U NO ME?

Feel free to contact me

I get texts sent to my Google Voice account by mistake once in a while. Here I share with you how I respond to these.

Unknown participant: So wyd

Me: I am. And this is my faithful servant, Patsy.

Unknown participant: ?

Me: Whose castle is this?

Unknown participant: Who is this?

Me: really?

Unknown participant: Yes

Me: I'm the captain of the gravy train

Unknown participant: Your not funny

Me: You can't spell

Repentant soul: Mark im really really sorry for everything I have done! I feel so bad. Can you please forgive me?

Me: Who is this?

Repentant soul: Nevermind

Repentant soul: U probably wouldn't forgive me anyways

Me: What did you do?

Repentant soul: I said nevermind

Me: Ha! Ok. Check this out: >KO)-> USB Dongle Goblin! Woot!

Repentant soul: Thats pretty tight

Three days later...

Repentant soul: Hey!:)

Me: Word!

Repentant soul: Whats up homey!

Me: G dog slice skillet of my biscuit!

Repentant soul: Huh dawg?

Me: what's the flava?

Repentant soul: Chocolate. Wht abot u homey? And why cant u get pictures G?

Me: s'coo bro. I can't get pictures?

Repentant soul: I was goin with your G status talking. Im a gurl:P

Me: no one said otherwise. Watch dis -> :@P Fat nose! Dats me lawl

Repentant soul: Yeah u do hve a big nose;)

Me: ok, i'm thinking of a person. you have 20 questions (yes/no) to figure out who

Repentant soul: K

90 minutes later...

Repentant soul: I just had an ice cream fight at golden corral!!! It was awesome!

Me: new!

Repentant soul: U should try!

Me: I just got to the golden corral (nick of time! they close at 10 i think). I hope this ice cream fighting is all it's cracked up to be

Me: I got kicked out of the GC! I asked them where the ice cream fight was and they asked me to leave.

Crime and Punishment (but mostly crime)

Mmm, raspberries.

Growing up, there was a woman in our neighborhood whose self-appointed duty was to make life miserable for anyone younger than 18. She was a rumor-monger and loved to pass on gossipy bits to anyone who would listen regardless of how unlikely the rumors were. If she caught you doorbell-ditching her house, she would make you come pull weeds out of her garden. Apparently she didn't realize that by affixing a punishment she drew many more ditching attempts because now there was an actual thrill involved - to avoid the danger of being caught. Gordon and Seth and I came up with the world's greatest doorbell ditching method and we used it on her numerous times without repercussion. We each took a large crab-apple from a nearby tree and threw them one after another. The crab-apples arrived at her door within a fraction of a second of each other and gave the appearance of someone knocking on the door. But now we had the advantage of already being 50 feet away from the door, providing us additional valuable seconds in our escape. We did this at every opportunity.

One day I was at home alone and the phone rang. When I answered, it was this woman. She asked to speak to my mother. I told her she was not home. She called back very soon thereafter and asked to speak to my mother again. I told her she still wasn't home and I didn't know when she would be back. Within ten minutes, she called back again. I told her that no, my mother STILL wasn't home and she asked me to take a message. She asked me to tell my mother that she had seen Gordon behind Storehouse Market throwing dirt clods at the fence. I nodded to myself. Dirt clods. At an old wooden fence. Crisis. It's really no wonder she was desperate to get through to my mother. I hung up after assuring her that I would indeed pass along the vital information. Which I did not.

Aiding and abetting, it's what I do.

Three and a half books

My library is customer service oriented

Among the benefits of living in a small town is the delight of using a small town public library. Let me tell you about mine. When you first approach the doors to the library there are better than even odds you will be met by a sign saying that the computer system is down and the library is closed. Due to the frequency with which I've seen this sign, I believe what it really means is "We're tired of your crap and are taking the rest of the day off."

