My first Barack Obama post.

Please.

So while listening to my liberal propaganda for the day, NPR, I heard them talking about the universities of Connecticut and Oklahoma and got excited. College basketball! Yes, they were talking about the NCAA championships and although I knew they wouldn't say anything that I hadn't heard before, I turned it up a little and paid more attention.

Then I found out the awful truth - that they were talking about the girls' college basketball championships.

Now don't get me wrong. I fully support the right of women to play sports and basketball in particular. I even enjoy playing basketball with girls, even though they are usually better than me. (Just kidding. They are only sometimes better than me...though they usually beat me at dumb shooting games like round the world. That one is for you, Deanna.) I think the world is a better place due to the women that do play ball.

But I shouldn't have to want to watch it. I have absolutely no interest in either the college or professional women's game. I don't care.

My views aren't unique. In fact, most of the world agrees with me, I would say. Even women.

So when the announcer lady started talking about how Barack Obama should have not only picked a men's bracket (which I thought was pretty cool) but a women's as well, I started yelling at the radio and pounding it with my fist. How dumb is that? He doesn't care about the women's game, why should he have to?

President Obama had some good insights about the different teams, how he thought Ty Lawson was going to recover in time to lead North Carolina in the difficult games, how he thought Arizona didn't belong in the tournament after their uninspiring season this year, little insights that showed he actually cared and followed the sport. If he had been forced to do a women's bracket, he wouldn't have known anything, maybe what an intern had just researched the night before. His picks would have been analyzed and decided that he was biased against a certain state, and people in West Virgnia would have been mad that he picked his team to be upset or something stupid like that. Get over it! Barack Obama should never have to pick out a bracket just out of political correctness or because he has two daughters. In fact, I like him a little bit more cause he didn't. So lay off him!

And so ends my Barack Obama post. I know I am probably in the minority of young people with blogs who haven't gone on for pages and pages extolling the virtues of Obama and why he's so great and why he's the best president ever. Oh well. I still think it's fun that he picked an NCAA bracket. Can't we just enjoy that? Does everything have to have a political message?

An excuse to put up a bar graph

Long time readers of my blog may have noticed a little uptick in blog entries from me. To facilitate this conclusion, I have done a little research and made a bar graph documenting the number of entries per month since this blog’s inception.












Obviously I’m not a very prolific writer. However, I already have 4 in the month of March and we’re not even halfway done. This will make 5. Many of you may ask, why now, Logan? We wanted you before, why do you make yourself available now? (And are we afraid to ask that question, on the fear that you might go away?) How does the future outlook for blog entries look? Well, let me answer those questions….and more!

Why Now

1. The most important constraint in blog entries has always been time at a computer to waste. I can have great things to write about – aka: backpacking across Europe for five weeks with my future wife comes to mind – but if I don’t have time to write when I could/should be doing something else…it doesn’t happen. My blog is not a priority in my life, sorry folks. I’m a family man.

Although there is plenty of work to do at the Boeing Company, my management has been a little slow to respond to what I have to offer. So, while I’m about done with one round of contract negotiations, I have been searching for things to occupy my time while the next set begin to pick up and I get more work to do. (Don’t worry, the work is coming. I don’t expect to be laid off this year. However, when production gets cut next year…) Writing a blog is a little less blatant than going on facebook all day, as well.

2. I need to express myself. During my time at Brigham Young University, I had many different outlets to express myself. Social settings abounded, I had different sets of friends I could bounce back and forth between and all of my true humor genius could come out. (Just kidding about the genius. But the point is that I had lots of different times to share different parts of my humor with different people who would appreciate it.) Like I alluded to in a previous blog entry, I’m still funny and I need to prove it!

The Future:

I don’t know. So don’t ask. Back off!

Celine Dion and IGoogle

So my home page is my IGoogle home page. At work I use it to get into my gmail from the little window. A little while ago they added themes - I'm sure all of you googlers out there have noticed that. Well, I never could pick on one I wanted forever and ever, and they have a setting that just brings up random ones every time. While this does mean that I'm going to get some weird ones every once in awhile, the variety is good for me.

Well, today I opened up and the Queen of Power Ballads herself, Celine Dion was featured.

"It's all coming back, all coming back to me now....."

Throughout the day, as I would go back into it, they would have different Celine pictures up there.

I found it a little weird, but in the end, okay. I hope she got some money out of it. Somebody better be paid if I have to look at Celine Dion everytime I check my e-mail.

It'd be cool if you could set it up to put pictures up yourselves. Google! I know you're reading this! Make it happen!!!!

