"Some of them may even display selective mutism, speaking not at all to most people and excessively to specific people. Some may choose only to talk to people they like." - from Wikipedia's article on Asperger syndrome. As I look at it in isolation just now I realize that "excessively" is a very biased and subjective term that probably shouldn't be in a Wikipedia article. But the reason I copy-pasted it in the first place is that I find it amusing. Do normal, sorry, "neurotypical" people regularly choose to talk to people they don't like? How dumb.

What a strange feeling it is when an old Facebook status about your crush is liked by a total stranger who upon investigation turns out to be your crush's mother, though at first you think it's her sister because she looks twenty years younger than she must be. Yes, what a strange feeling, especially when you weren't aware that your crush's mother even knew that you existed because you didn't know that your crush had ever mentioned you to her family because you thought you were out of sight, out of mind. But what a good feeling it is when you realize that you had nothing to hide, except for that one status that she liked, but nothing "bad". Yes, perhaps you would want to hide some of these things if you had any shame, but you don't, which is why your profile is on its most public setting.

By "you" I mean "me" and the rest is pretty much literal. This actually happened a month or so ago, but I didn't know whether it was prudent to mention or not, but now I think it's okay. I told a couple people, and I asked Marie, and I asked if I should message her, and Marie was like "No, that would be weird", so I didn't, but then I decided to do it anyway because I have decided that as long as my behavior is respectful I shouldn't have to be dictated by society's arbitrary whims of whether or not it's "weird".

So that was a good feeling. A slightly more disturbing one is when strangers are arguing with me and feel the need to look at my profile and then bring it up. (Ex. Mike Poole from last week, "It's ok, I'm sure the leadership will give you bonus missionary points for having a Jesus cover photo.") Why are they so obsessed with me? I couldn't care less what's on their profiles.

Grammatical note: "I couldn't care less" is the proper term. "I could care less" makes no sense at all in the contexts where it's used, which people would realize if they thought about what they were saying for two seconds instead of just running on autopilot.

Facebook's reporting system is really a piece of work, isn't it? I wonder about the logic behind it. (All of the following are based on real instances.)

Mook 1: Oh dear, someone has reported a meme of a woman with tape over her mouth that says "Don't wrap it and tap it, tape her and rape her". How should we handle this?
Mook 2: Mmm, well, I myself do not for a moment share the viewpoint expressed in this image, but we can't just go around censoring everything we disagree with. After all, America was founded on the free exchange of ideas.
Mook 1: Right then. It stays up.
Mook 2: Here's another one. It's a meme of a nuclear explosion that says "Some cancers need radiation treatment. Islam is one of them."
Mook 1: Ooh, tough call. Some of my best friends are Muslims. But, you know, maybe they just meant that sometimes Muslims get cancer and they need radiation treatment, and then they did a Google search for "radiation" and grabbed the first picture they found even though it doesn't really match.
Mook 2: Yeah, that makes sense. Not our place to judge others' mistakes. It stays up.
Mook 1: Let's see here, what else do we - SWEET JUDAS PRIEST, IT'S A PICTURE OF A  MOTHER BREASTFEEDING AN INFANT. AAAAAAH!
Mook 2: AAAAAAAH! TAKE IT DOWN TAKE IT DOWN TAKE IT DOWN! I'D DO IT MYSELF BUT I'M BUSY BLEACHING MY EYES!

You're supposed to be able to appeal the decision or whatever, and sometimes that accomplishes nothing but sometimes it does. One time I reported a blatantly pornographic page, they said it didn't violate their community standards, I politely asked if they were retarded, and then they took it down. I suspect that no one actually, you know, looked at it the first time. Or read what it was called.

I thought this was amusing, especially the bit about Planned Parenthood.

Christmas was good. The highlight was receiving another crocheted R2-D2 hat from my sister to replace the one she gave me last year that got stolen (at church no less). This one fits better anyway.

Another highlight was what I discovering on my grandparents' bookshelf in the basement, which I have looked over many times but obviously not paid close enough attention to. My grandfather pointed out a picture of him with his parents and sister when he was four or so, and though I had seen it many times, this time I noticed partially obscured behind it not one, not two, not three, but four books by Mary Frances Sturlaugson Eyer, the first black sister missionary, who was once a celebrity among Mormons but has since faded into obscurity for whatever reason. Since I am enthralled with this kind of topic this was a veritable treasure trove. These were evidently owned by my great-grandmother, Geraldine Jensen, and three of them were autographed.

On a related note, I recently recently added in its entirety this story that has also faded into obscurity for some reason even though it deserves to be famous.

​Because we live in a cruel and horrible world, wonderful luck sometimes happens to the wicked and undeserving, and so it was that on Monday I won two tickets to see "The Force Awakens" from Kool 103.9's contest. I was so happy that for a while all I could do was walk around the house clapping my hands like one of those toy monkeys with cymbals. The tickets were for the next day. So you see, I do not regret my decision to wait for a while because free tickets that aren't for opening night are better than opening night tickets that aren't free. To enter the contest all one had to do was comment on their Facebook page that one wanted tickets, and I made a point of asking very politely and deferentially, so I don't know if I was chosen randomly or if that had something to do with it.

Pros:
The movie was hilarious
The pacing, action etc. was exciting and superior to that of the prequels
The special effects were very good and superior to those of the prequels
Kylo Ren was a unique villain and not merely a Darth Vader clone

Cons:
It felt more like "Guardians of the Galaxy" than a Star Wars movie (largely because it was so hilarious)
Except for Chewbacca, there were no familiar aliens until near the end (would it have killed them to add a few Rodians and Twi'leks?)
Much of the plot was clearly a reboot of the first film
I felt like too much of what happened between "Return of the Jedi" and this one was left unexplained (why, for example, are the New Republic and the Resistance two separate entities and what is the relationship between then?)

I wonder how long I have to wait before I can comment on the major earth-shattering spoilers without being a waste of skin who doesn't deserve to live.

​On the whole, I considered it worth watching, though it wasn't quite what I expected from Disney. I thought it would be something more like this.

Now that Christmas is over and everyone else will have forgotten about it, I am taking the opportunity to post this video which remains as applicable as ever. I happen to particularly like this one. Sometimes I find them hokey because I'm cynical and I can't help it, but I like the artistry and the discount Morgan Freeman narrator voice.

