I'm on vacation for Thanksgiving and don't feel like writing a real post, but here's one of my favorite cartoons. One month until Christmas!

​The nearest McDonald's has reopened after a mercifully brief renovation period, so I can continue slowly committing suicide by eating there once a week. It looks gorgeous inside and out. But now the several small tables in the middle have been replaced by one big table with ten chairs around it, so you can pretend you're having family dinner with strangers, which of course is what I've always wanted. I sat across from an old man and hoped we could mutually agree to ignore each other as we read our newspapers. We did for several minutes, until suddenly his trembling clenched fist came hovering over my tray. What the? I thought. Is he trying to steal my fries or what? Then he opened his fist and deposited a Clementine. I looked up and took off one side of my headphones, figuring I was obligated to talk to him now. He smiled and said in his quiet, frail voice, "Take that with you, will ya?"

"Thank you," I said, and just kind of smiled dumbly because this was so random, but in a good way. I feel extra awkward talking to old people because I have trouble hearing them and they have even more trouble than everyone else hearing me, so I was relieved when he went back to his newspaper. But don't take that the wrong way. I was very grateful for the Clementine.

The world needs more uplifting stories like that, doesn't it? So here's another. A person previously from my ward who is a big fan of this blog pulled over and gave me a ride the last few blocks home last night. She said she recognized me in the dark because of my distinctive walk. She said I walk with purpose and not many people do. I don't know why not. I know where I came from and where I'm going, so I have a purpose. Doesn't everybody?

Sometimes a group gets to talking about our most embarrassing moments, and I can't think of one. Being embarrassed generally requires other people to notice that you exist, so it hasn't happened to me very much. But I do get embarrassed on behalf of people who should be but aren't. Like Utah's Board of Education. They embarrassed me to the point of writing a letter to the editor of the Salt Lake Tribune for the first time, but that was two weeks ago and it appears that they're not going to publish it, so I will. The limit was 200 words so I used 200 words.

I am embarrassed by the Utah Board of Education's efforts to put pseudoscience in high school curricula.  Anyone who doesn't even know what “theory” means in scientific parlance, as they clearly don't, is entirely unqualified to decide what our children should be taught as science.  Gravity is "just a theory" yet no one argues that we should teach a bogus alternative.  We know that evolution happens; the only debate is the particulars of how.

I assume board members' opposition to evolution stems from Mormon beliefs.  I'm also a Mormon and, like the biology professors at BYU and thousands of other Mormons, I have no problem accepting evolution as the obvious explanation for the diversity of life on this planet.  So-called intelligent design is not scientifically valid and has no place being taught as such.  Many high school students will figure this out on their own and rightly come to distrust their teachers, and then theism altogether.  Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "The Religion that is afraid of science dishonours God and commits suicide."

There really is no excuse for this level of willful ignorance about something that has been so well-established since before anyone reading this was born.

- Christopher Randall Nicholson

I mean, I think they should have published that because it's an important topic and far more coherent than some of the crap I've read in their letters to the editor, but whatever. I have no idea how many Mormons accept evolution, quite possibly hundreds of thousands or millions, but I'm sure at least thousands, especially among young adults and everywhere that's not the United States. Here's the rest of the Emerson quote that didn't fit in the letter: "It [the fearful Religion] acknowledges that it is not equal to the whole of truth, that it legislates, tyrannizes over a village of God's empires but is not the immutable universal law. Every influx of atheism, of skepticism is thus made useful as a mercury pill assaulting and removing a diseased religion and making way for truth." Ouch. Strong words. But he wasn't wrong. By the way, I habitually pronounce it "TRIB-une" instead of "Trib-UNE" because it's one of those words that I learned from reading and didn't hear out loud until years later.

