mario like-a the pinball

here are some things that make me happy.  maybe you will be happy as well.

recently i discovered that eating strawberry flavored frozen yogurt will turn my tongue pink.

once, my good friend bobby billy said that he got into a staring contest with a duck, and the duck pooped itself.  i promptly took a mental note not to get into a staring contest with bobby billy.

speaking of people named bobby billy, cookies make me happy.  for real.  especially when my mom makes them.  or when bobby billy makes them.

southern accents make me happy.  what also makes me happy is when i sometimes speak in a southern accent, and people are like "where are you from?" and i'm like "california."  and then they say something like, "oh... southern california, right?"

such geniuses make me happy.

nintendo has always been a source of happiness.  smash brothers makes me happy.  and angry.  but mostly happy.  i bond with my older brothers by playing smash brothers.  i met some of my best friends playing smash brothers.  no joke.

This.  This makes me happy.

how can i speak of happiness without mentioning babies?  babies are happy. and cute.  and they poop themselves.  and to all you haters out there: i am NOT a baby creep.  seriously.  i can be in a bad mood and then see someone strollering or carrying a baby and i just have to be happy.  anyone with a soul would be.

people who laugh make me happy.  its hard for something not to be funny when everyone else is laughing at it.  its like a reflex inside of you or something.  its even better when the lady-types are laughing.  they're way more happier than dudes are anyways.  most girls i know will laugh at anything.  i'm not even that funny but i can say just about whatever and they crack up and then i feel like i'm awesome.  just cause they want to be happy.

i once saw four ducks, two dude ducks and two ladyducks.  i threw some goldfish at them to eat.  the ladyducks and one of the dude ducks were totally for it and were happily eating and speaking to me in quackese.  but the other dude duck was sitting back being too cool for the rest of them.  i had to throw goldfish like right at his face in order for him to eat any.  it will make me happy to see that dude duck get over his pride.

today my friend drew a purple tree just for me.  that made me happy.

what also makes me really happy is when i see a total nerdular nerdy nerd-dork of a nerd holding hands with a total babe.  or just another nerd for that matter.  basically any time i see a nerd win i'm happy.  like mcfly winning over biff.  ash over team rocket.  or any other dork winning over the dirtbags like edward cullen, charlie sheen, or johnny caringa.

in the end, there are basically a ton of things that make me happy.  and i find more on the days that i decide that i'm going to be happy rather than the days that i decide i'm going to be angry.  thanks to everyone who's been a part of making me happy.

mascot mayhem

let's go back to he 1900's.  things were better then and everything was awesome.  even me.  the 90's was totally the time to be alive.  the super nintendo and n64 we birthed.  pokemon and super smash bros bombed this world with all their glory.  tv didn't suck, cause it had shows like doug, power rangers, dexter's labratory, and bruno the kid.  toonami was hosted by moltar instead of that dumb robot, and had shows like voltron.  yeah.  those were the days.  school was fun, girls were gross, and catching mewtwo was regarded as an esteemed accomplishment. 

however, this story starts even before these things.  dexter hadn't made his debut and pokemon wasn't even a though in my mind.  we're talking like, 94 or 95.  i was 5 or 6 or something. 

i'm talking about my first of my very limited athletic experiences.  it was t-ball.  or is it teeball?  i don't know, and it doesn't really matter.  it was t-ball cause when i was 5, thats what it was.

we were the Giants.  a great name for a great team.  i remember very little about it, other than that our team was more orange than black, and was apparently coached by two of my older sister's high school friends, or just dudes that she knew and thought were losers.  i can't remember which. 

however, one game stands out above all the rest.  it was another game like always.  we, the Giants, went on to face our opponents: the Banana Slugs.  wait... Banana Slugs? even my 5 year old mind wasn't threatened. 

i mean come on, man!  we were the Giants!  do you know what a giant is?  a really, really, really big person.  who can step on you. easily.  you'd die.

do you know what a banana slug is?  this.  this is a banana slug. 

