K-Mart's Basement

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

2011-12-05T20:59:00.002-07:00

A Fish, A Barrel, And A Smoking Gun...

2011-11-10T18:37:00.004-07:00

Earlier this year I wrote about The Scroll, BYU-Idaho's amazing student newspaper.

Well I've decided to write about it again because I just can't stand it anymore and I need to talk about it or I will end up just screaming at people in the street.

I'm going to take my two least-favorite letters to the editor from last week's paper and discuss them here. The first is by one Bryan Faulk. Faulk writes about how The Occupy Wall Street movement "lacks direction." I was going to post a link to this letter but it doesn't appear that The Scroll's web site posts letters to the editor. I'll just quote parts of it and do my best to keep it all in context.

Faulk opens with:

"As disorganized as the Occupy Wall Street movement is, it's safe to say that their underlying sentiment is thus: greedy industrialists + corrupt politicians = trouble. With that, I couldn't agree more, but all Occupy has done is identify the problem."

Umm, what? You started by accusing the movement of being disorganized, but apparently they're not so disorganized that they don't have an "underlying sentiment." I would completely disagree that their message is about "greedy industrialists" (remember that their movement is about occupying WALL STREET. Wall Street is typically associated with the FINANCIAL SECTOR...) But okay, fine. I'll address this later. Moving on.

"Until the movement officially publishes a list of analyzable policy demands they're nothing more than a throng of crybabies."

Wait, so people protesting wage inequality, lack of jobs, and lack of government oversight in the financial sector in America are "crybabies." Why? Because they haven't "officially" published a list of "analyzable policy demands"? It's not enough if people actually are publishing lists of demands online and in newspapers and blogs, what we need is an "official" list. Occupy Wall Street is a movement spread by word of mouth and online networking. There is obviously no "official" spokesman for this movement, much like the Tea Party protests have no "official" head or office. Why should they have to publish an official list of analyzable policy demands? They want to make this country aware that there is gross inequality in wages and that 1% of the population controls 99% of the wealth. Why are they crybabies for wanting to voice their outrage and dismay?

"Though the Occupy movement has yet to take an official stance, it appears that many of the protesters support government restrictions to control the greed of big business. With that, I couldn't Disagree [sic] more. They blame capitalism as the problem and government as the answer, when in reality it's the other way around!"

There are so many logical holes in this that it makes my head spin even trying to start. Faulk states that the movement "has yet to take an official stance" (there's that word again). He then goes on, in the very same sentence, to (incorrectly) outline what the movement is supposedly about!! How can he do this when he has already stated that the movement is "disorganized," "lacks direction," all they've done "is identify the problem" and has "yet to take [a stance]" on anything?! It's as if he's stumbling over himself in his eagerness to discredit these protesters, but he discredits himself in the process. If the protesters do not have any kind of clearly defined agenda, as he says, then how can he then turn around and explain what their agenda is? On the other hand, if the protesters really DO have a clear agenda, how in the world can he say that their agenda is about taking down capitalism? It's like his only information about the protesters comes from Fox News and talk radio. The man has never actually read anything about what these protesters are trying get across.

He then goes on to describe how big government is the problem, how big government "decides who can produce how much of whatever" and that this leads to lobbyists bribing Congress "to ensure that legislation will favor their industry."

"You want to keep corporate money out of politics? Take away the magnet!"

"Occupy protests have brought to light a problem that needs fixing, but yelling at buildings won't solve anything."

"I've proposed a solution and am open to hearing others. Occupy, it's your turn."

I can guarantee that Tea Party protesters were never called crybabies by this guy, even though their demands amounted to "lower taxes, less government." I can also guarantee that this guy has never ridiculed Tea Party protesters for "yelling at buildings."

My biggest problem with Bryan Faulk is not his condescending tone, his ridiculing, or even his many logical fallacies. No, my problem is the way he characterizes the protests as something they are not. He has no clue what this movement is upset about, or if he does then he is deliberately mischaracterizing their arguments because he knows their arguments are stronger than his.

Yes, there are probably a lot of hippies and stupid pot-smoker types that take place in these kinds of protests. They are (justifiably) angry that they are unemployed or making minimum wage while others are making hundreds of millions of dollars a year for not providing any real goods or services to society. It’s not all young hooligans, though. There are those who believe that the financial industry is what caused the meltdown of America’s economy and so far they have not been held accountable for that in the least bit. They believe that the massive deregulation of the financial industry that took place in the latter part 20^th century led directly to the current crisis we are in, and that governmental regulation at the cost of insane profit is part of the solution. They also believe the wealthy ought to have their tax rates increased to pre-George-Bush levels.

So Faulk off, Bryan Faulk, Economics major. His solution to “keep corporate money out of politics” is to “take away the magnet.” So basically he wants to keep corporate money out of politics by removing government from politics. That is akin to killing someone in order to cure them of the flu.

***

The second letter under consideration today is entitled “’Man up’ and be chivalrous” by one Dean Deveraux. I started reading this letter with optimism but it quickly turned into disgust/anger.

He begins: “The word ‘chivalry’ is most often synonymous with knights. An honorable knight should be a benchmark for us men on how we treat our ladies.”

Okay, simple enough. Sure, the “our ladies” is a little corny, but whatever. He continues: “Modern-day chivalry can go a long way with the ladies you court or marry. The lack thereof can also make that trip very short. Luckily I married a woman that rightly expects her man to treat her like the lady she is.”

Ugh. Why do I suddenly feel like simultaneously vomiting whilst punching this dude in the face? He lost me at “treat her like the lady she is.” What the hell is that even supposed to mean? That the rest of us married women who expect to be treated like dirty little sluts? But okay, okay. Maybe this guy’s got a point. Maybe he’s going to talk about how men treat their wives discourteously or something. I’m still open to what he has to say.

“Why do I speak of chivalry? Simply because I’m disappointed in a recent trend I’ve noticed in which girls drive men around.”

What?! A “recent trend” in which “girls drive men around”? What the eff is this dude even talking about? Is he talking about actual driving, like in a car? Because if that’s what all this chivalry talk is about, then I will be really disgusted. Also, why did he not say in which “women drive men around” or in which “girls drive boys around”? It’s so creepy when you say “girls drive men around.”

“I am not chauvinistic, I simply feel that men are getting lazy. I have heard many explanations on why the ladies drive their fellas around like ‘she hates my driving’ or ‘I get tired of driving’ but I haven’t been convinced yet.”

Okay, a couple of points I’d like to make. First, the dictionary definition of chauvinism is “Excessive loyalty to or belief in the superiority of one’s own kind of cause, and prejudice against others.” If Deveraux counts his bizarre version of chivalry as his cause, then he is, in fact, chauvinistic. Second, please don’t refer to the ladies’ “fellas” ever again. We don’t live in 1930s Mississippi. Also, was there something so wrong with just “fellows”? And how has he heard “many” explanations about this phenomenon? Does he go around pestering married couples as to why the man is woman is driving when there’s a perfectly capable man right there to take over?

“If your lady is in the car, why would you drive like a maniac? Tired of driving? What are you, a trucker? Suck it up and drive your queen around.”

I wish he would stop referring to my wife as my “lady.” Yes, she is a lady, but I don’t refer to her that way and she doesn’t identify herself as my lady. When we were dating she was my “girlfriend,” then “fiancé,” and now she’s my “wife” or “spouse.” All of these terms are respectful and acceptable. Consider using them. She’s not my queen, unless you mean that she's the queen and I'm the king of our household. But I'm not her subject. We consider one another equals and peers.

Also, this guy gives completely contradictory messages in these lines. First he tells men to drive safely when our "lady" is in the car, then he tells us that being tired isn't a good enough excuse to let your wife take over. Couldn't being tired of driving be considered a safety issue, you stupid moron?

"What's worse is I see the men sitting passenger while making their ladies get out to get a movie at Redbox or get the mail in the parking lot."

Uh... What if "my lady" wants to choose the movie at the Redbox herself? Who rents movies from that horrible place anyway?

"C'mon fellas, man up."

Again with the "fellas." Enough already. It doesn't make you sound folksy or wise. Just douchey.

I, for one, am so happy that I married a woman who doesn't give a crap about who's driving and who doesn't place her self-worth on whether or not I let her drive. A woman who expects to be treated like the lady-queen she is and never takes the wheel is most definitely not the kind of woman I want to spend eternity with. Why does this guy feel the need to tell us all that we're wrong? We just don't give a crap about who drives!! Is that so morally wrong? There are lots of young couples who date in Rexburg. Not all men have their own cars. Are you telling these men that they ought to be commandeering vehicles from their girlfriends? What if the girl enjoys driving her own car? Does this make her less of a lady? I'm glad I don't ever have to ride in a car with your wife. She sounds like a judgmental bitch.

How to bomb a teaching job interview

2011-08-16T14:44:00.001-06:00

Scene - A high school office in a southeastern Idaho city. The first day of school is about one week away. Some students are milling about, registering with their parents. Two plump secretaries with porcupine haircuts sit and exchange amusing anecdotes about yoga, their dogs, and their attempts at playing with a Nintendo Wii. The Rob Thomas / Santana collaborative effort "Smooth," plays on the radio, followed by Maroon Five.

I sit, anxiously awaiting my name to be called. I mentally go over what I've read about the school district from their web site. Under a section listed as their "Teacher's Pledge" they had something along the lines of: "We believe that all students are equally capable of success, regardless of history, lack of family or parental involvement, or personal lives." Although I absolutely do NOT believe any such thing, I made a mental note to not mention anything that might give that impression.

The interview was scheduled for nine o'clock sharp. I arrived at eight fifty as to appear punctual. It is now nine fifteen.

At approximately nine twenty the door to the inner office opens. A young blonde girl walks out; presumably twenty-one or twenty-two years of age. She waves goodbye to her interviewers, who are smiling and waving back.

Interviewer: Jer-- Jeran...doe?

Me: (pronounces name while standing up, shaking interviewer's hand)

Interviewer: Oh. Jeran-doe?

Me: (repeats proper pronunciation of name)

Interviewer leads me into the inner office. I proceed to shake hands with three other men and one woman who are all seated at a long table. They motion for me to sit at the head of this table. The four men are all wearing front-pleated khakis and black polo shirts that are tucked into the khakis. They could easily be mistaken for Radio Shack employees. They all have thin goatees. The woman is wearing a beige pants suit and glasses.

I repeat my name for them several times, as none of them can say it. They apologize profusely, but I continue to smile broadly in an effort to let them know that it's not a big deal. After many repetitions they give up trying to pronounce it properly. None of them attempt to say my name for the rest of the interview.

Interviewer no. 1: So, before we get started with our questions we'd like to give you a chance to tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your background and how you got into teaching.

Me: [I tell life story; about how I was born to an American father and an immigrant mother from Italy, how I was raised in a bi-lingual home speaking Italian and English, how I always wanted to do something artistic with my life but could not decide what until I spent two years as a missionary in New York City after high school, how I lived in the Bronx and Manhattan in some very poor neighborhoods, how I worked in soup kitchens and homeless shelters and drug rehab centers and churches, how I slowly realized my calling of wanting to be a teacher, to help young people make the most of themselves, of how I was in New York City on the terrorist attacks of 9/11, how I wanted to return to Montana someday and make a peaceful life for myself there, how I enrolled in BYU-Idaho and studied English and minored in Art, how I married, student taught in Salt Lake City, got a teaching job in Montana for three years, how I never had my own room, only a pushcart, and how I was laid off after three years because I was un-tenured and they needed to cut the budget...]

All interviewers look as bored as possible during this spiel of mine, like if there were an easily accessible gun in the room they would have committed suicide by now. Most of them don't look up from their clipboards, several let out very big, loud yawns. At the mention of minoring in art, the lady perks up.

Lady interviewer: You minored in art?! That's just like me!

Me: Cool! [I have no idea who this woman is, whether she's an English teacher or an administrator or what. I later suspected she was the principal.]

Interviewer no. 1: I noticed on your resume that you were a... par... a par-uh... par-uh... [trails off]

Me: A para-professional?

Interviewer no. 1: What is that?

Me: [I explain the very mundane duties of a para-professional, which is what I was this past school year. I try to not act very surprised that they've never heard of a para-professional.]

This puts an end to that introduction of mine. Nobody has any questions or asks for any kind of clarification on anything (not even a nod on the part where I mention being in New York City for 9/11) and so the whole thing kind of peters out...

Interviewer no. 2: [as if coming out of a stupor, reads a line with obvious effort] If I were to come into your classroom, what would I see?

Me: Like what would you see in the room itself? How would I set up the room?

Interviewer no. 2: No, I mean if I were to come into your classroom on any given day, say November 2nd of this year, what would be taking place in there?

Me: Well... I... I guess it depends on... What grade is this position for?

Interviewers confer with one another, as none of them seem to know. They come to a consensus.

Interviewer no. 2: It's either for freshman or sophomore English.

Me: Okay, well you'd see some definite daily routines for one. I like to establish routines early on like journal writing and daily discussion and reading, so that they know what to expect every day when they walk in. But my class is a versatile one. I like to explore all parts of the language arts. We're reading stories, novels, poetry--we're writing research papers, personal essays, maybe even some creative writing. I like to read aloud almost every day, so you'd see that. I like to hold classroom discussions, small group discussions, sometimes formal debates. Stuff like that...

I continue to describe my classroom, but they all look puzzled and confused by my answers and not very interested.

Interviewer no. 4: What is your favorite part of English to teach?

Me: Hmm... Well one of my favorite things about English is helping my students develop a love of reading, so there's that. I love to share books and stories with them by reading aloud. One of the first short stories we read as a class is "The Cold Equations"...

I wait to see if anyone recognizes it. I thought it was a fairly well-known short story, as my class read it in high school and I also re-read it in college, and it's in many of the English textbooks I've worked with... They just stare at me, dumbly.

Me: ...By Tom Godwin? Anyway it's this great short story, and it's exciting to see them as we start out. Some of them are already moaning and groaning that this is going to be boring because it's science fiction and there's no pictures. But I guide them through the process, I read it aloud to them, we stop to make predictions, talk about the moral and ethical questions posed by the story, I ask them what they would do in the same situations... And then by the time we're halfway into it, the kids are just really excited for more. Any time we can do something like that that makes reading a pleasurable experience, I'm happy.

Silence from the interviewers, who are looking at each other shiftily.

Me: [I'm nervous now, as if I said the wrong thing.] But, you know, there's a lot of things I love teaching. I love teaching writing to my students, especially personal writing like journals and personal essays. Many of them have never written any kind of personal writing before, so they get really excited at the prospect of writing about themselves for a change. It's...

More disinterested silence.

Me:... It's really... I enjoy it.

Lady interviewer: Your main job as an English teacher here would be to prepare the kids to take the state test. That's the whole focus of English class at our high school. We prepare the kids to do well on the test, and the test is all grammar. That's it. So while they do get to read one or two books a year--I think they get The Odyssey and Romeo and Juliet as freshman, am I right? Okay, but our jobs as teachers is preparing them for the state test. The test is all grammar, and so the emphasis should be on grammar. Are you comfortable teaching grammar?

Me: Well, I think grammar is very important, because they need to understand grammar--if they don't understand grammar they won't understand how to read a book. So I take grammar very seriously. I think I was the only teacher at my old school that still gave spelling tests in the tenth grade. My semester finals were all grammar and spelling based. So yes, I am comfortable teaching grammar, although I must admit I don't have a curriculum that's based around grammar--yet.

Interviewer no. 3: It's very basic, especially for ninth and tenth graders. A lot of times we'll spend a whole week just analyzing one sentence. That's about all they can handle right now, one sentence at a time.

Me: Oh? And do you do A/B days here, or is it a traditional schedule?

Interviewer no. 1: We do A/B days. A class period is ninety minutes and we meet every other day.

Me: So you spend ninety minutes on grammar?

Interviewer no. 2: Not always. Sometimes it's only fifty or sixty minutes.

Lady interviewer: You would have a workbook to work out of. That's what they all have, is that right?

The men nod in assent.

Interviewer no. 2: Yeah, we usually give them some work to do out of the workbook. It tells you everything you need to cover and it has the worksheets right in it.

Me: So do you get together to look over the state test results and then figure out what they're doing well in and what they extra need help in?

They look at one another, doubtfully.

Interviewer no. 1: They're very secretive about state tests. None of us are allowed to see them, pretty much ever. We're only allowed to use a practice test, but none of us actually know what's on the state test.

Me: So you have to prepare the kids for the test but you're not allowed to know what's on it?

Interviewer no. 1: Well we all know the state benchmarks and goals. We work from those.

Me: In my old district we used to look over the results of the tests the year after they were scored and we could see what kinds of things students needed extra work on... That way we could adjust our curriculum, like if they needed more help with this or that, we would know.

Interviewer no. 2: We don't do it that way here.

Me: I will say that I know my grammar. I don't know if any of you have read my resume...

None of them had. Interviewer no. 1 has a the only copy which he pulls out again.

Me: On the bottom I list that I've had several articles published in some different publications.

Interviewer no. 1: [struggling] I see the first one was for the... Ex... Ex-plick... Ex-plick...ah-tor-ee? Ex-plick-ah-tor-ee?

Me: The Explicator... It's a peer-reviewed literary journal...

They all look confused. I leave it at that.

Lady interviewer: Some say that there are only two types of teachers in the world. The kind that like to work by themselves and be left alone, a "lone wolf" so to speak, and the kind that like to collaborate with others and always work as a team. Which kind are you?

Me: [half-jokingly] Well... You should not make absolute statements like that to an English teacher! Are there really only TWO types of teachers in the whole world?

The men chuckle at this, but the lady cuts us off.

Lady interviewer: Don't analyze the question, just ANSWER it!

Me: Okay, okay. To be honest, I got into education because the idea of having my own personal space to work appeals to me. I'm an individual, and I'm a unique person. I think most teachers can relate to this. I like the idea of having my own classroom and my own office, I like the idea of being in charge of what goes on in my room, my curriculum and my disciplinary plan. So in that sense, I guess I like being a "lone wolf" like you said. But of course I don't just do everything alone. Everything I've learned in these past few years of teaching I've learned from other teachers. I'm always talking to other teachers and learning from their example. I always like to meet with other English teachers to discuss possible problems and new ideas and to get help. I think all good teachers know how to collaborate with others. We talk about our students and how to best help them, we talk about our curriculum so we know what to cover. We're always working together. So in that sense, I also like being a collaborator.

At this point I know I've given the wrong answer. Of course they wanted me to say "I HATE working alone! YUCK!" but it would have been a total lie. I was honest instead, and I could tell that my honesty was making a bad situation even worse.

The remaining questions are all run-of-the-mill teacher interview stuff (How do you handle classroom discipline? How do you feel about contacting parents? etc.) They end with a "We'll let you know by Monday."

On Monday I got the phone call.

Interviewer no. 1: Jer... Jer-and-doe?

Me: Yes? It's me. Jerandoe.

Interviewer no. 1: I just wanted to call to let you know that we've made a decision about the English teacher opening.

Me: Okay.

Interviewer no. 1: So thank you for coming in for the interview, and good luck.

Me: Thank you. [end of call.]

I assume he meant that they gave the job to someone else, although technically he never explained that.

Oh well.

An Open Letter to the Man Who Accosted Me in an Attempt to Sell Me a Power Balance Bracelet in the Mall.

2011-07-29T18:38:00.001-06:00

Hey look at me,

I FOUND SOMETHING FUNNY!

YOU'D BETTER RE-POST, RE-TWEET, RE-GOOGLE PLUS ONE IT OR WHATEVER IT IS YOU KIDS DO AND SHOW EVERYONE HOW AWESOME AND FAMOUS I AM.

Thank you.

"So sick and tired of acting dumb and playing fair"

2011-07-12T23:32:00.000-06:00

You know what? This blog is ridiculous and sharing my personal thoughts on whatever inanity pops into my head is egotistical and lame. Until I get my life together, I'm gonna take off for a while... If you need mindless rambling about unimportant shite, feel free to peruse the back catalog. I just can't take this anymore...

[drives away blaring Foghat's "Fool For the City"]

A Long, Dull, Stupid Story: Part 2

2011-06-22T12:05:00.001-06:00

Last year at around this time I was living in Montana and looking for a teaching job in Idaho. I found a really promising opening in one of the school districts around here. They needed someone to teach art part time and English part time and I am certified for both. You can read the whole long, dull, stupid story here.
(**Spoiler: I didn't get the job.**)

Now a year passed. I live in Idaho. I worked as a reading instructor at an elementary school for a year since no other teaching jobs were available. I took the instructor job even though it paid 1/4 of what I was making in Montana (which was barely above poverty level to begin with). It was a thirty mile round trip every day, but I thought it would be well worth it because of what I was told when I was interviewed. They told me it would be a great way to get my foot in the door of this school district. In fact, there were eight new teachers that just got hired who had all worked as aides and tutors the year before. They even introduced me to these people and made me shake hands with them and stuff.

So I suffered through a year of reading instruction. The job wasn't bad at all. Yes, the pay was very little, but it wasn't a difficult job. The problem was that the teacher I was assigned to work with did nothing and left everything up to me. She was a full-time teacher, she was paid a full-time salary. But she didn't DO anything. By the end of the year, I kid you not, our students STILL DID NOT KNOW HER NAME. I was just the assistant but they thought I was in charge of the classroom. She was never in there, she NEVER prepared lessons, she never addressed disciplinary issues, she never did anything. I wanted to complain about this. I wanted to scream. BUT... I wanted to be a team player, too. I wanted to go along with it, endure it for a year. I accepted every additional duty or little job I was asked to do by the principal. If they needed someone to stand outside in sub-zero temperatures and gale-force winds for recess duty, I always accepted. I sacrificed my lunch time every single Friday so that they would have someone on recess duty. I went to meetings that had nothing to do with me or my job and didn't complain. I contacted parents to talk about their kids because the head teacher would not (who ever heard of an aide calling parents?! It's insane!). Basically I wanted to show them that I was a good guy, that I would be an ideal candidate for a full time teacher.

As the end of the year rolled around, I started asking around for teacher openings in the district. I always got puzzled looks at this.

"Oh, no. No, no. No new teachers this year. We've hired everyone we need for a while."

This is basically what I heard from everyone. High school principals. Middle school principals. Secretaries. District offices. Human resources. Everyone.

I felt a teensy bit duped. Was it possible when they hired me that they honestly thought they would have teacher openings next year? Yeah, it's possible. I guess. But more likely, I think they knew damn well that there were going to be no openings in the high schools and middle schools.

But whatever, right? Screw 'em. I learned my lesson. When it became clear that they would have no job openings next year, I had nothing to lose. I went in to the district office and told a higher-up about the horrors of that classroom that I worked in. Told them how I did the job of a full-time teacher all year, and that I would only come back to work as a tutor if I were placed in a different school. The guy smiled and nodded because he knew all along what I had been going through.

He told me she had always been a problem. He knew, he assured me.

***

I put in applications all over the place. Nobody is hiring, of course. The Idaho school system is crashing down all around us. Everything is falling apart. It's almost chaotic. I peddle my resume and skills to different schools like some door-to-door knife salesman. I put in applications with every single district within a 25 mile radius.

I eventually get a phone call, two weeks into summer vacation. I got an interview! It's with a middle school! Cool! Seventh grade English! I love it. I'm very excited and prepare myself for an awesome interview.

June 20th
Monday - 2:30 PM

The interview was great! It was very casual, very relaxed. I talked myself up and made them laugh. I felt as though I impressed them.

"When will I have an answer?" I asked.

"We'll let you know by the end of the day tomorrow," she said.

"Oh cool! That fast?"

"Yes, we really need to get this position filled. It should have been filled last week... But is there anything else you'd like to know? Any other questions?"

"Well I... You know, I'll just hold off on the questions for now. When I find out if it's a yes or a no, then I'll go from there."

"Oh? Are you...? Okay then," she said, as if she were surprised I didn't want to get ahead of myself.

Tuesday, June 21st
She said "by the end of the day tomorrow." I didn't know what that meant, exactly. The end of the school day? The end of her day spent in the office? I had no idea how long she stayed in her office during summer vacation. I assumed it would be around three or four o'clock. I waited patiently. I didn't know what to do with myself because I was nervous, so I watched movies all day.

2:00 PM
I had a bad feeling about everything at around two in the afternoon. I didn't want to call them, though. They hadn't had a chance to live up to their word yet. So I waited.

3:00 PM
Still nothing. Office workers and administrators started packing up to head home about this time.

4:00 PM
Nothing. I remembered how last year I received an e-mail from a different principal in a different school district in Idaho, also regarding a job. The e-mail had been sent at 5:15 PM. Maybe they stayed later than I thought?

4:30 PM
Eh, who was I kidding? I called the school. No answer, no voice mail. I called the district offices. No answer, but they did have a district-wide voice mail system. I typed in the principal's extension and left a voice mail.

"Hi there, this is J. Lahondere. I had an interview there yesterday. I never heard back from anyone, so I was just checking on the status of that position. Do you have a ballpark figure on when a decision will be made? Please call me back whenever you get this. Thank you."

June 22nd
Wednesday - 11:45 PM

I tried calling the school again. Still no answer. The school was pretty empty when I went in for the interview. It was nothing but custodians, the principal, and one other teacher who was assisting in the interview. No secretaries or anything like that. Empty.

I tried calling the district office. I got an answer, but the girl had no idea what job opening I was talking about. She transferred me to human resources which sent me straight to voice mail. I left a message and called back. I needed to get the number for the principal's office like I did yesterday.

"Hi, I just called a second ago and was transferred to human resources. It just sent me to their voice mail. Do you have [principal I interviewed with] phone number?"

"Umm... No, I only have the school phone number."

"Oh, when I called the voice mail system yesterday it put me through to her actual office phone. Can I just do that?"

"Uh..." she sounded extremely hesitant. "Let me put you on hold for a sec."

I waited on hold for five minutes. She came back.

"All I have is her school phone number. What is this regarding?"

I explain my situation. "I just need to get a hold of this principal so I can ask about the job I interviewed for."

"Okay, what I can do is connect you to her directly. Can you hold for a sec?"

I held for a sec. It rang through about thirty times. I thought it might go to her voice mail again, at least, but it never did. Suddenly, a woman with a decidedly Mexican accent picked up.

"Hi, I'm trying to get a hold of [principal]? Is this...?"

"Jhoo know this is the district office? That principal gone. All school is close for summer."

"She's gone for the day? Is she ever coming back...?"

The woman laughs, "Well I shoo hope so sir, she a principal for middle school!"

"I just need to talk to her about an interview I had on Monday."

"She gone for summer vacation, sir. All school closed."

"I know, but I met with her on Monday about a job opening. Do you know the number for her office?"

"Jhoo know, you give me message and I send her e-mail. Then she call you back when she get e-mail."

"No, that's okay. I can e-mail her myself. I'm just trying to find out whether this job has been filled or not. Do you know anything about job openings?"

"Human resources, you talk to Patti."

"Yes, but is Patti in the office right now?"

"Yes."

"Okay, transfer me to her."

It was the same as before. Straight to voice mail. I left a message for "Patti" and sent an email to the principal. I simply asked if she could tell me when they would have a decision by. I just needed an estimate so I could get on my with life. So far, no answer.

Stay tuned for further developments. Isn't it exciting?!

Wednesday 4:22 PM
UPDATE:
I DIDN'T GET THE JOB!

Oh well. They never called me about this like they said they would, but they DID reply to one of my various e-mails. They said they went with someone with more experience, but that "We appreciated meeting with you."

Brilliant. I sure am happy they appreciated that meeting.

BURGLARS ARE EVERYWHERE - BURGLARS BURGLARS BURGLARS!!!!!

2011-05-14T14:44:00.000-06:00

Found this little chestnut while I was tidying up my old computer files. Apparently I wrote this some dull grey winter afternoon while in my dungeon-office. It's pretty messed up, but I put effort into it and thought it would be sad to delete it forever.

My old boss/principal of the school used to send out these ridiculous e-mails that only borderline retarded and full-blown retarded people could possibly believe. They were all forwarded from who knows where, and he felt it necessary to share them with the entire staff. It comforted me to think that this is what he was doing in his office all day, getting paid three times as much as me and enjoying his air conditioner.

His comment on all this was "This is good information."

It just shows how good he was at discerning good information from bad information (i.e. he had the critical thinking skills of a stillborn pig). And yet this man was in charge of making decisions that affected my life! He has my life and lives of many other teachers and thousands of students in his hands! It's enough to make me smile and chuckle knowingly.

Enjoy!

FW: Things your burglar won't tell you
Dick Kloppel
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2010 7:51 PM
To: List_All_CMR

This is good information -

Things Your Burglar Won't Tell You:

1. Of course I look familiar. I was here just last week cleaning your carpets, painting your shutters, or delivering your new refrigerator.

Subtext:
Fear everyone. No one is to be trusted. Everyone who works in and around your home is a criminal. Everyone is out to get you.

2. Hey, thanks for letting me use the bathroom when I was working in your yard last week. While I was in there, I unlatched the back window to make my return a little easier.

Subtext:
Do not allow people to use your bathroom ever, for any reason. Especially people who work on your lawn. The yard workers are the enemy

3. Love those flowers. That tells me you have taste ... And taste means there are nice things inside. Those yard toys your kids leave out always make me wonder what type of gaming system they have.

Subtext:
Never grow flowers outside your house, and do now allow your children to play with toys outside.

4. Yes, I really do look for newspapers piled up on the driveway. And I might leave a pizza flyer in your front door to see how long it takes you to remove it.

Subtext:
Again, treat delivery boys like the thieves they are. Remove flyers from your door IMMEDIATELY.

5. If it snows while you're out of town, get a neighbor to create car and foot tracks into the house. Virgin drifts in the driveway are a dead giveaway.

