Songs For Your Bowels

Since living in China, I've had people at home ask me about my experiences living here. Thinking about it, one would usually hope to hear some story about a great cultural experience where I saw something that, "I'll never forget," or that "My life has been forever changed."

While I would like to tell them such things, I usually opt for a much different path:

My bowels.

Yes, when people ask me what is going on in China I tell them about my current bowel movements. Basically since living here, my GI tract has decided that it was no longer going to function at 100% ability and instead function at about, I'd say, 36%. All the plumbing is seriously jacked up.

Since I started spending an inordinate amount of time sitting down wishing I could just die instead of enduring the bathroom agony, I began thinking of inspiration or motivation. Purely, the motivation to try and get through your bowel movement that has quarantined you to the toilet seat. I figured that everyone in the world poops and that I'm not the only one who has had problems. I would even venture to say that everyone has, at one point, sat on a toilet for much longer than they desired to. With this in mind, I decided that the world needed a motivational playlist to get through this. This way, when you rest your hands on your head and wish that this moment in your life would cease to exist, you can listen to some tunes that will power you through...your dump.

1. Sweet Nothing (feat. Florence Welch) by Calvin Harris

Because maybe you've had sweet nothings for long enough. Yes, you GI tract. Please stop giving me sweet nothing.

2. Radioactive by Marina and The Diamonds

We all know that you've been in the bathroom for about a half hour. It's quite obvious that anyone else who wants to enter in the next 3 hours needs a hazmat suit.

3. Lonely Boy by The Black Keys

Just listen. Listen. This will help you when you're crying and realize that you--YOU are the lonely boy. Hopefully, you won't be alone for long.

4. Gimme More by Britney Spears

Gimme more! OoooOooo!

5. Mirror by Justin Timberlake

I can see you sitting there, looking at yourself in the mirror--CAUSE I DON'T WANNA LOSE YOU NOW, I'M LOOKIN' RIGHT AT THE OTHER HALF OF ME.

6. Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall

There definitely is some serious waterfall going on...

7.I Feel It All by Feist

You're feeling it all. Just...so many feels.

8.Die Young by Ke$ha

That's really all you're hoping for right now. You thought it was a good idea to eat that block of cheddar cheese. Boy, you were wrong...

9.Let's Have A Kiki by The Scissor Sisters

"I'm gonna let you have it--NOT" said the intestines.

So there you have it. A quick playlist that you can jam to and try and survive your short isolation from the real world while you enter the world of the porcelain throne. There isn't any rule that says you have to agree with me on any song in this list, I'm just trying to help. So put on your game face and step up to the plate. Because in the game of porcelain thrones, you win...or you die.

The Brownies of My Life

Do you guys know about avoidance tactics?  You know, the things you do (consciously and subconsciously) to help you get out of a situation that causes your brain anguish and discomfort.  Usually used when people are experiencing disgust, fear, anxiety, depression, etc.

WELL GUESS FREAKIN' WHAT?!

This is one, right now.  This very second.  This second too.  And this one.  Aaaaaaaaand--ok I'll stop.

You guys know that I'm supposed to be studying for my motivation and emotion test tomorrow so I'm using justification by using vocabulary and actual approaches to emotion while writing this.  See how I earlier explained avoidance with different approaches to emotion?  Gah haha, I'm so sneaky.  I'm secretly making you more learn-ed in the psychology field.  Kind of like how I make baked goods and give them to all my friends to make them fat  really really happy. Golly, I'm the best.

So since I'm avoiding more emotion jargon (and I will be throwing more into here), I obviously have something I'd like to spew out onto my laptop.  No, no more vomit on the laptop tonight, just finger taps.

Just yesterday afternoon, I had the chance to attend a homecoming of one of my good friends as he returned from his LDS mission.  Now, I often find these gatherings (apart from the religious aspect) to basically be big high school reunions.  Which got me thinking about how grown up I am.  Or the complete opposite.  Yeah, that one, definitely that one.

You know, I often look at myself and say, "Damn Ryan, you're lookin' mighty fine in that sweater vest today."

"Why thank you me, but you really need to learn some boundaries and stop stroking my knee."

