Because some of my earliest memory fragments - I'm talking two, three years old - are about the first Carmen Sandiego game show, it didn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling last October when a Pumpkin Walk exhibit devoted to the greatest thief of all time prompted a couple of little kids nearby to ask, "Who the heck is that?" This underrated and unappreciated character has been on a bit of hiatus, it's true, but since it's only a matter of time before every piece of media ever created by humans gets twelve sequels, a reboot, and/or a remake, Netflix is stepping in to introduce her to a new generation. Yay! Mostly.

Make no mistake, I'm excited to watch this. But I also want to critique a little, because that's what people come to my blog for, no? Okay, so in case you were too lazy or unable to watch the trailer, it's basically about how Carmen Sandiego attended a thief school called V.I.L.E. but turned against it when she realized that crime isn't a game. She decided to only steal from other thieves, to protect artifacts. And Netflix is advertising this series as the backstory for the very same lady in red we all should know and hate to love, okay?

But Netflix seems to be deliberately ignoring a kind of crucial piece of information...

CARMEN SANDIEGO IS A VILLAIN.

Or a villainess. Are we still allowed to say that? No one would deny that she's villainous, but is she a villainous villainess?

Anyway, I can kind of appreciate what Netflix is doing here. I presume this show is targeted toward a younger demographic that doesn't really understand moral complexity, and we don't want them consuming media that teaches them bad is good and good is bad.

But...

The fact is that humans are morally complex. Nobody is all good or all bad, and in fiction, cranking this paradox up to eleven makes characters oh so fascinating. I wish Netflix had gone this route.

Here's how I fantasize, I mean imagine Carmen Sandiego, which, though there is no overarching cohesive canon in this franchise, is largely drawn from the aforementioned TV series, the comics, etc. She's a somewhat eccentric, somewhat amoral genius of larger-than-life proportions. Crime is literally a game to her, something she does to challenge herself for fun, since catching criminals as an ACME detective was too easy for her. In one of the TV episodes she breaks into the latest high-tech vault and doesn't steal anything, just because she had to take the challenge. Then she accepts a challenge to give up on her high-tech gadgets altogether and steal things the old-fashioned way. She steals the unstealable, the impossible, the unthinkable, but she rarely steals anything that will hurt someone. She steals artifacts and landmarks that aren't owned by any one person. In another episode, she buys something she needs for a theft when she could easily shoplift it. She's not making anyone go hungry.

And because crime is a game to her, she goes out of her way to leave cryptic clues for the detectives following her, and doesn't begrudge them in the slightest for tracking her down and recovering what she stole. Remaining calm and optimistic, she signs off most episodes with a friendly "Until next crime." She even saves their lives more than once when they're in trouble, and yells detective Ivy's name out in panic when the latter slips from her grasp hundreds of feet off the ground. She's never killed anyone. Neither she nor any of her henchmen are even armed. And though the comic series tragically only lasted four issues, it had time to show her display even more of a conscience than that:

(Note: This comic was made in the mid-nineties. A black girl growing up to become President of the United States must have seemed impossible then, but now, in 2019, it's only half as impossible.)

(Note: That remark was not intended to be racist or sexist, but rather as a sardonic commentary on the United States that has nothing to do with anything else in this post.)

And of course, her stylish and iconic outfit is impossible not to like, am I right?

Granted, on some occasions Carmen Sandiego is more evil than others. In the creepy "Word Detective" game, she captures ACME agents and puts them in a machine that scrambles their speech into gibberish as part of her mission to create world illiteracy, which is creepy. I'm not arguing that she's not a villain. She is a villain, and that's entirely the point, and it makes her awesome because she's a fictional character. I realize there's a risk of sending that message to impressionable children who might then grow up to steal Mount Rushmore, but...

What more do I extrapolate from these clues in previous Carmen Sandiego media that Netflix has chosen to diverge from, as is admittedly their right? What do I think really drives this character, besides boredom? I think she enjoys her status as a villain a little too much. I think she craves attention and recognition for her brilliance, whether she'll admit it to herself or not. I think she knows deep down that she has a good heart, but she tries to quash it because she has an image to maintain. She overcompensates by running an organization called "Villains' International League of Evil" or "V.I.L.E" - heavyhanded much? (In the Netflix series, for some reason V.I.L.E. has been changed into a thief school that Carmen didn't create but attends and then rebels against.) I think she builds up this image as an amoral mysterious figure of mystery and constantly eludes capture because she has a proverbial wall around her tender heart to stop people from hurting her like they hurt her in the past.
​
I - 

Oh.