Subtext:
To be even more effective, lend your neighbor several pairs of your shoes and have him walk around in them back and forth from your front door to his car. If your neighbor’s legs are not as long as yours, use some kind of stilts to more evenly space the footmarks. Old crutches work well here. Make sure you put the exact same brand and make of your tires on his car, as burglars probably have memorized what your tire tracks look like already.

6. If decorative glass is part of your front entrance, don't let your alarm company install the control pad where I can see if it's set. That makes it too easy.

Subtext:
Windows are your enemy. Anything that allows in sunlight can allow in burglars.

7. If you don't answer when I knock, I try the door. Occasionally, I hit the jackpot and walk right in.

Subtext: Dumbass.

8. It's raining, you're fumbling with your umbrella, and you forget to lock your door-understandable. But understand this: I don't take a day off because of bad weather.

Subtext:
Are you UNDERSTANDING this, asshole? I AM WATCHING YOU ALWAYS. You and your STUPID umbrella. Trying to stop the rain from getting your little baby bum all wet? AWWWWW, HOW CUTE. Yeah, fumble with that umbrella. I DON’T TAKE THE DAY OFF. I’m the hardest working person in this town, jack. And you know you’re a lazy p.o.s. don’t you? You know that you don’t deserve your nice things, don’t you? You know that I deserve to have them. You know you’re worthless deep down. God hates you and you know it. So you just keep fumbling.

9. I always knock first.. If you answer, I'll ask for directions somewhere or offer to clean your gutters. (Don't take me up on it.)

Subtext:
People who are not from your town? Raping, stealing, bastards. People looking for work? Raping, stealing, bastards. They deserve every bullet you jam into their foreheads with that shiny little gun of yours. Go ahead. Do it.

10. Do you really think I won't look in your sock drawer? I always check dresser drawers, the bedside table, and the medicine cabinet..

Subtext: YOU FUCKING MORON. DAMMIT YOU ARE STUPID.

11. Helpful hint: I almost never go into kids' rooms.

Subtext:
I know what you’re thinking right now. Why would he tell me specifically where he DOESN’T go? That doesn’t make sense, does it? Especially for a document entitled “Things Burglars WON’T Tell You.” So you won’t tell me that I never go into kids’ rooms… But you ARE telling me this. Does this mean my kids’ room is safe? Yeah, work that one out. Think about your children. All safe and snug in their little beds. You’d do anything to protect them, wouldn’t you? But when it comes down it, they’ll die just like all the rest. I can’t wait to feel their hot blood spill over my filthy fingers as I slash their throats. I’ll do it nice and quiet so you can keep on sleeping, you fat troll. Aren’t you glad you stored all your valuables in there, now? Was it worth it, you prick? Was it worth killing your own children over? Die in a fire.

12. You're right: I won't have enough time to break into that safe where you keep your valuables. But if it's not bolted down, I'll take it with me.

Subtext:
Safes? You really think your jewels and gemstones are safe in there? No. I will take the safe with me. How the hell will I do that, you ask? Doesn’t matter. It will be stolen by me. And do you really think bolting it down will stop me? No. I will stead the floor it’s attached to. Bolt the floor down, you say? Nice try, asshole. I’ll steal the entire house. Everything will be gone when you return. It’s all mine now, all mine. You can’t stop me. I will steal the very earth you live on. There! I just did it. I just stole the entire earth! IT’S ALL MINE NOW! HAHAHAHA!

13. A loud TV or radio can be a better deterrent than the best alarm system. If you're reluctant to leave your TV on while you're out of town, you can buy a $35 device that works on a timer and simulates the flickering glow of a real television. (Find it at faketv.com.)

Subtext:
You’re probably too cheap to even buy one? But then again, you’re the one who’s gonna lose it all. The real players in this game know how to shuck and jive, my boy. They know what they’re doing. Fake TV is just the beginning. Consider a fake refrigerator that opens at random times to mimic late night snacking. Set your toilets to flush at period intervals. But make sure these intervals correspond to your personal biochemistry and digestive system. You think burglars don’t monitor that for weeks at a time beforehand? You really are an idiot, huh? Of course they monitor that for weeks beforehand. You can’t stop at toilets, though. Shower timers. Door timers. One of the only fool-proof fakeouts is not just a Fake TV, but an entirely fake house. It’s called DecoyHouse, and it’s for the person truly serious about security. It’s an entire house stocked with decoy items but rigged with explosives. Anyone who tries to enter it illegally will get blown to Kingdom Come. You’re probably too poor to afford it, though.

14. Sometimes, I carry a clipboard. Sometimes, I dress like a lawn guy and carry a rake. I do my best to never ever look like a crook.

Subtext:
Sometimes I carry a Book of Mormon or a Watchtower magazine. Sometimes I carry a child. Sometimes I carry a Census form. Sometimes I carry a pizza in a cardboard box. Sometimes I carry flowers and balloons. Sometimes I carry an invisible gun that kills your thoughts and mental defenses. It goes with my cloak of nothingness that I wrap you in as I seduce you through ESP and we have sex in your bathroom and you only remember vague scraps of what happened years later as you wake from a nightmare, or was it a dream? It’s not rape if you don’t fight back, you stupid whore. I’ll find you and eat your children if you ever tell anyone about me. About US. REMEMBER ME.

15. The two things I hate most: loud dogs and nosy neighbors.

Subtext:
Let’s not forget giant alligators that live beneath trapdoors under the welcome mat. Screeching chimpanzees filled with AIDS and dropped from the roof, too. How about a bucket of black scorpions? A hose filled with cobra venom and pig’s blood can keep away evil spirits of your dead ancestors.

16. I'll break a window to get in, even if it makes a little noise.. If your neighbor hears one loud sound, he'll stop what he's doing and wait to hear it again. If he doesn't hear it again, he'll just go back to what he was doing. It's human nature.

Subtext:
You think the screams of the raped never touched on the ears of the friends and neighbors of the damned? Oh, honey… You’re so young and stupid, you little bitch. Of course they heard. They heard and maybe they felt guilty for one fleeting moment because they didn’t even bother to call 9-1-1 as the girl’s throat filled with blood and gurgling screams. They heard her. They all heard her. They heard her cries for release, they heard her bones breaking like wet sticks as the vampire sucked the marrow out while she watched her life evaporate. They heard it all. They did nothing. Because they don’t love you, that’s the thing you don’t seem to understand. We are mere animals rasping and scratching for a wad of meat on sad little bone, and we will crush the skull of those who oppose us if we’re hungry enough. They won’t call, they won’t do shit.

17. I'm not complaining, but why would you pay all that money for a fancy alarm system and leave your house without setting it?

Subtext:
You fucking idiot.

18. I love looking in your windows. I'm looking for signs that you're home, and for flat screen TVs or gaming systems I'd like. I'll drive or walk through your neighborhood at night, before you close the blinds, just to pick my targets..

Subtext:
I’ll take out your daughter, I’ll impregnate her and force her to abort the baby. I’ll abduct children from Wal-Mart and McDonalds when your back is turned. I’ll take your money. I’ll take your mind. I’ll take and take and take. I’ll take. I’m always walking, you see. Look outside RIGHT NOW. That’s me. You thought it was a neighbor or a friend or someone you don’t know. It’s me. It’s me and I know you saw me. Just for that I’m going to make you suffer even more.

19. Avoid announcing your vacation on your Facebook page. It's easier than you think to look up your address.

Subtext:
Not only am I a shapeshifting teleporting stalker genius, I’ve got MAD hacking skillz as well! Try to hide your status updates, mark everything on your profile private, make it viewable to close friends only. DOESN’T MATTER. I will STILL break through your computer’s firewall and steal everything you’ve ever typed. And I’ll use computers to manipulate things in your house. Got a digital camera? I can turn that on wirelessly and watch you having sex with your spouse. In fact, I do it all the time. Ever bring your cell phone into the bathroom? Chances are I’ve heard you defecating. If I’m lucky I may have even hacked your cell phone camera and gotten some good pictures. It’s easier, so much easier, than you think.

20. To you, leaving that window open just a crack during the day is a way to let in a little fresh air. To me, it's an invitation.

Subtext:
You little pansy faggot, as you prance around being happy for springtime and fresh air, I’m getting ready to make that fancy Xbox and TV and laptop of yours MINE. You want fresh air so bad? PONY UP AND BUY A FUCKING PERSONAL AIR FILTER. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this, because you’re too stupid to be allowed to keep your belongings. In fact, you deserve to lose everything. Opening the door for some fresh air? Why don’t you just invent a time machine and go back to medieval times when people didn’t have windows, you f-tard? You go through all the time and effort to buy a house and yet you just OPEN THE DOOR?! LIVE OUTSIDE, ANIMAL.

21. A good security company alarms the window over the sink. And the windows on the second floor, which often access the master bedroom-and your jewelry. It's not a bad idea to put motion detectors up there too.

Subtext:
Why stop with motion detectors? How about retina scanners, or complex DNA analysis? Entering into the home triggers an automatic infra-red scanner. Any imperfect matches are shot with poison needle darts hidden within the flower vases. But don’t forget shape shifters, not to mention replicant cyborgs. They can sometimes mimic DNA. Use a compound memory scanner that plugs directly into the brain stem. If the memories do not match the family memory signature, an alarm will sound. Be prepared at any given moment to stab a loved one to death if this happens.

Rated R for Retarded

2011-04-16T13:56:00.001-06:00

Part 1: The Confusions of a Young Cinephile

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I love my church, but there are many parts of Mormon culture that I really dislike and/or don't understand.

I've already written about Mormons and facial hair, as well as Mormons reinterpreting scripture in regards to wealth. The next topic I'd like to write about is one that's been bothering me for many years: R-rated movies.

I am not exactly sure how this R-rated movie thing all got started in the church. When I was a child I remember that R-rated movies were "bad" but not necessarily outright forbidden by the culture. I of course don't know exactly what the trends were in the Mormon church in the eighties and early nineties since I was just an oblivious kid, but I do remember my parents watching R-rated movies from time to time. They watched these movies in the theater, out on dates. The only reason I know this is because I'd always ask my mother about the movies she went to go see when she got back home, and she'd usually oblige me and tell me about them.

For the longest time I thought this was a very creepy photograph, but it's actually just an illustration of some kind.

I thought that everything changed in 1990 or so, when the church re-issued a pamphlet entitled For the Strength of Youth (the cover is pictured above). In 1990 I was eleven years old and I was issued a copy of the pamphlet and told to study it, which I did. Throughout the nineties we studied this pamphlet in church, taking our cues from it. It was written by the First Presidency, so we turned to it for answers. Wait until you're sixteen before dating. Avoid immoral music and dancing. Boys shouldn't get their ears pierced. Nobody should get tattoos.

I was too young to even watch R-rated movies for most of the nineties, but I always assumed the injunction against R-rated movies was in the pamphlet because everyone cited the pamphlet as their source for this commandment and I believed them. Even when they didn't cite the pamphlet, it was just an established fact that R-rated movies were never acceptable and it was a sin to watch them. It was one of the things we were always told by youth leaders, and it was always mentioned in talks, firesides, mutual activities and youth conferences. In fact, one of the staples of General Conference stories was the one about some valiant boy or girl who would inevitably walk out when their friends / slumber party / group date decided to rent / attend / view an R-rated movie. When I was a deacon I remember hearing horror stories about how they tried to make one of the members of the Priests Quorum (a senior in high school) watch an R-rated movie in Social Studies (probably Glory) and how awesome he was because he stood up for his beliefs and refused to watch it. He had to go to the library and read a book about it instead, or something. This story was mirrored (and still is) in many articles in The New Era.

Then my troubles began. I started to get obsessed with movies and cinema in high school. I made it a personal goal to watch the American Film Institute's Top 100 movies (I imagine this list created a lot of budding film geeks in the late nineties). I'd seen some R-rated movies with my father as a teenager. We occasionally snuck out to catch a "boy's only" action flick like True Lies or Die Hard. Even I knew that those kinds of R-rated movies were fairly indefensible. I mean, yeah, they were awesome, but I couldn't really call them "uplifting". They were mindless fun and I knew it. But then I started watching these other films. Most of the films on the AFI list were either made before ratings existed or rated PG, but there are a few R's in there. My parents knew that I was renting these movies and they didn't object to me watching them.

I watched them and started to feel more and more confused. What was I to make of:

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?

Taxi Driver?

Platoon?

The Deer Hunter?

The Godfather?

The Godfather part II?

The Shawshank Redemption?

Unforgiven?

Blade Runner?

Was I supposed to find these films dirty and offensive or something? I didn't. I loved them. I saw in them something that was lacking in many of the contemporary films I had watched in my youth. These weren't Encino Man or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. These were movies that had something to say, movies that made me feel something inside. I remembered them and thought about them for days, weeks afterward. They made me think about life and death, love, God, the nature of pain and war, family, loyalty, masculinity, religion, patriotism, sanity, eternity, and what it means to be human. In essence, they got me to ponder upon those three questions we always refer to in the church:

Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?

But these movies were all R-rated, which means that by watching them, I thought I must be committing a sin. My viewing of the Shawshank Redemption had somehow caused Christ to suffer, but I could watch The Truth About Cats and Dogs and get off scot-free because it was PG-13..? The funny part is that the only thing I remember about The Truth About Cats and Dogs is a scene in which Jeneane Garofalo has an extended phone sex conversation with her love interest while they both masturbate. But hey, at least they didn't say "fuck" more than two times, right?

Toward the end of high school I had decided that there was either something wrong with the doctrine of the church on R-rated movies, or I was just going to have to sin and watch them (repent later) because I really liked movies. I liked them so much that I'd rather give them up completely than have to live the rest of my life only watching The Waterboy,

Dr. Dolittle,

Armageddon,

Patch Adams,

Rush Hour,

and a pantheon of other PG-13 shit-fests. (All those movies were released when I was seventeen. Here's some more non-R-rated fare from 1998: Deep Impact, Godzilla, You've Got Mail, The Rugrats Movie, Stepmom, The Mask of Zorro, Antz, The X-Files, City of Angels, Lost In Space, Parent Trap, Ever After, What Dreams May Come, Meet Joe Black... I could go on like this, but you get the idea.)

While I was on my mission the church published a revised edition of For the Strength of Youth, and it is the version used to this day. I remember reading through the new pamphlet and being surprised that no mention was made of R-rated movies. Basically, it just says that you shouldn't expose yourself to vulgar or pornographic media. Did this mean that the youth of the 21st century could just use their good judgment on what was and wasn't allowed when it came to R-rated movies? This kind of shocked me, to be honest.

I wanted to track down an original For the Strength of Youth pamphlet form 1990 so I could compare the wording on movies in both of them and see what exactly had changed. I got a hold of one from 1990, and this is what it said:

Don't attend or participate in any form of entertainment, including concerts, movies, and videocassettes, that is vulgar, immoral, inappropriate, suggestive, or pornographic in any way.

Wait, what? So all those years I thought they specifically banned R-rated movies, but they didn't. And I was too dumb to actually look in the pamphlet itself to confirm this. But what about all those Conference talks and admonitions to the youth and stuff? I was confused, so I just went with what felt right.

When I went off to college the trashing of anything R-rated continued in full force. BYU has a policy in its Honor Code that no students are allowed to view or own R-rated films. The kids who lived in the dorms had it even worse; they weren't allowed to watch PG-13 movies either! This meant that they could be kicked out of school for watching The Fellowship of the Ring,

Rated PG-13

but not for watching Jaws,

Rated PG

or Gremlins,

Rated PG

or Poltergeist.


Rated PG, and this was one of the less disturbing images

Because yes, OBVIOUSLY The Lord of the Rings, a film based on a well-beloved classic that's even been quoted in an Ensign message by a member of the Quorum of the Twelve-- yes, THAT'S the morally degrading film out of this bunch. It's rated PG-13, after all. But if I ever tried arguing this point with anyone around here, all I got was, "The Honor Code is inspired and was written by General Authorities, therefore the ruling against PG-13 movies in the dorms and R-rated movies in general is divinely decreed."

Well I didn't believe this, because when I watched The Lord of the Rings I could feel the Spirit. It was spiritually moving and beautiful. So yes, you can ban the movie all you want but don't say that it's because God wanted it that way or because the movie is somehow morally objectionable.

Thus it was in college that I started to look for the official stance the church takes on R-rated movies. I searched all the conference talks, the back issues, the archives of The Ensign on lds.org and also paid careful attention to everything said in General Conference.

Stay tuned for:
Part 2: The History of "R"

Bewbs in School

2011-04-15T17:42:00.000-06:00

Just read this jaw-droppingly stupid story from the Philadelphia Inquirer. Apparently there were two girls in a Philadelphia middle school who wore large bracelets that said "I Love Boobies" in an effort to raise awareness for breast cancer. The school banned the bracelets and told them to stop wearing them, which they didn't. They were subsequently suspended for a day. Their parents then brought a lawsuit against the school, alleging that it was a freedom of speech issue.

Stupidly, U.S. District Judge Mary A. McLaughlin decreed that the school was in the wrong and the girls did indeed have a right to wear their boobs bracelets.

Some random internet comments made by random internet people regarding this article:

I'm pretty sure Middle-School boys already know what boobies are. You're a little late to be shielding them. ;3

(The person who wrote this comment really is as stupid a jackass as they sound. And that little emoticon at the end just makes you want to rip their eyeballs out, so that doesn't help. They assume the reason for banning the bracelets was to shield boys from the existence of breasts, when in actuality, the bracelets were banned because they affected boys and girls in the formative stages of adolescence by creating a completely unnecessarily sexualized environment. The bracelets used a sort of double entendre to shock and titillate the reader into going to the foundation's web site on breast cancer awareness. Girls with small breasts, girls with big breasts, fat girls, chubby girls, and shy girls already have enough intense scrutiny placed on their bodies by the world around them. Ironic bracelets aren't helping.)

Finally....a win for rights and free speech.

(YES. AT LAST. Finally, these middle-schoolers have been granted the God-given freedom to SPEAK THEIR MINDS THROUGH LEWD BRACELETS ENDORSED BY ACTUAL PORN STARS AND THAT YOU CAN PURCHASE AT TRUCK STOPS. Now if only we could lift the FASCIST ban on drawing penises on the bathroom walls, and let these kids get into some REAL SELF EXPRESSION.)

Anyone that thinks breast cancer should be hidden away is not suitable to work in our name.

A pox on the school district and attorney.

(Thank you, medieval wizard! Shouldn't we also curse their crops and firstborn children, though? By the way, retard, the opposition never said that breast cancer awareness was unacceptable. If these girls had worn bracelets that said "Breast Cancer Awareness" or even "Keep 'Abreast' With Cancer Awareness" there would have been no problem. But yes, let's present this straw man as an argument and attack IT instead.)

But seriously, these internet commenters and those who agree with them are actually too stupid to breed. It's immoral to allow them to have children. It's the same reason we don't typically let people with Down Syndrome become parents. It's just wrong.

I wish I were a teenage student at this middle school. Because if those two girls could get away with wearing bracelets that say "I love boobies," then why not take it to its logical conclusion? The judge said using the phrase "I love boobies" can "reasonably be viewed as speech designed to raise awareness of breast cancer and to reduce the stigma associated with openly discussing breast health..." Here are some shirts I would design to "raise awareness" of other diseases and conditions that have "stigmas" attached to them.

First, why stop at "I Love Boobies"? That's childish and stupid. This slogan will emphasize the need of breast care while utilizing more mature terminology:

And why should it be the girls who have all the fun? Boys' lives are also deeply affected by the ravages of breast cancer, from moms, grandmothers, aunts, etc. Boys have just as much incentive to promote breast cancer awareness:

And even better, why not get the boys to take an active role in breast cancer screening through some gentle encouragement:

In fact, these catchy t-shirts can really be a force for good! For example, you can print the name and number of a local women's health clinic with a catchy slogan:

And you know, slogans don't have to be used just to promote awareness of diseases, either. For instance, you could promote healthy child-rearing practices by spreading the word and removing the stigma regarding the nursing of infants:

Who says these slogans have to limited to women's issues? PETA could use a slogan to spread the awareness of the humane treatment of poultry:

Or to spread the awareness of animal cruelty to felines:

Middle-schoolers are obviously not too young to start being made aware of men's health issues, too; especially ones that have a horrible stigma attached to them, such as colon cancer:

Prostate cancer:

If you think about it, you can use helpful slogans to remind people about lots of things that have stigmas attached to them, especially things that teenagers tend to not think about too much such as keeping yourself hydrated in hot weather:

Okay, okay. I'll stop.

Fish in a Barrell

2011-04-08T17:54:00.039-06:00

The most widely read publication in Idaho

Those of you who attended BYU-Idaho are undoubtedly familiar with The Scroll, the university's "newspaper." This thing has always hurt me in many deep and personal ways, all four years of college. In fact, this thing was hurting me even before my mission when I did a semester as a freshman. That was probably the lowest point of my life because it was also the lowest point for my testimony. I was surrounded by all these Mormon teenagers and twentysomethings on all sides, and what I started with great enthusiasm quickly became abject misery. I thought I would find other Mormons like myself-- other Mormons who weren't country-music listening, tucked-in t-shirt wearing, a cappella choir enthusiasts. I envisioned Mormons who liked video games and The Simpsons and the films of Stanley Kubrick. Mormons who didn't think Dungeons and Dragons and Stephen King was on par with devil worship, and who could enjoy a nice cold Mountain Dew from time to time. I got this instead:

Actual photos from my wife's yearbook, circa 1999-2000

I look back now and realize how naive I really was. I'm not saying closet-nerd Mormons didn't exist, but they were far more rare than I imagined at the time. That freshman semester took place way back in 1999, in a time before Hot Topic and the ubiquitousness of the internet. When I was eighteen I always thought I was born too late; I figured I would have fit in better in the seventies or the eighties. I now realize that I was also born too early. I was living on the edge of the cultural takeover of pop culture by nerd/geek culture and I didn't even know it.

LARPers, circa 2010

You'd be hard-pressed to find a LARPer on campus in 1999, but when my wife and I moved back to Rexburg in 2010 there were LARPers battling it out in the quad. I'm not saying the khaki-wearing sports-worshiping douches are gone, but they're not as prevalent. There are now board game clubs, anime clubs, video game competitions, and a bona-fide board game store where people play Magic: The Gathering on Friday nights. Yes, this stuff is actually more geeky than anything I was into at age eighteen, but it's proof that things have changed quite a bit.

The Scroll factors into all this because when I eighteen and on the brink of personal disaster, I saw it at the embodiment of young LDS culture. Its opinions, its articles and its comic strips all painted a picture of what it meant to be Mormon and a BYU student. The articles were horrendously stupid, the opinions were usually half-baked and borderline senile, and the cartoons usually made me want to take a shotgun to anything living and subsequently end that living thing's life.

I hated The Scroll for everything that it represented.

Serving a mission in New York City transformed me from an idealistic but spiritually crushed eighteen year old into an semi-world-weary but emotionally mature twenty one year old, and by the time I returned to college to complete my freshman year The Scroll lost most of its power over me. By then my testimony was starting to become firm, and I started to understand that some people were just retarded and couldn't help it.

This didn't lessen the intense bouts of rage that would overcome me when inevitably reading The Scroll, but it did lessen the damage it could do to my faith.

Now I've returned to Rexburg after a four year absence, and subsequently The Scroll is back in my life. I've decided to do something constructive with the rage that still comes from reading it and write my own commentaries on its ridiculous articles and stories. I do this in an effort to heal the world and to let any fellow young Mormons out there know that they are not alone.

Some of you may say, "Hey! Aren't you a little bit too old to be making fun of some crappy student-run newspaper from your old college? Wouldn't a better person just ignore the stupid little newspaper and go on being an adult?"

The answer to that is, "Probably." But you know what? The articles, ideas, opinions and views expressed in The Scroll represent more than just adolescent inanity. Sure, you could say that making fun of The Scroll is like going to the Special Olympics to scoff at the high functioning retards... But the difference is that the high functioning retards featured in the pages of The Scroll are all going to go on to become the future leaders of our church. Do you understand that? These men and women are going to graduate, become dentists and dental assistants, have families, buy big effing houses and cars and boats, and become bishops and Relief Society presidents and so forth.

Future bishopric member

So basically I'm a hero for making fun of them.

But enough of this. I'll let The Scroll speak for itself. The inaugural article I'd like to post is a bit of a classic to me. It ran sometime during my college years, and it epitomizes everything about Rexburg in just a few inches of text. Every week The Scroll runs what it calls "The Police Scene," or basically every phone call the local police department received that week while they weren't busy handing out speeding tickets to people going twenty seven miles per hour or making out in a public park.

Here it is. Bask in its wonder:

I promise you this is unedited.

Special thanks to my sister for making a bookmark out of this for me which is why I've been able to keep it all these years. Of course these are all worthy of their own little movies, but really nothing could ever been item number sixteen on that list. Two simple words and yet, what a mystery! What was that call about? Why did the editors of The Scroll see fit to include it on their list? How did everyone go on with their lives after such a horrifying incident?

Camels and Needles

2011-03-06T14:09:00.003-07:00

Let's put this one to bed once and for all, shall we?

When I was a child I remember repeatedly hearing and reading a story about what Jesus had to say on worldly wealth.

The Bible says a wealthy young ruler asked Christ what he needed to do to get into heaven. Christ tells him to keep the commandments. When the young man explains that he already keeps the commandments, Christ tells him to sell his things and give his money to the poor.

The man leaves Jesus at this point because he didn't want to do that. Jesus then states:

"Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:23-24)

As a child I found this story to be fairly self-explanatory. Jesus was explaining that there would not be many rich people in heaven.

When I was teenager, however, I started hearing a new interpretation of this scripture. I recall one of the first times I heard this interpretation. It was during Aaronic Priesthood class on a Sunday, and our instructor (who took many liberties with the doctrine of the church) was reading the aforementioned story from the New Testament. Afterward he stopped and said to us in a conspiratorial tone,

"You might think you know what this scripture means, but you may not know the whole story."

We listened intently, thinking perhaps he was going to reveal to us some hidden knowledge of the scriptures that was beyond our grasp. This is what he told us:

"You see, when Jesus said it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven, he didn't mean it how you might think he meant it. In Jerusalem in those days, there was a main gate into the city. This gate was very narrow. It was so narrow that it was called 'The Needle.' It was too narrow for a camel to walk through it normally. For a camel to pass through, it had to first get down on its knees. Then it had to crawl through this opening on its knees. This opening was called 'The Eye of the Needle,' and this is what Jesus was talking about. It wasn't about money, but more about humility. For a rich man to get into heaven he has to get on his knees, too, and be humble."

This interpretation of the story shocked me when I first heard it. It seemed to change everything that Jesus was trying to say. It felt very wrong to me, and although I had absolutely no proof I wish I would have just called this teacher on his bullshit.

And yes, I say bullshit because this isn't some innocent little misunderstanding or mistake in comprehending the scriptures. No, this is willfully changing the meaning of a scripture that he apparently found offensive and/or frightening.

I just remember sitting there feeling this awful sense of dread inside as he "explained" the scripture to us. The whole story about camels and crawling and the "Eye of the Needle" made me feel furious and depressed. I didn't know it then, but I was experiencing the loss of the Holy Ghost. He was withdrawing himself because falsehoods were being taught.

I was too young to say anything in protest, and kept my reservations a secret. I didn't soon forget this story, though, and I noticed it popping up in church discussions for years afterward. I heard it in Sunday School classes, in Priesthood meetings, and most of all I heard it in discussions with other missionaries on my mission. Without fail, when we'd gather in a group and study this story, whether at church or as missionaries, some douchebag would proudly announce, "STOP! I know the REAL meaning of this scripture!" and then proceed to tell the camel-through-the-gateway interpretation while everyone else in class would nod approvingly.

It was on my mission that I finally had a breakthrough in my personality, and I started to tentatively call people on their bullshit (at least when it came to stories passed around in the church). I realized that sources were really important, and most of these types of stories didn't have any. At all. Once in a while you'd get a photocopy of a photocopy in some handout from the mission president's wife or a printout of a forwarded e-mail claiming some kind of authority, but that was usually it.

So I got a little bolder. I started asking people where on earth they heard this interpretation of the story. Most of the time this caught people off guard, and they'd begin to fumble and look guilty. "I heard it in General Conference" was a common answer. I'd ask "Which General Authority taught this? What conference? Where can I look it up?" And most of the time these people would shrug and admit they had no idea. Once in a while you'd get someone who'd defend this camel-gateway viewpoint vehemently, claiming it was from their Patriarch or their father or from a specific book they read. I'd always ask to see the proof in writing. Nobody could ever provide it. They couldn't even provide names of books or articles or anything.

My reasoning against the camel-gate theory was based mostly on my own feelings and observations from the text itself.

First and foremost, this scripture was usually misquoted. You often hear it reported that Jesus said, "It's easier for a camel to PASS through the eye of a needle," when it's actually recorded "It's easier for a camel to GO through the eye of a needle." That's a minor thing, but I feel it is important. The word pass implies passage from one point to another, back and forth. This makes the camel-gate story a little more palatable.

Secondly, this saying is worded slightly differently by Luke. Matthew and Mark record "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle," while Luke writes, "It is easier for a camel to pass through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." Does this even read like Jesus was talking about a city gate? At all? If he were referencing a specific gate to the city of Jerusalem wouldn't he have said something along the lines of, "It is easier for a camel to pass through THE eye of the needle" or "to pass through THE needle's eye"? He doesn't specify any particular "needle" here.

Third, why are the apostles so amazed at this saying? The verse following in Matthew states, "When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed..." If Jesus was comparing a rich man entering heaven to a camel entering the city, what was so freakin' amazing about that?!

