Hairy Kiri

I want to talk about one of the cruelest torture devices known to man: waxing.

I meant "man" in that previous sentence, not mankind. While this procedure is probably most often used by women, it is clearly a torture device when deployed against men.

Let me tell you about my experience.

I went on another cruise. It was amazing. However, before going on the cruise, I did not want a reprise of my successful competition in the hairy chest contest. Luckily, a young woman from church offered to wax me on a pro-bono basis, provided I paid for the supplies.

This seemed to me a welcome boon, as many of the salons were charging in excess of $100 for an equivalent service.

I will get to the details of the waxing in a moment. But, permit me to skip ahead to the reaction I received from female friends.

When I shared the fact that I had just gotten my upper torso waxed, without fail, I heard the same responses (in order of appearance):

1 - Laughing
2 - "Now you know what we go through."
3 - "Did you bleed?"
4 - "Make sure you use sunscreen."
5 - "Are you going to keep it up?"

After hearing this standard response, it became clear that this was indeed torture. The first clue was the concept of retribution. Women tend to go to extreme measures in the name of beauty. In many cases, I am thankful as a heterosexual male for their efforts. In other cases, I am not aware of these efforts as they are in one way or another invisible to me.

However, retribution here is not tit-for-tat... er... rather... let's say quid pro quo.

Allow me to illustrate:

Exhibit A - Man Hair



Exhibit B - Woman Hair

After my waxing experience, I learned that there are two general levels of pain associated with mass hair removal: "That really @#$%&*ing hurts" and momentary cardiac arrest. These levels have a statistical correlation (p <0.05) with area of the body and the amount of hair. In women, the amount of hair and location correspond to "this pain makes me want to kick a puppy" while for men like me (and the guy in the picture who suddenly makes me feel better about my situation) the hair is everywhere. The area that hurt the worst? My sternum. Imagine having all the hair on the top of your head ripped out simultaneously. That's what it felt like. Another reason the two aren't comparable, is that most women (I won't say 'no woman' - ew...) don't get anything waxed that takes two and a half hours to complete. Yes, it took the entire running of Star Wars III to complete my upper-body epilation. I can honestly say that that was the second most excruciating 150 minutes of my life. The first required extensive surgery and a week's stay in a hospital.

As for the question of whether I bled? I didn't get to see my back, but as I watched the front, it looked like a lawn aerator from lawn aerator from Lilliput had just run all over me.

Interestingly, without fail, each of the women I talked to about this reiterated the warning: "Be sure to use sunscreen." Oh, I'm sorry, are you referring to that big shiny thing in the sky? That will burn you?!?!? For those of you who don't know, the top of my head is as bare as a newborn baby's butt. Ironically, I tried to get sun on my newly smoothed skin - and I couldn't get a tan, let alone a burn.

I think this was due to extensive skin damage. For the first two days, whenever I would get anything that resembles a cold chill, my entire body winced in pain. If I got excited about something, my chest would tingle - and not in the happy good way. And the acne/ingrown hairs - my back must have looked like the face of the average teenage male fry cook at Zaxby's.

Will I undergo this torture again? Really, before I did it, I had no idea it would be so excruciating and claimed that if my wife wanted me to, I would be happy to do so. Now, I'm rethinking that assertion. If my (future, yet to be named) wife insists that I go through with that kind of torture for her pleasure, the pleasure that I receive in reciprocation must match.

You know, tit for tat.

Shameless Self Promotion

I don't know why this didn't occur to me before this weekend, but, I am finally rolling out a project that started as a concept 2 years ago.

Feel free to check it out at http://faithpromotingrumors.blogspot.com

I have a few faith promoting rumors that I have researched, but need more. I'd love to hear from you the stories you've heard over the pulpit, from friends and family, or that extremely zealous member of the church where you served your mission.

This is a very interesting phenomenon in the Latter-Day Saint movement, and, the project is aimed at compiling and discussing these faith promoting rumors that are passed back and forth so freely with sometimes little critical thought.

