The rise of cougars

Last night Tracey and I were watching television and we got sucked into what will become my summer guilty pleasure, Age of Love. Before you judge me for watching one of those lame dating reality shows, let me explain why it is so good. First, it is a train wreck on the level of Flavor of Love, but the ladies on this show are much classier than the Flavor of Love girls. They do not look like they just polished off a 40 of Old English seconds before the cameras were turned on. The second reason is not since Kim Bauer somehow got caught in a bear trap and was almost attacked in the second season of 24, have cougars been so prominent on a television show. Lets just say that they should have this sign in the ladies apartment.

For those of you who do not know about this awesome new phenomenon, a cougar is a lady of advanced age who refuses to admit that they are older. They often spend hours and hours at the gym to keep their bodies in good shape. This is necessary because they also wear the same clothing as their 16 year old daughters. They typically are on the prowl for younger men often in bars or other places with dim lighting. This lighting scheme is cougar camouflage, it prevents their prey from being able to determine the cougars age from their face and emphasizes the scantily clad cougar body. I found this helpful poster to identify a cougar but it is specifically for Canadian cougars so you may have to modify a few of them for the states.

Anyway, this show prominently features a pack of cougars against much younger women. There has only been one episode but the show looks like a winner.

Finally, on a completely unrelated note, I would like to share this awesome video of Steve Carell doing this video of the German who says nice things

I love lamp

So last night we were over to Tracey's parents house to see the baby before she is shipped via ups to California. Ups or they are driving, one of the two. Anyway, VH1 had the 40 greatest soft rock hits, and due to Tracey's weakness for list shows we ended up watching it. Now, Afternoon Delight was on this list and it is one of the dirtiest songs but in a sneaky way. I decided to post this awesome video for your Thursday morning

Anchorman - Afternoon Delight!

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My wife's obsession

First off I do not want anyone to think that I am disparaging my wife in any way for being obsessed with something. I would like to come clean that in the realm of becoming obsessed because I am about a million times worse. Once I get focused on something I will literally spend weeks researching it and spend all my waking time thinking about it until I get burned out. A perfect example of this was my obsession with the xbox 360. When it first came out, any time we were in Target I would come up with some excuse to walk by the electronics department just so that I could see if they had them in stock. I did this even though I had no intention of actually buying one. I have also blogged about my unhealthy obsession with Disney as well so I am comfortable with my history of obsession. I think this personality trait is rubbing off on Tracey because she has recently become obsessed with all things relating to cupcakes.

Now I have no idea when his started but it began to manifest itself a couple of weeks ago. Tracey suddenly began to spend hours (ok, so maybe minutes) searching the internet for the perfect cupcake recipes. Now since I am an experienced obesessor (I made that word up) I was quickly able to recognize the signs. First, wanting to make cupcakes every night despite the fact that her husband is roughly the size of an orca whale and definitely does not need more cupcakes, although I will be more than happy to eat them. Second, the increased purchasing of cupcake memorabilia. Now you may be thinking, what the hell is cupcake memorabilia and do such things even exist? The answer is yes and if it exists we own it now or will shortly. Again I have no room to complain because Tracey is an awesome wife that lets me have a Wii despite the fact that I am 27 and probably too old to own one. Finally, she spends a large amount of time on the internet searching for cupcake recipes. This is the most glaring because the internet is filled with awesome stuff to look at such as this video or pictures of unicorns and she is looking at recipes. It is not a problem unless she has a secret boyfriend whom she calls cupcake and then I am going to be super pissed.

Anyway, as far as obsessions go this is a pretty mild/awesome one because it provides me with plenty of desserty goodness so some day I can become as large as these people. (warning, do not click on this link if you are eating or planning on eating soon)

I don't know if you've noticed, but Ben seems to refer to BYU with a slight note of disdain. He really doesn't hate BYU, he just thinks some of the people are crazy. Ok . . . A lot of the people.

Often as a BYU student or alumni, you run into people like my siblings who dislike BYU and claim that they would have never gone there. (I often wonder how many of these people would have even been admitted.) I think part of these people just don't want to live in Utah County because of it's special social demographics. Some people think BYU is too Mormon . . . Uh, duh, it's a church school.