Fourth, why would a city even build such a stupid narrow entrance? Wasn't Jerusalem a center of commerce in the ancient world? According to the New Testament CES manual, we're talking a city of about 80,000 people at the time of Christ. Traders, caravans, people of all nationalities converged in Jerusalem. There must have been insanely long lines to get through that "Eye of the Needle." Why bother??? I've actually asked proponents of this interpretation this very question, and the response I've received is "the entrance to the city was narrow to discourage thieves from pillaging the city and leaving with the stolen goods." This explanation doesn't really work for me, because according to the little fake story humans can fit through the opening just fine. It's the camels that have to kneel and/or be unburdened first. So basically you'd have to believe that this narrow little entrance into the city was enough to stop thieves riding camels but not thieves who were on foot or had camels waiting for them right outside the city walls.

Fifth, and probably most importantly, I've heard some versions of this story where the key point is not so much that the camel has to "get down on its knees" but that it needs to "unburden itself" of whatever it's carrying to enter the city. So if the camel needed to unburden itself of its material wealth to enter the city, isn't the meaning kind of the same either way? To get in the camel has to rid itself of its material possessions, just as a rich man has to rid himself of his wealth. Of course, the times when I've heard this "unburdening" interpretation taught, the camel's possessions were equated to sins, meaning "to enter heaven a man must unburden himself of his sins." Sure, that's a cute little sentiment there, but it's way off from what Christ was trying to express in that particular story.

It was during my mission that I read Jesus the Christ by James E. Talmage, a highly regarded and respected book about the life of Jesus Christ. This book was written in a special room set aside in the Salt Lake Temple, and every chapter was presented for consideration to the Prophet Joseph F. Smith and the Quorum of the Twelve. It's a classic in Latter-day Saint religious literature. If this camel-gate theory was what Jesus really had in mind, I figured Jesus the Christ would be the book to explain it. I got to the section discussing the story of the rich young ruler, and was relieved to find that no mention was made whatsoever of camels passing through city gates that happened to be called "The Needle." I believe Talmage said that Jesus was using a hyperbole (or extreme amplification) to make a serious point about the wealthy, and his apostles were amazed by it.

***

I've compiled here a small collection of quotes, articles and essays that make mention of the camel-gate theory and how it is completely fabricated. I felt inspired to collect these and present them in one place because I still hear the camel-gate theory presented as if it were actual church doctrine. My wife, who is attending Brigham Young University - Idaho, just had a religion professor tell her entire class that the camel-gate theory was the true meaning of Jesus' expression. This guy is a RELIGION PROFESSOR! And he's probably taught this to hundreds, maybe thousands of impressionable students! This isn't just some harmless misunderstanding, either. As I said above, it is a fundamental change in the meaning of Christ's words. He said that very few wealthy people would be allowed to enter into heaven! He didn't say wealthy people who didn't pay their tithes or wealthy people who were greedy; he just said wealthy. Rich. Isn't this something we ought to be talking about more in the church today? But no, instead, we sweep it all under the rug and claim that Jesus didn't really mean it. We claim that he just meant people who were proud or selfish. No, it has nothing to do with money, really. It has more to do with HUMILITY and REPENTANCE.

From Jesus Christ and the World of the New Testament: An Illustrated Reference for Latter-day Saints by Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, Eric D. Hunstman, and Thomas A. Wayment, published by Deseret Book in 2006:

The saying about a camel going through the eye of a needle has nothing to do with a city gate (92).

From Jesus the Christ by James E. Talmage, member of the Quorum of the Twelve:

“There was a 'common Jewish proverb, that a man did not even in his dreams see an elephant pass through the eye of a needle' (Edersheim) … proverbs involving comparisons of a kind with that of a camel passing through the eye of a needle are common in the Talmud.”

From the article "Footnotes to the Gospels" by S. Kent Brown, C. Wilfred Griggs, and Thomas W. Mackay, first published in the Ensign, March 1975:

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle” Regarding this, W. F. Albright notes, “In spite of the attempts of commentators and preachers to find small gates, or even camel-hair, in this saying, it seems certain that it is simply a proverb cast in hyperbolic form.” (Matthew, “Anchor Bible,” vol. 26, p. 233.)

From the Jerome Biblical Commentary edited by Raymond Edward Brown:

"...the figure of the camel and the eye of the needle means exactly what is said; it does not refer to a cable or a small gate of Jerusalem."

From “Imitation Gospels and Christ's Book of Mormon Ministry” by Richard Lloyd Anderson of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship:

The unhistorical "eye of the needle" gate is described, with the physically implausible act of the camel inching through it on his knees.

From “The Camel and the Eye of the Needle” by Daniel McClellan, LDS professor of religion and Oxford graduate:

This interpretation, however, is not without criticism. The most glaring problem is that no gate designed for camels, or small enough to force them to their knees, has ever been uncovered in Jerusalem, nor has the practice ever been attested. In addition, the apostles display utter shock at the idea, which precludes the possibility of a contemporary proverbial understanding of the phrase. In other words, the apostles were unaware of any camel's gate in Jerusalem. The idea is currently understood to have originated with two writers from the 9th century CE, Paschasius Radbertus and Walafrid Strabo.

From the web site BiblicalHebrew.com:

Luke clears this up, by carefully using the Greek word for a surgeon's needle, nullifying this interpretation ...The needle in Matthew and Mark is a rafic. In Luke it is a belone. Both are synonyms for needles used in sewing, but Luke's is more likely to be used by a surgeon than a seamstress.

From the book Approaching Zion by LDS scholar and professor Hugh Nibley:

The Lord did not say, "Wait a minute, fellow. Perhaps we can work something out here." So the young man went away sorrowfully. And the Lord let him go sorrowfully, then turned to the apostles and said (this is the point), "I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24).

We are told that the apostles were amazed beyond measure when he told them that. They didn't know about any postern gates through which a camel comes. That's an invention of modern-day criticism. There is no evidence anywhere at all that there was a gate called "The Eye of the Needle." No, Jesus really meant it: It's impossible.

…

[His] disciples marveled greatly at this, for they had never heard of that convenient postern gate, invented by an obliging nineteenth-century minister for the comfort of his well-heeled congregation—the ancient sources knew nothing of that gate, and neither did the baffled apostles. (That is another "para-scripture.")

***

So can we put this one to bed, please? The next time I have to listen to this camel-gate theory spouted off in church, I'm going to make a point to call it bullshit and I'm also going to make it a point to ask the person spouting it why they are doing so. I want to hear them say that it's because they don't believe Jesus meant what he said, because that's what they're thinking.

Salvation Through Cheese Balls

2011-02-24T18:00:00.004-07:00

I was trying to be on hiatus with this thing, but once in a while you just come across something so special that you can't remain silent about it. For me, this usually happens in the dollar store.

I was looking for some cheap / crappy snack food to enjoy while playing video games when I came across a bag of "Brim's Cheese Balls." The name "Brim" just stood out to me and I was impressed by its bright purple packaging. I grabbed the crinkly bag off the shelf and turned it over in my hands. I came to terms with the fact that I was standing in a Dollar Tree, attempting a serious contemplation of the quality of these cheese balls on a Friday night. I wondered what the point of my life was. It was then that I discovered this little gem:

That's right: it was scripture printed on a cheap bag of chips.

This is especially wonderful to me because a couple of years ago I actually wrote a blog entry called
"Rap Snacks: The New Scriptures" and it was also about people modeling their lives and basing their morality around bags of chips. At the time I thought it was just ridiculous nonsense, but I now realize that it was prophecy.

I am some kind of prophet.

So there's not much for me to say about this image, other than, yes: it exists.

In a way I guess it makes sense. Who buys cheese balls at the Dollar Tree? To paraphrase Homer Simpson:

- Alcoholics
- The unemployable
- Angry loners

- Etc.

I guess these people do need Jesus in their lives, and what better way to introduce him than through cheese balls? Some might laugh at this attempt to mingle cheese balls with scripture, but perhaps it will help someone out there.

Thank you, Brim's brand cheese balls.

Thank you.

Another Hiatus

2011-01-12T17:17:00.002-07:00

Happy 2011, people.

I've decided to take myself off the internet for a while. I of course will still add to this blog, but I may be missing for a few months. If you're really starved for some pointless ranting, then by all means, enjoy the archive of meaningless drivel that I've put on here over the years.

Ciao!

Merry Christmas Everybody!

2010-12-12T09:35:00.001-07:00

I made a little compilation of lesser-heard Christmas tunes this year. Some are weird, some are just lesser-known, many are made by people who are probably legally insane. It's called An Outsider Christmas. There must be terabytes of Christmas music out there, and yet the radio and the drug stores tend to pipe out the same fifty Christmas songs over and over and OVER. How many times can a man hear "All I Want For Christmas (Is You)" by Mariah Carey until it completely loses all meaning (probably five)? So here's a small collection of some real gems. Sure, some of them are terrible. But at least they're unique, and you won't be hearing them non-stop from the secretary's little desk radio for a month.

These songs were cribbed from lots of other compilations, found on blogs and other web sites, heard on the radio, found accidentally, and so forth. The cover art is from a Christmas album by Eilert Priam, a Swedish Elvis impersonator who doesn't speak English, doesn't sound like Elvis, and doesn't sing particularly well.

The link is below the cover art.

Merry Christmas!

An Outsider Christmas, Volume 1

http://www.mediafire.com/?r7qr8c115ktycmr

A Real Phone Conversation With Jensen's Jewelers

2010-12-10T12:46:00.005-07:00

So I got a little catalog in the mailbox last night. It was for Jensen's Jewelers. It was sixteen large, full color, high-glossy pages of ads. The crappy mass-produced little overpriced pieces of carbon they were advertising were just as ugly as sin. Normally I'd just toss it, but lately I've been politely calling the companies that send me junk mail and asking them to please remove my address from their mailing list. Usually they're quite friendly about it, since it does save them a little money and people are generally nice if you're nice to them first.

(ONLY THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!)

I have a few reasons for taking the trouble to stop the junk mail.

The ads are annoying to me, they show me things I don't want and am not interested in.

Or sometimes they show me things that I do want but cannot afford, which makes me sad.

Sometimes I'm expecting something specific in the mail and then I see something in my mailbox and am momentarily excited only to realize that it's junk mail. Then I am sad.

Sometimes I bring them inside and they end up making more clutter.

Usually I just throw them away in the dumpster before I get back inside and I think to myself, "What a waste of resources." There's the trees, the paper, the printing, the ink, the transportation on trucks on the interstate, the mailman, etc. Just a big waste of time and energy. I don't want to have to feel semi-guilty for it.

Mostly, though, I just don't want the advertisements in my life. I don't want their little colored pieces of paper constantly reminding me and bringing me back to their stores and their sales in my mind. I have the right to not think about Target or Rent-A-Center or Walgreens if I don't want to think about them.

If I want to live a sheltered life, disconnected from corporate ads, should I not be allowed? Even if I live in a town and use the Postal Service, should I not be allowed to disconnect myself from their ads?

I realize that in most public places, ads have become the norm and that I will have to suffer through them. But when I'm at home, I think I have the right to not be advertised to unless I choose to be. And I typically do not choose to be.

Soooooo,

There was no 1-800 number listed on the catalog so I called the Jensen Jewelers in Rexburg and asked them if they could help me get my address off the mailing list. They gave me a number for their corporate offices in Twin Falls, Idaho. I called them and explained what I wanted to do. The lady I spoke to sounded baffled but said she'd put me through to the right department.

Here's a transcript of the actual call--

Me: I'm not sure if this is the right number to call or not, but I'd like to get my address removed from the mailing list.

Jensen Jewelers: Okay, well can you give me your account number?

Me: I don't have an account.

Jensen Jewelers: What's the name the account is associated with. We can look it up that way.

Me: I actually don't have an account with Jensen's Jewelers. I was calling to get my address removed from the advertising mailing list.

Jensen Jewelers: Oh-- There's no way to do that, sir.

Me: There's no way?

Jensen Jewelers: Those are just ads-- Are they bothering you that much?

Me: It's not that they bother me, I just don't like receiving advertisements in my mailbox that I didn't ask for, and I think they're a waste of time and paper. I'd just like to not--

Jensen Jewelers: --Well you can't remove your name from that list.

Me: Is there some kind of do-not-mail list I could add my address to?

Jensen Jewelers: No, there's not. Maybe if you gave me the name on the ad I could look up that person's account...

Me: There is no name on the ad. It just says "resident."

Jensen Jewelers: (derisive snort) Well, that's just... Ugh... That means everyone gets one!

Me: Maybe someone else might know who I could call. Could you point me in the right direction, maybe?

Jensen Jewelers: Sir, there's no way to remove your name from the mailing list. Those just get sent out to everyone.

Me: Is there a supervisor that I could speak with?

Jensen Jewelers: Sir, my supervisor is just going to tell you the same thing. We have no power over who gets those ads. Everyone gets those ads.

Me: May I speak with your supervisor anyway?

(puts me on hold)

Jensen Jewelers: Sir, I spoke with my supervisor and he's currently on a call. He said he will call you back.

Me: I just thought of something: do you distribute your ads through some other company? Like some mailing company? Maybe I could get ahold of them directly.

Jensen Jewelers: No, we send out the ads ourselves. We just don't have any power over who gets the ads.

Me: Okay then. Thanks for your help.

(click)

She hung up on me.

So the the tone I got from this woman was that I was making a totally unreasonable request. Impossible! This is just impossible! I could have asked to please speak with President Obama regarding the upcoming summit between Earth and the alien-people of star system Rigel-14 which would be taking place in the local Rexburg Kentucky Fried Chicken men's bathroom and I would have received the same reaction from this woman.

I wish I could have captured the tone of her voice as she remarked, dripping with annoyance and venom, "Are they bothering you THAT much?"

Funny choice of words, actually. The fact that she added "THAT much" meant that she understood that advertisements to be implicitly bothersome. If she really was surprised to hear that the ads were bothering someone, wouldn't she have just asked "Are the ads bothering you?" But no, she asked "Are the ads bothering you THAT MUCH?"

So what the hell is the problem, lady? You've just admitted to me that your crappy junk mail is an annoyance I could do without. I made the effort to call and act totally polite and civil. Why treat me like you just found I raped and murdered your grandmother?

Elementary School Folk Carols Project

2010-12-01T16:20:00.003-07:00

I have a long and storied history with silly Christmas carols, or changing the words to Christmas songs to make them "silly." They were beloved to me as a child, and I even wrote a short book of Christmas carols when I was in fourth grade in which I changed the lyrics to popular carols and made them "violent." Oh, what a precocious youth I was!

I overheard some of the second-grade students singing "Jingle Bells, Batman Smells" on the playground the other day, and it warmed my heart. They weren't quite sure of all the words, so I took a moment to sing the whole song to them. They caught on very quickly, and later wanted me to teach them other Christmas songs. I happily obliged them. It made me wonder what other "wacky" Christmas carols might be out there that I may have either forgotten or missed in my youth.

I decided to record what few Elementary School Christmas Carols I know, in hopes of preserving them for future generations.

We'll begin with that old standby, the short but sweet "Jingle Bells." This is a classic that's been around since at least the 1960's.

Jingle Bells
Batman smells
Robin laid an egg

The Batmobile lost it's wheel
And the Joker took ballet [variation: And the Joker got away.]

You really can't do much better than that one. It's silly, it uses a comic character that apparently all children know, and it keeps the Batman theme going throughout. It's also got a the debasing of a revered "authority figure," it's got a pun, and it's got the ridiculing of a villain. It's perfect.

"Deck the Halls"

Deck the halls with gasoline
Fa la la la la, la la la la!
Light a match and watch it gleam

Fa la la la la, la la la la!
Now the school's burned down to ashes
Fa la la la la, la la la la!
Aren't you glad you played with matches?
Fa la la la la, la la la la!

Perfect. I loved this one, even though I had nothing against going to school. I liked it up until fifth grade or so! But it was still fun to pretend to hate it and want to burn it to the ground.

"Joy to the World"

Joy to the world,
The teacher's dead
We bar-b-qued her head!

And what about the body? [variations: What happened to the body?, Don't worry about the body,]
We flushed it down the potty

And round and round it goes,
And round and round it goes,
and rooouuund and roooouuunnd and round it gooooes.

Again, I had nothing against my teacher, but it was fun to pretend to hate her. This one was violent AND slightly blasphemous! Perfection! I heard a variation on this one where "teacher" was replaced with "Barney." The strange thing was that I heard the variation in the past year or so. Apparently Barney bashing is still alive ad well in the world of children?

The last two are focused on Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. The first is called "Randolph and Red Nosed Cowboy." I suspect this one was just made up by a classmate at my old school because I've never heard anyone else sing it, and it's not really that good. They essentially only replaced one or two key words from the original Rudolph song, so it's kind of lazy. Perhaps we could change it up a bit more and make this one a real classic.

Randolph the red-nosed cowboy
Had a very shiny gun
And if you ever saw it
You would crap your pants and run

All of the other cowboys
Used to laugh and call him names
They never let poor Randolph
Join in any cowboy games

Then one foggy Christmas Eve,
The sheriff came to say
"Randolph with your gun so bright,
Won't you shoot my wife tonight?"

Then how the cowboys loved him
As they shouted out with glee (Yee-Haw!)
Randolph the red-nosed cowboy
You'll go down in history!

The "won't you shoot my wife tonight" is great, but otherwise it doesn't change much, huh?

I think we all know the following song, but I'll include it for history's sake. It is Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer with the little call and response parts added in.

Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer
Had a very shiny nose (like a light bulb!)

And if you ever saw it
You would even say it glows (like a light bulb!)

All of the other reindeer
Used to laugh and call him names (like Pinocchio!)

They never let poor Rudolph
Join in any reindeer games (like Monopoly! [variation: like Nintendo!])

Then one foggy Christmas Eve
Santa came to say (Ho! Ho! Ho!)
"Rudolph with your nose so bright,
Won't you guide my sleigh tonight?"

Then how the reindeer loved him
As they shouted out with glee (YIP-eee!)

Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer
You'll go down in history (like Columbus!) [variation: Like Adolph Hitler!]

Yeah... That last variation was just used by me because I thought (rightly so) when I was twelve that it would be "hilarious."

I think we all changed Monopoly to Nintendo when we were in fourth grade and I kind of liked it ever since. I loved singing the little extra parts because they ANNOYED THE CRAP out of people, and they're just so mindless and stupid to go along with this stupid song.

So are there any I've missed? Let me know if you've got any more!

Books versus E-readers

2010-11-29T21:13:00.001-07:00

I'm sick of seeing the absolutely unnecessary (and frankly, retarded) glut of "e-readers" out there. E-readers are little hard drives that display text on a screen and that try very hard to look and feel like books. I never liked them even though I could not quite put my finger on why, and lately I've heard more and more about how they are going to "revolutionize" reading and how they are so much better for the environment because they don't use paper. I'm sick of them, though. I'm sick of seeing them for sale in stores. I'm sick of seeing advertisements for them. I'm sick of people talking about them. I'm sick of their very existence.

So let's examine the difference between actual books and e-readers, shall we? These are in no particular order, just as they come to me:

- Books can last a pretty long time. I own books that were printed before my grandparents were even born. There are many books that are hundreds of years old and are still perfectly readable. I don't have any electronic devices that old. The oldest electronic thing I own is probably my Nintendo. It's a tough little guy, but it's also a relatively simple computer compared to the other, deader, electronics I have lying around (dead laptop, dead iPod, dead computer, dead digital camera, dead router, dead cell phone, dead CD player, etc.) Granted, maybe these other devices didn't just "die" because they were old, but time takes a much bigger toll on complex electronics than it does on books. Let's just say that in A.D. 2071, I'll be surprised if I see my great-grandchildren reading a book off a Kindle manufactured in 2010.

- Books are durable. They can be dropped, stepped on, thrown across a room in frustration, etc. and still be very readable. You can't do that with e-readers.

- Books are relatively inexpensive, and so they're much more portable than an e-reader. You can toss a book in your bag or your purse, toss a book in the back seat of your vehicle, take a book on a camping trip if you like, take a book to the beach. You don't have to worry about leaving a book in a hot car or your front porch most of the time.

- Another good thing about books being cheap is that you don't have to worry as much about them being stolen, or losing them. You can put a book down in a public place like a park bench or a seat on the subway or the ledge of a sink in a public bathroom and generally not worry about it being swiped the second your back is turned. You can't do that with an iPad or a Kindle.

- A third thing about the inexpensiveness of books is that you can easily replace them in the off chance that they are lost or stolen or ruined. (You can get a lovely new copy of Moby Dick for less than five bucks on Amazon!) E-readers cost hundreds of dollars to replace.

- Books can handle foreign particles. You can drop a book in the sand and not worry about it being destroyed. You can keep it in a humid place like a bathroom for a long time. You can spill a root beer on a book and have it still be quite readable. You can't do that with most e-readers.

- Books do not require energy to read. You can blissfully enjoy a book nearly anywhere on the planet, regardless of whether you have access to electricity. E-readers require a working electrical outlet to recharge (although I guess you could have some kind of solar panel attached to your e-reader... But even then the battery would slowly lose its ability to retain a charge over the years). You can read a book in a forest or in prison or on a deserted island or during a zombie apocalypse or in the aftermath of a nuclear war, even. All you need is light, and if you learn braille you don't even need that.

- I wonder what book I might take with me if I had to leave civilization all of a sudden. The nice thing about books is that they are ready to use, instantly. You just pull one off the shelf and it's ready. If I had to escape the country because the Mafia was after me, I could grab a couple of books and get in my car and drive away. An e-reader would require a power cord, a charged battery, a USB cable to upload the files from your personal computer (or if it uses Wi-Fi, then some kind of internet connection) and somewhere along the line it's going to require the use of someone's cable modem and router of some kind. It's not the kind of thing you could just grab and go.

- Books, again due to their cheapness, are easier to lend out than e-readers. If I want to read a book I can borrow a copy from my friend or from the library. I've lent out many books that I've never seen again. Keeping hundreds of books on one device makes it impractical to lend out to others.

- Which leads me to my next (tangential!) point: Books are better for writers and better for business. Because if a book becomes just a PDF file to display on an e-reader, how much easier is it to copy it and distribute it without paying the author anything for it? You might say, "But libraries let you read books for free, too," which is true, but the point is that a library loans you a physical self-contained object that only one person can own at a time. If you want to keep that object, you have to pay someone for it. As e-readers try harder and harder to replicate the look and feel of actual books, though, what will be the motivation in anyone paying for a book when they can get the exact same thing for free as a PDF file?

- You could say that this is a lot like what happened to the music industry when computers gained the ability to replicate music, but in some ways it will be way worse for writers. Some say that musicians don't make money like they used to, but at the very least musicians can always perform their art on stage and make money from live shows, or perform on television, or license their music for films and commercials and video games or even for crappy products. Plus, there are more people that pay for digital music on iTunes than there are people who have read an entire book in the past year. What will authors get from the world going digital?

- PDF files and text files are way, way smaller than movie files and music files. I think you can fit the entire Old Testament on 3.5" floppy disk. You can already download gigabytes of music and movies in a matter of minutes. Imagine how easy it will be, then, to copy books, which are tiny tiny little files. I bet you could download entire book stores onto your Nook in a matter of seconds without having to pay a penny to anyone. In some ways I could see this as a good thing for writers, in the sense that many more people might be exposed to their work. In other ways I see it as something that could easily destroy the entire publishing industry, putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work. Maybe then the only writers that will exist are the ones who aren't in it for the money, since their work will be quite worthless..? I can see that as a good thing, but it's also sad that people won't be able to make money from writing anymore.

- Looking at the ecological side of things, books are made from trees which are renewable resource. According to industry reports, paper companies plant five to ten times as many trees as they harvest. E-readers require complex computer parts that are made from ores and minerals that have to be mined out of the earth. These ores are non-renewable. They are also toxic and costly to extract. We have laws against mining them in the U.S. which is why we get almost all of them from China. They don't give a crap about the environment there.

- Books are biodegradable. You could compost a book if you wanted to. If you were to burn a book, it would not give off toxic emissions. E-readers aren't like that. Because of their batteries, their microprocessors, and other chemicals and metals used to make them, they are toxic when returned to the earth. Their metals corrode and eventually work their way into the ground water.

- Books have a much smaller carbon footprint than e-readers. The energy required to create one book (including ink-making, printing, binding, shipping, etc.) creates about 7.5 kg of carbon dioxide. The energy required to create an iPad produces roughly 130 kg of CO2, according to Apple. Kindles create roughly 170 kg of CO2. And while it's true that there are probably way more books printed right now than e-readers manufactured, at least with the book that 7.5 is a one-time expenditure. E-readers require energy for the rest of their lives. They also require other energy consuming things to function (the aforementioned computers, routers, modems, etc.)

- "E-readers ... require the mining of nonrenewable minerals, like columbite-tantalite, which sometimes come from politically unstable regions." Books don't fund Communist regimes.

- It's easy to write notes in books, highlight things, underline passages you want to remember, etc. I'm sure the stupid e-readers also have some stupid way of doing this, but I wanted to add it anyway.

- Books don't have the ability to connect to the internet or to anything else. This means you don't have to worry about streaming advertisements or flashy things to distract you from the page at hand. You won't ever be tempted to check your e-mail with or play a flash game or check the time and the weather or anything like that with a book.

- A book typically contains just one book at a time. This means that you are forced to focus on just it. If you want to read something else, you have to physically seek out another book to read. If you put a hundred books on one e-reader, though, I can imagine the temptation to quit and try a different book would be much stronger. This is sad because I've read many amazing books that started off slow and that I forced myself to get through because I had nothing else to read anyway.

- Libraries are cool, libraries are sexy. Is there any word in the English language more beautiful than "library"? Hundreds of books arranged neatly on tall shelves... It conjures up wonderful images in my mind.

- People that read in public are cool. I'm always curious about what people are reading in public, or even in movies and stuff. Even if it's something that I would never ever want to read, I want to know. People reading Kindles in public, on the other hand, are douche bags.

Neil Postman wrote that a good "test" for whether or not mankind needs a certain new technology is to ask several questions of it. The first question you should ask is: What problem do we, as a civilization, currently have that this new technology purports to solve? This is followed by the question: What new problems might theoretically arise because of this new technology? And finally: Do the benefits of using this technology outweigh these future problems?

Rock musician Patti Smith said, "Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book." I echo her sentiment. Let's not abandon the keystone of religion, of civilization, of humanity itself, for a stupid electronic bauble.

"Turkey Day" is for Retards, Please Stop Calling It That

2010-11-26T09:23:00.003-07:00

I know I can't be the only one to make this observation, but has anyone else noticed how sad it is that we celebrate a holiday in America called "Thanksgiving" only to follow it by a second holiday called "Black Friday?"

Thanksgiving is supposed to be this humble day in which everyone can sit down, reflect, and express gratitude for all the precious blessings we enjoy in life. The act of quiet reflection and expressing gratitude doesn't have to be religious. It has no political agenda. It's such a beautiful holiday because it can apply to everyone, whether Christian or Jew or Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist or atheist. You can be poor, you can be an alcoholic, you can be lonely, and yet you can always find something to be grateful for. It doesn't much matter what you have to be grateful for because it's the feeling of gratitude itself that softens your heart. Cicero wrote, "Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others." I agree with that statement. When a man takes the time to cultivate gratitude, things like anger, greed, selfishness, annoyance, lust, slothfulness, etc. can't remain in his heart.

So we have this beautiful day set aside, and it's being utterly destroyed by corporate America in several ways. First, there's Christmas creep. This is the phenomenon of "celebrating" Christmas earlier and earlier in the year. As a small child, I recall Christmas decorations only appeared on homes and in public after Thanksgiving. This year, apparently Halloween was the new Thanksgiving. There were Christmas decorations being put out on October 30th. Our society is now devoting a full two months out of the year to celebrate Christmas. That's one-sixth of the year.

There are probably several reasons for this happening. The first is that corporate entities like Target and Wal-Mart and Albertsons realize the deep psychological connection that customers have with the Christmas holiday. It's a holiday that's made for spending a lot of money. It's a happy holiday. We associate it with happy childhood feelings. We associate it with receiving beautiful shiny gifts and such. I'm sure there's some chart somewhere that lays out the statistical correlation between happy feelings of nostalgia and consumer spending.

Thanksgiving gets pushed out of the picture in this way. To the stores and the media the day is just a quick pit stop on the way to Christmas. The corporate world barely even acknowledge its existence anymore. This wouldn't be a problem except that the vast majority of Americans live their lives completely immersed in the media and the corporate world. I work with young students, and the influence of the media is not lost on them. If anything, it's much stronger. Little kids don't know how to read a calendar and don't yet have a good grasp on the flow of time. Yet they were in my classroom a full two weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday telling me, "It's going to be Christmas next week!" and "I can't wait until Christmas comes tomorrow!" Who told these kids it was Christmas time? Nobody. They just saw all the commercials, all the decorations, all the Santa Clauses and Christmas trees and overplayed music droning in the stores around town, and assumed it must be any day now. I feel sorry for the kids. I remember how excruciating it was to wait for Christmas as a child, back when time didn't exist. It was just 24 days for me, yet it felt like a lifetime. These kids have to wait almost 60. Thanksgiving doesn't even register as a day for these children.

Second: Is it just me or has there been a sharp uptick in the expression "Turkey Day"? I seem to recall I wrote about this once on this very blog, but I can't remember. I remember back in the day they had the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Turkey Day Special, which at the time was cute and funny. These days, though, the name "Turkey Day" is seriously replacing Thanksgiving altogether. I'm not even kidding here. I was at the store the other day and I overheard an older adults say to another, "So what have you got planned for Turkey Day?" They weren't trying to be cute or funny, either, as far as I could tell. I wouldn't be surprised if Turkey Day becomes to Thanksgiving what "Happy Holidays" is to Christmas.

A third way that Thanksgiving is being dismantled is by the 21st century holiday of "Black Friday." This is a day when all the stores supposedly put out their best "deals" and everyone goes out into the bitter cold and darkness to spend their hard-earned money on these deals. People have been trampled to death at these orgies. There's not a lot I can say about this day that hasn't already probably been said better elsewhere. All I will say is that I find it difficult to keep a spirit of humble gratitude in my heart when I'm out amongt thousands of other people, bleary-eyed and cold, jostling my way through an overcrowded store at 4:00 AM to purchase some video game or a new printer for 20% off the original price.

