DanHagen.com

Or, more accurately, the top ten reasons why I haven’t updated my blog in over a month.

For some pretext: Upon logging in today for the first time in a while, I realized that my version of Wordpress is already outdated. Way outdated. I must have been behind as far as one or two versions (Eek!). School and work have been occupying a lot of my time, which is alarming enough as it is… and using deprecated software is just plain uncomfortable. Woe is me.

Now that I have the updated files copied onto my server, I can finally sit down and write a poorly-structured, half-baked blog post that creates the illusion of me still holding interest in my own web site. And what better thing there is to write about than the fact that I’m so lazy?…

…or, rather, the fact that I’ve been so absorbed in other activities unrelated to the computer, therefore cementing the excuse that I’ve actually been more busy than I’ve been lazy.

First of all, there’s my job. It was only a few months ago when being an unemployed teenager made me worry-free, until my first job decided to walk by and impregnate my schedule with many days of working, smelling like pizza and dealing with the odd, fascinating, and loopy people that are my coworkers. Perhaps this trade-off of giving my time into working at Papa Murphy’s is worth it (rather than simply earning money, I think it does build character). Hmm… that was a pretty corny thing to say.

Then, there’s Miranda. What can I say? This girl is pretty much the light of my life right now. She is, overall, an awesome person to be around - as well as an influence on many of the things I do and think about. I can’t help realizing how she’s made me look at life and how she’s helped me through different situations, big and small.

Sleeping. O glorious sleep. Taking three-hour naps in the afternoon is great. Try it sometime.

Alcohol and substance abuse. Just kidding.

Trance, house, and anything to that extent is awesome. I am an electronic music fag, and if you’re like me, then you’ve realized how abysmal some of the school dances are simply because of the tracks they play. And don’t trick me into believing that you listen to real dance music. Do you enjoy the song “Everytime We Touch“, by Cascada? If so, then you fail. You fail miserably. Go listen to something awesome.

Spring is beginning in full force. Who doesn’t want to go outside and enjoy the warmer weather? I’m tired of Utah’s screwed-up weather patterns. I just want it to end.

I totally forgot what I’m trying to list here. Oh well. Cold pizza sounds good right about now.

After the transition to high school, I’ve come across an important social life skill that all students must learn at one time or another. Well, ok… it’s not absolutely necessary - unless you actually plan on taking a date to the prom. In this case, it’s actually quite critical.

I don’t know about you, but from where I come from, there’s a particular set of rules you must abide by when asking someone to the dance. First of all, it is absolutely unacceptable to simply walk up to your date and ask them in person. This gives them the impression that you are an uncreative douche who probably has a job, a life, or anything else that consumes a good amount of your time (such as calculus homework).

To explain: No one wants to go to the dance with someone with the guts to verbally ask someone to their face. This is why we have an (unofficial) rubric to follow when asking someone out. See below:

1. Have you used careful planning? It takes time and patience to plan out a wild and creative way to ask someone to the school dance.
2. Have you spent a minimum of twenty dollars? If you’ve barely spent anything on your little scheme, then you’re obviously not trying hard enough.
3. Is your invitation a pain in the ass to deal with? If all you did was quietly stick some forks in their front lawn and write your name on one of them so your date can find it, then it might not be tricky enough. Try covering their lawn with a thick layer of cement first, then bury the forks in the wet material.
4. Is your date pissed off at you on the inside? If so, then you’ve probably succeeded. Good for you.

This car clearly does not have enough post-it notes on it. Also, you shouldn’t reveal your name in such big letters.

The last bullet point listed above is very important. One of your main objectives is to make your friend invariably hate you because you did graffiti on their car and you wrote your name on it. Of course, they’re not actually going to express their anger at you (If they do, then screw them. They obviously don’t appreciate your humor).

As you may have gathered, it is important that you make them try to figure out on their own who you actually are. There are a number of applications in which you could do it this way. For example: Bake a large and delicious cake, and somewhere inside of it, hide a slip of paper with your name inscribed. Leave it on their doorstep with a message mentioning that they’ve been asked to the dance, but to figure out who, they must look inside of the baked good.

