Why They Sound Like That

Cassie plays the bassoon, so I have to poke some fun. I've discovered the secret to that unique bassoon sound.

Some Awesome Things

Before I begin, thank you for the feedback on my recent Twilight post, both here and on Facebook. I haven't responded yet, but there are some interesting comments that might warrant a (hopefully brief) follow-up. I don't want to post about the same thing so soon, though, and there's so much I want to say about politics but am too frustrated to write about, so it's time for an intermission. Also, I have some crazy insomnia going on , so I'd like to share with you some awesome things I have found on the internets. Let's go!

Let's kick things off with a trailer for probably the best movie ever that I haven't seen yet but really want to because it looks like it is full of all things that are awesome except bears and flame-throwers and laser beams. You are not prepared for Sharktopus! It's part shark, part octopus, and it apparently feeds exclusively on girls at the beach, and I want one for a pet.

What a catchy tune! "Sharktopus won't be kept at bay, and you can never never never get away!" Did I mention this is a documentary? Yes, better even than Planet Earth. "Greatness comes at a price, it always has." So true. My birthday is soon; please get me a sharktopus. Also, please get me one of these chainsaw rocket launchers:

Thank you in advance.

Shifting gears, Firefly gets a retro facelift!

It seems that someone got overlooked... but that's because Dr. Simon Tam is starring in his own new spin-off!

I would watch it. I would even buy it on the VHS.

And now some puppets that would make the coolest Halloween costumes ever:

And I thought they smelled bad... on the outside! (I'm tired, give me a break.)

One more. Abbott and Costello, probably the greatest comic duo of all time, debate math:

"Did you ever go to school, stupid?" "Yeah, and I come out the same way!"

Maybe I can sleep now? Nope.

If I Had a Time Machine

...I would not use it for the good of mankind. That's for losers.

First, I'd use it to get lots of money. That's pretty much a given. There's no point going back in time if you don't have any money, so get that thought out of your head right now.

By the way, my time machine would of course be made from a DeLorean (duh):

So, now I have a (hypothetical) time machine and unlimited wealth. Next I conquer the world, right? Wrong! Really, I'm disappointed in you. You should know me better than that; I don't want that headache! I'll stick to complaining about the people who do run it, thank you very much.

No, once I've used my time machine to obtain untold riches, I'd leak the text of the first several chapters of Twilight onto the internet while Stephenie Meyer was still trying to sell the manuscript. Apparently that's enough to stop her from publishing a book. (I guess I lied, I would use my time machine for the good of mankind, but only for selfish reasons.)

That's not what I'd need the money for, though. The money is so I can go back to really good concerts that I wish I'd had the time/money for. Like Metallica's concert with the San Fransisco Symphony in 1999 (before I was even a fan of this amazing band):

If you skipped those videos because you're not interested in metal music, you might give them a try anyway as they could serve to broaden your horizons. These recordings helped open my mind to the idea that metal really is music and not just noise. In particular, this next song is a good door to ease your way into appreciation of metal, and was my first favorite Metallica song:

After enjoying that concert several dozen times (and saying hello to the other dozen me's there, and saying "man, this concert was awesome, you're really going to enjoy it!" and "I've seen this concert three times already, is it still as good the tenth time?" (the answer is yes)), I'd go back two more years, to the east coast this time, and see this one a few times:

Beth Gibbons' voice gives me the shivers, it's so perfect... I've tried to see if I'm in the audience several times while watching these, but I'm not sure. If you see me in the audience, let me know! That would mean that someday I will have a time machine.

There are many concert's I'd selfishly go to (I'd follow an entire tour of Pink Floyd, for examle), too many to post here; but I can't leave this out:

There, did you see me? Right there around 5:04, I'm totally waving at the camera! Go back, see? Right.... there! I knew I'd get a time machine some day!

In between concerts, I'd go back to pivotal points in history to watch how they really unfolded. Also, I'd go way, way back and watch as the Earth formed. I don't have footage or photos to post yet, but I'll blog it when I do, I promise! I also might get cameos in classic films as an extra, and play pranks on famous scientists (go back and read or re-read Darwin's Origin of Species and watch for mentions of pizza). I'd also stop Fox from canceling Firefly and Dollhouse, using Marty's strategy for getting his dad to ask out his mom in the first Back to the Future movie.

Meanwhile, I'll have to make do with YouTube and my DVD of that Portishead concert. That's the closest I have to a time machine at the moment.