The project will only be successful with participation from a variety of sources, so comment, discuss, bring up your own favorite faith promoting rumor. I'll work to research it, post it, and update old posts as more information comes to light.

Fit to be tied

Yesterday I went to the gym after work. On the mornings that I plan on going to the gym I pack a back pack with gym clothes and a towel. That way, I can go right after work and just change there. As I was changing, I realized I did not pack a t-shirt.

Great.

The fear of this happening always lurked in the back of my mind as a possibility. It finally snuck up and had me in a stranglehold of reality.

Realizing there was a mall right across the street, I thought I would run over there and pick up a cheap shirt on sale. So, as I was walking into Dillards... Yeah, Dillards. Who goes shopping for a work-out shirt at Dillards? Me, that's who (what's wrong with me?). So, as I was walking into Dillards, I was approached by a sales associate that must have been able to read the confusion on my face that I was there with intentions of buying clothes in which I was going to sweat profusely. Luckily for her and for me, I spotted a Nike section in a remote corner just as she was asking me if I needed help.

After I declined her assistance, she commented that I looked "as lost as a cow on afroturf." Yep. Shecalled it "afroturf." I wasn't sure the first time, but, upon its repetition, she definitely called it "afroturf" twice. Two times. Apparently this young woman has been on the giving and/or receiving of many white kids schoolyard jokes. Unfortunately, this woman was easily in her early thirties.

I finally wandered over to the Nike section to find some stuff on sale. I found some of those tighter-fitting "Dri-fit" workout shirts, and thought to myself, "I have never purchased nor have I received one of these as a gift. I must purchase one and introduce it to my stable of upper torso coverings." I found one in the color and size that I thought most appropriate to my allegiances and girth. I rang it up and went back to the gym. As soon as this shirt came over top of my head, I realized something was afoot. It tended to cling to my body and show off various contours that I was at the gym to try to remove. When I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I felt like the biggest poseur in the world. Like I was that guy who was trying to look the part of a fitness junkie, but my physique belied my rouse.

Needless to say, I spent $15 on a shirt that will probably never see the light of day again. The Dri-Fit technology worked, in that it captured so much water (read: man sweat) that if dropped on the scale after the workout, it would have weighed more than I do. This must be the same moisture removal technology I saw at the Olympics during the diving competitions.

So, I walked around super self conscious yesterday, which sped up my workout considerably. Maybe it will become my "speedy" workout shirt. Not only will it make me want to get out of it as soon as possible, its sheer... um... sheer will also cut down on any potential wind resistance. But, then I'll become satisfied with its performance which will lead to a feeling of being comfortable in the shirt and then I won't feel so self aware and then it will become yet another workout shirt. I never win.

Go Fish

So, I recognize that the vast majority of my readership is female (read: only my mom reads my blog), which is why I'm simultaneously apprehensive and inspired to write about this.

I'm writing about a phenomenon that I have observed in my dealing with several women in my life. I would say that it's a communication problem, but that would insinuate that at some point during the aforementioned phenomenon an actual two-sided exchange occurred. Here's the abstract of the situation:

Woman has expectations as to how a situation is supposed to go.

Situation does not meet preconceived expectations.

Woman expresses her disappointment that reality does not fit fantasy, and challenges the man to convince her that her fantasy is indeed intact.

Man is placed in a compromised position, facing the impossible task of convincing a woman of something she refuses to believe, despite his statements to the contrary.

Okay, here's how the situation has actually manifested itself (Note to any woman with whom I've had this or a similar conversation who believes in self-torture enough to be reading this blog still: this is an amalgam of several similar conversations, not a transcript of our particular conflagration):

Girl: "Is everything okay?"
Dallin: "Yep"
Girl: "I knew something was wrong! Why didn't you tell me?"
Dallin: "What?"
Girl: "Tell me that everything is okay between us."
Dallin: "I already did. Everything is okay between us."
Girl: "You're such a liar. Why do you have to be such a liar?"
Dallin: "What?"
Girl: "All I ever asked for from you was honesty."

