BYU dating laws

So I've been doing some deep thinking recently about relationships at BYU and specifically, about how quick people seem to get married around here. I’ve even come up with a theory that I’d like to share with you about your odds of getting married. My theory is this; there is a statistical half-life of two months for the dating-to-marriage conversion. What I mean is, after two months of dating, any given couple has a 50% chance of getting married at some point. Not that they will get married at two months necessarily but that their odds of tying the knot at some point are 50%. So two months later, at the 4 month mark (or about one semester) there is a 75% chance of that couple getting married. Then after 6 months of dating the odds are 87.5% and anything after that is gravy. Now, I’m only talking about relationships at BYU, other schools and time before or after graduating BYU are not a factor in this theory of mine. I’d also like to confirm it with research so that my theory can become law; I’ve always wanted my own law. I think I’ll call it, “Walke’s law of relationships” that sounds pretty scientific and legit right? Anyway, your input would be helpful on this front. If you want to participate let me know, either below in the comments, in a private message on my facebook page, or even on my wall if that’s what floats your boat. Useful information would include:

1) number of relationships you have had at BYU

2) how long each lasted

3) how it ended (marriage, breakup, other[?])

4) year in school (or year in school you got married)

5) average wind speed velocity of an un-laden swallow (African)

Bacon Candle

       This is actually from a while back but, i wanted to share it with you anyway. This semester I have been in a dinner group with a few friends from the ward and once upon a time it was my turn to cook. I decided that breakfast for dinner would be a good idea (and frankly, when isn't it a good idea?) so I made french toast with bacon. Quite naturally, it was delicious, but I made a lot of bacon (once again, always a good idea) and I had a cup that was almost completely full of bacon grease left over. I wasn't quite sure how to get rid of it because I know that you aren't supposed to dump it down the sink but I wasn't too sure about what would be considered a proper disposal method. So, drawing on my days as a boy scout for wisdom, I decided to dispose of the stuff through incendiary means and make a bacon candle. I rolled up a napkin, stuck it in the middle of the cup and, well, I think the pictures speak for themselves.

as you can see, it was a success. bacon grease is 
exactly as flammable as you would expect it to be!

And then it was brought to my attention that another wick could be added to the mess for an even bigger flame. Naturally, I thought this was a brilliant idea.

2x the wicks, 2x the fire.

Then, realizing that there was still room for more, I doubled the wick count again, bringing the total to 4 burning napkins in my bacon cup.

As far as ideas go, this was one of my better ones. Anyway, after about half an hour, the heat was great enough to actually shatter the cup (it was glass), which was awesome but unfortunately, it did bring an end to the bacon candle.

I've considered possible expansions for the bacon candle project, such as gathering a couple gallons of bacon and putting some kind of porous wood like pine in it for the wick. I think that would be cool but I have no idea where I would get that much bacon grease. I don't anticipate it happening any time soon, or probably ever, but I'll keep you posted if that changes. 

Santa Inc.

