I've grown rather tired of doing this every week, and I feel that the quality of my posts has declined sharply as a result (insert your own quip about not being able to tell the difference here), but I can't stop now, can I? When I migrated here from Webs, which is an impossibly incompetent and terrible company, I decided to post every week because consistency would be more likely to get readers than doing it just whenever I felt like it, as was my previous strategy. Then around the time I wanted to give it up, at least for a while, Bracelets came into my life and discovered it and loved it and I felt that I could not disappoint her. I really wish I had come up with a better nickname for her. I could have just called her Emily. Emily could even be her real name, and you still wouldn't be able to find her among the other fifty Emilys (Emilies?) that I know. My favorite Emily doesn't even know that I exist, and probably never will. I admire her from a distance, listening to her speak and hanging onto every word. She's my favorite Kool 103.9 DJ because she always has her own little commentary on the news stories and doesn't hold it back, and because she often announces the name and artist of the upcoming song so that if I've never heard it before and I like it I don't have to pay really close attention to the lyrics so I can look it up later. And unlike Dave Denton and Benji Wood (the latter who feels the need to announce his name every five minutes), she has opted not to divulge her last name, retaining a certain aura of mystery. My other frustration with this blog is how it's evolved into just a random jumble of stuff with no rhyme or reason. I didn't set out to make it that way. In the days when I just wrote whenever I felt like it, sometimes I could devote a whole post to a single topic like a normal person. But no more. I just feel like it's gotten out of hand. And as a corollary to that, these topics often include items of Mormon news or culture so in-depth that 99% of everyone else would neither understand nor give a rat's tail about them. That's kind of disruptive and unfair to non-Mormon readers, if in fact I even have any, who may give up and not keep reading afterward when the topic shifts again. So I've decided upon a solution so childishly simple I should have done it to begin with. I will save that stuff for the end and give it a label so those who don't understand or care about it can skip it. I would like to think that I have grown more tolerant of people mixing up "you're" and "your", "their", "they're" and "there", "too" and "to", "whose" and "who's", etcetera. I used to consider this a sign of low intelligence but changed my mind a while ago when an intelligent person who does that proved me wrong. However, I draw the line at "her's", because "her's" is not a freaking word in any context whatsoever. There is literally no conceivable situation in which you could say "her is" as a coherent grammatical unit (as opposed to something like "The only way to defeat her is to aim for her soft underbelly") and be correct. Why is it so difficult for people to not insert nonexistent apostrophes everywhere? Responding to an open invitation, I ended up at a campfire at Second Dam with some people from the ward and some other people. Providentially, it was two days after someone randomly gave me a bag of marshmallows that I never would have finished on my own. The highlight of this event was listening to ghost stories which were particularly riveting because they were first or second hand, and in such an instance I tossed all skepticism aside and chose to believe because of the coolness factor. Jit said that back in India there was this grove of mangoes (I think) where eighty percent of the people who went in at night got sick, and people reported seeing a strange white light or something. The large feral cats who could decapitate me with one swipe of a paw would be sufficient motivation for me to stay out of any wooded areas in India at night anyway. He then mentioned waking up one night as a child and seeing a man next to his bed, and when he called for his mother and she turned on the light he wasn't there. I would have never slept again. Not that I do much anyway. Then this girl had so many stories about her own house, from herself and her parents and siblings, that we felt constrained to ask many times, "Your family still lives there why exactly?" The one that intrigued me the most was of her seeing some kind of tall, skinny figure looking through her open bedroom door at night. It was a long time ago and she didn't even know if it was a dream or not, but she has closed her door every night since then. Other people who stayed at her house mentioned something similar so that was enough evidence for my coolness-factor-biased