I suppose this is probably my last post of 2015. Pity it's nothing spectacular, but then I suppose most of them aren't anyway. Not fishing for compliments, but I'll take them if you have any to give...

With no disrespect intended toward my many friends who went and saw it on opening night. Opening night is as good a time as any to go see it. I just don't understand why some people feel a need to.

Look, I'm not the only one who's gotten 12 am and 12 pm mixed up, but at least I didn't act like this. Karma karma karma karma karma chameleon.

My laptop is busted, but one of my old roommates left behind a desktop computer that he was using to run a Minecraft server. It's an older model with Windows XP, only 20 GB or so of memory, and no sound, but I still consider it a blessing. It has Pinball. I decided that playing Pinball as part of my exercise routine in the morning was a good idea because it makes my brain focus, and I discovered that I tend to do much better while lying on my stomach (the computer is on the floor). I don't know what kind of scores are typical for this game, but this morning I beat my previous best and broke three million points, so that put me in a good mood and if I were superstitious I would consider it a reason to be optimistic about the whole day.

One of the stupidest things I've read this week: "Virginity is a social construct rooted in misogyny that shames women with expectations of purity and men with expectations of masculinity." I was going to start drinking shots every time someone uses the word "misogyny" in a context where it doesn't belong, but then I realized that would be suicide. Anyway, this was in response to a guy from high school posting about how he's waiting for marriage, and he's not even LDS, which you could have guessed based on the fact that he went to my high school, so I was very impressed with his courage. Because according to society's logic, the proper solution to "slut-shaming" is virgin-shaming. Just like the proper solution to fat-shaming is skinny-shaming. And the proper solution to black-shaming is white-shaming. Let's face it, society is really stupid.

Well, here's something that I wish I didn't have to share but I do. I'm not bothering to make him anonymous because he's already shared it in a group of 31,000+ people and I don't think I have quite that many people reading my blog, so this is really just me spitting in the ocean and saying I helped. Anyway...

I have seen this man demonstrate his strong and firm testimony many times. I know there is a huge double standard in our society between how men and women are "supposed" to show compliments and affection. In my home branch, it was quite normal and common for guys to hug each other. We also touched each other in other (mostly non-sexual) ways and frequently joked about each other's sexuality or gender identity, which in hindsight was probably ignorant and insensitive, but at least we were comfortable with each other. Now I'm not even comfortable lightly touching a girl on the shoulder to show friendship, even if she does it to me first and thereby gives me implicit permission to do so. You can't tell by looking at people which ones are the reasonable human beings and which ones are constantly on the lookout for reasons to be offended or charge someone with harassment. This post served to remind me that my paranoia about touching is a perfectly reasonable one. Alas, as I've mentioned before, touching is one of my three-way tie of love languages, so that really sucks.

So I don't have 31,000+ readers, but how many people do visit my site? Here are the most recent stats. If these are accurate, my little map at the bottom of the site is tracking only a small fraction of visitors, which is really annoying, but what can you do?

("the dinosaur renaissance article" could only be this one, which for me shows up on the second page of results for that term. I'm surprised but not displeased.)

When I recently got into an argument on the internet with a stranger I realized that it had been a long time since I got into a heated argument on the internet with a stranger, and I was disappointed with myself for relapsing. What happened was that I commented on a Salt Lake Tribune article (and we all know the comments sections of most Salt Lake Tribune articles are cesspools), and some jackass who had commented quite some time earlier but obviously had nothing better to do than continue lurking there jumped on it, and I, instead of ignoring him as I should have, stuck around for a bit to express my contempt. I think I have made amply clear on this blog (just last week for example) how little I am bothered by the opinions of morons about me or my religion. Mike is one of those sad little people who has nothing better to do with his life than try to make Mormons angry, and so when I declined to take him seriously he attempted, somewhat pathetically and unconvincingly in my opinion, to project his own anger onto me and pretend he had succeeded.

He stopped replying after this. Several other people commented but (knowing they would likely be of a similar caliber) I didn't bother to read those even when I went back to take these pictures, which I did so that you wouldn't have to place blind trust in my description of the event, so never say I don't make sacrifices for you. I will plead guilty to the charge of being a coward. I hope someday I can be brave like Mike Poole, who despite being a jackass is clearly not a coward at all, because it takes so much courage to pick fights with strangers from behind the safety of an electronic screen. And speaking of "cult behavior"...

Anyway, I'm a jerk sometimes, in case you haven't figured that out yet, but the entire reason I'm bringing it up is because that makes me humble and that makes it okay. I struggle because, while I should follow the admonition and example of Jesus to love everybody regardless of what they do, I see no reason why I should feel respect toward people who don't deserve it. I try not to insult people to their faces (and at least in theory, not behind their backs either) but I see no reason why I should abstain from sarcasm when they are saying rude and asinine things. Pretending to respect them would be dishonest, after all, and I highly doubt that Jesus respects everybody either. But He probably doesn't hold contemptuous thoughts toward them or use the phrase "leg-humping obsession" (which I can't help but love because it perfectly encapsulates the mindlessness and contemptability of some people's behavior). I struggle to find a balance and will probably continue to do so for the foreseeable future. I've decided to cut hypocritical Mormons a little more slack, though, since I am one.

P.S. Sometimes I wink at married women online, too.

But on the plus side, I noticed that I no longer feel compelled to argue about evolution when it comes up. I used to get very heated on the topic, mainly because I still resented having been brainwashed with creationist baloney for a few years, but now I just kind of feel like whatever, if they want to delude themselves about the nature of reality that's their right. As long as they don't try to get it taught in schools. I don't know why I've mellowed out in this area. I find that when I undertake any effort to eliminate one of my major flaws, I crash and burn and become discouraged within a couple weeks at most, yet I occasionally discover that one of the smaller ones has vanished on its own without me doing anything. Nice. So anyway, here you see me only bothering to comment once, and not even using actual words. It helped that someone even smarter than me was there to do the talking, and now I am sharing it here so you can get a free science lesson whether you need/want it or not. (This was in our group, Latter-day Saints Who Love Latter-day Science, which you should totally join.)

Trending this week for whatever reason has been a thirteen year old story about a forensic reconstruction of what Jesus may have looked like. Apparently it's gone viral because people had totally forgotten about it and then someone rediscovered it and all heaven broke loose on social media. I guess I missed my chance. I read this article a year or two ago and I guess if I had shared it I could have been the one to start this firestorm. It's been a little disturbing to see some Mormons getting their tights in a wad over this. "No! The Savior does not look like that!" Evidently some of them are too attached to the undoubtedly inaccurate Western European Jesus we're used to seeing in paintings. We should worship the living Christ, not artistic depictions of Him. The forensic reconstruction may be way off too, but my point is that it doesn't matter either way.

