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Satanists and Academy Square

Everyone claimed that satanists were having cult meetings in the old abandoned Academy Square.  Sacrificing babies, rituals, blah blah blah.  Well, I want to say that I went into the cordoned off place several times and never found any satanists.  I did find a couple kids drinking alcohol.  I supposed they could be satanists.  I found a bunch of old geometry books that may or may not have contained satanic messages.  I will admit that it was pretty cool to walk around in at night hoping you would find something.  We found a room that had some cool graffitti and what appeared to be some sort of ritualistic pentagram, but I think we can all chalk that up to some gothic misunderstood teens that really dug a lot of Anne Rice novels. 

My Friend, The Felon

A few of my entries have mentioned one particular character from the dorms, Jeffrey Minor, and some of the havoc he raised...such as making his roommate's life miserable, poking fun at Fat Al, sneaking girls into his room, etc. Why was he at BYU? Good question.

He always found a way to surprise me (no, stun me) with his actions. Not that I was perfect, but then again...

Check out the Jeff Minor story. Sad.

Dorm Living

You know, there really should be some kind of matching process for roommates in the dorms. With all of the technological advances we've made in the world of online dating (no, seriously) you'd think schools would come up with some kind of pseudo-scientific methodology for profiling and pairing people. I would have gladly paid $4 (or more) for a choice of roommates.

I mean, look at this picture of me at my desk with my friend Dave putting his dirty shoes on my bed. Posters of Bowie, Power Station, and The English Beat on my wall. Across from me? Yngwie Malmsteen, Randy Rhoads, and Erasure. That's right. My first roommate Scott was a surfer from Florida, and we just didn't connect all that well. Nice guy, but we just never clicked. And so every little issue seemed to cause problems. Things like the fact he'd listen to his walkman cranked all the way up when he went to sleep -- which meant I had to listen to it too. Or the fact that I'd come back from class, and he'd be sitting on my bed with a friend....instead of on his side. Or the fact that he LISTENED TO HEAVY METAL AND GAY POP. Sorry, that just bugged the crap out of me.

It took me about 5 months to convince someone in the front office to let me move elsewhere, and find someone more compatible. I ended up rooming with a Grateful Dead / Bob Dylan fan named Wade from upstate NY. We got along great. Not surprisingly, Scott ended up with his own room.

Fat Al

Ah yes, another story from the dorms...

There was so much love flowing in Hinckley Hall during that first semester at BYU. I was paired up with a surfer from Florida named Scott, my buddy Preston was paired with a river raft tour guide from Placerville, CA (hangtown!) named Scott, and we had two guys named Alan running around. One happened to be pencil thin and a cool guy, the other was short and stocky - and not so pleasant to hang around.

I'm not sure where it all started, but there was distinct animosity between Jeff Miner (who is now is prison - no kidding) and Fat Al. While I'm sure most of it was not deserved, it was kind of hard to stick up for the daily taunting and practical jokes against Al because he was such a self-righteous jerk all of the time. I think he considered me one of his "friends" on the floor, but to be honest, I didn't like the guy.

During one of my phases at the Y (there were so many phases), I had discovered a unique use for hot sauce from Taco Bell. At the time, they came in little plastic cubes. I would poke a holle in one end, and place them strategically underneath the toilet seats on our floor, and wait to hear the yells. When people would sit down, they would be sprayed with hot sauce on the back of their legs. Not the most mature prank, I know. But as the youngest person on the floor, I felt it was my duty to do the most damage. Anyway, to tie it back in -- Fat Al became my last victim, and with a brand new suit. I felt bad, and dropped this prank from my list. And I think that was the day Fat Al realized I was not a friend.

There were daily attacks on Fat Al, primarily from Jeff -- but everyone seemed to dislike Al. His claims that he was going to the Celestial Kingdon and everyone else to hell didn't exactly build a case in his favor...even though he may have been right about a few folks (like I said, Jeff is now in jail). But if there was ever someone who was making a concerted effort to NOT have friends, it was Fat Al.

Man, I just read this back, and its not such a pleasant little story. Just my mood this morning, I guess.

Moo, I Say

Just a quick item for tonight: I miss the little cow signs.
Someone spent a lot of time going down to Kinko's south of campus, making color copies of little cows, cutting them out and pasting them on foamcore, attaching sticks, and then placing their little signs in grassy areas on the north end of campus near the humanities building (forgot the name) and the ASB where people were breaking free of the paved sidewalks, and killing the grass in a selfish drive to shave 2 seconds (if that) from their classroom-jockeying routines.