I've gathered that the prevailing attitude of library employees is "irritated" because there are signs plastered all over the interior of the library with such aggressive statements as "NO CELL PHONES IN THE LIBRARY!!!!" (Really? Will they interfere with your delicate electronics? Gotta be bugged by cell phones. You are not dumb!) and "DO NOT LEAVE CHILDREN UNATTENDED!!!!" For the benefit of you, the reader, I have been conservative with my usage of exclamation points. In actuality there are many more.

I hope you are getting an idea of how RN this place is. My daughter was preparing a bibliography for a school report and had neglected to get the page count from a book at the library that she had used as a reference. I don't know why the page count is required, but I called the library to ask for help. I told the librarian the name of the reference book and asked if she would tell me how many pages were in it. Here is her response: "Let me get this straight. You want me to count every single page in that book so I can tell you how many pages are in it?!"

Attention Payson City Library employees: There is this new contraption they've started using in books. It's called "page numbers." It's kinda neat because you can tell your friends "Look on page 347 for some interesting bit of info" and your friends no longer have to count all the pages starting at one on up to 347 to know which page you're talking about. They merely scan through the book until they find the page with the number 347 at the bottom and then they know they have found the page they were after. Here's a fascinating trick: If you go to the last page in the book and look at that page number, that's how many pages are in the book! Cool, huh?

"Yes. Please count all the pages in this encyclopedia for me. I'll wait right here."

Does the title of a post matter?

What the crap is this?

Have you ever been in a Doctor's office? Have you ever read a magazine article? Do you have a magazine subscription of your very own? Have you ever noticed that sometimes articles have a title which is phrased as a question? Have you ever read an article with a question for a title that didn't end up asking more questions than it answered? Would you believe that I haven't? Can you guess how I feel about these kinds of articles?

Does Obama eat fried pork skins in private? Is computer AI on the verge of enslaving humanity? Is the moon a giant space creature's skull? Does eating granulated flax unguent increase one's lifespan? Does it? Do you have to read the article to know that when you're finished reading, you still won't know the truth?

Can anyone point me to an article of this kind that does anything but manipulate its readers into a certain point of view? Or that consists of any amount of substance? What is the point of reading an article with a question for a title? Am I the only one who prefers enlightenment to fear, uncertainty and doubt?

Blood Sausage

Slop is good food

One time I was on a mission to the Dominican Republic. My companion and I went to visit a recent convert and her mother was in the "kitchen" making blood sausage. This is how it is made. Take a pig's poop chute and everything attached to it and put it in an enormous bowl on the floor. Add some water of questionable potability. Slosh the intestines around in the water for a while in a vain attempt to remove things that are disgusting. Now take the open end of the intestines and place the opening around your mouth. If this is starting to sound revolting to you, just relax, breathe deeply and keep in mind that the end product will be blood sausage. That should keep you going. Now that you have the opening of a pigs intestine wrapped around your lips, inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth into the intestine in order to inflate it like a balloon. Continue this process for a while. Soon you will have inflated intestines leading from your mouth, to the large bowl on the floor which still has approximately 43 miles of intestines to fill with air (depending on your height). Now, take the blood which came from the pig as it was being slaughtered and which any sane individual would recognize as being worth collecting. Pour this blood into the open end of the intestine which you have now peeled away from your mouth. It will go into the air-filled intestine where it will soon clot. Yes, clot. Tie off the ends of the intestine. Once clotted, you can put your soon to be delicious blood sausage in hot water and boil it. Please, now enjoy your homemade treat. You were following along, right?

I thought it would make a fantastic photograph with me pretending to blow air into a pig intestine, so, with the permission of the woman making the treat, I took the intestine in my hands and brought it near (not touching) my face. (Okay, I accidentally did get a tiny bit on my face.) My companion took the photo and I handed the previously manure filled flesh sack back to its owner. It stunk. It really stunk. Have you been around pigs? If not you have no understanding of the degree to which it stunk. And now it was on my hands. I went to a water source with some soap and I washed my hands. They still stunk. I ended up washing my hands about 8 times. But that stink would not leave my hands for 4 days.