Perhaps some of them resent that this depiction is a teensy bit goofy-looking and not nearly so majestic. If they resent that the Savior could be goofy-looking, then they literally believe that physically attractive people are in some way superior to not physically attractive people. Yet the Bible says that "he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him." (Isaiah 53:2) This strongly suggests to me that Jesus is, if not "ugly", then at least rather plain and certainly not as handsome as he is usually portrayed. And so what? We claim to believe that looks don't matter, and that's true even though most of us have a hard time fully believing it, and it doesn't matter if the only perfect man who ever lived was also the ugliest person in the history of the planet. Except that if He was, He wouldn't have gotten any followers because humans are shallow, but you know what I mean.

There's an urban legend in Mormondom that this painting by Del Parson was said by a prophet to be the most accurate depiction. The only truth in this legend is that Del Parson was asked by the Curriculum Committee to go through a few revisions for whatever reason, but the extrapolation is kind of laughable. Why would church leaders be so concerned about the accuracy of this one painting or this one artist and none of the others, or of their own videos for that matter, which over the years haven't even consistently portrayed Jesus with the same hair color? The Jesus of the recent Bible Videos looks nothing like this painting. And why would they never bother to actually tell the membership, “Hey, by the way, this is what Jesus really looks like”? Anyway, I got into another argument about that. Sigh.

And so on along those lines. I could get used to that kind of logic.
 
Me: The prophet has said that you should date me.
Lindsey Stirling: Oh really. What were his exact words?
Me: If you need a quote then you might want to strengthen your faith in a prophet and him being a revelator of truth and visions of what he sees.

Now time to answer a reader's question! Bracelets, age 22, of Farmington, Utah, asks, “Do you consider yourself more of an optimist or pessimist?” She actually asked via text message, but I'm answering in this public forum because I know everyone else has been wondering this too and just been afraid to ask. Also, I wanted to write more than could reasonably be put in a text message, and also add some comics.

Well, Bracelets, notwithstanding all evidence to the contrary, I have to say that on the whole I'm an optimist. The reason for this is my faith in God and in Jesus Christ. Because of them I know that everything will turn out all right in the end and I'll be more than compensated for everything I've had to go through. Because of them I can keep trying and become better despite my myriad flaws and wrongdoings. If you exclude them and focus only on a secular angle, then as you can probably guess, I'm a pessimist. The reason for this is the state of the world and my own experiences. And in fact, this, too, is doctrinally sound; I will be impressed if you can show me even one scripture verse that has anything flattering to say about human nature or the natural trajectory of civilizations. I will go so far as to say that I think faith in humanity is a mental disorder (and I can say that because I know a thing or two about having mental disorders). To be sure, there are plenty of good people doing good things, and plenty of examples in the scriptures as well, but they get our attention precisely because they're going against the grain. Have faith that such people exist, not in humanity as a whole, which doesn't deserve it.
 
I'm an optimist about my prospects for making a successful career out of writing, because I'm a great writer, and that's just a fact. But still in the back of my mind I recognize that at any time I could suffer a terrible accident and lose the use of my hands. Then I'd have to dictate or learn to type with my feet or something, and then I could become a motivational speaker about overcoming adversity and yadda yadda yadda. Don't get any ideas, God, this is just a hypothetical. But anyway, Bracelets, in general I try not to be an optimist if it means expecting certain events or outcomes that may or may not happen. As you know, misplaced optimism has brought me a lot of grief, notwithstanding how well-founded it seemed at the time. I think one should always at least half-expect the worst plausible outcome (or in the case of dating, something worse and so contrived that it would ruin a work of fiction) because one can avoid a lot of soul-crushing disappointment that way.

That doesn't mean one has to feel negative and depressed all the time. It just means one should avoid getting one's hopes up whenever possible. And maybe this doesn't work for everybody. Maybe there are those who need to always expect success in order to make it happen. But that works for me in Pinball and nowhere else. As you know, I don't even like to trust people if I don't have to because too many have proven to be untrustworthy. I trust you, though, because the Holy Ghost said I could, and who am I to argue with that kind of endorsement? And again, that's because you go against the grain. You're an exception because you're exceptional. In summary, I'm wary of attaching labels to my views because they can lead people to make all kinds of assumptions that may or may not be accurate (the same reason I try to stay away from terms like "conservative", "liberal", or even "moderate"), but my faith in God and Jesus Christ overshadows all the rest so you may consider me an optimist on the whole. And that's what Christmas is all about.
 
As long as I'm addressing you here, Bracelets, I would like to express my appreciation to you for reading all of my blog posts. More than one week during this past semester, I really didn't feel like writing anything at all, but I did because I knew you would be disappointed if I didn't. So thank you for bringing that additional stress into my life.

Now, here is another song for Star Wars and another song for Christmas. In case you (meaning everyone now and not just Bracelets) couldn't guess, I've had so much Star Wars and Christmas music that I've wanted to share during this brief seasonal window of opportunity, but I've sadly been limited by the weekly posting format. If you don't typically even bother to listen to the music I post, please at least push play on this one and mute the sound, because it's on my own channel. And then go subscribe to my channel.

You may recognize this tune from a parody done by The Police that surpassed the original in popularity.

Merry Christmas, or Happy Holidays if you prefer, whatever, I really don't care!

Even 
After 
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,

"You owe me."
​
Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.

- Hafiz (Muslim poet)

​I published this before I meant to, so I hope nobody has read it yet.

I had to participate in a poetry contest for one of my classes recently, and chose to finish and submit this one. I didn't particularly care about winning but I figured as long as I had to participate I should put forth an effort, and I knew I had a better chance if I tried to be unique rather than just go off of talent alone. Indeed, most of the poems were equally talented in my opinion, and I just voted for the ones that resonated the most with me personally. After the first place winner was announced, he read his poem aloud, and I realized right then that I definitely didn't want to win after all. But guess who was announced right after that for second place? My exact reaction was "Oh God, no."