Now I get what my therapist meant about projecting myself onto fictional characters.

Okay, so I have my own fantasies, I mean ideas about what this franchise should look like. If I somehow magically had the resources and expertise to do so, I would forgo cartoons and TV shows in favor of at least twelve live-action movies. The potential of live action hasn't been fully explored here. It would be a realistic, gritty portrayal of the Carmenverse with the latest special effects and action sequences worthy of Indiana Jones or James Bond, but with the same bizarre humor, tortured puns, and ludicrously impossible thefts that the shows and books and games deserve to be more famous for. It would be as much of a paradox as Carmen Sandiego herself. The movie would spend equal time following her and an agent like Stan Packer from the audio games who drives himself half-mad trying to catch her in movie after movie. And she would commit crimes, like always, but she would show her redeeming qualities and have occasion to thwart far worse villains than herself. And somewhere along the way she would open her heart just enough to let in a certain Waldo (or Wally outside the United States), who would later be killed, crushing it.

And then... in the final movie (spoiler alert)...

Packer finally captures her. Whether because he got lucky or she got careless, it's hard to tell. But she's getting bored of her life of crime anyway. Like her previous life as an ACME detective, it's just too easy. She's pulled off so many of the greatest heists in history that it's getting old. So she resigns herself to her fate and, with a smile, holds out her wrists to be cuffed.

Packer hesitates. This is what he's worked for all this time, the culmination of his career, his key to fame, and yet...

For some reason, he can't bring himself to do it. Maybe because of the good she did for the world in the previous movies, or maybe just because putting her in jail would be like putting a butterfly in a cage, he growls at her to "Get out of here." She tips her hat and does so. Packer stares off into the distance where she disappeared for a while, then turns and walks home. Cue wistful music and roll credits. Carmen Sandiego is never seen again.

...until the next few movies after the final movie. It turns out she cryogenically froze herself and set the alarm for a few hundred years. Now she's ready to have a bunch of cool adventures in space.

Since I don't magically have the resources and expertise to do that, I have to content myself with criticizing other people's efforts. Look, I'm excited for this series regardless and I wish it great success, but not so much success that Disney buys it and ruins it. Seriously, Disney, how do you manage to make a Star Wars movie flop at the box office? Not even George Lucas managed to do that. Please leave Carmen Sandiego alone. There are rumors of a live action movie to go with this series, so I hope that happens too.

Am I taking this too seriously? Of course. Because this and other fantastical fiction franchises just so happen to be approximately two thousand percent less depressing than real life. Sorry not sorry.

Social liberalism, which currently holds sway over what respectable Americans are allowed to think even as disrespectable Americans run the country, has brought a lot of progress and also a lot of bullcrap. I consider myself a social moderate because I couldn't care less what adults do in their personal lives, but I'm not going to command that it be endorsed, celebrated, and taught to children everywhere in the US. Last night I read one of the finest articles I've read this year: "The New Evolution Deniers" For those of you who may be new here, I'm fully on board with evolution, and in fact the only part of this article I disagree with is whether Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens are/were worthy of admiration. (No.) I find it pleasantly surprising but not ironic in the slightest that this apparent atheist is basically defending the LDS Family Proclamation without knowing it. It's just another confirmation of my conviction that true religion has nothing to fear from true science and that an understanding of evolution, especially human evolution, deeply enriches my theology and vice-versa. I pity the poor fools who think they're in conflict.

You should read the whole article, but basically the author tears apart one of these instances where conservatives are openly hostile toward science while liberals pretend to care about it - you know, like how conservatives think climate change isn't real while liberals acknowledge that it is but do little or nothing to reduce their carbon footprints. I don't know much about all the sex and gender stuff going around so I stay quiet about it, but some things are mind-numbingly obvious. I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was, to learn from this article that there are a substantial number of delusional people insisting that biological sex - not gender, which is a related but separate thing that the article and I are not getting into, but actual biological sex that includes brain chemistry and body parts - is a "social construct". I'm not making this up. Read the article. I know I shouldn't be surprised by anything in this deranged society anymore. I suppose everything is a meaningless figment of my imagination, and can be whatever I want it to be. But then, if that were true, my world would look a lot less like this and a lot more like steampunk Hyrule with lightsabers.