Your date has no choice but to eat the whole cake in order to find your name hidden inside. This will insure that he or she gets a nasty case of diarrhea over the span of at least a day or two, which will then lead to your date actually hating you (which was one of our initial goals).

Understand now? Good. I’m just gonna stop right here because I’m tired of making fun of my local customs. I just hope I got the general idea across.

Every once in a while, we come across something that invokes deep thought - something that influences our decisions and the choices we make in life. Although different things are interpreted different ways, the general idea is always perceived and we still become unique people because of that. It’s like scripture. A bible verse can be have so many spins on it that it basically just depends on what kind of mind you have.

Take for example: A video I came across on Youtube the other day. Even while others disregard it as nothing, I personally saw it as something with a much deeper allegory behind it. This is why I had the urge to share it. Perhaps you can be made as thoughtful and enlightened as I was after watching this.

Life has been going swell lately. I had a birthday party of epic proportions last Friday - which was just dandy - plus, Christmas break is right around the corner. Guess what that means? Over a week of sitting around and doing nothing. It will be absolute bliss.

Now, with that said, I feel it is an appropriate time to go off on memes and hot-topics that really make me pissed. In other words: I enjoy making fun of controversy and delivering proverbial punches in the gut to some of the more pathetic aspects of society. These may not apply to all of the following bullet-points, but it doesn’t matter. You probably already saw this coming anyway.

• Shutup about The Golden Compass. Oh, it’s anti-religious? Really? Out of all the anti-Christian, anti-Mormon, anti-whatever movies you could have picked from, you simply had to complain about this one… and yet, 99.9% of the people who even see this movie don’t seem to pick up any of the aforementioned connotations.
   
  Alright; maybe if you have an extreme case of OCD - or if you’re just extremely over observant - you might be able to see some kind of remote connection to anti-religion. From what I last heard, though, people aren’t even sure if The Golden Compass actually contains intentional themes of the sort. Then again, I haven’t really looked it up. (Probably because I have better things to do… like watching paint dry.)
   
  In all seriousness, you’re entitled to your own opinion. You can be against this movie. Just don’t be pretentious and annoy other people in the process.

 

• FaceBook tends to somewhat annoy me on a regular basis. Today, I rejected about 150 application requests. One hundred and fifty. Friends, why must you do this to me?! To make things clear: No, I don’t really give a crap about your movie tastes. I don’t give a crap about the music you like, either. And, no, I don’t care about “Who’s hot and who’s not”. Oh, did you just poke me? Then I’ll be damned if I ever poke you back.
   
  I could go on for a while about this - but I think you get the idea.

 

• I am not 16 yet, therefore I am not able to handle dating. In other news: I am fresh out of the womb of my mother, and I am still being fed milk from a bottle. Because I live in a Mormon community, there is a huge, restrictive mindset that blankets the school as well as the rest of the surrounding area. Written all over it: “You cannot date until you are sixteen years of age”. What stops me from dating right now?
   
  Now, I will admit that I do somewhat agree with this policy. I know some people who, as old as they are, still should not date because they are too immature. On the other hand, specific age restrictions are pretty lame. We all grow at different rates. We all mature at different times. Why, oh why do we have the need to set limits at exact ages and increments?
   
  I am not sixteen yet. However, my birthday is tomorrow, at around six or seven in the morning (to be accurate). Hmm, I’m not feeling ready right now. On the other hand, when I wake up in about ten hours - BAM, I should feel a good and drastic change.

 

• Wait a minute, wait a minute… Did someone just say a bad word? While we’re still on the topic of Mormons, it’s a good time to discuss yet another annoying aspect of my life that I deal with almost everyday.
   
  Go ahead and walk into any of the public schools in a diverse city like L.A. or New York, and you will hear people cussing as if it’s an art form.
   
  However, if I was caught using a loud expletive in seventh-period English, then I would be in deep humiliation. I can imagine it now: Silence, a few gasping noises, and all of my friends staring at me.
   
  Before I go any further, let me be quick to emphasize that I am indifferent to almost all religions. I’m not ripping on the LDS Church; I’m even Mormon myself. It’s a great community with good values, but the problem lies where people take some of these values to an extreme and they inadvertently repel me from my religious upbringing. As you’ve probably noticed, this is where topics like crude language and dating really stand out.
   
  A few days ago in my Multimedia class, my friend Donald was reading my blog, and he just happened to come across a place where I used the word “hell”. I won’t go into much detail (You’re probably getting bored already, right?), but basically what followed was a half-hour lecture on why he was so surprised at me for saying such a thing, and why I shouldn’t cuss anymore.
   
  I think the best response that worked on him was, “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
   
  Then, I told him “Run for the hills, Donald! There’s a bad word! GAH!” And now, friends, it is my job to cover up his eyes if anything remotely offensive pops up on his monitor.

I digress… it should probably seem a bit awkward to discuss some of these things on my blog, considering who actually reads it. But you know what? It’s good to vent. I want my friends to know that I love all of them, and finally: Have a great Christmas. Or Hanukkah. Or Kwanzaa. Or whatever floats your boat.

Do you ever use hair gel or hair spray? Maybe just occasionally? Only gel? Well, whatever. Assuming that you do use any of these products, let me ask you a question: Ever notice the stupid labels that companies deceptively slap on them? I can’t help wondering why they all have a “mega” hold, or a “super” hold, or a “maximum” hold. This is about all that’s available. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a “medium” hold, let alone a “light” or “weak” hold. Allow me to demonstrate.

Zooming up on this container of hair gel, it is clearly marked “maximum hold”. Maximum. For the record, the strength is displayed on a scale from one to ten! This stuff must be pretty friggin’ strong. I’d imagine that once applied, it could magically transform my hair into pipe cleaners for me to bend and sculpt as I please (You gotta admit; that would be pretty sweet). But, no. It doesn’t stop there.

You gotta love this. Looking at another container by the same company, we see that this is apparently “Mega Mega + Hold”. Unbelievable. Somehow they were able to surpass the maximum, simply by putting a plus-sign in front of the scale. Genius.

A different brand, a different type of gel. Upon closer inspection, it can apparently maintain “Maximum lift“. Lift? Alright. I don’t know what the hell that means, but yeah, alright.

Ooh. Here we have yet another “Mega Mega Hold” type of hair gel, just like the last one, except… look at the scale. The nine digit is highlighted, rather than the ten. Uh-oh. Inconsistent much?

After this particular analyzation, I think we can come to the conclusion that hair gel is pretty dang strong these days (My head is still spinning from the label that implied a hold over the maximum). I mean, wow. How is this even legal?

What bugs me even more - as I said earlier - is the fact that I can’t seem to find any hair gel that’s of a lesser strength. To illustrate my point and make it easier to comprehend, I went into GIMP and sketched up a crappy diagram.

What’s the point of all of those smaller numbers if you’re never going to use them? Pfft.

In the realm of web coding and design, the line between amateur work and professionalism is extremely blurry… a line that’s blurry enough to trick you into thinking that you need glasses.

Corny metaphors aside: Think about it. I believe the real designers here are the ones who bust open their favorite text editor and graphics program in order to create an attractive and standards-compliant layout, completely from scratch. On the other hand, many people simply acquire their own copy of Dreamweaver and immediately dub themselves a web-developer.

So, with this in mind, I can honestly admit that I’m not a professional. On a scale from beginner to expert, I would consider myself an intermediate (at the most). Do you believe me? Luckily, my friend Kilroy referred me to a nice list of reasons why I might be a hardcore web/graphics designer. I considered it worthy enough to post right here on my own blog. In addition, my responses to each of the tips will be written in non-bold style. Why don’t you click past the break and take a looksee?

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