 "Also, Ryan, look at how mature you are, you're the epitome of maturity with your well organized life and such."

"...Please stop talking to me like that, me."

Sometimes, I find that I put myself on some sort of snobbish pedestal and everything underneath it are the things deemed "too immature."  Things like going streaking in a cemetery, telling poop jokes, eating a whole bag of chips, and laughing at a kid falling down  (Think about it, you know it's a little funny. I heard you do a silent guffah.).

How did I get to this point? Thinking about it, I guess it would be the environment in which I am currently residing in.  Telling a poop joke in class is usually deemed inappropriate by my peers, especially if my mouth is full of a bag of Garden Salsa Sun Chips.  But are they really as distinguished as I think they are?

Which brings us back to Sunday.  Surrounded by my old friends, I found myself giggling at a kid falling on a trampoline and telling dirty jokes.  I FIT GYNECOLOGIST INTO A SENTENCE. Now tell me when that happens without awkward tones and a lot of use of the word "it" and "it's" involved.

I'm adding it to the list of accomplishments I have by my bed. The other two are knit a scarf and not slap a kid in class yet.  Shooting for the stars you guys.

I enjoyed all of this as well.  This wasn't some pained activity like watching a Kristen Stewart movie, but an more along the lines of baking a pan of brownies, waiting approximately three seconds for it to cool, and pouring the entire thing down my esophageal tract.

Ryan, doesn't that hurt?

Well yes, it does.  But here's the thing: As much as I love eating an entire pan of brownies, I can't do it everyday.  Along with the obvious obesity/diabetes problems I would probably incur (along with my burned throat), I would have to have a brownie fund as to not go into serious brownie debt.  Then the brownie mafia would come after me and bake me to a gooey perfection before breaking my legs.

...so I got a little off track there, but I think I understand myself.  Being goofy for a little bit is fun, even beneficial, but I can't do it forever. Where would I get if I didn't take any situation seriously? I would start to have diabetes of the life.

But these guys brought me back to that dirty 15 year old I was.  Or wasn't, I guess I get to be him now, I can't really remember.  We all got to join together and soak up each other's immaturity and realize how grown-up we aren't.  All of us were figuring out how our lives were going to play out and YOU KNOW WHAT? Our slight immaturity helped us to downplay life's oncoming shits.  Grad school applications are less daunting, job choices seem endless, and I can still eat anything I want. We all got to be Peter Pan for a time.

Until we had to return to reality.

I guess I'm just trying to illustrate how moderation is key.  We need to appraise the situation, deem it appropriate for whatever behavior we would like to exhibit, and then exhibit that behavior.  Paraphrasing Magna Arnold, we can appraise the situation or object, and assess what costs and benefits we can personally get from it.*

 Me every Friday night. Victory.

But knowing myself, I have a nasty sweet tooth that I haven't outgrown yet. So you know I'm going to down a pan of social "brownies" whenever I get the chance. Then I'm going to rub my chocolate stained face all over you and laugh like a kid seeing a dog poop on a baby.

Haha. Poop.




*BAM.  Look at me keep sneaking my test material into this post.  Like. A. Psychology. Boss (But-not-licensed-in-any-way-or-affiliated-with-the-APA-kind-of-boss).

Let's Take A Walk

I decided that the small town Cedar bug is starting to get to me.  One strain in particular that tells me that walking around any dark neighborhood at night is decently safe and that I'm not going to get murdered/mugged/________(insert maiming activity here).

Which brings us to our walk last week on Saturday night.

If I ever happen to venture up to Salt Lake, I always find myself generally going to the same place on Saturday night with a good group of people.  This night was no exception.

So, I found myself hanging out with some good friends and we decided to go to the club we usually attend on Saturdays.  Weird thing was, there was something not terribly fun about the flashing lights and loud music that night though.  You see, right before this, I had attended the film, The Master.  I had never heard of this movie and I only saw it because in line at the movies with my friend, we talked to the strangers in front of us who had just bought tickets for the next showing of that movie and they raved about how great it was.  Thus, we bought tickets, entered the theater, and took our seats.