At this point, I'm screwed. There is no point in trying to talk to someone who has her (or his) mind made up about a situation. So my response is the same: "I refuse to argue with you about this. I've already told you that everything's all right. You will believe what you want to believe." This is usually met with awkward silence. And a quick trip to wherever I picked this girl up.

So, with all that said, I'd like to know about the mechanics of this kind of a technique. What are the intended results? What is the motivation?

Clearly this is a manipulation tool. The person who uses this tactic is looking for an excuse to be the victim. They want to demoralize you through their own autodemoralization. A friend recently commented on this concept when talking about fishing for compliments. She said, "When people are fishing for a compliment, they're going to be hurt if you don't say something nice. But then, they won't believe you if you do, anyway. So, why say something you don't mean? It won't make them feel better anyway."

Exactly. People who do this do not want you to correct their view on the situation; they want to be miserable and to make you feel just as miserable as they are.

What gets me here is the total lack of trust in the assertions contrary to their assumptions. This indicates to me at that point that maybe I was wrong to think that things were going okay. To quote Ben Folds, "It seems to me if you can't trust, you can't be trusted."

Until someone convinces me otherwise, I refuse to engage in conversations that are obviously set up so that there's a winner and a loser. That way, I win.

Bad Spellings other than Tori

I found some more. I knew that I would. More evidence that people are stuck in cruise control most of the time. Especially when it comes time to express themselves through written... er... typed word.

Whittey - this is the adjective that describes a person that exemplifies the term "whit." So, basically when a girl says she's looking for a "whittey" guy, she's looking for this guy, this guy, or for you emo girls, these guys. Here's a whittey fellow that is just "ew." (By the way, a google image search for "anorexic man" reveals this tasty nugget.)

Defiantly - Okay, before you get up in arms about how this is a perfectly legit word that is legitimately perfect in its spelling, tell me what is wrong with the following sentence: I defiantly look forward to going to church on Sunday. Keep in mind that the person who wrote this was sporting her Young Womanhood Award. So, I'm pretty sure that she didn't exhibit faith, divine nature, individual worth, et al., with open defiance. This error doesn't pop up much anymore because the microsoft spell checker no longer corrects "definately" as "defiantly" as it used to.

When never - "Oh Rhett, when never will you ask me to marry you?" Scarlett asked longingly
"When?" replied Rhett, "Never."

Principals of the Church - I guess if we can have Sunday School Superintendents, we have people who will teach the Principals of the church. I will admit, that during my 4 years in Mormon seminary I defiantly paid attention to the Principals of the church.

"No pain, no game." - For real? This probably explains such sports as Hockey, American Football, Australian Rules Football, Rugby, Mesoamerican Ballgame, and Church Ball.

Collage - My mom and various other detractors might argue that my experience and degree at Utah State might be accurately described by this term. I do wonder if cosmotologists go to beauty collages. While we're on this subject, I am a big proponent of post-secondary education at any level, but, to call a 4-month program where you learn to cut hair and set a perm a "college" seems to water the term down just a little. I remember when I was preparing to go to grad school at Virginia Tech, I mentioned this to some people from home and they said, "Like Sevier Valley Tech?" SVATC, or Sevier Valley Tech, is now Snow College Richfield Campus, and is where most of my high school graduating class spent their senior year learning auto mechanics or cosmetology.

Daploma- Apparently this is what you get when you graduate from collage. I defiantly want to get my collage daploma as a cosmotology technition.

Random Musings! Part Deux

Okay, these are some thoughts that I have had stewing in my head for some time. If you don't agree, deal with it.

Women under the age of 25 should not be allowed to name their own children. The demand for therapists in the next 15-25 years will explode due to all of the people named "Nautica," "Mattix," "Apple," "Easton" (named after the manufacturer of arrow shafts and baseball bats), "Miller Lite," "Microsoft," "Voting Machine," "Peter Lemonjello," and everyone listed on this website.

Pets are imaginary friends for grown-ups.

So is the "paranormal." (Yeah, that's my brother's website...)