I was allowed to let someone else read it for me, but that was still awful. I found myself biting my finger to drown out the pain, and when that didn't work I resorted to plugging and massaging my ear flaps and thinking, Shoot me. Shoot me. Shoot me. Shoot me. When it was over, people discussed what they liked about it. No one mentioned that it reminded them of Dr. Seuss, so I guess that part was a failure, but as long as they liked it that's what matters. Certainly I don't mean to complain about that. It's the having-it-read-out-loud-and-being-the-center-of-attention part that I hated. I had to wonder if I would have gotten first place if I had voted for myself. Most of the ones I voted for didn't win, but one of them did, and I assume everyone liked it for the same reason I did, aka it made fun of millennials.

I also had to participate in a poetry reading for one of my classes (guess which one) yesterday, and it was slightly less fun than facing a firing squad. I managed to keep the trembling out of my voice but it just went into my legs instead and created a miniature earthquake. I chose this poem because it isn't heartfelt or sincere enough to be embarrassing to read, but not as goofy and random as the one I had submitted for the contest. My friend Bracelets went last, and she has a phenomenal reading voice, soothing yet firm. I told her she should record audiobooks.

I've been revising my novel again through a fortuitous series of events. A few weeks ago my computer conked out again, and this time the warranty is expired, because apparently I just have horrible karma. Windows 10 attempted to download some updates but said that it had failed and would try again later. Then I was awakened in the middle of the night by my computer turning itself back on and restarting, but I didn't do anything or even think much about it because I was so tired and non-functional that it may as well have been a dream, and indeed I didn't remember it until later the next day, after I turned my computer on and found that it couldn't go three minutes without crashing and restarting. I tried to go into Safe Mode, I tried to do a System Restore, and nothing worked because it would freeze up as soon as I clicked on something. At one point I was finally getting it to do a System Restore or something along those lines, but after a few minutes it said "Undoing Changes" or something and stopped. I almost threw that piece of crap out the window.

So the IT guys on campus said the operating system needs to be reloaded and they have to do it manually since it froze if they tried to do anything the straightforward way. Since I cannot afford that for the foreseeable future, it hasn't happened. And after that, as if annoyed at me for taking it to the doctor, it refuses to even start up. The light comes on, the fan whirrs, the light goes off, then back on again, and does that a few times before giving up. All because Windows 10 tried to install some updates. Thanks, Microsoft.

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah. Less than forty-eight hours before this happened I had emailed the file of my novel to someone to read over, thus allowing me to access it while all my other files are off-limits. So that was a blessing. And then, since Thanksgiving break was coming up and I was going to be bored out of my skull without my computer, I checked out some library books about science fiction writing, and they gave me a ton of ideas and that was awesome. During my previous largest revision a couple years ago, I had trimmed it from 495 pages to about 430 by cutting redundant or unnecessary material, and it was still too long for a first time author to get published, but now it's actually growing again, which I like because, although quality is more important than quantity, both is better than either one. Right?

I have had it up to my eyeballs with the hate and ignorance being directed toward Muslims by at least thousands of people (as indicated by Facebook comments and likes). People who have never read the Koran are suddenly experts on it because they know how to copy-paste a few verses that are no more shocking than half the stuff in the Old Testament, and they also have mind-reading powers to know what all 1.6 billion Muslims in the world want. If all 1.6 billion Muslims in the world wanted to destroy America, they wouldn't be sending in a few thousand to sneak in undercover as refugees. They could overrun it with their bare hands. If you believe in barring all Syrian refugees and/or Muslims from the United States, then I hope someday you're forced from your home and have nowhere to go because everyone associates you with the people who forced you from your home. To be frank, you deserve it.

Look, someone shared my Facebook post! I have a fan!

Apparently I answered my own query, and the "plain English" is exactly the problem.

Devil's advocate: While it may be true that terrorists do not represent Islam any more than the KKK represents Christianity, this seems like an apples to oranges comparison because terrorists are actually a huge problem whereas the KKK is so irrelevant that most people forget it still exists.

Response to devil's advocate: I believe this is owing to the culture of Western, "Christian" nations as compared to the culture of the Middle East, which is at least a couple centuries behind. The Middle East has virtually no democracy and no separation of church and state. The fact that Islam is the favored religion in that region is, for these intents and purposes, a coincidence, and if it happened to be Hinduism then the situation would be exactly the same except that we would be talking about fundamentalist Hindu terrorists justifying their atrocities from the Bhagavad Gita. The Middle East is mostly Muslim, but most Muslims don't live in the Middle East.

On a related note, I spit on Donald Trump and his ilk.

I went to the institute Christmas concert last night and actually had someone to go with me. Shortly beforehand, after I had put her number in my phone, I stared at it for a little while as it gradually dawned on me that something wasn't quite right. Then I realized I had put in my own name instead of hers. That's how tired I was yesterday. Two of the digits were transposed anyway, so it was a good thing her apartment was easy to find. I walked in a straight line there and it was the second door I saw in the first building I went to, and then she was like "Wow, no one ever finds it without calling me." Obviously that's just further proof that I'm a genius. So anyway, we went to the concert and I thought it started at 7 but it actually started at 7:30, but when we arrived five minutes before 7 there was already a long line, so that was a lucky mistake/divine providence/whatever.

So I had to make conversation, and I'm terrible at that. I don't know why it is that I can write a decent 2,500 word essay in an hour and a half, which I know because I did it yesterday, but I can't articulate spoken words nearly so easily. I wasn't even nervous. I was quite comfortable. But I was very conscious that my sentences were full of "um"s and repeated words to give my brain time to catch up with my mouth. Oh well. The concert was very good, as I knew it would be, because the institute choirs are stellar. I suppose there's not much point in saying much more about it because nothing I say would remotely compare to actually watching it. Sorry. And then afterward we ran into a couple from my ward and I didn't introduce them because I don't remember the guy's name. At least I remembered his face, which is more than I can say for some people that I'm apparently supposed to recognize from somewhere. I'm so sorry. Sometimes I swear I have dementia with names and faces.

Speaking of musical performances, I saw a girl on Facebook complaining about her "minstrel cramps". I resisted the urge to comment, "I hate it when my minstrels get cramps. It makes their singing sound terrible."

A great blog post by Daniel C. Peterson re: the hypocrisy and insatiability of LDS detractors re: the temple in Kinshasa for which plans have just been released in conjunction with the announcement of the groundbreaking on February 12 of next year.

But even the detractors are forced to admit that we have the sexiest cult.

What makes our cult sexier than the others, you may ask? Two words: President Uchtdorf.

