I'm usually pretty chill about the prejudice against Aspies and autistic people. I figure countless millions of people have been discriminated against for stupid reasons, so who am I to think I'm better than them? Who am I to resent someone calling the cops on me for acting strange when better men than I have been murdered for their skin color? I sometimes see the phrase "screeching autistically" used as some kind of derisive and not particularly funny joke. While I'm at the high-functioning end of the spectrum and do not, to my knowledge, screech in this manner, still I have a kinship with those who do and therefore try to gently guilt-trip people out of mocking them. I saw a dumb teenager use the phrase a few weeks ago. It would have been silly for me to get upset, because when I was a dumb teenager my friends and I were quite unrestrained in throwing around words like "gay" and "retarded", mostly at each other. I cringe to think about that now. But I have less patience with adults, especially LDS adults, who should know better. The other day one used "miserable Aspie" as a slur against Jeremy Runnells who isn't even, to my knowledge, an Aspie. I told him to bite me. And I felt that I was symbolically saying it not just to him, but to the countless people throughout my life who have treated me like less than a person. So I'm still not perfect. Or sorry. The Logan institute recently did its closing social and made it Star Wars themed. Mormons love Star Wars for theological reasons in addition to the reasons that everyone else loves Star Wars. Each room was supposed to represent a different location from one of the movies, and while they were in the planning stages I took the liberty of contributing unsolicited and tasteless suggestions. These were better ideas than what they did for the opening social. They were calling one of the rooms "The Friend Zone" which was a clever joke because it was a place where you went to make friends. But not many people came in. I think they were afraid that if they came in, they would never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever leave. We made several Star Wars decorations. The most bizarre in my opinion was a cutout of Darth Vader saying "Great leaders inspire greatness in others." Sorry, what? Did we leave off the end of the quote? "...by punishing failure with death," or something? This is Darth Vader, not Jesus. I heard there were several activities at this social but since one of them was an actual Star Wars movie, none of the others mattered. I heard one of them was a dance. The only dance move that most Mormons know, at least in this country, is jumping. Most people would call it "jumping up and down" but that's stupid because you only jump up and then the down part just kind of happens by itself. It's a cool move, but it's not my favorite. What are my favorites? I'm glad you asked! Let me show you! The "George McFly"The "Salacious Crumb"The "Clone Troopers"The "Obscure Peanuts"The "Aman Mathur"The "Emo Philips"The "Wayne's World" (especially for Rammstein)The "The Cheat"The "Italian Schoolgirl"The "Russian Riverdancer"The "What is Love?"I had to make more than half of those GIFs myself, and it was a real pain in the neck. Please read this post twice to justify the amount of work I put into it. ThanksgivingI suppose now that I'm feeling less lazy I should record something for posterity about visiting my grandparents for Thanksgiving. They live in eastern Idaho. It's a beautiful place if you like seeing eight hundred cow fields in a row, which I don't particularly, but I love it anyway. Up until a few years ago my grandparents had cows too. Cows are one of the ubiquitous animals that everyone, at least in the western hemisphere, knows about from infancy, but if you've only seen them in pictures and/or from a distance you may be surprised to discover how massive they are. I was. And if you've never had your hand sucked on by a calf before, put it on your bucket list. It feels amazing until you pull your hand out. I went back to the now-empty barn to look around and, surprise, it still smells like cows. My sense of smell is virtually nonexistent but one of the few things I can smell, fortunately for my nostalgia, is cows. I found two kittens sleeping, got closer, and then found that they weren't sleeping but were in fact part of a cluster of ten dead kittens in varying stages of decay. How they all came to be in that spot is perhaps best left to the imagination. Next to the barn is a shed full of junk, including no fewer than nine bicycles and an old-timey radio. Whenever I see it I think it would be cool to fix it up and use it, but then I remember that it would still only play modern stations and that would totally kill the magic. And then, outside, there's like twenty enormous farm machines that are probably going to stay right where they are until the Second Coming. It's weird to think that one day Grandpa just turned each one off and never used it again. Kind of like how one day your parents put you down and never picked you up again. And they can't have been cheap. The main way we spend time together when I'm there is by watching TV. In all seriousness, I feel that it brings me closer to them. As soon as Thanksgiving was over we watched "The Muppet Christmas Carol", the Rockettes Radio City Music Hall Christmas show from 2007, a ghost movie called "The Spirit of Christmas" that was all right but should have been half an hour longer to flesh out the reasons for the romance, and the first few minutes of some movie called "Noel". They turned it off after someone said to the protagonist, "You need sex. Good sex." My sister thought that it should have been PG-13 but since it was made a long time ago, in 2004, it must have been before the PG-13 rating was created. She was only off by twenty years. But none of them had minded a few minutes earlier when the protagonist said something like, "I'm doing great! You know, single woman over forty during the Christmas season! Just keep me away from any kitchen knives or open windows for the next few days! Ha ha... heh..." So I'm not sure why the word "sex" is more offensive than a joke about suicide. Although I'd be lying if I said I didn't find said joke hilarious. But they turned that off and I requested "The Santa Clause" because I hadn't seen it in a very long time. Well, I don't know what else to say about this vacation now but I really just wanted to say something about how big cows are. Auralnauts - Jedi PartySo how do actual Jedi dance? Look no further to find out! This is from the redubbed Star Wars film "Attack of the Phantom Past" and makes sense in context. Kind of.