Wrong Number

It's fun to mess with people. Here's a short text conversation I just had with a wrong number:

Wrong Number: "hey dad i am hungry and isaac said that you were going to bring pizza"

Me: "Well son, I have been looking for you for a long time, and now I've found you, it figures you just want free pizza."

Wrong Number: "Hey who is this think i got the wrong number"

Me: "Haha, yeah, you did."

The end.

Amazing True Facts

Normally I like to keep the content of this blog completely original, but this is too good. Here is a list of incredible facts that you can impress your friends with. I got this list from blogger Dan Bergstein at Sparknotes. Enjoy:

• When placed in warm milk, raisins re-plump into grapes.
• The metal backs of iPods are made from recycled zippers.
• Eskimos don't believe in bridges or tunnels.
• Every sixteen minutes, someone named Richard dies.
• Billy Bob Thornton's grandfather was the first person to own a television.
• Dolphins kill more people annually than sharks and influenza combined.
• On a dare, former President Rutherford B. Hayes declared war on Chile for 17 minutes.
• The original title for Catcher in the Rye was Hey, Look, a Carousel!
• Professionals call the top socket on an electrical outlet the "Martha," and the bottom socket the "Jasmine."
• In the archives at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., there are two identical snowflakes preserved in a freezer.
• Three out of every ten nickels has been in someone's mouth.
• If you hold one nostril closed for 72 hours, you will slowly lose the ability to see color. (Your sight will instantly return to normal when you release your nostril.)
• Wave a magnet at the lower left corner of a vending machine to receive a free soda.
• The glossy paper from the backs of stickers can be used to soothe sunburn.
• To be a train conductor, you have to cut off one of your own toes during a loyalty ritual.
• The Z in Jay-Z's name stands for "Zeppidemus."
• Jean shorts were invented three weeks prior to the invention of regular jeans.
• Whispering instead of talking on cell phones saves significant battery power.
• In Austria, the traditional Christmas colors are not red and green, but purple and clear.
• Benjamin Franklin coined the phrase "Baby Mama" in a satirical poem published in Poor Richard's Almanac.
• If you take the first letter of each word in the Monopoly board game instruction manual, they spell out an X-rated sentence.
• The original name for the laptop computer was "Hinged Smart Slab."
• The average person inhales 3 pounds of spider webs in his or her lifetime.
• When first introduced to the public, plastic laundry baskets cost $75 each.
• Winnie the Pooh started out as a non-fiction account of mental illness.
• Reading backwards for twenty minutes burns the same amount of calories as walking a half-mile.
• The Q in Q-tips stands for "quantum," as the small bit of cotton on the tip contains more atoms than the entire human body.
• Revolving doors were first invented as a way to keep horses out of department stores.
• Peru and the moon weigh the same amount.
• Human beings and anteaters are the only animals that can snap their fingers.
• If you soak a baseball hat in coke, and then let it dry on someone's head, over a 3-hour period the hat will shrink with skull-denting force, causing intense pain and irreparable damage.
• Clouds cannot travel south southwest.
• In sign language, there are 72 ways to say "drawbridge."

Christmas Thoughts 2009

So, an... interesting holiday season is almost gone... some random stuff, then.

First, my awesome sister-in-law Liz made me the coolest Christmas present ever: a very good replica of Jayne Cobb's orange and yellow poofball hat from Firefly. If you don't know Firefly, it is quite possibly the greatest television show of all time, and definitely the best show to not make it past one season (stupid Fox... first Futurama, then Firefly, now Dollhouse... lame!). Borrow it on DVD from a friend (I don't think all 14 episodes are on Hulu anymore but it's worth checking), and then watch the movie, Serenity. It's well worth your time. Serenity also works fine if you don't watch the series first, but it's even better if you have. Meanwhile, some context for the hat:

Jayne being hired by the Serenity crew (one of my favorite scenes from the show):

Jayne gets a gift from his mom in the mail:

And some artwork from DeviantART of Jayne looking threatening in his hat:

And now mine, home-made by my sister-in-law Liz. They even put it in a white box with fake straw and a note with roughly the same wordage as the one Jayne got:
And, finally, a picture of me failing to look as menacing as Jayne in the hat:

How's it sit? Pretty cunning, don't ya think?

Another random Christmas thought... usually I like to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas as a Christmas tradition. This year I watched It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart at my parents' house. It really is a good movie until it starts snowing again (if you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about). If you haven't seen it, I recommend it. It is much better than I remember from last time I saw it forever ago, very well done for all its tackyness at the beginning and end.