Something tells me that this guy doesn't have a date this weekend.

why on earth would anyone want to name their team after this and call themselves one?  let's look at some of the qualities of said banana slug:

1. it is slow.
2. it is weak.
3. it is ugly.
4. it is slimy.
5. it can be stepped on by giants and non-giants alike.
6. it is weak against salt.  
7. it probably doesn't have any friends.
8. i don't think that that is a face even its mother could love.

during the game, i remember hearing one of the coaches yell out, "do the banana slug!!" and what do i see?  all these kids who were on base get on their stomachs and like.. try to be a slug or something.  i don't see the strategic importance of such a move.. other than that maybe it was meant to distract the opposing team of 5 year olds.  in which case, it worked. 

what should have happened next was that our coaches should have been like "Do the GIANT!" and we would like step on all the kids trying to be slugs.  but it didn't happen.  whatever.

what i don't understand is what drives some teams to name themselves and their mascots after useless beasts, such as banana slugs.  whats the point?  are you saying that your team is ugly, slow, weak, and destroyable?  are you trying to make the other team feel less awesome when they beat you, because all they beat were a bunch of invertebrates?

sometimes mascot names just don't totally make sense.  when driving by a high school in orem, i saw that they called themselves the "bruins."  i think bruin is one of the more confusing mascot names.  i mean, i've heard of schools calling themselves bruins, and never really knew what that was until i saw UCLA's mascot and was like oh.  its a bear.  why not just call yourselves the bears then?  if you're going to name your team after the mightiest of woodland creatures, you should at least go with the name that everyone is familiar with.  its not like when you go camping, the ranger guy tells you to keep your food safe and watch out for wild bruins in the area.  if i woke up in my tent one night and someone was like "EVERYONE RUN, ITS A BRUIN!" i wouldn't feel all that threatened.  but if you run the same sentence over using "BEAR!" instead of "BRUIN!" i would probably poop myself.

at other times, a team's mascot doesn't even go with its name.  take U of alabama for example. i can imagine their thought process going something like this:

"well, guys, we need a name for our team."
"hmm, well our color is gonna be red, how about the roses?"
"are you freaking kidding me? we may as well be the banana slugs!"
"ok, fine.. how about.. the red wave?"
"hmmm crimson wave sounds better.  or even crimson tide"
"wonderful... but how will we make a mascot out of that?"
"you're right.  how about we just make it a really pissed off looking elephant?"
"an elephant? what does that have to do with red tidepools?"
"nothing, but anyone who questions the logic of it would have to deal with an angry elephant.  and no one wants to get stepped on by an angry elephant."
"excellent."

as much as it doesn't make sense, i can't help but respect that.  a name like crimson tide implies that a huge wave of ambiguous red force will come to engulf your team, and if that doesn't get you, the pissed of looking elephant sure as heck will. 

if your team has to add adjectives in front of its name to make it sound cooler, such as "fighting chickens," or "mighty ducks," you may need to rethink your team name.  chickens are lame enough on their own, and making them fighting chickens still isn't gonna make them able to stand up against something like a pterodactyl or a shark. 

however, if adding adjectives makes an already cool name/mascot even better, then go for it.  no one wants to stand up against an angry elephant or a flying bear.  those are some pretty dang powerful forces of nature.

unfortunately, this doesn't really seem to stick with people, since i continue to play kickball with my ward team, who insists on calling ourselves the "woodchucks." yeah, great.  a furry little guinea pig wannabe who may or may not be able to chuck would.  that is so much more threatening that a mighty bear flying towards you with the speed of a commercial airline. 

Seriously.  which one of these looks the most threatening?  oh, you're right.  i'd rather fight a bruin. 

ok, so maybe all yall don't want to go for the fierceness factor in your mascots.  maybe you're going for something cute.  or laugh your opponents into submission with your name.  in that case, go right ahead.  call yourselves the woodchucks.  or the fighting chickens.  or the dodgers. 

but if you really want to go for the cuteness factor, then you should call your team the babies.  really.  what's cuter than a baby?  that's what i thought.  it also has a great factor of messing with the other team's mind.  if they lose to you, then everyone will be like, "you lost to a bunch of babies?  wow.  just wow."  or if they win, then people will be kind of offended and say something like, "what the crap?  you beat a bunch of babies!?  you are terrible, terrible people."