You have to pick your battles, though. I agreed to disagree with my institute teacher's assertion that all evolution is fair game except for humans. He said there may have been "human-like" things evolving on the Earth before Adam and Eve, but he sketched them out on a paper and he drew a line between them and he said there's a line between them. And I just let it go because it's an emotionally loaded topic and any argument would be fruitless. But I'll say it here because this is my blog and I'll say what I want: such a line demonstrably does not exist in any physical sense. There is no such line in genetics, there is no such line in physiology, there is no such line in the fossil record, there is no such line in the archaeological record. The line is spiritual and theological only - unless one wishes to assert with a straight face that, to name one of scores of examples, God had some great unknowable purpose for giving the same defective Vitamin C gene to humans and other primates and literally no other animals anywhere. (Guinea pigs and fruit bats are the only other animals that can't produce Vitamin C, and that's due to entirely different defects.)

Now, I like and respect this teacher so I'm not bashing him, but I just have waited long enough to get that off my chest. I do not like or respect Utah's Board of Education. Every member of it who's pushing for intelligent design in schools should be forced to resign in disgrace. It would be difficult to overstate how ridiculous it is that they're still having this discussion.

I attended a panel discussion on campus called "Facticity" that touched on truth and fake news and stuff like confirmation bias. Basically, because of evolution, our brains have a ton of quirks that were useful for survival but now mostly just make rational thinking impossible. Really, it's so unreliable that maybe we'd just as well not have any opinions at all, but until that becomes possible we just have to struggle with it as best we can. Confirmation bias is probably the worst. I don't think it's more obvious anywhere than in politics. Conservatives read conservative books and articles, liberals read liberal books and articles, and they both come away with renewed confidence in what they already believed. I remember being afraid, almost, when I saw a book called How Can You Possibly Be a Mormon and a Democrat?, and knowing that I didn't want to read it because seeing thoughtful and intelligent arguments against my conviction that all Mormons and all people in the world should be conservative would make me uncomfortable. I'm embarrassed about that now, but I think virtually everyone in the world has thought that way at one time or another.

I used to think, when I read a book by Glenn Beck, that it was so well-documented and argued that no one could possibly refute it and anyone who read it would become conservative. Now I know better. People choose the facts they like and ignore the others. Sometimes innocently, sometimes not so much. Sometimes they extrapolate and twist the facts and hope no one notices. Often no one does. For example, BYU study discovers that religious individuals who view pornography are more likely to describe themselves as "addicted" even if they don't show any symptoms of addiction. Porn apologists jump on this and report, incorrectly, that the study discovered that porn addiction doesn't exist and is just an illusion created by the guilt of religion. An honest article that describes what the study actually says is dismissed as "spin". This happened a few months ago. And by the way, contrary to what everyone seems to think, nothing is ever proven by one study. It has to be repeated over and over and over again by multiple scientists before it can be considered legit. Which no one has ever been able to do with the alleged vaccine-autism link... how strange...

I wrote about confirmation bias a few years ago for a class, in an essay on the Dinosaur Renaissance. Basically, the scientific orthodoxy believed that dinosaurs were all cold-blooded, slow and stupid, and they held on to these archaic notions despite overwhelming evidence against them. There was still a bit of evidence for their position, of course, as there is even now, but they disproportionately focused on it and ignored everything else. That's confirmation bias. Dr. Robert T. Bakker fought an uphill battle to overturn them and now most of his own hypotheses, once controversial, are the conventional wisdom. How we see dinosaurs today is mostly thanks to him, in large part through his influence on a moderately successful book and film franchise you may have heard of, called "Jurassic Park". So we see through this experience and others that scientists aren't immune to the same brain quirks that mislead everyone else, but thanks to the nature of science the truth will come forth eventually both because and in spite of their efforts.