But it brings up an interesting problem... in the movie, the angel assigned to help the main character has to do this good deed to "earn his wings". However, the movie also states "every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings". Well, how does that work? Do you do a good deed, then wait for a bell to ring? Are there enough angels that this really works for every bell ring? Or, when a bell rings, if not enough angels have done good deeds, does an angel compulsively do a spontaneous good deed? Or if there aren't enough angels with good deeds under their belt, and someone tries to ring a bell, does it go silent? What if we run out of angels? Now I have a headache. Thank you, Jimmy Stewart.

Velociraptors Are Serious Business

Back in April I wrote a post on Velociraptor Awareness Day to spread word on the increasing danger of velociraptors. I have recently come across a very funny web comic, called xkcd. The author of this web comic (a physicist and former NASA contractor) shares my velociraptor paranoia, and has made raptors the subject of a few of his web comics, which I will share here:

I have decided this is the best web comic ever. Of course, it was already pretty popular before I discovered it, but hey. Here are a couple more I thought were particularly good:

If you've never seen this comic before, I highly encourage you to check it out. I'm not going to embed any more, but here are some links to a few more of my favorites:

Sympathy Tips for Physicists

Movie Narrative Charts

Extrapolating

Alternate Currency (This one is for anyone who has ever used the Romney Computer Lab)

The End Is Not for Awhile

Holy Ghost

Impostor (The Sociology frame is my favorite)

Macgyver Gets Lazy

Babies

Zealous Autoconfig

Nerd Sniping

Brick Archway

Action Movies

Highway Engineer Pranks

Right-Hand Rule

Ninja Turtles

Guitar Hero

Love

Hitler

Okay, that's more than enough. Trust me, there were a lot more I wanted to link to, but it's near overkill already. Enjoy!

My Dream Car

Some friends of mine were watching clips from Top Gear in the computer lab today, which made me think of my all-time favorite episode of this show, where Jeremy Clarkson drives the world's smallest production car, the Peel P50, to work. And at work. In the office. If you have nine minutes and want a good laugh, this video is well worth the time. If you want it in high quality, click on it to see it at YouTube.

50 of these were sold, and about 20 are left. I want one.

Funny Stuff

I don't know about you, but I could use a good laugh right now. So here's some funny stuff I've found recently.

First off, I recently found a blog in the tradition of the FAIL Blog, called People of Wal-Mart. Basically, the idea is that people see funny people in Wal-Mart, cars in the parking lot, or general funny/weird stuff at Wal-Mart, they take a picture, and submit it to the blog. It can be hit or miss, but now and then something truly bizarre and hilarious shows up. Here are a couple of my favorite examples:

Okay... there's something personally funny about this last one. I haven't posted anything about my geology field camp class yet (I'll fix that soon, I promise!), but here's a photo of me pretending I can slackline after a hard day of hiking and mapping:

Okay, I'm scared now....

The next funny thing is this music video I found. Any of you who know me personally or have read more than a few posts on this blog know that I have a thing for Icelandic music. Okay... I'm obsessed with it. Björk, Emíliana Torrini, múm, Ólafur Arnalds, GusGus, Sigur Rós... I can't get enough. But! It's not all good, and this is an example (though my wife claims she likes this one). I dare you to watch it all the way to the end. This video is for serious. Also, it was made in 2003, despite looking like it was made in the 70s and the music sounding like the worst of 90s white rap. The group is Quarashi, and the song is called Orð Morð. My favorite is the old guy in sunglasses that sings the chorus. If you watch to the end you get a good laugh at the drummer, but at least watch a minute; you have to see this to believe it:

You watched it, you can't unwatch it!

Last thing. Early last month I posted photos of my beard in a post called Pogonology. When I was on my internship, a friend told me of a website called Beards.org, and suggested I submit my beard. I did, and nothing happened. Yesterday I got an email saying sorry for the delay, asking what kind of school doesn't allow beards ("I have to assume that you are out of high school by now!"), and that my beard was now added to the gallery. So check out my now world-famous beard, and then go look at some of the others there. There are some really good ones!

Okay, that is all for now.

Adults Are Just Obsolete Children and the Hell with Them

The title of this post is a quote by Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, about writing for adults. Yesterday was the 18th anniversary of Dr. Seuss' death, and I figured I'd make note of it. I grew up reading The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Yertle the Turtle, There's a Wocket in My Pocket!, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and other classics.