self. What made it so intriguing for me was that she said it didn't seem human to her. I wanted more details. I wanted her to draw a picture or at least describe it more, but she didn't want to. I've never seen a ghost, sadly, but hearing these stories did remind me of some of my childhood fears. I had more than one nightmare about a man with a computer monitor for a head. It was one of those big bulky ones, antique now but contemporary at the time. And its screen was always black and he never said a word and he never chased me, but he just stood there or sat there looking like the creepiest thing ever, and I hated it. I also got scared because the lamp on my desk looked like it was rotating in the dark, and my mom had to move it. I was a pansy. Then there were the movie villains like Ursula from "The Little Mermaid" and Hexxus from "Fern Gully" and Yzma from "The Emperor's New Groove". That movie came out when I was seven, and there was a life-size cardboard cutout of the main characters at Wal-Mart. I saw it in my peripheral vision and thought something along the lines of, "There was a woman there. I wonder if she's hot." So I took a closer look. Hello, sleepless nights. Then one Family Home Evening my dad was like "I just rented The Emperor's New Groove and we should watch it" and I decided to face my fear and not be a pansy, and I got over it. Yay! Some readers may be uncomfortable about the following story, but it's true, so I can't help it. In ninth grade there was a new Global Studies teacher named Mr. Twyman. (Mr. Twyman met a pieman going to the fair. Said Mr. Twyman to the pieman, "Let me taste your wares." etc.) I heard the backstory of the story later from one of the other teachers, Mr. Morrison. Basically, Mr. Twyman came to Mr. Morrison one day and said, "Can I borrow one of your videos about Africa?" And Mr. Morrison was kind of busy so without really looking up he just said "Sure, go ahead." So Mr. Twyman grabbed one and showed it to the class. I don't remember how long it was or what it was about exactly, but there was some kind of ceremony involving topless women dancing. That was the first time I remember seeing topless women outside of old paintings and statues, and my reaction was, That's it? That's what all the fuss since first grade has been about? You have got to be joking. I've since realized that things like that are non-sexual contexts anyway and therefore not a big deal, which I suppose is why Mr. Twyman didn't stop the video even though he was starting to look uncomfortable. So no, that wasn't a big deal, not really. But that wasn't the only surprise this video had in store for us. I don't think it was a minute later that some guys brought out a goat, bleating and struggling and obviously not pleased with whatever was about to happen. Now the students' murmurs of titillation shifted to murmurs of concern and Mr. Twyman looked even more uncomfortable, but he assured us, "It's okay, kids, the goat doesn't get hurt." Bzzt! Wrong! One knife plus one copious spurt of blood equals one very dead goat. When this day was discussed among the students years later, it was not the topless dancers but the goat sacrifice that they went on about. I always wondered if this was why Mr. Twyman didn't come back to teach the next year. The Mormon Section The Face2Face event with Elder Holland and those others was good, as I'm sure everyone anticipated. I was grateful for the last question because it was reflective of the one I had asked regarding an issue that I've lost sleep over for years. I would have been rather peeved if, after devoting three questions and approximately an hour to marriage, they never got around to that topic. The event went on for nearly twice as long as I expected and I wonder if that was intentional or if they were just having such a good time they let it keep going. To what extent are these things scripted? And how old are Whatshisname and Maddy? I'm pretty sure they were the moderators for the last Face2Face event too, the one for youths. So are they youths or YSAs? Just curious. Well, I don't have as much to put in this section today, but I'm just setting a precedent that will hopefully serve me well in the future. Golden Films - Peter Rabbit's Hippity HopThis is the song that gets stuck in my head every time in tae kwon do when we have to jump over and between and around the pads. I suspect that no one listens to the songs that I post here anyway, so I don't feel too embarrassed about posting this one. Inki and the Minah Bird (Because Why Not?)This is one of the strangest cartoons I've ever seen, but I like it. The Minah Bird is an underrated and unjustly forgotten character. Inki is an offensive racial stereotype but honestly isn't half as goofy as Elmer Fudd or Yosemite Sam so whatever.