I'm not saying that they are morally bad people, I'm just saying that the newly cultivated spirit of thankfulness we start to have on Thursday afternoon as we sit down to dinner with family and friends is obliterated less than 12 hours later. It's just so sad to me. How was Thanksgiving like in the 1960's? The 70's? The 80's? Am I just getting older and more bitter, and that's why everything seems to have changed? Or was there a time in post-war, modern America where the Thanksgiving holiday was spent mostly at home, mostly with family and friends? I'm not much of a sports fan, but the thought of a family just sitting down to enjoy a football game on TV seems more peaceful and filled with gratitude than the insane rush of shopping.

I picture a Thanksgiving week twenty years ago. A family spends their day together on Thanksgiving. They have their Thanksgiving meal in the afternoon, and since they have no family or friends in this new town that they've recently moved to, they decide to go for a car ride together. As they drive around, the mother and father notice that the movie theater is still open, and they decide to take in a movie with the kids since almost every other business in town is closed. The theater is mostly empty, but there are several other families there. Afterward they return home. They play cards, they play Super Mario Brothers on the Nintendo, mom knits, dad reads the paper and naps on the couch. All the evening, everybody is merrily eating leftovers. The following day is more of the same. It's cold outside and there's nothing to do anyway.

I'm describing an actual memory I have here. It was from a time before Black Friday. It was from a time when corporations kept their businesses closed on Thanksgiving, not just because they figured not many people would come, but also to allow their employees to stay home and spend time with their families. It appears that those days are gone now, and it makes me sad. I remember that time before everything was open 24/7, and it created a beautiful feeling of security and of calm. When nothing was open, you never felt like you were missing anything by just staying at home. You felt happy to stay at home because you felt like it was where you were supposed to be. There were fewer distractions, then.

In just the past ten years I've witnessed "Black Friday" morph into "Black Friday Week" and now "Black Friday Month." More and more stores are pushing the "Black Friday" into "Black Thursday" by staying open on Thanksgiving or opening their stores earlier and earlier. This year I see ads for stores opening at the ungodly hour of 3:00 AM. I want to know: why the hell do we need to be shopping at 3:00 AM? From what I've observed, it's not really very fun. It's not like standing in line for the release of a certain movie or video game where you're with a bunch of like-minded people because this kind of shopping requires you to be at odds with everyone else. It's not even much of a money-saver, considering you're buying crap that you wouldn't have purchased otherwise. So why, then? Why the hell does some poor schmuck need to go in to work at 3:00 AM just so somebody can buy a discounted fondue pot or the hottest new piece of crap from Apple? Of course people counter with, "But sir, these employees receive extra pay! And they probably don't even care about the holiday anyway! It helps them AND it helps us! Win win!"

Yet again I wonder: what was Thanksgiving like in the eighties? In the seventies? Sixties? Fifties? Where were all those poor schmucks who desperately wanted to go to work on Thanksgiving day in 1978? Were they upset that they didn't get to work that day? Did they wish they could go in to work that day because they sure could use the extra money? Is that why things have changed? Are you naysayers telling me that Thanksgiving is changing because it was a big fat waste of money?

I suppose it's not as bad as I make it out to be, though. In the end, every individual has control over his or her family environment. The best way to combat this attitude of greed and stupidity is to just not participate, and to shield the children from it, too. The easy way to do this would be to cut the media and the corporate world out of your life as much as possible. I can only imagine that life is better without them.

Here's a talk on gratitude by Thomas S. Monson:
http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-1298-27,00.html

Mandatory Meetings: The Soul-Crushing Wasters of Life's Precious, Precious Time

2010-11-19T15:22:00.004-07:00

Quick, name the best possible time you can think of for a three hour teacher meeting on how to use new school district software...!

Did you say "3 o'clock on a Friday afternoon right before a vacation week so everyone's exhausted because the kids are all insane because it's almost Thanksgiving and we've seen nothing but dark, depressing gray skies for the past six days ...and everyone just wants to go home and by the way make sure to make the meeting mandatory for every single faculty member even though the information applies to about less than .00000000014 percent of the employees in the district oh and also make sure to have the meeting run by effeminate ex-military personnel that act unwarrantedly rude and snippity to everyone and make everyone turn their computer monitors off for the entire first two hours of the meeting despite the fact that it's a technology training meeting"?

If so, you must be an administrator in my school district! Cool!

I would say that it was a pointless meeting, but the phrase "pointless meeting" is redundant isn't it? And trust me, I've been to my share of meetings. I served a mission, I've fulfilled many different church callings, and I am a full-time teacher. I don't think I've ever been to a meeting, in the education world at least, that couldn't be totally replaced by a single succinct e-mail. This one was so comically bad that it was actually kind of fun in a sick way.

They sat us all in this computer lab to show us this new computer software the district will be using. They made us turn off our monitors so that we had to watch what they were doing on the computer projector. Except, the screen at the fron...t of the room was illegible to everyone. It appeared as though someone had smeared three tablespoons of Vaseline on the projector lens. I could only make out a vague shape and color here and there. When we complained that we couldn't really see anything, we were told it was our own fault for sitting in the back. It was funny because the back row was about two yards away from the front row. I sat in the meeting for two hours, patiently waiting to see if they would ever even explain even the most basic functions of this new software. I assumed they would eventually get around to that part. You know what they say about assuming, though...

It didn't bother me a whole lot because as I mentioned, this software applied to me in no way whatsoever, and I wasn't allowed to go home anyway and had nothing better to do. The instructors droned on for several hours talking about "RMT su...pport" and "top loading" and "service data" and "the W-J 9 test" and "M-A billing protocol" while I sat there, oblivious. I still couldn't tell you what the software was for even with a gun to my head. I was like a sleep-deprived bonobo sitting in on a lecture on astrophysics. Common sense would dictate that maybe we could just let Mr. L and teachers like him go home a little early today since this meeting doesn't apply to him and who the heck cares anyway? But no, the corporate mindset of "you must physically stay in the building until your officially contracted time comes" is the absolute only option, ever.

Why is it in movies that when doctors, lawyers, executives, businessmen, barbers, etc. say something like, "Denise, could you cancel my 4 o'clock today? Something's come up" there's no immediate backlash from everyone? If that's how real li...fe really is, why are teachers treated like drive-thru workers at Kentucky Fried Chicken? Not saying we should just take off whenever we feel like it, but hey, we had four years of college, an insane amount of meetings, and work doesn't even end for us when we go home. Could we be trusted to make common sense judgments on when we can leave on a Friday afternoon? My goodness, you even joke about "So can I go home? All the students are gone and this meeting doesn't apply to me" and you get looks that range from horror to outright disgust. I made a sarcastic remark before we started that "This sure is a great time to have a meeting." A teacher turned to me and said, solemnly, "Friday afternoons are the only time we even have time for meetings, you know." I responded with a comment about how in my old school district we would have rebelled against this tyranny. Funny enough, that same teacher that felt compelled to correct my sarcasm got up and left twenty minutes into the meeting because she had "somewhere to be."

Huh. So I guess that Friday at 3:00 time slot wasn't as convenient for everyone as she said. How weird.

And MAYBE I might have felt bad for wanting to go home once the meeting was underway and it turned out to be the most informative, helpful, inspirational thing I could have hoped for. But all it consisted of was those two mincing tech-suppo...rt guys (one of whom was supposedly ex-military which was the excuse he used for being a total dick to everyone) running around the room and telling people how to double-click on certain boxes in the new program. I spent most of the time listening to the old guy next to me complain about how much he hates using Firefox and Google Chrome browsers because "they were full of viruses" and that his computer had "about forty viruses" on it due to using Google Chrome. He also didn't know how to use CTRL-ALT-DEL. I spent a good ten minutes teaching him how to log on to the school computer. The tech support guys ran around back and forth from person to person. For each question they answered, two more hands would shoot up and they would often leave one person, mid-sentence, to go and help two others, who would then also be left behind, also mid-sentence. Basically it was like a giant roller-rink of ineptitude.

Some ladies offered the old guy a piece of apple pie in a styrofoam bowl. He declined it but slapped his arm around my shoulder and said, "This young man would LOVE a piece of apple pie." I actually didn't want it, but he insisted so I took... it. "Thanks for taking that. I can't eat that stuff. I'd like to, but I don't. I'm a marathon runner. Sure, it's the off-season right now but I don't eat that sweet stuff. Maybe, MAYBE on my birthday I'll have a small piece of cake. Thanks for taking that pie for me."

***

Epilogue:

I dropped the pie on my way out and got whipped cream on my favorite coat. Eff off, stupid stupid meetings.

Steers and Queers: Ruminations on the Gay

2010-10-27T20:59:00.336-06:00

Everything is gay these days, and I wish there were a more thoughtful cultural discussion about it all. Or any cultural discussion.

Of course popular media has always been morally relativistic. It was the same way in the eighties and the nineties and the aughties. The media isn't going to change anytime soon. But I feel that we, as a culture, are changing because we're more dependent upon popular media for our information than ever before. We are inundated with "news" from cable television and the internet. Lately, I've noticed more and more videos, news reports, articles and such that revolve around homosexuality. There's the repeal of the military's "Don't Ask--Don't Tell" policy, there's the movement to change the definition of marriage, there's the "It Gets Better" movement to comfort gay teens, there's the astounding popularity of Glee.

I know that in a sense, all of these things are only happening in the world of media. They don't happen in the real world, not really. If I were to disconnect from the internet my personal life wouldn't even be hearing about most of this stuff, and I would be blissfully unaware of any of these changes. Unfortunately I like Netflix instant view and Xbox Live too much to disconnect.

But I know that I'm the exception, and that's because I've been on the other side. For years growing up and in college I lived with cable television and the internet going at full force. I witness my own friends and family connected 24/7 through phones and laptops and television. I see the media shaping culture as the wave of the future, and the media's fascination with homosexuality is bound to shape the opinions of young people and probably influence a whole generation.What upsets me is how all of this is being fed to the masses without any real argument or challenge from anyone. This is a symptom of the media age, I think.

What is it that makes a man gay? What separates a gay man from a straight man? The more and more I think about it, the only answer I come up with is that gay men want to put their penises inside of other man. Straight men want to do the same thing, except to women. Because isn't that what it comes down to? Am I wrong in this? It's a purely sexual thing, is it not? It's not about love. A straight man can love another man and still be straight. It's only when he wants to do something sexual with the other man that makes him gay.

That brings up questions about the nature of love, I suppose. What is love? Is it inherently sexual? When I say the word "love" I am of course speaking of romantic love, and not love in the familial, brotherly, or platonic sense.

I'm going to jump to a conclusion here and say that yes, romantic love is inherently sexual. Perhaps I'm a pervert for thinking this, but I feel sex is (or ought to be) the ultimate expression of love, and love ultimately leads to sex. There can be sex without love, but I'm not sure there can be (reciprocated) love without sex. When a man feels an attraction to someone in the sense of romantic love, even if it be a pure and chaste attraction, is not that love ultimately expressed through sexuality? Isn't sex what two people work towards when they are in the throes of their love spell? These days it could take only days (hours, minutes!) of knowing and "loving" someone before having sex with him, but in former times wasn't this the whole point of a marriage? Isn't this implied in the word "consummate"?

In fact, I'm going to look up the word consummate right now because I find this so interesting. From the Oxford English Dictionary:

consummate (verb)
1. To bring to completion; to finish, carry out, accomplish.
2. To make a marriage complete by the act of sexual intercourse.
3. To make perfect; to perfect.
4. To attain perfection; to come to fruition or completion.

See, so I'm not a pervert after all. When you consummate your marriage you are bringing the act of marriage to completion, you are also making it perfect. That sexual act is the culmination of everything that came before it. It signals to the rest of the universe: now it is official, now it is complete.

Maybe I have a simple-minded world view, and two people really can love each other, in a romantic, boyfriend and girlfriend way, without ever desiring to express that love sexually. Do relationships like this exist amongst adult human beings? I won't say they don't, but in my experience as a human male, I've never come across one.

Romantic love is beautifully sexual. Sexuality, in its purest form, is a sublime expression of human intimacy, devotion, and love.

In fact, I believe it's a shame that sexuality is paraded so openly in our culture because it really does lose much of its mystery and beauty as it becomes more and more commonplace. What's mysterious or beautiful about two dumb people humping? See what I mean? That image is kind of disgusting/ludicrous, but it's not too hard to imagine because I've seen a lot of sex in my life. I probably saw more people having sex by the time I was eight years old than most of the men born before A.D. 1800 saw their entire lives. This is thanks to television and movies.

In our modern world, I can say things about sex freely and openly, whereas such behavior was considered less acceptable fifty, one hundred, two hundred years ago. Sure, people told dirty stories and dirty jokes, but I believe public discourse on human sexuality was much more limited. And even if you don't think it was, you have to admit it was at least less visually focused. Maybe everyone talked about sex all the time back then, but at least it was just that: talk. I don't think people were humping in the streets regularly, at least not in the western world, and there weren't images of sex to be looked at on a regular basis.

But I digress.

Some might take issue with my argument that "A straight man can love another man and still be straight. It's only when he wants to do something sexual with the other man that makes him gay." They might argue that being homosexual is about love, not sex. But my point in explaining how romantic love is inherently sexual is that in the end, there isn't a distinction. Romantic love and sex are intertwined. They're one and the same.

So lately there's been talk in the news about young men killing themselves because they were bullied by others due to their homosexuality. A campaign was started to encourage all the young gay people of America into not killing themselves because "it gets better." What I think is interesting is that the subtext of all this is sexual. We talk and talk about gay rights, gays in the military, gay boys committing suicide, and deep down it's all about putting penises in other men's anuses. That's what seems so ridiculous to me. How can we have a dignified conversation on human rights when, when it comes down to it, the right we're defending is the right to put your penis in another man's anus (and not be judged as morally wrong by anyone for it)?

These boys were ridiculed because they wanted to put their penis in other boys' anuses. Not because they loved other boys. Boys can love each other. They may not wish to talk about it or admit it, but of course boys can feel brotherly love for one another. This wasn't about love. It was about engaging in (or wanting to engage in) sexual acts with other boys.

When boys taunt each other by calling each other "gay" or "fag," the insult is the implication that they engage in sexual acts with boys. The implied insult is NOT "ha ha ha you form deep emotional/spiritual bonds with other members of the same sex," it's "ha ha ha you have sex with boys."

This is why I find the efforts to dismantle gay discrimination so strange. They do commercials where celebrities come out and tell the youth to stop using the word "gay" as derogatory to anything in any way. "You wouldn't say the n-word to your friends, would you? Then don't use the g-word." Basically, saying "this party is gay" is equal to saying "I hate niggers" because apparently both of those sentences use words that are considered taboo. But what are we defending here? Nigger is a contemptuous term for an entire ethnicity of human beings, men, women, and children, forced into slavery, raped and murdered and abused and put down through the centuries because of their skin color / national origin. The word has been used in a derogatory way towards black people for over a century.

Gay, on the other hand, is a (sometimes) derogatory term for things that are boring, bland, trite, and generally unappealing, oh and it also can refer to men who like to put their penises in other men's anuses. Oh and before it meant that, it just meant "happy." But yeah, it's on par with "nigger" nowadays.

So the whole civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties-- what was that all about? These millions of black people in America didn't have the right to vote or own property or earn a decent living wage. They were segregated from the population in public and their children were segregated in schools. How is this anything like what homosexuals go through in America? Gays are allowed to vote, own property, go to school, get jobs, even use the same public restrooms as everyone else which kind of doesn't make sense when you think about it because don't we segregate the sexes in bathrooms for vaguely sexual reasons?

In fact, is it proper for homosexuals to be using the same bathrooms as straight people? I know this probably sounds extremely stupid and bigoted, but hear me out! Why is it that, in all of the known world, public bathrooms are segregated by sex? I don't have an exact answer to that question, but I believe it has something to do with the intimate nature of a bathroom. There could be possible nudity in a bathroom, and most of the bodily functions that take place in a bathroom are considered taboo. The things we do in a bathroom are not things we want to show to the public, because they would be shameful if done in front of other people. These bodily functions can feel shameful because they involve the most intimate and private parts of our bodies, and we are extremely vulnerable while we do them. Even in the public bathroom, we strive for privacy by building individual stalls. Have you ever had to use a toilet that had no stall, or with no door on the stall? It's humiliating. It's why prison cells don't have stalls for their toilets. Ideally, we like to be completely alone when using the bathroom. Since that's hard to achieve in public, we've established a rule that only people of the same gender may share a bathroom because it reduces the strain of engaging in private, vulnerable and intimate activities by factoring out sexual tension. Sexual tension should not be a part of using a bathroom.

So if I'm sexually attracted to other men, is it right for me to walk in and use a bathroom full of men? Of course I'm not assuming that gay men enjoy the sight of other dudes defecating. Straight men don't enjoy the sight of women doing that, either. But should a homosexual man have to keep his homosexuality to himself, then, while he's in a public bathroom? Or would this be considered a repression of his right to be openly gay?

If you argue that a gay man should be allowed to be openly gay in a bathroom, then why shouldn't a straight man be allowed into the ladies' room? You might answer, "Because the women in the bathroom would feel very awkward and uncomfortable if a man was in there with them." True, but shouldn't they be the ones to accept him and get over their old-fashioned ideas? I mean, it's not as if the man is going to be sexually aroused by watching ladies use the bathroom, right? But still, I think most people would agree that even if a man isn't turned on by it, he should not be allowed in the ladies room. And yet people argue that a gay man in the bathroom shouldn't be a big deal because he isn't going to the bathroom to be sexually aroused. Fair enough. So I go back to my former question: Should a homosexual man keep his homosexuality to himself while he's in a public bathroom? I would say that yes, he should, for the sake of politeness. But others argue that that viewpoint is inherently judgmental and wrong. "Why should I have to hide who I am from you? You should be the one to accept me and not judge or fear me!"

It brings me the whole argument about whether or not openly gay men should be allowed in the military, and suddenly the "don't ask, don't tell" policy makes perfect sense to me. Because what is this policy trying to do? It's trying to be civil, I think. It's saying, "Yes, you are homosexual. Yes, you want to put your penis in other men's anuses. Yes, you may valiantly serve your country. But we ask that you please keep these feelings to yourself. We will tell everyone to not ask each other about their sexual feelings. Do not share your personal desire to put your penis inside of other men while you are here." The rule is not to discriminate the homosexual solider or even to pass judgment upon him; it is to protect the heterosexual soldiers from having to work in a sexualized environment. Most of us have to work in environments that are sexualized to one degree or another. I don't mean that there is porno everywhere, I just mean that there exists potential for sexual tension when men and women work together. In offices and business and schools you'll likely have to work with a member of the opposite sex. For most people this is not a very big deal because your job won't require much intimacy with your co-workers. But from what I understand about the military, it can be extremely intimate. These men do not enjoy the privacy that civilians do. For example, I am not required to eat, shower, get dressed, exercise, and sleep with my co-workers (female or male) at my school. It also doesn't matter much if I don't get along with some of the other teachers in my school because we work mostly independently. Being in the military isn't like that.

But really, the whole debate isn't over whether or not gay men can serve. It's whether or not they can serve openly. So to use the bathroom analogy, it is like letting a perfectly polite, nice man into a woman's bathroom and asking the women to go about their business like normal without worrying or thinking about him. And this is a generous example that assumes that all openly gay men in the military are not going to be interested in other men at all for the duration of their service.

But I've gotten off on a tangent again, because I got into all this by talking about black people and civil rights. Black people, back in the day, were not even allowed to use the same bathrooms as white people! A homosexual white male was allowed to use any bathroom he wanted. Homosexuals had more rights than black people did. And I guess this leads me again to the fact that the whole homosexual crusade isn't really about being homosexual at all. It's about being openly homosexual.

Black people were discriminated against because they were visually different from white people and everyone else. Homosexuals only become distinct through their own actions. A black man cannot change the fact that he is black. Denying a man a job just because of his skin color is wrong, and something we should have laws against. But should you be allowed to deny someone a job based on his or her actions? Should a school be allowed to not hire a teacher because he liked to get drunk a lot and party? How could the school know such a thing about the prospective employee? He'd obviously have to be open about it. What if a really openly slutty young woman wanted to be a teacher at this school? Should the school be allowed to say "no"? What if you just had a teacher who was well-qualified and also enjoyed viewing pornography and masturbating on a daily basis and was open about it? Should the school be allowed to refuse him a job for that?

In each case, your answer depends upon whether or not you feel the action in question is morally wrong. It's all about the action, not the person. Sure, maybe you like to drink, maybe you're a slut, maybe you like to look at porno-- but you are expected to keep these things to yourself because of the society that you live in. If you don't tell your employer about your actions and you don't do those actions at work, then it's none of their business, is it?

So why is homosexuality an exception to the rule? Why does IT need to be openly and unquestioningly accepted?

It's because of the implication that homosexuality is morally wrong, right? That's what pisses people off. They don't like the implication that homosexuality ought to be kept a secret because that somehow implies that it's wrong. But what about those other examples I just gave? Lots of people these days don't think that "sluttiness" is morally wrong. Having many sexual partners is considered by many to be normal, even healthy. And yet I wonder: even if you do feel this way about promiscuity, do you really think you should be so open about it, even with children and the elderly? Does EVERYONE need to know about and accept your promiscuity, even if we don't feel it's morally wrong? Isn't it okay to just keep certain things private just because of civility or politeness, or is that also an outdated concept?

Is your promiscuity really what defines you as a person?

No?

Then why be offended if people don't want to hear about it?

The thing is that I think homosexuality really IS the defining characteristic of gay people. At least, that's the vibe I'm getting from what I hear and read in the media. Gay people are gay first, people second. This is the only reason I can understand of why they are so offended when others find their homosexuality distasteful.

If I were to go around telling people "I am sexually attracted to girls with big, round breasts and asses" I would probably be told I was being a pervert.

Okay, that's a bad example. I'll tone it down. If I were to just go around telling people, "I love women! I'm sexually attracted to women." I might be considered kind of cute and funny by some, but annoying and shallow by others. Did any of these people want to know what I find sexually attractive? No? So what should my sane response be when I get told to please be quiet? My sane response is to realize that my sexuality is a personal thing and that most people consider that a private matter. I would also realize that these people weren't annoyed with me because I am genetically predisposed to like women; they were annoyed with me because I went around telling them about it even though they didn't care to know.

Individuals should not necessarily be judged, but I think that actions can. You can argue that a homosexual cannot change the fact that he is a homosexual, and that means it is a part of him as an individual

Where does the disgust for homosexuality come from? Is it purely genetic? Is it a spiritual thing? Is it learned? I was never told or taught about homosexuals when I was a child, but I recall the first time I saw two men share a passionate kiss (thanks again, television!) in some movie. I felt like I was going to vomit when I saw it, and it troubled me to the core. I can't explain exactly why. It was just really offensive to me. I didn't felt this way when I saw my first Native American or my first person with Down Syndrome or when I met my first Jehovah's Witness. The closest thing I can remember that inspired such feelings was when I learned that a close friend had lost his virginity the night before. I was young and I felt a kind of disgust and repulsion at this knowledge. Over time I got used to hearing about other people's promiscuity, so maybe that's why it no longer shocks me?

But then again, maybe you could argue that children find many things offensive that adults shouldn't. I don't know. Are children inherently racist? You could probably argue both sides of this, but I like to think that all kids aren't disgusted by those of a different skin color unless their parents have taught them to be. Like I said, I wasn't. I had friends of all races as a child: black, Asian, East Indian, Latino, etc. Maybe you could argue that my parents must have taught me that racism is wrong from infancy, but if they did I never noticed their lessons. I just accepted other children. Are children inherently bigoted towards those with disabilities? Maybe you could argue kids display behaviors around handicapped people that adults would consider "rude." I don't know. Are children inherently discriminatory against gays? I kind of think they are, although I have no proof. My students, first and second graders, were recently having a joking discussion about marrying the girls in their class. "You are gonna marry her!" one boy would say and they'd all laugh. Then one boy, playing along but not really understanding the little game, said "You are going to marry HIM!" and pointed to a boy. The other boys in the group recoiled in disgust at this little suggestion. I imagine what would happen if a girl came up and kissed one of those little boys. I think they might react a number of different ways. They might freak out and scream, they might blush and hide, they might chase the girl around and kiss her back. I then imagine if another boy came up and kissed one of those little boys. I don't imagine a lot of giggling and chasing around. I imagine fear, disgust, and shame.

Now I think this example might be unfair because children aren't sexually mature and so maybe sexuality doesn't enter into it. I doubt you'd get a lot of positive reactions from boys trying to kiss other boys in middle school, though, but that might just be because all those boys have been poisoned by society's anti-gay bigotry by age twelve.

But hey, even if you do believe children are inherently anti-gay; children do lots of things that we would find morally objectionable in adults. What I am trying to illustrate is that maybe heterosexual humans just find homosexual people inherently disgusting, and that we must work for years to suppress this disgust.

Which makes me think of how animals treat homosexual behavior. For most of my life I was under the impression that human beings were the only species that enjoyed gay sex, but in recent years I've been assured by the media that this is not so. I've read many articles by researchers seeking to illustrate that homosexuality is "normal" by explaining how other species engage in homosexual activity regularly. So if two gay chimpanzees are seen having gay sex, do the rest of the chimps not mind? Because I've heard stories about gay animals, but I've never heard stories about gay animals being killed by straight animals because of their gayness. It's something to think about. Perhaps disgust over homosexuality is a purely human trait? Perhaps animals don't have the capacity to be disgusted by gay sex because they don't comprehend romantic love? So is it romantic love, those feelings coupled with desire, that heterosexuals find so disgusting?

More on this later.

My Professional Peers, or This is What I Get for Going to College For Four Years and Entering the Field of Education

2010-10-20T16:54:00.000-06:00

I work with a woman, let's call her Cindy. She is a teacher's aide. She usually helps the students with reading in Mrs. Pinkman's classroom. She is a native of Idaho, born and raised in St. Anthony. She's told me on numerous occasions that she's never been out of Idaho. She is thirty-three years old. She loves to talk non-stop. In fact, if you let her she will talk for hours on end, even if she receives no responses or confirmations from the people around her. Mostly she tells disjointed personal anecdotes that have no context whatsoever. She will flow in and out of old stories, personal opinions on everything from politics to cake, and stream-of-consciousness rambling. Listening to her speak is kind of like a sublime free-form jazz, except if jazz were twice as annoying and fifty times more repetitive.

The amazing thing is how she can keep going with so little input from me or the other teacher in the room. I usually never speak a word to her, concentrating on cutting shapes out of construction paper or whatever task is at hand. The other teacher, Mrs. Pinkman, will either completely ignore her or start talking over her, sharing her own endless personal "anecdotes" until there are times when they are overlapping! They just talk over one another! I know this sounds crazy, but they do! Neither will stop, and once they start they can go on for five minutes or so of just overlap talking!

So both of these women are insane. But for my money, I'd rather have Cindy's ramblings because they're a little more baffling.

I had the excruciating experience of listening to Cindy read to the children from various books. Every morning when the children arrive, before the individual mentoring Mrs. Pinkman asks Cindy to read to the kids. It's a cruel thing to do, like making a mortally wounded box turtle participate in a biathlon. By Cindy's own admission, she's "not much of a reader." In fact, she tells me that she "hates books and reading." That is, except for Fablehaven, which is a book her eight year old son picked up. She said that she read his copy of Fablehaven and it was "the best book I've ever read in my life." Keep in mind that this book is aimed towards an eight to ten-year-old audience. Of course there's nothing wrong with an adult enjoying a children's book. Good for her. But it's kind of sad that she works as a reading tutor when she, of her own admission, hates reading.

The reason why I said listening to her read was excruciating is because her reading ability is about on the same level as the first-graders we're trying to help. She read a tiny book written at a third or fourth grade level and couldn't pronounce many of the words. For example:

Hovel. "The family lived in a small, dirty hovel. It was a cramped hovel, full of children and pets."
Now from the context clues alone, even if you didn't know this word I'd hope you could guess a hovel was some sort of dwelling place or home. One of the kids asked her, "Miss Cindy, what's a hoe-vul?" (Because she kept pronouncing the word "hoe-vul.") Miss Cindy's response: "I don't know."

Minstrel. "A minstrel came to the town, playing his music and singing songs." Okay, again. Maybe she's never heard of a minstrel, but doesn't the context give a clue here? Plus, she kept pronouncing the word "minis-terel."

Lute. "The minstrel played his lute for the crowd. He plucked its strings and sang..." When the children asked what a lute was, Cindy answered, "A loot is kind of like his treasure. It's like when you loot something, you take all the treasure in a backpack. That's his loot." What that says to me, then, is that Cindy has never seen the word "loot" in print. Because wouldn't she realize this type of "lute" was spelled differently from "loot?" Also, does her definition make a shred of sense in the context of the sentence she read?

Bathe and bathing. "The children of the home hated to bathe. When it came time for bathing, they all ran away." Every time the word "bathe" or "bathing" came up in the story, she pronounced it "bath." So the word "bathe" should sound like "bay-the" but she would pronounce it "bath," like "bath tub." "Bathing" should be pronounced "bay-thing," but she pronounced it "bath-thing." Oh, how I wish I were making this up.

I stopped recording her mispronounced words after she finished about two or three pages. It hurt me too much. Instead, I decided to keep a small record of her ramblings after all the kids had left the room. Here is what I collected in the course of about an hour. Enjoy!