I wrote this post in response to something Ellis posted on facebook about how I know the truth about Santa the other day. Where he got that idea, I don't know. But I decided to play along, it was just going to be a reply to what he wrote on his wall but it started getting long so I decided to just make it a formal blog post instead. You may be interested to know that what I wrote was based on various Santa Claus myths, I simply told to story as it would have been had Santa been a heartless CEO/Nazi. The articles I used in my research are cited below in case you are interested.        Alright Ellis, you want me to elucidate the Santa Claus problem and although I hate to talk about this in a public forum were kids might see it, I will acquiesce because I think the people should know the truth behind the lies. If there are children in the room, it would probably be best to send them out.        The sad truth is this, Santa is real (1). Not the answer you were expecting right? You see, he is indeed real but he is also one of the greatest white collar criminals to ever live. I'll list a few of his larger misdeeds here but know that there are many more. Santa started off with pure enough intentions, around 600 years ago he started a non profit group to help underprivileged children who's parents couldn't afford toys find a little joy. He set out to brighten the world with trinkets and carved little wooden horses one child at a time. Back in those days, it was a family business, mostly involving the children that lived in and around the area where said fat man lived, it was far from a global affair yet.        Slowly, Santa began expanding his organization and it became difficult for him to make all of the toys himself, even though he worked to build the toys all year. A little known fact is that at this time, Santa came up with the idea of offering up to others the chance to volunteer in his shop so that he could increase production.  Now I know it seems harmless enough that he offered up the chance to render service to the poor to the community at large but he set a serious precedent, he focused the majority of his recruiting efforts on children. In his mind, if the toys were for the kids, then the kids should be helping to make them.  As a trade off for helping produce the toys, Santa promised to deliver toys to all the children, not just the underprivileged ones as he had in the past (7). His increased production allowed him to begin expanding his enterprise to other countries and in gratitude, many began making conciderable donations to his charity. As it turns out, these donations far exceeded operational costs and Santa started making a nice profit for himself.        It is at this time that he developed his characteristic large girth and also marks the point that the organization as a whole stopped being a charity and instead effectively became a business. At first this system worked well but Mr. Claus soon learned that children are easily distracted and he quickly faced the problem of a dwindling volunteer staff. It is at this point that Santa's criminal record can truly be said to begin. Santa opened an orphanage and forced the children he took in to build toys, at the time this was a generally accepted practice in much of europe. However, during the 19th century many european countries began passing laws that prohibited child labor (2), so Santa did what any reasonable CEO would do, he moved his business to the north pole where such laws did not exist.        Of course, because of the nature of his business, it has always been in Santa's best interest to maintain the good will of the world citizens so in secret he went to great lengths and committed countless egregious atrocities in order  to create people that were genetically different enough from us that they can no longer be called homo sapiens, but are instead, as Mr. Claus calls them, "elves". This was done so that he could bypass any potential lawsuits that might be levied by the governments of the world or the ICC (3) for mistreating workers. These "elves" were bred to be short with high metabolisms so that they would be too small to mount an effective rebellion against their master and also be highly energetic so that they could be forced to work for longer hours, the pointy ears was actually something of an accident, it was an unintended genetic mutation but because of the way focus groups seemed to take to them, he kept the change, even though he always considered them to be misshapen and unsightly.        What followed next was a vicious re-branding campaign that got underway in the 1860s (8), as Santa began to push his protrail of an idilic village in a snowy, remote part of the north pole and the elves as happy workaholics that made toys for free and were happy to do so. As world population began to explode, Santa began searching for a way to keep his company in the black while still delivering gifts to the children of the world. This desire to continue to deliver gifts shouldn't be interpreted as some remaining shred of humanity in Mr. Claus but was in actuality a desire to maintain the wealthy lifestyle to which he had become accustom, and his love of the fame granted him as an international celebrity. My research also discovered that Santa has citizenship and residence in several countries including; Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and even Canada (4). He also maintains a home in Alaska but it is believed that he has been unable to obtain citizenship here, probably due to his status as a Canadian citizen (5). Apart from this he also has permission from every country in the world to fly through their air space, something no other person or country or person on earth has managed to do. The move that changed Santa Inc. into what we know it today was Santa's decision to promote certain toy companies in exchange for large sums of money. As part of this move Santa abandoned the green coat that he had worn since the late 1700s (6) and adopted a red and white one in one given him by Coca-cola at the turn of the 20th century in one of the most audacious examples of product marketing to date.        As you can see, Santa is not the jolly fat man that we have all been lead to believe. Instead, he is a both tyrant and a remarkably capable business man. Now you know the truth, spread the word and join the cause, lets take Christmas back from this fat man and give it to the people. 1) http://www.newseum.org/yesvirginia/ 2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_Acts 3) http://www.icc-cpi.int/Menus/ICC 4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa#Origins see section titled "Home" 5) http://www.dave-h.com/images/Funny/Canada__s_Army_Motivator_by_UnholyChronus.jpg 6) http://www.happywink.org/christmas-day/evolution-of-modern-day-santa.html 7) I can't find the article at the moment, but trust me, all the myths agree that at first he only helped the less fortunate. Giving gifts to all the good little boys and girls came later. 8) http://cartoons.osu.edu/nast/santa_camp.htm