0 Comments
(Just because I liked the profundity and accuracy of that comic and I've been trying to open with a comic most of the time because people like pictures. This has nothing to do with anything else in the post.) The highlight of this week was that the authorities were able to stop someone I care about from killing himself. This was made possible by him posting his suicide note on Facebook. He explained that he felt like a monster who just made people miserable and didn't belong on this planet, so he wanted to go be with God and the angels and love people from a distance where he couldn't hurt them. At times like this, calling the police is generally the best option because dissuading people in this condition may be impossible. Reporting it to Facebook is also good but not sufficient. He is now in the hospital and out of immediate danger, but of course the problems which drove him into that state of mind in the first place have not magically disappeared, nor will they. I hope he can work through them, but in the meantime it would be really, really helpful if people (aka Mormons who should know better) would stop treating him like trash. (Reading this to myself, it kind of looks like I'm talking about myself in a thinly veiled and roundabout way. I don't know if it looks that way to anyone else, but in case it does, let me clarify firmly that I am not.) You know what's a really, really stupid word? "Mansplain". I know what it means, but what it looks like is someone just picked a random one-syllable word and shoved it into the word "explain" with no rhyme or reason. It's about as catchy and clever as "forksplain" or "chairsplain" or "sheepsplain" - that is to say, not at all. Here are three alternatives, any one of which is easily a hundred times better because some actual intelligent thought went into it: "manalyze", "mannotate", and "demanstrate". You're welcome. Now, in an effort to win back everyone I just alienated, I will attack a cheap and easy target that no one will defend. You know what else is a really, really stupid word? "Bae". Now, people are fond of pointing out that it's the Danish word for "poop", but I'm going to be controversial and say I don't actually think that's relevant to those of us who are speaking English and not Danish. I'm sure there are many homonyms across languages that happen to be the "same" word despite lacking a common origin or meaning. I wanted to say precisely how many, or at least a rough estimate, but apparently no one has studied that. But really, this attack is needless overkill anyway because "bae" is just a stupid word to begin with. It just makes people sound too mentally deficient to pronounce "babe". That's why I hate it. I forgot to share the charming stories of how I got a math textbook and in iClicker. I had arranged to meet someone on campus and buy the math textbook from her for twenty dollars, which was really nice since it would have cost fifty-four dollars just to rent a used one. I told her I would wear my R2-D2 hat to make sure she would recognize me. She pulled up in her car, ran to me, staring at the ground, and we exchanged the money for the book in one fluid motion as she said "Here's this for you thank you very much have a nice day!" She didn't even glance at the money as it went into her hand. If I were an unscrupulous person with a time machine, I could go back and give her one dollar instead of twenty. Then she left as quickly as she had come. When I looked at the bottom of the book's cover I saw the possible reason why: "This edition is for sale on the Indian subcontinent only. Not for export elsewhere." Then I arranged to get an iClicker from someone else for fifteen dollars. It was an iClicker 1, which was all I needed for Stats because we aren't going to use any of the special buttons that the iClicker 2 introduced. This took a bit more doing to arrange but we did it, again I wore my R2-D2 hat, and again the person seemed frantic to get it over with. I don't get it. I get that they had no reason to stick around, but why act as if they almost on the verge of panic? Maybe they were both die-hard Trekkies and didn't want to be seen in public near my hat. Anyway, she gave me that and I turned it on to see if it had batteries and was working. It did and it was. Within five minutes, I had dropped it and I joked to myself that it had probably stopped working. It had. I was rather annoyed. That evening I dropped in on my neighbor to use his screwdriver and try to fix it myself, reasoning that something had probably been jarred loose and maybe I could identify it and glue it or something. We couldn't get it open, though, because there were only two screws and one other attachment point where a screw should have been but wasn't. Then my neighbor's roommate, who is technically also my neighbor, saw what I was doing and asked if I just wanted to take his iClicker that he never used anymore. His was an iClicker 2, which, as previously mentioned, I didn't need, but now I can fit in with all the cool kids. Then my neighbor invited me to stay and watch the first episode of that show everyone has been talking about, "Making a Murderer". It made me very, very angry. The show I mean, not the invitation. To recap, the series as a whole is about Steve Avery allegedly being wrongfully convicted of murder based on dubious evidence because people had it in for him, and there's some controversy as to whether the documentary fairly presented both sides of the story so I'm not qualified to comment on that. But what's beyond dispute, and what the first episode focuses on, is that before that he was wrongfully convicted of rape, despite a great deal of evidence exonerating him and decent evidence pointing to the actual rapist (who remained free for another decade and raped at least two more women), because people had it in for him. It makes my blood