"I looooooove to go hucklebeerryin'. I could spend all day huckleberryin'. My aunt used to take us huckleberryin' for huckleberries down by [some place]. My kids all love huckleberryin' too. My first date with my hubby was when we went huckleberryin' -huckleberryin'-huckleberryin'-huckleberryin'-huckleberryin'-huckleberryin'-huckleberryin'-huckleberryin'-huckleberryin'-huckleberryin'-huckleberryin'-huckleberryin'-huckleberryin'-huckleberryin'- etc."

"Well I don't get gay people at all, because you know what? It's supposed to be Adam and Eve, not Adam and STEVE! Get it?? It's Adam and Eve, like from the Bible, not Adam and Steve! It's not Adam and Steve, is it? No. It's Adam and EVE. Adam and EVE in the Garden of Eden, it's not Adam and Steve!"

"I love the smell of rubber cement. I used to smell this all the time when I was a kid."

"Got a call from my son's teacher because he was out peein' on the playground again. I told him to stop it, but he's just so used to peein' that way at home! How am I supposed to get him to stop? He sees his daddy do it on the front lawn all the time, and so he wants to do it too."

"Oh I hate it when people use hick slang for things. Like my father-in-law, he always says 'up-again.' Like for instance he says 'the ladder is up-again the garage over there.' He always does it!"

"I was born and raised saying 'crick' and not 'creek' and I hate when people out-of-state say 'creek' when they really mean 'crick!'"

"When I was in high school I was everybody's best friend. Everyone always got excited when I walked into class because I was kind of like the class clown, but a cool version of it. So everyone was always happy if I had class with them. I was such a terror! One time I made a substitute teacher cry! I brought some fart spray to class and whenever she had her back turned I would keep spraying the fart spray. Oh it was stinky in there! And the substitute teacher kept saying 'Whoever is doing that had better stop!' but I kept doin' it! And everyone was just cracking up at how funny it was! I'll always remember that."

"One time when we were baking a cake for a football team I got me and the other cheerleaders to spit in it. We were so mad that the moms asked us to bake a cake for the team, so to get revenge I had the idea that we should spit in the cake! So I did and I made my friend do it, too. We laughed so hard when we gave the cake to the boys and they ate it! They told us how good it was, too! Ha ha ha!"

"I never got in trouble at school. Well, except once. But no one ever told me I wasn't supposed to say nigger in school! How was I supposed to know that was a bad word to say in school? My dad said it all the time at home! How was I supposed to know? I was only fifteen!"

Hobos and Creeping Malaise

2010-10-11T16:52:00.000-06:00

This place really just sucks the creative energy out of you sometimes. I think it's because it's just so overwhelming and after a few weeks you no longer have any sort of connection with reality anymore. Like I have this article here from The Scroll, which is BYU-Idaho's student newspaper... It's so ridiculous and laughably stupid... I've been meaning to write about it, but what the hell is the point anymore? It's like I could say, "Hey! What a stupid article this is..." But who would even care? I feel like I'm pointing out two or three oddly shaped blades of grass while standing in a vast field hundreds of acres wide in the middle of nowhere. Where to even begin?

My first about Rexburg entry tried to point out the insanity of the physical appearances of the women here, and now I've almost grown numb to that, too. They still look hideous to me, but when the hideousness is all around you all the time, how can you even distinguish it from anything else anymore?

---

Okay.

I'm not giving up, though. I'll tell you a little about my job. That's a nice place to start.

Some of the public schools in Eastern Idaho make Great Falls, Montana look positively metropolitan by comparison.

When I was offered a teaching job interview in Great Falls several years ago, I showed up to the interview wearing a full suit and tie, shined shoes, everything. I had my resume and other documents with me. I was told beforehand that I was supposed to prepare a short English lesson to present to my interviewers which would include the school's principal and vice-principal, the head of the English department, and one or two other teachers. This would take place in the school library where I would have access to a white board and a table and stuff. I was a nervous wreck, but it all went well and I was offered a teaching job.

Here in Idaho, I got a call to show up for an interview at district building in St. Anthony, which is a small village about 15 miles away from Rexburg. I showed up at the building, again dressed in my suit and tie. The secretary had no idea who I was, and told me to go to the back to look for my interviewer. I went to the back of the building and found a large empty office area. I wandered around, knocking on doors and opening them. They were mostly empty and dark. I eventually found another person wandering around the building. I believe she was the lady in charge of driving the school bus. I asked her if she knew my interviewer. I don't think she did, but she helped me look for him.

Eventually we found a man and a woman sitting in a room looking over some files. I introduced myself and was told to go into the other room and have a seat.

They must have been in the process of moving or something, because other than a few stains on the carpet the room was totally empty. No chairs. "I'll just stand," I said amiably.

"Oh wait, there's no chair in there, huh?" The guy said. He shot up and bolted out of the room, urging me to follow him. We went from room to room in the little office, looking for a chair for me to sit in. Finally we found a small empty room piled up with old cardboard boxes. There was a metal folding chair inside. He flicked the fluorescent light on and told me to have a seat; they were almost ready for me.

So I sat down, wondering if I had come to the wrong place. The chair was facing a wall, so I decided to turn it around and face it out of the doorway and into the dark hall. After an unknown amount of time had passed, I heard the sounds of people talking down in the distance. I instinctively knew that they had forgotten about me in the dark, empty room. I started to speak up. I poked my head out the doorway and said, "Hello?"

"Oh shoot, that guy!" I heard the man say to his co-worker.

They ushered me into their little office and had me sit down. The man was dressed in cut off jean shorts and a polo with some grease stains on it. The woman had on jeans and a t-shirt. I felt awkward wearing a full suit, but I'd always been told that it's better to overdress for an interview.

I sat down and they started asking questions. The man was mostly incoherent to me as he had the ability to somehow sound as if he was tweaking on meth while stuttering at the same time. He had a vaguely Canadian/Mexican accent, which didn't help. The woman remained silent, only looking at me knowingly from time to time.

At one point the man asked me, "Hey man, s-s-o what what what is your teaching philoso-ph-ph-phyy and stuff? You know, dude? Like how you gonna teach 'em k-ki-k-kids?"

I started to give my answer when he stood up and walked towards me slowly. He had his hand facing me palm-up, as if in the "stop" motion, so I trailed off. He was looking at something that was apparently behind me. He placed his hand on my shoulder and slammed his foot down on the carpet.

"Sorry bra! It was a hobo! I hate them hobos... Had to kill the hobo... Kill it."

A hobo, for those of you who don't know, is a type of a spider that apparently lives in Idaho. I've only ever heard of it while in Rexburg, and everyone in Rexburg knows about them. I've seen commercials on TV advertising their extermination and ads on billboards about them. I don't know if it's just an Idaho thing or what, because I've never heard of seen anything about hobo spiders anywhere else in the U.S. In college I remember people saying how they were deadly poisonous, although I've never known or heard of anyone ever being bit by one, let alone dying from it.

I just Googled "hobo spider" to confirm whether or not they even exist, and apparently they do. I even found this web site all about them, actually: http://www.onewest.net/~dkv/hobospider/

The web site had this baffling first line at the top of the page:
Well known spider expert Darwin Vest has been missing since June 1999. This website is now maintained by Darwin's family and may not contain the latest data. For the latest updates on the search for Darwin click here: http://hobospider.org/dar.html

So I clicked there and wouldn't you know it, the oddly named expert on hobo spiders Darwin Vest was from Idaho Falls, Idaho.

See what I'm talking about? This place is obsessed with "hobos."

Ugh... Why does the name "hobo spider" bug the crap out of me? I don't know, but it does.

The Most Beautiful Woman in Idaho

2010-08-28T16:51:00.000-06:00

There are a lot of things I'd like to write about Rexburg, and I'm going to start with Rexburg's concept of beauty. After living here for about three weeks, I've got a pretty good idea of what men and women in Idaho consider beautiful.

The ideal look involves electrocuting yourself and rubbing Flaming Hot Cheetos dust all over your skin while in a state of impregnation. This may seem like the beauty advice of a clinically insane person, but how insane is something if every single person within a 200 mile radius is doing it? I never had much of an inclination to pretend to talk to my spoon as if it were a cell phone, but if all my neighbors were carrying spoons and talking into them all the time, and the people at the grocery store were doing it, and the librarians were doing it, and the police officers were doing it, and parents were giving spoons to kids and telling them to do it... I mean, I'd eventually give in and start doing it myself, right? If girls walked around holding spoons in both hands while their thumbs rapidly moved up and down them in a texting motion, it wouldn't seem so weird any more. Right?

No.

Talking into a spoon would never appear or feel normal to a right-thinking person. This is because pretending a spoon is a cell phone is an insane thing to do. This woman, to anyone born outside of this place, would appear to have the look of someone who was probably born with fetal alcohol syndrome and taken advantage of all her life. If she was alone, I would have assumed just that. But no, this woman represents the vast majority of women who live around here. And you may be saying to yourself, "Sure, sure, but that's just a cartoon exaggeration of a human being. Surely no one looks like that." Oh, how I wish that were true. And yet, there are thousands like her, all of them orange, all of them pregnant, all of them with hair sticking out nearly on end.

The appearance of the women here is probably the most foreign part of the whole experience so far. I have no idea where this look came from. I've never seen anything like it on TV, not even on CMT. It's as if it's a completely native Idaho look. It's as if someone took a bunch of girls and placed them on a deserted island in the South Pacific. The only reading material they had at their disposal was an issue of Country Home Living from 1978, and they formed their entire civilization and culture around the women from this one issue. As hundreds of years and generations passed, the styles became more and more exaggerated as they tried to out-do each other on the crazy, eventually evolving into the orange pseudo-humans we see now.

The funny thing is that I had a student a couple of years ago (let's call her Jessica) who had just moved to Montana from Idaho. She was your typical teenage snotty little brat-girl. I could tell she had been considered popular in her former school. She had that air of confidence and stupidity about her that cheerleaders and other popular sluts often have. She made friends quickly in the new school because of this and because she wore expensive clothes, and there was no denying that she was fit and "attractive." I put attractive in quotes because she was only attractive in that Idaho way. The orange-tan skin, the big poofy country hair with skunk streaks, the raccoon eyes, etc.

I remember a time when the kids were talking about her in class.

"Who's Jessica?"

"She just moved here. You sit next to her in biology!"

"I don't know who you're talking about."

"You know, the girl who got in trouble for texting?"

"Oh! The one with the crazy hair?"

"Yeah!"

At that, all the kids started chiming in. One of them even asked me, "Mr. L, why does that girl do her hair like that? She looks crazy."

I tried to explain cultural differences. The thing was, Jessica thought her hair was the epitome of stylishness and beauty. You could tell she took great pride in making it bigger and bigger. Her makeup, too. It was visibly caked on to at least a millimeter off her face.

I thought it was precious how all these teenagers found her hair freakishly huge. They were so young and innocent! It reminded me of the fable of the Emperor's New Clothes. These kids were still young enough to tell it like it is: your hair looks insane.

This place is just different, though. Everyone goes around like it's a contest to see how impractical and the most like the hide of a rabid animal their hair can get without anyone saying a word about it. I carry a notepad around at all times just to sketch pictures of some of the hairstyles, like a birdwatcher eagerly drawing the most exotic of plumage. I'll post more as I find them.

Welcome to the Bubble..

2010-08-18T16:45:00.001-06:00

Originally I wanted to just make a blog to make fun of and cope with the insanity that is Rexburg, Idaho. I even made a sweet logo for it:

I might still work on it, too. Not sure.

After seeing a man dressed in a banana suit walking a goat through the parking lot at the grocery store in an effort to sell juice, I think we realized it wasn't really fair to just sit back and make fun of this place. We see the bizarre hair-dos, the countless screaming babies, the diamond merchants on every corner, and we realize it would be like making fun of some foreign culture just because they did things differently. Idaho is a neighbor to Montana, but we feel as though we're anthropologists living with and observing an alien culture on their home world.

I guess this is what happens when you take a ton of Mormons, make them farm potatoes in the middle of nowhere, start a big religious university with very strict rules, invite young Mormons from around the world to attend, and surround the whole thing with endless desert wasteland. Welcome to The Bubble.

Hiatus

2010-08-16T16:14:00.001-06:00

Hi everyone,

As you've noticed by now the blog is on a hiatus. This is due to my moving from Montana to Idaho! I currently don't have internet at my new apartment, and until I have fifty bucks to spare to get it hooked up I'm limited to going to the public library here and using their achingly slow computers.

I'll see you again soon, hopefully by the end of August!

- Lahondere

A Long, Dull, Stupid Story About Trying to Get a Teaching Job in Idaho of All Places

2010-06-18T18:18:00.008-06:00

After I got married my wife and I were invited by her father to spend a week or two in Florida. We were working dead-end jobs at the local mall here in Montana at the time. We lived in a studio apartment and had been married for about four or five months. If we went on this trip, we were told, all our food and lodging would be paid for along with our air fare. Since we were just working to survive anyway we figured a couple of weeks of free food would be awesome.

I had just graduated from college. I'd put in an application with the school district but had heard nothing of them hiring. We were satisfied to work those crappy jobs because they paid the bills and we could find something better in the future.

While we were on the trip, I got a call on our cell phone from the school district in Montana. They wanted to have an interview with me in two days' time. I told them I was all the way in Florida, and might we reschedule it or something? They said they couldn't do that, but they would keep me in mind for future job openings if I wanted. We went and spoke to my wife's father about the situation, and he kindly agreed to fly us back home early.

I let the district know I would be there after all. They told me to prepare a sample lesson to present to my interviewers. It should be about fifteen minutes long. I anxiously prepared the lesson on the plane ride home, showed up at the school the next morning, gave my lesson plans, went home to our little apartment. I got a phone call from the school after I had been home for a while. I still remember what the lady said,

"We'd sure like it if you'd come be a teacher here."

We were ecstatic. It was such a happy occasion for us. I had a real job! With a real salary! Real benefits! It was such good news.

I tell you all this because it was my only experience with finding a real, professional job. Sure, I've done my share of trying to find crappy jobs while I was in high school and in college. It's miserable, they always give you the run-around, you always have to keep bugging them for real answers... You force yourself to put in application after application, hoping one of them will give you a call back. None of them ever do. Occasionally you get an interview which you think goes really well, but they never get back to you. It's worse than miserable; it's hellish.

In a way, getting that first teaching job was the same as all the other jobs I've had. In every job I've ever had (cookie shop worker, convenience store stooge, movie theater stooge, and toll booth worker to name a few), I was typically notified that I'd gotten job almost immediately after interviewing or applying for it. There was not a lot of waiting involved. I don't think I've ever gotten the job when I had to constantly call, check up, touch bases, see how it's going, etc. If I ever had to "touch bases" with a potential employer, it meant I didn't get the job.

So getting that teaching job confirmed in me that I was in the "professional" world now. When you're a "professional," your employer doesn't dilly dally. He calls you and gives you a straight answer. Right? Right. Awesome. Yeah, it wasn't much (starting teachers in that district made $27,000!) but it was better than the mall and it felt good to call myself a teacher.

Now I'm looking for a new teaching job, specifically in Idaho where my wife will be going back to school.

Here's my stupid, boring story.

March 13th
Saturday – 9:00 AM

On this day the school district in Idaho held a job fair. I signed up for it and was offered an interview. I would have to make a six-hour drive from Montana to Idaho but I thought it would be well worth it to show my dedication and for them to meet me in person. I left for Idaho immediately after school Friday and arrived at around 11 o’clock. I had a great interview the next morning, but was told afterward that it would only be considered a preliminary interview. If considered for a job, I would have a second-round interview in May. I was disappointed that they didn't mention that earlier, but drove home and waited optimistically.

May 24th
Monday – 5:45 PM

I finally got a phone call from the Idaho district. They wanted to do a second-round interview with me after all! They noticed I was certified to teach English and Art, and lucky for me they had one part-time English and one part-time Art position open for next year. I could fill both at once! They wanted to do a phone interview with me Monday evening which I was happy to do. I raced home after school on Monday and waited for their phone call.

A nice lady called me and I thought the interview went really well. My interviewer asked if I had any final questions.

“When will you have an answer for me?” I asked.

“We will let you know within the week,” she said.

“Will you call me whether it’s a yes or a no?” I asked.

“Yes,” she affirmed, "We'll call you either way."

“So I will expect your call by the end of the week then,” I said.

May 28th
Friday – 3:40 PM

May 28th was the last day of the week. I had not heard anything from the people in Idaho. I was a little disappointed but it was my birthday and it was a three day weekend before the last week of school. I was very busy and didn’t worry much about it. I thought they would surely get back to me by Monday of the following week.

May 31st
Monday – 9:00 AM

But I forgot that Monday was Memorial Day and there was no school. No matter. I had a lot of packing up to do at school and papers to read and final grades to put into the computer. It was the last week of school. They were probably busy.

June 2nd
Wednesday – 11:04 AM

I decided to call the Idaho school on Wednesday and ask when I could expect a decision. I knew it was the last week of school for them, too, and they were all probably very busy. I started second-guessing myself. "Did she actually say it would be within a week? Maybe she said within a week OR TWO. Maybe she said within AT LEAST a week..." I started calling the district office in Idaho. I called three different people but received no answers. I left three voice mails, each of them stating my name, phone number, and e-mail address. I never received any replies.

June 7th
Monday - 10:00 AM

Monday was the first official day of summer vacation. I called the same people from earlier in the week and received the same voice mails. I left messages for all of them, and then decided to start e-mailing.

I emailed four different people. Thankfully, they all got back to me (some of them even within the hour!) All of them gave me different information on who I ought to contact. The woman that gave me the second interview apologized that it was taking so long to make a decision. Another woman informed me that it had been the last week of school and everyone had been very busy and that was why it had taken longer than usual to make a decision.

Here’s a copy of the email I sent that finally put me in touch with someone who knew something:

Hello there,

I had a job interview a couple of weeks ago (May 24th) for an
English/Art teacher position at ________ High School. Ms. C.
interviewed me. I was just e-mailing to find out what the status of
that job was and whether or not the district has made a decision. I
e-mailed Ms. C. and she said I should contact you (I think I left
a message on your voice mail, too).

Are you able to make an estimate on when a decision will be made? Any
information would be greatly appreciated.

My phone number is XXX-XXX-XXXX, or you can always just e-mail me back.

Thanks again,
J. Lahondere

I received an answer back within minutes:

Monday, June 7th
10:02 AM

J.,

We have not filled the position. Since our final set of interviews is
scheduled for Wednesday, June 9, we will fill the position by the end of
this week.

Thanks,

G.

Okay. So I had been misinformed when I was told I would get a call “within a week.” Not a problem, because I realized it was probably not on their list of priorities to hire a new teacher, what with the entire summer to sort it out. Silly me for obsessing over that phrase "within the week"!

So I’m thinking they’ll do their final interviews on Wednesday, and I’ll know by Friday. I didn’t want to misinterpret what the woman wrote to me, but when she said “we will fill the position by the end of this week,” wouldn’t that lead a guy to believe he would get an answer by Friday, Monday at the latest?

I don’t know how hiring decisions are made. I only have my own past experience to go on. Like I explained above, when I was hired for my first teaching job here in Montana I had the interview, drove home, and got a phone call less than an hour later asking if I would accept the job.

Maybe this school in Idaho needed to sort it out with some kind of hiring committee or something. Perhaps there were twenty people who applied and were interviewed. Notes needed to be compared, salaries worked out, background checks. I can understand it would be time-consuming.

I made the mistake of being a little over-confident since I was qualified to teach both English and Art. I thought I was a shoe-in for the job. Were there that many English/Art teachers out there vying for this job? No, it only made sense to hire me. By hiring one guy to teach both subjects they'd be saving on the costs of benefits and potential sick leave, and they'd be saving precious space. Plus, I'm only a third year teacher with no Masters, so they could gleefully pay me a crap salary. I was confident, but they did need time... But surely after two interviews and two months to think about it they would know whether or not they wanted to hire me, right?

Friday came and my wife and I awaited their phone call anxiously.

Noon rolled around and I began to get nervous. I really didn’t want to have to wait another weekend to have an answer.

One o’clock. Nothing.

Two o’clock. Nothing.

Three o’clock. I wasn't sure how long they stayed in their offices, but I didn't think it was long past three o'clock. I decided to contact them instead. Here's the email I sent.

Friday, June 11th
3:09 PM

Dr. R.,

It's 3:10 PM and I was just checking in to see whether a decision will
be made on the English/Art position before the weekend. I had an
interview with Ms. C. on May 24th. Thanks in advance for
getting back to me.

I did not receive any reply or phone call. I assumed they must have already gone home for the day and cursed myself for not emailing them sooner.

The weekend felt excruciatingly long, but when I awoke Monday morning I knew it would be the day.

Monday came and went. Still nothing.

I considered calling again but I felt like I was becoming a pest. Surely they would have read the email by now, unless they were on some kind of vacation?

On Tuesday night I found this in my inbox:

Tuesday, June 15th
5:09 PM

J.,

A decision has not been made.

G.

Okay, so it took them a few days to get back to me but they got back to me! A decision had not yet been made, which was also good. Judging by the single line, they must be extremely busy over there. So busy, in fact, that they did not have time to even explain any more to me. What was taking them so long?

On a side note, I noticed the time her single-line email was sent. 5:09. I sent my email at 3:09 on Friday. So was she in her office after all, but had just not seen my email? Assuming she was out of the office by 3:09 on Friday, why didn't she get back to me at all on Monday? It's not as if her reply took very long to write. Anyway...

I went the rest of the week not worrying about it.

Today I decided to try again. It has been twenty-six days since my second interview, about three months since my first. How much longer was I supposed to wait on them? I didn’t even want an answer necessarily. I just wanted to know when I could EXPECT an answer, that way I wouldn’t waste my time worrying about it. I sent off this email:

June 18th
Friday - 10:06 AM

Dr. R.,

Just checking in to see whether or not a hiring decision will be made
by the weekend. If not, do you have an estimate on when to expect a
decision? Even if the district does not plan on making a decision
until the end of August, it would be better to know that than nothing.
(My interview was for an English/Art position at Granite High School.
It took place on May 24th.)

Thanks for your time,

J. Lahondere

Five hours later, I got this response:

June 18th
Friday - 3:49 PM

Thank you for your interest. As of Wednesday, the art position has been
filled. The English position is now a part-time position. Are you still
interested?

G.

No, I am not.

Summer vacation

2010-05-06T10:36:00.000-06:00

So that stupid mill levy passed for that stupid school district I work(ed) for. That kind of made me happy because it meant some of my colleagues got some job security. Stupidly, I was let go anyway. I don't know the exact reasons why I was not brought back for next year, and they stupidly decided not to tell me. It's really a rather long, stupid story, and I don't feel like telling it. Stupid.

So I've got about four months to find a new job before all the money runs out. This is one of those situations that I'm sure we'll look back on and think what a blessing it really was. Actually, no, I don't even have to look back. This is quite the blessing. Otherwise, I might have felt tempted to stay at that stupid school and put off pursuing the dream of teaching college and do nothing to achieve it for yet another year. They can keep their stupid TVs and episodes of CSI: Miami and Lean Cuisine stenching up my room in the mornings. Good riddance, I say.

Four months to find a new job, four months to finish the novel. I'd better go play some Nintendo to get motivated.

What I'm up against...

2010-04-20T10:28:00.014-06:00

I know a semi-lengthy explanation of local school district funding isn't the most exciting thing to read, but bear with me. It gets good!

So in Great Falls this year the school district is asking for a Mill Levy to be passed to help fund the schools. I honestly don't know what the words "mill" and "levy" even mean in this context, but I do know that the citizens of the town get to vote on whether or not to increase property taxes by $14.00 a year per $100,000 your home is worth. These taxes are proposed on a year-to-year basis; they are not permanent. This means that the increases in taxes only last from year to year as these levies are requested or not. It kind of doesn't make sense to me why the people are even allowed to vote on this, but this is just how the budget is created.

Asking the voters for a Mill Levy is something the district's been doing for many years. Throughout the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, the Mill Levies almost always passed. Then in 2008, the voters said no. Most teachers agree that this was largely due to the fact that the voting was switched to completely by mail-in ballot, coupled with the (then) recent economic downturn. It's a lot easier to vote no on school money when you don't even have to leave your own house, and it's easier to say no when you can cite the bad economy as your reason.

But people went around saying, "Tighten your belt, tighten your belt" and "Live within your budget!" What people failed to grasp is that the levy request IS a part of the district budget. The state funding formula for a school budget contains the amount of state and local support required for the operations of a school district. When the voters approve the levy then the district will have its budget for the year.

But it failed in 2008, the schools cut jobs and didn't fill spots left by retiring teachers. I was fortunate enough to retain my job that year, but my class loads got bigger. How did class loads get bigger, despite falling student enrollment overall? When an English teacher leaves a school, the 130-150 kids who would have had him must be packed into different classrooms instead. This makes for about 3-5 more kids per class, depending on what grade level you teach. I saw the change with my own eyes last year, as my classrooms went from having 20-25 kids to 25-30 kids.

For two years, the district did not ask for another levy. We were afraid that if we asked again we'd be voted down, and it would turn into an unbreakable trend. This year, the schools are facing a huge deficit of funds. This is due to many economic factors. We need the levy to just barely maintain the status quo, but even saying that is misleading. Because even if the Mill Levy passes, the district will have to make some cuts in teachers and programs. If it doesn't pass, which looks likely, massive cuts will be made. At least 10 teachers per high school will have to be cut. I don't know about the middle schools and elementary schools, but they will also have to cut teachers.

So what is it about asking for $1.50-$2.50 a month for public schools that makes the people of Great Falls scream for blood?

Well I'm glad you asked, because I don't know. To give you an idea of the prevailing attitudes and moral philosophies that I'm up against, I've included an amazing sampling of comments left on the website to the local newspaper, the Great Falls Tribune.

And to give you some background information: A starting teacher in Great Falls, Montana, makes $27,000 a year. After taxes and insurance, they take home about a $1600 paycheck. That equals about ten bucks an hour. I'm not pointing this out to complain about my salary, just to illustrate that teachers aren't rolling in dough. Obviously teachers with more experience make more, but the jobs that are going to be cut are the new ones, the ones that make about $27,000 a year.

One of the things that gets tossed around is that teachers were expecting to receive a 1% pay increase next year, as negotiated in our contract. It comes to about $25 more a paycheck, but is instantly erased by the fact that our health insurance premiums are being raised by $40. This 1% increase is extremely modest, and does almost nothing.

I should also note that Great Falls pays its teachers less than any other AA district in Montana. Also, Great Falls spends less money per student than any other district in Montana.

With all that information in mind, I present to you:

READER COMMENTS OF GREAT FALLS!!!

"Let's point out the obvious here. Our economy is in the toilet and it's on the verge of being flushed. WHY? Because when it comes to spending, the political courage to say NO cannot be found. If there is one thing that the TEA Party movement has brought to the table it is this; CONTROL SPENDING. Live within the existing budget(s). The Trib and the teacher's union supporting this levy hope to cloud this simple principle by hiding behind the kids. They will look right past the many in our community without jobs and the elderly who are on fixed incomes! WHY? Because their interests come FIRST. Vote No!"

"Don't be shamed or cajoled into voting YES. How many of you folks are getting a raise this year? These people spend you dollars like it's Halloween candy. Dont tell the school board no....tell them HELL NO!!"

"like Obama with healthcare, you are missing the point. You can't talk your way into having higher taxes legitimized. The school district has a budget. LIVE WITHIN IT! At what point does one say enough already? You might think that we have not reached that point yet; I say we have! More importantly, I believe the voting taxpayer will agree with me."

"It's this type of rationalizing that drives the taxpayer crazy! I think it's about time for the taxpayer to run a levy that requires local and state governments (and yes that means the school district) to cut spending by 3%... a real 3%! Not some accounting technique. This levy is all about feeding the teacher's union... and that's an appetite that will never diet on its own!"

"Public schools are socialist! I refuse to continue to subsidize the education of other peoples' children!"

"Time again to vote NO on this levy. The People have alloted [sic] "x" dollars and its time the schools start living within that budgeted amount given by the taxpayers. This idea that schools think they can create budgets that exceed what the taxpayers allotted shows poor leadership and accounting by those in charge of the schools."

"Don't think for a moment that school is for or about kids. It's about corporate welfare for the textbook, computer, and bricks and mortar contractors (and here in GF, the private bus company, which closes down neighborhood schools to increase its revenues and "jobs")"

"I would probably be more supportive of this levy increase if it were applied entirely for the student's benefit such as better books, better facilities, etc instead of the majority going to teachers and adminstrators [sic] salaries! In case no one noticed we happen to be in a severe depression. Serious times deserve serious methods and perhaps f the teachers and administrators were willing to accept a 5 year salary and benefits freeze to lower the levy, it might stand a chance of passing."

"Also the $14.32 they ask for doesn't have a sunset clause so it could go on and on and on. Another thing I don't like is don't threaten me with the education you provide my children . . .don't use my children to get what you want I really resent that."

"The schools I attended received no funding from the state in the form of taxes and consistently produced students with higher GPAs and college scholarships that their public counterparts. No unions muddying the water and no politicians forcing political requirements intended or implied like union membership in a predominantly republican or democratic involved union. Seemed to work quite well. But that was 50 some years ago and under a kinder and gentler USA that had ethics and worked to earn a living instead of standing in line for government handouts."

"How does the quality of education fall because the taxpayers don't pass a couple of mill levies over the past couple years. If that's your best, no wonder the vote is going to lose."

"hey maybe great falls could be the first to not fund school sports with tax payer money then when it works than the rest of the state might follow we could make history and for once be a leader not a follower"

"We pay enough, we all live within our budgets (and not because we can't demand a levy when WE run short, but because we're responsible enough not to spend more than we make). I'm with NERVA: Deal with it, you leftists, WE DON"T HAVE THE MONEY!"