As the article suggests, this bullcrap seems to come from anthropology. I've taken a few anthropology classes and enjoyed them very much, but I did hear some bullcrap. The thing about anthropology is that it isn't quite concerned about objective truth like most fields of science. It records facts about human behavior, but it's supposed to treat everyone's culture and beliefs as equally valid without trying to prove or disprove them - and that's as it should be, of course, but it doesn't address the reality that not all beliefs regarding objective facts of the physical world are correct or equally valid. They're just not. Just a couple days ago an anthropology professor here at USU gave the example that when he goes into a Pentecostal church in Brazil to study the members, he doesn't tell them their beliefs about creation and the age of the Earth are wrong, but as an educator he knows full well that evolution is real and the Earth is not 6,000 years old. So there's a disconnect between anthropology and reality that appears to have been hijacked by lunatics and weaponized in an attempt to beat the rest of science into submission.

Here's a thought: if your ideology is so vulnerable to actual facts that you have to bully, intimidate, and censor people to prevent them from sharing facts that you disagree with, then your ideology is probably bullcrap. If you have to label everyone you disagree with as racists and homophobes and transphobes and mansplainers instead of engaging with their arguments, then you should probably rethink your life. Of course there's legitimate stupidity and hate speech out there that doesn't deserve to be engaged with or taken seriously, but a lot of what people with the mentalities of spoiled five year olds demonize as stupidity and/or hate speech is actually legitimate points that they find offensive. A free exchange of ideas is crucial to a successful society (even if it sometimes means letting white supremacists march in the streets instead of hanging them from lampposts where they belong), and nowhere is this more true than in science. Science doesn't care what you want to be true. In any instances where scientists actually are being bigoted or just plain wrong, time and superior science will overrule them as they have in the past with racism and mental illness.

​​Again, the article and I are not talking about gender here, just biological sex. I don't know much about gender. I don't understand why people simultaneously claim that it, too, is a social construct but also an immutable part of a person's core identity that may not match their biological sex. So I avoid discussions about that rather than put my ignorance on display (insert your own quip about me always putting my ignorance on display here). Certainly it's a no-brainer that lots of gender/sex norms are unnecessary and arbitrary social constructs. There is no reason whatsoever why men shouldn't wear dresses and paint their nails if that's what they want to do. Why did we decide that women can wear pants but men can't wear dresses? Stupid, stupid, stupid. But to pretend that there's no meaningful difference between men and women, or that despite enabling the human race to reproduce for hundreds of thousands of years they're merely two of God knows how many points on a nonexistent "spectrum" just because genital mutations occasionally happen (and I'm grateful that we as a society are finally acknowledging that they happen), is even stupider.

I really don't understand why something so obvious has become controversial.

First, a completely out of character uplifting story. This week I tried to pay the utility bill online (ouch) and I forgot to put my credit card back in my wallet and it fell in the couch. I discovered this last night when I got to the register at Panda Express. Yes, I was eating somewhere fancy and expensive even though I'll probably regret it later because it's fall break and I wanted to do something special like everyone else, dang it. Feeling just slightly embarrassed, I asked if they could hold onto my food while I went and got my card, which would have taken at least forty minutes but was my only option. And the guy behind me in line whom I had never met before was like, "Nah, I'll just pay for it." And I was like, "Are you sure?" And that was a stupid thing to say, because what was he going to say, "On second thought, no"? But you know, you have to say something like that in these situations. So he did, and his little act of kindness made me not care that Russians are getting arrested for meddling in our elections. Normally I'd be outraged, because only Americans are allowed to meddle with other countries' governments, but I'm focusing on the positive now.

​Now, on to what the title promised:

To recap: serial killer abortionist Kermit Gosnell violated several laws, operated in disgusting conditions, murdered babies that were born alive, and wasn't investigated by the authorities for nearly two decades despite multiple complaints. And everyone, regardless of their views on abortion, hates him. Yet for some reason most of the media refused to cover his trial until they were called out on it by this thing called "the internet" that they apparently didn't count on, and many people tried to stop this movie from getting made or released, and now most of the media is refusing to review it despite it doing reasonably well at the box office and Facebook is literally blocking its ads for some bullcrap reason. I don't know why. I guess Kermit Gosnell just makes abortion look bad. I'm not able to see this movie because it's not playing anywhere near me, but I support its mission to get the truth out.