Really. They are both examples of anthropomorphism.

Dollar Cuts

Yesterday, browsing through the Sunday paper advertising circulars, I was filled with disbelief at what I saw. No, it wasn't the home shredder nor was it the latest "collectible" from the Franklin Mint. The Dollar Tree has brought us delicately priced delicacies: 4 oz frozen steaks for $1.

Now the company you turn to when you don't care enough to go to Hallmark for greeting cards is selling steaks. This is clearly for the consumer who likes the flavor of meat on the way down and on the way back up.

I can only understand this in terms of Dollar Tree's need to move other goods. They must have a huge surplus (someone mistakenly ordering 1,500,000 cases instead of 150,000) of either Moderately Soft brand toilet paper or the dollar-sized bottles of Imodium AD.

Or, it just occured to me that this is the Atkins diet meets bulimia: not only is it carb-free, it will purge your system for at least a week.

In light of the recent e-coli outbreaks in meat products being distributed, you won't see me running to the nearest Dollar Tree to load up on these bite-sized dandies. I could stand to lose a few pounds, however. . . Somehow I think that an hour every day on the bike at the gym is less torturous.

Love Spells

I have been a member of several online social networking sites (read: internet dating sites) for some time now. One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the vast diversity in spelling of seemingly familiar words. I'm not really surprised when people have difficulty spelling unfamiliar or particularly difficult words. I mean, I'm not even sure if I'm ever spelling pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis correctly. That means the average person might not know if he or she is ever spelling a word like 'receive' correctly. I usually have to stop and think about that one, too.

What I find interesting is that the word being misspelled is so familiar that this person really should know better. Here are a few real examples of what I am talking about:

technition - Now, I had to stop and think about this one for a second. The word looked different at first, and I couldn't place my finger on what was weird about it. Then it hit me. The word is "Technician." I then did a google search to see if "technition" was possibly some new tech-savvy position... posician... Much to my relief it replied, "Did you mean: technician" Again, alarming to me, were the number of uses of this non-word. Many of them were in reference to jobs. Not only by the people looking for information about said employment, but also by companies looking for *cringe* technitions. One useful application of this word could be incorporated into some kind of an R&B hit by R Kelly, "Technition (Remix)"

cosmotologist - Here's another one. The first thing I thought when I saw this was, "if this is your profession, wouldn't you know how to spell your title correctly?" Apparently not. I can think of a couple of reasons why a stylist might choose to be considered a "cosmotologist." The first has to do with a specialty of recreating styles and cuts from the popular women's magazine, "Cosmopolitan." Perhaps, clients will show up and say they want the haircut that's on page 356 of the March 2007 Cosmo. A properly trained cosmotologist could reproduce such a thing without having to consult the magazine. The second is a reference to the cosmos. From such a root we get words like cosmonaut, cosmologist, and, surprisingly, cosmetics and cosmetologist. But, while the root is the same in the Greek, referring to arrangement or order, I'm supposing that it has more to do with the more recent reference to outer space. It should be pretty obvious where I'm going with this, so I won't go any farther than saying this: Cosmotologists are obviously responsible for many hair crimes against nature.

haircute - If you have any of the above referenced haircuts, you did not just receive a haircute, you received a hairuglyashell. Apparently, the people who use this word forgot one of the lessons of reading where the 'e' comes around and bites the vowel to make it say "oo!"

cuttie - This is one I see a lot. It's basically the opposite problem of the last one. It reminds me of "cutting" and, that is not something I think is very attractive. So, when I see a profile for "UtahCuttie4U" I run. Run so far away.

martial status - This one is my favorite dating site flub. Perhaps the reason you're single is because you think marriage is martial. Or because you signed up for a Karate class thinking it was a marital art.

As I come across and remember more of these, I'll do another installment. For now, what are some of your favorite misspellings?

The lady doth protest too much, methinks

It's been a while since the last post. I actually wrote half of this one already, but due to operator error, I lost it. This is probably a month overdue. However, I had to write about this.