1984

So I read 1984 the other day. I think I remember writing an essay about it in high school without ever reading it, but I finally checked it out from the library the other day and read it.

My thoughts on the book:
1. 1984 was the year I was born.
2. It was one of those books that was written not to tell a good story, but to send a message. I like books that do more of the first, though I suppose that every good story actually tells a message. No, this one has no uprising proletariat coming back to restore freedom to the world, it has no Brotherhood actually existing and overcoming, but rather has Big Brother and the Thought Police and the rulers continuing to rule and exert power over everybody else. I understand Orwell’s point. I appreciate it. I don’t think any of us what any of that to happen. That doesn’t mean that I liked reading the book. I’m not going to want to read it again.
3. Freedom is too important and too natural for something like this to ever happen. All men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights is an idea and a thought so ingrained in the world now that a revolution like the one mentioned wouldn’t take hold.
4. I wanted to give a thought on how government isn’t always horrible like the Party in 1984, and that when we read something like this, our knee-jerk reaction is to go all the way back. However, since that reaction is already happening in our society, and I think it’s wrong. I’m okay with government, but I think that, generally, the less we have it, the better.
5. I’m grateful for the restored gospel of Jesus Christ which teaches true, correct principles and then lets us govern ourselves.

An addendum to "A Basketball Blog Entry"

I would just like to mention that Torrie has enjoyed our basketball night as well. She's made some friends by talking to the other wives, and she gets the chance to make fun of me sweating. That, my friends, is a win-win for Torrie.

A Basketball Blog Entry

So a few of you may know of my love for playing basketball. However, ever since the glory days of the back-to-back-to-back stake young men’s basketball championships of the Livonia Ward, I have found it hard to find my niche on the few teams I’ve been on. I’m not a consistent enough shooter, and it’s harder to find quality opportunities to impress people with my speed because I’m not a good enough finisher and big people always seem to be able to block my layups. Add the fact that I never play consistently enough to get over that first game where you can’t make even a single layup, and I find myself not contributing very much to any team that I play on (though, usually, I have a pretty good plus-minus, even though I’m not directly contributing to the score. I’m just saying.)

So, after having moved to Shoreline, I finally decided that I needed to start playing ball again, now with the old men in the ward. The fact that I currently weigh more than I ever have may have influenced this decision.

I showed up last Tuesday and shot a little. One guy from the ward came to shoot as well so we had a little 21 action, where I destroyed him. I was fast and was making layups, and he wasn’t using his body well enough.

So my confidence was a little better for last Thursday’s game. That was a mistake. I turned the ball over like no other, missed a couple of easy layups, and we got killed by the best team in the league. I got bruised up and, being out of shape yet running around, was pretty wiped out after the game.

So it was with a little trepidation that Torrie and I showed up for basketball last night (she watches, I play). Mostly different people showed up for our team, so perhaps I didn’t have the stigma of the game before. We started and I played the second quarter. I played fairly well, including getting fouled on a breakaway and nailing my two free throws, but I did get a little tired at the end of the half and we were still down by about 5.

The 3^rd quarter was played with our “A” team out there, and at the end of the quarter we were still down by about 5. They were playing well, but I knew that the other team was getting tired. I went back in the game about halfway through the 4^th quarter, down by 3.

It was a little frustrating because there were a couple guys who weren’t passing and kept losing the ball on their drives. Luckily we played some good defense, got a couple to go in, and we were down by 1 with about two minutes left.

We brought the ball down and I guess the guy was tired cause he passed me the ball near the 3 point line on the left side. I saw an opening and drove with my left, switching to my right as I went to lay it in. To my dismay, it ringed in and out. However, my momentum allowed me to get the rebound. I passed it away, and a couple of passes later I found myself with the ball in the same situation. I drove again, knowing that I could beat the guy guarding me. This time the layup went in, and we were up by one. They brought the ball down and tried to pass it around. I doubled up on the guy with the ball and he put up an ugly shot, no good. I grabbed the rebound and we brought it up the court, taking our time. I passed it to one of the big guys and set a pick for him. Beautiful pick, and then I went for the roll straight towards the basket, nobody in my way. To my surprise, my teammate saw the opportunity and sent me a beautiful pass, which I gathered in and put in the basket. Up by 3!

The other team would drive down, get fouled, and make a couple of free throws, but we were able to hold the ball long enough for time to run out. A comeback victory!

I felt much better afterwards, and while I still have plenty of room to improve…maybe I won’t give up on basketball after all. At least until I’ve started losing some weight.