Now I try to proactively overcome confirmation bias. Whether in politics, religion, or the pineapple on pizza debate, I read things that I disagree with and either come up with reasons why they're wrong, alter my own views, or both. I'm far more eclectic and nuanced these days. And while I'm surely still wrong about a lot of things, I know I'm a lot more right than the dogmatic jackass I used to be. But less right-wing, ba-dum-tss. And I have to apply this even to the things I feel most strongly about. Like evolution. In order for me not to be a hypocrite, there have to be some conceivable circumstances under which I would stop believing in evolution. So what are they? Simple. There would have to be a superior alternative theory that better explained the (sometimes literal) mountains of evidence. People keep making the mistake of thinking that if they disprove evolution, creationism is proven by default. But creationism spectacularly fails to stand up on its own merits. Any legitimate alternative would have to be much better, and there's about a 0% chance that one is forthcoming. But hypothetically, that's what it would take.

Also, if you aren't already, please make an effort not to believe or share fake news. That would really help too.

Since we've recently had Halloween and Day of the Dead, and Dead Sunday is coming up for German Protestants, that's as good as excuse as I need to share another gem from the most epic Neue Deutsche Härte band ever. This one guest stars Khira Li Lindemann, lead guitarist Richard Kruspe's daughter, who I can only presume is an alien or a robot. I have posted the English lyrics (taken from here) below the video by way of explanation of why this song is appropriate for Halloween and Day of the Dead and Dead Sunday.

A small human only pretends to die
It wanted to be completely alone
The small heart stood still for hours
So they decided it was dead
It is being buried in wet sand
With a music box in its hand

The first snow covers the grave
It woke the child very softly
In a cold winter night
The small heart is awakened

As the frost flew into the child
It wound up the music box
A melody in the wind
And the child sings from the ground

Up and down, rider
And no angel climbs down
My heart does not beat anymore
Only the rain cries on the grave
Up and down, rider
A melody in the wind
My heart does not beat anymore
And the child sings from the ground

The cold moon, in full magnificence
It hears the cries in the night
And no angel climbs down
Only the rain cries on the grave

Between hard oak boards
It will play with the music box
A melody in the wind
And the child sings from the ground

Up and down, rider
And no angel climbs down
My heart does not beat anymore
Only the rain cries on the grave
Up and down, rider
A melody in the wind
My heart does not beat anymore
And the child sings from the ground

On Dead Sunday they heard
This melody from God's field [the graveyard]
Then they unearthed it
They saved the small heart in the child

Up and down, rider
A melody in the wind
My heart does not beat anymore
And the child sings on the ground
Up and down, rider
And no angel climbs down
My heart does not beat anymore
​Only the rain cries on the grave

​The powers that be trained me to scan CDs and DVDs and had me do those instead of books almost every day for the past two weeks. It's been a nice change of pace, but since I don't want to make anyone jealous of how great my life is, I'll focus on the negative aspects here.

1. Most of the hundreds of CDs that I've handled per day fall into one of four categories: (a) albums that I own, (b) albums that I want because I recognize the artist and/or know I'd like them, (c) albums that I want because they look intriguing, and (d) albums that I want because they have music on them. And I either have to send them away to get sold or throw them away. This is eating away at what little sanity I had to begin with. I'm not made of stone.

2. Amazon's search function, which I have to use to title search the CDs that can't be scanned, sucks. If I accidentally leave out a letter, which happens fairly often since the keys are stiff and clunky compared to the laptop I'm used to, more often than not it declines to autocorrect or suggest what I really meant like Google or any other search engine would. But on the other hand, it takes the liberty of autocorrecting words that I did spell correctly. I searched for "Myst III" (the video game) and it said "We couldn't find any results for 'mist iii'". I searched for "overcoming the guilt of your past" and it said "We couldn't find any results for 'overcoming the quilt of your past'". I kid you not. When this happens I have to put quotation marks around the inexplicably controversial words to stop Amazon from changing them. Grr.

I know, I know, first world problems. Also I got this promotion that I neither want nor deserve and I'm not comfortable with it.