boil that innocent people's lives are ruined by false accusations of heinous crimes, and all the more so when the accusers know they're false. People who knowingly falsely accuse other people of rape or murder should get exactly the same sentence as the accused would get. Ideally, rapists and murderers and false accusers would all get the death penalty, but precisely because so many innocent people are convicted this is awkward to enforce in practice. So we won't kill you, innocent person, we'll just ruin your reputation and take away a decade or three of your life and then "compensate" you with less than minimum wage, if anything. Grrr. Looking around in church one afternoon, thinking to myself: Haley, you look uncharacteristically short today. Are you slunched over? [pause] I don't think "slunched" is a real word. Well, it should be. I like it. Sitting in Sunday School, as the teacher drew an asymmetrical curvy thing on the blackboard and explained: "That's supposed to be an arch." The guys behind me whispered. "There wouldn't happen to be a keystone in this arch, would there?" "What's a keystone?" "Don't worry, she'll explain it." (I'm sorry that my one if any non-Mormon readers probably have no idea why I found this amusing. It wasn't actually funny enough to justify explaining, but it was in reference to a popular metaphor about the Book of Mormon, which you should totally read.) Elder Dallin H. Oaks once said that sometimes "a volunteer will step forward to present what he or she considers to be the Church’s position. Sometimes these volunteers are well-informed and capable, and they contribute to a balanced presentation. Sometimes they are not, and their contribution makes matters worse. When attacked by error, truth is better served by silence than by a bad argument." And sometimes, thanks to the magic of social media, that bad argument is mindlessly accepted, liked, and shared by thousands of Mormons because they want it to be true. I am referring specifically in this instance to Rodney Meldrum's scientifically bogus claims about alleged DNA evidence supporting the Book of Mormon which, though hardly new, have recently been given new life by several Mormon Facebook pages that should know better. What the Church says about such things: "Nothing is known about the DNA of Book of Mormon peoples, and even if their genetic profile were known, there are sound scientific reasons that it might remain undetected. For these same reasons, arguments that some defenders of the Book of Mormon make based on DNA studies are also speculative. In short, DNA studies cannot be used decisively to either affirm or reject the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon." What one of the pages, LDS SMILE, said to me when I complained: "It was never meant to "prove" anything but simply a perspective that one person had. I understand full well that it's not definitive as I spent 10 years as a cardiovascular genetic researcher. I get it but it was a post that resonated with our readers that we wanted to share." Translation: "I know this is a load of crap, but people like it, so I don't care." Here's the funny thing about science - some guy with no credentials or expertise can't just make up whatever "perspective" he wants, misrepresent and strategically omit evidence to make it look credible to the uninformed, and expect it to magically be valid. This is not "simply a perspective that one person had", and not merely "not definitive" - it's wrong, period. And I find it extremely disturbing that these things go so viral while the sane comments and rebuttals get only a fraction of a percent of the same attention, because they aren't what people want to hear. It has been said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while truth is still putting its boots on (which has been fittingly attributed to Mark Twain even though he probably never said it and certainly didn't originate it), and that was long before social media came along so that now it can travel completely around the world while truth is still asleep. People who base their faith on what they want to be true rather than what actually is true are building on a very sandy foundation for themselves and embarrassing the Church for everyone. Guy on the internet: "...I don't give a rip about 'credentials'..." Me: "...So you don't care if some random wacko from off the street performs your surgery?..." *cricket chirps* President Harold B. Lee once said that "it never ceases to amaze me how gullible some of our Church members are", and while he was referring specifically to the mindless spreading of false urban legends, the principles he discussed apply here as well. I myself am not merely amazed at it, but also dismayed, disturbed, and downright disgusted. People, I implore you with all the fervor of which I am capable, use some common sense. Remember how I said that I would probably fail Latin now that my ex-crush isn't here to help me? Remember how maybe you thought that was intended to be a joke? Well, it wasn't. Instead of whatshisname, today I have chosen to present the charming Carla Ulbrich, in a lovely little song taken from her fabulous debut, "Her Fabulous Debut". Carla Ulbrich - What if Your Girlfriend Was GonePerhaps our culture's romanticization of pirates isn't as undeserved as I thought. I went to a museum exhibit about them today and learned that they didn't kill many people, had a democratic and sort of an egalitarian society amongst themselves, and just wanted an alternative life to the hell that awaited them in legitimate maritime occupations. Many black people were pirates, and it was basically their only alternative to slavery. Of course they were still bad guys, but now I have to kind of admire them along with everyone else. (I mean that everyone else admires them, not that I admire everyone else, as I most certainly do not.)