Most people ignored the signs. But I admired them. Not enough to stop cutting across the grass, mind you. But aesthetically, they were nice.

Making Some Cash

I was just over leaving pearls of wisdom in the comment section on Provopulse.com regarding the I Can't I'm Mormon website, and reminded myself of a great little nugget of life in Provo back when I was a starving student.

Back in 87-88, my sophomore year at BYU, I created and sold t-shirts, artwork, and whatever else I could to make enough cash to pay my paltry and yet, back then, painfully high rent. Two of the t-shirts I came up with actually did pretty well, and at $20 a pop, helped pay the rent and feed me for a short while. The first was clean and simple: "Brigham Young University: The Collective Unconscious" which did alright. I had read some Jung, and thought it a funny play on words. The ignorant were offended, when actually, its a fairly innocuous slogan. I sold maybe two dozen of these.

For the second, I was reading through some history of the old Brigham Young Academy, and came across this gem: "You can go to Provo or you can go to hell" - Brigham Young. Which is exactly how the shirt read.

The quote is from a conversation between Brigham and Abraham Smoot, who the Prophet was telling to go down to Provo to start the academy. Smoot apparently had just built a house up in Salt Lake, possibly had a child die or his wife suffer through a tough labor - don't remember the details now, but essentially he was not really interested in uprooting his family yet again, and so Brigham put some emphasis into the request.

I sold 50 or more of this t-shirt, and paid my rent for a couple months. As I mentioned over on Provopulse, if anyone decides to use either of these and make new t-shirts, let me know and I'll buy one.

Clockwork Not-So-Orange

Maybe I am repressing the many visits I made to the top of the Kimball Tower to participate in those sinister (yet paid) psychological tests.
I remember going up to the top floor, occasionally having to wait for someone to let me in (and on rare occasion I would find the door to the the roof observation deck open and venture out), and then I was led into a small room where they had me play a little computer game. I'd play for 30 to 60 minutes, and then someone would come in, thank me for my time, and I'd leave. But that's all I remember. And then weeks later, I'd receive a small check for my time.

Why can't I remember more about this? Did I black out? Was I probed in some way? Was the room some kind of gas chamber where they'd drug me, adjust the implants that they placed in my back molars for better reception, provide me with detailed instructions of the next target I was to kill, bring me out of it slowly so that I wouldn't realize what was happening, and then send me on my cheery way? Should there be an investigation? Is my story enough to warrant some kind of government probe?

Ok, maybe I'm just bitter because the game was rigged, and I always lost. Guess I pulled out all of my molars with pliers for nothing.

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Beggars Banquet

I believe what Preston is trying to express in his most recent posting is that sometime during our sophmore year, we began to participate in the practice of "beggars banquet," which is the art of table-scrap-diving. I don't recall any memories of dumpster diving behind Arby's -- that must have been after my time. But I do remember sitting at the Pie Pizzaria across from Helaman Halls or over at Caddy's near that dump Raintree Apartments and waiting for people to fill themselves on pizza or burgers or whatever, and leave behind a treasure trove of tasty morsels. Pizza was always the best food for this, as people usually left a few pieces unadultered once they were full. The process was simple enough -- we would scope out the restaurant, find a group of people who looked fairly clean and otherwise sanitary, and wait for the eventual leftovers.

I have to say, this was a practice I employed after leaving BYU and was struggling as a young single loser out in the harsh abyss that is Northern California. Not that I did it too often -- it would gross out most of the people I hung out with.... but what's the big deal? You'd watch the people who got up to make sure that they didn't do anything obscene to the food being left behind, and when the coast was clear, you'd pounce before the employees came along to clean up. No big deal. In fact, employees at one pizza place I frequented saw me do this often enough that they'd point out leftovers to me once in a while. I guess I hung out there a lot, since there's not a lot to do on a hot Sacramento weekday evening. Plus there was some hot babe who worked there that I'd always flirt with, and tried asking out on several occasions.

Hmmm....for some reason, she never said yes. Strange.

Scrounging behind ARBY's

So answer me this, what was the reason why we'd go behind McDonald's and ARBYs and wait for them to throw out food when they threw out the trash. Basically at closing time they'd take all the stuff that wasn't sold and toss it out. So what did I, well I go and grab that bag and have a feast. How I didn't die from a disease I'll never know, but man, I got a lot of free food that way. No one cared. Got to the point where the worker just gave it to me. I'd have like 25 cheeseburger to munch on the next few days. Gotta love it.