It seems like at least half of my coworkers are in my stake (cluster of LDS congregations similar to a diocese, whatever that is). One of them, "Sally", is now an ex-coworker but because of this I still see her around. And when I do I always get this weird vibe like "It's great to see you, now go away." I don't know, I don't interpret vibes very well. I don't see why there should be any awkwardness because we both made it clear where we stand vis-a-vis friendship and other stuff. One time we were talking at work and some other coworker commented something about "blossoming romance". And then Sally said something, I don't remember exactly, but it was something to the effect of "No no no no no no no no no."

And I, trying to be witty but really just being stupid, said, "It's like a bromance but with a sister." Because "sistance" doesn't really work, you know.

And then Sally was like, "Oh, great, I've been brozoned."

And I was like, "But... I thought that's what you wanted."

And she was like, "Oh, it is, it is."

And the other coworker, mockingly imitating me, said "I can't do anything right!"

But Sally offered me free ice cream at the ice cream place that her treasonous backstabbing self now thinks is better than Jenson Online, and I took her up on it recently because I'd felt like crap for so long. So she can act as weird and standoffish as she wants. This just goes to show that if you make friends whenever you can, statistically some of them are bound to justify it by getting you stuff.

After an email from the LDS Church's Correlation Research Department, and a survey about my testimony, church attendance, problematic issues etc., I was invited to participate in a reading of sample chapters from the upcoming four-volume church history publication that's part of ongoing efforts to be more transparent and forthcoming about "controversial" stuff. I wish they'd done it at least twenty years ago, but nobody asked me. Of course, once I accepted, only death could have made me miss this opportunity. If someone had cut off my arms and legs, I would have dragged myself with my teeth until someone took pity and gave me a ride.

I've never done this sort of thing before and it wasn't what I expected. I thought they were going to have some historian guy, like our local hero Phillip Barlow, read the chapters out loud to us. But actually they had the chapters printed out for us to read on our own, highlight the parts we liked in green and the parts we didn't like in red, write comments, and answer some brief questions. And they had it in the Primary room. So I showed up to this church building I'd never been in, looked in the Primary room, saw people highlighting and thought they were coloring in an attempt to recapture their childhoods or something. I thought it was a separate thing from my thing. So I ended up sitting in the foyer, frustrated and baffled, but I wasn't the only one. There were at least eight equally confused people there with me by the time someone found us and told us where to go.

The guy in charge of the thing was totally bald yet not super old-looking, like Elder Oaks, and wore a long black overcoat that was distinctive from the suits normally worn by General Authorities and church employees. This made him seem like part of a secret branch or something. He explained what to do, including the table of snacks and the $20 Amazon gift card for each of us at the end. The emails had neglected to mention those details - obviously the push for transparency has a long way to go. What I actually read is, of course, confidential. I'll just say that it was very pleased. I'm better-versed in church history than average but there were quotes and anecdotes I hadn't seen before, and the "controversial" bits were seamlessly woven in like I wish they had been all along. I had to press myself to find enough criticisms to justify my participation, and I had to stop myself from critiquing historical events and people like I would a fiction story. "This is an irrational way for this character to act." "That was a stupid thing to say." I did feel compelled to write "Rude" next to one quote.

History throughout history has essentially been propaganda written to assert the superiority of the author's nation, religion, favorite color, etc. Omitting whatever facts they didn't like and exaggerating or fudging the remaining ones was the norm. That only really changed in the twentieth century, and the LDS Church is finally catching up. Elder Dallin H. Oaks remarked on this lag a decade ago: "[W]e're emerging from a period of history writing within the Church [of] adoring history that doesn't deal with anything that’s unfavorable, and we're coming into a period of 'warts and all' kind of history. Perhaps our writing of history is lagging behind the times, but I believe that there is purpose in all these things - there may have been a time when Church members could not have been as well prepared for that kind of historical writing as they may be now." The thing I read was well-written history, not propaganda, yet it didn't back away from or compromise on its religious truth claims. So I liked it.