During my time away from life behind the Zion Curtain (July 2001 - August 2006) a phenomenon developed: "Clean Flicks" movie rental stores. A place where people could go to rent or purchase movies with all the naughty or prurient content removed. Of course, I'm sure this was immediately popular among those Utah county residents who were more concerned with living the letter of the law when movies were too scintillating for the spirit of the law. Such an enterprise made me skeptical for a pair of reasons.

The first was reminiscent to me of the practice of showing edited-for-content movies at the BYU student center. The question that routinely came up was "Who is editing these movies?" The same thing made me wonder about the Clean Flicks stores. Generally, people doing good things deserve the benefit of the doubt. In our utopic minds we probably tell ourselves the story of the genesis of this kind of service as follows:

A person finds himself or herself frustrated that many of the high-budget or critically acclaimed movies contain language, violence, or sexual content that are offensive. In an attempt to promote the general welfare (provide for the common defense, establish a more perfect union, truth, justice, and the American way...) they opened a store where families can find fun for a Friday night.

Usually, however, the very cynical version is usually not called to mind:

A person realizes that there is a lot of complaining about not being able to watch movies from his or her coworkers. Upon further investigation, these people are talking about how much they wanted to see Schindler's List, but Speilberg decided to put some more color in the movie than just the little girl in the red coat. Such an entrepreneur sees a market and realizes that someone who isn't offended by the content could remove this from the movies and open up a shop that caters to this demographic. He obviously doesn't care to research copyright laws or to realize that to edit movies in this fashion subjects him (let's face it, it's probably going to be a
dude) to focusing on the objectionable parts of all movies he edits. The idea is to make money, and he'll stoop to this level of self-debasement and exploitation to do just that.

My other objection to this is purely on an ethical/legal point of view. Namely, it's illegal to copy movies and distribute them. There is a lot of "yeah, but" that comes with this. Isn't it okay if he buys a copy of each movie that he edits then rents? Isn't it okay if he sells the unedited version of the copy with the edited one? Isn't this about the directors trying to exercise control over their 'art'? No. It's about copyright and distribution. If the studio had no property interest in their right to control how many copies exist, how movies are distributed, and, subsequently, how much they can charge to do so with their copyrighted work, there would be no sense in having copyright laws. The reason you are in business is the same reason they are: to create wealth.

In January, I heard a news report about the story found here. Now, it's a good chance that Clean Flicks is a company founded under the principles from my utopic story. They were taken to court over their copyright infringement and lost, but they remain committed to providing quality, family friendly flicks. Which, in my opinion, should have been their aim in the first place.

It is important to note that one day in late 2005 I decided to remove all rated R movies from my collection. I just felt like I needed to get in the habit and clean up the media that I am watching.

This leads to the following questions. Is it possible to edit a film entirely? You may be able to mute out a word, remove a scene with lewdness, or chop up a fight scene to exclude some of the blood, but, how do you edit a movie's theme? I remember a quote from my younger days: "If you add a teaspoon of wine to a barrel of sewage, you still have sewage. If you add a teaspoon of sewage to a barrel of wine you now have more sewage."

Since January 25, Clean Flicks has launched quite a public relations campaign to distance themselves from Daniel Thompson. Furthermore they have filed a suit against him that seeks, among other things, $100,000 under the Cyberpiracy Prevention Act. I have the same question that those at Ars Technica do - is it hypocritical for a company to turn around and sue someone else for intellectual property infringement right after it has been sued for infringing on copyright laws?

But, this Thompson character fits the mold of the cynical view. He is willing to debase himself for money, and when he gets that money, he is willing to debase himself even further. The worst of this all is that he was soliciting minors. To raise the churn-your-gut ante, from what reports implicate, there was potential of this kind of activity to be recorded using a camera set-up connected to a television in the back room where pornographic material was found.

It is critical for those of us who are in the world and trying not to be of the world to use critical thinking skills. When we are faced with something that is commercial, yet plays to something that we hold sacred, we should exercise some scrutiny.