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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. Rammstein - Spieluhr [Music Box]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 Despite my incompetence the first time around, they let me drive the forklift at work again yesterday. Forgiveness is a beautiful thing. I didn't hit anything this time, but I noticed that I have really lame depth perception re: telling if the forks are an inch or a foot off the floor. I obviously need to play more video games and work on that. That's the only thing I drive, so many people have stepped forward to give me rides home from work, which is really awesome of them. Sometimes they'll be like "I need to get gas real quick; is that all right?" or "I'm going to grab some food real quick; is that all right?" or something to that effect and of course it's always all right. One evening one of them was like, "I need to pick up my husband on the way; is that all right?" and I was amused because what kind of a question is that? What was I going to say, "No, it's not all right, I forbid it"? If it ever comes up again I'm going to say that just for kicks, but this time around I didn't and that was that. So when time came to leave I got in the middle of her van and she said "You can sit in the front" and I said "We're getting your husband, aren't we? I just assumed you would rather sit next to him" and she laughed because apparently that was funny. She said she felt like a chauffeur but she seemed more like a mom, honestly, seeing as we were in a van and all. I felt like she should be taking me to soccer practice even though I've never been in soccer practice because I've never been on a soccer team. She then decided to just take me home before she got her husband, so that was whatever. But when she decided the same thing the next wing, I wondered aloud whether he knew that I existed and whether he would be upset if he did. I already have one neighbor who hates me because he thought his wife was flirting with me even though she wasn't (a story recounted here), and as hilarious as that is to me, making it a regular thing doesn't seem like a good idea. Some people are so insecure. Jocelyn usually takes me home on Fridays and last week she mentioned she had a date right after work, which was weird because I often forget that anyone goes on dates because hardly anyone ever talks about it. Yay for not being at BYU. I inquired about it and learned that there was some institute activity that I hadn't heard about because I hadn't been to institute in a few weeks due to always being at work. In the past I would have been involved in planning and setting it up. She described it as some kind of "sports night", and I don't much care about sports but I try to go to all the institute activities even if only for a while, so I said she could just take me there and I'd slip away and do my own thing. She went and colored in the lobby while I wandered around looking at the various activities, and I saw her a couple times still in the lobby sans date, and I didn't want to get involved and create awkwardness but I figured I could ask about it later and if he'd stood her up I would hurt him. More notably, it began to dawn on me that there were a lot of couples around. Like, a lot. In fact, in the Mario Kart room I observed that of the twenty other people present, all twenty were paired off. One of these things is not like the others. One of these things doesn't belong. It was like prom all over again. How strange, I thought, has the institute really been stressing this sort of thing in the last couple weeks? In my peripheral vision I noticed one of the teachers approaching and looking, insofar as I could determine, not very happy. The last person who approached me like that was the security guard who kicked me out of Temple Square, so I thought something similar was about to happen, but he stopped and just stood a few feet away for a while and contributed to my discomfort. I would have liked to play Mario Kart but that would have created an odd number so I just went home. Wandering through campus for unrelated reasons the next day, I spotted the poster for the event and noticed that it was titled "Date Night". A little detail that Jocelyn forgot to mention. Had I known that, I wouldn't have bothered going, but with the way things turned out I am rather amused at my own little accidental act of rebellion. And fortunately Jocelyn's date did show up, just fifty minutes late, so I didn't have to hurt anyone either. This story didn't take as long to tell as I thought it would, but I guess it will have to do. Dj Mangoo - EurodancerI once listened to this on repeat about twenty times. Clearly I need help. This video is pretty cool too, despite its terrible quality. It makes you wonder how often this kind of stuff happens without a camera fortuitously capturing it. Still tired. Have you ever felt the urge to barge into someone's room, tear their alarm out of the wall and shove it down their throat? Me neither. I was just curious. My life kind of revolves around my job these days, which is all right with me as it fulfills my financial, social, and music related needs all quite handily. I had a terrible day this week where everything went wrong and I felt like I was being eaten alive for hours, and it was still better than any day at my previous job other than the Independence Day picnic. In one other day this week I learned that the guy I've