I did manage to see this one. Weird story. So I'm in this Facebook group "Black Latter-day Saints" despite not being black, and someone there said to text this number for free tickets to this movie, and I did, and I only asked for one, but this happened:

So on my sixth try, I found someone willing and able to go with me on such short notice. After I kicked a couple seats in front of me until they took a hint and turned off their obnoxiously bright phones (Pro tip: if you can't go without looking at your phone for an hour and a half, something's wrong with you), I was able to enjoy the movie. It's not really my type of movie and the chronology was a little confusing at first, but it was decent. The movie, of course, is about the sisterhood between LDS prophet Joseph Smith's first wife Emma and black LDS convert Jane Manning James, a sisterhood far ahead of its time. This movie has been praised for "having a public conversation everyone else should be having". As someone with more than a passing interest in black Latter-day Saint history, of course I had to see it and I'm glad I did.

Tomorrow: another post because I missed a week somewhere

The latest General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (hereafter never again to be called the LDS Church, the Mormon Church, or any of the less flattering names that internet trolls like to copy-paste in hopes that someone will mistakenly think they're clever) has been, as usual, a much-needed refuge from the stupid crap going on in the world and in my life. Although I've had more trouble than usual sleeping lately and especially last night, and was only semi-conscious for today's sessions, it was still a calming and uplifting and faith-building experience. I believe so strongly in this church and its mission and feel very blessed to be a part of it. This is my first attempt at writing about General Conference right after it happens instead of a week later, and I'm playing around with the format and trying to do something other than just comment on a bunch of talks that people just watched, so we'll see how it goes. In my preemptive defense let me point out that I'm still only semi-conscious.

I heard the rumor about church changing from three to two hours and thought it was ridiculous. Shows how much I know. Of course, I'm one of those who's excited about it for all the wrong reasons. I'm sort of an elitist jerk whose tendency is to zone out the moment I don't feel intellectually stimulated by what I'm hearing, instead of listening to the Spirit and yadda yadda yadda. And for the past few months I've been going to the family history room during the third hour instead of Elders' Quorum, which I find difficult to sit through. Traditionally I much prefer the mixed groups in sacrament meeting and Sunday school to the monolith of men. Lately I've been better at fostering meaningful platonic relationships with men, but traditionally it's been awkward. Someone helpfully pointed out the issue years ago: "I know you're uncomfortable hanging out with guys because you don't want people to think you're gay, but actually, hanging out with girls all the time is what will make people think that." And I was freaked out at first, but then I realized that if she had actually read my mind, she would have gone mad.

Anyway. The proper reason to get excited about two-hour church is that the focus of gospel learning is being shifted more into the home, for me and my two inactive roommates to deal with. I'm glad everyone else in the Church is qualified for these "higher law" changes. I still haven't done anything with "ministering". The monthly visits were out of my comfort zone already, and I got to doing them consistently anyway, and them bam, this more vague mandate that I still have no idea what to do with. I don't have a ton of experience making friends, okay?

I've been grappling lately with the realization that I can't have and don't want a family, and the discomfort that causes me in such a fundamentally family-centric religion. From my vantage point it looks more often than not as though God built me to be incompatible with His plan for ostensibly the entire human race. And I'm positive that not one person in the church's leadership understands my unique challenges. I don't think there ever has been or ever will be an Aspie ace Apostle. May people throughout the world could undoubtedly say the same about the things they're dealing with. So naturally, I zone out whenever conference talks are about marriage or raising children. But... I feel encouraged in my personal relationship with God, and encouraged that He does understand and care. And that's enough for now. I must say the positives of my membership in this church and my testimony of most of its teachings far outweigh the discomfort, or of course I wouldn't still be here. I hope my experience is comforting to some who deal with similar awkwardness.

Another talk about forgiveness. I'm not a forgiving person. How can I forgive someone who inflicted damage on me that I will have to deal with until I die? I'm not that humble or that strong. I hope they talk about forgiveness again for at least the next twenty years so I'll have a chance to get it right.