I was surprised, though, to learn that pirates actually did use the Jolly Roger and variations thereof. I thought that was a myth/Hollywood invention, since going around broadcasting the fact that they're pirates doesn't seem like the brightest idea. I think it was just during raids. I don't remember because there was a lot of stuff to take in. Speaking of surprising historical accuracy, "A Knight's Tale" had much more than I anticipated when I watched it recently. Looking at the box I assumed it was a totally and deliberately anachronistic comedy along the lines of "Shrek" (though presumably with fewer talking animals). However, the only glaring anachronisms were the late-twentieth-century pop songs, and the rest were mainly along the lines of "we didn't bother to research the difference between fourteenth and sixteenth-century fashions". I had hoped that despite its anticipated lack of seriousness the film would provide some inspiration for my own fourteenth-century project, but it was set in 1370s Western Europe while mine is set in 1350s Eastern Europe, so not much luck there. It was still thoroughly enjoyable, though, if a bit confusing, but I shan't get into that because it would be a spoiler. I will just say this. There is a part where the hero tries to win back his ticked off love interest with a poem, which is actually pieced together from the suggestions of his compatriots. She loves it and ceases to be ticked off, but when they meet in person again she demands to hear more poetry on the spot, and he's all like "Oh crud." As a decent writer, albeit not much of a poet, I just want to say that this would have been a highly unreasonable demand even if he really had written the poem himself. There are surely some people who can spontaneously compose beautiful poetry, but they constitute a very small minority. Writing takes time, thought, rearranging, and editing. The words don't usually just flow out like magic. Granted, for me it is much easier than speaking. The great dating guru Arianna Rees once said not to write things that you can't say in person, but if I followed that advice I would have to dumb down my writing about a thousand percent. Still, there is room for improvement, as I started using the "Grammarly" tool recently and discovered that my grammar isn't as great as I thought. In most cases, though, I don't care, because as long as one is intelligible, writing with an authentic voice is more important than being a stickler for every little rule. Just imaging how boring Douglas Adams would have been if he followed all the rules instead of being witty. I learned a new word recently: humblebrag. It means "to make an ostensibly modest or self-deprecating statement with the actual intention of drawing attention to something of which one is proud." For example, my boss told me that the guys across the street said that I'm a whiz kid with social media. How ironic it is for me to be considered good at anything with the word "social" in its name. I got to help stomp out an Idaho grass fire yesterday before it spread out of control and destroyed who knows how much terrain and property. It was already pretty big and took about three minutes to stomp out with four other guys. So that was exciting. The moral of this story is: Dear cigarette smokers, give yourself cancer if you insist, but please have the decency to not throw your butts out your car window. Not only is it littering, which is despicable in and of itself, but it can lead to a bunch of destruction and then saying you're sorry won't fix anything. Usually when I talk to people about deep stuff the most I can hope for is to be validated. If I'm lucky I can be understood. If I'm really lucky they not only understand but agree with me and say that things that I was thinking but never said, thus revealing that perhaps a few things about me aren't completely abnormal. It takes a lot of trust to discuss these things; trust which in one case I am now betraying by mentioning it up here. This person said: "Butts are super gross. The problem I have with them is a lot of guys['] and girls['] butts look the same. So why am I attracted to one and repulsed by the other[?] Context. Haha. That is the only difference." Hormones: saying "screw logic" since about 450 million B.C. That actually happened. The rest of this I made up. That night, he received an unexpected visit from a representative of the Hormone Mafia, hereafter referred to simply as a goon. "Look, amico," it said, "if you wanna reproduce then I suggest you don't question our judgment, capiche?" "But -" he began, but the goon cut him off. "No buts," it said. "And no pun intended. If you know what's good for you, then you're gonna like what we tell you to like, whether you like it or not, capiche?" "Yeah, I capiche," said my friend, causing the goon to noticeably cringe at this butchering of the Italian language. "I just don't like this cognitive dissonance, that's all." "Ha!" said the goon. "You really should have thought of that before you evolved critical thinking skills. We were here first. On that note, tell your buddies in the parietal lobe that next time we're taking no prisoners, capiche?" In closing, Planned Parenthood is still in trouble as more behind the scenes videos are released. Some have disputed that any profit was being made on the fetus parts, but even if not, they are clearly still in violation of other laws. Who can expect any less from an organization that has already been caught in so many legal and ethical violations? One wonders if they will ever go too far, or if the government and the nation will continue to turn a blind eye for eternity. It isn't as important as a lion being killed in Zimbabwe, after all. Some actual good news: "Cosmopolitan" finally being recognized and treated as the filth that it is. So, yay! And in other good news, I fixed my disk usage problems (mostly) so that now it is usually under fifty percent and often in single digits, but Google Chrome is still slow as death. Heavy sigh. In closing for real this time, there may have been a time when I confined my posts to one or two topics rather than jumping all over the place all the time, but that time is evidently past, at least for the time being. To anyone who doesn't like it, I'm sorry. To anyone who does, you're welcome. See you next time. |
"Guys. Chris's blog is the stuff of legends. If you’re ever looking for a good read, check this out!"
- 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
May 2024
Categories
All
|