"Could you imagine if our public schools made a leftist's parents student work in the school to help pay for their education? Oh man...The ACLU would be called and the school would be sued for making poor little Johnny help pay for his education. For a lefty, the only place little Johnny is going to work is the football field. You see, lefty's believe in taxes, they love taxes because they can then make the playing field EVEN. By Even I mean: "Even little old grandma's have to pay taxes so Johnny can go to school" Even little old retired Grandpa's have to pay for Johnny's education" Even Childless couples and middle age couples with no children in the school system have to pay for little Johnny's education" Lefties will not and cannot go it alone...they need their hand held while they hold their hand out."

"The funding is more than adequate without the levies. Schools cry they need more money for the students, yet as we know the money never goes to the students, it goes to wages. It goes to wage increases despite the fact that there isnt a corresponding increase in student graduation rates or grades. Do the right thing and VOTE NO."

"Like spending HOW MUCH for those electric signs in front of each school? (Can we say carbon burners?) You know the signs Im taking about. like the one at North Middle School. Claimed that they had 400 and some odd "Honor roll" students last year. Now lets see... HOW many students go to that school? The percentage of hornor roll kids tells me that 1) North is just shoving kids through with "make em feel good" grades, OR the cirriculum [sic] is to simplistic for children of that age. Seems like only the top 5% or so of the students should be on the honor roll, but it might hurt their feelings if their freinds make it and they dont!!"

"I take it you haven't looked at the high school newspaper. If it leaned left any more it would fall over. It just reflects the liberal attitudes in education in general."

"I used to support these new taxes until I realized that its all my taxes. From the stimulus money they blew through, to the reserves they have built up using my taxes, to the money they are allocated by the state, to all of the levies - all my tax dollars. If this levy is approved - and I urge everyone to vote NO - they say we will maxed out and no future levies. No long term plan - just scare us by saying our schools will collapse. Previous levies have failed, it won't be any different this year. The only money I am going to spend is the stamp to send in my "NO" ballot!"

"There is one teacher, that collects $20.00 from each student. The parents have the entire year to pay the twenty dollars. The teacher uses the extra money to pay for Snacks, extra projects, books, field trips, and lots of other things. On top of which, she makes it a point to invite the parents IN TO THE CLASS ROOMS. I had absolutely no problem giving that teacher $20.00 because it went DIRECTLY to the kids. NOT to fill some hire ups [sic] pocket."

"If only homeowners are being taxed than only homeowner should vote."

"Not to worry O'Bama will fund college for the children. We have to pay for that. We are being nickel and dimed to death and some people cannot understand the simple request to stop this madness."

"Methinks all those backers are school employees like administrators and consultants!"

"The District needs to bite the bullet. I say "no" to the levy."

"throwing money at a situation often times doen't improve the situation at all."

"So just who is the "GREEDY" one in this regard, certainly not the homeowner on a fixed income that might have to do without medications because that 12.00 or so reflects a much greated deduction in their income than someone making 30000 a year such as a teacher/administrator!"

"I don't think they deserve a blank check. They have a responsibility to not waste the money I have entrusted them with. I think they are wasting money."

"This levy request is a good example of what I've been talking about in the topic noted above. IMO, I think this is just a big "Charity Tax". When this goes through, this doesn't help the private schooled or homeschooled children, it just helps the public schools. That's all fine and good, but why shouldn't people be able to choose whom they'd like to be charitable too [sic]."

"I've seen some of the most uneducated kids bagging groceries at wal mart and albertson's and they are the nicest kids in Great Falls because their parents taught them to respect others which keeps them out of trouble. What an absolute joke you lefties are...."

"This levy is not about more education.It is about giving more money to the school district to pad the general fund to pay wages.It will not privide better education or better teaching, just better pay for the teachers and administrators. Throwing more money will not provide better education, it will just approve the current spending habits of the school district.Make the district operate within their allotted budget and vote NO on the levy."

"Must be nice to be able to go to Applebees for lunch! Since you can afford to go there, why not pay that 14.00 bucks for everyone who is on a fixed income and can't. Hope that lunch tastes good!"

"Be a PATRIOT take responsiblity [sic]...site [sic] your facts!!!"

"Teachers: welcome to the new economic times. We all have been doing this for a few years now."

Really makes you feel good inside, doesn't it? To recap:

*Again, this is over a one-year $14-30 increase in property taxes.

*Teachers will get that 1% pay increase whether or not this thing passes.

*When it fails, many new teachers like me will be unemployed. If I go, about 150 students won't have an English teacher next year. Those students will be forced into other English classes.

*Class loads will get bigger, which causes more stress for teacher and student. Students receive less individualized attention.

*Teachers have to focus more time and effort on discipline issues that come with big classes.

*Teachers will have more and more essays and papers to read, which will mean less and less time spent actually reading them and more time just glossing things over.

*Teachers will get more burned out. Quality of education goes down.

*On top of that, the community loses 50 college-educated, professional people who lived, voted, spent their salaries, raised their families, and owned homes here.

Enjoy your fourteen dollars!

Boregasm.

2010-04-07T21:19:00.001-06:00

School-Homed

2010-03-29T15:16:00.004-06:00

Sometimes The Onion is just a good ol' fashioned work of genius in the way it blends satire and the truth.

Increasing Number of Parents Opting to Have Children School-Homed

It's eerie how close this is to the truth! I feel like an insane scientist from a fifties B-movie, raving in the streets, shouting to the people, "THE ALIENS! THE ALIENS ARE HERE, AMONG US!! LISTEN TO ME!!" I've been writing the exact same thing as that article!

THE ONION MAKES MORE SENSE THAN REALITY!

Sit. Stare.

2010-03-09T10:07:00.011-07:00

We're doing state testing this week at my high school. This means that for four hours a day for three days, the kids have to sit in my room and take a long bubble-sheet test. First day for math, then for English, and finally for science.

The tests are a pretty big deal, as they are the measurement of how "well" we "perform" as a school. The whole idea is inherently flawed and dangerously stupid, but it's federal law. I've blogged about why I think this system doesn't work in the past. I have never met a teacher who thinks this will work, actually. I'm talking about varied demographics, too. When some people think "teacher," they might get the impression of a leftist, socialist professor with a scraggly beard and a loud agenda that he indoctrinates his students with. While I'm sure those teachers do exist, that's not what I see around here. Around here we've got conservative teachers and liberal ones. Fairly moderate ones, too. There are religious teachers and some that might not be religious. There are Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, members of the Green party, you name it. We come from very diverse social and economic backgrounds, too. One thing we all have in common: We don't think state testing accurately portrays the quality of the educational system whatsoever.

So no, teachers don't disagree with No Child Left Behind laws because we're all members of some teacher's union and we don't want to be held accountable for what we do. We just think it's a very flawed program.

I recently read an article in the New York Times about Diane Ravitch ("Scholar’s School Reform U-Turn Shakes Up Debate").

This woman was once a driving force behind No Child Left Behind and federal testing laws, but has since totally reversed her opinion. She says now that the law was based on fads and trends in education, and that NCLB does far more damage than good.

A little too late now, seeing as how entire faculties are being fired due to low test scores. (You can read about that here.)

Even the high school I teach in, considered one of the best in the state, faces the same fate in two years. The same holds true of every other AA high school in Montana with the exception of one. Unless we have 100% of students passing those state tests in 2012, our entire staff can/will legally be fired.

I thought about this as I watched the kids taking the state test. I can tell most of them were trying their best. Some weren't. Others didn't really try at all.

We give them a ridiculous amount of time to work on each section of the test, and the vast majority of them are finished with about thirty minutes to spare. They're not allowed to text or talk during this time, but they are allowed to read a book quietly. What amazes me is that out of thirty students, about ten of them choose to read quietly. The other twenty would rather spend half an hour sitting and staring. Seriously, just sitting and staring. I don't know if they're thinking about anything or if they're just too mentally exhausted to continue, or what. Some lay their heads down and go to sleep. Many just sit.

I realize test-taking can be excruciatingly boring, but in my mind this is all the more reason to want to read an actual book. After sitting and reading those awful math equations and arid informational articles, wouldn't a book be some kind of pleasant release? At distraction, at the very least? In the four hours we get to test, the majority of the kids need about ONE to get done. Sitting in a silent room for three hours with nobody to talk to and nothing to do doesn't seem like the most exciting thing in the world, but in their minds it beats reading a book. Reading a book is about as foreign to them as assembling a transmission to a 1988 Chrysler LeBaron. It doesn't even register.

I think this little observation is more of a key about what's wrong with education than all the stupid data collected from those stupid tests. Most kids don't have the smallest desire to read a book even to pass the time, even when the alternative is DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. I'm guessing most of these kids have never read a book on their own in their whole life. But why? How could this have happened? Are teachers just not reading anymore? Are iPods and Droid phones and hula-hoops to blame? THE KIDS ARE HAPPY TO SIT AND STARE FOR HOURS AT A TIME. Does this bother anyone else?! This behavior is akin to my pet frog, whose brain is the size of a grain of sand.

It's really not that mind-boggling, though. I'm a reader. You're probably a reader, too. How did I become a reader? I was a fan of books from a young age. I was never told to like books by teachers. There was never a point in school where I suddenly got turned on to books. My parents just read to me, told me stories, took me to the local library as a child. I didn't realize it at the time, but I could tell that my parents took reading seriously because they both did it on a regular basis. It happened early and it happened naturally. Conversely, I was never that into sports as a kid. This wasn't because I just hated sports, either. I was in T-ball and soccer, even a little basketball. I did them because my parents signed me up for them. If they would have pushed me further in that direction, I'm sure I would have pursued it. But they didn't, and I could tell that sports weren't very important to them. They didn't really watch a lot of sports or play a lot of sports. They didn't take sports too seriously. Now I'm all grown up, and I'm really not interested in sports at all. One of the main reasons is that I'm not very good at them due to years of not practicing! People don't like doing things they're not good at, especially when those things appear pretty pointless anyway. So most teens don't read, fine. The problem is that people expect English teachers and schools to turn them into readers.

I'm a big fan of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. For those of you unfamiliar with it, I made a nifty illustration with MS Paint here:

This thing supposes that the needs of any given level cannot be met until the needs of the lower level(s) are met. I've been led to believe, throughout college and my life, that high school teachers are mainly responsible for the Cognitive and Aesthetic needs of their students (the levels colored in blue). Don't get me wrong; high school, as an institution, can definitely help with the red levels (Esteem, Social/Emotional, and Safety needs), but you're a fool if you believe a school can have even a hundredth of the influence that family has, especially in those areas.

So I'm here, trying to impart lessons of critical thinking, self-awareness, beauty and form, introspection, and problem solving-- But the kid:

1. Went to bed at 2:00 AM the previous night having stayed up texting, resulting in four hours of sleep
2. Had a breakfast that consisted of a Red Bull and half a bag of Skittles

Right off the bat, we are not ready to experience any kind of Aesthetic or Cognitive awakening. I mean, come on. The kid is exhausted and running on caffeine sugar fumes. The kid's already set up to fail, and that's not even considering the other levels of the pyramid. Taking a look at the kid's Safety Needs:

3. The kid comes from a home where rules and limits are mostly arbitrary. The kid does not have a curfew or limits on what he can and can't do. The kid's mother does not react consistently to the kid's actions, sometimes punishing, sometimes condoning, sometimes ignoring. The kid's father is not a part of his home life.

4. Home rules are vastly different, sometimes opposite, from school ones. At home, the kid's mother and her friends openly swear and use curse words. They openly discuss sexual matters. The kid can, too, without repercussion. At home, the kid is allowed to wear t-shirts that advertise alcohol, tobacco, drugs. In fact, his mother purchases this clothing for him.

5. The kid has been involved in fights at school and at home. He has been taught from youth that violence is often necessary when solving any kind of dispute. He has also been taught that authority is not to be trusted, and that seeking help from authority is probably an act of cowardice.

So the safety needs of this kid aren't being met, on top of his neglected physiological needs. In the world of Emotional/Social needs:

6. Although the kid is loved by his mother, he has never been taught who he is or what his place in the world is. The kid has no concept of what the meaning of life is, as his life is made up of temporary, often fleeting, relationships.

7. The kid has a limited understanding of family and heritage. He probably does not know his grandparents, and has had very limited interaction with any extended family. He does not see family and home as the ultimate place of stability and security. Instead, he subconsciously understands that family is a source of pain and conflict, owing to his own parent's failed marriage.

I think the Emotional/Social needs are the ones that most of the failing students are so obviously (and desperately) trying to fill throughout the school day. Again, I think Maslow was a smart cookie, because the kids will do almost ANYTHING to get these needs met. Until they are met, nothing else matters to these kids. In successful students, a solid family life takes care of most of their emotional and social needs. In failing students, talking with friends, even one or two lines of text, means more to them than their grades. Many kids daily risk getting a zero on a test and dropping their whole letter grade to sneak a peek at that incoming text message. The threat of an F means nothing to them.

Bringing us to the Esteem Needs:

8. He has no plan for the future whatsoever. He does not have a calling in life or goals to aspire to other than living from day to day, as modeled by the adults around him at home. He may have a career in mind, but no idea how to get there and no family members to guide him.

9. The kid has almost zero responsibility at home. He probably doesn't have chores or any job to do. He doesn't have responsibility over much of anything. The kid owns a cell phone but contributes little/nothing towards paying the bill. The kid plays no part in any decision-making at home.

10. The kid has never been taught his own self-worth, or the sanctity of life in general. The kid has been indirectly taught that life is meaningless and not unique, and therefore of little value. This includes his own life.

11. The kid has also been taught that a man's value is directly proportional to the money/material goods he possesses. The kid is surrounded by a home and family culture that values wealth above all else. If the kid comes from a family that has money, he cannot comprehend the value of anything that will not make him money. If the kid is relatively poor, he will also equate his poverty with worthlessness.

Heh.

So, yeah. Eff my life.

Maybe you think I'm exaggerating the situation, but from what I've observed the hypothetical situation of this kid is quite common. It's common in Montana, and it's even more common in the urban world. Kids live with all of these things every day, and yet some will say that it's the teachers' fault if these kids aren't stimulated intellectually. They're going to turn those bubble sheets in, grade them, and tell us we're not trying hard enough because only 87% of the kids passed the test and we need to be at 93%.

We're trying our very best with the extremely limited resources that we have as a school system. We provide lunches (and even breakfast at times) to the kids who don't eat at home, we provide jackets and clothing to the poor, we try to establish rules for kids who have never experienced them, we provide various social outlets such as clubs and sports and dances to help the kids get socialized, we try to know each student as an individual and make them understand their own self-worth and give them a sense of belonging... On top of all this, we try our best to teach them critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, and communication skills to succeed as members of society and as human beings...

I've said it before: this school system only works under the assumption that families will do their part. We can't be expected to raise these children. We're their teachers, not their parents. We can set a good example, guide, direct, encourage, even persuade, but we can't parent them.

It makes me very sad to hear that the President himself endorsed firing all those Rhode Island teachers from the "failing" school. It's enough to make me just give up on politics all together. Why bother? Nobody is listening to us. The insidious part of No Child Left Behind is how seemingly EVERYONE agrees on it (except teachers). It was passed by President Bush in 2004, so Republicans automatically love it. It was fought against by teacher's unions, and so conservatives automatically love it. It imposes a big business model on Public Education (a rather socialistic institution) and so of course Republicans and conservatives automatically love it. It injected the federal government into locally run schools, and so Democrats automatically love it. It supposedly creates "accountability" and "oversight" to government employees (teachers) and so liberals automatically love it. The media throws out all these insipid buzzwords when talking about the law, misleading everyday folks who now assume the law must be helpful if it creates "accountability" to those darn liberal teachers.

Everyone thinks they know how to fix the problems of our educational system, but I firmly believe we're putting band-aids on shotgun wounds when we make up idiotic laws like No Child Left Behind. I also think many people have this mistaken notion that all teachers do is complain about pay raises. News flash: WE DIDN'T GET INTO THIS PROFESSION BECAUSE WE THOUGHT IT WOULD MAKE US RICH. Teachers aren't stupid. I know this may not mean much these days, but we've been to college. Many of us for at least eight years, if not ten or twelve. If we cared about being wealthy, we had many years to change careers. I wouldn't say no to a pay raise, and I think a minor salary increase is definitely in order all around (starting salary for a teacher in Montana = $27,000), but massively increased salaries will not solve anything. I actually believe teachers should NOT be paid too much, because then the profession will attract a-holes who only care about making money. Keep the salary average, normal, livable. It will attract people who actually have a passion for learning and teaching the young. Save the high salaries for the jobs that require you to not have a soul.

Want a solution that will get kids' test scores up? Take away their freakin' cell phones. Make it illegal for anyone under 18 to own a cell phone. Better yet, make it illegal for any family with children under 18 to own cable television or the internet.

Most fifteen year-olds are well acquainted with internet pornography and view it regularly. Most underage girls have taken photos of themselves in their underwear, if not fully naked. Did anyone stop to think what kind of affect THAT might have on their life? I've confiscated cell phones where girls and boys were texting vivid descriptions of fellatio to one another. That's just what they do in the middle of English class on a Tuesday. Did anyone stop to think how these things might be affecting kids' ability to function in school and society? I know a thing or two about teenagers from working with them. Willpower is not their forte. Neither is foresight. They also have a disproportionate sex drive due to being in the throes of puberty. Take the hormones of a fifteen-year-old boy or girl, mix in a total and utter lack of parental supervision, add a healthy does of complete anonymity, and let them loose in a wonderland of infinite pornography known as the internet. Better yet, give them the tools and technology to create sexual images and films of their own that they can transmit anonymously to anyone on earth instantly and without a trace.

Great plan. Just keep blaming teachers, everybody. Keep blaming the teachers. I can't wait until all education is privatized and you're all paying five thousand bucks a semester to keep your dumb-ass child in school (which will now be known as The Local Wal-Mart Education Center of America). Kiss off.

Atheism and Me

2010-03-08T14:23:00.004-07:00

The comments to this video say "Christopher Hitchens OWNS Dinesh D'Souza" although I respectfully disagree. If anything, I think it's vice-versa. You can see for yourself:

I don't know where my interest in atheism stemmed from. I was raised a to be a believer, but I was also raised to be skeptical and to ask questions. This skepticism (even cynicism) comes naturally to me, and so I guess this is why atheism has always looked fascinating.

I can't say I ever considered myself an atheist, although at times I did have personal doubts and fears about the existence of God. I'm sure most believing people experience those personal doubts and fears, though. As an adolescent I found the world of art and academia to be full of atheist ideas and notions. I felt like a square for being a believer. I didn't see God the way they did. They saw an outdated myth, something silly, something destructive. I saw what I perceived (and still do perceive) to be the truth of the matter. I always felt their view of God and religion was childish and simplistic, although I didn't know I felt that way at the time. I just knew I was sometimes embarrassed to be a Mormon, and that they might not think me stupid if only they'd take the time to understand.

Not that the Mormons have a history to be ashamed of, in my opinion. Just that my LDS culture wasn't a very good match for me. Where were the artists, the creative types? It seemed to me that they were either making crappy, sentimental, Thomas-Kinkaid-style art for tons of money or they just didn't exist. Where were the LDS musicians? Busy making EFY CD's and other religious music. I wanted LDS film-makers, and I was getting God's Army.

Which wasn't as bad as I wanted it to be, actually. God's Army, I mean. But I had this idea that Mormons were like the country bumpkins of the world. They hunted and fished, they strictly prohibited R-rated movies. They listened to country music and watched CMT. I wanted to be good, but how could they prohibit The Godfather and accept Austin Powers with open arms? I would rather "sin" and read Stephen King than their stupid LDS fiction.

I used to pride myself on being logical. I thought Spock was the apotheosis of cool. I was naturally logical, and pure logic was delicious to me. So atheism was, in many ways, alluring. It took that fourteen-year-old logic to it's conclusion, and atheism made sense to me on an intellectual level. Thank goodness I didn't completely give in to those logical underpinnings, because then I might not be where I am today. Something inside would stop me. Usually, it was thinking about Jesus Christ Himself. I could not read those stories from the New Testament and deny them. I felt something deep in my heart as I read them. I understood them to be the truth, even during the times when I almost didn't want them to be. They were always true to me. I was never so cynical that I could brush those stories off. Frankly, I'm kind of amazed at how atheists can even do that. They just must not feel what I felt when I read them. That's the only explanation that makes sense to me.

So although I wanted to be dark, deep, pretentious, mystical, alluring, etc., it just wasn't something I could do and keep my religion. And no matter how badly I wanted to be dark and deep, I also did care for the well-being of my eternal soul. I was never a part of that club of artists and intellectuals, but I wanted to be.

I think attending a church university was one of the best things that could have happened to me in this respect. I realized there that I could enjoy the "dark" things of the world... Ponder the dark mysteries of life... Explore human emotion, human suffering and pain... And still be a faithful person. Still be a believer. My English professors didn't shy away from the inherent darkness in literature, and they were smart guys. It was such a beautiful thing to me to see that there are artistic, intelligent, well-read people in my LDS community. They enjoyed and created good art, and they did it without being pretentious a-holes.

I feel confident enough now to look at atheism with the weary eyes of an older man. It still fascinates and intrigues me, but more because I don't understand what makes the atheist tick. I've asked before, on this very blog, what drives the atheist to even live day-to-day life. If we're all going to die in a matter of years, remembering nothing, entering a state of eternal oblivion, what's the point of doing anything? I guess that sounds pretty bleak, and some atheists have argued with me by stating that I, a believer, am more depressing and twisted than any atheist. Maybe it's true, but I wear it as a badge of honor.

I think C.S. Lewis expressed it best when he wrote in Mere Christianity that people who try to break down Christianity (and religion in general) will typically take an eight-year-old's version of Christianity and attack it. Of course it's ludicrous to believe that a magical giant man with a beard lives in outer-space and He somehow sees and hears all of us and if we pray to Him He will give us things. But that's kind of a retarded version of my belief system.

It's like decrying music. What's the point of sitting there, listening to seemingly random noises? How in the world could such random noises stir such strong emotions in us? It's ridiculous, but there it is. On a simplified level, it makes zero sense.

I don't want to be guilty of doing the same thing when deconstructing atheism, but it can be a difficult topic to research. And if people like Christopher Hitchens are the ones speaking for atheism, then it becomes even less of a contender.

Here's a great article I read that led me to write this post:

The Most Misunderstood Book: christopher hitchens on the Bible

This outspoken atheist wrote a book about how religion ruins everything and Jesus was probably a myth that never existed in the first place. At age fourteen, a book like this might have shaken me a bit. Might have made me feel stupid, or embarrassed. Thanks to the wonderful, educated, talented men and women of the LDS community, this is no longer true. I can respect that there are some arguments to be made for atheism, but this book doesn't sound like one of them.

The church is true. Thanks for reading my ramblings. Check out that article, even though it is quite long!

Fuddruckers' Assault on the English Language

2010-03-06T16:28:00.004-07:00

Recently the wife and I got some food at Fuddruckers, the unfortunately named burger restaurant.

After we placed our order, the girl at the register asked for a name. I try to avoid giving my name in situations like these because it always leads to an additional ten minutes of explanation including etymology, genealogy, history, and language theory. Instead, I simply told them my wife's name, "Rachel."

When your food is ready, they call your name over a loudspeaker. We sat and talked, waiting for them to announce Rachel's name. Ten or fifteen minutes later, they were announcing the name, "Rochelle." After they announced "Rochelle" a second time and nobody went up to claim to the food, we assumed it must be us.

As we got up from our table to walk over to the counter, the announcer girl got on the loudspeaker a third time. She was visibly irritated at this point. I thought I'd mention to her that the name was pronounced "Rachel," but realized it was not the announcer's fault when she handed me the accompanying ticket, pictured here:

So when I said "Rachel" to the cashier, they heard, "Reachelle." This, I think, illustrates some of the problems we are currently running into as a society in terms of the English language.

People no longer know how to spell properly. If you heard the word, "Rachel," for the first time, even if you'd never seen it before, wouldn't it make sense to just spell it like it sounds? "Rachel," or "Raychel," or "Raechel," I would accept.

But "Reachelle?" This looks like it should be pronounced "Ree-a-shell." That doesn't sound anything like what I said to her.

One of the reasons kids today are having problems with spelling is because they did not learn how to read phonetically. I think most people born in the nineteen-eighties were still taught to read phonetically, but there was a trend started several years ago called "whole word" reading. I believe "whole word" reading is actually a revival of a trend from the sixties that got dumped when everyone realized how stupid it was. It's a terribly stupid way to teach reading, but it's popular again.

Whole word reading supposes that it's better to just memorize what words look like instead of learning their phonetic pards. I believe the cashier was taught to read this way. There are a two relatively common ways to spell "Rachel." There's "Rachel" and "Rachael." Now the second way is tricky because it doesn't make sense phonetically, but I suspect the cashier was familiar with seeing the name spelled that way and was trying to somehow recreate it. Since she did not know how to sound words out, she may have also gotten the name "Rachelle," confused with "Rachel," believing they sounded the same.

The second problem with spelling is that nobody reads anymore. The students that I have that are good spellers are always avid readers. This is not a coincidence. Reading exposes you to hundreds of thousands of words that you otherwise would not hear in day-to-day life. It also allows you to see what words look like and how they are spelled. Readers develop a sense of what looks right or wrong. Even if a reader doesn't know how to spell a certain word, they will most likely be able to tell when it looks wrong.

Non-readers and non-spellers, like our friendly cashier, do not have this skill. And with that, we barrel on towards Idiocracy. Good night, and good luck!

Mansions and Ghettos and Top Pop

2010-03-05T11:02:00.007-07:00

I came across an article today, CNN's "25 Top Earning Towns in the Country."

Listed at no. 1 was New Canaan, Connecticut, a place I once lived. Actually, I believe I technically lived in Greenwich, CT, but I knocked on doors in New Canaan, Greenwich, and Darien. All three were in the top fifteen wealthiest communities in the country. The average family income for New Canaan is $231,138.

What's funny to me now is how I had no idea about any this when I went into Connecticut. I didn't even know where Connecticut was on a map. I was a missionary in New York City, but we had small section of CT in our mission boundaries because it was a part of the New York City Stake, and the MTA subway trains went there. I soon learned that all the people too rich for Manhattan commuted there every night. I was transferred to CT because of my shoulder surgery. They wanted to keep me in a driving area until I recuperated. I had never seen such palatial mansions and wealth outside of movies and TV. I still recall driving around these neighborhoods and seeing dozens of Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Vipers, Bentleys, even Rolls Royces... High school kids were driving BMWs. Escalades were the typical soccer mom minivan.

Out of curiosity, I did a little more research and discovered this:

"Census Bureau Cites Bronx Continues to Be Poorest Urban Neighborhood in U.S."

No kidding!

So yes, all missionaries love to brag about either vast poverty/wealth of their respective areas. And yes, different reports will list different places in the U.S. for each. But I'm proud to say I served in the richest and poorest places in this country. They were only a few miles apart, too.

A bishop in Connecticut once took me and my companion out for a birthday dinner with his son and wife. His son was allowed to pick two people and the kid chose us. He was a very kind man and his family was wonderful. Dinner was superb, and at the end of the meal I glimpsed the check. It was, as I recall, over eight-hundred dollars. A good meal to say the least, but it didn't hold a candle to a slice of Cross-Bronx Pizza for a buck seventy-five, fifty cents for a Top-Pop.

Middle-earth Radio

2010-02-18T19:44:00.006-07:00

Middle-earth Radio: Super Sounds of the Seventies Weekend

February 19th, 2010

7:30 to 9:00 PM

BE THERE!

The Baby Parade (of Shame) 2010!!!

2010-01-29T11:11:00.008-07:00

Every year the local newspaper prints a list of babies that were born at the start of the year and calls it "The Baby Parade." Why would you put a picture and name of your baby in the newspaper and online for anyone to stare at? I don’t know. But it’s tradition for me to look through the list and get angry at each stupid name.

Now I'm the first person to enjoy unusual names! HONEST! I consider my name pretty unique and it’s always brought me happiness. So don’t think I want everyone to have boring names. Trust me, this is coming from the guy who wants to name his children after MYTHICAL TOLKIEN TREES and ELVES!

But even I must say this has gotten WAY, WAY out of hand.

"How can you object to stupid names? Aren't you the one who would name his daughter Zelda if given the chance?" I can justify naming a daughter after a video game character. So why do I feel I can get away with Zelda, but someone who names their daughter "Rayne" is judged by me to be an idiot? It's because I have invented extremely meticulous and complex rules to what constitutes a stupid baby name, and Zelda, while some may say it's retarded, follows those rules. Here are my issues with the weird names:

1. I don't like when names are just "invented" from weird or unique sounds. This is something done in video games and sci-fi novels. Names ought to have some kind of meaning or traceable history. I realize Alexander or Jessica might as well be "invented" words, but in truth they actually have long histories and evolved over time. This may, in actuality, be the rarest form of annoying name, but it’s probably THE most annoying. An example of this is the name “Taylee.” What the hell is that? It’s not a real name. It’s not even a real PLACE name. It’s just something invented that sounds pleasant (i.e. not real).

2. I don’t like when names are misspelled on purpose (or by accident, for that matter). English has definitely decided at this point in time that Jason is spelled “Jason.” It’s not “Jaycen” or “Jaeson” or “Jaysen” or "Jaeysin” or “Jayousieyn.” Despite the complexity of English, spelling actually does follow very predictable patterns that anyone can eventually learn. I know, I know, the pronunciation of words like “though” and “tough” don’t really make sense at first, but I’ve studied this. Trust me, there’s a stable pattern. Misspelled names give the impression that somehow, names are exempt from this rule. I get students all the time with misspelled names, like, “Ayreal.” How should you pronounce that? I was told it’s pronounced exactly like “Ariel.” And yet, it looks like “Aey-reel.” Then there's Jayden. Never mind the fact that I'm pretty sure this name is just made up, and I'm pretty sure it's only popular because of celebrity babies; take a look at some variations:

Jayden, Jaeden, Jaiden, Jadin, Jadyn, Jaidyn, Jaedun, Jaydun, Jaidun, Jaidon, Jaedon, Jaydon, Jadon, Jadan, Jaydan, Jaidan, etc.