Let's just say the next two hours and fifteen minutes were...existential.

That became the word of the night: existential.  Of all the movies (which this one I'd recommend to see) to see that night, it had to be the one that made me think. THINK.  About. My. Damn. Life. Come on world, the weekends are for turning off those thoughts that make me worry about what I'm going to do with my life.  I always just end up at death.  I skip everything else good that happens in your life and I'm just dead.

So here I am at a raucous place of sin, sitting on a chair on the patio thinking about my ultimate demise, so you can imagine why I wasn't having a spectacularly peachy time.  As the night wore on, one of my friends decided to head home so I volunteered to walk them to their car. You know, in case they broke their femur on the way or something.

With the quiet hum of an engine, my friend headed off into the night and I was left outside, hearing the steady beat of the bass from the music inside.  As I began to walk back towards the club, I stopped and started thinking. When the thinking starts, we all know it's going to downhill from there.

I continued to walk.  Past the club, down the street, and I just kept going. A few blocks later, I walked into a 7 Eleven, cursed that they didn't have the pina colada slurpee flavor, and settled for the largest size with a cherry flavor. I then took the opportunity to do a city smart thing to prevent me from losing my valuables.

Take note: Put your valuables such as phones, credit cards, and cash, into your underwear.  Most muggers won't check there since they'll ask you to empty your pocket and/or purse/bag.  Hence, why you wear tighter underwear to become mugger-proof.  If you're a mugger reading this, totally a lie. People don't carry valuables on them. And I might have pepper spray. And special-ops training.  But seriously, this shit works.

I'm sure you guys can see my gears clicking since I took the physical preparation of being mugged yet I continued to walk. I can't really explain it either other than the fact that I wanted some quiet time in nice weather to sort through my own muddled mind (and I didn't feel like paying to get back into the club).  My mind was determined to ignore all those public service announcements in my head that told me not to walk downtown* by myself.

Don't think I didn't have any thoughts of being stabbed by a hobo, but those thoughts were overpowered by the thoughts about life.  I began reflecting which is probably one of those building blocks of existentialism.  Where would I be if I had never moved out of Salt Lake? Can my major take me to where actually want to go? Where is that anyway, the place I want to go to? Am I happy with what I'm doing or deceiving myself by staying busy all the time? How religious am I or do I even consider myself religious? Who is this Mitt Romney and is his hair actually real? (Jk, we all know he's a robot. No? I gotta read the paper more...).

Of those, I contemplated my major the most or at least my plans for the coming months.  Graduating in may means if I'd like to attend grad** school, I need to take the GRE, which means I have to prepare to take that and if I fail that THEN I CAN DO NOTHING MORE AND MIGHT AS WELL FIND MY CARDBOARD HOME ON THE STREET I'M WALKING ON.  That, or pursue another degree in a field I like more where I can pursue a Master's in that field.

I began to feel insignificant in the city as I quietly sipped and walked along, the only noises far off being police siren's and the sound of my footsteps behind me. But we all have to get to this point, right? Where you questions yourself when you find yourself at these turning points.  Sometimes, you just have to sit at that crossroads for a little longer, especially if you have the time to do so.  Sometimes, you have to make that quick decision to get up and keep walking until you face an outcome.

I ventured onward and the only berating from a stranger I received was a few words in Spanish.  As a car passed me, they slowed down, stopped, and yelled at me in Spanish.  I stared, they stared, we all stared, and they drove on.

Potential kidnappings avoided in-counting: 1.

My face started to become wet suddenly and I looked up only to be sprayed in the face more by the sprinklers of the capitol building. I had walked into the avenues and here I was at the capitol building on a Saturday night, or Sunday morning really (it was about 2 in the morning by this time). At this point, my city senses turned backed on and I decided to hide sit behind a small wall that shielded the landing from the street.  I sat there until my friends called me, wondering where I had gotten off to. They then came and snagged me from my potential new home, ending my short existential adventure.  Probably for the best though, since any more reflecting and I might have become vegan or something like that.


Only slightly unfortunate since I had picked a nice spot on the hill for my cardboard mansion.