Some of these people say "I would never sign the honor code, it's so dumb. They can't tell me how to live my like" To that I say, nobody is forcing you to go there. If you don't like it. . . Don't go. However, some people do like it, so let them live their lives.

Other people LOVE BYU. It's a great school. You get a great education. Students are in the top 20 for the happiest college students. Granted it is more difficult to get into and once you arrive the competition can be fierce. Average ACT is 27.8 and the average GPA is 3.78. Students may be naive but they are no dummies.

I believe people like Ben have the best perspective. Ben's undergrad is from BYU and his Phd will be from the University of Utah. He has experienced both sides. BYU is full of crazy people and classes can be harder. The U is a bit more "normal" but the sometimes academic experience is less competitive. (I'm not saying it's bad . . . I'm just saying it's not as competitive)
BYU is full of REALLY young couples with lot's of kids (see Ben's Ikea post). I can't say anything bad about young mothers because my mom was only 19 when she had me (and look how I turned out) but sometimes I wonder what these people are thinking! I think it may be one of the only campuses in America where you can see babies in class on a regular basis. Sometimes I wonder why they don't adopt Disney World's stroller parking

Students at BYU also have their own language. It includes words like heck and fetch. Due to the missionary culture a lot of them also speak foreign languages. I can't tell you how many times I've walked across campus and heard guys speaking to each other in Spanish. I think they do this so they can freely talk about passing women.

Perhaps the strangest things about BYU are the mating rituals. Ben has already mentioned into nerd love. The weirdest thing I ever heard of was tunnel singing. That's right, students will go to tunnels on campus and sing (they like the acoustics). Believe it or not, this often constitutes a date. Mormons can be very musical people. (It's because nearly everyone is forced to take piano lessons) Sometimes this translates into loony behavior.

Recently I was studying in the student center. The room was full people quietly minding their own business, hunched over text books and laptops. All of sudden some douche bag decides that we would all benefit from his impromptu piano performance of a stylized hymn (you know this is the only song he knows and he memorized to impress people, specifically females). GAG!!!! I instantly IM'ed my husband who reminded me that this was the mating call of many BYU males. Unfortunately this ploy did not work as all the girls who would fall for it were attending the Tuesday devotional. My guess is that he made is way over to the Marriott Center to join his barbershop quartet where the attempted to snag women.

The funny thing is, this is that at BYU, the men might think they are chasing the women, but I assure you Mormon women sneaky. Just ask Ben.

Ikea thoughts

I know I have been posting like crazy recently but it will probably be dying down soon so enjoy, or hate, it while it lasts. I just wanted to share a couple of thoughts and maybe a video or two to help pass the time on a Friday.

So Last night Tracey and I decided that Thursday night might be an ok time to actually brave Ikea since it is the middle of the week and the crowds would not be as bad. Man were we wrong. I should have know how it would be when the 5 cars that got off the freeway in front of us all went the same direction but we drove all the way down there so we proceeded.

First off, the store is ginormous. To put in perspective how large it is, you could put all of the pregnant 18-19 year old BYU students belly to back in the place and you would almost be able to contain them. I know this because we saw a large portion of this population waddling around the store. Now after seeing the store I am amazed Ikea took this long to come to Utah. I mean they have free day care (which was already full causing parents to let their kids run wild in the aisles, I know I was shocked too), they have a "restaurant" that has kids meals for $0.99, and their furniture looks ok and is dirt cheap. You put all of those together in an area with 2 university and approximately 10,000,000 married couples in or barely out of their teens with 3 kids and another on the way and you have a recipe for success.

As for the furniture, it was exactly what you would expect. It is very minimalist, very cheap, and not so comfortable. In other words it is perfect for people that want their apartment to look really nice and don't care that their couch feels like it is filled with Swedish meatballs. They did have some cool accessories but I would stay away from the big furniture.

Ok, for some time wasters here is a link for a funny video of Paul Rudd on the Daily Show which reminds me I need to watch the Daily Show more. Here is another funny clip from Conan for those of you that have watched Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip