So I Don't Pay Tithing On My Tips From Stripping?

When I read the following article I was suprised to find that it wasn't our church denying to accept the tithe of a lottery winner, it just goes to show that giving money earned through non-christian acts to a christian church is looked down upon among most denominations.
Click on the link for the First Coast News report.

I promised I'd share silly things again.

Buyer Beware: University Courtyard, Rexburg Idaho

I've debated quite a bit on whether or not to post this but I decided it'd be important to make a post for prospective renters to find when researching Rexburg housing. This is my first serious post on this blog I believe, I apologize to my readers I'll return to posting crappy satire and videos of Kerri Strugg soon.

Rating: 1 out of 10; the reason this apartment complex receives a one is simply due to it's location across the street from the BYU-Idaho campus and it's newer condition. All other factors of this complex are negative and shows that the owner has one thing in mind; take money from the married Mormon college kids who have limited choices in terms of housing.

Why you shouldn't give this apartment complex your money:

1. Unethical business practices; in order to maximize their profit margin they have a revolving door of tenants that allows them to make substantial profits off of the $300 deposit each new tenant has to provide. They achieve this revolving door by requiring a 90 day notice to renew the lease and since these leases correspond with the terms of BYU-Idaho a tenant needs to make a decision to renew one month after living there before they sell your apartment to a new group of tenants. One could sum up their procedures as putting new tenants, who will need to pay the extra deposit, ahead of the current tenants on the priority list; where as all other apartment complexes in Rexburg, or in the galaxy for that matter, do it the opposite way.

2: Bad management; the managers, though amazingly nice people, are no help and do not have your best intentions in mind. Beware, if you're still silly enough to try this place, the Internet the managers want to sell for you is as slow as a dial-up modem and works 45% of the time. Not to mention, the managers will want you to put down one of those lucrative deposits on their Internet as well; there is no plausible reason for a deposit on Internet, perhaps they need to clean the internet's carpet as well.

3: High Rent: The rent for what you get at University Courtyard is preposterous. When we were there we had to pay $520 a month for what appeared to be a hallway with a kitchen and bathroom in the middle. Don't think it's the market, you can get two bedrooms in Rexburg for that price, in fact other Rexburg complexes with the same layout as Univervisty Courtyard go for around $375 a month and put their tenants first.

4: They will break the law in order to make money; this fact is probably the most disturbing of them all, although I'm truly at fault for actually being naive enough to think that these land-lords in BYUtopia would act as humans and not businessmen.

In our situation the owner denied us the ability to renew our lease even though we had a legal contractual agreement that said we could; for those of you who read reason number one you'd know why. In our lease there was a discrepancy on days to renew our lease, the first page stated 90 days but the inner-pages stated 60, and we asked to have our lease renewed before the deadline of 60 days which resulted in us being put on a wait list for our own apartment that had been sold to new tenants. This act was illegal. In terms of law, if there is a flaw in the contract that flaw goes against the contractor when being interpreted; thus meaning we legally had the right to renew our contract.

Of course, when I brought up this concern up to the manager personally he stated there are usually people in my wife and I's circumstance every time the leasing period ends. Which showed me that they've put forth effort to create this revolving door of tenants and also that they don't fear any legal action considering the tenants they exploit are college students who are in debt to their eyeballs thanks to tuition.

In conclusion; if you have any choice between University Courtyard and any other apartment, choose the other apartment. It is a sincere hope that Brigham Young University Idaho takes a hard look at the housing situation for married students, especially in regards to regulating them, because if they don't this could put a wrench in the gears of the growth machine we've been seeing since the school became a 4 year university. Feel free to comment and add your horror story or call me a complete and utter moron.

Related Links:
University Courtyards Official Website
Better Business Bureau - If you were treated in a similar fashion, report them.
BYU-Idaho's Community Housing Page - Encourage the University to regulate married housing to prevent the exploitation of their students.

Oregon Lured Us Back

It didn't take long for Oregon to lure us back; Cambra and I have decided to move back to the land of fertile lands and large rivers to continue our schooling. Rexburg isn't a bad place at all; Oregon is just better. The main factors that allowed us to come to the decision to downgrade schools were cost of schooling, scenery (potato farms and deserts got nothing on cherries and Mt. Hood) and last but not least my freedom to wear shorts and grow facial hair; take that honor code.

It hasn't taken us long to re-socialize to the Oregon lifestyle, we've already attended Saturday Market in Portland, climbed Multnomah Falls, had two separate tie-dye parties, got jobs working on one of the local fruit-lines and vowed to make the leap to organic food when we make our "for-reals" move. After proof reading that list I want to kick my own butt for sounding lame. Anyway, here are some pictures from our adventures back in the greatest state in the union.

From the Bridge looking up
The Columbia River on the way up
Multnomah Falls Lite
Top of Multnomah Falls

Do You Remember....

When this happened?



I sure do! This past weekend has given me a chance to really look back on America's great moments and of course the American hero Kerri Strug came to mind. Nevermind the rebel philosophers that decided on the final draft of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, were they battling a broken ankle? I think not.