I've developed sort of an unhealthy obsession with diversity, and get an extra thrill when anyone who isn't white and/or American speaks. Don't get me wrong, most of my best friends are white and/or American, but the diversity of God's garden - and I hate myself for being so sappy, but honestly - is such a breath of fresh air. The Deseret News ran an article last week about how the number and percentage of General Authorities from outside the United States have increased in the last forty years. The actual membership as a whole is quite a bit more diverse, but that diversity is of course trickling up at an exponential rate and it's wonderful to see. The more skin colors and nations and walks of life I see represented, the more my heart burns with love for all my brothers and sisters of varying skin colors and nations and walks of life. In the words of the great preacher Emo Philips, "Why be prejudiced against anyone because of their race or nationality or creed... when there are so many real reasons to hate others?" I kid, I kid.

Nonetheless, I love President Russell M. Nelson the most. I never expected him to capture my heart like this when I had little opinion on him prior to his current calling. Maybe it's his sense of humor, maybe it's just an ineffable charisma, maybe it's that he has far more energy than me despite being sixty-nine years older, but I love and sustain him one way or another. It's always easier to follow the prophet when he's already likeable as a person.

And I actually appreciate that he's moved the temple announcements to the end, instead of putting the best part at the beginning and going downhill from there given the pace he's set, I wasn't at all surprised when today he set the new record for most temples to be announced at one time (twelve) despite already announcing seven more six months ago. I'm so happy for myself now getting to look at more dots on a map, and I'm so happy for the Latter-day Saints in and near Mendoza, Argentina; Salvador, Brazil; Yuba City, California; Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Praia, Cape Verde; Yigo, Guam; Puebla, Mexico; Auckland, New Zealand; Lagos, Nigeria; Davao, Philippines; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Washington County, Utah; which is less lame than it sounds because it's outside the Wasatch Front. It seems wev'e crossed a threshold of dotting the Earth with temples and will only go further from here, and I personally know some people who will be affected by these. Speaking of temples, Rick Satterfield's website is back online with a facelift and well worth the wait.

Tune in next week for something that I haven't decided yet.

By now this is quite old news that I kept feeling inadequate to write about. Darius Gray, black Latter-day Saint pioneer and quintessential adorable old man, spoke at this year's annual Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lecture. This year it was combined with the Mountain West Center’s Evans Biography Awards, so it was part of two days of USU events that also included Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Ron Coleman Paul Reeve, Max Perry Mueller, and LaShawn Williams - all, like Brother Gray, people I had heard about from my readings on LDS history and culture but never dreamed I would see in person. I hadn't heard of Rodney Frey, but he's probably important and famous too. I skipped three classes to make it to all these events and it was so worth it. These are the sort of opportunities I have to take advantage of now while I'm still in Utah.

​Brother Gray spoke on "Redeeming a People: The Critical Role of Historical Examination in Moving Cultural and Moral Trajectories". In his characteristic humility, he said little about his own life even though he could have made it the entire subject of his talk. He joined the Church in December 1964, about thirteen and a half years before the priesthood and temple restriction was lifted, and he struggled with it but had a strong testimony and I just think it's a fascinating story that inspires such admiration for his faith and courage and patience. It's been recounted elsewhere, but on this occasion, when someone actually asked him what had drawn him to join a church that wouldn't let him progress, he just talked in somewhat vague terms about how God had ahold of his heart and hasn't let go of him yet. He obviously didn't want much focus on himself. His talk should be available online sooner or later but I can't seem to find it to link to at this time. I won't even try to summarize because I still feel inadequate. Anyway, I got a picture with him and he complimented my beard and was just every bit as warm and friendly as I knew he would be.

So that was the main event. Mentioning everything that happened or was said would surely bore my dear readers to tears (insert your own quip about all my posts doing that here), but I want to mention one thing. The last speaker in the two days of events was Darren Parry, chairman (or, as he gave us permission to call him because it sounds cooler, Chief) of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation and a fifth-generation Latter-day Saint, mentioned that he would read the history of the LDS pioneers settling Utah and feel constrained to exclaim, quote, "The hell? This is only half of the story!", close quote. The pioneers, he pointed out, would never have survived, let alone thrived, without the hospitality and generosity of the people who were already living here. Quote, "Who moves to Cache Valley in September?", close quote. But he says that months ago church headquarters called him and asked him to help tell the Shoshone half of the story in the upcoming second volume of "Saints". So that's cause for excitement, and if it's confidential information that's not supposed to be shared then blame him, not me.