middle-aged woman. She began answering my question and showing me how she had arrived at the numbers she had given me. Through the process, she realized that she actually had made an error! We fixed it and I left her office like the monster thing had never even happened. Once again, Christian had triumphed over the enemy and defeated the forces of evil!

As I walked away from her office, I wished that I had known before going into that situation how useful it is to play dumb. People don’t respond well when you walk into their offices and tell them that they have been doing their jobs wrong. However, if you are humble and just walk into their office acting like you just can’t understand it fully, you end up raising questions that lead to them finding their own errors. Either way, you end up with the correct numbers in the end. It’s just that if you do it the right way, you can avoid confronting a bloodthirsty monster in the process.

The internship continued on until today. I met many more monsters and time after time, found that I had the tools I needed to defeat them. Yet there were other creatures such as the dragon I encountered in the cave of “Menial Intern Tasks” where I found that my tools were lacking. The moment that the dragon came into my line of sight, I knew which weapon to use on her. As she came at me with flames dripping from her mouth as she screamed “data entry! data entry!” I whipped out my battle 10-key and swung it with all of my might at her tree-trunk neck. I connected with my full force but my blade merely bounced off of her! I examined the blade of my 10-Key and realized that it was dull as could be! I had forgotten to sharpen my 10-Key skills before entering the cave. If I had sharpened my skills before entering the cave, I could have ended the battle with the dragon right then and there with one fell swipe of my weapon. Instead, I was forced to labor in that cave with a blunt weapon and beat the dragon back to the depths. I was victorious in the end but I wasted precious time.

As a result of all my battles, victories, struggles, and experiences here at GT throughout this internship, I have learned much. The experience that you gain in this industry is invaluable and I can already see that after just a few months. I enjoy my job here and I see my quest, not as one complete, but as one just beginning. As of now, I am but a lowly intern of the realm. Later, I shall begin training to become a CPA-KOTR (Certified Public Accounting Knight of the Realm)!! I’m very excited about getting to that chapter of this story. For now though, I must return from my quest to gain more training at home in OSU (Orodemis Staven Underwood…my hometown) before I can return to the wild world and continue slaying the enemies pouring out of the lands of fraud and incompetence.

So there it is.  That is my paper.  If you read all the way through it then I am thoroughly impressed.  I hope that my teacher doesn't, by some crazy chance, find this post and see the things that I said at the start of this post.  That would be bad to say the least.
 
Peace out.