thought of as Jason for as long as I've worked there is actually Nick, that Naomi dyed her hair a long time ago even though I just noticed it, and that both of the red-haired girls are the same person. What a day that was. And what a small world it is too. Yesterday at lunch Malone was like, "I'm going to St. George with Mark Bell." And Jess was like, "Oh, I know him." And I was like, "I know him too." And Kailey was like, "Sorry, what are we talking about? Oh, I know him." I don't have much to say besides work stuff but I'm not sure that anyone else would much care about it, so... I shouldn't need to remind you that we celebrated a very special holiday this week. I am referring, of course, to Darwin Day on the twelfth. Get it? It's funny because you probably thought I was talking about Valentine's Day but then I revealed that I wasn't. The only thing I was going to say about Valentine's Day was that hating Valentine's Day because you're single is like hating Christmas because you're an atheist, but I realized that's a stupid analogy because atheists still get presents on Christmas. At least I assume they do and they can correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway, Charles Darwin's birthday has been celebrated off and on and here and there for well over a century, but it only became official for the whole United States a couple years ago. I remember well that it was covered on the front page of the Utah Statesman with a picture of some human ancestor skull fragments, and like always there were free stacks of it in the LDS institute next to the Deseret News and I knew that was probably making a few heads explode. The institute put on a dance last Friday like they typically do in February, but took a different approach this time. I don't remember what they've done all the way back when but in 2014 they did a ladies' choice dance and advertised it as for "Dates Only", sending the message that if no woman wanted you then neither did they. The next year they did another ladies' choice dance but removed that tagline, though it remained de facto because no one went alone. I know that because I was there because to my great surprise someone asked me to it. The next next year, they did another ladies' choice dance and someone asked me to it again. I know this is all very repetitive for both long-time followers of my blog, but since most people just read an occasional post when it shows up in their news feed, I'm writing for their benefit and you'll just have to be patient. This year I figured my luck had run out because I'm not in school and virtually everyone at work is taken. But this year they decided to do a Singles' Awareness Dance instead. Get it? It's funny because the acronym spells SAD. Like Students Against Driving. The poster said semi-formal refreshments would be served but I don't know what that was supposed to mean because they just looked normal to me. I always go to dances to absorb energy from the crowd and experience music differently than I usually get to with headphones, and also out of loyalty since I usually help set them up as part of the LDSSA Service Committee. They don't happen very often so they provide a nice change of pace. This time, though, I wasn't really into it. My feet were tired and I couldn't stop yawning and most of the music wasn't really my thing. Someone told me to go ask a lady to dance, but I hid in an alcove so he would leave me alone. After some debate and an hour and a half I left to go grocery shopping and listen to my own superior music at home. Here's one of the songs I recently discovered, and I can't believe how beautiful it is or that the artist never became popular. It's the B-Side to the M.B.4 single "Ewok Celebration & Star Wars", a disco version of the original "Yub Nub" song that was replaced in the Special Edition of "Return of the Jedi", not to be confused with Meco's better-known disco version that I already posted last July. M.B.4's version is a lot more mellow and trance-y, and I could describe it better if I actually knew any legit music terminology like my friend Scott. But that's irrelevant because it's not what I'm posting. Give this a listen and see if it gets stuck in your head like it does in mine, and if you don't mind that any more than I do. (It's not as long as it looks. This video has like three minutes of silence at the end for some reason.) It feels weird to have wi-fi in the house for the first time in over a year. It was supposed to start on the first, but didn't work for nearly two weeks. When it did, the roommate who got it opted to name it "ExclusivelyForGayPorn", which is pretty funny if you're twelve. His brother changed it to "Silence of the LAN". He changed it back to "ExclusivelyForGayPorn". His brother got home, changed it to "StopBeingADickAmmon" and told me, "Maybe he'll get the hint." He did then change it back to "ExclusivelyForGayPorn" once again, but decided to make peace and voluntarily changed it again to "TroyAndAbedInTheMODEM", which is a reference to a show that I've only seen a couple episodes of. I am madly in love with my job. How it works, for all of you who have been wondering, which I'm sure is all of you, is trucks drop off a bunch of books from thrift stores and stuff all over the west, then they get dumped onto a couple of conveyor belts and the workers at stations on either side of them pick them up. CDs, DVDs, and video games get tossed into a special bin, magazines or obviously