The thing about TA's is, you shouldn't date them

       Didn't I tell you I would post something new in less than a month this time? And look at that, I'm making good on that statement. I guess I've just been on a writing kick recently, it seems to be my new favorite way to avoid doing homework or something. Right now I am sitting on a secret couch that I found on the first floor of the library. For some reason, they have a couch hidden back here behind the book shelves. To be more specific, its a love seat, and my theory is that its here for the express purpose of making out. It's the only reasonable explanation for why it would be here. Is it now a goal of mine to one day do just that in this very spot? Maybe. For now though, its a great place to hang out and write stuff while I try not to think too hard about that accounting test I have to take some time between right now and monday. Or the pl sc 170 final draft of my paper that I have due friday.
       In case you are wondering when I plan on explaining the title of this post, good news, its story time. I had a hard time deciding on what to title this post but I'm pretty happy with it, I think it does a good job of capturing the central theme of the story. I just want to start by saying, I am pretty proud of this story and I hope I did a good job of capturing the awkwardness that I felt throughout this experience but just know, it was classic. Ok, here it is, in all its awkward glory. So there is this one TA in one of my classes that I think is pretty attractive, and the other day I had the chance to spend a good 45ish minutes talking to her. That same day, Ammon texts me saying that we should do a double date to go see the leaves and such. I thought to myself, "huh, I should ask cute TA girl, I did enjoy talking to her after all." Now some of you are probably already thinking, "wow, thats a bad idea, she's your TA, if you screw up she might fail you". To that I say, yes. You are so right. It is a really terrible idea to ask out your TA. I didn't even know if she was single or not, she wasn't wearing a ring so I was fairly sure she wasn't married but that was all I had to go on. Now I'm sure this come as no surprise to anyone but, I went ahead and asked her anyway.
         By chance I had an opportunity later that evening to make good on my bad idea . It even started out problematic because we were walking up some stairs and of course I tripped, and not just the, "whoa, I kind of lost my footing" kind of trip. We are talking about a full out, "both feet are no longer under me, almost cracked my head open and died" kind of trip. Luckily I managed to catch myself so I was doing some sort of inclined push up type thing instead of actually hitting my head, but it wasn't exactly a shining moment for me. So we managed to get all the way up the stairs and at this point, even I was starting to second guess the wisdom of asking TA girl on a date. I mean, I did just make a pretty big fool of myself 20 seconds ago, it's unlikely that she forgot already. However, in a move that would have made my econ teacher hang his head in shame, I ignored the sunk costs and decided that I had come to far to just give up and limp home. No sir, I had come to ask this girl on a date and by golly, I was going to do it!
       As it turned out, the actual asking went a lot better than I expected. I mean sure, I didn't sound as smooth as I would have liked but that was a given, whenever I get nervous I tend to stumble over my words and rest assured, I did a good amount of word stumbling both times I talked to her that day. But I did manage to get out the when, where, and what and I even used the word "date" because apparently girls hate it when you don't say that. So then she said the only thing that a girl can say after such a stunning delivery from a charming young man such as myself. She said, "I'm so sorry but TA's aren't allowed to date students, otherwise I would go with you. Its against *acronym I've never heard of* regulations because I have control of your grades". Now that's not an exact quote but its pretty close. So then I said something about how it was fine and see you in class, blah blah blah. So there it is, I hope you enjoyed it, I know I did. Personally, I thought the whole thing was just hilarious. It was the perfect storm of failed efforts to ask a girl out and I couldn't help but appreciate it.

My life is a 3 step plan

       So, here we are, at the crossroads of potential once again. Right now, this post could be about anything, it may very well become one of the greatest pieces of literature ever conceived of by mankind. Or it could just become another piece of proverbial toilet paper, stuck to the shoe of mediocrity. Unable to even fulfill its intended purpose of wiping the backside of.... ok maybe this analogy is going too far. The point is, this post could be great or it could just end up being, well, less than crap.
       As you may remember from my last update on life, I had a whole lot going on school-wise during the last couple weeks. Well, those days have come to an end, for a few days anyway. And not really over exactly, just slowed down. The good news is I got A's on 3 of the 4 tests I had. The bad news, that fourth test was a real killer. But oh well, what's done is done. I guess.
       Right now is actually 1 am and I'm not even procrastinating any homework by writing this blog so I'm going to save most of what I was planning on writing for another day. Perhaps I will even break this tradition I seem to have going on of only writing once a month and do an update in a couple days, who knows? But I want to share this little exchange my sister and I had on facebook the other day. Some of you have probably seen it, but I kind of wanted to preserve it so I decided to post it here. In my family we sometimes like to play this game where you come up with a 3 step plan but leave out the second step that would explain how to achieve your goal. It seems dumb I know but just read on, you'll understand.

• • 
    
• 
  

  Kayla Walke

  Brother dear. I have a wonderful three-step plan. I'm sure you will approve.
  
  Step 1: We drop out of college.
  Step 3: We make millions of dollars.
  
  I've come up with two-thirds of the plan. You just contribute step 2 and we'll be golden.

   ·  · See Friendship · October 12 at 8:36pm near Provo
  

  • 
    

    You, Holly Woods Meek, Cynthia Sun and 2 others like this.
  • • 
      

      Kayla Walke Don't just like it. You don't contribute and you aren't getting a cut!
      

      October 12 at 8:37pm ·  ·  1 person
    • 
      

      Becky Walke-Bond Step 2: Cut your aunt Becky Walke-Bond in on the goods!!!!
      

      October 12 at 8:45pm · 
    • 
      

      Tyler Walke Ok ok how about this, I've created a 3 step plan for how to execute step 2 of your plan.
      Step 1: buy a Bobby pin, two pokémon cards and a can of peaches on the Internet
      Step 3: carefully hide the evidence of our wrong doings so that nobody ever learns of the terrible, dark misdeeds of our past.
      
      That's all I got. Step 2 is all yours.
      

      October 12 at 8:46pm · 
    • 
      

      Kayla Walke Okay. Got it.
      
      Step 1: Take a suspicious road trip to Canada.
      Step 3: Solve world hunger. Tell no one.
      
      Ideas for step 2?
      

      October 12 at 8:59pm ·  ·  1 person
    • 
      

      Valerie McGee Walke I think due to lack of planning you should both keep studying. K, how about that ochem test?
      

      October 12 at 9:01pm ·  ·  1 person
    • 
      

      Kayla Walke I've been studying for hours Mom! I get a break once in a while. Besides, if the series of 3 step plans work out, silly ochem won't matter.
      

      October 12 at 9:02pm ·  ·  1 person
    • 
      

      Tyler Walke of course! canada, it was always going to be canada.
      Step 1: travel deep into canadian rockies in search of gold
      Step 3: ride out of the woods on a now tame big foot. Dirty, scratched, but victorious, raising the basket of genetically altered tomatoes high above our heads.
      

      October 12 at 9:10pm · 
    • 
      

      Valerie McGee Walke You guys make me laugh! :)
      

      October 12 at 9:12pm ·  ·  1 person
    • 
      

      Kayla Walke Woah there. The genetically-altered tomatoes actually correspond to solving world hunger. Careful, we don't want to get too close to actually finishing step 2.
      
      Step 1: Circumnavigate the globe using only a dollar-store compass, hatchet (the book, not an actual hatchet), and a rubber band.
      Step 3: Create transatlantic and pacific trade between the US and Atlantis.
      