Sippin' on a slurpee hiding from the popo. Thug life, I think.

Hopefully now you (the reader) are thinking about your life and you probably hate me for it. The sick existential cycle continues! Please only send hate-mail in the form of baked goods.

*To get a feel of where I was, I think I started out on about 200 North and...300 West?  Not terribly scary, not terribly safe either. These are my best guesses since I wasn't particularly paying attention to the street signs, I was going off of landmarks.  We all know that is the best kind of direction keeping.  Just going in One direction.  Get it? One Direction, like the boy band.  I was trying to appease to any tween girls out there. I have a theory that if you shouted that into an elementary school loud enough you could start a full on riot.

**I automatically first wrote that as Grad school, not grad school.  You can see how I feel subconsciously about the idea of grad school. Like some kind of sacred idol.

Karmic Justice

It has become one of those Sundays.  You know, the ones where you attribute your laziness and lack of hygiene to it merely being Sunday.  For some reason, us lazies all universally think that the distance of the sun from the earth on this particular day makes us extra tired and IT IS A PERFECTLY LEGITIMATE EXCUSE.  Or not.  Maybe it's flying spaghetti monster magic or where Jupiter is in the sky, but I'm blaming all of the above because I finally dragged my sorry butt out of bed and made it to the library to attempt some study time.  We can all see how that's going, MUAHAHA.  *ahem*

Anyways, this was not, of course, before making four hot dogs and a hamburger.  I slightly regret this decision because of the sodium content.  Totally could have gotten more out of that bag of Cooler Ranch Doritos.  I'm pretty sure that's how nutrition works, you try and get the most out of your food before you get diabetes and get wheels for feet.  I'm also obviously aware of all the modern medicine techniques for loss of limbs (I gotta stop watching so much Mad Men...).  I do get my choice of rims, right?

But do you know what is great?  I can actually open my mouth to put this food in where it be digested and turned into bile.

Now gather up children and get on my magic school bus* where we travel back two weeks to a Friday morning when Ryan woke up and screamed.  I being Ryan in case you know anyone else by that name.  I yelled...very masculine-ly.  Grrrr, football and camping--ow my face!

Me before the incident.

Of course, my food-hole only opened about an inch since the scream incurred due to a sudden crack in my jaw.  For the rest morning, I tried massaging my jaw since this has occasionally happened before but this was on a whole new level.  Breakfast was shoved into my face so as to get some kind of energy into me since I was going to be traveling to the Salty Lake only hours later.

BUT PLOT TWIST.

All of this food that was shoved into my unwelcoming mouth and down my intestines was not sticking--in any sense of the word.  I was experiencing what one would call the "the shits."  Basically anything and everything that was going in was being blendi-fied and then I'd just sit and cry throwing my fists in the air and cursing everything that ever existed.

I can talk about my bowel issues with you guys, right?  I'm pretty sure we're close enough for that, internet friends forever!  *as I scoot closer to you and handcuff your wrist to mine...* NEVER LEAVE ME.

So basically my body decided that it wanted nothing in it all weekend since my mouth was locked up like a psychopath's basement and my other end had become a new Niagra.  I, of course, refused to have any of this and even attempted to eat a Chipotle burrito.  Because you know if you ignore a problem it goes away!

For those who have been to Chipotle, you know that the burritos have the circumference of a newborn baby's head and I CONQUERED...almost.  Which is frustrating considering I used to be able to almost fit my entire fist in my mouth.

With all this unpleasantness falling upon me at once, I began to wonder what I had done to deserve it.  It OBVIOUSLY wasn't something I had eaten or a stress condition, so it must be attributed to the universe and what I had put out there.  But who had I wronged?

Was it the kid on crutches I didn't hold the door open for?  In my defense, I honestly thought he was going in the opposite direction so by the time he hobbled to my door I had speed-walked by.

Maybe it was how curtly I had responded to a female student in my statistics class when she had asked me what a certain symbol was by drawing it in the air.  I also responded with an air symbol that was probably easier to read.  Just kidding mom!  I made her cookies and knit her a sweater with the symbol and it's meaning on it.