Oh, I caved to the evils of capitalism and added some AdSense ads to my site, which are allegedly supposed to actually show up any day now. I recognize that I will probably get pennies, if anything, but it's worth a shot. I didn't put them on the memorial page for my deceased schoolmate or on most of the religious themed pages, though I did put a couple on religious themed pages because I'm curious what will show up and if they turn out to be for Mormon.org and Deseret Book and stuff then I'll add more.

One of the guys in the Star Wars watching group asked me if I had a crush on my ex-crush. Then he accurately guessed all the girls in the ward that I've had crushes on since he moved in. I don't know what was the most unnerving - that he could tell, that he was paying such close attention, or that he bothered to remember.

Some of my friends who had until recently never heard of the Star Wars Holiday Special are still failing to grasp how awful it is. Some things are so bad they're good, and then some things - like the Star Wars Holiday Special - are so bad they go past good and straight to bad again, and you are sincerely perplexed at why they exist and what state of mind so many people must have been in to create them. I have a theory that the LDS priesthood ban ended in 1978 because, in order to preserve the harmony of the cosmos, God needed something really wonderful to balance out the awfulness of the Star Wars Holiday Special later that year. But nowadays, some privileged first world millennials are unfamiliar with the horror that it perpetrated on their ancestors. I tell them it's mostly about Chewbacca's family. They're like, "Sounds awesome." Well, sure, if Wookiees grunting at each other for ten minutes with no subtitles is your idea of "awesome".

Here's a cute, heartwarming song for Christmas :) Well, sort of. That's a subjective thing which some viewers may disagree with. The look on Johnny Carson's face just completes it for me.

Okay, here's a more serious one. It has singing African-American camels in it.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asks.

Yes, I think, but I can't. It would make you feel bad and besides, I promised myself that I would never use you as a crutch.

"Come on, let's talk about it. What are you thinking?"

I can't tell you. I have to suppress this. I don't want you to feel my pain too.

She draws some of it out of me anyway. Now she's repeating my words back to me like a therapist. "Your dreams have been shattered... You've hit a wall and can go no further."

Yeah.

"Is there anything I can do for you?"

Can you make this just be a nightmare, and wake me up from it? No? Crud. Well, the next best thing would be to get me something hot and yummy to eat, but I can't ask you to do that.

"I don't want you to lose sleep over this or anything."

Heh. I know I will, but honestly, after the usual routine of losing sleep for no discernible reason it's almost refreshing to know why for a change.

I did lose some sleep, incidentally, but it wasn't too awful. I corralled my emotions into a cage of logic and evidence and told them to pipe down. They just yipped and whined at me for a while and then gave up. Alas, as I was sleeping they evidently found a weak spot in the cage, because I woke up in the middle of the night with emotions bursting out of my chest like the xenomorph in the "Alien" films. That was literally the analogy that came to my sleep-addled mind while it was happening, even though I made up the cage bit just now.

In times of distress I usually draw inward into a self-destructive cycle instead of turning outward to God. God seldom assuages my pain as I would like, and I guess that makes sense. Would you be a loving parent if you went along with your child begging you not to vaccinate him because the needles hurt? But this time, for whatever reason, I just cried out in my mind, God, remove this cup from me. It is more than I can bear. I don't remember whether I said please or not. I remember that I thought of the Savior, whose words I had just paraphrased, and that He had concluded saying "Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done", and that I really ought to be humble and do the same. But I didn't want to. I am not the Savior; I am just a weak, frail mortal fool and I couldn't stand it for a moment longer.

Of course, whether I said "thy will be done" or not was ultimately irrelevant because God does His will with or without my permission. He's got some nerve, hasn't He? But this time, to my immense relief, He did as I asked. The storm was calmed. I relaxed and went back to sleep.

Our second discussion brings us to the same place. "What do you want me to do?" she asks. "What do you want me to do?"

Is this a serious question? Should I answer honestly? I want you to kiss me.

The worst part about watching some of my current aspirations implode in a manner of seconds is not being able to take a break from life and recuperate for a while. I still have to study and do homework and go to work and lie to everyone who says "How are you." Why can't I just have a universal remote that lets me pause things for a while? Is that too much to ask for? Well, actually, I would also use that remote to rewind and fix all my mistakes (I'd need several spare batteries for that), fast-forward through all the bad parts (I'd need several spare batteries for that), and mute all the annoying people and sounds (let's just assume that since this is a magical remote anyway it also has an unlimited power supply).

Speaking of remotes, let's talk about movies, just because.

Lucy

I grew up believing, as many Latter-day Saints did, that the Church of Jesus Christ has an official prohibition against watching R-rated movies. In actuality, there isn't really. That would be kind of silly since the vast majority of the world doesn't use that rating system, and it would also convince the faithful that every PG-13 movie must be just fine and dandy to watch. So I could in theory find an R-rated movie that I felt was worth watching, and watch it, but I never have and likely never will since I'm used to avoiding them and don't even watch movies all that often anyway. But a few months ago, right before school started, I watched one without even realizing it, until I looked it up on imdb afterward and had a bit of a surprise. I watched the movie on somebody's laptop on the bus ride from the airport after my trip home, and it ended just as we got to the transit center, so that was convenient.

The movie was called "Lucy". I'm still not even sure why it was rated R, but whatever. Maybe because the violence was too realistic. When Lucy the innocent bystander who just happened to get involved with a sleazeball gets captured by a drug lord and watches him kill people, she doesn't take it in stride and make wisecracks like protagonists are supposed to do. She cries and hyperventilates and throws up. Which I think is actually a good thing because it's closer to how a real person would react, and therefore less desensitizing for the audience, though it's probably too late for that. The movie itself was okay, not great, and probably not worth watching more than once, largely because my suspension of disbelief was ruined by the plot literally revolving around the stupid "You only use 10% of your brain" myth. Because we all know that after most head injuries the doctor says, "Good news! You only damaged part of the 90% of your brain that you don't use!"

Iphigenia

In my World Sacred Literature class, the teacher had to leave for surgery for a couple days, so we watched this movie about the Trojan War. The Greeks want to go chase after Helen of Troy, but they can't because there's no wind to blow their ships. The oracle tells King Agamemnon that the only way to get wind is to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia. And from there, a half hour plot stretches over two hours as he makes his decision and then vacillates back and forth about it and gets into arguments with his wife and brother. The movie was entirely in Greek, which was a nice touch, except that the white subtitles were poorly animated and often difficult to read against the white robes or white boulders.