so no matter what you win.  even when you lose. 

the many names of tay

over the years i've many names.  names that weren't the name that my mother gave me.

the name that my mother gave me was Scott.  yeah.  that's my name.  you can't go wrong calling me that.

don't call me Scotty. don't call me Scottie either.  only my dad really gets away with that.  or carl.

i used to respond to it but i also used to be a 5 year old. 

my first real for real nickname was cheeseball.  its cause when i was little my older brother convinced me that cheeseball was actually my middle name.  which would have been a pretty rad middle name, but my mom didn't give that to me either.

later on my other brother decided to start calling me"punk."  i don't know why, but i didn't really care, and since i was like 9 or 10 or something and just learning how to be sarcastic, i would call him "shorty."  (you know, cause he's short).  so like, he would come home and say "hey punk," and i would be like, "hey shorty." yeah.

sadly i wasn't called by any other name than my own in middle school.  probably cause everyone is too cool for nicknames in middle school.

then high school same along and some of my friends were like 'we need to give you a nickname' and they threw some things around till i was scooter.  and then they turned that into scoot cause it takes less effort to say.

in college my ultra nerd friends and i were hanging out and probably playing smash bros or something, and my friends andrew and mike (for some reason, spellcheck is mad that i didn't capitalize andrew, but not mad that i didn't capitalize mike) were talking about what my name would be if i was a pokemon.  one of them decided that it would be tay-tay, which is what they have called me ever since.  a times its just tay, (cause cause thats easier), or they will mix in some adjectives like "lil tay."

by the way, tay-tay is a small ground-type pokemon that loves to eat leaves.  it does not like the rain or snow and prefers to be warm.  it evolves into tayzor at level 22.

some of my mission friends also called me tay-tay, cause i had to think of a character name for the novella, Ricardo! and tay tay is what i came up with...

however, women are not allowed to call me tay-tay.  sorry.  its just never sounded right coming from them.

thats basically everything that everyone calls me.  i do have a friend who insists that my name is steve, but she probably just has me confused with one of these guys:

 

anyways, yeah. those are my names.  but Scott is still the one that my mom gave me.  you can't go wrong with it.  and nobody's worn it out either.. so its all good.

ARTICUNO used BLIZZARD!

ARTICUNO
FREEZE
No. 144
HT 5' 07"
WT 122.0 lb

A legendary bird POKEMON that is said to appear to doomed people who are lost in icy mountains.



Ah yes.  Articuno.  The legendary bird of ice.  Back when being legendary actually meant something.  I always use the master ball on him.  Its cause when I was in 4th grade my friend told me to use it on him, only afterward to regret telling me this cause i should have apparently used it on Mewtwo instead.  However whenever i play through the game again and again.. i just use it on Articuno. 

Articuno is an ice/flying type.  It learns moves such as peck, ice beam, blizzard, and mist.  Ice type attacks are very good against ground, grass, and flying type pokemon, as well being one of the only types that is good against dragon types.  wonderful.

There have been several times during this lovely lovely spring where i wake up and look outside to see the sun shining so beautifully.  As i go out to go to classes and begin my day, i am shocked to find myself much colder than i should be on any spring day.  in disgust, i yell to myself, what the crap, utah?

perhaps even more of an abomination was when the other night just days away from the epic month of May, i watched snow fall down to the ground and actually stick.  as a ground type, snow is one of my natural enemies to being with, but seeing it fall so well into the spring makes me want to step on a kitten.

this is why i think that above us in utah (and probably idaho) there is a legendary Articuno flying over us.  its using its ice powers to make us cold when the groundhog so boldly declared that we would have an early spring this year.  Articuno probably doesn't know that its ruining our spring, it probably is just looking for some doomed soul stranded on mt timpanogas or something.  maybe it needs to lay low cause it was spotted in Canada and doesn't suspect to be see in the U.S.  The problem is, its making it cold for the rest of us. 

well then, there only really one thing to do.  until Articuno is caught, i guess spring won't officially begin.  and when they said "gotta catch em all," Articuno certainly was not excluded.