      October 12 at 9:16pm · 
    • 
      

      Tyler Walke well, steps 1 and 3 should be related to steps 1 and 3 of the previous post because they are supposed to help connect it somehow, thats what makes it a viable step 2. the trick is to make it have a connection, yet still be totally random so that step 2 is open to interpretation the next time around. that way if we actually write it all out in order, it would make some sort of twisted sense. notice i didnt say how we got from looking for gold to riding out on big foot. hope that wasnt too confusing but i think you get the idea. anyway...
      
      Step 1: carefully preserve the african crickets we killed with tweeties made from the pages of hatchet and the rubber band, we'll need the protein during the long months ahead as we begin our trek across the sahara
      Step 3: wonder how kayla managed to get a bigger machine gun than me as we mow down hoards of angry atlantians that have come to protest the globalization made possible by the legislation passed by congressman bigfoot and myself.

       So there it is. As it turns out, that was some kind of annoying to format all that facebook stuff, you would think it would just be a simple copy paste but no such luck. Sometimes I feel like my life is a 3 step plan (hence the name of this blog post), I know where I am, and I pretty much know where I want to be, but I have no idea what step 2 is. It's quite possibly the worlds greatest joke. But hey, maybe Kayla and I are on to  something here, maybe we do just need to take a crazy leap into the unknown and see what happens. Anybody up for a trip to the Canadian Rockies to pan for gold?

Texanism Explained and Minor Details From my Life

Well, its been about a month since my last post. That's mostly because school started and I've suddenly become super busy. It always amazes me how I can do homework all day and still never be quite where I feel I need to be. Its something like surfing, I feel like I'm riding a wave of due dates, always on the brink of disaster and being buried alive by the unforgiving ocean of what I'm expected to accomplish. Ok, to be honest, I was going for a poetic/emo sound in that last line. How did I do? It's a little goofy but I think the imagery is nice, don't you? Actually, I'm doing pretty good in school so far, despite having lots of homework things are great, I even enjoy that homework sometimes. Except for accounting, that class sucks, mostly because its fairly monotonous so far. But luckily its just one class, most of my course load this semester is poli sci stuff. I'm majoring in international relations and in half my classes basically I get to sit around and argue about world politics with people. Its great!

My new ward is pretty awesome too, its full of cool people (and quite a few very attractive girls). I have a calling on the Publicity committee which basically means that I have no calling, so that's nice, I have enough going on right now. I have 3 sets of people to home teach, and that is one set more than my last ward. It's more work but I don't mind, I really like home teaching because its basically just an excuse to hang out with people that I would hang out with anyway.

Returning back to school topics, I stumbled upon an interesting discovery the other day. I was reading an article about nationalism for pl sc 150 and it was talking about how much we characterize someone based on their nationality. It talked about how, when living abroad, people are more likely to be identified by their country of origin than anything else. For example, we would identify someone as "the German guy" when that is really the least descriptive thing we could say. Consequently, people living abroad are more likely to identify themselves by their nationality and have a stronger sense of patriotism because of it. Now, you may not care about any of that but I was thinking about how much this idea applies to Texans. The media has done a great job over the last several decades of building up the image of Texas through western movies and the like so that now when I talk to people at BYU a lot of times they say things like, "oh, you're from Texas huh? I bet you think your state is pretty great don't you?" Now, I'm not a big "Texas pride" kind of guy, but when people start talking about your home like that, no matter where you're from, you feel the need to defend it. This and other types of comments creates a cycle that feeds on itself and leads to things like putting Texas flags everywhere and such. That's my opinion anyway, I could be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.

Ok that's all I have time for right now. I have to go do more homework type stuff, I have 4 tests and 2 papers all due in the next week. Yeah, I'm not too happy about that. You might be wondering how I even have time to write a blog post right now and its simple really, I'm procrastinating. And now I'm going to stop procrastinating and do my homework. Well... I'm going to stop writing this post anyway.

when dishwashers attack!