It must have been the time when I told my friend I couldn't hang out because I needed to catch up on some homework.  Did I have homework to catch up on?  Yes, but it's like the remote whispered sweet nothings into my ear and told me to just keep pressing play on my Netflix queue.  Next thing I knew, it was two days later and I had eaten half a box of Life cereal.  Literally, the box.

Oh, now I have it.  All the times I had taken my younger sister and sat on her, smothered her, thrown her, put my socks on her face, put her face in my armpit, or eaten her food, must have added up and come back to bite me in the ass.  By the way, happy birthday tomorrow smelly.

I'm all better by now though.  After a visit to the doctor and some heating pads/ice cubes on my face, my body has resumed its normal functions and I no longer fear being lactose intolerant.  All this pain at once just got me wondering whose toes I had stepped on to get everything at once.  It even made me consider being more observant of my behavior so that if I do receive some of that karmic justice, I might receive it in smaller doses.  Things like stubbing my toe or watching any movie with Amanda Seyfried in it.

But that way of life is literally impossible unless I tied myself up now and someone just had to feed me every day.  Even then, I'd probably be pissing off that guy.

So, I guess I'm just going to have to deal with the occasional flare-up of karma since that must be how it is for me.  Some people get the little ones dispersed over time, I get a large one for one weekend (and yes, my jaw locked for 3 days, I hated all food that wasn't flat).  Kind of like how some people go bald slowly and some drop it like it's hot.

I'm going to drop it like it's hot.





*Anyone remember that show and how your teacher would try and legitimately try and use it as a source of knowledge so they could maybe get 10 minutes of peace and quiet?  Bless those teachers and the creators of this cartoon for teaching me that learning doesn't occur unless you have a kooky red-haired teacher who wears earrings corresponding to the lesson.  I'm waiting for little guillotine earrings when A Tale of Two Cities is read.

This Yogurt Tastes Like Poop

Yet I'm still eating it.  The mean thing is that is looks like whipped cream with strawberries, but it tastes like poop.

POOP.

I stupidly picked up the last carton at the store last night thinking, "It's not vanilla, but I'm sure it will taste just fine."  WRONG.  Now I must suffer through every single bitter bite until the carton is gone.  Or...here kitty kitty...

Just kidding, I only let my cat eat bugs and rocks.

This is really how you're starting a back to school post?  Yes, yes I am.  You know, I don't think talking about yogurt (yoghurt?) is the best way to welcome the new school year (it's definitely yogurt, spell check is getting angry at me.).  Shutup and go eat my poop yogurt me.

I guess I'm back in the Ceeds (I'm going to make it happen people) now and the school year has begun.  Joyous occasion?  Eh...let's start with new occasion, I can work with that.

I'm back of course after a 3 week trip to Salty Lake where I actually took the cat with me.  I made the mistake of letting him out of his cat carrier on the way there.  He immediately commandeered the car, held a gun to my head and told me I must go 60 to 80 mph or the car would explode along with a bus of school children. Did I mention I was driving with Keanu Reeves as well?  Let's just say I didn't make the same mistake on the way back to Cedar.

I guess I really could be talking about how excited I am to be back in school or how this is such an opportunity or I really need to burn the evidence in the backyard...YEAH, all that stuff, but I'm not.  I'm tired and it is day three.  THREE.  Uno, dos, THREE. Why can't my life be like a movie and college goes by in 90 minutes? I WANT TO BE REESE WITHERSPOON AND BE A SASSY LAWYER.  Wait, I'd rather be anyone in Good Will Hunting.  A Beautiful Mind?  So I guess now I'm going to wake up and realize I haven't actually been going to school for 3 years but have been sitting in my basement chewing on cardboard.

Is that a better alternative?  I'll let you decide.

All right, cardboard: check.  Cat joke: check.  Dated movie references: check.  Poopy yogurt: check.

Do I even have to talk about classes?  Fine: class class, paper paper, read read read, walking everywhere.  I think that did it justice.

I guess this is how school is going to start.  Can I use YOLO ironically or is that against some kind of rule I don't know about.  Whatever, the rules?  I break them.

YOLO FOREVER