I am hopefully going back to school this semester so I can get closer to being a real writer and not just a pretender. I had no idea how to go back, but up to this point it's been ridiculously easy. I emailed the registrar's office to ask what I needed to do so I could enroll again, and they arranged it. I emailed my adviser to ask what I needed to do to get my major changed in the system, and she arranged it. I couldn't have dreamed it would be so simple. And I didn't want to go back, but now I'm really excited. Writing classes are the best.

Yes, sometimes you can judge an album by its cover. That's why I bought this from Deseret Industries one day a couple years ago, having never before heard of the artist in question. I knew I would like it, and I wasn't wrong.

And this, in my opinion, is the best track - a cover of Dido that she, Dido, apparently doesn't like, but with all due respect to her it's much better than the original. Largely because Sarah Brightman's voice has got to be in the top ten most beautiful sounds produced on planet Earth. Listening to her now, with all her classical and operatic and vocal and New Age and whatever, you would probably never guess that she made her debut at age 18 as the lead singer on a sci-fi disco single called "I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper". So that was a thing that happened.

I must have watched more TV when I was really little than I thought, because I remember a bunch of shows. "Adventures from the Book of Virtues", "Arthur", "Barney", "The Big Comfy Couch", "Bill Nye the Science Guy", "Lamb Chop's Play-Along", "The Magic School Bus", "Mr. Rogers", "Pappyland", "The Puzzle Place", "Reading Rainbow", "Sesame Street", "Shining Time Station", "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego", "Wishbone", and "Zoom". You've probably heard of most of those except "Pappyland", which is so obscure that neither the writer nor any of the puppeteers and actors have Wikipedia pages. As far as I can tell it was never broadcast outside of New York state. On top of that, I was two or three when I watched it, and remembered literally nothing except that the protagonist had a magic paintbrush or something and a bear and a turtle once argued "Right!" "Left!" "Right!" Left!" So finding it on the interwebs was extremely difficult.

I don't remember much about "Carmen Sandiego" either, except for the late Lynne Thigpen's ACME Chief (probably the first black person I ever saw) and the Rockapella song. So I knew Carmen's name long before I knew about the city in California and that caused a bit of confusion down the line. Sometime during middle school, Rockapella actually came and performed for us in an assembly so that was sweet and piqued my memory.

​Why thank you ^_^

​​I don't think I would have much interest in that show now, since it's about a bunch of kids answering geography trivia questions, but having dabbled in some of the books and computer games since then I am kind of obsessed with the franchise as a whole and especially its protagonist. Since I'm also obsessed with music, you can understand my joy at discovering a couple of out-of-print music albums dedicated to the series. The first, released the year before I was born and appropriately eponymously titled:

To my knowledge all of the songs are original to this album (one is a Frank Sinatra cover but this version is original to the album). Only one, the aforementioned theme song that closes the album, is directly related to Carmen Sandiego, but most of them are geography and/or travel themed. And then there's "The Violin". In catchy Celtic fashion it tells the story of a guy who grows up under pressure from his parents to learn to play the violin before they will truly accept him, and then his wife leaves him for someone who can play the violin, and then (SPOILER ALERT) he drowns in an shipwreck and his last thought is that next time he'll learn to play the violin. All right then.

The year after I was born (if you're clever, you can look up both release dates of and extrapolate the year I was born) came this album:

​Again, only the closing song is about Carmen Sandiego. Appropriately titled "Carmen's Song", it's an alternative theme that pales in comparison to the original but is still catchy and awesome, which just speaks to how catchy and awesome the original is. And guess how many songs follow the album's space theme? I'll tell you how many: one. They Might Be Giants chips in "Why Does the Sun Shine (The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas)" from their EP of the same name, covering the original from the 1959 children's science album "Space Songs". Other than that, again, I believe all the songs are original to this album. More than half of them feature the TV show's host Greg Lee. He sings about eating cake for breakfast, because by this point apparently they'd given up any pretense of trying to stay on topic.