Well, its been a couple weeks since my last/first post. I suppose I should write another one. Here's the 30 second version for those of you who dont really care about the details (which begs the question, why are you reading at all). I'm still unemployed, provo is awesome, my dishwasher exploded, school needs to start soon, angry birds is waaay to addicting, not all food is happy food, i want class to start now, and I'm still not married. That last one was really for my parents, its a pretty constant concern of theirs. I've made a few technical changes to my blog layout since my first post as well. The most noticeable being the background image of the jungles of ecuador, I'm proud to say I took it myself.

Also, I changed over to my new apartment at chatsworth, heres a couple of pictures of my new digs.

Heres my room its (mostly) unpacked now!

Mmmm k, so, I still dont have a job. Remember that interview I had before? It didnt work out, I couldnt get the materials to open that I had prepared for the interview and it was all down hill from there. When you are applying for a tech job, it is a bad sign if you cant even get your own program to open so I wasnt too surprised when I didnt get it but that means I have to start the whole process over again. One rejection email was particularly telling, it said something like, "we are sorry, but the position has been filled, we had over 80 applications". I mean geez, over 80? How am I going to compete with that? So my quest continues.

Luckily, this quest is going on in Provo, which means that even if I dont have a job, at least I always have something to do. Ammon has been between apartments the last few days and he has been staying with me at chatsworth until Dan shows up and that has been a lot of fun. Dan says hes getting in tonight but I'll believe it when I see it. I have other roommates here but they havent made much of an appearance so far. For some reason though, we dont have any dish soap in the apartment. We have every other cleaning supply, including dish soap that most people have sitting on the counter and that you arent supposed to use in the dishwasher. But not the detergent kind. Which has been a bother because who wants to wash dishes by hand right? So Ammon tells me that if you use a quarter as much soap, you can actually use the other kind of dish soap in the dishwasher and it will be just fine. He was wrong.  There was this book from my childhood that I love called That's Good, That's Bad. It was a great book, and I'm reminded of it when I think about the whole experience. "I cleaned the dishes. Thats good! but the dishwasher exploded. Thats bad! But now the floor is clean too. Thats good! but it was a pain to clean up the suds. Thats bad! but it was pretty flippin hilarious. Thats good!" In the end, it was a funny, but I dont think I will be doing it again any time soon.

Despite Provo being an exciting place and all, it is a little more dead than I'm used to right now, so there are moments that arent as exciting as they could be. Google+ has angry birds on it and you can compete against your friends. Now, angry birds is addicting enough, but throw in the competitive bit, and well, Ammon and I have been playing a little more than is probably considered healthy. On a side note, i still prefer Facebook to Google+, just throwing that out there so you know where my loyalties lie. I just realized that most of the things I want to write about happened around the apartment. Thats weird, but thats where all the funniest stuff has gone down. I have left at least a few times in the last few weeks though. Just last night I went out with friends to see some awesome music at some little restaurant place I've never heard of before. The great thing about Provo is its very musically inclined so its easy to see some pretty great local stuff, usually for free, if you know where to look.

Ok now that I've proved that I left the apartment at least once in the last couple weeks, back to tales from the apartment. I was sitting on the couch eating pie straight from the tin (it was on sale at Smiths because it was old, gotta love the managers special!) and drinking milk from the jug, both of which I do because of a desire to not wash dishes, when Ammon just started laughing at me. I was a little taken aback by this outburst and so I inquired as to what the heck he found so dang entertaining about the way I eat. As it turns out, it was a rather insightful observation. He said that some foods are depressing foods, and a person cant help but look depressed eating large amounts of pie and milk unless its at some sort of holiday thing like Christmas or Thanksgiving.  Other foods such as yogurt, are happy foods because its hard to look unhappy while eating it. It as a pretty funny thing to say and I'm not sure that I agree with it 100% but it made me think, thats for sure. Consequently  the next day I got sick and threw up for the first time in 4 years, I was suspicious that the pie was the culprit. However, I disproved that theory the day after I got better by eating about a quarter of the pie for lunch and not throwing it up. Sure, I could have tried a small bite to see if it made me queasy but go big or go home right? Alright, thats it for now, more to come as I feel so inclined to report.

Whats left of the pie (the box says its peach but its clearly apple)