The girl next to me, who responded curtly and then ignored me when I tried to talk to her at the beginning of the semester, was suddenly talking to me and laughing at things I said that weren't even funny. At one point the camera panned rapidly across the masts of several Greek ships and I remarked, "I think they're just showing the same ships over and over." She laughed. Why is that funny? I wondered. If she had telepathic powers, she might have responded, It isn't really, but this movie is so dull that I've drastically lowered my entertainment standards as a survival mechanism.

Hocus Pocus

Shortly before Halloween I attended a 25 or Better activity, as I often do despite not being 25 or better. Maybe it's just me, but I always get the vibe that most people there are just waiting to die. Among other things the film "Hocus Pocus" was being shown, and I watched it for the second time (the first time being Halloween of last year). The guy next to me kept giggling like an insane cartoon character at every other line, regardless of whether it was funny or not. I wanted to kick him in the head. I also couldn't shake the thought that if I were Max, I wouldn't at all mind being captured by Sarah Jessica Parker. I'm sorry.

Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost

I hadn't seen this in about fifteen years, since it was new, so I was happy to be able to watch it while doing laundry at a friend's house. Some of it was vaguely familiar; much of it hardly remembered at all. I didn't notice when I was a kid that much of the animation seems inspired by/ripped off of anime, perhaps attempting to piggyback on the then-current Pokémon craze. The main thing that had stayed vividly in my mind were my crushes, the Hex Girls, but since I had looked them up on YouTube in the intervening time I already knew that their music was just as awesome now as when I was little.

Star Wars

Some friends/neighbors decided to watch one Star Wars movie per week until the new one is released, and invited me to join. We've watched the first two so far. As I may have mentioned elsewhere, before George Lucas sold his franchise to Disney and abandoned his plans to re-release them all in 3D, I took a friend that I was kind of in love with to see "The Phantom Menace" and it was the closest thing to a date I'd ever been on, marred only by the fact that I already knew she was a lesbian. I thought back to that as I watched it again with these people. I was feeling stressed, and that reminded me that I'd been feeling stressed back then too, and I had decided to just shut off everything else in my brain except Star Wars and pretend I didn't have any problems for two hours. I don't even remember what I was stressed about, but considering that the next two months were hell, it was validated in one way or another.

I still remember when "The Phantom Menace" came out because I first heard about Star Wars through the Lego sets that were being released at the time, and I thought at first that Star Wars was a Lego movie. There was this Lego minifig named Chewbacca and I thought "Hey, he has the same name as Emily's [my cousin's] cat!" My parents went to go watch it in the theater and I wanted to go with them but they wouldn't let me because they thought it would be too scary. They were probably right. When I did see it on VHS (!) a year or so later, they tried to explain how the movies were made out of order, but I didn't understand and I thought this was a remake of the first episode. I thought that Jar Jar Binks was a comic genius, and for that reason I still don't hate him. And now that I know he's basically the main villain of the entire saga, "The Phantom Menace" has become a much darker film. In any case, I enjoyed it. I can't deny that the prequel films are more flawed than the originals, but they have their own magic and their special moments too, and I grew up with them and I just like to be able to relax and enjoy them without regard for the haters.

What every church dance needs to spice it up a little...

"Attack of the Clones" is more of a mixed bag. A couple of the so-called romance scenes are so painful to watch that I skip them. Still, the action sequences are phenomenal. This time around the girls who had come for the first movie also brought their roommate, who happened to be my ex-crush, and we shared a couch and a blanket and I wished that she was still my crush because then it would have been so exciting. They also brought brownies. She said that she had made them, but then one of the others claimed to have made them. I mentioned this to my ex-crush. She was like, "Well, it was my mix." I was like, "Ah, so she baked it but you bought the mix." She was like, "Well, I took it from my mom's house when she wasn't looking." Maybe it's good that she's not my crush anymore. I don't need that kind of bad influence in my life.

Someone wanted to know who provided the voice of Dexter Jettster, Obi-Wan's four-armed friend. Thinking back to an article I read in "Star Wars Adventures" eleven or twelve years ago, I guessed that it was Rob Coleman. My ex-crush said, "If you're right, I'll be so impressed." I wanted to be right. But then someone looked it up and the correct answer was Ron Falk. Too late, I remembered the article more clearly, and remembered that Ron Falk was the other guy in it and that Rob Coleman was the animation director. Opportunity = lost. I wanted to skip the painful scenes, but I wasn't in charge of the remote, so I just joined with everyone else in mocking them. I normally don't talk during movies but since I had seen it a hundred times it was fair game.

Afterward, I was too restless to go straight to bed, so I took a brief walk of just a couple blocks, during which yet another imbecilic Utah driver managed to nearly kill me, this time by speeding around a corner with zero regard to the stop sign posted there. Then, to my astonishment, she pulled into the driveway just a short way ahead. I couldn't believe it; here, finally, was an opportunity to yell at one of these idiots in person. God must be so proud that I didn't even swear or insult her when I did so. I was just like, "Hey, thanks for almost running me over! There's a stop sign there, you know!" She just kind of mumbled "Sorry" as she hurried to her front door, apparently afraid. Oops. I didn't want to make her afraid. I only wanted to get the point across loudly so that she wouldn't go out and kill some other poor soul whose guardian angel is less competent than mine. I found that my anger was directed toward the vehicle itself, and that I was tempted to come back and take a baseball bat to it or something. In the end I opted not to because I didn't want to get arrested. And, um, because I'm such a good Christian, of course.

The Mission

In my World Sacred Literature class this past week, we watched a film that was only tangentially related to the course material but much better than "Iphigenia". It's called "The Mission" and stars both Robert de Niro and the guy who provides the voice for Simba's uncle Scar, in a true story about a 1750 South American border dispute between Spain and Portugal that jeopardizes whether the natives in the area can be legally enslaved or not. The local Jesuit priests want to persuade the Catholic Church's mediating representative to let them keep protecting the natives under the asylum of their mission. Or something like that. I didn't understand it a hundred percent but I thought it was good anyway.