​And what a topic! I hate to love her, you know, because stealing things is bad and not a trait to admire, but Carmen is just the best at it. She makes Gru look like an underachiever. "The moon? That's cute. I stole Saturn's rings and the Great Red Spot of Jupiter." Like Boba Fett and other mysterious cool people, her backstory varies depending on the source, but usually the gist is that she was a morally upright ACME agent until she got bored and defected to do something more exciting.

That was one of the smallest things she ever stole. It was onward and upward from there. Granted, as alluded to she does have help. ​She runs the Villains' International League of Evil (V.I.L.E.) with a bunch of pawns with puns for names, like "Morton U. Bargandfore" and "Hugo First". But she's got more brains than all of them put together. She's the driving force, the glue, the mastermind of all masterminds. And I'm sorry, but she will always be much, much cooler than anyone who fights against her.

This artwork obviously isn't official but I made it official in my own little fantasy world, and to me it summarizes the awesomeness that is Carmen Sandiego. That level of confidence that she can and will escape from any situation unharmed (at least until she develops colon cancer at age fifty-three, forcing her to learn humility and re-evaluate her entire life) is just breathtaking. I don't know what this artwork is called, but I call it "Don't Shoot, I'm Glamorous".

Now for the question that must have occurred to everyone by this point. What man could ever be worthy of such a goddess of thievery? None, of course, but just as she took pity on incompetent villains and let them into her secret organization, so too she found room in her heart for someone. All of this is totally canon.

They sat down to talk and quickly discovered that besides the physical chemistry, and notwithstanding Carmen's immense superiority, they had a shocking amount of stuff in common. This is fiction, after all, so I guess it's okay to say that they were soulmates.

Waldo eventually got up the courage to share his feelings. He tried to be all smooth about it. "Carmen," he said, "you've... stolen my heart."

She rolled her eyes, because she'd heard that one at least eight hundred times before. But at the same time she failed to suppress a blush and a smile, because he had stolen hers too. And it was cute how he always paid for stuff that she would have just taken anyway.

But Carmen Sandiego couldn't stay in one place for long, and where she was going, Waldo couldn't follow. For the first time she felt torn between love and duty. But when her decision was made, she took comfort in Waldo's parting words:

And they did, three years later. Waldo had been tormented by her absence day and night for the entirety of those three years, thinking of her in his waking moments and dreaming of her as he slept. He knew better than to let her slip away again. He proposed to her right then and there. She said yes.

"I'm sorry," he said, "this was kind of rushed, so I haven't got a ring yet, but -"

Carmen gave him a dismissive wave of her hand. "Been there, stolen that. I took them from Saturn, remember?"

"Er - right." Waldo was a little more at ease now, seeing how well she was taking this. "I meant one for your finger, with a diamond in it."

"Ha!" Carmen said. "Diamonds aren't worth nearly as much as diamond companies want you to think they are. Besides, if I wanted one, I would steal a jewelry store franchise." But then a worse thought occurred to her: what would this mean for her lifestyle? Could she really settle down? She had missed Waldo, to be sure, but she was certain she would miss her globetrotting thievery just as much. She felt torn now between love and fear.

Carmen wasn't used to trusting people. In her line of work, trusting people was a good way to die. But she was truly in love, and so she chose to take a leap of faith, and found that her new husband was true to his word.

Books and television came to replace Carmen's real adventures, and eventually she came to accept that and embrace her life with Waldo. But "happily ever after" doesn't last as long as it used to, and there is no rest for the wicked...