broken books get tossed and recycled, and VHS tapes and cassettes and pretty much anything else gets thrown in the garbage. If it's an actual book, we scan the barcode or enter the ISBN manually if it doesn't have one (and if it doesn't have an ISBN at all it gets put in another special bin); then the computer looks it up and determines if they'll be able to make a profit on it. If not, or if it's not in good enough condition, it gets tossed and recycled. If so it gets labeled as "Very Good", "Good", or "Acceptable", and set aside and either sold through Amazon or directly from the company; I don't know how they determine that. Probably eighty to ninety percent of the books end up getting recycled, and they make money off that too, apparently a lot because I don't know how else they stay in business. Perhaps I should be sad about having to throw away so many books, but really, just seeing and handling all of them is enough to make me happy. I just don't take it personally - except when I want to. I definitely allowed myself some pleasure in tossing books like "Fifty Shades of Grey", "The Lie: Evolution", and "Intermediate Algebra". It did pain me somewhat to have to put a "Very Good" sticker on Hillary Clinton's autobiography. But what can you do? We all have to abandon our principles for money at one time or another. I've had to handle a lot of dirty books the last couple days. So many, in fact, that when I washed my hands afterward the water turned brown. This week has marked a few anniversaries. First, of course, was the terrorist attack anniversary on the eleventh. I regret that I cannot pontificate on it with any feeling of sincerity because it has never resonated emotionally with me at all. I was eight, I was in the car on the way to a dentist appointment and I heard something on the radio about planes crashing into buildings, and I didn't care because I knew that terrible things happened throughout the world every day and as far as I knew this was just another of them. My parents later sat us down and explained what had happened and why it was a big deal, but it was the first time I had ever heard of the World Trade Center, so it was still difficult to feel the impact, and I still don't. It's little more ingrained into my life than the Kennedy assassination. I've said before, though, and I'll say again, that the terrorists won. Fifteen years later we're a lot less free but no safer. The fourteenth was my own year anniversary of meeting Debbie, which I know not because I'm a creeper but because I found the sacrament program announcing the activity where we met, which was supposed to be a beach thing but due to weather was changed to a screening of "The Cokeville Miracle", which made me cry until I couldn't breathe. After that she saw me leaving on foot and made me cram into her car with four other guys. Some time later she made me get into her car again, though she was alone this time, and I didn't remember her at all from the first time, but when a pretty girl tells me to get into her car I don't ask questions. The sixteenth was the three year anniversary of meeting the most interesting girl I've ever met, one who made me start thinking that maybe vampires are real. That story is recounted here. Errata: Last week I said that there may be "one or two Canadians" reading this, and that was somewhat rude of me to overlook the person in Ireland who visits with some regularity. At least I assume it's just one person. Maybe it's Enya or Liam Neeson. The Mormon SectionThe Logan institute has some female teachers now. Maybe it has in the past, but not while I've been here, so it's about time. Institute teacher is not a priesthood calling. I attended one of their classes out of curiosity. She talked about how she and her husband are building a house together and he agreed to everything she wanted in it because he wanted her to be happy, so she didn't realize that he didn't actually like it. When she realized, she halted construction and insisted on redesigning the whole thing. With a combination of tears and laughter she announced to us that it was the most expensive mistake she's ever made. She said that he said that no one has ever loved him like that before. I enjoyed this story because I never get to hear this perspective. I always just hear about men doing things to please their wives, which is great of course, but marriage is actually about both partners, not just the females, so hearing this side of the equation was a breath of fresh air. Adriano Celentano - PrisencolinensinainciusolIf I ever teach English as a second language, for a joke final exam I'm going to show the students this song with instructions to identify and define in context all the English words they hear. I can imagine the panic and consternation in their eyes already. This looks like the most interesting class ever, for multiple reasons. Bonus Track: |
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- Amelia Whitlock "I don't know how well you know Christopher Randall Nicholson, but... he's trolling. You should read his blog. It's delightful." - David Young About the AuthorC. Randall Nicholson is a white cisgender Christian male, so you can hate him without guilt, but he's also autistic and asexual, so you can't, unless you're an anti-vaxxer, in which case the feeling is mutual. This blog is where he periodically rants about life, the universe, and/or everything. Archives
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