On Thursday when we watched the second half of the movie, I wasn't in a great mood and didn't really enjoy it, but that was just as well because it was supposed to be tragic. There was a battle, and when the first guy got shot a few seconds into it I thought about how much it must suck to be the first guy who gets shot. Maybe you're thinking, All right, let's do this! We're gonna fight this battle and I'm gonna be brave and strong and support the cause and one for all and all for one! Then a few seconds into it, before you've had a chance to do anything, you're dead and you can't do anything and that's all there is to it. Perhaps your last thought is something along the lines of Hey, wait! I wasn't ready! Let me do that over! I'll do better this time! A good metaphor for life itself in that regard.

And how did [SPOILER ALERT] the protagonists feel right before they died, when they realized they had lost? When Robert de Niro's character realized that his clever plan to blow up the bridge had been foiled, a moment before he was filled with lead, what went through his mind? Maybe something like Wait, it isn't supposed to be like this! This isn't supposed to happen. We're the good guys. Again, a good metaphor for life. I was shocked and devastated too, but sometimes that's the awkward thing about true stories.

Inside Out

Last night I went to an institute dance where they were showing "Inside Out". I poked my head in for a moment and was riveted almost immediately. I missed the first twenty minutes, so when they started it over I stayed to watch those, and then stayed to watch the rest of the movie again. Then the dance was over. I have no regrets. I've felt like Pixar jumped the shark a while ago, but this was a phenomenal movie, hilarious and exciting and ingenious and with such a rare yet deep and true and bittersweet message. I wonder if perhaps, when I'm famous, someone will make a film about the inside of my head. All the characters would be running around in confusion and horror screaming things like "Who designed this thing, a rhesus monkey on acid?"

Evita

"Evita" is a stellar musical and I love every single song in it. This one seems particularly poignant sometimes, for although the suitcase and picture aspects of the chorus have never applied to me, most of the lyrics are spot on, especially in verses one, two, and three, aka all of them. I think all of us are a little bit like an early twentieth century Argentinian dictator's wife sometimes.

I figured out why I've grown weary of writing posts. I'm not actually quite as narcissistic as I seem, and I'm tired of being all me this and I that. I just want my work to be in the spotlight while I hide safely in the shadows collecting royalty checks and fan mail.

This wins the prize for "Stupidest Thing I've Read All Week": "Telling black people they should be 'respectful' to avoid getting shot by police is like telling women they should dress 'appropriately' to avoid getting raped." Wow. Just wow. Heaven forbid we tell people they should be respectful. What a gross violation of their inalienable rights as Americans to do whatever they want with no consequences. After all, cops are obligated to take whatever crap the ungrateful brats they serve and protect dish out at them. They never get attacked or killed in the line of duty, and if they did then that's just their job anyway, so they need to just chillax and not worry about defending themselves.

But in all seriousness, if you mess around with a police officer doing his job just because you're a jackass, you voluntarily forfeit your right to not get shot. This isn't to say that deadly force is always justified or that police brutality doesn't exist, but just to dismiss the absurdity of the original premise. And you know, white people get killed by police too, but that doesn't generate any outrage because it doesn't fit the "police are racist" narrative. Maybe it does happen to black people proportionately more often, but maybe if society treated them like any other human beings instead of pretending it's still the 1960s and they can't accomplish anything without being patronized, they wouldn't be raised in the kind of culture that leads to that kind of thing. And finally, whoever trivialized rape by attempting to put this petty little complaint on par with it should be embarrassed.

Addendum: Hi, it's me from five years in the future. I will leave the preceding two paragraphs intact because they represented my thinking at the time, but I hereby disavow and apologize for almost everything in them. Systemic racism is a much bigger problem than I believed, police brutality is a much bigger problem than I believed, and telling black people they should be "respectful" to avoid getting shot by police is exactly like telling women they should dress "appropriately" to avoid getting raped. If you can't handle being disrespected without shooting someone, don't be a police officer. I'm the one who should be embarrassed that I ever wrote those ignorant and repugnant paragraphs, and I am, but at least I was honest enough to grow up and adjust my views. Bye now, back to the future I go.

In other news, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made a couple of changes to Handbook 1 regarding same-sex couples and their children. John Dehlin, who was excommunicated earlier this year for "asking questions" (and not, as a reasonable person might assume, for trivial things like publicly belittling anyone who believes in the historicity of the Book of Mormon and stating that he considers the concept of the Atonement to be repugnant) got hold of the relevant excerpts from someone in his secret combination, I mean network, and leaked them, prompting hurt, confusion, and widespread outrage.

Anyone sincerely wondering about the rationale behind the changes would be well served to actually listen and think instead of jumping to conclusions. Here, Church Spokesman Michael Otterson interviews Apostle D. Todd Christofferson, who explains it. He was probably chosen to do so because he has a gay brother, Tom (who explains here why his spiritual journey recently led him to abandon his same-sex relationship and return to the Church), which would make him particularly sensitive to multiple sides of the issues. See also: The 9 Facebook Myths About the Church's New LGBT Policy

I don't blame anyone for being troubled or confused by the changes, but many of the reactions I've seen are disgusting. Why is it that most of the people who accuse other people of hate are among the most hateful people I've ever encountered? To the non-Mormons who are outraged, I say, this has nothing to do with you. If you don't like it then don't join the Church. I could go on but I'm sure by next week you'll have forgotten all about it and found something else to feign righteous indignation about. To the Mormons who are outraged, did you even bother to ask God whether He approved this policy change before you made up your mind that He didn't? It seems to me the height of arrogance to presume that you already know God's will because it must be the same as yours.

To everyone, Mormon or not, who insists on attributing this to hate, hate, nothing but hate, I say as respectfully as possible, get a clue. Do you think the leaders of the Church are braindead? Do you think they were unaware of the backlash they would cause? Do you think they insisted on doing it anyway because their hatred of gay people outweighs their desire for people to like and join the Church? How absurd. The Church's critics so often want to have their cake and eat it too; in their minds the Church is a fraud only interested in baptizing converts and bilking them out of tithing money, yet at the same time it takes unpopular stances on social issues and risks alienating those prospective converts along with current members. And the leaders are apparently intelligent enough to keep the fraud going after all this time but too stupid to realize or care when they're working against their own best interests. That makes perfect sense!