I don't have a lot to say on the subject, but I thought I'd share this video from Saturday Night Live shortly after his death. Sadly I can't embed the video here, but it is well worth one and a half minutes of your time to enjoy Jesse Jackson reading from Green Eggs and Ham as if it were a religious sermon. Yes, it's really him, and it is very funny.

By the way, if anyone tries to tell you that you're supposed to pronounce Seuss as if it rhymed with "Joyce", tell them they're dumb. The "Seuss" in "Theodore Seuss Geisel" is indeed pronounced "Soyce", but the "Seuss" in "Dr. Seuss" is supposed to be "Soos", to rhyme with "Mother Goose". The anglicization is correct in this case. Now you can annoy the rare person who might correct you on that by being nerdier than them!

Bilgeous Bogwallow

Just a quick post to prove this blog is still alive. I am very busy with school, and since I am a glutton for punishment I decided it would be a good idea to volunteer to compile all the field camp maps into one map to present at the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous.

This year I am taking second semester chemistry, Applied GIS, Old Testament, a physics lab that is insultingly dull (think sixth grade physics) and a technical writing class as well as participating in the Trombone master class again. This semester will either force me to learn to manage my time efficiently or kill me. Or both.

I may post more on some classes later if there is anything worth posting, but for now I will just share an assignment from my technical writing class. Today in class we split into groups to practice writing effective paragraph transitions. To do this, Professor Williams had each group take a paragraph he'd written that began a ridiculously silly story and each member of the group was to come up with a paragraph, in turn, that continued the story. I typed it all up as we went. The next step was to improve the transitions between paragraphs, the challenge being that each paragraph had a different author. Our final result was more ridiculous than even I could have predicted. It is bad. Hilariously bad. Maybe you won't think so, but I think so. I actually contributed two paragraphs to the story. Here it is in its entirety, with the first paragraph being provided by Professor Williams, and my two paragraphs in orange:

Bilgeous Bogwallow was a very pretty little girl with an unfortunate name. Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bogwallow, felt there was something poetic about the way it sounded when spoken aloud, which is why they settled on “Bilgeous” in the first place. “It trips nicely off the tongue,” her father said when Bilgeous first started to complain. “No Bogwallow could ask for better.” Bilgeous, who had endured an endless stream of taunting and ridicule since the day she entered kindergarten, couldn’t have disagreed more. One afternoon, as a crowd of third-graders chanting “Bilgeous Bogwallow boils bunions” pelted her with clumps of dirt and grass, Bilgeous decided that it was time for a change.

Bilgeous’ face flushed red with hatred as the chants grew louder. Bilgeous decided she didn’t like the way Jimmy looked. She thought Jimmy looked like a frog, and to the children’s surprise, he began to grow green. It started with his hair and spread down his face. Warts sprung up all over his skin.

As his dramatic transformation drew to a close, the crowd began to realize what had happened, and came out of their stunned silence. “She turned him into a newt!” Cried a student. Before long the other children had tackled Bilgeous to the ground, and were yelling accusations of witchcraft and devilry, attracting the attention of a nearby teacher, who came over to see what the ruckus was about. The teacher could not have known what she was in for.

To the surprise of everyone, Harry Potter came flying in on his Nimbus 2000 and turned the boy back to a normal boy. He told Bilgeous that she shouldn’t use magic in such a way. Then Harry told Bilgeous that she should come to Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to learn true magic. From nowhere, Draco Malfoy appeared and returned Jimmy to his newtish form, prompting a duel between Harry and Draco over Bilgeous and Jimmy.

Dumbledore appeared with a loud crack, broke up the fight, and confiscated Draco’s and Malfoy’s powers for having used them inappropriately. He then called everyone’s parents and told them of this dreadful event. Then Dumbledore changed Bilgeous’ name to Minerva McGonnagal, so she would never be made fun of again.

Unexpectedly, Minerva decided with her newfound powers Bilgeous was a fine name after all, and hurled a powerful curse at the school which promptly disappeared, leaving nothing but a crater. From then on, Bilgeous was known as a hero for ending the tyranny of school forever!

So there you have it. Yes, most of the characters from Harry Potter make appearances. No, this does not fit the Harry Potter canon, nor is it endorsed in any way by J.K. Rowling. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you didn't, well, you read it, you can't unread it!