At what point will names just be spelled “Kxylsrr” and be pronounced “Charlie?” Why do names not have to follow basic rules?

- A side note to this is foreign spellings of names. I wholly support foreign spellings of names. There’s “John” in English, and there’s “Jean” in French. The two are not pronounced the same, even though they originate from the same name. I don’t believe in changing the spelling of a foreign name. For example, I think it’s cool to spell “Jaime” the Spanish way, and not “Hymay.” Keeping the original spelling keeps the language and rich history in place. A name ought to be everything that comes with it, not just a phonetic sound!

3. I don’t like when names are not used on the traditional sex. Again, this is making names just a phonetic sound and stripping away any kind of history or meaning behind a name. If one is confused about what sex a name is suited for, one should look to historical examples.

4. I don’t like when surnames are used as first names.

5. I don’t like when the names of places are given as first names, especially considering most parents have absolutely no connection to the place whatsoever.

6. I think using nouns and adjectives (like names of feelings) as names is totally acceptable. Lots of people I know dislike names like “Charity,” or “Hope,” or “Faith,” or even “Miracle.” Whatever. Maybe it’s tacky, but I think they’re just fine. They’re real words that actually mean something to the parents and have some kind of traceable history. I wouldn’t name my kids after feelings, but they’re okay in my book.

7. Finally, I’d like to state for the record that I am only talking about white people here. Other cultures have their own names, and I won’t even attempt to get into that. These are names from my own community of white people that I’m harshly judging here.

If you are confused about what I find acceptable or not, and I know my opinion means a lot to you, put your baby name to the Wikipedia Test. It's better than just Googling a name, because there are trillions of stupid web sites that list infinite baby names. Wikipedia can show you who or what has traditionally had the name. For example, one of the names I came across was “Averi” for a little girl. Of course, there will be no entry for “Averi” in Wikipedia, since I can already tell it's not real, but I typed it in anyway. I was eventually led to “Avery.” The entry says this name is a surname, derived from the Old French version of Alfred. There are also nine cities in the U.S. with the name “Avery.” So far, no females of note with the first name “Avery.” So right here the name has violated several rules. It’s spelled wrong, it’s actually a last name, it’s more commonly used as a place name, AND it’s a name for a boy. To top it all off, it’s an ugly name! Well done, parents of Averi!!

So here are the names listed in the Baby "Parade" (an actual baby parade would have been about forty-eight billion times cooler). I have only recorded FIRST and MIDDLE names. In some cases I had to add the middle name to make it clear what the sex of the baby is even supposed to be.

Without further ado, THE BABY PARADE (OF SHAME), 2010 EDITION!!!

Kamilla 1st - The "1st" was "Camilla's" middle name. The girl got an actual roman numeral in her name, and it wasn't even at the end!

Jordyn Rhianna - I know, I see it too.

Cash - They named their baby after the child support money!

Devyn Nichole

Max Deloy

Averi Ann'Mikael - Who knew Montanans had a penchant for Klingon middle names?

Paxton Elizabeth - Paxton is a girl?

Ryder Lee - This was also a girl.

Jayse

Taylor Neveah

Cooper

Kooper

Kuper - A cooper-splosion! Montanans also love 19th century barrel-makers, I guess.

Raynyn - Okay, enough is enough. There are far too many Y's on this list already. You each get ONE Y and ONE K from now on.

Kaylie - There, better.

Harlow Faith - A girl.

Avery Dawn - Also a girl.

Austyn - You're doing this just to piss me off, aren't you?

Jaydon - ...

KC Jace - Aww come ON. You people LOVE Y's, so why not Casey? At least you worked a soft C in there, so good for you.

Sloane - This is actually a real name, but it bugged me because it's usually a last name. The only person I've ever known with this as a first name was Sloane Peterson, Ferris Bueller's girlfriend.

London Christina - Places as names, places as names.

Keaton - Again, a last name used as a first name. This time stolen from Michael and Diane. Good work!

Aidan Christian

Aiden Lane

Aiden Aiden Aiden - Aiden is the John of the 21st century. (At least it's a real first name.)

Jakob - Okay, we GET IT. K's and Y's are the coolest letters every. They're the most beautiful sounds.

Hadley Katelynn - A girl

Tayley - Someone's parents love LOST!

Jacksin - Ah, nice! Spell it wrong AND put the word "sin" in there! AND include the letter K! ROCK!

Finley Marie - Yes, FINLEY! What a beautiful name for a little girl!

Lucas Ryon - Are you sure you don't mean LUKUS RYYOEON

Taylee Elena - WTF: TWO TAILIES? HOW?!

Tyson - Ah, frozen chicken and/or an insane boxer! Beautiful.

Amorina - You know, I hate to say it, but I thought this was actually kind of cute.

Oliver Per - Per? Only one Oliver Per person please. This was a girl, I think.

Danica Rain - Do you think the C here sounds like a K or an S?

Jack Ywain - Mark Twains long-lost brother from Dimension X?

Teighlor JoLee - Ugh.

Tia Joy

Kaylee - Go away.

Bridger Rose - Ugh.

Trevyn Breanne - ENOUGH WITH THE Y's!! PLEASE!

Kaysa - STOP!

Alyvia - PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!

Remi Kayann - NO MORE K's and Y's!! PLEASE!!

Lakayla Ray - ... bastards.

If you don't believe me, here's the link:
http://bigsky.momslikeme.com/members/Scrapbook.aspx?pi=2&q=&dt=MWorldData.Message&si=&filter=0&g=1517145&se=&sd=&sn=0

If you'd like to learn more about my hatred for stupid baby names, see last year's P.O.S. (Parade of Shame).

I've just had a rough couple of weeks. I take it out on innocent babies. Does that make me such a bad guy?

Good decade, guys! (expanded)

2009-12-23T14:03:00.015-07:00

My favorite 24 albums of the aughts!

I decided to go through my music and find my favorite albums of the past decade. I am usually extremely skeptical of "new" music, and the vast majority of my collection is stuff from the 1970's. In fact, I still tend to view anything after 1989 as "new," but I'm trying. It's strange for me to think that a whole decade has passed, and I wonder how future generations will see the music of this time. Here are twenty-four albums that define the aughts for me.

Enough has been written about these albums, and I'd rather let the music speak for itself. These are in no particular order other than an order I find aesthetically/aurally pleasing.

I don't know exactly how I chose these albums. They had to be albums I considered very, very good. Albums I listened to many times over the course of the years. Albums I could see myself listening to in another ten, twenty years. Albums I listen to all the way through on a regular basis. Stuff like that.

You'll notice multiple entries by Radiohead, Porcupine Tree, and American Music Club. I like these bands, even though they sound virtually nothing alike.

I was surprised to find myself posting two albums by The Decemberists, but there they are. I love both of them. Maybe I hold a special place for The Decemberists because of Rachel, since she introduced me to them. I found The Hazards of Love to be a fitting way to end this mix and this decade, as this was the decade of love and loss and marriage for me, and I finish it walking hand and hand with her after all those troubles of adolescence and youth. It's quite romantic to me.

I hope you enjoy the music! I only chose one track from each album, and I hope you find some good stuff here.

Part 1 of 3:

2000 - Radiohead - Kid A

2009 - Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus

2005 - The Decemberists - Picaresque

2005 - Mindless Self Indulgence - You'll Rebel to Anything

2000 - Grandaddy - The Sophtware Slump

2007 - Yeasayer - All Hours Cymbals

2006 - Clint Mansell - The Fountain Soundtrack

2002 - Peter Gabriel - Up

01 - Radiohead - Kid A - Everything in its Right Place
02 - Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus - Fences
03 - The Decemberists - Picaresque - We Both Go Down Together
04 - Mindless Self Indulgence - You'll Rebel to Anything - Straight to Video
05 - Grandaddy - The Sophtware Slump - Miner at the Dial-A-View
06 - Yeasayer - All Hours Cymbals - Wait for the Summer
07 - Clint Mansell - The Fountain - Together We Will Live Forever
08 - Peter Gabriel - Up - No Way Out

Part 2 of 3:

2002 - Coldplay - A Rush of Blood to the Head

2001 - Spoon - Girls Can Tell

2004 - American Music Club - Love Songs For Patriots

2001 - Tool - Lateralus

2000 - Porcupine Tree - Lightbulb Sun

2004 - Dungen - Panda

2003 - Radiohead - Hail to the Thief

2007 - Porcupine Tree - Fear of a Blank Planet

09 - Coldplay - A Rush of Blood to the Head - In My Place
10 - Spoon - Girls Can Tell - Me and the Bean
11 - American Music Club - Love Songs for Patriots - Patriot's Heart
12 - Tool - Lateralus - The Patient
13 - Porcupine Tree - Lightbulb Sun - Last Chance to Evacuate Planet Earth Before it is Recycled
14 - Dungen - Ta Det Lungt - Panda
15 - Radiohead - Hail to the Thief - There There (The Boney King of Nowhere)
16 - Porcupine Tree - Fear of a Blank Planet - Way Out of Here

Part 3 of 3:

2008 - The Helio Sequence - Keep Your Eyes Ahead

2008 - American Music Club - The Golden Age

2006 - Midlake - The Trials of Van Occupanther

2003 - Porcupine Tree - In Absentia - Trains

2007 - Radiohead - In Rainbows

2003 - Kenna - New Sacred Cow

2000 - Coldplay - Parachutes

2009 - The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love

17 - The Helio Sequence - Keep Your Eyes Ahead - Lately
18 - American Music Club - The Golden Age - The Decibels and the Little Pills
19 - Midlake - The Trials of Van Occupanther - Head Home
20 - Porcupine Tree - In Absentia - Trains
21 - Radiohead - In Rainbows - Reckoner
22 - Kenna - New Sacred Cow - Sunday After You
23 - Coldplay - Parachutes - Trouble
24 - The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love - The Hazards of Love, pt. 4 (The Drowned)

Year distribution:

I was surprised at how well-rounded this turned out, year wise. Every year of the decade had two or three albums to represent it with the exception of 2000, which had four.

A Note on Coldplay:

I am going to admit that I felt kind of lame for including Coldplay not once, but twice on this list. I really lost interest in Coldplay when X&Y came out. I thought it was snoozefest horrible. I realize people thought this about Parachutes and A Rush of Blood, too, but X&Y was just trite and bland and all the other things Coldplay haters said about Coldplay. So I kind of just wanted to leave Coldplay out of this list all together, but I could not deny the fact that I listened to Parachutes and A Rush of Blood hundreds of times this decade. I discovered them like I did most of these bands: their album cover intrigued me when I walked by the music section of some store. I downloaded some Coldplay tracks off of Kazaa or Limewire or whatever we used in those college freshman days to share music and I really liked Parachutes. In fact, I think I might even still like it more than A Rush of Blood, even though Rush of Blood is probably the better album. Unfortunately, the single for Parachutes was "Yellow," which I always thought was the weakest track on the album. Also, the cover for Parachutes kind of sucks. That's what made it all the harder to include in this list, because there are some really great album covers on here. I feel like I'm not living up to my music-geek-audiophile-hipster standards but liking Coldplay, but I do and I can't lie about it. At least, their first two albums (and a compilation I made of bonus tracks and EP stuff). I tried to get into Viva La Vida or whatever that last one was called, and it just wasn't working for me anymore. I liked Coldplay better when they were just trying to sound like early Radiohead, I guess.

A Note on Other Bands I Didn't Include:

I was also a little reticent to include Tool on here, since I only discovered them relatively recently (thanks to Rachel!). I really like Lateralus, but I probably listened to Audioslave's debut album a lot more this decade. I chose not to include Audioslave because even though I really liked it and listened to it quite a bit, I'm pretty sure Lateralus is just a better album and I don't listen to Audioslave straight through as much anymore. Both their covers are excellent, though, and I'm going to post some album covers of other stuff I wanted to include but didn't.

Like Demon Days by Gorillaz. I must have listened to that about a hundred times. It's a great album, but I just couldn't bring myself to remove one of the above twenty-four to include it. Also, David Gilmour's On An Island. I love this album, but haven't listened to it straight through enough to knock one of those twenty-four off.

Reggie and the Full Effect's Songs Not To Get Married To is also great, but a little uneven and kind of a seasonal thing for me. Now Here is Nowhere by the Secret Machines would have totally gotten a spot if I ever listened to anything after the first three or four songs on it. But those first few tracks are phenomenal. Just haven't gotten around to doing the album straight through.

Oh, and Duncan Sheik's White Limosuine. Really good album, but the cover art was just too crappy and I couldn't bring myself to even post a picture. Great music, though.

Happy New Year, people! Can't wait to see what music this next decade has in store.

Audioslave - Audioslave

David Gilmour - On An Island

Gorillaz - Demon Days

Reggie and the Full Effect - Songs Not to Get Married to

The Secret Machines - Now Here is Nowhere

But I pulled you, and I called you here,
And I caught you, and I brought you here.
These hazards of love
Never more will trouble us...

People who add "gate" on the ends of certain headlines...

2009-12-14T15:09:00.025-07:00

...are idiots. For instance, the cringe-inducing headline, "climate-gate." Apparently someone hacked into the email accounts of a British climate research center, and these candid emails somehow prove climate change is false. The "gate" thing is just... it's done. (It's a tired reference to the Watergate scandal of President Nixon for those don't know.) It's like there's some mass coverup and these emails prove scientists have all been lying to us for some reason.

I don't care what the rest of the world does, but I don't understand why it's so hard to find another Mormon who gets this stuff...

Anyway, I'm no scientist but I understand how to read. While I haven't read the one-thousand or so pilfered e-mails, I trust others who have read them and reported that while they prove scientists can sometimes be smarmy a-holes, they don't disprove climate change. From what I have read it appears that the general consensus amongst the scientific community is that climate change is real, and humans are influencing it.

I'm going to stop right there, because I know that last sentence is already a cause for argument.

Some people out there say that no, scientists aren't even in agreement over anything and really it's the liberal media that claims scientists agree. Again, I haven't researched the opinions of scientists exhaustively, but I have found enough trusted sources that make this same claim, and so I believe it. For example: Politifact.org and Factcheck.org have both stated something to the effect that there is a consensus among scientists on the reality of man-made climate change. Both those sites pride themselves on being un-biased, apolitical entities. Heck, if you want proof look at a poll conducted by CNN and this article by Fox News. They both report that most scientists agree. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the American Meteorological Society also say that there is a consensus amongst most scientists. (There is a well-documented and fairly long list of scientific organizations that agree that climate change is real and human-influenced in this Wikipedia Article.)

I understand that SOME scientists don't believe climate change is caused by man, and that some don't even believe climate change is taking place. My assertion is that, from what I've read, MOST scientists believe climate change is real and caused by man.

Can we at least agree on this?

The reason I'm laboring this point is that this is one of the (main) reasons I personally accept man-made climate change as a fact. I understand that just because lots of scientists believe something it doesn't mean it's true, but how is this issue different from so many others? There are many things I believe about the world at large that I have not researched on my own but that I accept as fact. I guess that might sound really naive, but isn't it how most people function?

At what point can we really know anything is even true? There are people who believe the earth is flat, and they have seemingly good science to back them up on it. There's lots of people in America that believe 9/11 was perpetrated by the U.S. Government (if this is you, go here). There are people that think autism is somehow linked to vaccines. Yet, most experts agree that the earth is round, 9/11 was a terrorist plot, and vaccines are actually good for you.

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9/11 Conspiracy Theories 'Ridiculous,' Al Qaeda Says
***

In this brave new world of unlimited information and opinion, it's actually quite easy to find people who believe in pretty much anything. With just a few clicks you can start making it your life's work to get people to stop drinking McDonald's milk shakes because they contain melted plastic. It doesn't matter that millions of people disagree with that "fact." With the internet, anyone can write and publish anything! Even me!

***

If all these educated men and women are lying to the world about climate change, the next question that naturally arises is "Why?" What's their motivation for lying to us? I heard some of my sophomores talking about how Al Gore was making bank off of selling carbon credits. Is that what this is all about? Al Gore is orchestrating all this to get rich?

I don't know how much money the "clean energy" people have, but don't you think big oil and coal might possibly have a bit more? If it's all a hoax to make money for Al Gore and the clean energy people, how on EARTH have big oil companies not exposed them yet? Their resources are unimaginably vast! They own entire countries! How on earth could measly start-up green corporations even hope to stand up against the leviathan of big oil?! It's madness! They would be obliterated by big oil if they were just making crap up to get rich!

And then, what about scientists and researchers who have no connection with Al Gore? How do they benefit from lying to the world? Using this logic, ask yourself another question: what do manufacturers of fossil fuels stand to lose if climate change really is caused by them? And why is it that studies funded by oil companies tend to show that the climate is not affected by C02? Their conclusions are different from almost all the others! Doesn't this seem the least bit suspicious? Consider this quote: "It appears from the details of the [e-mail] scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change." Who made such a bold statement? Saudi Arabian climate negotiator Mohammad Al-Sabban. Weird. Why would a member of the Saudi government make such a sweeping statement about climate change based on some e-mails he never read?

I realize we can play the "who stands to benefit from this?" game all day. (For example: the big pharmaceutical companies don't want you to know that autism is caused by their expensive vaccines! That's why they suppress this information!)

I know, I know, there are lots of people who don't believe climate change that AREN'T connected with fossil fuel profit, but I kind of suspect that they just think this way because of Fox News and talk radio. What if George Bush and Rush Limbaugh had been the first to come out years ago and tell the world about the dangers of climate change? Would the deniers still be denying?

***

What bothers me most about all this is how many LDS people are opposed to even the idea of man-made climate change. It seems like something we should understand better than any other people, and yet, we don't. There's nothing in the church doctrine about opposing climate change, and I don't remember President Monson or the general authorities issuing any statements on it, and yet the consensus among church members is that climate change is a myth.

Weren't we all taught since our youth that in the last days, the earth itself would experience great upheavals, storms, earthquakes, hurricaines, floods, and all manner of calamities?

Don't we also learn in church that the Lord doesn't necessarily just destroy things Himself, but allows the fallen state of human nature to kick in and do it for Him? Jeremiah and Lehi and other prophets prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem in 600 B.C. Then, it got destroyed. It wasn't God Himself who came down with a bazooka and a Abrams tank! He allowed invading armies to come in and wreck the place. Same thing happened when Christ prophesied the destruction of various cities. He didn't come back with a flamethrower; they got leveled by other military forces. This is also how blessings often work, is it not? God doesn't necessarily come down and give us stuff, He works through the good will of others.

That's another reason why climate change makes so much sense to me! We've been told for millenia that the world will eventually end in great calamities. Isn't it perfect that the industrial revolution, which brought unprecedented wealth and ushered in a new age of light and truth (and subsequently much sin and darkness) will be the very thing that causes the earth to destroy itself? All that progress came with a price, and now that we are very comfortable with this quality of life we refuse to do anything to sacrifice even a little bit! So we'll keep pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, the earth will keep retaining heat, and then ocean currents will change, weather patterns will change, crops will die, famine will ensue, and we'll have a mass die-off. Lovely.

Maybe the problem is that Mormons know the end of the world is inevitable, and so there's no point in even trying to curb emissions? But if that's the case, we should know better. Yes, there's always sin and pain in the world. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make it better. At the very least, we can admit that it's actually happening and that it will end the world. I realize we are a peculiar people, but we don't have to look like such idiots on this, agreeing with whatever conservative news tells us to believe.

Here's something from President Ezra Taft Benson:
In Matthew, chapter 24, we learn of ‘famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes. . . .’ (Matt. 24:7.) The Lord declared that these and other calamities shall occur. These particular prophecies seem not to be conditional. The Lord, with his foreknowledge, knows that they will happen. Some will come about through man’s manipulations; others through the forces of nature and nature’s God, but that they will come seems certain.
- Ezra Taft Benson "Prepare Ye" Oct. 1973 General Conference

Note how he said some will come about through "man's manipulations." I realize he may not have been talking about climate change, but he understood that the calamities could just as easily be brought upon ourselves. Also, he does say that they're certain. So maybe we can't necessarily stop them, but can't we at least acknowledge the possibility that climate change IS indeed happening?

Here's a great quote from President Joseph Fielding Smith regarding the calamities at the end of the world:

"Talk to them; hear what they have to say—these learned men of the world. ‘We have had worse times,’ they say. ‘You are wrong in thinking there are more calamities now than in earlier times. There are not more earthquakes, the earth has always been quaking, but now we have facilities for gathering the news which our fathers did not have. These are not signs of the times; things are not different from former times.’ And so the people refuse to heed the warnings the Lord so kindly gives to them, and thus they fulfill the scriptures.”
- Joseph Fielding Smith, General Conference Report, Apr. 1966, pp. 13, 15.

Holy crap! Doesn't that sound just like the people who go around saying how we're actually in the end of an ice age, and how things are just as cold as they've always been, etc?

I have this personal theory that people will put their political beliefs even before their religious ones. I can't prove this, but I think that if the prophet himself came out and said that climate change is caused by man, people in the church would not listen. They'd find ways around what he said, or make excuses. It wouldn't matter. All that matters is what Fox News and talk radio say. Their prophets are Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity and whatever other political entertainer is currently popular. I don't mean to pick on Republican/conservative types, I really don't. This just seems to be an issue where I don't agree with them.

***

So what if it really is all a bunch of B.S.? The scientists are all completely wrong/lying to us, and the world is fine. Or what if yes, the climate is changing, but there's nothing we can do about it because it's completely natural and out of our control?

(I stole this, by the way)

Scenario 1: Climate change is fake and we do nothing about it.
Awesome! Non-crisis averted, everything is fine!

Scenario 2: Climate change is fake and we make all sorts of crazy laws and stuff.
This sucks because it will hurt our economy and potentially lose everyone a lot of money.

Scenario 3: Climate change is real and we make all sorts of crazy laws and stuff.
Awesome! Crisis averted (hopefully!) everything is going to be okay!

Scenario 4: Climate change is real and we do nothing about it.
Mass destructions, dead zones in the ocean, hurricanes, droughts, immense famine, the end-times, irreversible damage to the planet, mass die-off of human race.

So from a "risk assessment" point of view, which is more risky? Scenario 2 or scenario 4? That's what it comes down to. If it's all a hoax, we will lose money and our economy will suffer, but economies can recover eventually, right? If it's real and we do nothing, we basically kill ourselves all off.

I do believe the world will eventually end. I take the scriptures quite literally in this sense. Does this mean I should hasten the end along?

I won't lie: I really hope climate change is all B.S., personally. Because this crap scares me, and I don't want to be held responsible in the afterlife for doing nothing while thousands died needlessly. So don't think I have a personal interest in climate change. I just wish more of us used critical thinking skills, or could give me answers to these questions.

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Middle-earth Radio: It's a Middle-earth Christmas!!

2009-12-07T17:48:00.010-07:00

Part 1 of 3

01 - South Park - Woodland Critter Christmas - Christmas Time Comes Once a Year
02 - Weird Al Yankovic - Polka Party - Christmas At Ground Zero
03 - Bobby Lloyd and the Skeletons - Christmas Party With Eddie G. - Do You Hear What I Hear?
04 - Augie Rios - Christmas Party With Eddie G. - Donde Esta Santa Claus?
05 - Mannheim Steamroller - Christmas 1984 - Deck the Halls
06 - The Beatles - Christmas Record '67 - Christmastime Is Here Again
07 - The Jackson Five - Jingle Bell Rock - I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
08 - Pac-Man - The Pac-Man Christmas Album - Snowflakes and Frozen Lakes

Part 2 of 3

09 - The Ramones - Brain Drain - Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight Tonight)
10 - Bob and Doug McKenzie - The Great White North - 12 Days of Christmas
11 - They Might Be Giants - ...In Holidayland - Feast of Lights
12 - Aqua Teen Hunger Force - Have Yourself a Meaty Little Christmas - Feliz Navidad
13 - Jimmy Eat World - Happy Chrismahanukwanzaka! - Last Christmas
14 - Levi Buffum - The 8-bits of Christmas - We Three Konami
15 - Levi Buffum - The 8-bits of Christmas - Super Jingle Bros.
16 - Snoop Dogg - It's a Hip Hop Christmas - Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto ft. Ice Cube

Part 3 of 3

17 - R2D2 and C-3P0 - Star Wars: Christmas in the Stars - R2D2 We Wish You a Merry Christmas
18 - Shonen Knife - Do the Knife - Space Christmas
19 - David Bowie and Bing Crosby - BBC's Merrie Olde Christmas - Little Drummer Boy
20 - They Might Be Giants - Lincoln - Santa's Beard
21 - Linkin Park - Reanimation - My Dsmbr
22 - The Fabulous Thunderbirds - Christmas Party With Eddie G. - Merry Christmas Darling
23 - John Lennon - Happy Xmas (War Is Over) - Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
24 - Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Christmas Eve and Other Stories - O Come All Ye Faithful

This is my setlist for December 18th, 2009. KGPR, 89.9 FM, 7:30 to 9:00 PM.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

It's Christmas in Middle-earth!

2009-12-04T16:36:00.011-07:00

My Christmas media traditions!

We have lots of Christmas traditions in my family. Here are some traditions that specifically involve movies, music, and other media.

Christmas is:

It's A Wonderful Life

Is it a cliche to watch and enjoy this film at Christmas? According to other movies and TV: yes. But I grew up without this film, only discovering it as a sixteen-year-old high school student. I watched it and truly loved it.

No other movie inspires me more to the beat the crap out of an old man in a wheelchair, as Mr. Potter is like the bastard of all Christmas. It starts me off with a healthy dose of Christmas cheer, which becomes intense rage, and then devolves into blubbering tears at the end. This movie is kind of like being an alcoholic!

Mr. Krueger's Christmas

This is the spiritual successor to It's A Wonderful Life, also starring Jimmy Stewart. I like to imagine Mr. Stewart is playing the same character from Wonderful Life, only many years later. .. And with his name changed to Mr. Krueger for some reason. He's a tired old widower now, working as a custodian and living in a basement. You may have never heard of this one if you're not Mormon, as it was made by Brigham Young University in 1980. It's been on video at Church Libraries ever since. It's totally cheesy at times, as it is part of church doctrine that all BYU films should be (D&C 198:4-6). But the corniness is completely forgiven because this is Jimmy Stewart we're talking about. The man has got ten lifetime passes, and he makes it genuine and touching. The ending is quite un-corny, and it amazes me that this was shown on CBS. Nothing so overtly religious would make it onto the airwaves today. This is another one that just breaks me down and makes me weep at the end.

Here's a low-quality, stretched-out version of the movie.

Or you can go here and order the free DVD

P.S. I actually met Clarissa (little girl with mittens) while I was in New York, at a ward function. She was very nice, and had a daughter that looked just like her.

Harry Potter movies

I'm not a huge fan of Harry Potter, but I find the movies more than tolerable. I guess because the first ones came out at Christmas time, they got themselves a spot on this list purely by association. The movies aren't particularly entertaining to me, but they act as a kind of pleasant Christmas opiate. There's always one or two of them on TV at my parents' house, and it's nice to lounge around watching the exploits of familiar, comforting characters and their whimsical world. They're mostly forgettable, too, so they feel new to me every time I watch them.

A Christmas Carol (Specifically, a Muppet Christmas Carol)

I love A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Apart from being an entertaining story, it's a great example of how you can have a good story with an important moral and not make it overly religious or overly stupid fluff. Most of the time, "secular" Christmas stories that try to teach something absolutely fall flat. They're so generic and blandly moral that they just look retarded. Take one of the dozens of movies about Santa Claus that's come out in the last decade. They all treat Santa Claus as if he's the Messiah Himself. He has a mission to bring joy to the children, but ONLY if you believe in him! You must believe, and then you will receive the Spirit. The CHRISTMAS Spirit! And be rewarded with gifts! But Santa needs YOU to bless and poor and lowly. You see, he blesses them THROUGH you. And if you will just believe, Santa will come again... Next year. Barf. Santa is Santa. He doesn't give a crap whether or not you believe in him. He gives you presents if you've been nice, and shuns the naughty. That's a Christmas story I can get behind. I don't need Santa to be Jesus.

Anyway, I digress. A Christmas Carol rocks. I grew up with Mickey's Christmas Carol which was terrifying, and watched A Muppet Christmas Carol in theaters when it came out. I actually enjoy several versions of the film, and have made it a tradition to watch one of them in my English classes before Christmas.

1. George C. Scott Scrooge
I think his version is my personal favorite, although it has issues. Ghost of Christmas past is kind of a Tina Turner / Mon Mothma mashup.

The scene with Scrooge's girlfriend could have used a little more feeling. Ghost of Christmas future is probably the scariest in this one, though. That thing is scary.

2. Patrick Stewart Scrooge
This one is also good, although sometimes baffling. This one has the best Scrooge's girlfriend scene. Captain Picard is really quite broken up over this memory. I also liked that this tried to remain very faithful to the story, although the "comic relief" is odd at times. Also, Ghost of Christmas past (shown above) is... Really rather freaky looking. He looks kind of like the zombie child of Legolas and wax sculpture of Michael Jackson.

3. Michael Caine Scrooge
Michael Caine is the man. When I was young I just took the Muppets for granted in this. They were just other living characters. Now I find it a little odd that Mr. Caine had to act alongside puppets. It's all good. Love the Ring Wraith / Future Ghost. The songs really make this one awesome.

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

There's not a lot that needs to be said about this movie. It's Chevy Chase at his very best, before he lost his mind.

The Griswolds are like the archetypal American family. Family = comprised of completely dysfunctional / borderline deranged people. If you haven't figured it out yet, that's basically what families are. The beauty is how we make it work anyway.