The other thing that annoyed me was all the Mormon youths I saw denying that the news was even true because it wasn't on lds.org. I only wish that were a straw man characterization. Some gems: "Until further legitimate documentation is provided, which is first and foremost always on lds.org first, I conclude this to be a hoax, and have made my own conclusion that KUTV is not a reliable source of information (never have) because of a lack of true sources to support the message in the articles. In other words, shut your blasphemous pie-hole, and thank you." "No sources, random website. Please stop posting third-party websites and start using common sense." "I don't give a flying dipwad if you know a bishop. Until Top comes out publicly with this information, it's false. Doctrine is doctrine, and it doesn't make any sense, nor has it ever made sense, to withhold doctrine from the public." "Kids these days. Believing anything on the internet they see. I have no pity on you for failing to find truth. Keep listening to what you wish. As for me, I'm not going to listen to your pissant attempts to belittle."

Actually, those are all from the same guy. Oy.

You know, as I said a few weeks ago, a certain breed of skepticism is healthy. I wouldn't fault fault anyone for waiting until the Church officially said something before they fully accepted the news. But to flat-out reject it right away just because they don't like it and it isn't on lds.org isn't skepticism, it's just irrational and wrong. Maybe this kind of attitude and inability to handle the truth is one reason, as hinted at by Elder Oaks, why we needed to use a sanitized version of church history in most venues until recently. Marvin Perkins related, "As an exuberant new member of the Church, I was in a conversation with someone, trying to share the Gospel. As we spoke, he pointed out what he said was a fault of Joseph Smith. In my inexperience, I defended Brother Joseph with denial - 'impossible... couldn't be.' My new-member mind was saying that the Church was true, so what this man was saying couldn't be. I'd later find out that his claim was true. Now it didn't bother me as much to find out that Joseph was human and had faults as it did that my credibility with this man was shot because I was willing to defend something in total ignorance. I had not studied the issue he'd presented, yet I was willing to speak out on it. Once my credibility was gone, I felt I had little chance at helping him want to know more about the Church."

It seems to me that growing up, we always put Joseph Smith on a pedestal and acted like he was perfect even though we would adamantly deny doing so. Now, it seems the pendulum has swung the other way and we're attempting to compensate by constantly saying, "Joseph Smith was imperfect, Joseph Smith had flaws, Joseph Smith made mistakes", and so on. I find both extremes annoying and I hope that they'll balance out in a few years. Why can't we just treat Joseph Smith as a person? Why can't we just be candid about his flaws whenever it's relevant, without going out of our way to mention them just to prove that we acknowledge that they exist? If we just treat him as a person, we don't need to explain that he had flaws because it goes without saying. Granted, many Mormons are comfortable with the abstract intellectual notion that Joseph Smith was generically "flawed", but become hurt and uncomfortable when they encounter any actual specific examples. That's a shame.

Bracelets (whom you should remember because I've mentioned her before; if you've forgotten, suffice it to say that she is not a relative of Dora the Explorer's monkey friend but rather a girl from one of my classes whom I have granted this pseudonym as a tribute to one of her fashion proclivities) is the very archetype of a classy lady. Last week I asked her out, which was a big deal considering how much I hate dating. I don't think I've ever gone into much detail here about how much I hate dating, because I wouldn't know how to do so without it sounding like a pity party. Suffice it to say for now, then, that I hate it. Nonetheless, sometimes I experience a lapse in memory and judgment and attempt to do it anyway.

The ugly storm clouds on the morning of the planned thing indicated to me that it was probably going to be ruined. I was somewhat annoyed that they couldn't have come the day before or waited another day, but clouds are difficult to reason with. They're airheads. I considered praying, but realized how selfish it would be to ask God to subvert the natural weather patterns of this season just for me. It could have all kinds of bad environmental ramifications. Anyway, my prediction proved partially correct when she asked if we could postpone the thing, but she suggested we could walk around campus instead, and thought that would only be like twenty minutes because she's always super busy and virtually impossible to schedule time with, but it ended up being closer to two hours and we did a lot of talking and that's primarily what I wanted to do anyway so it was great.

I'm not accustomed to having deep discussions in person. I do have one close friend, "Quincy", that I engage in such discussions over the phone, but she usually does at least ninety percent of the talking. At other times I do it via Facebook or other textual mediums. So articulating myself was difficult at times and I stumbled over my words so often that if she didn't know better she would have thought I had a speech impediment. In writing, not only do I have time to form my thoughts, but I can change, rearrange, and delete words to my satisfaction before sending them out to be scrutinized. In speaking I don't have that luxury. Ah well.

Bracelets is a very impressive individual but, in order to keep this post a reasonable length and hopefully not say more than I should say, I will narrow my recollection down to three of the things that impressed me the most that evening (in no particular order).

1. Her phone beeped like seven times in two minutes. I thought someone was harassing her, but then realized that she just has a lot more friends than me. It beeped a few more times over the course of our time together, but she didn't take it out while we were talking or even when there was a lull in the conversation. For that, I mentally made her an honorary member of Gryffindor and awarded her a billion points.

2. She gave an impassioned spiel about how she knows what she wants and she's not going to settle for less. I was so proud to hear that, since I already know that some of what she wants, though perfectly reasonable, is very difficult to find these days in our degenerated society, and it had occurred to me to mention to her that she should hold out for it and not settle for less, but obviously I don't need to because she's already on top of things.

3. She gave an impassioned spiel about the importance of honesty and how it's important to know the truth even when the truth sucks. I wanted to applaud, because this touches on one of the things I hate the most about dating, where dishonesty is not only accepted but expected. The lies of which I have been on the receiving end were mostly intended to spare my feelings; but by insulting my intelligence and betraying my trust they had the opposite effect. After one particularly brutal occasion, as I was breaking down in tears to my bishop, he mused, "Our society gives women a free pass to lie for their convenience." And I was kind of stunned that he would say such a thing. I thought, Whoa, dude, you'd better not talk like that if you ever want to become a General Authority. You're supposed to pretend that women are perfect little angels who can do no wrong.

So anyway, honesty is very important to me and, though perfectly reasonable, very difficult to find these days in our degenerated society. And overall I just had a great time. I had been trying for over a month to do something with Bracelets, but she was always busy, and after a while it had gotten discouraging. But that evening, it was all worth it.

This week's song - not that I'm obligated to provide a song every week, but this week's song - is by Erasure who, thanks to the popularity of "Robot Unicorn Attack", are known by everybody and their dog for "Always". I found the CD with that song, and another one by them, at Hasting's for 97 cents each. So I purchased them both and on the one that doesn't have "Always" I was blown away on the second track by this gem. The video is really weird, as you can probably guess by looking at the preview.

I do think, in all modesty, that this post is much better than last week's. My plan to lower the bar worked.