the official website of jon madsen - year in review (the first one)

Okay, okay, I know I should've actually had a year in review before the year was actually out, but c'mon... I mean, I was just able to hack into my friend's Xbox live. You haven't played Halo until you've done it online, I'm telling you.

So one year of rexbasior.com down! What have you learned? What have I learned? What have we learned? Hopefully nothing. As for me, at least, I actually know less than I did a year ago, I've just had more fun in the whole process.

Anyway, I'm looking up at the darkcounter and I'm reading a very satisfying number: 523! Good job acquaintances of mine! I had a goal of getting the counter over 500 before the one-year mark was up. I would like to thank my mother for doing a daily psychoanalysis of me through this site and I'd like to thank myself for secretly putting rexbasior.com as the homepage of every computer I come across. I guess I'd also like to thank everybody for wearing the t-shirts. The physical world is still better than cyberspace in a lot of ways.

Since we're now at one year of nostalgia I thought I'd go over some of my own favorite pictures and verbiage from the last year. Enjoy (...please?).

I had several reasons (or excuses) for going to Bikini Cuts. I wanted to go before the place got shut down by the conservative community. I wanted to go while I didn't have a girlfriend to tell me I couldn't. I wanted to go before I went bald.

Last night (well it seems like last night even though officially it was two nights ago since i'm writing this at three in the morning) I got a call from my favorite music store, MODified Music. I guess MODified is my only friend in Salt Lake City that really cares about me (or my money) enough to invite me to a party.

Ultimately, we only feel what we, ourselves, feel. We don't really feel what someone else feels, not without some kind of astral projection.

Since then, I've changed my mind. Maybe it's because I've stopped being happy when I'm kind to people. So now I believe in love, because it hurts.

I'm starting to realize that getting old isn't just about having your kidneys fail or taking naps or forgetting things. Getting old is feeling young, despite age. I could act young for the rest of my life, but it wouldn't change my age.

I feel old because most of my friends my age are married. I feel old because people who were 14 years old when I was 22 are now more mature than I am. I feel old because the freshman girls I mentored in college are having children. I feel old because when it gets just a little warmer, I'm going to put on my Skechers roller skates and skate through the sidewalk fountains at the Gateway Mall.

Before I go on with all my legal woes and all that, I'll just admit up front that I did speed. Okay, if you read that like I took drugs, that's not what I meant. I meant I was in my car exceeding the posted speed limit (not while taking speed). Now let me go on being a whiny hypocrite by complaining about cops.

My latest other toy is an MP3 player. The sucker's tiny! I thought of something to describe how small it is, but the example is inappropriate.

I think a lot of you realize how big of a deal it was when my glasses flew off my head onto the road while the car was moving. I probably don't have to explain the horror of it to you people who have even close to the same vision problems I do. Of course, many of you may not understand what it's like to be ridiculously nearsighted. Most of you probably aren't even as nearsighted as I am. I'm so nearsighted, when I don't have my corrective lenses I can't hear.

In case you're wondering, the shirts are free. Yep, pretty cool, huh? Why are they free? Because I expect you to wear them and therefore advertise for me. That way, I'll bring in more viewers and make more money (if I actually had a product or any kind of advertising).

You may ask how I can afford to be so benevolent. The only thing I can think of is karma. Since I'm nice to most people, I'm rewarded with the money necessary to pull this off. Of course if the people I hang around weren't as nice as they are, I'd probably be more of a jerk to them, so I guess the fact that I'm nice to people is really 'cuz they're nice to me. Hmm. I guess it's just a coincidence that I have the funds I need.

As I've mentioned before, I've had some problems with the place I worked. Just to recap, my former employer, Neways, recently switched my shift with a day's notice. A week after the switch, I discovered that the company used the switch as an excuse to cut my pay, since the morning shift didn't have a pay differential.

Naturally I complained about this. I said to my superiors that it was silly that I was being punished for catering to them. I guess I stuck around because I thought things would only get better. Silly me.

Walking out of O.R., I could see about as well as I usually could - horribly. Thoughts went through my head about how maybe this whole laser thing could be a really MASSIVE scam.

Clint is the latest addition to my apartment. Rhett and I were thinking about getting some bar stools, but we decided on Clint instead.

As a kid, I actually destroyed the main, bad-thing, the Mother Brain, but I always failed to escape the planet on time before the bomb timer ran out. Well this time I did it with the help of a Nintendo emulator, an under-the-table password code and an illegal save feature. When you finish the game in a certain amount of time you actually get to see yourself without your armor. Hey, I'm pretty cute!

Our first big stop was at the Garden of Eat'n, the dining establishment attached to the Fillmore Best Western. It was there we decided that instead of splitting the tabs, we would just take turns footing the bill. I suggested this idea and also set the example by taking the first tab right there at the Garden of Eat'n. I also knew that this would be, by far, our cheapest meal.

My vacuum broke when, strangely, my friend Rhett threw it off our balcony. Probably even strangelyer, I videotaped the whole thing.

I read in something like Entertainment Weekly that Springsteen was starting up a tour called the Vote For Change Tour. The Boss hired a bunch of other musicians including Ben Harper, Bonnie Raitt, Dave Matthews Band, Dixie Chicks, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, John Fogerty and John Mellencamp to accomplish one thing: the removal of the president. Their method was to continuously tour the 13 most prominent swing states singing and campaigning against Bush. Obviously Utah wasn't on the Vote For Change agenda. Sure it's fine now, but what about next time when some decent musicians want to do a little campaigning?

I needed a reason to take my epistle about the election down. It's totally dated and irrelevant now. I don't think one person I voted for actually made it into office.

(6jan05)