LOTR

Ah, LOTR. I missed the Fellowship of the Ring while serving my mission, although I did get to see snippets here and there in commercials and at members' homes. I returned to Montana on December 18th, 2002. It was the debut of The Two Towers.

To celebrate my homecoming, we rented the Fellowship of the Ring and we all watched it downstairs. I was captivated, in every sense of the word. I've always been kind of obsessed with Tolkien, and this was like being in heaven. I loved films. For a long time I even wanted to be a director. I had TWO YEARS of no movies other than Johnny Lingo, and then The Fellowship of the Ring in all its glory. The second it finished, we rushed to the theater where we watched The Two Towers. The place was packed. I remember the almost reverential feeling that swept over me hearing those first few strands of music while the scene sweeps over the mountains. I still get chills watching it.

I'm going to say that watching the Fellowship and Two Towers was the single best movie-going experience of my life. The build up to the Battle of Helms Deep, the arguments and fear, everyone waiting in silence for the orc army to arrive... And then it starts to rain. I recall how the crowd erupted into laughter when you hear Gimli say, "You could have picked a better spot..." The audience desperately needed a little comic relief because we were all so tense.

Ah, the memories! What a great, great film.

Consequently, that experience spoiled me for months. I couldn't watch any other movies after that because they sucked so bad in comparison. I even tried renting Attack of the Clones (I missed that one, too) and shut it off halfway through. It was unbearable.

I associate LOTR with homecoming and Christmas now, and hope to make viewing the trilogy over the course of Christmas Break a tradition for my kiddies. Just look at those pictures. How can you not love this film? If you don't love this film, then quite frankly, I don't want to know you.

Gaming (video and board)

As if I need Christmas as an excuse for video gaming... But there really is something nice about staying up late on Christmas break and playing games all night. This "tradition" started with Super Mario Brothers 2 and continues to this day (ask Sabrina about our awesome Bubble Bobble event on New Year's Eve!) In recent years I've really gotten into board games, too, and there's nothing quite like a beautiful board game set up with all the pretty pieces, some Mountain Dew, and some eager players...

(a nice family enjoying Talisman)

It just sounds heavenly to me. Hopefully I can bother enough people to get at least one good bout of Talisman... Maybe some Risk, too. Heck, I'll even settle for some Phase 10 at this point.

Town Pump Christmas Eve

Not technically a media-related tradition, I thought I'd bring it up anyway. In Montana we have a ubiquitous convenience store called Town Pump. A few years ago we all went down there on Christmas Eve. We said we wanted to go visit the nice folks who had to work that night and wish them a Merry Christmas, but mostly it was an excuse to buy junk food and Mountain Dew. We did it again next year, calling it "tradition," and it has been that way ever since. I love this tradition.

The Crappy New Year's Eve dance

What would Christmas Break be without a crappy New Year's Eve dance at the Stake Center? The tradition here is to get all nice and dressed up, go to the New Year's Eve dance, complain about how utterly and completely horrible it is and how they used to be way, way better, and leave at about 10:30. Drink Martinelli's at midnight in our pj's.

I think this photo of the refreshments table, taken with my cell phone, sums up the New Year's Eve stake dance experience.

An empty table, two sad balloons, a warm cup of generic 7up, a ziploc with a few muffins in it, and an unopened bag of Funyuns. Par-tee-down? YES!

And finally, weird/awesome Christmas music!

What's Christmas Break without an insane soundtrack? I love weird/crappy/stupid/awesome/unique Christmas music. I have amassed a little collection, and this year I'm doing a special edition of Middle-earth Radio: IT'S A MIDDLE-EARTH CHRISTMAS!! (Dec. 18th, 89.9 FM, 7-9 PM!) I'll post the play list here soon. It's my personal gift to YOU.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, BUON NATALE!! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Your sleeves are rolled up-- they look pretty awesome...

2009-11-23T14:58:00.006-07:00

It's Thanksgiving time, people!

Since Thanksgiving heralds the beginning of the Christmas season and the year-end celebrations, I thought I'd share a few of my family's media traditions, starting with Thanksgiving. I'm actually really quite excited for the holidays, even though I do act quite Scroogey to stores and various forms of advertising that try to cram Christmas down my throat two months too early.

My family is one of film buffs. We're also big into traditions. I think part of the reason for this is that when we all moved to Montana, we left our family and friends behind. We knew nobody here. All we had here was each other, and our own traditions naturally evolved and gave (and continue to give) us much comfort and joy.

We have two movie traditions in my family. One of them is to watch the film, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles every year at around Thanksgiving. This film is by John Hughes, who directed such 80's fare as Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Sixteen Candles, and The Breakfast Club. I love all those movies, but Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is this man's cinematic masterpiece.

It's strange to me to even call the film a "masterpiece," and yet after all these years of watching it I have come to the conclusion that that's what it is. I'm saying this as a seasoned film enthusiast and a lover of great cinema. It's not your typical masterpiece in that it doesn't appear to take itself seriously. It's just a good, good movie. The film is funny, well-acted, well-scripted, and in the end, deeply moving. I have come to appreciate its message of brotherly love more in recent years, and I now end up crying like a baby every time I see it (although you should keep in mind that I cried at the end of The Return of the King, too... I'm a sensitive guy).

The premise of the film revolves around going home for Thanksgiving, so it's an obvious choice for a Thanksgiving movie tradition. I would urge you all to add this to your Netflix queue. Film critic Roger Ebert lists it in his "Great Films" series, and also says its one of the few movies he watches every year with his own family. His review.

Hannah and Her Sisters

While I'm talking about Thanksgiving movies, I thought I'd mention this one. I've always liked Woody Allen here and there, and thought I'd check this out. We watched it last week, and by coincidence, it also revolves around Thanksgiving. The film starts and ends on a Thanksgiving family gathering. It's also a beautiful, funny, and ultimately moving film. I can't count it as a "tradition," at this point, but I liked it and thought I'd mention it while I had a chance.

Michael Caine looking pimp as usual.

The other Thanksgiving movie tradition involves actually going to the theater. On our first Thanksgiving in Montana, it was just my parents, an 11 or 12 year old me, and my five younger siblings. We were all together but had no extended family to spend the day with like everyone else, so we made the best of it and went to the movies. I can't say for sure what that first one was, but I believe it was Disney's Beauty and the Beast back in 1991. I can't say for sure whether or not we watched this on Thanksgiving at the movie theater, but I know I saw it in a theater and that it came out in November of 1991.

1992 - I definitely remember watching Aladdin in the theaters on Thanksgiving the next year.

1993 - The tradition was still in its infancy at this stage and I don't think we watched a movie this year. MAYBE Mrs. Doubtfire. Can't say for sure.

1994 - The Santa Clause

This movie was funny, and then they went and made INFINITY NUMBER OF SEQUELS.
JULIET MARRIES SANTA CLAUS = NOT ENTERTAINING.

1995 - Toy Story

Freakin' awesome. One of the best animated films ever made. Revolutionary. This was followed by:

1996 - Not positive on this, but it was either 101 Dalmations or Jingle All the Way. I know we saw both in theaters... And I'm pretty sure Jingle All the Way was by far the superior.

Which was followed by:

1997 - Flubber

Ouch.

1998 - A Bug's Life

A return to form.

1999 - Toy Story 2

More of the good stuff. The rare sequel that's just as good as the original. Considered by many to be one of the best animated films of all time. Followed by:

2000 - Little Nicky

This was the year the tradition almost died. I was put in charge of taking the siblings out to the movies by myself for some reason, while my parents did other things. Little Nicky was a crude, retarded movie and I felt embarrassed for having exposed my siblings to it.

2001 - No movie. Mission

2002 - Mission again.

2003 - Elf

2004 - The Incredibles

2005 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

2006 - Rachel and I went to see The Fountain by ourselves one freezing cold night during Thanksgiving break. The theater was virtually empty and the movie rocked. It kind of became "our" little movie.

"Together we will live forever."

2007 - Nothing good was on this year.

2008 - Nothing.

2009 - NEW MOON!!! The movie tradition is BACK, baby! YEEEEEEE-AH BOYYYYY!

Next Up: The Christmas Media Celebration!

It's been a good decade!

2009-11-19T18:56:00.003-07:00

Ok, I realized it was the end of the first decade of the 21st century. I present what I feel were/are the best albums of the new century thus far (yeah, I'm counting 2000 in this). Let me also say this doesn't include all the millions of albums out there that I haven't gotten around to listening to quite yet. I'm actually extremely skeptical of most "new" music. I consider pretty much anything from the past decade "new," so these little guys ought to feel quite honored!

And now, the five very best albums of the aughts (in chronological order):

Grandaddy - The Sophtware Slump

Radiohead - Kid A

Midlake - The Trials of Van Occupanther

Porcupine Tree - Fear of a Blank Planet

American Music Club - The Golden Age

HOORAY!

Non-Trinitarian AP style?

2009-11-19T12:11:00.003-07:00

Great article from the GetReligion blog.

http://www.getreligion.org/?p=21323

As a religious person, an English teacher, and a fan of language I appreciated the implications of the article. Language is extremely powerful, isn't it?

Happy Anniversary, Bill!!

2009-11-17T14:48:00.007-07:00

Yes, it's been five years since this awesome little ditty hit The Smoking Gun, and after re-reading it I find it just as entertaining as the day it hit.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/1013091oreilly8.html

It's a hilarious/disgusting document detailing Mr. Bill O'Reilly's sexual harassment settlement. Apparently after being harrassed many times by Bill, a female staffer decided to try to make some money off of him and tape his gross phone calls. The document clearly states that she, in no uncertain terms, expressed disgust and asked him to stop, but he just kept on a-goin'. Funny stuff.

(Warning: you can't un-read this crap once you've read it. He's a sick man.)

Bill O'Reilly is a rich and evil douche. People who take him seriously are somehow worse, in my opinion. Try reading this and taking anything he says or does seriously ever again.

Here's a great clip. Notice how (both!) high school students present well-rounded, thoughtful, reasonable arguments while Bill O'Reilly is all about just acting indignant over a complete non-issue that's taken totally out of context. It says something when two high school douches look like paragons of intelligent discourse compared to you. Mr. O'Reilly spent half the time vehemently defending his horrible book for teens. I mean, yes, Bill O'Reilly is an easy target, but I'm amazed at how many of my own upper-class white students are assigned his young adult books by their parents. Being rich has nothing to do with being smart, and that's the truth.

Middle-earth Radio: Mordor Mix

2009-11-16T21:13:00.003-07:00

Here's Middle-earth Radio: Mordor Mix.

This is the playlist from a show I did that I did near Halloween, hence the "Mordor" theme. It's not really that scary, and there's some pretty good music in it so I thought I'd share.

Part 1:

1 - Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath
2 - Pink Floyd - The Piper at the Gates of Dawn - Lucifer Sam
3 - The Who - A Quick One - Boris the Spider
4 - Blue Oyster Cult - Fire of Unknown Origin - After Dark
5 - They Might Be Giants - TMBG Unlimited (January) - Cyclops Rock
6 - Warren Zevon - Excitable Boy - Werewolves of London
7 - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Let Love In - Red Right Hand
8 - Atomic Rooster - Death Walks Behind You - Death Walks Behind You

Part 2:

9 - Mr. Bungle - California - None of Them Knew They Were Robots
10 - Red House Painters - Songs For a Blue Guitar - Make Like Paper
11 - XTC - Nonsuch - Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead
12 - AFI - Sing the Sorrow - The Leaving Song, pt. 2
13 - Roky Erickson - I Think of Demons - Night of the Vampire
14 - Blind Guardian - Forgotten Tales - Mr. Sandman
15 - King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King - In the Court of the Crimson King
16 - Michael Jackson - Thriller - Thriller

Middle-earth Radio: Melancholy November

2009-11-14T13:07:00.006-07:00

Originally broadcast on KGPR, 89.9 FM - Great Falls Public Radio
11/13/2009

Part 1 of 2

Part 1
1 - George Winston - December - Thanksgiving
2 - Helio Sequence - Keep Your Eyes Ahead - Lately
3 - Yeasayer - All Hours Cymbals - Sunrise
4 - Ramona Falls - Intuit - I Say Fever
5 - Doobie Brothers - Stampede - Take Me In Your Arms (Rock Me a Little While)
6 - Neil Young - Harvest - A Man Needs a Maid
7 - American Music Club - Mercury - Dallas, Airports, Bodybags
8 - The Smiths - Strangeways, Here We Come - Stop Me If You Think That You've Heard This One

Part 2 of 2

Part 2
9 - They Might Be Giants - Lincoln - Snowball in Hell
10 - Dream Academy - Planes, Trains, and Automobiles Soundtrack - Power to Believe
11 - Mindless Self Indulgence - You'll Rebel to Anything - Straight to Video
12 - Peter Gabriel - Up - More Than This
13 - Pink Floyd - A Momentary Lapse of Reason - Yet Another Movie
14 - Porcupine Tree - Fear of a Blank Planet - Sentimental
15 - The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love - Hazards of Love pt. 4 (The Drowned)
16 - Guns N Roses - Use Your Illusion I - November Rain

Christmas Creep

2009-11-13T11:41:00.003-07:00

I'm not really a fan of the phenomenon where Christmas decorations and celebrations start earlier and earlier every year, sometimes called "Christmas creep."

For one, I feel like it cheapens Christmas even more than it has been cheapened. It's already quite the battered ol' gal. If you spend any time in public, shopping at chain stores, or watching television in the U.S., you're probably already used to getting Christmas blared in your ears and flashed in your face with all its garish colors and mind-numbing advertising. I have no problem when stores acknowledge Christmas and the holidays and create a cheery atmosphere, but I dislike the fact that they push the starting line further and further into November (October, even). I don't like that they're trying to manipulate us all into feeling all Christmas-y and hoping that we'll spend more money. I'd rather choose for myself when Christmas starts, as opposed to having Wal-Mart tell me.

I also dislike the Christmas creep because it just makes the season last too long. As a child, Christmas took FOREVER to arrive. Christmas was a life event. We built paper chains in school and had little advent calendars just to count down 25 days, and those 25 days felt like a life-age. I can't imagine what suffering kids today must endure. They have to wait more than twice as long as I ever did!

As I've grown older, time has sped up. A month is no longer unbearably long. A month is nothing to me anymore. I measure my life in years, and even those seem to be going faster and faster. Is this why people have embraced the elongating of Christmas? Is it because they want it to last longer so they can be reminded of their own childhoods? If so, I believe the plan is flawed. This is because although December has become shorter, all the intervening months have also become shorter, too. If we spread Christmas out across two or three months, it's going to take up a disproportionate chunk of our lives and will eventually become a hazy blur of Victoria's Secret advertisements, crappy Santa Claus movies, and peppermint-flavored everything. Where's the magic in Christmas when you only have to wait six months for it to get all started up again? Summer doesn't even come around that often.

So no, corporations, I personally reject your starting of Christmas so freakin' early. In my youth, Christmas time started the day after Thanksgiving. In the past decade or so, it seems that this is no longer the case. This year, there were Christmas decorations being put up the day before Halloween. Many of my students informed me they saw Christmas decorations up mid-October.

Speaking of which, I also dislike the term "Black Friday" for its pretentiousness. This is supposed to be the day after Thanksgiving in which everyone goes out and shops and stores have their first Christmas sales. Black Friday conjures up images of witches and demons at black mass, or thousands of soldiers dying in a failed raid in World War II, or the name of a devastating terrorist attack or something. Actually, maybe the name is apt. Millions of people going to celebrate the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ by waking up before the dawn, huddling in masses in the bitter, freezing cold outside in front of horrible retail stores for hours on end, pushing and shoving one another in an orgy of spending while thousands of children are starving--all in an effort to save twenty dollars on a Nintendo Wii... Religion doesn't even inspire that kind of mass devotion.

...

Anyway, enough bitter old-man hand wringing. I actually started this as a way to share holiday traditions, but I've gone off on a this rant... I'll be back with some nice happy writing about my favorite holiday rituals.

When Waltons Came...

2009-11-10T15:43:00.001-07:00

I read an interesting article over at The Consumerist.

http://consumerist.com/5401379/walmart-clinic-spotted-in-the-wild

It seems Wal-Mart has been getting into the clinic business in Georgia..?

There are pictures there of sign boards listing various diseases and medical ailments and how much they will cost you to treat them. I bring this up because I have health insurance from my job as a teacher. It covers my wife and me and it takes a bigger percentage of my take-home paycheck every year. I'm no fan of Wal-Mart, but I think it's great that they can offer treatments to common things like this for such a low price. I'm also no student of capitalism, but does this mean competition will force health-care providers to lower their costs?

Last school year (early '09) my wife and I both got very, very sick with the flu at varying times in the winter. We were both working with youth and we were both bringing home germs. One night, she was running an especially high fever, was in constant pain, and was delirious. Even with her dying and in the most miserable state I've ever seen her in, we were both scared to go to the emergency room. It would cost us hundreds of dollars which we just couldn't afford. We went to the walk-in clinic the next day (our regular doctor would not make an appointment with us). They gave her some antibiotics and she was feeling better almost immediately. It was a $40 co-pay. I never understood how insurance worked before I had it. I assumed insurance was where you paid a little each month to be covered by it, and it paid all your bills. I know, I know. You're laughing at me...

There's this thing called a "deductible." This is the amount of money you have to pay yourself before the insurance pays for the rest. I believe the deductible for doctor's visits is $300 for me. It goes on a yearly cycle, which means I have to spend at least $300 in doctor's visits in one year before the insurance "kicks in" and pays the rest. Seeing as how we don't have to go to the doctor very often, this was our first visit. The 10 minute visit to the clinic was something like $160. There was also a $40 "co-pay" for the visit, which has nothing to do with the deductible and has to be paid right then and there. So this trip was costing us $200, and this isn't including the amount of money deducted from my paycheck every month (which is considerable!). Later, I also got sicker than I've ever been in my life and had to go to the clinic. My visit was even shorter, and I got the same antibiotics. Same thing. $160 plus $40 co-pay.

Adding it all up

$80.00 in co-pays

$320.00 in doctor visits

$25.00 in prescription drugs (which has its own separate deductible, by the way.)

-$20.00 that insurance covered

Total: $405.00 for two ten minute visits to the doctor so he could see how sick we were and prescribe us common antibiotics.

Now, to tie this all in to Wal-Mart-- they had the price of flu treatment right up on that board. $55.00. Fifty-five bucks even. Even if the prescription drugs cost us the same, that would have been $135.00 for my wife and I to get treated. That's one-third the cost of what it took us!

I went to college to get a degree so I could get a stable, professional position that would include things like insurance and a pension. I am still paying the bill from that visit from earlier this year. We worked hard, stayed out of debt, didn't drink or smoke or gamble. We live in a very modest home and do not drive new cars or wear expensive clothing. Where did we go wrong here? Why do antibiotics cost us so very much? Are we drains on society? Are we just asking too much?

I do not pretend to have answers to the health care debate, but I'd like to point out that there are problems with health care in this country. I have a college degree and work a good job with benefits. Just imagine every other poor person in this town who doesn't even have that. I'm not saying we are entitled to live like emperors among men just because we're Americans, but still, is it so unreasonable to expect relatively common drugs like antibiotics to be affordable? What's the point of living in America when my wife is in more pain than I've ever seen her and we're afraid to go to the doctor because of the bills?

To quote Homer Simpson, "That's not America! That's not even Mexico!"

An Open Letter to Atheists, part 2

2009-10-31T20:35:00.000-06:00

An Open Letter to Atheists, part 2

Ok, so maybe this isn't actually a letter... I just have some questions that perhaps some friendly atheists can answer for me.

I am writing this because I've noticed more Mormon bashing than usual in my online world of Facebook, comments on forums, and whatever humorous articles I feel like reading. Of course, general religion-hating is nothing new to me or mankind, but I've noticed a spike in derogatory comments towards LDS people and the things they hold sacred as of late.

While I am of course offended on some level when people belittle things I hold especially sacred, I try not to take it personally and will generally tell myself, "They're probably ignorant and have no idea what they're saying." That's my coping mechanism. I'm sure most of these people aren't really interested in any kind of theological discussion and will just say things that touch on "taboo" topics for the sake of humor. That's fine.

What I'm curious about are not the casual profaners, but the ones that appear to be really angry with religion in general, my church specifically. Lots of people hate the Mormon church. While many of these haters are Christian or religious, the ones I am curious about are the non-religious haters. I'm curious about the ones that are atheists and who feel religion has done more damage than good in this world.

I won't argue that religion is a powerful force that can potentially be used for evil. Why should I? My own religion teaches this very thing. Religion is used to enslave people and make them instruments of evil. I believe this can be true. When atheists talk about the atrocities committed in the name of religion, I always kind of feel like I'm the kid waving his hands in the air to get noticed. "Hey guys! Look at me! I'm just like you guys! I agree with you and I wanna be cool, too, even though I'm religious!" Any serious student of religion should agree that religion has been used to commit atrocities (and still is). The same could be said of alcohol, guns, mass production, sex, music, books, science, and bears. The trick is to not get so wrapped up in a single-minded worldview that you're missing the rest of the picture. Albert Einstein said, "Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed." If your theory is that religion is the cause of all suffering in the world, then you will, of course, be able to find ample evidence of that. It reminds me of certain talk radio shows or cable news commentators that attribute everything wrong with America to the "liberals." If your theory is that liberals are stupid, evil, morally base people, you'll always be able to find plenty of evidence for it.

I know that people can accuse the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of the same oversimplifying of life. Critics ask, "Can't you people explain away everything by just saying 'Because God said so?'" It's an argument I've had put to me and people like me many times: we don't think critically because our religion has taught us not to question things. Well, I have studied my religion for years and I disagree. Mormonism, in my opinion, teaches that life can be an extremely complicated, at times mysterious, thing. While we base our lives on certain fundamentals we believe are true, our religion openly acknowledges that we are far from all-knowing and must seek out answers to things we don't understand. We are taught to research things, ponder them, and pray about them. I believe the Mormon world-view is a beautifully complex one, even if there are simple-minded LDS people out there.

***

What I want to know is this: what do atheists hope to accomplish in ridding society of religion? I realize not all atheists want to do this. In fact, I know some atheists that don't care about religion one way or the other. They may find it silly, but they do not care about it. Some even take the more patronizing point of view that religion is helpful because it eases the fears of death for the uneducated masses. On the other hand, many atheistic people I know are vocal about their disdain for all things religious. This is fine, because as far as I'm concerned, that is your right as an American citizen. If you want to criticize a religious institution then by all means, do so. That's what this country was founded upon! My question is: why?

Is it assumed that once religion is gone, wars will generally cease and most people will stop being greedy and oppressing one another? I honestly can't believe any well-educated atheist believes this. It seems like such an astounding jump in logic to presume that the absence of religion will put an end to human suffering. However, I can understand atheists' motivations if this is what they believe. After all, I don't think a religion-free society has ever been tried en masse before (I admit I might be wrong on this), so this idea could have merit. If this is their motivation, I have to admit it's noble.

Is it just a matter of getting rid of religion because it's all lies used to control people, and lying is a bad thing? Maybe atheists can accept the fact that people will still suffer without religion, but they shouldn't be lied to about a God that doesn't exist..? Again, I can get behind this idea, especially because it's not that far removed from teachings of my own religion. Teaching falsehoods about the nature of life and the universe is not as good as knowing the actual truth, no matter how comforting the falsehoods are. I believe that.

Is there some other goal in abolishing religion that I have not thought of?

***

My second question for atheists is: how do you plan on making mankind stop believing in religion?

What I tend to see from atheists is stuff like, "You people believe some magical bearded white man who lives in space gives you orders on how to live your life? CRAZY!" or something to that effect. Another one: "I love how the Old Testament God tells you to commit mass genocide, but then the New Testament God is all like 'Love thy neighbor'! You people are worshiping some homicidal maniac!" I could go on and on like this. Yes, it all seems quite insane. I'll be the first to agree to that. Why is God so interested in circumcision, anyway? Sounds creepy to me. Show your allegiance to the magical space-being by cutting off your baby's foreskin? Uh, ok... Oh, and whatever you do, DO NOT EAT PORK.

Making earth-shattering observations of this nature may work for an angsty tweener, but we're talking about an institution that has been around for quite some time. Setting up an eight-year-old's view of religion and then tearing it right down can be fun, but I don't think it will have much impact. Mostly, it's just insulting and puts people on the defensive. Like I mentioned earlier, ridiculing the absurdity of religion is nothing new, and has been done for millenia. (It may not be as edgy as you think.) If you really want to criticize religion, you need to do more than just point out how illogical it seems. Human beings, as I'm sure you'll agree, are not always logical creatures. Millions smoke, chew tobacco, text while driving, get herpes, do meth, and watch "Two and a Half Men." We have a propensity to do things that are harmful to ourselves. Ironically, this is another principle that is taught in my religion. We call this the "natural man." The natural man wants to hurt other people when angry, wants to have sex whenever and with whomever he feels like it, wants to take things that don't belong to him. These actions will probably cause him more suffering in the end, and yet he wants to do them anyway. Understanding something logically, from my experience, will not change a person's behavior. Try explaining to a bunch of hormone-driven fifteen year olds all the perfectly logical reasons to wait until marriage for sex. You might be surprised at how many will laugh in your face.

Think of that before you start explaining how silly it is to believe that a man being nailed to a hunk of wood two-thousand years ago somehow purges us of our sins. Again, I think this is taking a childish, simple-minded view of things, but I admit it does seem illogical.

Just looking at this statistically is enough to be discouraging. How many untold billions of people throughout human history have lived and died practicing religion, or at least believing in God(s)? It's almost as if it's a part of human nature (which I will get to in a minute). How can you change that?

***

Which leads me to my third question: what does it matter in the end?

If you are an atheist, I assume you do not believe in any kind of afterlife. This fact alone is what really baffles me about atheism. Genuinely baffles me. I'm going to pretend now that I am an atheist and I'm going to try to convince you to see things from my point of view here:

When you die, your consciousness is extinguished and all goes black. Forever. The reason for this is because your consciousness is just a state brought on by synapses and neurons in the organic matter inside of your own skull. Once your budy stops functioning, the illusion of self-hood will be erased and you will cease to exist. You will not float around as a soul or spirit, you will simply stop existing. This is because there is no such thing as a soul or a spirit, as those are religious concepts invented by primitive man to comfort themselves from the terror of death.

It doesn't change the fact that when you die, you will not remember anything that ever happened to you. It's just darkness, nothing. You will never come back, either. NEVER. You will just be GONE. You will no longer care about yourself or anything. You will no longer feel anything.

So why worry about whether or not people believe in religion? You will definitely not live to see the day that religion is universally rejected, and even if you did, so what? When you die you will forget any of this ever happened, and it will no longer matter. People will revert to believing in their magical gods and spirits eventually. You might say, "But I want to create a better world for the future." What future? You keep forgetting that when you die, NOTHING WILL MATTER ANYMORE. Human suffering will not concern you because YOU WILL CEASE TO EXIST. We are all just intelligent animals fighting for a short little existence and when we are gone, we are gone for good.

We get eighty years here. Maybe more, maybe less. It's all quite short. You will not live to see human beings travel to other solar systems and planets, and by the time they do you will be long dead and probably long forgotten. Your life is maybe one-fourth over, maybe one-third. Stop wasting what little time you have trying to change the opinions of other people. Nothing you do in this life will matter, because eventually the sun will burn out and this earth will be gone. All is utterly pointless, and there is no grand scheme in the universe. Even if there were, you will be dead by the time it is revealed, and your consciouness completely obliterated. That, and the idea that there is some sort of plan or orderliness to the cosmos implies that there is a higher power or force out there, which is not true.

Ok... I'm done pretending to be an atheist.

But do you understand my question now? What does it all matter in the end? If you really believe there is nothing after this, then who cares what people believe, or if they want to kill each other, or even if the human race dies out? When you're gone you won't know the difference. And you will be gone. Sooner than you think.

Look at it this way; I've heard it said that religion is just a natural part of evolution. Early man didn't understand certain scientific concepts about life and his surroundings and so he devised supernatural explanations for them, which became religion. Those rules goverened life, and because they are a natural extension of evolution, they also helped our species to thrive. They taught us things like monogamy and not to kill eachother, which in turn has helped our species become the dominant one on this planet.

Of course, I don't personally believe that religion sprang from natural evolutionay process. For one, I'm a believer, so I actually believe that there is a being we call God and that He directed the creation of this planet and has instructed our species on the secrets of the universe from time to time (and still does). For two, I think religion is so often completely contradictory to human nature that if it really started as a part of evolution, then evolution has incredible foresight-- which doesn't make sense when put in the context of an inherently pointless universe. Besides, religion could not have existed without language, and by the time language showed up there were enough humans already around to avoid extinction... Rendering religion useless from an evolutionary standpoint. I don't believe a small group of religious cavemen who practiced monogamy and pacifism would have outlived their thousands of crazy, killing, impregnating brothers. Evolution doesn't give a crap about right and wrong. It doesn't reward the moral, which is a religious concept anyway. It rewards intelligence and hotness, not high morals.

In the end, if your only theory is that evolution is the explanation for everything, then you will find an explanation for religion using it. I do not disbelieve evolution, but I like to think there is more to the universe than it. As Thomas Jefferson said, "Time, will in the end, produce the truth." I'm guessing fifty years give or take a decade ought to do it.

***

I hope I have not offended any of my atheist friends with this. Just because I do not agree with you does not mean I think you are a bad person or that you are stupid. I genuinely want to know what you think about these three questions (assuming they even apply to you):

What do you hope to accomplish in removing religion?
How do you hope to accomplish it?
Why does it matter in the end?

Here's a great Cracked article (really!) on atheism and religion:
http://www.cracked.com/article_15759_10-things-christians-atheists-can-must-agree-on.html

I'm outta here until December-- I'm going to seriously make an attempt at the great American novel. Wish me luck.