The Dawning of the Age of Aquarius

I listened to the Forrest Gump soundtrack the other day and I've had the Age of Aquarius song stuck in my head. While I was trying to find a place to listen to the song today, I read a little bit about it. Apparently it's from some hippie musical called Hair, and then was later released as a pop song by the 5th Dimension. And, contrary to popular references (including my own three sentences ago) the song is just called "Aquarius", not "Age of Aquarius". Whatever, right?

Here's the interesting thing: Apparently there is some discord among astrologers about when the age of Aquarius really begins, but the first lines of the song lyrics give their own measurement for when it begins: "When the Moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars". According to Wikipedia this alignment will really happen on Feb. 14, 2009.

So, whatever the heck the age of Aquarius is, it starts on this week on Valentine's day. Weird, huh?

No hawk

The mohawk had to come off this week, due to legal complications, but it's been a fun experience. Here's some of the responses that I've experienced:

Con

People stare a lot. Sometimes I would forget that I had a mohawk, and I'd just see this guy staring at me and wonder if he knew me or something, or see some girl that just couldn't take her eyes off of me. I'd be pretty sure that she must've wanted me bad, and then I'd remember that I had a haircut.

Pro

I went to the zoo the day after I got the 'hawk, and little kids would stare at me like crazy. They're even more shameless about it than adults, and don't mind staring. They're really nicer about it, though. I think that most of them haven't yet learned to hate people that look different, so they just thought I was interesting or something and I ended up having all of these little kids telling me stories about the snakes and bats that we were looking at. Apparently it's easier to make friends with little kids when you look funny. Maybe clowns should start wearing mohawks.

Pro

A girl in the Detroit airport gave me her phone number and wanted to hook up with me in Vegas. I suppose it's possible that she liked me because of my charm or boyish good looks, but since I don't really get a lot of girls offering me their phone numbers, I'm going to assume that the mohawk was the new thing that encouraged that.

Pro

At the Braves' game in Atlanta I got put on the big screen. When I saw them with their Fan Cam putting people up on the screen, I was pretty sure that I was a shoo-in, so I had Kim get ready, and she got a picture of it as evidence.

Pro

After the game, the lady selling Braves visors liked my haircut and gave me one for free.

Con

At said game, I got really sun-burnt. The loss of a super-power is pretty unfortunate, but let's not dwell on that anymore.

Con

Camille doesn't like me anymore and Kim thought I looked ugly.

Con

The term "WT" was used to describe me on a much more frequent basis (rivaling the frequency with which I actually deserve it).

Pro

My boss, surprisingly, didn't even care. He just took pictures of it and put them on the wall.

???

The bishop didn't express an opinion. He just kept asking, "What happened?" over and over. I didn't really have a good answer for him.

Con

I got pulled over in Nephi on the way back from Las Vegas (where I'm just another one of the many freaks and didn't get any special reactions at all). I was going pretty fast and it was obvious when the cop had seen me, so I pulled right over before he even had to turn his lights on. I would have thought he'd be pretty appreciative of this, but he wasn't pleased with me at all. He even threatened to take me straight in to jail.

It's possible that the last one didn't have anything to do with the mohawk, since I hear that Pete Lattin got arrested in Fillmore just for speeding, and he's a pretty clean-cut guy. I don't imagine that the mohawk helped, though. In fact, just for contrast, consider what happened to me today when I went to court for the same ticket. Today, however, I was mohawk-free and I wore a shirt and tie. The Judge told me to go get my ticket reduced by the DA, despite that I admitted that I deserved the ticket that I got, and the DA cut my fine in half upon hearing that I was a BYU student.
I think that people might treat you different as a mohawk-wearer, but even so, the pro's seem to balance out the con's. I just don't understand why everyone doesn't have mohawks. I guess it's a good thing they don't, or they'd all be super-villains like me.

Skinvincible

When Spider-man got his cosmic powers, Magneto came to check him out in case he was a mutant. That's when I learned that some mutants don't show their powers when they're born, but develop them later in life. I assumed that's the way it was with my super power.
I'm a fair-skinned guy, and it's not surprising that I'm sensitive to the sun, and I'd been burnt pretty good when I was a kid. About a year ago, though, I spent a week with my brother in Las Vegas during the summer. It's different going to Vegas with my brother, because we didn't do any of the touristy things. We just hung out by the pool all day every day, and then went to the casinos at night. Even though I laid by the pool without any sunscreen for about four hours every day, I didn't get burned or tanned or anything. It was as if the sun had no effect on me whatsoever. I was skinvincible.
I don't know how long I've had this power, but that was the first time I'd seen it in effect, but now I can't remember being really sunburned since high school when we'd go boating. This week, however, I discovered that my power wasn't a mutant evolution after all, but from a different source.
On Monday I spent a large chunk of the day outside in the sun at the Braves game. The newly-exposed skin on my head got burned bad. Maybe the worst burn that I've ever had in my life. Yesterday it blistered up. Last night the blisters burst. This morning my head is swollen all around the burn on one side. I look like I had some birth defect that makes my head lop-sided.
Now some might say that my skinvincibility was just a joke or my imagination, or that I simply don't get enough sun to test it since I'm just a indoor-dwelling computer guy. I insist that my powers were real, and it's obvious to me what has happened. I simply lost my power when I shaved my head. Every super-hero has a weakness. I guess the haircut was mine.

A sunbeam

Late last night after we'd run out of potatoes (details forthcoming) Tyler, Casey and I were sitting on the stage (a.k.a., Castle Grayskull) drinking slurpees, when my thoughts turned to my life ambitions. I asked Casey if he would respect me less if I had a mohawk, and without hesitating he said "I'd respect you more." And that's how I made up my mind.
"That's all it takes?" Tyler said as we ran up the stairs to find some clippers. "I've been telling you for weeks that you should stop worrying about it and just do it." I told him that it clearly takes more than one person to qualify as peer pressure. He's since objected to that explanation, too, claiming that it doesn't count as peer pressure since I had to ask them to approve it. I'm sticking with peer pressure.
Here's some documentation.
Today when I went to the zoo I noticed that it's a lot easier to make friends with little kids because they love to stare at me.

Mullet Poser

I don't really have a mullet, because my hair is long all over, instead of just in the back. Since the color has faded, though, to where it's blond again in the back, but brown(ish) in the front, I think it embodies the philosophy of a mullet: "Business up front, party in back."

Catch Phrase

Troy and I went downtown (Denver) to Two-Fisted Mario's. I guess I haven't been down there for a while, but I was turned around when we got out of the car, and I started walking in the wrong direction. Troy called me, and then I was looking around for which way to go, and then I was in the middle of the street running around in circles when a minivan came by and I jumped onto the side of it as it drove by and hit it. The driver stopped and backed up, then got out of the car. He was all upset and said, "Hey, don't hit my car," and I was like, "Well you almost hit me!" and then he's like, "Dude, don't freak out just because your hair is pink."

Pink hair is weird, man

I tried to dye my hair red on Saturday so I could be Raggedy Andy for Halloween. I think my costume turned out ok, but the hair kind of turned pink. (Colors are unpredictable on my hair because it's so light.) It turns out that pink hair is very versatile. I went a little gothed-out tonight for the ward party, and the pink worked out well for it. Now I just have to figure out how to attend BYU with it.