Carmen Sandiego came out of retirement, with Waldo as her redundant yet loving sidekick, to find her lost child in the most epic adventure of her entire career. If it ever gets out of development hell, this adventure will be depicted on the big screen in "Carmen Sandiego Steals the Universe". If successful, it will be followed by a direct-to-video sequel, "Carmen Sandiego Develops Colon Cancer, Learns Humility, and Re-Evaluates Her Entire Life". The title isn't finalized. The closing scene is, though (SPOILER ALERT):

Carmen manages to keep her eyes open a few moments longer to look at Waldo. He looks a little different from when they met but, like her, he's only improved with age. She thinks of all they've been through together, of his unflinching loyalty to her through thick and thin from the first moment he offered her that drink. She sees the love in his eyes and the pain that probably surpasses her own. And with her final breath she says, "Maybe your heart was the biggest thing I ever stole after all."

I can't believe I just made myself cry with my own writing.

She will also star in a few non-canon crossovers just for fun, because every franchise will become even cooler with her in it. For example, what could be better than her stealing the artifacts that Indiana Jones recovers? She would probably get to them first. She would steal not just the Ark of the Covenant, but the entire Well of Souls. And you just know that despite their initial disagreements they would end up working together and making out (this would be before she met Waldo).

"We're not all that different, you and I," Carmen says to Indy as they catch their breath after fighting off eighty-seven Nazis. "Both of us have devoted our lives to stealing things. The difference is that I'm much better at it than you."

"The difference," Indy growls, refusing to look at her, "is that I am a tenured professor of archaeology. The artifacts that I st- that I recover go into a museum. To be shared with the world. To enrich, to enlighten. Or at least they would if they didn't always get taken away first."

"Such nobility," Carmen says, letting out a tinkly little laugh as she sees that she's gotten under his skin. "But does the end goal change the fact that these things don't belong to you? That you're taking them from where their rightful owners left them for a reason? And do tell me more about how an archaeologist's toolkit consists solely of a bullwhip and a revolver."

Indy doesn't have a snappy response ready. Somehow no one has ever called him out on that before. He winces to his core as Carmen laughs again, louder this time. She's almost as bad as Marion.

To Carmen Sandiego, as has been readily demonstrated, space and time are as easily traversed as an empty dirt road. So it is that she also finds herself a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. After grappling with the Nazis, she's developed a fondness for taking on evil dictatorships, and when she sees how the Galactic Empire is cracking down on thieves she knows she has to take a stand. She misses working with lesser beings so she enlists with the Rebellion and quickly demonstrates her value to them.

"You've got the Death Star plans?" the hologram of General Dodonna says breathlessly.

Carmen keeps a straight face. "Well, not exactly."

General Dodonna fails to keep a straight face. "Not exactly? How so?"

Carmen smirks a little. "The mission you gave me was much too easy. I decided to do something more worthy of my skill set."

Now General Dodonna goes ballistic. He isn't normally the type to do so, but the Rebellion placed its hope in Carmen Sandiego and now it appears she's let them down for no good reason. "Too easy? Are you [redacted] kidding me?? Your mission was of unspeakable importance! Trillions of lives are at stake here, Carmen! What, pray tell, was 'more worthy' of Your Holiness?"

Meanwhile, on Coruscant...

"Hang on, I gotta take this." A meeting with two of Emperor Palpatine's advisers has just been interrupted by an important phone call. "Vader! How's my favorite Sith?" He leans back in his desk chair, relaxed, feeling that life is good and all is right with the galaxy now that - "Whoa, whoa, whoa, huh? She what? Are you trying to be funny, Vader? I - yeah, yeah, real funny, ha ha. Look, I'm very busy right now, and - Vader, this isn't funny anymore. How stupid do you think I am? I didn't get to be ruler of the galaxy by being gullible. Yeah, whatever, bye." Palpatine hangs up and rolls his eyes at his advisers. "That moron's trying to convince me that someone 'stole the Death Star'. Isn't that the stupidest thing you've ever heard?"

They laugh. "Yeah," Mas Amedda says. "Even stupider than most inhabited planets having only one type of terrain."

"Right?" Palpatine says.

In conclusion, that's why Carmen Sandiego is my heroine and I want to be just like her when I grow up.

Because what else could I possibly close with? Do it, Rockapella!