100th Post

Guess what? As of this posting, I have written in my blog 100 times. Funny how this comes in the middle of me hardly posting anything at all... I don't really have any special or amazing Earthshaking topic to write about. I figured instead, considering that my audience of loyal followers has drastically increased since I started blogging last year (increased by several hundred percent if you look at it one way, increased from one to three or four if you look at it another way), I will highlight a few of my favorite posts over the last year and a half. Since every single post is brilliant and worth re-reading multiple times, I will have to be very choosy to select only a few to highlight.

So where do I begin? Google Analytics says that my extra-important post about Velociraptor Awareness Day has recently surpassed my post about the threat imposed on mankind by Polar Bears as my most visited post. Both are masterpieces of online journalism if I may say so myself. Also popular are my report on the Apocalyptica concert my wife and I attended, and the one about the health benefits of rhinotillexomania (eating boogers), even though I only mention eating boogers at the end of the post. In fact, this one gets Googled quite a bit, and it's funny to see how many ways people search for it. I bet most of those people leave as soon as they see I start by talking about the Olympics and Hiroshima.

But what are my favorite posts? Other than all of them, here is a top ten best ever posts in my blog, chosen by me, in reverse chronological order:

Pogonology (8/5/2009): Probably my most (as in only) anticipated blog post ever. Photos of my beard from a couple years ago, photos of my extremely huge five-month beard from this year, and interesting photos of me taking it off in stages. My favorite is the Ambrose Burnside look. As a bonus, more pictures of beards I admire than anyone ever asked for!

Live Free or Die Harder with a Vengeance (5/4/2009): This one mostly makes this list because of how proud I am that I came up with such a clever title for the post, meshing together the names of all four Die Hard movies. I justify putting it in this list because it's an excellent (I say) review of four very good movies.

Velociraptor Awareness Day (4/18/2009): This was just way too fun, and it's fun to see people Google image searching "velociraptor" and ending up here, because I did that search to find those images and put the best ones in this post. I still recommend doing an assessment of your Velociraptor attack preparedness, and joining the Velociraptor Awareness Coalition (VAC) on Facebook. You can never be too prepared.

Apocalyptica (10/26/2008): This is by far the coolest concert I've ever been to, not that I've been to a whole lot of this type of concert. These guys are one of my top five favorite bands of all time, and put on an awesome show, running around on stage with electric cellos, head banging with long hair to speed metal music played on cello. I never thought I could temporarily lose some of my hearing because of cellos, but it's possible. If you don't know these guys, watch some of the YouTube videos in the post (some may be taken off YouTube by now, who knows), and if you do know them, you will still enjoy watching.

Polar Bears: Number One Threat to America! (8/23/2008): This is one of my pet peeve topics, Global Warming. It is one of the four main ways socialists are trying to take over America (the other ways are through government health care, the minimum wage, and the judicial system, though I'm sure there are more ways as well). The science has been pushed aside and drowned in politics, and the issue has been obfuscated to death. It is not, and never has been, about saving the Earth (which does not need saving and we couldn't if we needed to), but about power and control through the redistribution of wealth, and this power is gained by spreading fear and misinformation. This post is still relevant a year later, and will be for years to come, and it was also fun to write. This is a very important issue for every American to be educated on. I like all my political posts, but I try to space them out so this doesn't turn into a purely political blog, and I decided only to put a couple of those posts in my top ten list.

Peace through Superior Firepower (8/6/2008): Another important issue that people tend to be ignorant of. People like to say how horrible it was that we nuked Japan, not knowing how many millions of innocent lives were saved by ending that war as soon as possible with the complete unconditional surrender of Japan being the only viable option. Negotiation only works when you have something to back up your words. "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Or, as the villain in National Treasure says (roughly paraphrased), "the thing about bluffing is that sometimes you have to be holding all the cards." Saddam Hussein made a bad move bluffing to the world that he had weapons of mass destruction stockpiled when he didn't... it led to the toppling of his evil government and his death (better late than never). The world can only be stable if America is holding all the cards, i.e. has all the weapons.

Good Books and Bad Books (8/2/2008): Another great controversial post, about a topic I absolutely hate but can't get away from: Twilight (I like to pronounce it twih-ligt, like Dwigt). I really, really hate these books. They're not just annoying, they are detrimental to society. I am not happy about the fact that all four books are in my house on my bookshelf, but there's nothing I can do about it. I did, believe it or not, watch the movie, but I haven't reviewed it yet. It wasn't so bad, but is still not the amazing better-than-Harry-Potter thing that everyone says it is (that's what brought it to my attention, is that unforgivable comparison). I'm sure I'll have to see New Moon, but at least I don't have to read any more of the books. I may write more on this in the near future, since I have comments on the movie that I think are interesting and relevant to movie critiquing in general. Meanwhile, I will continue to boycott these books (not ban them, I am against banning these things on principle).