I hope you still get goosebumps from this video; if not, you're un-American.

I'm Ready For Vacation

I should be studying, taking a quiz and/or doing my reading for religion. That would be possible, if I wasn't Mike. I would be a horrible marathon runner, in terms of my academia I come out of the gates on fire and then meander my way across the finish line. With that personal confession out of the way you can understand that I am ready for a break now that we have one last full week of class before finals. My cynicism has increased dramatically.

The glamour of being in a four year school has vanished, I am now beginning to notice a bit more the annoying idiosyncrasies that exist among people -- I'm not all high and mighty, I know the fact that I mention it makes me guilty as well -- and it's really making me scoff on a regular basis. Let me explain.

In high school, there was approximately 10-15 people I didn't like out of a school of 400. I believe on all levels of education there is a consistent number of annoying people. If I then take the 1:40 ratio and apply it to 11,000 at BYU-Idaho for summer semester that means there are approximately 275 people on campus that possess annoying traits in my cynical eyes.

Did I mention I'm ready for a vacation?

Bright side, things aren't bad in any sense. I am enjoying my time here at the university and am meeting some awesome friends. That shouldn't be too suprising considering I find 10,725 people to be pleasant.

If It's Good Enough for Kirby it's Good Enough for Me.

Luckily we in the church don't live by the mantra that is the title of this entry. Especially since our beloved Peter Priesthood, that has made us chuckle through the years as the stationary guy in Sons of Provo or the geeky returned missionary in the RM, has decided to promote the cool refreshing taste of Miller Lite. That's right, Kirby Heyborne is a spokesman for beer.

We as Kirby fans could have seen is excessive alcohol abuse for years now. From his slow depressing music that's always talking about the one that got away, to his impaired judgement when he decided to participate in the monstrosity of cinema known as The Singles Second Ward. Man I hate sequels.

I'm getting way too far ahead of myself, Kirby more than likely doesn't drink. Maybe in the commercial Kirby is getting excited because his beer-tracking friend was going to lead him to a white field all ready to be harvested as he carried his sickle proudly.

More than likely, however, he was just epitomizing the complacent church members that my American Heritage teacher told us about during his soapbox worthy diatribe of how we in the church allow ourselves to be manipulated by our countries consumer culture. You know like appearing in beer commercials, which is definitely against the honor code, to get your foot in the door of the entertainment industry.

If Kirby were a punk rocker and the population of mormonism were 16 year olds with purple hair I'm sure we'd all be shouting the term "sell-out." Here's the commercial for those who haven't seen it.

BYU-I: Elephants and Donkeys Throwdown in the Cage

I have the days off Tuesday and Thursday while the love's at work, coincidentally I get really bored. I study and what not but sometimes that doesn't stimulate me enough. Luckily today there was something goin' down that did the trick, this is after I played soccer in the hail for a few hours, the College Republicans and College Democrats (the phantom group that I guess represents my views the most) faced off amongst a predominately republican crowd at BYU-Idaho, yeah go figure.

I went and enjoyed myself. It was entertaining but the Republicans obviously had home field advantage and took the debate with ease, considering it was graded on crowd response and not the issues themselves. It didn't matter what the democrats presented or how well they did it, the Republicans were able to conquer with one of the many cards they borrowed from Sean Hannity; democrats would present figures for immigration the republicans would play the national security card, regarding energy national security with the addition of anti-ecosystem rhetoric.

My big pet peeve of the night was that there were obvious gaps and double standards that the "away" team in blue didn't capitalize on. It was this fact alone that inspired me to make a life changing decision, embrace my inner-democrat. JUST FOR THE RECORD, I really dislike Barrack Obama and Hilary Clinton but considering the obvious domination of the reds here on campus I should support the party I'm registered with; especially considering we'll be in Iraq for the next 50 years and the Republicans still decide to tie every political issue today to 9/11.

That being said, don't be suprised when you see my name associated with the BYU-Idaho Campus Democrats. I'm a yankee fan, I can't help but support a losing side.

I Love Curved Test Scores.

I enjoy good grades. Sometimes I enjoy mindnumbing activities more, which sometimes hinders my pursuit for good grades. Luckily, in this world of univerity exams there's a great tool that helps people like me out. The curve.

I am currently in a class at BYU-Idaho where the lectures don't do much at all, in fact the professor on www.ratemyprofessor.com has a rather consistent grading of around 2 out of 5 for most things. I don't want to share his name because that's rather immature and blogging is stupid, even more so when it's done to harm one's character. Anyway, back to the story.

I was so pumped to score a 69% on his exam (a personal improvement I might add). I was all set to accept the 69% and be proud, however that's not the case in this class. Apparently I'm not the only person in his class that feels this way about the teaching methods, in fact the average test score was way below that of mine which introduced me to the beauty of the curve. Thanks to the majority of the class being worse than my mediocre self I was able to score a 91% on the test after he brought the average test score to the 75% range. How amazing is that.

College, it doesn't matter if your top of the class just make sure you're better than last.

Here's a picture that epitomizes this post if you're one of them folks that prefer pictures.