Fun with Global Warming (6/29/2008): This isn't the heavy political post you might think it is, though there's a bit of important social commentary that goes along with it. This is actually a humor post. It's a bunch of unintentionally funny statements from college students who, frighteningly enough, will be future elementary school teachers. This is worth a read if you want a good laugh. I actually have a new batch of these coming in the near future. I think so, anyway...

Why Is It So Cool to Hate Wal-Mart? (6/18/2009) and follow-up (6/19/2008): Another one of my pet peeve topics, the blaming of big, successful corporations for all of America's problems rather than giving them the credit they deserve for making our economy go. I hate hearing good companies made into scapegoats. Wal-Mart, Halliburton, McDonald's, every big oil company ever, etc. Without these companies our economy would grind to a halt, but successes like these threaten the dependence of us common folk on Big Government, the true source of all our problems.

Iceland (5/22/2008), More Iceland (6/19/2008), and More Photos of Iceland (10/11/2008): I am obsessed with Iceland. I will visit there someday. I love the music, I love the geology, and I love the scenery. Björk, Emilíana Torrini, Sigur Rós, múm, GusGus, and Ólafur Arnalds are all from there, just to name a few amazing musicians. These are quick reads, because all you really have to do is look at the pictures. You won't regret it. I'll probably find more photos of Iceland in the future.

So what is in store for this blog in the near future? Will I succeed in reviving it from its moribund state? I think so. I have many old posts to follow up on with new exciting things to say, and I have several dozen movies I want to talk about. I've also been very frustrated with the prospect of writing a political post, since things are moving along so fast and the destruction of this country by the most America-hating President we've ever had (i.e. the first one, who still hasn't proven he's even a citizen of the country he is governing) is just depressing to think about. I don't know where to start! This health care fight is the most important war our country has ever fought, and we are fighting our own President. We really may become the American Socialist Republic very soon unless Obama's inevitable overreaching happens soon enough. Enough of that... I'll save it for a future post.

Don't worry, if all goes well this blog will be alive and well very soon!

Follow-Up: The Sentencing

Who killed my blog? It seems to be dead. Only six posts in the past three months? My only excuse is that I have been extremely busy with way too many extra important things (I've been playing a lot of Civilization IV lately). So quit complaining. Those pesky Zulu must be dealt with!

If you read the title of this post, you know it is a follow-up to something I've written before. You're probably confused about the other part of the title, though, unless you are one of the two or three people who diligently follow my blog (I am one of those people most of the time). So, now you're asking yourself, "what is he following up on?" or "sentencing for what and for whom?". (Who am I kidding; you're probably saying "who", not "whom", and you're wrong. Dead wrong. I'll deal with you when I finish conquering the Zulu.)

Almost one year ago, last October, I took a field trip to southern Utah (which you can read about here), and when I came back I found out that while I'd been gone I had been involved in an exciting high-speed police chase with shots fired, and I'd missed all the fun (you can read about it here). Not only did I miss out on my own police chase, I apparently missed the sentencing, too (and therefore the sentence!). Here's the story, from the newspaper a couple months ago:

Well, I have something to say, Rexburg Standard Journal. You still have my age wrong, and my middle initial, and my home town. Also, I absolutely do not drive a Silverado. I drive a blue Jeep. And if you ever tried to chase me, I would totally get away. You see, I am very good at Need for Speed: Most Wanted, and I know a few tricks (such as ramming cop cars head-on so they go flying and I speed through the roadblocks). Oh, and I didn't doctor the photo this time, so it totally doesn't look like me. At all. Also, I found more photos from the chase on the internet:

They tried to ram me off the road.

When ramming didn't work, the obvious next step is to try for deadly force.

The article from which I took these pictures said the chase started after a call of a domestic dispute and a pedestrian hit with the car. They found out later that no pedestrians were hit. The article states also that three cars were damaged in the chase: two Rexburg Police cars and one sheriff's car, completely neglecting to count the truck with the bullet through the windshield as a damaged car. Finding out these details, that the Rexburg Police would chase someone for hitting a pedestrian when none were hit, and that standard operating procedure in these cases is apparently shooting at the driver's head instead of the vehicle's tires, really instills in me great confidence in our local police force. It's too bad I missed out on all the action!